Silent Night Man. Diana Palmer
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off until the new year,” Tony said. “I can handle that.”
Frank blinked. “I’m sure she’ll welcome having you around, after the warm reception you gave her at the funeral home.”
Tony flinched. “Yeah. Well, I’ll have to apologize, I suppose.”
Frank didn’t say anything to that. Privately he thought Tony was going to find it difficult to bend enough to convince Millie that he was sorry. His friend had spent most of his life in violent surroundings. His social skills were a bit rusty, especially around women like Millie. Tony’s taste was the brassy, forward sort of females he could find in bars. Millie was both refined and reserved. It would be a tough combination to crack for a hard nut like Tony.
* * *
The next morning, a penitent Tony joined Frank at the funeral home for John’s last rites. There was a very small group of people there, mostly family. A couple of rough-looking men were sitting in the back, looking around constantly. Tony wondered if they might be John’s gang friends.
After the brief service, Tony drove Frank and himself to the cemetery for the graveside service. It was equally brief.
Tony noted that the rough-looking men had also come to the cemetery. One of them was intent on Tony and Frank, as if he found their presence suspicious.
“We’re being watched,” Tony told his friend as they walked back toward Tony’s sports car.
“I noticed,” Frank replied. Working as a bouncer had given him a sixth sense about trouble. Tony, in his line of work, also had developed it. They pretended to talk casually, without making it obvious that they saw the two men.
When they got to the car, and were seated and ready to travel, Tony looked in the rearview mirror and noted that one of the men was unobtrusively writing down his license plate number. He started laughing as he pulled the car around two of the family’s vehicles and exited the cemetery road.
“What’s funny?” Frank asked.
“They’re cops,” he said.
“What?”
“They’re cops,” Tony repeated. “Gang members wouldn’t give a hoot in hell about my plate number. They want to know who I am, and what my connection is to John.” He glanced at his friend. “How about asking your contact in the police department what they want to know about me? I’ll phone him with the details.”
Frank chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll call him when I get home.”
Tony grinned. It amused him to be viewed with suspicion. He mostly was these days. He kept a low profile and never talked about his job.
He dropped Frank off at his apartment, and promised to meet him the following day for lunch. Then he went back to his hotel.
He noted that he was being followed again. He gave his car keys to the valet who handled the parking, walked into the lobby and slowed his pace as he went toward the elevator. He felt eyes on his back. Someone was following him. This was amusing.
He got into the elevator and pretended to be disinterested in his surroundings. A man whom he recognized as one of the two strangers at the funeral got in with him and stood apart, also pretending unconcern.
When Tony got off, on the wrong floor, he noted that the man remained behind but jotted down a number.
He took the staircase down, and was waiting in the lobby when the man following him got off the elevator. He looked up into Tony’s black eyes and actually jumped.
Tony gave him a worldly look. “If you want to know who I am and why I went to John’s funeral, come on in the bar and I’ll buy you a drink and give you the lowdown.”
The man raised his eyebrows, and then started laughing.
“How did you figure it out?” he asked, when they were seated at the bar.
“I’ve worked with cops before,” Tony told him, “in between jobs overseas.”
“What sort of jobs overseas?”
Tony chuckled, reached into his pocket for his wallet, flipped it open and displayed his credentials.
The man whistled softly. “I thought about going with them, once, but after six months of being called, interrogated, lie-detected, background-checked and otherwise investigated to death, I gave up and joined the police force. The pay’s lousy, but I’ve only been involved in one shoot-out in ten years.” He grinned. “I’ll bet you can’t say that.”
“You’d be right,” Tony had to admit. “I’m carrying enough lead in me to fill a revolver. They can’t take some of the slugs out because of where they lodged.”
“You knew the deceased, I gather.”
He nodded. “He was my best friend since high school.” He grimaced. “But it turns out I didn’t know him at all. He was stalking a woman we both knew and I thought she was lying about it.”
The man pulled out a notepad. “That would be Miss Millicent Evans.”
“Yes.”
“She wasn’t lying,” the police detective told him. “She called us in on a 10-16 domestic, physical,” he added, using the ten code for a domestic disturbance call. “He’d knocked her around pretty badly.”
Tony felt two inches high as he remembered Millie’s unexpected reaction when he’d moved so abruptly in the funeral home. He couldn’t speak.
“But when it was time to press charges, she wouldn’t,” the detective said flatly. “We were disappointed. We don’t like women beaters. She said he was drinking heavily and had apologized, and it was the first time he’d hit her.”
“Was it only the one time?” Tony had to know.
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