Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

needed it. Cleaned me up when I needed that. You were the best friend I had. I--" Oh God, Pete was crying. He had to wind this up fast. "I'm gonna miss you, Tee."

He stepped back and looked down at Pete who shook his head so hard he lost his balance. Eli caught him, but he pulled away. Feeling helpless, Eli looked at Marilyn, silently asking what to do next. Marilyn gave him a "how the hell do I know" look, then stepped up and laid her rose on the coffin.

"I never met you, Teresa," she said, "but I know you're a good person because good people care about you. You raised a wonderful son who loves you very much." She fell silent, long enough Eli thought she was done, then she spoke again. "Thank you for looking after Eli for me. I wish--I wish I could have said it in person, but...well, anyway, thanks."

Pete was still crying. Eli crouched beside him. "You don't have to say anything if you don't want."

"What if that's not her in there?" Pete whispered. "What if she's lost somewhere looking for me?"

"God, Pete--" Eli pulled his son into his arms, holding him tight. "I wish you were right, kid. I really do. But she's dead. That's her body in the coffin."

"Maybe we should look, just to make sure."

"Pete, I saw her after she died. They checked six different ways to be sure this is her. I'm sure it is. We don't need to look."

"You swear?" Pete wrapped his arms around Eli's neck.

"I swear. Cross my heart."

Pete sniffled. "You mashed my flower."

"Oh, hey--" Eli pulled back and looked at the rose crushed between them. "Sorry about that." He tried to fluff it up again.

"That's okay." Pete swiped the back of his hand across his nose. From the corner of his eye, Eli saw Marilyn wince and had to suppress a smile. "Mom won't care. She even liked smashed flowers. She told me."

But he didn't let go of Eli's neck. Staggering slightly--the casts had only been off two days and the kid was getting awfully big--Eli picked Pete up and carried him to the coffin. Pete set his flower on the lid.

"Bye, Mom," he said. "Eli's my dad. I'm gonna stay with him now." He swiped at his nose again. "I miss you. Bye."

Eli backed away and set Pete on the ground. "Man, you're getting too big for that. You're gonna have to start carrying me pretty soon."

"Nuh-uh." Pete denied it, smiling through his sniffling. His hand came up, heading for his nose again, and Marilyn caught it, using only her finger and thumb.

"Let me take care of that for you," she said, coming at him with a tissue produced from some magical place, like her purse.

"I can do it." Pete wrestled half a second for the tissue before she surrendered and gave it to him.

"Clean off your coat sleeve while you're at it, huh? I don't want you getting back in the car like that. Ick." Marilyn made a big show of being grossed out by his disgusting mess and actually got a laugh out of the little guy.

Eli smiled, watching them, until he felt Jackson approach.

"All healed up, I see," the detective said.

"Got the casts off anyway." Eli hunched into his coat, studying the other man while he talked. "Still not quite back to normal. Lost a lot of muscle. What's up? Why'd you come?"

"I try to pay my respects when I can." Jackson looked over at Pete and Marilyn. "That Teresa's boy?"

"Yeah. Mine and Tee's."

Jackson lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah?" Then he nodded. "Yeah. You two were pretty tight back then, now I think about it. Didn't think it went that direction, though."

Eli hunched deeper. "Neither one of us was very discriminating back then."

"So you and Ms. Ballard really are...?"

"None of your business," Eli snapped. "But for your information, no matter what you might have thought, I'm not gay. Never have been. Nothing against those who are. I'm just not."

Jackson's eyes went wide with shocked horror. "Fuck."

"No, thanks." The conversation made Eli uncomfortable. He wanted to get out of here, back to Marilyn's with Pete so he could pretend for a while that none of it ever happened. "That's not the only reason you came, just to pay your respects."

"Not entirely, no." Jackson cleared his throat. "I came to warn you."

"About what?" Eli got a really bad feeling about whatever the man was going to say.

"Dwayne Gardner got released from jail six days ago."

"What?" Eli refrained from grabbing Jackson by the throat by sheer force of will. "What the hell is going on? You swore to me he wouldn't make bail with a murder charge on him."

"It got screwed up all round. The DA's office somehow didn't get the charges filed on time and the jail got the paperwork late. When Flash's girlfriend posted the seven thousand cash bail for the narcotics and weapons charges, they cut him loose. Then, when the warrant for the murder charge finally went down, they shipped it back and said he wasn't there."

"Fuck!" Eli spun in a circle looking for something to hit, but the only things close were Pete, Marilyn, Jackson, and Teresa's coffin, and he wasn't about to touch any of them. So he swore again. It didn't help much.

"I wanted to be sure you knew, 'cause when we took the Flashman in, it sure sounded like he had some serious hate thing going with you. What's the deal with that?"

Eli watched Marilyn walk with Pete to the car. She put him inside, bundled him up in the old quilt and hurried back. He wished she would stay there so she didn't have to hear this, but it was better she knew.

"Flash is out," he said when she reached them.

"I heard."

"What you didn't hear is that Flash wants payback on me. He's hated me since I beat the shit out of him once back when, but I'm pretty sure he thinks I killed his old man