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

I looked around the room. “Are we all done? Good. I suggest you all go to your rooms and get some rest. Brown will arrange a couple of rooms for Mr. Armstrong and Dr. Cameron. I would ask you all to please stay tomorrow morning to speak to the police when they arrive. I am sure they will want to talk to you.”

Gordon got to his feet and looked suddenly like an old, broken man. Perhaps in that moment, he understood for the first time the nature of the weapon he had been wielding most of his adult life against his family. Sally reached out for him but he waved her away and crossed the room to the door.

Somebody rang the bell for Brown and shortly afterward, he led Cameron and Armstrong out into the hall and up the stairs to the spare rooms. That left Sally and the major. He made to leave, then stopped by the door and looked back at me. “Is it a bluff? Do you really know?”

I nodded.

He said, “Who and how…?”

“Who and how, major.”

He turned and hurried away, across the checkerboard floor and up the stairs, muttering something about talking to Bee. Sally stood watching us. After a moment, she said, “I guess I’ve blown it.”

Dehan nodded a few times. “Nothing like screwing a man’s son to undermine trust in a relationship.”

I frowned and shook my head. “What made you do it, Sally?”

She sighed, seemed to sag and lowered herself onto the arm of the chair where Gordon had been sitting. “You live in New York, fer God’s sake! How could you ever begin to understand what it’s like to live on an island like thus? It’s no purgatory. Purgatory is where we go fer a day out. I’m thirty years old. If I don’t get out now, I never will. I’ll spend the rest of my existence here, on this island.”

I went over to the tray of decanters and poured three drinks. I gave one to Dehan and another to Sally. “That doesn’t really answer my question. I get that you wanted to get out. I get that you and Gordon could have a marriage of convenience. I even get that if you knew he and Pamela were not happy, you’d be prepared to break them up. I don’t approve, but I get it. What I don’t get is why his son. Why Junior?”

She looked down into her glass for a while. “I’m no’ proud of it. It was Bee. She looks dappy, but she’s a smart cookie, I can tell ye. An’ she’s known Charles fer years. She saw what was goin’ on between us right at the start, and even then she advised me no’ to fall for him. She said he played with people, used them against each other, an’ she told me about all the things he’d done to Pam over the years. To be honest, I felt sorry for her.” She shrugged. “I mean, there was nothing I could do fer her. Their marriage was over, you know what I mean? It was over a long time before he met me. An’ I was determined to get off o’ the island one way or another. Cameron was fuckin’ useless. He thinks you have to be faithful to your fuckin’ roots an’ all that shite. If I stayed wuth him, I’d be here for the rest o’my days. An’ that’ was no goin’ to happen.”

“You’re losing me.”

“Sorry. I… Bee scared me. I could see myself jumping from the bloody frying pan into the fire. Land up married to the old goat and stuck on this bloody island with the old bastard playin’ with me and humiliating me the way he humiliates the rest of his bloody family. Or did, when he had one. So I thought…” She shrugged.

“You thought Charles Jr. was a better bet long term, so you’d hedge your bets and play them both. Junior was bound to come into some money at some time, and when he did, you’d jump ship.”

“Something like that, aye.”

“Were you aware of the terms of the old man’s will?”

She avoided my eye. “I asked him a couple of times, but he refused to tell me.”

I gave it a beat, then asked, “Was Charles going to tell his father?”

She looked startled. “No! He was terrified of his father. We both agreed. For now, until things…”

She faltered and Dehan asked, “Things what?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Until things had settled. We were just putting off a crisis.”

I smiled. “Until you were firmly married into the family money.”

Her eyes were hostile. “I can’t stop you from judging me, but that doesn’t mean you have the right.”

I never got to answer. There was a scream. It was shrill and touched with hysteria. It echoed over the banisters along the galleried landing and filled the hallway. I ran out of the drawing room and saw Bee in a pink negligee, waving her hands in the air and shouting, “Pam! Pamela! She’s done something! Oh God! Come quick! Please! Come quick!”

I swore under my breath and sprinted up the stairs three at a time. Bee ran, her pink robe flapping behind her, leading the way to the room where Pam had been taken by Cameron. I could hear Dehan right behind me, struggling in her tight red evening dress.

By the time we got to the room, just about everybody else was there, crowding around the door. I shoved my way through and found Cameron kneeling beside Pam’s bed. There was an empty pill bottle on her bedside table and an empty glass of water. I snapped, “Has anyone touched that glass or the bottle?”

Cameron snarled, “I’m losing her, I’m fuckin’ losing her! Somebody get me my case!”

Sally ran from the room. I repeated, “Has