Page 66 of Justice for Francesca

The number wasn’t one he recognized, but something told him he needed to answer it anyway. He spoke softly into the phone. “Yeah?” He crawled back into the bed and made sure tosnuggle up to her body, this time her back to his front. He loved her like this. Warm. Relaxed.

“Tripoli.”

“Michael?” he hissed. “Where the fuck are you?”

“I… that’s a really tough question to answer right now.”

“You need to come back. There was another murder yesterday. You being gone is making you suspect number one.”

“Shit. Who?”

Tripoli swallowed. “It was Tilly.”

The silence on the other end of the phone was total, like the void of space. When Michael finally spoke, it was tortured. “Oh god, no.”

Tripoli struggled around the lump in his throat. “Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. Cosmos found her. The guy… Michael, he shoved her into the magic box. Stuck it full of real swords.”

“What the fucking fuck?!”

Waking up at the sound of his voice, Francesca rolled over to face Tripoli, her gaze sad. “Let me talk to him.” She held her hand up for the phone.

He didn’t move at first, not sure he’d heard her correctly. He swallowed again. “Francesca wants to talk to you.”

There was a twinge of hardness to Michael’s voice. “She’s with you? It’s six a.m.”

Tripoli met him with equal force, his eyes still locked with Francesca’s. “We gonna do the protective brother speech right now? Really?”

To her credit, she didn’t roll her eyes or push him to hand over the phone. In the end, that was why he handed it over, although he put it on speaker.

“Michael? Please. Come back. We need to eliminate you as a suspect.”

“Frankie… I can’t. One second.” Michael must have put the phone up against his clothing because there was a murmur ofvoices quietly in the background. When he returned, he said, “Even if I did, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Clearing my name, that is.” Tripoli heard resignation in Michael’s voice, and he registered that Francesca heard it as well.

“Michael?”

“Fuck. This is a mess. I’m guessing I was the last person to see her. She had a disagreement with Triumph. She called me, and I met her at my apartment. There will be all kinds of video of me arriving at my apartment and me leaving shortly after.” There was another murmur in the background. “Frankie, you’re going to see something pretty incriminating on the video they pull from the apartment. Jesus… I swear, Frankie. I absolutely swear I didn’t do it, but it’s going to look like I did. I know you don’t believe me. You never did when I was accused years ago, but I fucking swear, I didn’t sell those drugs. I sure as hell didn’t kill Mila.” His voice wavered. “And I didn’t kill my friends. I couldn’t do it, Frankie, no more than I could hurt you.”

Tripoli heard panic creeping into her voice. “Michael,” she whispered. “What am I going to see?”

Silence as a car started.

“Michael?” She pushed at him with more urgency.

“I left my building with a flatbed cart. And a crate.”

“Where did you take the crate?”

“The club. It will be on video. I took it in through the delivery entrance. I left without it about thirty minutes later. Unless there’s footage of Tilly leaving my apartment after me, I’m going to be arrested eventually.”

“What was in the crate, Michael?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s… it’s complicated.”

“It always is, isn’t it?” she intoned. “You ask me to trust you, but you give me nothing to make that possible. You say nothing. You have no explanations, only facts that make things worse. What else am I supposed to think except that you’re guilty?”

“Frankie, I promise. I’d tell you if I could, but I really, really can’t. I need you to trust me like you did when we were kids. Please.”

Francesca spoke with new conviction, although Tripoli saw the struggle in her face. “I want to believe you, Michael, I do.” She closed her eyes, took in a huge breath, and then let it out while opening her eyes to look straight into Tripoli’s gaze. “I’ll do what I can to help you. I don’t know how much that will be because I won’t be on the case anymore. But I’ll try.”

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