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

am of her too. So I had my room there and everything. Well,” she grinned and winked. “Mo slept…” She made speech marks with her fingers, “‘on the couch’ and he’d sneak up to my room when Mel was a’bed.”

I nodded. It made perfect sense.

I stood. “Thank you, Anne-Marie. You have been very helpful. That’s all I needed to know for today. If you want to wait downstairs, your husband will be out in a moment.”

She went down and I went back to where Mo, looking slightly ruffled and irritable, was talking to a very stolid and impassive-looking Dehan.

I sat next to her and stared Mo in the eye. “You should have told me that you were sleeping with Anne-Marie before you split up with Kathleen.” He made like a goldfish for a couple of seconds and I carried on. “Lucky for you, Kathleen was killed in Lee County. A lie like that puts you right up the suspects list.” He swallowed hard. “Pat still lives with your mother, right?”

He nodded. “We all do.”

“That’s cozy.”

“We’re a close family.”

“She work? She go out?”

“Not much.”

“OK, you can go. Your wife is waiting downstairs.”

He got up without saying anything and hurried out. I sat for a while staring at the empty space Mo had recently occupied. After a bit I turned and looked at Dehan. I said, “I’ll be damned.”

She nodded. “You probably will be. Feel like cluing me in yet?”

I shook my head. “Let’s go and talk to Pat. It’s high time we did that.”

Twenty Two

In the car, headed north and east toward Morris Park, Dehan turned in her seat, with her back against the door, and watched me drive. Eventually, she said, “I guess it’s no great surprise, right? It’s usually the husband. Or the wife. And that’s what you’re thinking, right? Mo did it. That’s why he lied about his affair with Anne-Marie.”

“Put all the pieces together.”

“Yeah, if I could just find the straight edges and the corners I’d do that.”

“Mo pretended he was not with his wife on Thursday night. How many husbands have you come across who pretend they were not with their wife when they should have been with her?”

“You have a point, not many.”

“Where was he?”

“With Anne-Marie.”

“So she is his alibi.”

“Oh. I see. So it’s both of them. That’s pretty standard too.”

“But we arrive right back at the same question. Why divorce Isaac, but kill Kathleen?”

She groaned and flopped her head back. Then narrowed her eyes at me. “You know, don’t you?”

I eyed her sidelong and imitated an English accent, “I have taught you my methods, Watson. Observe and deduce. Eliminate the impossible…”

“I know, and whatever is left, however improbable, is the truth.”

I pulled in to Van Nest and parked outside Mel’s house. We climbed out of the Jag and I stood a moment, smelling the first hint of frost on the air as the sun slipped behind the treetops, where copper leaves were beginning to wither and fall. We

pushed through the gate into her garden, climbed the stairs to her door, and rang the bell.

Mel beamed at us. “Well, look who it is! Isn’t it Detectives Stone and Dehan! Well isn’t that a lovely treat all the same. Will yiz not come in and have a cup of tea? I was just putting the water on! Baby’s just having a nap upstairs.”

She bustled in toward the kitchen as Dehan followed her and I closed the door. We heard the tap and the water splashing into the kettle.

“Can’t you feel the cold in the air? It’ll soon be Christmas and it’s not Halloween yet. Doesn’t time just fly!”

I stemmed the flow. “Mrs. Vuolo. We’re actually here to talk to Pat. Is she in?”

“Pat? Yes. Isn’t she in her room? She’s just after going up. Go on. I’ll call yiz when your tea’s ready. Go on! It’s the last door on your left.”

As we climbed the broad stairs she called after us, “Will yiz have some biscuits? I have some nice chocolate biscuits. Will you have some?”

We told her we would and arrived at the landing. It was an ample, galleried affair with five bedrooms and a bathroom leading off it. We went to the last one on the left. I could hear the sound of a muffled TV inside. I knocked.

“What?”

“Pat, this is Detectives Stone and Dehan, from the New York Police Department. Can you spare us five minutes of your time?”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the door opened and she peered out at us. She was short and very thin. Her skin was pallid and her eyes were hollow, as though from too much sleep and not enough sun. She had a woolen hat on her head, a stud in her nose and fingerless gloves on her hands. Her nails were bitten. “Cops?” I nodded and we showed her our badges. “What do you want?”

“Can we come in? It’s easier than talking on the landing, or shouting through the door.”

She stared at me a moment. “I guess.” She stood back to let us in. “The room’s a mess.”

It was, and it smelled of stale sweat, tobacco, and weed. The sheets were rumpled and her two chairs were covered in unwashed clothes. She sat curled up on the bed and switched off her TV. “Just throw the clothes on the floor. I have to wash them anyhow.”

We did as she suggested and sat. I studied her a moment. She was probably thirty two or three, though her skin looked older; but her manner was that of a teenager. She said, “What do you want?”

“We’re from the cold case unit at the 43rd Precinct, and we are investigating your sister’s murder.”

“No shit.”

“I was wondering if there was