Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (read out loud books txt) 📖

be taken down and will be used in evidence against you in a court of law…”

“Feck off!”

As I put the cuffs on her, I could hear Dehan reading Mo and Anne-Marie their rights too. Through the window, I could see Sean and Karen pulling up to collect the machete. They climbed out the of the patrol car, breathing billows of condensation as they talked and laughed, moving up the garden path. It was a cold day.

Epilogue

“You ought to buy a dishwasher. Everybody has dishwashers these days.”

She was standing at the sink with the cold light of a winter afternoon on her face, slowly washing a plate. She seemed abstracted. On my laptop, Dean Martin was singing that the weather outside was frightful, but he reckoned the fire was quite delightful. I had to agree. I hadn’t lit it for over two years, but now it looked festive and homely. My house hadn’t looked homely for a long time.

“It helps me to think,” I said as I poured two Martinis and contemplated the tree. It looked like a badly wrapped Christmas present. I liked it.

“Washing up helps you to think?”

“Uh-huh.”

She was quiet for a bit. The smell of baking moussaka began to creep out of the kitchen. “I know she was a crazy bitch, and what she did to her daughter was unforgivable, but I hated testifying against her.” She sighed. “She’s plausible. If it hadn’t been for the strength of the evidence against her, I don’t think the jury would have convicted her.”

“I agree.” She was drying her hands and I handed her her drink. “Cheers!”

“Cheers!”

We drank.

She went through and stood looking at the fire and the tree for a long while. “Family,” she said at last. “They have such power to hurt you, because you need them so much.”

“I guess so.”

She turned to face me. I was struck, not for the first or the last time, by how beautiful she was. But I paused this time, to observe that the beauty came as much from the honesty and intensity of her gaze as from the perfection of her features. Then I buried the thought.

She said, “Do you miss your family?”

I shrugged. “I have no family left. But I guess I do miss having a family. If I think about it.”

She smiled. It was a sad smile. “I miss having a family. I miss my mom and dad. They were nice.”

She sat on the sofa, opposite the fire. I sat in the chair and watched her. “Two weeks to Christmas, Stone. What will you do?”

“Read a book. Watch a movie. I don’t know. How about you?”

She shrugged, pulled a face and shook her head. “Same.”

“You not going to your uncle’s?”

“You kidding? No way!”

We sat in silence for a little longer, not sure whether to ignore the elephant that had just strolled into the room. In the end I shrugged one shoulder.

“You want to come over? We could read a book and watch a movie together.”

She smiled at the tree, then grinned without looking at me. “Yeah, why not? Depends on the movie…”

“Wizard of Oz.”

“I love that movie.”

“And then Terminator Two.”

“Oh, man! Yeah! But no rom-coms!”

“Agreed.”

“How about board games? You like board games?”

“Christmas pudding and backgammon.”

“You don’t wanna play backgammon with me, Stone. I will destroy you!”

“Oh, really? Ha! Think again, Ritoo Glasshopper, you nevah praid a mastah before…”

The fire crackled and spat lazily as the aroma of moussaka gradually permeated the house. We talked and laughed, and challenged each other amiably in the warm glow of the flames, and the sparkle of the overdressed tree. And after a while, I poured the wine as she pulled the moussaka from the oven, and set it on the table with the carrots and the broccoli. We drank too much and laughed at things that only we could find funny, and the sun set and the darkness enclosed my small, warm house. And as the fire died to embers, we went up to bed: me to mine, and her to the guest room, which was hers.

BOOK 7

THE HEART TO KILL

One

It wasn’t raining. It was a deluge. The raindrops exploded on the blacktop on Simpson Street, raising a mist of spray two feet from the ground. The early morning crowds were bent and hunched under their umbrellas, not so much hurrying, as fleeing from the downpour. I watched Dehan through the windshield as the wipers squeaked and thudded in their losing battle against the water. She stepped out of her apartment block, warped wetly as the wipers swept past, then regrouped and walked around the hood of my car. Instead of an umbrella, she had on an Australian leather hat and a long coat. She pulled open the door and climbed in with a self-conscious grin on her face.

“G’day, Bruce!”

I smiled, shook my head and pulled away. “Bruce?”

She removed her hat. Her hair was tied in a knot behind her head and now she tightened it as she spoke. “Didn’t you know that, Stone? Australians call all men Bruce, and all women Sheila. It’s a thing. So I say, ‘G’day, Bruce!’ and you say…”

“G’day, Sheila. Never let me say you didn’t teach me anything.” We drove in silence for a moment, among the hiss, the squeak, and the thud, the wet noises of a January morning in New York, and the warm sigh of the heater. “I was looking at the David Thorndike case last night,” I said. “I’d like to review it.”

She frowned. “Thorndike. Wasn’t he the journalist?”

“Investigative journalist on the New York Telegraph. Found murdered in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend on Manor Avenue, at eleven AM on 8th March, 2008…”

“Last seen?”

“The night of the 6th,