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

Hank, our liaison officer at the San Mateo Police Department, which was two hundred yards away, across East Hillsdale Boulevard.

We met him in the lobby fifteen minutes later. He was big and friendly and looked as though he’d put on his even bigger brother’s clothes by mistake that morning. He walked toward us with big strides and shook hands with us like he was really genuinely pleased to meet us. He shoveled his floppy blond hair out of his face and pulled an envelope from a small folder he was carrying.

“I talked to the judge yesterday evening, Dehan, and explained the situation—you were coming from New York, grounds for suspecting homicide, blah blah—and got you a search warrant for the premises. Do you need me to come along?” I drew breath to answer, but he didn’t let me. “Strictly, I should, but I am happy to let you go on your own if that works for you. Obviously, if you need to damage the property in any way, dig, knock down walls, blah blah, you should call me. Or if you find anything of importance like a meth lab or a body. But if you are just going to look around…” He made a face and spread his hands—hands I figured were pretty full and could do without babysitting visitors from the Big Apple.

“We’re fine. We’ll call you if anything major shows up.”

He handed me a card. “I’ve arranged for a locksmith to meet you there in…” He glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes. You’ll report back to me when you’re done?”

We told him we would and made our way to the car as he strode back to his, shoveling his hair out of his face once more.

It was a short drive down East Hillside Boulevard and left onto South Norfolk. Brooks Street was in a quiet, residential area that couldn’t have been further from the Bronx. She had a cute, two-story house beyond what had probably been a nice front garden two years ago, with a crazy paved path winding through flower beds to a friendly red door by a big bow window. Today it was overgrown and running to seed.

The locksmith was there, waiting in his van. He unlocked the door for us, made us sign a piece of paper, and went on his way. We stepped inside.

There was a pile of mail behind the door. Dehan hunkered down to gather it up. The place smelled musty and unlived-in. The drapes were drawn, and there was only a filtering of light to alleviate the gloom. To the right of the door, a flight of stairs rose to an upper floor. To the left, there was an open-plan living room, dining area, and a kitchen, separated by a breakfast bar. There was a sofa and two chairs arranged around a TV. A framed photograph of a very pretty young girl with a middle-aged man and woman stood on a small bookcase that held mainly DVDs and CDs. The books were Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan trilogy, three books by Stanislavski, Norma Jean by Fred Lawrence Guiles, and three self-help books by authors I had never heard of: Dream Yourself Happy, It’s Not Your Fault, and Rebirth in Life: A Guide to Rebecoming. There was also a scrapbook in which she had pasted reviews of plays she had been in.

As I was reading through them, I became aware of the hum of the fridge. There was a table lamp nearby, and I reached out and switched it on. It cast a dull, amber glow. Dehan was at the table leafing through the mail and turned to look at me. I stood, went to the kitchen, and opened the fridge. It was full of rotting, moldy cheese and vegetables. I closed it and leaned on the breakfast bar to look at Dehan.

She said, “There’s been enough money in her bank to cover her electricity bills, which must have been minimal. But more important than that, she was intending to come home. She was not planning on staying in New York, or on disappearing. If she had been, she would have cleaned out her account and disconnected the electricity.”

I nodded. “What have you got there?”

“Not much. A few bills, invoices. But this could be useful. It seems she’s an actress; this is a letter from her agent, Philip Shaw.”

I frowned. “I didn’t think anybody wrote letters anymore.”

“These are statements. Maybe she wanted hard copies.” She glanced at me and smiled. “Maybe her agent is a dinosaur.”

“There are a few of us left. We’d better go and have a talk to him.”

We had a look upstairs. There were still clothes in her closet and her dresser. They were of a surprising variety, from torn jeans and sweatshirts to elegant ball gowns and cocktail dresses, from the demure to the downright outrageous. Dehan raised an eyebrow at them. “I guess an actress needs all this.”

“Most women,” I said, with the air of one who knew, “like to dress differently for different occasions. They don’t wear the same jeans and boots day in, day out.”

“Like you’d know.”

She had a dressing table with lots of makeup, and in the bathroom, her toothbrush was gone, but most of her toiletries were still there. Dehan sat on the end of the bed and scrunched up her face.

“So here is an actress, living in a nice house in the Bay Area. She has an agent, and she is obviously working because she has money in the bank and she’s keeping this house on her own. One day she ups and goes to New York, but not just New York—the Bronx. She is not planning to stay there; she is planning to come back soon, so it’s just a visit. While she’s there, she visits this loser, Stephen Springfellow, the Sureños show up, beat seven bales of shit out of him,