Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

“Yeah, least of all me. Listen, we just received new information on the Reynolds case. You remember, two years back…?”

He nodded. “Yeah, sure! I knew them personally.” He leaned back against the wall and pointed at the machine. “You want a coffee?”

“No, thanks. I just wanted to ask you a couple of things..”

“’Cause they got you and Carmen on the cold cases, right?”

“Yeah. That was your case…”

“Yeah, me and Pete were called to the scene, and you can imagine how I felt when I saw Celeste. Holy shit! Now I have to tell her dad, like he hasn’t had enough heartache in his life. One crazy daughter…”

“Helen?”

“Yeah, she’s diagnosed as schizophrenic. She’s OK while she’s taking her meds, but if she comes off them, she is off with the fairies, I’m telling you. Then his wife dies in childbirth. Can you believe that? Family is everything to this guy. And the one consolation he has for his wife’s death, he dotes on his daughter Celeste—she’s smart, she’s pretty—hey! At least he got something in return for losing his wife, right? Well then, capoom! That very daughter goes and gets herself murdered. You know? Where is the fuckin’ justice in that? And I have to go and tell him. ‘Hey, your daughter Celeste just got murdered.’ It was hard, I don’t mind telling you.”

I nodded. “That’s a tough break.”

“For him. I get to go home to my lovely wife and my kids. He gets to go home to the Addams Family!”

I smiled. “You know them well?”

“Nah, not really. We grew up on the same street. We didn’t hang out, he was a bit older than me, but we used to say hi. We attended the same Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, it’s right there on his doorstep. His wife was real devout, and his son, Samuel, he’s devout too. A bit too much for my taste. And me, well, I don’t go any more. My wife does, but I’m lapsed, you know? Too many unanswered questions.” He laughed. “I’m a detective, right? I need proof.”

“Right. Listen, Lenny, what I wanted to ask you about…”

“Oh, you ain’t asked me yet?” He laughed out loud.

I laughed with him and carried on. “About the phone records.”

He kept smiling, but his face became serious. “Yeah, what about them?”

“Did you request them?”

“Celeste’s phone records? Yeah, of course. She talked to somebody that night and I wanted to know who.”

“Right. That’s what I thought. But the records aren’t in the file.”

He frowned at me like I had suddenly started talking in a foreign language. “Her phone records ain’t in the file?”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Would you have taken the file home with you? Might they be back at your place?”

He made a face that was skeptical. “I’m pretty sure they’re not. I’ll have a look for you, pal, but if they’ve gone missing, they haven’t gone missing at my house.” He sighed. “The company was Verizon, and if I ain’t mistaken, they keep records for just one year.”

“Can you remember who she called?”

“Sure!” He shrugged. “It was a burner. If I remember, she called the burner, the burner called her once and then it called her again. That was…” He closed his eyes and screwed up his face. “Uh…eight, eight thirty and ten minutes before nine.”

I grunted. “Any other calls around that time?”

“It’s two years ago, but… yeah. Shortly before the last call, she received a call from the landline at home. That was Samuel telling her to come home and stop acting like a diva. And at, I don’t remember exactly, about eight forty five, a short call from Chad, her boyfriend.”

“That’s really helpful, thanks, Lenny. Try to find the records for me anyway, would you?”

“Sure, no problem.”

I left him standing at the coffee machine and went slowly back to our desks. Dehan was chewing on a celery stick and reading from the screen of her laptop. I dropped into my chair and put my feet on the corner of my desk. I stared at Dehan for a while, but she seemed not to notice. I thought about Chad and wondered why he would lie about having called Celeste that night. Had she arranged to go and spend the night with him? Had she then spoken to Rod and decided to spend the night with him, instead? Was it Chad that Remedios had seen from her window, chasing Celeste behind the chestnut tree?

I wondered about other lies people had told too, and wondered what they had to gain from them. I wondered about Samuel, calling Celeste after she had left the house. And I wondered about the Watson Gleason Playground on a cold, wet November night.

I took a small, blue Post-it, screwed it into a small pellet and threw it at Dehan. She batted it away without averting her eyes from the screen. “What?”

“Let’s go back to the playground.”

Now she turned and frowned at me. “What for?”

“Because we are going to find witnesses.”

“The area was already canvassed two years ago.”

“Well… yes and no. We’ll canvass it again. Come on, Little Grasshopper. The answer to our mystery, if I am not very much mistaken—and I am not—lies in that playground.”

She sighed. “See, you’re a wiseass, and a pompous wiseass.”

“But you like me nonetheless.”

I stood and we went back out into the rain.

FIVE

It was a short drive from Storey Avenue up Rosedale to the Watson Gleason Playground. I parked near the corner of Gleason and Croes and we walked back toward the playground. As we walked, I smiled amiably at the light rain that speckled the blacktop while Dehan spoke.

“If ever proof was needed, Stone,” she said, with her hands in her pockets, squinting at the odd