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

hard times, family has to pull together. All you’ve got is your family, and thank God we have each other.”

I pulled my notepad from my pocket. “We are going to need to talk to Mo. Where can we find him?”

“Him and Anne-Marie are both at the Used Car Mart on 177th Street. She does the paperwork and he sells the cars.”

I made a note. “How about Isaac?”

“The last I heard from Isaac, he was living out in Hunts Point. Poor love, things didn’t go so well for him. He works for a building supplies company on Halleck Street. Leastwise, he did. He rents an apartment at 841, Longfellow Avenue, bless him.”

I glanced at Dehan. She shook her head so I stood.

“Thank you, Mel. You have been very helpful. We may have to talk to you again at some point, or to Pat. But we’ll try not to disturb you.”

She told us it was no trouble at all and showed us to the door. We stepped out into the warm fall midday and heard the door close behind us. Dehan walked around to the passenger side of the car and leaned on the roof, watching me unlock the door.

“I need a beer,” she said. “And so do you.”

Three

We drove east along Van Nest as far as Bronxdale, then turned north. We had the windows open and cruised at a nice, easy speed, enjoying the temperature. We didn’t talk for a bit, till I glanced at her and asked, “Impressions?”

She had her elbow out the window. Her hair was streaming across her face, so she reached back and tied it in a knot at the back of her head. It looked good, but she was totally oblivious to the fact. She was the best-looking woman I had ever met, and also the least vain. She turned to face me and I saw myself duplicated, looking back at myself from her aviators.

“I gotta say, Stone, I didn’t get a damn thing.” She shrugged. “Mo? Killed her so he could be with Anne-Marie?” She made a face and shook her head. “That’s stupid, especially as Anne-Marie went and divorced Isaac just a few months later. Mo could have done the same. Besides, she was killed in Colorado.”

I nodded once. “I agree. But we should find out where he was at the time anyway. What about Isaac?”

She made a face like she’d just smelled sour milk. I pulled over and parked outside The Grill House. We pushed in and ordered two beers and a couple of hamburgers, then grabbed a table near the window.

Dehan took a pull and gave herself a froth mustache which I didn’t tell her about. “You know what?” she said. “If Mo had been killed, I’d be looking at Isaac. But that would have happened a long time ago. Why would he kill her after she gave birth? And why would he go all the way to Colorado to do it?”

I took a pull on my beer and sighed noisily through my nose. She pointed at me and grinned. “You have a mustache.”

I wiped it away with the back of my hand and smiled back. “That reasoning applies to everybody she knew in New York. I am not convinced that her depression was exclusively postpartum. I think there may have been more going on in her life that we don’t know about. There’s a connection here between her depression, her trip to Seven Hills, and her death.” I paused and pointed at her. “Speaking of which, I was surprised you didn’t ask her more about Kath’s depression.”

“You didn’t either.”

“You first.”

She squinted out the window, like the view didn’t quite convince her. “I don’t know, Stone. She didn’t seem to me to be quite in touch with reality. In fact, I get the feeling she’ll go to any lengths to avoid an unpleasant reality.”

I laughed.

She ignored me and went on. “Kath and Mo doted on each other. They were crazy about each other. He was mad about her and he was so supportive. But when they have a baby, she goes into a depression and goes to Colorado, and when she gets murdered, he marries his brother’s wife.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m being judgmental, but that doesn’t sound to me like a couple who are doting on each other and are crazy about each other.”

I was nodding. “So your point is?”

“I think if I had asked her about Kath’s depression, I think I would have heard what Mel wanted to believe about her depression. And I already know that. The useful information is going to come from Mo and Pat, and maybe Anne-Marie. That what you were thinking?”

“Yup.

The burgers arrived and she took a big bite, spilling salad on her plate. She spoke around a mouthful of meat and bun.

“Sho wha-oo wa’ do mow?”

I ate for a while without answering her, watching the anonymous people hurrying past on the sidewalk, wondering how a cute young mother from the Bronx winds up dead, beheaded, and probably raped, in the woods in Lefthand Canyon in Colorado. What was the sequence of events that led to her death? At what point did she tip the domino that lead, irrevocably, to her murder? Did it happen here, or there?

I wiped my mouth as she drained her beer. “I guess,” I said, and leaned forward with a fresh paper napkin, “We go and talk to Mo.” As I said it I carefully wiped the froth from her upper lip. She watched me with a curious mixture of alarm and amusement in her huge, brown eyes. I smiled. “You had a Santa Claus mustache.”

It was a short drive down White Plains to East Tremont, and then onto East 177th. It’s a grim, soulless part of the Bronx, with gray concrete wastelands as far as the eye