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colonel's eagles on his shirt collar, a sizable beer gut, and a black nine-millimeter Glock automatic riding on his hip, just what your average hick county sheriff needs to hold back the invading criminal hordes from the city and to bring down the occasional rogue elephant.
    Slowly he took off his sunglasses as he stepped next to the Bronco. I rolled the window down and he leaned-in, resting his meaty forearms on the Bronco's window frame. He scanned the SUV's interior then focused his eyes on me, narrow and hard. “You got some kinda problem here, Mister?” he asked.
    I looked the plastic nameplate on his shirt. It said Dannmeyer. I smiled my most polite and innocent smile. “Nope, everything's just fine, Deputy Dannmeyer.”
    His expression turned even harder. “That's Sheriff Dannmeyer, not deputy.”
    “Oh, excuse me there, Sheriff.”
    “I know I saw you and this vehicle back at the Funeral Home, and I know you heard Mr. Greene say this here was a private service. He said immediate family only.” He held out his hand. “Now, lemme see some ID.”
    I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver's license.
    He stared down at the card and said, “Talbott, Peter Emerson.” He frowned, peered in at my face again, down at the card, then back at me. “Talbott?” he asked suspiciously. “That's the same name as the deceased. You related?”
    “In a round-about-kind-of-sort-of-way.”
    He stared at the driver's license again, his face more troubled now. “This here license says you're from California,” he said.
    I tried hard to look just as serious. “That's because I'm from California, or I was. I moved to Boston recently, but the license hasn't caught up.”
    “Hasn't, huh?” He kept looking at the license. “So whadaya do out there in California or Boston, or wherever the hell it is you're from, Mr. Talbott?”
    “Me? I'm an aeronautical systems engineer, a computer programmer. I evolve mathematical constructs for computer simulations.”
    He gave me a blank stare. “Sounds interesting.”
    “It isn't. What about you, sheriff? Whadaya do?”
    “Me? I keep people from getting their noses stuck in places they don't belong.”
    “Now that does sound interesting.”
    “Sometimes it is. Sometimes it saves 'em a lot of time and trouble.” He seemed to be studying me, not sure. “Like you, for instance. You came all the way here from Boston? That's a long damn way to come for a funeral.”
    “Well, you know how close us Talbotts are, Sheriff.” I looked down and saw Dannmeyer had a U. S. Marine Corps emblem and “Semper Fi” tattooed on his hairy forearm. “Semper Fi? Well, goddamn! Were you in the Crotch?”
    “Hey, is there anything else?” Dannmeyer suddenly beamed.
    “No shit, what unit?”
    “Fifth Marines. And you?”
    “Me? Oh, I was in the Army, but I just love those cute jarhead tattoos.”
    His eyes narrowed. His smile faded and he couldn't quite make up his mind whether I had put him on or insulted him. Whichever, he knew he didn't like it. Slowly he backed his head out of the car and handed me back my driver's license, but those hard eyes never left me.
    “The fuckin’ Army, huh,” he said as he spat on the ground, gave me a two-fingered salute, and slowly put the silver-lensed sunglasses back on. “You be real careful driving back to Boston. We had to scrape the last two Talbotts off a bridge abutment out on I-71 and you wouldn't want to put us through all that mess again, now would you?” Then he turned and walked back to his cruiser. He got in and slowly backed the big car away from the gate.
    I tried not to smile, but I couldn't help it as I drove on through, turned south, and didn't stop until the cemetery was long gone from my rear view mirror.
    A private family funeral? The whole thing stunk even worse now than it had before. Maybe it was Greene and that expression of surprise on his face when he looked up and saw me sitting in the chapel. Maybe it was the callous