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

minutes, we’ll take him to my housekeeper.” He turned to Sylvie. “And maybe we could prevail upon Mary…”

Sylvie nodded, then pulled back and held Humberto’s face in her hands. “Hey, you want to see Mary?”

He grinned all over his wet face. His breath shuddered as he nodded. Dehan was already on the phone.

“Mary? This is Detective Dehan. Listen, can you join us in the church? We need somebody to look after Humberto for a couple of hours… Thanks.” She hung up and glanced at Sylvie. “She’s coming.”

Fifteen minutes later, Mary had managed to coax Humberto away to the rectory, with promises of hot chocolate and cake, and we led the reverend and Sylvie out to the cars. But when Sylvie saw that Dehan was taking her across the road, and I was taking the reverend toward my Jag, she stopped dead in her tracks on the sidewalk and refused to move. A spasm of panic constricted her face, giving her the look of a terrified child.

“What’s going on? Why are you separating us? Why do I have to go on my own?”

I studied her face, trying to read her reaction and what it meant.

“We want to get this over with as much as you do, Sylvie. Detective Dehan is going to ask you some questions, and I am going to talk to Reverend Truelove for a bit. It saves time that way, and we can all go home and get on with our lives.”

She turned terrified eyes on the reverend. He nodded and said, “Let’s get it over with, Sylvie.”

She hesitated and then followed Dehan to her car.

I let Dehan get ahead and drove at a leisurely pace. The reverend was quiet, staring out the side window at the anonymous, fleeting people on the sunlit sidewalks. “I cannot believe,” he said without looking at me, “that you seriously consider Sylvie a suspect in this case.”

“Who says we do?”

Now he turned to me. “Come on! You were about to arrest her in there!”

“Was I?”

“Well, that is what your partner said.”

“That was one of a number of options she put to both of you.”

He was silent for a moment. “So I am the suspect and she is the material witness…”

“Nothing says ‘guilty’ like a stupid lie, reverend. And you would do well to remember that during the interview when we get to the station.”

He sighed, closed his eyes and flopped back in his seat. He didn’t talk again until we arrived at the precinct.

Nine

I sat opposite him and placed a thin, manila folder in front of me. He glanced at it and then up at my face. I stared at him a moment and when I was sure I had his full attention, I said, “I spoke to Elizabeth Cavendish. She confirmed your alibi.”

He swallowed. “My alibi…”

“Yes. Your alibi. She also mentioned that her husband has been paralyzed from the neck down for the last twenty-five years.”

He wouldn’t make eye contact and his breathing rate had increased noticeably. “Yes, that was a tragic accident.”

“Where did it happen?”

“In Brazil.”

“Was that where Humberto was conceived?”

Now he met my eye. “How is that relevant to your investigation?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then let’s leave it.”

“Okay, fine. What is the relationship between you and Elizabeth Cavendish?”

His face flushed. “We are friends.”

“Close friends?”

“Yes, we go back a long way.”

“How intimate is your friendship?”

His anger was explosive, but it looked to me like he was using it to hide his fear. “Really, Detective! This is too much!”

“What is, Reverend? The suggestion that you and she are having an affair is that infuriating? I don’t see that that’s too much at all.”

He spluttered. “She’s a married woman!”

“She is a very frustrated, comparatively young woman, with emotional and sexual needs, who is married to a man who cannot fulfill those desires. You are both close and she is clearly drawn to you. Tell me where it becomes too much.”

He was foundering, trying to find a firm footing somewhere. “Naturally, I have been there for her! But as a friend, nothing more…”

“She said you were lovers. Was she lying?”

He gasped.

I repeated, “Was she lying?”

He hesitated and then hesitated some more. He was screwed whichever way he went and he knew it. Finally, he said, “No,” and sagged. “That is, we were lovers. Years ago, for a very brief period of time. We had a short, ill-advised affair after her husband’s accident.”

“You are not lovers now?”

“No.”

“How many lovers have you had, Reverend?”

“That is none of your damned business!”

“I disagree.”

“How…?”

“Liz says you are, and I quote, ‘a rake’.” It was Dehan who’d said it, but Elizabeth had agreed and not retracted her statement.

“Well, I…! That may be her opinion, but it is certainly not the truth! I am a man of God, Detective!”

“Is she lying?”

He heaved another sigh to steady his nerves. “Look, Detective, you are trying to make me say she is a liar, because in doing so I will undermine my own ‘alibi’, as you call it. But I am not going to call her a liar because she is not a liar. She may see me as a rake for reasons of wounded pride, loneliness or any number of reasons. But that is her subjective view, and I can assure you it is not based on any factual information. I am not a rake!”

“What is the nature of your relationship with Sylvie Martin?”

His face went like stone. “I have already told you, I am her pastor. We are friends. And that is all, honest truth.”

“What time did you go to Elizabeth Cavendish’s house that night?”

He spread his hands and shook his head. “You are asking me for details of something that happened twenty years