Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [story read aloud .txt] 📗

think you should become a novelist and write about our cases. You could be like Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote.” She started laughing. “You’ll have to wear slippers and a cardigan, and start smoking a pipe.”

“Funny. You’re funny. The way psoriasis is funny.”

We pulled up outside the hotel and climbed out. It was a cute bay with a white sandy beach flanked by rushes and grass, and a row of gabled, New England houses in gray and white clapboard. That was to the north. Behind us, to the south, was a large, elegant, colonial building that was two, three and four stories high, depending on which bit you were looking at. It seemed to ramble, like an agreeable fireside conversation, with long, white verandas, blue-gray walls and hexagonal turrets that were almost Chinese.

We checked in, dumped our overnight bags in our bedroom and went down to find the Wharf Bar. We ordered two Martinis and sat in a booth. Penelope turned up fifteen minutes later, at ten past two.

Raymond Chandler once described a woman as the kind who would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. Penelope Peach was that kind of woman, only she’d have had him selling the relics too, to pay for her Manhattan apartment. Her big blue eyes spoke to you of innocence, while her full, red lips told you the innocence was just as skin deep as you wanted it to be. What the swing of her hips told you was all kinds of anything but innocent.

I stood as she came in and she approached our booth. Her eyes flicked over me and I got the impression she’d read me, figured she had my number and knew just how to play me. When she shook Dehan’s hand, her expression was more cautious. That was where she thought her problem would be.

She sat beside Dehan, facing me, and the waiter came over and asked her if she wanted the usual.

“No, Sam,” she said, like he was the man she’d always dreamed she’d come home to. “Today I’ll just have a white wine.” When he’d gone away, she turned to Dehan. “It was so kind of you to do this. I don’t know what Stephen would make of it.”

Dehan shifted into the corner, so she could look at Penelope. “Stephen is your fiancé?”

“He is, and he’s a darling, but he is not exactly broadminded. You know what lawyers are like! Everything has to conform to the rules.”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “In my experience, when they are not breaking a rule, they are trying to bend it. Miss Peach…”

“Penny, please, we’re old friends, remember?”

The warmth in her eyes said that she wished we were. It was a warmth that wanted to be believed, and would have been easy to surrender to. I smiled and said, “Right, Penny. What can you tell us about your relationship with Jack Connors, Penny?”

She shook her head. “My goodness, I didn’t think anybody knew about that.” She laughed and turned to Dehan, laying her hand on her knee. “You must be awful good at what you do!”

We both smiled without much warmth and waited. The laughter drained out of her face. “I’m not proud of what happened.” She sat back and laid both hands on the table. Her eyes rested on the diamond engagement ring on her finger. “I met Jack about six years ago. It was at a party in a penthouse somewhere in Manhattan. The owner was the director of a big corporation and they were paying Jack some absurd amount of money to promote their brand. I was there with one of the executives of the company. He had proposed to me and I was seriously considering marrying him. Mark… No, Mike. Sorry!”

She laughed like she was more amused than embarrassed. The waiter brought her wine and she made a point of making eye contact when she thanked him. Dehan prompted her. “So you met Jack. Did you meet his wife, too?”

“I saw her, but I didn’t meet her. We talked for a while, he fascinated me and I gave him my number.”

Dehan didn’t try to conceal the edge in her voice. “What happened to Mark, Mike, Micky, whatever his name was?”

Penelope gave a small sigh and held my eye for just a moment too long for it to be comfortable, before turning to Dehan.

“Let me be upfront about this, Carmen. I’m a gold digger, and I don’t pretend to be anything else. Most of the men I am with like to delude themselves into believing I am something I am not, but I never lie to them, and I never make them promises I can’t keep. That’s my own code. I am not apologizing, and I don’t honestly need your approval.”

I stepped in before Dehan could answer. “Penny, we’re not concerned with how you live your life or any of its moral implications. We are just interested in Jack, and what happened between you two.”

She played with the stem of her glass for a moment. “Jack was about twice my age. He was very successful and very rich. His company was already worth a fortune by then. He called me a couple of days after the party and we met a few times at my apartment in Brooklyn.” She smiled at the memory. “He didn’t like it—the apartment. He said it was too small and inconvenient. He wanted me somewhere where he could come over at lunch time. His attitude would have been offensive in anybody else. He made no secret of it: as far as he was concerned, he owned me.” She shrugged. “But somehow he pulled it off, and the truth is, I kind of enjoyed being owned by him. He was a rare man, powerful and magnetic. Irresistible.”

I said, “So he moved you to the Upper West