The Winter Man (2 page)

“I'm very sorry,” she said quietly. She looked at John with no visible sign of emotion. “I never meant it to end like this.”

“Didn't you?” He turned, his hands in the pockets of his coat, as he glared down at her with piercing dark eyes. “Teasing him for years, playing hard to get, then calling the police to have him arrested as a stalker? And you didn't mean it to end like this?”

She felt cold all over. She knew he'd worked in construction years ago, but there had been rumors about him
since, whispers. Dark whispers. John had intimated that Tony was into illegal operations, that he'd killed men. Looking into his black eyes now, she could believe it. He wasn't the man she'd known. What had he said about her teasing John?

“Don't bother to lie,” he said icily, cutting off her question even before it got out of her mouth. “John told me all about you.”

Her eyebrows arched. What was there to tell, except that his friend John had almost destroyed her life? She drew herself up straighter. “Yes, he was quite good at telling people about me,” she began.

“I never could understand what he saw in you,” he continued, his voice as pleasant as his eyes were homicidal. “You're nothing to look at. I wouldn't give you a second look if you were dripping diamonds.”

That hurt. She tried not to let it show, but it did. God knew what John had told him.

“I…have to go,” she stammered. She was no good at confrontations. This big man was looking for a fight. Millie had no weapons against him. Long ago, the spirit had been beaten out of her.

“What, no urge to linger and gloat over your triumph?” He laughed coldly. “The man is dead. You drove him to suicide!”

She turned, her heart breaking, and met the tall man's eyes. “You and Frank could never see it,” she replied.
“You wouldn't see it. Other men have infatuations. John had obsessions. He was arrested other times for stalking women—”

“I imagine you put the women up to reporting him,” he interrupted. “John said you'd accuse him of stalking and then be waiting for him at his apartment, wearing no clothes at all.”

She didn't seem surprised at the comment. He couldn't know that she was used to John's accusations. Much too used to them for comfort.

She moved one shoulder helplessly. “I tried to make him get help. When I finally had him arrested, I spoke to the district attorney myself and requested that they give him a psychiatric evaluation. John refused it.”

“Of course he refused it. There was nothing wrong with his mind!” he shot back. “Unless you could call being infatuated with you a psychiatric problem.” He raised both eyebrows. “Hell, I'd call it one!”

“Call it whatever you like,” she said wearily. She glanced once more at John and turned away from the casket.

“Don't bother coming to the funeral,” he said coldly. “You won't be welcome.”

“Don't worry, I hadn't planned to,” she replied.

He took a quick step toward her, infuriated by her lukewarm attitude, his dark eyes blazing with fury.

She gasped, dropped her purse and jumped back away from him. Her face was white.

Surprised, he stopped in his tracks.

She bent and scrambled for her purse, turned and ran out of the room.

There were murmurs outside the room. He glanced back at John, torn between anger and grief. “God, I'm sorry,” he said softly to his friend. “I'm so sorry!”

He forced himself to leave. The funeral director was standing at the front door, looking worried.

“The young lady was very upset,” he said uneasily. “White as a sheet and crying.”

“I'm sure she was grieving for John,” Tony said nonchalantly. “They knew each other a long time.”

“Oh. That would explain it, then.”

Tony walked to his car and felt better. At least he'd dragged some emotion out of her on behalf of his friend. He got behind the wheel of his expensive sports car and revved it out of the funeral home parking lot, his mind already on his appointment with the bank.

Millie Evans sat at the wheel of her little black VW Beetle and watched Tony drive away, out of her life. She was still crying. His coldness, his fury, had hurt her. She'd had to deal with John's histrionics and threats for two years, watching her life and career go down the drain while he told lies about her to anyone gullible enough to listen. He'd persecuted her, tormented her, made a hell of her daily life. Now he was dead, and Tony wanted to make her pay for driving his poor, helpless friend to suicide.

She wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. Poor friend, the devil! Perhaps if he and Frank had realized that John was mentally ill years ago, they might have made him get help. He might have straightened out his life and gone on.

Millie was secretly relieved that John hadn't carried out his last, furious threat to end her life. He'd told her that she wouldn't get away with rejecting him. He had friends, he told her, who wouldn't hesitate to kill her for the right amount of money. He had savings, he'd raged; he'd use it all. He'd make sure she didn't live to gloat about pushing him out of her life!

She'd worried about that threat. The news was full of people who'd gone off the deep end and killed others they blamed for their problems, before killing themselves. It was, sadly, a fact of modern life. But she'd never dreamed that she—plain, prim little Millie Evans—would ever have something like that happen to her. Most people never even noticed her.

She'd wanted to be noticed by Tony. She'd loved him forever, it seemed. While his foster mother was alive, she'd coaxed the older woman into talking about her adoptive son. Tony had come a long way from North Carolina. He and his sister, both Cherokee, had lived with their mother and her abusive husband—but not their biological father—in Atlanta just briefly, but the man drank to excess and was brutal to the children. Tony and his sister went into foster homes in Georgia. After his sister, also in foster
care, died, Tony's nurturing foster mother moved him to San Antonio, where she had family, to get him away from the grief. She worked as an archivist at the public library in San Antonio, where Tony was a frequent patron; and where Millie worked after school and between classes while she went through college.

Millie had loved hearing stories of Tony as a boy, as a teenager, as a soldier. Sometimes his foster mother would bring letters to the library and show them to Millie, because they were like living history. Tony had a gift for putting episodes in his life down on paper. He made the countries where he was stationed come alive, and not only for his parent.

Millie had hoped that Tony might spend some time at the library when he came home on leave. But there were always pretty girls to take on dates. Frank Mariott worked as a bouncer in a nightclub and he knew cocktail waitresses and showgirls. He introduced them to Tony, who always had a night free for fun.

A library, Millie supposed, wasn't a good place to pick up girls. She looked in her rearview mirror and laughed. She saw a plain, sad-faced woman there, with no hopes of ever attracting a man who'd want to treasure her for the rest of her life. It was a good thing, she told herself, that she'd stockpiled so many romance novels to keep her nights occupied. If she couldn't experience love, at least she could read about it.

She wiped her eyes, closed up her purse and drove herself back to work. She'd forced herself to go and see John, out of guilt and shame. All she'd accomplished was to find a new enemy and hear more insults about herself. She knew that she'd never meet up with Tony again after this. Perhaps it was just as well. She'd spent enough time eating her heart out over a man who couldn't even see her.

* * *

Tony made his funds transfer, got the plat from the safe-deposit box, had the bank copy it for him and replaced the original before he went back to the funeral home.

All the way, in the back of his mind, he kept seeing the fear in Millie's face when he'd moved toward her. That reaction was odd. She might have been surprised by the speed of his movement—a lot of people had been, over the years. But she'd expected him to hit her. It was in her eyes, her face, her whole posture. He wondered what had happened to her in the past that made her so afraid.

Then he chided himself for that ridiculous compassion, when she'd caused John's death. At least he'd made sure that she wouldn't come to the funeral. That would have been the last straw.

He pulled up at the funeral home and locked his car. It was getting colder. Strange weather, he thought. First it was like summer then, in a matter of days, winter arrived. It was normal weather for Texas in late November, he mused.

As he walked into the funeral home, he saw some of
John's family gathered, talking among themselves. Frank spotted Tony and came out into the hall. They shook hands.

“I just have to drop this off,” he told Frank, lifting up the copy of the plat. “Then we'll spend a minute talking to John's people before we go out to eat.”

The funeral director spotted them and came forward. He took the copy of the plat, smiled at Frank and went back to his office.

“You may get a shock,” Frank murmured as they walked into the viewing room.

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, surprised.

John didn't have much family. His parents were long dead. He did have a sister, Ida. She was there, dry-eyed and irritable. She glanced at the doorway and put on a big smile.

“Tony! How nice to see you again!” She ran up to him and hugged him. “You look great!”

“Sorry we have to meet like this,” Tony began.

“Yes, the idiot, what a stupid thing to do!” Ida muttered. “He had a life insurance policy worth fifty thousand dollars. I paid the premiums for him, me and Jack, and look what he does! Suicide! We won't get a penny!”

Tony looked as if he'd been hit in the eye.

“Oh, there's Merle. Sorry, honey, I have to talk to her about the flowers. She's giving me a good deal on a wreath…”

John's cousin Ben came forward to shake hands.

“What a mess,” he told the two men. He shook his
head. “I bailed him out of jail. He didn't exactly skip bond, but I'll forfeit what I put up,” he added heavily. “Two thousand dollars,” he grumbled. “He swore he'd pay me back.” He wandered off, still shaking his head.

An elderly woman with dyed blond hair and wearing a hideous black dress, peered at Tony. She grinned up at him. “You must be that rich friend of Johnny's,” she said. “He said you owned several islands out in the Atlantic and that you were going to give him one and a yacht, too, so he could get to and from this country.”

“That's right, Blanche,” Frank said, smiling. “Now, you'll have to excuse us, we've got an appointment. We'll see you at the funeral.”

“I sure would like to see that yacht,” Blanche added.

Frank took Tony by the arm and propelled him out into the lobby.

* * *

They were sitting in a good Italian restaurant fifteen minutes later, having given in their order.

“I can't believe it,” Tony said furiously. “His own family! Not one of them seems to be sad that he's dead!”

“He was nothing but trouble to them,” Frank replied. “He didn't work, you know,” he added, shocking Tony, who'd already had a few shocks. “He told the government people that he had a bad back and he fed liquor to two vagrants who signed sworn statements that they'd seen the accident that crippled him. He convinced his
doctor and got a statement from him, too, and talked a lawyer into getting him onto partial disability.” He shook his head. “But it was barely enough to live on. He pestered his relatives for handouts. When he got arrested for stalking, this last time, he talked Ben into posting his bond. I warned Ben, but he said John had promised that his rich friend would pay Ben back.”

“I've known John since high school,” he told Frank. “You've known him since junior high. He was a good man.”

Frank paused while the waiter served them appetizers and ice water.

“He changed,” Frank said quietly. “More than you know. You only saw him on holidays, while your foster mother was still alive, and hardly at all in the past couple of years. I saw him constantly.”

“You're trying to say something,” Tony murmured, eyeing the other man.

Frank toyed with his salad. “He made friends with some members of a gang a few months ago,” he said. “It really thrilled him, that he could kick around with people who weren't afraid of the law. He hated cops, you know,” he added. “Ever since the arrest for stalking, when he went after—”

“Yes,” Tony interrupted him. “That Millie creature!”

“Creature!” Frank sat back, shocked.

Tony was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “She caused John to kill himself, remember?”

“Who told you that?”

“John did. He sent me a letter. Left me a letter.” He pulled it out of his pocket. It had arrived the day he got the news that John was dead, obviously having been mailed in advance of the suicide. “He said she tormented him…hell, read it for yourself.” He pushed it across the table.

“I can imagine what's in it,” Frank said. He ignored the letter and finished chewing a bite of salad. “He accused women of teasing him when they were only trying to get him to leave them alone. Millie was more kindhearted than most—she kept forgiving him. Then when she refused dates, he started telling tales on her to her coworkers.” He glanced at Tony, sitting stiffly, still unbelieving. “You've seen Millie. Now, you tell me, does she really look like the sort of woman who'd lie in wait at John's apartment wearing a French maid's costume with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a champagne flute in the other?”

“It would be tough to imagine,” Tony had to admit. “Still, mild-looking women have done crazier things.”

“Yes, but Millie's not like that.” Frank's face softened. “She sat with your foster mother when she was dying in the hospital, before you could get home. She was there every night after work.”