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

gets you twenty we’re going to find a plantation within walking distance of Sly’s place, plus a drying and storage shed.”

Polly told us that Larry at the gas station had a couple of trucks he lent out to tourists during the season. We thanked her, stepped out into the chilly, sunlit, organic garden and took a stroll down Main Street to the gas station. There we bought a local map and rented a Dodge truck from Larry. Larry was wearing blue dungarees and a blue cap, and managed to make words in spite of the odd mismatch between his remaining teeth and his mouth. He grinned a lot and seemed to be buoyed by some secret source of happiness.

“Yiz can go dahn t’Gold Heel ‘n theen come all t’way beck t’Salina, but tha’s n’awful long way t’go, when all y’godda do is, take a lift at Emanciation Hill n’cut cross country dahn t’Salinas. ’S half the time and gits y’there all’same. S’what I’d do. Four Mile Creek Drive starts right there, in Salina.”

We thanked him warmly and, once we’d worked out what he’d said, took his advice.

It ended up being a ten and a half mile drive in two big loops, through deep canyon gorges in some of the most remote and beautiful terrain I had ever seen. We made Salina after about five miles, which took all of half an hour, and then crawled south and eventually west along Four Mile Canyon Drive. That was another six miles, until my GPS told me we had come parallel with Sly and Coy’s house, a mile north of our location.

We were in a broad, grassy esplanade with steep, densely forested slopes on either side. I pulled off the track, we grabbed a rucksack we’d packed with sandwiches and water, and began our climb through the woods. It was a cold day, the sun was in the south, and the trees were dense, but even so, after five minutes of climbing, scrabbling on the loose pine needles and hauling ourselves up manually through the trees, where the slopes were steepest, we were hot and perspiring.

After about fifteen minutes, the slope leveled off a bit and the trees thinned out. Dehan leaned her back against a large pine, checked the GPS on her phone, and pointed up to our left.

“Another climb, old timer, it’s up there.”

“Old timer?” I followed her across a gully, crunching over dry twigs and branches, toward the second slope. “You didn’t call me that last night, when I defended your honor.”

“Shut up.”

We scrambled, clawed, and climbed for another fifteen minutes, and finally the ground leveled off again and we found ourselves at the edge of the forest looking out at a huge clearing, maybe three hundred and fifty yards south to north, and double that across, east to west. We dropped on our bellies to have a look, and get a rest.

Opposite us, there was another stretch of woodland, and I knew that beyond that, maybe half a mile away, was Sly’s house. But over on the left, hidden from the road by that forest, was exactly what we had come looking for. A long, broad area of land which had been recently disturbed, as though it had been harvested. At a rough estimate, I guessed it was at least sixty yards across and a good hundred and fifty yards long. You need a patch six feet across to grow an outdoor cannabis plant successfully, and in the right conditions it will grow to well over seven feet and give you three to five pounds of produce. The plot we were looking at here, at a rough estimate, would support about five hundred plants.

Dehan jerked her head towards the field. “If he’s planting super skunk there…” She sucked her teeth and thought for a moment, “From a patch like that, he’s harvesting maybe seven hundred and fifty kilos, maybe a ton of weed a year. Wholesale value, say two, two and a half grand a kilo, you’re looking at maybe two million bucks.”

I nodded. “Tax free. No wonder he looks prosperous. But he might be growing corn. We need to get a closer look.”

We went at a steady jog, keeping to the tree cover, and circled around until we were within ten feet of the edge of the field. There we dropped and lay among the ferns, listening. There was only the sigh of the pines and the odd flap of wings. After about five minutes, when we were sure there was nobody about, we moved forward to the churned-up earth and squatted down to inspect it.

Everywhere we looked, there were the severed stems of the cannabis plants. They had been harvested whole and taken away to a barn somewhere, there to have the buds removed and prepared for wholesale. I took out my cell and photographed the area, and the severed stems. Dehan sighed and shoved her hands in her back pockets.

“OK, so we’ve proved, for our own satisfaction, that Greg is growing marijuana on his ranch. We’ve proved that Sly lives on that ranch in rented accommodation, two or three hundred yards from the plantation.” She shook her head at me. “But none of that is illegal. So far, there is no crime here.”

“I know. We have also proved that Sly sold dope to Pat, and she probably sold it on in New York, but that’s all circumstantial. We still haven’t connected any of this to Kathleen or her murder.” I spread my hands. “We’re making progress. We are putting together the pieces. What we need to do now is prove that Sly is selling this stuff illegally, and connect him, through Pat, to Kathleen.”

She chewed her lip. “How are we going to do that?”

I pointed at the woods that separated us from Sly. “Let’s take a look at his house, see if the drying shed is there.