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

was and she pointed at a door, “They’re expecting you. Just go right on in.”

“They?”

She smiled. I went in.

It was a corner office, the size of an average apartment. It was decorated with old world elegance. The walls were lined with books. Some of them even looked as though they were used sometimes. Her desk was large and made of oak. She was sitting behind it and her uncle, Don Alvaro Vincenzo, was sitting on the corner of it. Over to the left, there was a sofa with two chairs and a coffee table. There was a man sitting there on the sofa, who looked as though he could break bricks with his face. All three of them were watching me.

I smiled sweetly and closed the door. “Good morning, which one of you is Sonia Vincenzo?”

The guy with the dangerous face glanced over at Sonia and her uncle with a, ‘Well, it’s not me, so it must be one of you guys,’ expression.

Alvaro said, “I like a man with a sense of humor, Detective Stone, it’s a shame you haven’t got one.” Then he laughed out loud, staring with manic eyes, first at his hard man and then at his niece.

Sonia said, “Come in, Detective, I hope you don’t mind, I have asked Don Alvaro and Mr. Vitale to join us.”

She was beautiful. She looked like she’d been made by Armani: today she was exquisite, tomorrow she’d be out of fashion, and by next year, her seams would be coming undone. I shook my head.

“I don’t mind at all. I am just wondering why.”

She indicated a chair across from her desk and I sat. Don Alvaro smiled down at me. He was a tall, elegant man with expensive, gray hair and an expensive suit.

“We don’t often talk to the cops these days, Detective Stone, usually it’s the Feds.” He said it with urbane humor, like he thought he was being sophisticated.

Sonia said, “It pays to take precautions. With all the micro-technology that you boys use now, it is good to have some reliable witnesses to contextualize the stuff you record. It would not be the first time the NYPD have tried to entrap a member of my family.”

I grinned. “Yes, I have often wondered why we target the Vincenzo family, such decent, upstanding members of the community.” I turned to Alvaro. “How is Pro, by the way?”

His smile wasn’t so much thin as anorexic. “What do you want, Stone?”

I turned back to Sonia. “Actually, I have no interest in your family at all, Ms. Vincenzo. I wanted to ask you about somebody else.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“Sean O’Conor.”

If I had slapped her in the face with a wet mullet she wouldn’t have looked more surprised. I glanced at Don Alvaro. His face was like granite, but he had two cute pink spots on his cheeks. Sonia shrugged.

“Sean… Why, I have had no contact with Sean for over ten years.”

The Don slid his ass off the desk and walked over to stare out the window.

“What was the nature of your relationship, Ms Vincenzo?”

“Relationship…? I wouldn’t describe it as a relationship… We were acquaintances…”

“Acquaintances. How did you meet?”

“We met at law school. We were both working in Manhattan. We met occasionally for a drink…”

I studied her face a minute, still smiling. “If you’ll forgive me saying so, you seem…” I spread my hands. “Odd bedfellows, metaphorically speaking, of course.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Him a devout Catholic, champion of the poor and the needy, savior of souls, you, a member of the…” I smiled at Don Alvaro’s back. He was rigid. “… immensely powerful Vincenzo empire.”

He turned to raise an eyebrow at me. She said, “We were just acquaintances, Detective.”

“Not bedfellows? Do you happen to know where he is now?”

“We lost touch.”

“Did you correspond?”

“Correspond?”

“By email, for example. Did you ever exchange emails?”

She could sense a trap. So could her uncle and he was watching her like a hawk.

“We may have exchanged a few.”

I let her see in my eyes that I knew that. What I wasn’t sure about yet was whether her uncle knew that. I took a slightly different tack.

“What kind of man was he, Ms. Vincenzo?”

“Well,” she shrugged, “I didn’t know him that well…”

“Really?” I waited, giving her space. She glanced at her uncle, but didn’t say anything, and so I moved in, “Because I was under the impression that you two were pretty close.”

“I don’t know what could have…”

“Didn’t you, for example, write to him threatening to put him in hospital if he broke up with you?”

I felt rather than heard the tough guy stand up. Alvaro gave him a ‘hang on’ look.  Nobody spoke for a moment.

“I don’t know what the source of your information is, Detective.”

I put a smile on the right side of my face.

“Cute, a lawyer’s answer. But you and I both know what the source of my information is. You wrote that email, and clearly, if I have read it, it must still exist.” I looked up at the Don. “Did you know about their relationship, Don Alvaro?”

He didn’t answer; he just gave me the dead eye.

“See, the thing is, Sonia, that right after you wrote him that email, he was executed.” I looked back at Don Alvaro. “And I do mean, executed.”

She looked shaken. “I didn’t even know he was dead.”

“What, didn’t you ask your uncle not to tell you when it was done?”

She sighed. “I’m an Italian, Detective Stone, we are hot-blooded and passionate. When we fight, we say things in the heat of the moment, but we don’t mean them. It’s bluster. It doesn’t mean anything. Sean and I were having an affair. I wanted to make it more permanent. He was…