Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

“He called her at nine thirty that night.”

“For how long?”

“They talked for forty-five minutes.” She stood and walked to the window. There she turned and rested her ass on the windowsill. She said, “He’s a rake. That’s been established, right?”

“I think so.”

“Simon is a royal pain in the ass who thinks he’s Abraham, but ain’t. When he gets posted to New York, being a good patriarch, he takes out life insurance to protect his wife and daughter in case the children of Babylon should do for him. Only it wasn’t the children of Babylon he needed to be worrying about.

“His wife receives an email informing her that her husband is now worth more dead than alive. At first, it doesn’t even register. But then, when they get here and move into their house by the church, and she meets the fascinating and sexually magnetic Reverend Truelove, the insurance begins to take on a greater significance. What if…?”

I nodded. “But she is incapable of doing it herself.”

She raised a finger. “Shut up. As you say, she hasn’t the strength, or the killer instinct, to do this by herself. Paul, however, is—how did Elizabeth Cavendish describe him?—half a ton of trouble? He is not constrained by the letter of Divine Law. He has warmth and humanity in his heart. So, they start to have an affair. She promises him that if he will get rid of Simon, she will be his and his only.”

I frowned. “So how did they do it?”

“Shut up. He comes over with Ahmed, so he has a witness other than Sylvie to say that he left. After Ahmed has gone, perhaps during the reading from scripture by a lay member of the congregation, he slips back though the garden, kills Simon, and returns to the church as the reading of the scripture is concluded. Then he delivers his sermon, like he has been there all along.”

We stared at each other for a while. It was something we did unconsciously which other people found disturbing, but it helped us to think. After a moment, I said, “It sounds a bit like the plot from an Agatha Christie novel.”

“Okay, but… the bones…”

“It would require very precise timing.”

She shook her head. “No. It would require approximate timing and a cell phone on vibrate.”

I nodded. “She hears his car arriving. Calls the reverend. He invites John Doe to read the lesson and slips out. She has left the back door open for him. He comes in, knocks Simon down and kills him, gives her the phone to call 911, and races back to the church.”

“See?”

I sighed. “It’s crazy enough that it may have worked.”

“And I am figuring that Paul Truelove is all about being crazy. Crazy in the Amazon, crazy at Eastchester Bay and crazy in the Bronx.”

I was quiet for a bit. It was hard to find fault with it, and like she said, it kind of fit with the picture of Paul Truelove that was beginning to emerge.

“What do you make of Humberto?”

“Have you been able to find him?”

“Nope. Nowhere. He is not officially in this country.”

She made a ‘yeah, that’s what I expected face’ and said, “I have absolutely no reason for saying this, but I’m pretty sure you’ve had the same thought. I figure he’s Truelove’s son from a Brazilian affair.”

“The thought had crossed my mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had as much to do with his coming back to the U.S. as Reggie Cavendish’s accident. What I can’t decide is whether that has anything to do with this case, or whether it is just part of the general chaos and collateral damage associated with his life.”

Dehan gave a small grunt. “In as much as he has probably left a string of heartbroken, pregnant parishioners in his wake, half way around the globe.”

I frowned. “So why didn’t they get hitched afterwards? And what made this Don Juan of the Altar go to such lengths for Sylvie?”

She gave me a knowing look and wagged a finger at me. “Because… she never really wanted him. They probably never even slept together. She just wanted him to do the deed. And once he’d done it, she sold him the ‘it’s not you, it’s me, I am too traumatized’ line. And it was the fact that he could not have her, that drove him to the extreme of killing for her.”

I thought about it. It wasn’t the strangest story I’d ever heard, not by a long shot. People will do some pretty crazy things when their hormones get stirred up. One thing was for sure. He had lied about being at Elizabeth Cavendish’s house. He had been in the right place at the right time to kill Simon Martin and both Elizabeth and Sylvie had backed him up in that lie.

I nodded. “I think it’s time to rattle their cages. You get Sylvie, I will go get Paul.” I stood and paused a moment. “Dehan, be totally unsympathetic. She’ll break down and start crying. When she does, do nothing. Let’s see what happens next.”

“Gotcha. What about the reverend?”

“I’m going to tell him that Sylvie and Elizabeth have sold him out. We’ll play it by ear and maybe we can play them against each other.”

As we moved toward the door, I said, “You got your car, right?”

“Yeah, you didn’t pick me up this morning. Remember?”

“I didn’t want to disturb…”

“Asshole.”

I watched her walk down the sidewalk toward her car, on her long, beautiful legs, and smiled to myself.

Eight

I pulled up in front of the church and was surprised to see Dehan pull up on the other side of the street. I’d expected her to continue on to Bogart Avenue to get Sylvie. I climbed out of the Jag and