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

“What?”

“I was… I was undressed. Did we…?”

“Oh!” I laughed. “No! No, of course not.” I shook my head for good measure. “Not at all.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “OK. Good.” Then she frowned. “Not that that would be awful! I mean… It wouldn’t be right, but…”

“Dehan.”

“What?”

“It’s cool. We’re cool. We’re good. Eat, drink. We need to review what we learned last night, and where it leaves us.”

“Where it leaves us…?”

I laughed. “I mean about the case. I need you focused.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

She drained a glass of orange juice and refilled it, pulled off half of that, and I started talking.

“OK, let’s look at what we know so far. We know that on Friday, 6th July, at three forty in the afternoon, Kathleen left New York by train. It takes about forty hours, by train and bus, to get from New York to Boulder.”

I sipped my coffee while Peaches and Cream delivered Dehan’s breakfast. I was accustomed to seeing the intense concentration with which Dehan attacked good food. But this morning was kind of special. I gave her a moment, till I saw the color returning to her cheeks. Eventually, she glanced at me and I carried on.

“Now, we don’t actually know where, when, or even if Kathleen arrived in Colorado—alive. All we know is that having boarded her train in New York, she turned up dead in Lefthand Canyon.”

She nodded her agreement, dunked toast into a fried egg, and stuffed it in her mouth. Then she spoke with difficulty.

“Bud we mush ashoom she awibed at reesht in Jenba.”

“We must assume she arrived at least in Denver. Agreed. And that would have happened at about eight A.M. on Sunday. Now, either she rented a car or she was picked up.”

Dehan nodded. “Mhm.”

“We’ll be able to confirm from her emails whether she rented a car, but I am pretty sure she didn’t. No abandoned cars were found at or near the scene. Either way, I am going to trouble my dear Watson to check if any rented cars were reported stolen at that time. For now at least, let’s proceed on the assumption that she did not rent a car.

“That means either Ingrid and/or Alfredo picked her up, Greg picked her up, or Sly or one of his men picked her up. Which brings us to last night.”

I paused. She was stacking bacon and fried egg onto a piece of toast. She skewered it all with her fork and maneuvered it into her mouth. She chewed, watching me. “Kib gobbing,” she said, with difficulty.

“Keep going?” She nodded. I kept going. “OK, Greg. Greg is prosperous. From his own admission, we know that he was sweet on Kath at one time, and we know that he resented her getting hitched with Mo. We also know that he was unwilling to be helpful in our investigation and claimed that we were wasting his time. We know, again from his own admission, that he has visited the Shack in the company of Pat, Kathleen’s sister. This last confirmed by Saul.”

Dehan mopped the last of the egg from her plate with a piece of bread, stuffed it in her mouth, and sat back in her chair with a comfortable smile on her chewing face. She sipped coffee and sighed.

“Everything keeps coming back to two points, Greg and the Shack.”

I nodded. “And Kathleen was not involved with either of them. But hold your horses. Let’s not start analyzing yet, Little Grasshopper. There are more facts. We know, for example, that Pat took the left-hand path and got involved in drugs, and we can safely infer that the Shack and its patrons played a part in that process.”

“Its patrons in the form of the man Sly and El Coyote.”

“Precisely so. Now, here is where it gets a bit tricky, because a lot was implied last night, but very little was actually said. Saul said he thought Pat had some kind of arrangement with Sly to sell dope in New York. But Sly never actually confirmed that. Equally, Sly said he had access to large quantities of cannabis, but he never said he grew it himself. I think it’s safe to assume that he does grow some, but we don’t know for a fact that he does, how much, or where.”

Her eyes and her mouth made three large Os as realization began to dawn. “Oh, mamma. I see where you are going.”

“Maybe. It’s something we should look into.”

“You think Greg is growing cannabis for Sly.”

“Think is too strong a word. It’s a hunch. Greg has a lot of money and a lot of land. He was sweet on Kath but he was hanging out with Pat. He was a clean-living, clean-cut cowboy hanging out with a dope head in a joint like the Shack. What would make him do that?”

“Son of a gun.”

“Pat’s known him most of her life. What happens? She’s the black sheep of this Irish-Italian Catholic family. Maybe she decides to make a bit of money and get her independence. So she talks to Greg about growing dope on his land. She talks to Sly about selling it in New York.”

Dehan was nodding as I spoke. “Starts out in her mind as a small-scale deal between friends, but it gets out of hand. Before she knows, it they’re dealing in tens of thousands of dollars. She’s in the Big Apple, with too much money and an addictive personality. Next thing, she’s spending all her money—and Sly’s—on blow and anything else she can get her hands on.”

I sighed. “From there, it plays out like we thought. He threatens to send some boys out east to collect his money, and she begs Kathleen to come and either bail her out or plead for time. We saw last night how that might have