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

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? It’s about Tammy.”

I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

He frowned. “New York? Is she dead?”

I thought about my answer. Eventually, I said, “We have reason to believe she may have been killed, but we haven’t found a body. Mr. Duffy, would you have anything of hers that might contain her DNA? A hairbrush, for example…”

He nodded. “Yes, I still preserve all her possessions. Would you like to take her hairbrush?”

Dehan said, “That would be helpful.”

“That’s fine.” He rang a bell. “Does this mean you have…” His face went gray. “Something that you can make a comparison with?”

“There was a crime scene, Mr. Duffy, two years ago, on June 14. There was blood, but no body. We have reason to believe the blood belonged to Tamara Gunthersen.”

Hope contracted on his face like a spasm. “No body?”

“No.” I looked at my empty glass and sighed. “Mr. Duffy, forgive me for asking this, but you understand we have to. Did anything go missing from your house around the time that Tammy disappeared?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Of course you have to ask. It is the logical question. But the answer is no, and for a very simple reason. Everything I own belonged to her already. You can’t steal what is already yours. I am not a millionaire, Detective. I am not even a multimillionaire. I am a billionaire. What more could she want in material terms?”

He had a point. There was a tap on the door. Parks stepped in and Duffy told him to go and fetch Miss Tamara’s hairbrush and seal it in a plastic bag for us. Parks bowed, muttered something about “very good,” and left.

Dehan had finished her beer. She placed it on the table next to her and sat forward. “What else can you tell us about the man who should have been Tamara’s date that night?”

He gazed out the library window at the silent garden outside. “Geronimo dos Santos. A Jesuit priest. Very peculiar. A collector of ancient texts.” He gestured around him at the hundreds, probably thousands of tomes he had around him. “I have a noted library, Detective. Over the last couple of hundred years, various generations of Duffys have collected many rare and valuable books. He was interested in my collection. He came to tea a couple of times. I showed him my collection. We talked about this and that…”

He shrugged. I made to stand.

“I don’t think we need keep you any longer, Mr. Duffy. Thanks for the drink. You have been very helpful.”

We all stood. He held out his hand and we shook. “If, by some miracle, you find her alive,” he said, looking us both in the eye by turns, “let me know, will you? Tell her she still has a home here.”

We told him we would, and we left. The hairbrush was waiting for us on a small table in the hallway. Dehan picked it up and put it in her pocket, and we stepped out into the gentle sunshine.

Ten

We walked a couple of blocks through pretty, tree-lined streets to Chouquet’s, where we could sit outside and eat mussels and steaks. I figured we were not going to be in San Francisco much longer, so we should make the most of it. We sat on orange chairs in the sun and gave our orders to a smiling waitress in a long, black apron.

Dehan gazed at me through her impenetrable aviators and said, “Do you know how I would define this case?”

I smiled. “No, Dehan, I don’t.”

“I would define it as a mindfuck.” I laughed and she raised her hand. “No, let me lay it out for you in synthesis.”

“Okay.”

“A Portuguese Jesuit named Geronimo—and we haven’t even got started yet—employs an actress to turn up unaccompanied at Hugh Duffy’s annual remembrance party for his dead fiancée. Geronimo dos Santos has auditioned and selected her with some subtle ingenuity. He has chosen a girl who is going to step, radiant, right into Sally-the-dead-fiancée’s shoes.”

The waitress came out with our beers, and Dehan took a long pull before carrying on.

“So at this point, we assume dos Santos and Tammy are co-conspirators planning to scam Duffy. But instead, Duffy and Tammy have a whirlwind romance, get engaged to be married, and Tammy promptly disappears, as does Geronimo dos Santos. Meanwhile…” She gave a small laugh and shook her head. “Tammy is on the phone begging her estranged husband in Friendly Acres to give her a divorce, either so she can marry the billionaire she is engaged to, or so she can marry her loser ex-boyfriend in the Bronx!”

She stared at me, and I nodded. She continued.

“Next thing, Tammy and Geronimo dos Santos disappear. Her loser boyfriend is found tortured and shot in the heart, there is blood on the floor that is probably hers, but there is no trace of her body, and the case goes cold. Until two years later, when an anonymous client employs a disreputable shamus to investigate the loser’s murder. I call that a mindfuck.”

I had to agree. “And the only person with any credible motive for killing her is Peter, her husband. But if it was him, what the hell is with this whole circus?”

We were quiet for a bit. Then she asked me, “Do you like him for it?”

“Peter?”

She nodded.

“So far, it’s the only thing that makes sense. The only theory that holds water, as of right now, is that dos Santos was planning to use Tammy in a scam. She was only meant to get close to Duffy, but as everybody keeps telling us, she was so radiant and luminous it went too far, too fast, and they were both swept off their feet.” I