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

at the bar, then found a table by the wood burner he had against one wall, next to a mural of a 1947 Chrysler Windsor with a half-naked Cuban girl leaning against the hood.

Dehan sat back in her chair and stretched out her long legs toward the fire. I took a couple of paper napkins and dried my hair with them. She said, “You like her for it?”

I stared at the flames a moment. “I don’t know. We still have the same problem we had with Samantha. She’s mad enough for it. David seems to have been a guy who knew how to make women mad. But I don’t see the passion in the killing.”

She was staring at her boots, like it was them talking to her. When I finished, she nodded at them and said. “I don’t like her for it.” She chewed her lip for a bit, then said, “There’s something missing.”

Julio brought over our beers and I took a long pull. As I set down the glass, I said, “I agree. And it’s something to do with the laptop and his article. This feels like an execution, not a crime of passion.”

She made a face like I’d just said two and two made four point zero one. “I don’t know, Stone. I don’t see it that clearly.” She finally turned to look at me. “It’s too much of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“You just said you didn’t like Katie for it.”

She sighed. “I know.” She swiveled around and leaned her elbows on the table. “He finishes his article, decides it’s going to make him rich and famous, decides to tell Katie about Samantha, and Samantha about Katie, Katie dumps him and moves out, his laptop and his papers disappear and he gets executed—all in the space of a week. There is no way these events are not connected.”

“I agree, but I’m damned if I can see how at the moment.”

She gave me a lopsided smile and I was momentarily distracted by how extraordinarily beautiful her face was. “Oh, Mighty Sensei, a full morning into the investigation and you don’t know the answer? You must be getting old.”

She took a pull on her beer, smacked her lips, and examined the glass for a moment.

“How does this work? He finishes his article, and having put it all together, he realizes he has a bombshell on his hands. He’s looking at the Pulitzer, a best-selling book, TV interviews—he’s made the big time. Now, remember, this guy is security conscious, he keeps a gun next to his laptop, so what does he do? He puts his finished work somewhere safe…” She spread her hands and shrugged. “A safety deposit box, his editor, a locker at the paper. Could be anywhere. Meantime, he decides to come clean with Katie. He has real feelings for her. After all, she is a rare woman who is prepared to support a talented, but very demanding man. So he tells her. She gets pissed and storms out.”

She took another pull on her beer and examined the glass again, as though she was watching the end of the story play itself out on the side of her glass before she told me about it.

“Then, one of two things happens. Either he goes and tells Samantha the bad news, which seems unlikely if Katie has just dumped him…”

“He may have believed she would come back to him.”

She nodded, then shrugged. “Or, Katie decided to tell her. Now…” She took a deep breath. “If Katie had killed him, you know what, Stone? I think she would have used a battle axe. She has volatile emotions and she doesn’t strike me as the ice-cold rage type. But Samantha, we don’t know her well enough to be sure, but I could buy that. I could buy her judging him, sentencing him to death, and then executing him.”

I thought about it for a minute. “What is it about Samantha…?”

“We know that they were married for at least five years, right? In all that time she was prepared to put up with him disappearing for weeks at a time, failing to show at weekends, broken promises. That’s got to make you mad, right? But instead of confronting him, threatening him or just dumping the son of a bitch, she swallows it and adapts her life to suit his. That is…”

Again she spread her hands and I finished for her. “Cold anger.”

“The final straw comes when, after all the sacrifices she has made, instead of getting her reward, some other dame gets it. She comes to see him. He lets her in. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ She tells him she knows about Katie. She knows what he’s like about security, she knows where he’s likely to keep his gun, she takes it and, bang! Ice cold.”

I did a lot of nodding. “It’s neat, it’s logical, it’s convincing.”

“But?”

Julio brought our chicken and beans and we ate hungrily and in silence for a while. Finally, when I was wiping the plate with a hunk of bread, I said, “What would stop Katie from telling us she had spoken to Samantha?”

She snorted. “That’s easy. The loyalty of two wronged women.”

“Really? Good to know.”

“You don’t buy it.”

I shook my head. “It’s not that. It is a very credible scenario, and so far the most likely, but right now that’s all it is. There is no evidence to support it. We need to find his laptop and his article. The fact that he was working on something that was apparently bigger than Watergate, the fact that he was apparently executed, and the fact that the article and the laptop disappeared without ever making headline news…”

I shrugged one shoulder and she nodded. “I hear you. It is pretty suggestive.”

“At the very least we need to explore that angle. We start