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

She nodded. “It was close to his office and close to his house.”

Dehan said again, “So what happened to Mike?”

“Frankly, he wasn’t in the same league. I broke it off with him and began to think seriously about the possibility of a future with Jack.”

I frowned. “You really think he would have left his wife for you?”

She hesitated, then gave her head a small shake. “No, but he was happy to keep me in style. We never talked about his wife. He gave me to understand that she would never question him. And he wasn’t all that interested in what I did, just so long as I was there when he called. It was a pretty good arrangement and a pretty good life.”

I sipped my Martini and asked, “Was he the only one? How many other men were you seeing at the time?”

“Two, Stephen and Grant.”

Dehan glanced at me. “Stephen?” She jerked her thumb in the general direction of Lantern Hill Lane. “The same Stephen?”

“Yes, I had just met him around that time.”

“At a party?”

The sarcasm was clear in Dehan’s voice and Penelope sighed. “Your judgmental attitude makes it hard to be cooperative, Carmen. You don’t approve of what I did. You’ve made that clear, but forgive me, that is your problem, not mine.” She paused a moment and went on. “I met him walking the dog in the park. He is a really nice guy and I actually started to have serious feelings for him. I found myself feeling happy at the thought of seeing him and spending time together. More important than that, I found I wanted to make him happy.” She gave a small shrug. “When Jack died, I was already thinking about breaking up with him, and Grant.”

I signaled the waiter to bring another round. “Did Stephen know what you did for a living?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he would have dropped me like a hot brick. He comes from a very strict, New England Methodist family and he is very rigid in his morals. Twice he has come close to losing his job with the firm because he has refused to make false statements. He is like super moral. If he knew about my past, he would not be with me.”

Dehan drew breath, I gave her a look and she closed her mouth. I said, “Tell me about Grant.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Grant was a piece of work. Man, he was something else. He was South African, with this real kind of badass South African accent? He used to pronounce it ‘Seth Efrica’, real kind of harsh. He was seriously rich and well on his way to becoming a billionaire. Back then he was, I don’t know, thirty-five? And Jack was poor by comparison.”

Dehan was frowning. “Dot com?”

She shook her head. “No, arms, security, mercenaries. Offices in Manhattan and supplied private armies to warlords in Africa, Latin America, even the Middle East. A lot of it was real shady stuff, but man did he pull in a lot of money! Shaw Line Defense is the company.”

“He knew how you made your living?”

She gave her head a little twitch to the side. “He’d been around the block a few times. He wasn’t exactly naïve, you know what I mean? He knew there were other guys and I depended on them all for the way of life to which I had become accustomed. He didn’t like it, but he was coming around to the idea that if he wanted this all for himself, he had to put a ring on it.”

I said, “He wanted to marry you?”

“Yeah, we talked about it.”

Dehan said, “But?”

“Let’s say I was weighing my options.” She leaned back to allow the waiter to set another glass of white wine in front of her. Then he set out the Martinis and left. “On the one hand there was Stephen, who I was growing real fond of, then there was Jack who was generous to a fault, gave me the apartment and stayed out of my hair, and then there was Grant, who was headed for the Forbes five hundred and was willing to marry me; but I was beginning to ask myself, what price I would have to pay for being his wife.”

I asked, “How did you find out Jack was dead?”

“I called his office on the Friday morning.”

“You did that a lot?”

“It used to drive him crazy, but it was naughty fun and secretly I think he liked it.”

“And they told you he was dead?”

“His secretary was hysterical. She told me about his wife finding his…” She seemed to go slightly pale. “It still makes me sick to think about it.”

Dehan sighed and scratched her head. “What were you doing on Wednesday, late morning to early afternoon, Penny?”

“You can’t think that I…”

“I can think all kinds of things, just tell me what you were doing on the Wednesday morning to midday.”

She seemed to sag. “OK… I remember it quite vividly. It might sound trite, but I had a hangover. I’d had dinner with Grant the night before and one thing had led to another… It wound up being quite a wild night, lots of drink and… stuff, big row, make up sex and booze...” She shrugged. “So I woke up feeling rough, to say the least.”

She stopped talking and sat staring at her fingers on the table. I drew breath but she started talking again.

“Jack was not crazy like that. He knew everything and was right about everything and if you disagreed, he just ignored you till you saw sense. But Grant was wild. It wasn’t enough that you did what he wanted, you had to agree, and want what he wanted too! He was real intense.”

“What did you row