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

“I know it was a long time ago, but can you recall where he worked? Where he kept his computer and all his papers?”

“Oh, yes! Always on the table by the window.” He pointed to the dining table. “Always over there. Whenever I am come to see him, always he was at the table by the window, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee. Always there.”

“But it wasn’t there that day.”

“No, and I am pointing that out to the police. They are saying, ‘There is no robbery!’ And I am saying, ‘Well, look here! They have taken laptop, and also all his papers! What is that if it is not a robbery?’”

“Quite right. How about his gun, Sammy? Did you ever see him with his gun?”

He beamed. “Oh yes! Goodness, yes! He was very chatty, friendly kind of chap. He invited me in for coffee one time, and I ask him, ‘You are no afraid of being robbed? With expensive computer and important work for the newspaper?’ And he says to me, ‘Oh no! I am always take out special insurance!’ And he shows me a pistol in the drawer. ‘I always take precaution!’ He was a tough cookie, all right!”

“And where did he keep it, Sammy?”

He pointed. “Over in the sideboard. He said he wanted to have it close when he was working.”

Dehan frowned. “Why was that? Did he feel he was in danger?”

“He told me he was an investigative reporter, and the people he investigated were very dangerous characters. He always wanted to have his insurance. Always he said it like this, ‘I always have my insurance!’”

I walked over to the table and stood by the chair. I looked over at Sammy and Dehan by the door. “Here? This where he sat?”

Sammy nodded. “Yes, just there where you are standing.”

I tried to visualize it. He’d be sitting at the table, writing, reading, smoking, drinking coffee. There would be a ring at the door, or a knock. The gun is in the sideboard. He goes to the door. He is careful, cautious, he knows he is in danger and likes to keep his insurance handy, so he asks who it is…

I said, “Was there anything else, Sammy, that you thought was odd that the detectives at the time did not think important?”

He danced his head around a bit. “Well, there was one thing, maybe it is nothing, but I thought it was odd.”

“What’s that?”

“It looked to me like he was going to leave. He didn’t tell me anything about leaving, but in his bedroom, the suitcase was unzipped and open on the floor.”

Dehan frowned. “What about his clothes?”

“No, they were all in the drawers and in the wardrobe. It was just the suitcase, which would be normally, you know, in the wardrobe or under the bed. But that morning it was out, on the floor, and open, unzipped.”

I thought about it for a moment, but it didn’t say anything to me. Dehan asked him, “Do any of the neighbors from that time still live here?”

He did his little dance with his head again. “Well, you know, people in apartment blocks like this one, they are mainly transient. They come and they go. But yes. Me. I live on the first floor. I have six apartments in this block. I live in one and I let out the other five.”

Dehan rested her ass against the back of the sofa and crossed her arms. “Do you remember much about what happened that day, Mr. Gupta?”

“Sammy, please. Everybody is calling me Sammy. I always think, if you can bring a smile into somebody’s life, even for a moment, you have done something useful. Isn’t it?” He looked from me back to Dehan. We waited. He went on, “You know, Detective Dehan, I have a very good memory, because I am very observant. I am noticing the little details. And, of course, after poor David was murdered, I was thinking about what I had noticed that day, and also the previous days. I offered these observations to the detective who was investigation, but thought they were not useful.”

Dehan said, “We think they might be, Sammy. We’d like to hear them.”

“Surely, I will tell you. Let me fill you in,” He grinned at us, like he’d phrased it in a particularly enlightening way. “You know that he was here for just over two months, and for most of that time he was sharing it with Miss Katie O’Connor, a very pretty and lively little filly! Oh, goodness! She was very alive!” He laughed. “And she was often receiving visits from her sister and her boyfriend.”

I frowned. “Her sister?”

“Yes. But about a week before he was killed, Miss Katie moved out. David was very upset because he was most in love with her. She was very charming! Very pretty! Really most nice. But they had a big argument and she went with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend or husband, I don’t know, I am sorry. Then!” He held up his finger, grinning at each of us in turn, “Two days before he is dead…”

Dehan said, “Thursday 6th March.”

He nodded at her, as though he approved of her choice of date. “Exactly correct, yes, Miss Katie O’Connor comes to visit, to collect some things, at about nine o’clock. I am hoping, you know, that she will stay the night and maybe they will make up, because he is nice man, and he is very much in love with her. They don’t fight, but she doesn’t stay. She goes. Friday everything is very quiet, but in the evening a woman comes to see him.”

“A woman? There is no mention of this in the police report.”

“No! I know! Because the detective thinks I am making a mistake.