Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

badly smeared and her lips bruised. Wayne’s description of Jimmy killing Angela focused almost obsessively on the kissing. And the one thing that was missing from Angela’s purse and from Noelia’s purse, was the lipstick. They were two, wicked, cruel men who hungered for a maternal woman’s kiss. We can only guess at what drove them to that depravity. Betrayal?” I shrugged again. “Teddy’s last words to me before he cracked me over the head, ‘They are not worth it. Even the sweet ones are whores.’” I shrugged. “I guess once they yielded to Jimmy’s advances, that branded them as whores in Wayne and Teddy’s minds, and that sentenced them to death.”

Dehan said, “If he had just sat out his sentence…”

I smiled. “But he was vain. That was one of the things that I began to realize early on. We kept asking, if he was the killer, why would he draw attention to himself? Well, the answer is simple. He was a narcissist. He wanted his deal to get out of prison, sure, but he also wanted to rub it in our faces that he was killing girls and getting away with it.”

The inspector nodded for a long moment, big slow nods. “A master class in detection, Stone. Very impressive. Well, I said it before and things went a bit pear shaped. But I certainly think you have earned a good few days’ rest.”

I nodded. “I think we are going to need it, sir.”

* * *

That evening we sat in Zack’s Bar & Grill in Stonington, sipping dry martinis and waiting for our fresh seafood starter, feeling bruised, ragged, but healing and happy. Dehan had been watching me for a while. With that smile she gets when she thinks she knows what I’m thinking.

“So,” she said, “You didn’t drive me all the way out here just to eat seafood. What’s the surprise?”

I raised an eyebrow and smiled back. “I thought tomorrow we could cross over to Fishers Island and spend a couple of days doing absolutely nothing.”

“Uh-huh…” She bobbed the olive in her martini a couple of times. “That’s nice. But that’s not it either.”

I gave my head a little shake. “You’re right.” I hesitated. “This may come as a bit of a surprise, Dehan, but I’m actually not a big risk taker. I’m pretty cautious. I take things very much one step at a time.”

She was frowning hard. “That doesn’t come as a surprise at all, Stone. I’ve known that for a long time. Where is this going?”

I heaved a big sigh and took a sip of martini, wishing I’d ordered a whiskey. “I would never do anything, Dehan, to jeopardize our…” I spread my hands. “Our whateveritis.”

“Our whateveritis?”

“Yeah.”

“Calling it that is a pretty big risk, Stone.”

“I know. And I don’t want to call it that anymore.”

Her frown deepened. “What are you saying?”

I looked down at the tabletop, then looked into her eyes. “I almost told you once before, outside Teddy’s.” I gave my head a small shake. “I can’t do this anymore, Dehan. You are young, beautiful, modern. I am an old dinosaur. When Teddy told me he had killed you, it almost killed me. It’s too much. I need to end this…whateveritis.”

“End it?”

“Yeah. I want to call it something else. I want to call you something else. I don’t want either of us to die without my having called you my wife. I think that is what I most want in the world. Carmen, will you please marry me?”

I watched the tears spring into her eyes. She frowned, then gave a small laugh. “You son of a bitch,” she said. “Of course I will!”

BOOK 11

MURDER MOST SCOTTISH

ONE

We’d touched down in Edinburgh at 7:10 AM local time, collected a large, characterless vehicle from the Car Hire Centre and, resisting the temptation to explore Edinburgh, we took the M90, crossed the Firth of Forth over the spectacular Forth Road Bridge as the sun climbed over the North Sea, and headed north, toward the wild and remote north coast of Scotland, in the Scottish Highlands.

I drove first and Dehan sat back and watched the strange, conflicted landscape that was at once gray, drab and post-industrial, and wild and green and timelessly Celtic. Pretty soon we were outside town and driving through picture-book rolling fields and hedgerows under very blue skies with lazy, whipped cream clouds.

Dehan was staring this way and that with slightly narrowed eyes, her aviators perched on top of her head. She said, suddenly, “Somebody shrunk New England.”

I smiled. “Your first glimpse of the world outside the U.S.A., Dehan.”

She frowned at me. “You know, if you keep calling me by my surname, you’ll have to call me Stone. We’ll have to call each other Stone. That could become confusing.”

I was quiet for a bit, smiling to myself. “I won’t deny,” I said, “that I get a foolish kick out of calling you Mrs. Stone.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled too.

I continued, “I know people don’t get it, but I figure that’s their problem, not mine. Either way, and even if it seems contradictory, you will always be Dehan.” I shrugged. “That’s just who you are to me.”

“It is contradictory, but that’s cool. How long is this drive?”

“Six or seven hours, through some of the most remote, beautiful landscapes this side of the Atlantic. That gets us to John O’Groats…”

“John O’Groats. That is some name.”

“The most northerly part of Great Britain. Mid summer they get only a couple of hours of darkness at night. From there we drive west for four miles to the ferry at Gills, and from there…”

“The ferry to the island of Gordon’s Swona, another eight miles by sea. And from there, another mile by road to the castle. So total…?”

“Maybe nine hours. We