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

There was a howl and a shriek and the wind seemed to grow louder. The drawing room door and the windows rattled. I frowned at Dehan.

She said, “Was that the front door?”

Bee stared at her. “Who on Earth would come in at this time of night, in this weather? Has Charles been out?” The howl subsided. Lightning lit up the gardens outside, momentarily silhouetting the trees. Thunder rolled, then split the sky. When it passed, we heard the savage hammering: once, twice, a third time. The major exclaimed, “What the devil…?”

And then there was a shout, half hysterical from the hall.

“Help! Help! Fer God’s sake! Somebody! Help!”

Pam was on her feet and running, gasping, “Charles!” I was ahead of her, wrenching open the door, running across the checkerboard hall toward the study. The door was open, light streaming out. In it I saw, as I ran, where the latch had been smashed, ripped from the wood.

I stopped dead in the portal, blocking the doorway, taking in the scene. Pam was clawing at my back, screaming at me to move, to let her through. I turned and enfolded her in my arms, pushing her back. “Major! Major! Take her to the drawing room. Lock her in if you have to. Gordon! Get out of here! Take your wife away from here! Now!”

But Gordon just stood staring at me. The major was gaping. Pam was hysterical, thrashing, struggling to get to the room. I looked at Dehan. She slipped past in her scarlet dress and entered the study. I heard her snap, “Back up. Move away from the desk. Don’t touch anything.”

Across the hall, I saw Bee and Sally come out of the drawing room door and stand staring at us. I grabbed Pam’s shoulders in my hands and shook her, staring into her face. She was still screaming, “What has happened? Let me get in there! It’s my son! For God’s sake! What’s happened? Let go of me!”

I shook her again. “Pam! Pam, listen to me! You cannot go in there! Charles has been shot. He needs my help. The longer you keep screaming, the longer it is before I can help him. Do you want me to help him or do you want him to die?”

Gordon Sr. went white and stepped toward me. I looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t even think about it, pal.”

He stopped dead. Pam was goggling at me. I looked her in the eye again and said, “Do you want your son to die, Pam?”

She shook her head. “Of course not!”

“Then go with the major and your husband and wait in the drawing room while Detective Dehan and I do what we can to help him. Go! Now! Every second is vital!”

I propelled her gently toward the major. He put his arm around her and I pointed at the drawing room door. “Go!”

They withdrew reluctantly across the hall and into the drawing room. I turned and went into the study.

It was an eerie sight, like a strange, physical manifestation of the scene I had visualized just a few hours before. Only there were some significant differences between the scene I had imagined and the scene I was looking at. For a start, it wasn’t Old Man Gordon who was sitting behind the desk in the large leather chair with his brains blown out. It was Charles Gordon Jr., his grandson.

The left side of his head wasn’t missing, it was just spread out all over the Wilton carpet, part of his desk and most of his left shoulder—that part was the same—and like his grandfather, he was slumped forward slightly, gaping at a ledger on his desk, with his right arm hanging limp down by his side. On the floor, a couple of feet from his chair, was a revolver. It looked like an old Smith & Wesson .38, Military and Police model.

Dehan was hunkered down looking at it, and behind her, staring wide-eyed and pale, was Bobby Armstrong.

TWELVE

The door had a big, muddy boot print just below the handle. I could see the mud was wet. Dehan was on her hands and knees, sniffing the muzzle of the revolver. Then she touched it gently with the back of her fingers. She stood and said to me, “You got your cell?”

I nodded and pulled it from my pocket. There was no signal. I looked at Armstrong. “You got any signal?”

He shook his head like I was crazy. “Och, there’s no signal here in a storm! An’ who’re you going t’call, anyhoo?”

“There are no cops on the island?”

“Ut’s a private island. What for, anyway? Nothin’ ever happens here!”

“Just a murder every forty years.”

“Ah didna kill him!”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Dehan said, “What’s 911 here?”

“999.” I picked up the phone on the desk, listened and shook my head. “The line is dead.”

Armstrong curled his lip. “What did yiz uxpect, in a storm like thus?”

“What are you doing here, Armstrong? You said today you wouldn’t come past the gate. Yet this is the second time I’ve seen you in the house since then.”

He snarled at me. “Ah don’t have to answer your feckin’ questions! Yer nay a cop here, see?”

I jerked my head toward the door. “Get out. Go wait in the drawing room with the others.”

He took a step toward me. “Ah don’t have to do what you feckin’ tell me, pal!”

“This is a crime scene, pal! You’re disturbing the evidence. Right now my testimony and Detective Dehan’s is likely to clear you of suspicion. Disturb the scene or leave the house, and you go right to the top. Am I getting through to you, Armstrong?”

He muttered something about “Feckin’ Yanks!” and marched across the hall to push through the door into the drawing room. I watched it