Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) Blake Banner (ereader iphone txt) 📖

that mad at someone that I was going to shoot them, I’d confront them on their doorstep. Or if I’d brought them to my house, I wouldn’t fix them up with a drink first. The whole set up looks so formal.”

She shrugged as she turned onto Boston Road. “Like you said, Stone. They’re academics. Maybe they’re just weird.”

“Maybe. Let’s see what Dr. Meigh says.”

THREE

“They were both a bit weird, to be perfectly honest, detectives.”

Dr. Patricia Meigh was surprisingly small, though her presence was surprisingly large. She sat in her black leather chair, behind her oak desk, like a much bigger woman, and turned her black Parker fountain pen over in her fingers. I frowned.

“Were?”

“Forgive me.” She didn’t smile. “He was. She, no doubt, continues to be, wherever she is.”

Dehan asked, “Weird in what way, exactly?”

She studied her pen a moment, pursing her lips. “You know the big difference between scientists and doctors, or engineers?”

“I have often wondered,” I lied.

“For doctors and engineers, it’s all about fixing a problem—a real problem. The engineer wants to get it built, get it made, put together. The doctor wants to cure her patient, make people well. But for scientists, it’s all about proving the hypothesis. They exist in the abstract. They dream up a theory, work out how they can turn the theory into an hypothesis, and they are happy, satisfied, when they can prove the hypothesis is correct. That was Jose and that was Agnes. They both existed—and she presumably continues to exist—in theoretical hypothetical worlds.” She hesitated a moment. “Agnes wasn’t strictly a scientist, of course, but a mathematician. Her work was entirely theoretical, in any case.”

Dehan gave a small grunt and squinted at Meigh. “That’s pretty vague, Dr. Meigh. Can you be more precise?”

“Yes, I can be very precise. They were both completely inept socially. At any kind of social gathering, she would go and stand in a corner and stare, completely unnoticed, while he would butt into other people’s conversation and talk incessantly about himself. The man’s ego, and his vanity, knew no limits, whereas she is a zero personality. She is a void, an empty space. Quite brilliant, truly, but absolutely no ego.” She added, with a touch of bitterness, “They were made for each other.”

Dehan looked up from a prolonged study of her thumbs. “So they were involved with each other?”

“Oh, good heavens, yes! Involved with each other and, more precisely, involved in each other. They went everywhere together, did everything together, forever united in this kind of ghastly, joyless bond. The Jose Robles admiration society, membership of two: him and his slave.” A trace of a smile flitted across her face. “I am exaggerating, but not very much.”

“Did he talk much about Spain?”

Dehan glanced at me like she thought the question was weird, but Dr. Meigh rolled her eyes and said, “Incessantly! Nothing was as good as it was in Spain, especially the food. He was forever moaning about American food, as though all we ever ate was hamburgers. Spanish food was the best in the world. Everything Spanish was the best!”

“Yes, I noticed they both had a lot of Rioja and Ribera del Duero.”

“No doubt, whatever that is. Forgive my being blunt, but he was a supreme pain in the ass. And a male chauvinist to go with it: what he used to call the ‘Macho Iberico’. The Iberian macho, a strutting, pompous little…” She paused and breathed in noisily through her nose. “I guess I shouldn’t really talk about him like that to the cops, huh?”

She smiled and I returned it. “Actually, it is very helpful. We were having some difficulty getting a handle on who they were, and their relationship with each other.”

“They were very close,” she said. “I have no idea what she saw in him. I am very fond of Agnes. I have known her for a long time and mentored her as an academic. She is a highly intelligent woman, but she has a very weak ego, and he neutralized her completely. I am not a psychologist, but I could see that there was some kind of codependent relationship developing there. It was a shame.” She narrowed her eyes and made a kind of claw with her right hand. “He seemed to be consuming her. He even rented a house in the same street so he could be close to her and they could come to work together and go home together. I suspect he wanted to control her.”

Dehan sat back in her chair. “Were you and she close? Did she ever talk to you about him, them…”

She made a dubious face. “She was as close to me as she was to anybody, except Jose, but she never discussed their relationship with me. Whatever they had going on, they were never demonstrative in public. They never hugged or kissed or anything like that.” She sat forward suddenly and pointed at her own chest. “I’d hug her sometimes, because I felt so goddamn sorry for her! She was hungry for love and affection, you could tell that. But with him it was always me, me, me and I’m the greatest and Spain is the best damn country in the world. Got on my nerves, I don’t mind telling you.”

I scratched my cheek and sucked my teeth. “Was he good? As a scientist?”

“Very good. More than very good. He was brilliant. He was on his way to big things.”

“You were his boss?”

She smiled like I’d said something quaint. “Doesn’t really work like that. He was conducting research under my supervision, in my department.”

“What was the research?”

“I can only tell you in very broad terms, Detective. Obviously it is highly confidential, but in essence, he was conducting research into lithium ion batteries.”

“Next big thing?”

She gave her head a little jerk to