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

don’t know, m’lady. A little while ago I served coffee to young Mr. Gordon, the major and Mr. Stone in here. But I am not sure where they have gone. Shall I go and look for them, m’lady?”

“No, thank you Brown, no doubt they’ll show up before long.”

“Very good, m’lady.”

He made to leave with the maid in tow when the door opened and the massive form of Charles Gordon Sr. filled the doorway. He ignored Brown and the maid, eyed Bee and then stared for a moment at Dehan with a look that was nothing short of a leer.

“Good afternoon,” he said and moved into the room. Brown and the maid left and closed the door behind them. “Your husband has left you alone and unguarded.”

“I don’t need guarding, Mr. Gordon.”

“Call me Charles, then I can call you Carmen.”

Bee sighed and gazed at the flames that were beginning to enfold the logs in the fireplace.

Dehan smiled at Gordon. “That’s OK, Mr. Gordon. I still get a kick out of people calling me Mrs. Stone.” She smiled down at Bee. “It reminds me I just hit the jackpot.”

Gordon gave a humorless grunt. “Good lord!” He moved across the room toward the salver with the decanters on it. “Oh for the naivety of youth, though I do declare that even when I was at your tender age I was not naïve about love. Were you, Bee?”

“No, Charles, you know I wasn’t. You robbed me of all my innocence when I was just sixteen.”

He poured himself a whiskey and turned to her with a wolfish grin. “And didn’t we both enjoy that!”

They both laughed, but Dehan thought Gordon laughed with more pleasure, and Bee more trying to please. He turned to Dehan. “Believe me, Carmen, naivety is nothing but an inhibitor to pleasure. One lusts after dreams and illusions that can never be realized. How much more satisfying to lust after what is carnal and real!”

She rested her ass on the arm of a chair and raised an eyebrow at him. “Mr. Gordon, I think you are trying to convince me that you are bad. But I don’t believe you are bad…”

“Oh really?” He leered at her again. “I wouldn’t be too sure…”

Dehan shook her head. “No. Bad? Bad was Mick Harragan, who raped and murdered my mother while I was forced to watch. Bad was Maria Garcia, in the first case I ever worked with Stone[2]. She drugged Nelson Hernandez and his three cousins so they were conscious but they couldn’t move. She then shot each one of them with a pump action shotgun before cutting off Nelson’s head and balls and placing them in the middle of the table where they were playing poker.” She chuckled and shook her head. “No, you’re not bad, Mr. Gordon. You’re not even naughty. You’re a pussycat.” She grinned. “But, I’m sorry, my attention drifted, right about the time where the Ivy League heir to daddy’s fortune was going to explain to the Bronx born-and-bred Jewish-Latina detective all about naivety, reality and carnality. Please, go ahead and educate me, Mr. Gordon.”

Bee squealed with laughter and reached out and grabbed Dehan’s hand. “Oh, Charles, I do believe you have been put firmly in your place.”

Gordon stared at Dehan with baleful eyes. “I am not amused, Mrs. Stone.”

Dehan stood. “Get back in the sandpit, Charlie. I eat men for breakfast who make you look like a sissy’s bitch. I’m going to find my husband. You may have seen him around. He’s a man.” She grinned and held out her hands like she was holding two watermelons. “And he has balls.”

With that she stepped out of the drawing room, left Bee wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, and took her attitude across the hall to the study, where she had an accurate hunch she would find me.

What can I say, I guess I’d hit the jackpot too.

NINE

Charles, the major and I had left our coffee to get cold in the drawing room and crossed the hall to the study. The door, like the drawing room door, was solid walnut with a brass lever handle and a chub lock underneath. Charles pushed it open and stood back for me and the Major to go in.

“This is where it happened,” he said.

I stepped inside and stopped to have a look around. The room was large and roughly square, though perhaps a little wider than it was deep. I estimated it was almost thirty feet across, and twenty-something from the bay window on the right, at the front of the house, to the wall at the back, on my left. The window, flanked on the right by a credenza, overlooked the drive, and opposite, in the center of the wall, there was a large, granite fireplace, about six feet high and five feet across, with a large iron grate backed with red firebricks, blackened by centuries of burning wood. It was laid with large pine logs on a bed of kindling. On either side of it there was an old, burgundy chesterfield. The floor was carpeted in deep, red Wilton.

The far wall, opposite the door, was taken up with a dark mahogany bookcase. In front of that, almost dead center of the room, was a huge, oak desk with a black leather chair behind it.

Charles came in and closed the door behind him. I asked, “Is this how it was when he died?”

“Precisely. My father didn’t change a thing. And when I took over and started using the study as my own, I didn’t see any need to change it. I think this is the best use of the space.”

I turned and looked at the door. “A chub lock. They are easy to pick.”

“Oh, yes, without a doubt.”

The major coughed and took a step forward. “Thing is,