Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

Mrs. Luff turned to him and took his arm in both of hers. “Oh, Bob!” She gave him a cuddle and a squeeze. “I told you not to take it up again.” He smiled ruefully at her, and she grinned. “But it was fun, though, wasn’t it?”

He gave her a kiss. “Yes it was, Mrs. L. Worth every minute.” He wheezed a laugh, screwing up his eyes. “Especially when you thumped her with your fist! What a punch! You should be in the ring, Mrs. L!”

Dehan was calling for backup, and I went to unlock Peter’s cuffs.

Epilogue

I placed the sizzling leg of spring lamb on the table, removed the lid from the roast potatoes, and poured her a glass of rather fine Rioja. Then I began to carve.

“Okay, Stone, admit it, this one had you foxed.”

I nodded. “It did. I knew who it wasn’t right from the start. I knew in my bones it was none of our three suspects, but what threw me was that there didn’t seem to be any other option.

“Of course, with David and Peter, the red herrings were deliberate. But with Zak, it was just bad synchronicity. He came looking for me, not you, at just the time when Bob snatched you.”

“So when did you start to think it was Bob?”

I loaded up my own plate, poured my wine, and sat.

“It’s hard to say, because while I was beginning to suspect Bob, I was also coming around more to the view that it could, after all, be Peter. I have to admit that Bob was clever. Very damn clever.” I raised my glass. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

“Amen to that.”

We sipped. “I guess when I realized that the photograph was not of Nancy Pierce, but of you, all the pieces started to fall into place and I began to get the feeling that the killer was outside the picture, creating a picture for us to look at. And then I remembered that impression I’d had the first day when we stepped into Bob’s place. And that made me remember Bob talking about Schrödinger’s cat. That pretty much clinched it. But I needed to be sure.”

“That was clever, the Floradix liquid iron thing. That was smart.”

“Hey, I’m a smart guy.”

“Whatever. He confessed to six murders.”

“And one attempted.” I ate in silence for a moment, then said, “That did surprise me, them working together, like the Wests, and Brady and Hindley. She was the one who gathered the information about Peter, and then about Hank and David. And he put it all together and made the plans. They traveled together to San Diego and L.A., at the same time as Peter and David. Who would suspect a married couple? But they were too good. The investigation died, and the sport lost its appeal.” I shook my head and sipped. “She is pleading not guilty. She says she was just helping her husband, like any good wife should. And in the end, it was she who stopped him killing.”

“Talk about the fucking cuckoo’s nest.”

We ate in silence for a bit. Then, I said, “Did I tell you Peter telephoned?” She glanced at me. “He wanted to apologize for having been unsupportive. He wanted to tell me he and his wife are seeing a marriage counselor, after they come back from a six-month cruise. He said this case has taught him a valuable lesson, that he should appreciate the good things he has in life.”

“Wow.” She sighed and set down her knife and fork. She picked up her glass and said, “Maybe he’s right about that. You don’t know how valuable the good things in your life are until you are about to lose them.”

We held each other’s eye for just a second. We touched glasses, and I said, “I’ll drink to that.”

And we did.

BOOK 3

GARDEN OF THE DAMNED

One

For reasons I couldn’t really put my finger on, it was somehow appropriate. Out the window, April was coaxing the first, tender green leaves from bare branches and withered twigs after a dark, cold winter. This seemed like a suitable counterpoint. I tossed the file onto the desk, narrowly missing my feet, and said, “This one looks interesting.”

Dehan picked it up, leafed through it, and read the abstract on page one.

“John Doe,” she smiled at me in a way that said she wasn’t really smiling at me, “good start.” She carried on, “Aged about thirty, found in a dumpster at the corner of Lafayette and Bryant, in the Bronx. No papers, no ID. Clothes suggest a vagrant. Cause of death, a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, possibly a .38. No slug recovered and no blood found in the vicinity.” She looked at me. “What makes this interesting?”

I frowned at her and spoke with some severity. “The fact that a young man got murdered.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “No. That is why we should investigate it. That doesn’t make it interesting. So far it looks like a guy nobody cares about got whacked by another guy nobody cares about. You said it was interesting, why?”

“Look at the photographs.”

She leafed through till she came to the photographs, three six by eights. She spread them on the desk and spent a couple of minutes staring at them. They showed a man of about thirty, in old, filthy clothes, lying face down in a dumpster full of rubble and builder’s trash. She shook her head. “Help me out. I’m not seeing it.”

I gave a small smirk as I handed her my magnifying glass. “Have a look at his hands.”

She stared at the glass a moment and then at me before taking it, then she looked at John Doe’s hands. She sat back. “Okay, they appear to be manicured. You