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

His face cleared. “I was with Brown! He’ll tell yous. I was with him!”

“When?”

“When…” He faltered.

I shook my head. “It’s a very small window, Doc, but we don’t know exactly when he was killed. Hold on to that thought. And my advice, for now, keep your mouth shut. You’ll do everyone a favor. Now, please, leave the bag there and get into the spare bedroom with the others.”

He left the room and I stood in the doorway, biting my lip and watching him make his way down the passage. I turned and faced Dehan and we stared at each other for a long moment. It was a strange habit we had fallen into shortly after we met. It made other people uncomfortable, but it helped us to think. After a moment, she blinked and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Well, at least we know it wasn’t Gordon or Pamela.”

I frowned at her. “I wasn’t kidding, Dehan. I know who did it. I should have seen this coming. Our killer is crazy and almost unbelievably daring. This…” I gestured at Gordon. “This, while people were just feet away in the corridor—it is reckless to the point of insanity. But there is also a coldness to it, a clarity of thinking that, if we are not very careful, will lead to the killer being acquitted. There will be no evidence to convict them. The problem is not who did it, or even how. Both of those are obvious. The question, Dehan, is how do we prove it?”

NINETEEN

Sally was lying down with her forearm across her eyes. Bee was sitting next to her, holding her knees up to her chest and staring vacantly at the air six inches in front of her nose. The major was in an armchair by the window, watching her quietly. Cameron was on the floor, echoing Bee’s position, but with his arms laid across the top of his knees and his forehead on his arms. In the corner, Armstrong lay curled in the fetal position, snoring softly. Outside the door, the red-haired maid sat asleep in a chair. Beside her, Brown sat in another, drawn and anxious, watching me and Dehan.

I leaned on the doorjamb, and after a moment Bee turned to look at me. “Do you really, seriously think that one of us did these terrible things, Mr. Stone? Don’t you think that your theories have perhaps gone a little astray?”

Dehan came up beside me, leaned on me and rested her head on my shoulder. After a moment, I nodded. “No to the first and yes to the second, Bee.” I jerked my head at the window, where the sky was already turning pale. “The storm has pretty much blown over. Phones should be working again soon.” I shrugged. “I thought I’d cracked it, but the fact is I hadn’t. And you know what? My wife and I came here on honeymoon, not to conduct a pro bono investigation, and frankly, if I’m honest, we are both pretty tired of getting insulted, sneered at and put down for no other reason than we are Americans and work for the NYPD. We tried to help, I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

Cameron looked up at us. His eyes were resentful. “I told you from the start you were on the wrong track. It was Gordon. It had to be.”

Dehan snapped, “How! How’d he do it?”

“I don’t know, but…”

“When you do know, talk. In the meantime, why don’t you keep your mouth shut!”

Bee sighed. “It would be a relief if you did, Doctor.”

I said, “The fact is, everybody has an alibi for the time of Gordon Sr.’s death. So either it was somebody who was not a member of the party in the house, or it was suicide, as the doctor says. Either way, Dehan and I are washing our hands of the case. We will call the cops as soon as we have a signal, we will preserve the crime scenes and we will pass on our findings, such as they are, when they get here. But other than that we are done. I do recommend, though, that you all lock your doors when you go to bed. There is at least a chance that there is a killer at large on the island, if not in this house.”

With that I turned and made my way downstairs, with Dehan by my side. Above, I could hear them all leaving the room. We crossed the hall, I undid the padlock on the study door, stepped inside and I pushed the door to behind us. I checked my cell. “Still no signal.”

She picked up the landline and shook her head. She waited a moment, then started to dial and after a moment started to speak in a loud voice, as though she was talking to the cops. I moved quickly to the bay window, opened the left panel and climbed out. Then I sprinted around the side of the house, past the steps down to the kitchen and in among the rosemary bushes in the orchard garden. There I lay flat, watching the side of the house, and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long, maybe only fifteen minutes, but it felt a lot longer in the sodden, muddy soil after the storm. There was a dull grayness in the east, showing through wet, broken clouds that looked like they had been shredded by the wind and abandoned, scattered across the heavens. The light through the leaded windows in the tower looked warm and inviting in the paling pre-dawn. I checked my watch. It was almost three.

Then I heard the soft clunk of the front door. A shadow stepped out and moved swiftly down the steps and into the driveway, then seemed to disappear. For a moment I wondered if I had somehow got