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

glanced at her, talking to Charles, I saw her eyes were alive and she was smiling. I also noticed Ian Cameron watching her. I didn’t blame him. She was in a very simple, but very expensive black dress with no sleeves or shoulders, and a silver chain around her neck with a single amethyst. It all served to highlight her own beauty. I smiled, partly because she was mine, and partly because that very beauty hid the kick-ass, Bronx-bred bad attitude that was never very far below the surface.

Pamela stood, gave me a thin smile and joined Dehan and her son. She gave Dehan a frigid once over and said, “What an exquisite dress, but darling, are you in mourning? Who died?”

Dehan raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. “My tolerance for bullshit. It died a long time ago, but I’m still in mourning.”

Charles burst out laughing. Dehan caught my eye, winked and grinned.

Then the door opened and I noticed several things all at once. Dr. Cameron stiffened and his hostile face became even more hostile. His wife, whose side he had not left since we’d entered the room, also stiffened, but the expression on her face was anticipation, not hostility. Everybody else in the room went silent and stared, except Dehan, who caught my eye again with an unspoken question.

The man who entered the room was aware of the effect he had, and of his own magnificence. He was over six foot, but if he’d been four foot two he would not have looked any smaller. He had a powerful chest, a powerful jaw and a mane of silver hair swept back from a large forehead. His nose was aquiline and his pale blue eyes were cruel and ruthless. He was a man born to be king in a world that no longer needed kings.

Charles moved forward, “Ah, Father, there you are. May I present Detective Carmen Stone…”

Charles Gordon Sr. ignored his son and moved in on Dehan like a hungry wolf moving in on an injured baby gazelle. His voice was deep and resonant, with clear traces of his Boston roots. “Detective? I’ll wager most of the men you hunt down surrender willingly.”

I saw the doctor turn away. Dehan shook her head. “No, most of them need a couple of slaps and their hands cuffed.”

He laughed. “You make it sound so appealing.”

“Yeah? The reality is a little different, Mr. Gordon. This is my husband, Detective John Stone.”

He gave me the kind of look that all the women in the room were giving Dehan. There was enough acid in there right then to clean a ton of copper. He raised an eyebrow.

“Another detective? We had better all behave, then, hadn’t we? Though you are, of course, outside your jurisdiction.”

I stepped up and put my hand on Dehan’s elbow. “And on our honeymoon,” I added. “Thank you, by the way, for the champagne. We enjoyed it.”

“Don’t thank me.” He said it like he meant it. “Thank my son. And speaking of useless incompetence, Charles, am I not entitled to a drink in my own house?”

He pushed past me toward his son, who was hurrying to the drinks tray, and Pamela, Lady Jane and Sally Cameron all seemed to be sucked into his wake, like seagulls trailing after a Spanish galleon in full sail.

“What will you have, Father?”

“Let me see…” He didn’t so much say it as boom it. “Let me see! Shall I have something different to what I have every single night? Good lord, boy! Can you take the initiative on nothing? Not even a simple task like getting your father a drink?”

“Vodka martini it is! What a character!”

There was some simpering and giggling and I stepped out the French windows onto the terrace. The sun was low on the horizon and the evening light was turning a grainy copper. The shadows of the trees stretched long across the lawns and above, the blue was turning dark. There was a closeness to the air and you could almost taste the static electricity in the humid air.

Dehan came out after me and rested her ass on the ancient stone balustrade. She gave a small laugh. “We just stepped through the looking glass, but instead of winding up with Alice in Wonderland, we wound up in an Agatha Christie novel.”

I smiled. “You’re not far wrong.” I sipped, watching her. “I hope you’re not regretting it. We can move on if you want.”

“Are you kidding? I love it. I never saw a group of people hate each other so politely. Is this what Brits are really like, Stone? I thought it was just the movies.”

“Some. This small archipelago has a very complex society.”

She held my eye a moment, still smiling. “Let’s make a bet.”

“What kind of bet?”

“Who will the victim be, and who will the killer be. So far I don’t think it’s the butler.”

I laughed, then shrugged and gazed out at the slowly gathering dusk, which the Scots call the gloaming. “The victim is obvious,” I said, playing her game for a moment, but feeling oddly uncomfortable about it.

“The old man? CG Sr.?” I nodded and she nodded back. “I agree.”

“The murderer…” I shook my head. “I have some ideas, but we’re here on our honeymoon, and I don’t want to tempt the gods…”

I trailed off. It was as though the word had some hidden power of evocation. In the sky, over broken stone wall and the trees in the north, a great plume of green light shot up into the sky, flickered and spread out like a fan. Dehan saw my face and said, “What?”

I took her hand and pulled her to her feet, then turned her around. A violet arch swelled like a great dome from the horizon, then shimmered and seemed to break up and spread like