Shay O'Hanlon Caper 04 - Chip Off the Ice Block Murder Read Online Free Page B

tried to keep an eye on the time so we could turn up the volume on the two TVs that were mounted above the bar. We were ten minutes from the New Year, and I finally felt like we might make it to the end of the night.
    I handed off the last of the latest round of drink orders to one of the servers whose name had flown in one ear and straight out the other. She was a fresh-faced, college-aged kid with a strawberry-blond French braid who seemed reasonably capable. She shouldered the loaded tray with practiced grace. I wondered what she wanted to be when she grew up.
    “Hey!” A hoarse voice shook me out of my very momentary reverie.
    I turned toward a balding, narrow-faced man with a bulbous red nose who was crammed like a sardine against the bar. From the look of him, he appreciated his alcohol.
    “What can I—” The rest of my query died in my throat when I caught sight of the wallet he was holding out. Instead of showing me his driver’s license, the wallet contained a police shield. In the blink of an eye, multiple thoughts raced through my head, a dead father leading the chase. My jaw snapped shut.
    He squinted at me, looking remarkably like Popeye the Sailor Man.
    I waited, inanely wondering if he was going to speak out of the side of his mouth and ask me for some spinach. When the words came, they weren’t about spinach. “Peter O’Hanlon here?”
    Okay. If my father was dead, would they be asking for him? I had no idea. I quickly scanned the crowd for JT, without success.
I said, “No, he’s not.”
    Popeye shifted his eyes from one end of the bar to the other as if he thought I might be hiding my dad in plain sight. His gaze pinned me again. “Know where I can find him?”
    I leaned close. “If I could find him right now, I’d probably kill him. What’s going on?”
    His breath was hot on my cheek and smelled like a combination of cigarettes and wintergreen. I wondered if he used mints like my dad did to hide the evidence of his lapses.
    “I need to talk to him.”
    “Don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t seen my father today.”
    “Your father?”
    “Yeah, Pete O’Hanlon’s my dad. Did you pick him up again?”
    Popeye gave me a sharp look. “No. Should we?”
    Well, hell. I was too busy to play twenty questions with the law. The clock on the wall read 11:56. If he wasn’t here to break the news to me that I had a dead daddy, I didn’t have time to deal with him. “Look,” I said, “I don’t know where he is. If you find him, please tell him to get his ass back here.” I was about to move on when the man stopped me with a hand on my wrist.
    Irritated, I swung back to face him. “What?”
    Popeye pulled me toward him and again put his lips next to my cheek. “Your father own a gun?”
    A gun? What kind of question was that? My dad used to keep an old revolver under the bar for emergencies, but as far as I knew, he’d never pulled it out. Whether it was still there I had no idea. “He used to,” I answered warily. “Why?”
    Popeye flipped his business card at me, like a surly TV detective. “You call me if he comes back, okay?”
    I picked up the card. Emblazoned across the top was Sgt. Robert DeSilvero followed on the next line by Saint Paul Police Department , with Homicide Division printed below that.
    Holy cow. Homicide Division? My head snapped up to meet Sergeant DeSilvero’s eyes.
    “Call me.” He backed up and faded into the masses.
    Any further thought I had on what transpired were lost when the floor literally started vibrating from the stomping of feet and thunder of voices shouting down the seconds to the new year.
    It didn’t look like 2012 was going to be getting off to a very good start.

    It was past three in the morning when JT and I hit the sack. Exhaustion made my body feel heavy and lethargic. JT clicked off the bedside lamp, and the mattress sank down as she crawled in and rolled to face me. She propped herself on her elbow, silhouetted against the window