Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) Blake Banner (10 best books of all time TXT) 📖

think it’s worth a look. It seems, a couple of weeks before he was killed, Leroy—or Lee, as his new family called him—sent a WhatsApp message to his aunt telling her that he thought Brad Mitchell was having an affair. He’d heard him on the phone and, apparently, he’d seen text messages. So he’d cut school a couple of times and been to the university, where he’d seen Brad with that woman.” I slid my cell across the table to her. “He sent her this picture.”

She glanced at it. “So what? Proves nothing. It’s not even suggestive.”

“Yeah, agreed. But Sonia and a workmate found an article in the paper which said that Brad Mitchell had opened a rehab clinic near White Plains, in the Silver Lake Preserve. The psychiatrist in charge of the Mitchell Clinic was to be Dr. Margaret Wagner, the woman in that photograph.”

She sagged back in her chair, made a wincing face and blew. “You’re right. It’s thin. It’s not thin, it’s anorexic supermodel skinny.”

“Yeah, I know, but Sonia makes the point, and I agree, Leroy threatened to blackmail Brad Mitchell. If the clinic was already on the cards back then, that’s a pretty strong motive for murder. Especially if the victim is not your own kid, but an increasingly obnoxious intruder.”

She screwed skepticism into her face. “But he’d also have to have killed his own daughter. And his wife says they were having coffee together. She’s not likely to alibi him if he’s killed her daughter.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but like Sonia said, what if? I think it’s worth asking a few questions and finding out exactly what kind of relationship he and Dr. Wagner have.”

She turned a pencil around in her fingers for a while, then said, “Yeah, I guess. So where do we start, with Dr. Wagner?”

“Yes, chances are she knows nothing about the kid’s death. But all we want from her is whether she was having an affair with Mitchell. If we catch her off guard she might just come clean. If we go to Mitchell first, he’ll alert her and she could clam up.”

She nodded and made to stand. “So all we are doing right now is establishing whether she and Brad Mitchell were having an affair.”

“Correct.”

“And then we take it from there?”

“Yup.”

“OK.”

She flicked through her phone book and after a moment made a call. She sat staring at me for a moment with the phone to her ear, biting her lip. Then:

“Yeah, good morning, this is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD. We would like to meet with the director of the clinic… Dr. Margaret Wagner? OK, thanks.” She winked at me and mouthed putting me through to her secretary. “Yeah, good afternoon. Detective Carmen Dehan of the New York Police Department. We would like to meet with the director of the clinic… Dr. Margaret Wagner? Let me just make a note… Sooner the better. Sure, today, say in about three quarters of an hour…? OK, that’s great.” Another pause and Dehan pursed her lips and shook her head. “Oh, it’s just a routine inquiry. Thanks.”

She hung up and smiled. “See, Stone, I’m smart. Now her secretary thinks we had no idea the director was Dr. Wagner, and that our inquiry is about one of her patients. No red flags, no calls to Brad Mitchell.”

“You are subtle, Dehan. A subtle, devious, dangerous woman. Let’s go.”

We stepped out into the cold midmorning light. The sun was low in the south and casting long shadows across Fteley and Storey Avenue. We climbed into my ancient burgundy Jaguar Mark 2, and took the Bronx River Parkway north through endless green suburbs as far as Elmsford, and then turned east into White Plains. It was a half-hour drive and by the time we got there it was eleven AM, and the sun was approaching its zenith in a perfect blue sky. We skirted the north of the town and took Hall Avenue into deep woodland. The Brad Mitchell clinic was about a mile in on the right-hand side behind large iron gates set in a fifteen-foot, redbrick wall.

The clinic was an old, Georgian manor at the end of a hundred-yard blacktop drive surrounded by sweeping lawns and woodlands. Dehan pushed her shades up onto her head and scrutinized the parkland around us.

“He’s not short of a few bucks, Stone. This is a few million in real estate.”

I nodded. “Two gets you twenty he has investors, which is further reason to avoid bad publicity.”

We pulled up in the parking lot at the front of the building and climbed the flight of six broad granite steps to the main doors. Inside there was the kind of hush you only get with high ceilings and marble floors, where even the echoes seem distant. There was a small, discreet reception desk on the left as we went in. The girl sitting behind it smiled at us with polite indifference and asked Dehan how she could help her.

“We’re here to see Dr. Wagner.” Dehan showed her her badge and I showed her mine. “Detectives Carmen Dehan and John Stone.”

She picked up a phone on her solid oak desk and after a second said, “Detectives Dehan and Stone to see Dr. Wagner…mm-hmm.” She hung up and pointed to a broad, marble staircase that rose along the back wall of the entrance hall. “Next floor, turn right at the top of the stairs and Dr. Wagner’s office is at the end on the right.”

Dehan smiled at her with dead eyes. “If I was a celebrity with a habit, would you take me there yourself?”

The receptionist didn’t lose her smile or her composure. She tilted her head on one side and said, “No, Dr. Wagner would come down to meet you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We turned and climbed the stairs, and followed her directions to the end of a long corridor carpeted in red, with prints on the walls depicting English hunt scenes and ships in full sail on the high seas. The door there