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

“Exactly what you think we rowed about. I told him I wanted to end it and that there was a man I was thinking of marrying.”

“Stephen?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d he take that?”

“How do you think? He once explained his philosophy of life to me: take it; if you can’t take it, buy it; if you can’t buy it, shoot the owner and take it.”

I grunted. “So did you tell Grant who you were thinking of marrying?”

“Of course not…”

She said it without much conviction, and left the words kind of hanging. Dehan said, “But?”

“Well, for about a week or two before Jack was killed, I’d had the feeling I was being watched or followed.” She shrugged. “Stalked, maybe.”

I leaned forward. “Anything more definite than a feeling?”

“Maybe. A few times I saw the same white van. It was parked outside my apartment on a couple of nights, and when I went for walks in the park, it was there two or three times. I didn’t think much of it at the time, and after Jack died, I stopped seeing it.”

Dehan scowled at her. “That could be really important. It’s a shame you didn’t come forward at the time.”

She stared at her wine and looked unhappy. “I suppose it is. It never occurred to me at the time.”

I gave Dehan a microscopic shake of the head and said to Penelope, “Did you notice anything particular about the van? Plates, logos, any kind of distinguishing feature?”

“No, just that it was white, it was dirty and it had no windows in the side panels at the back. No logos, no writing. I don’t recall the plates.”

“Where is Grant now?”

“As far as I know, he still lives in New York. His offices are at one eighty-four, 5th Avenue, above the printers. He has the seventh and eighth floors. They don’t look like much from the outside, but he’s the real deal. You should see his apartment and his country house.”

I nodded. “I believe you. You got a number for him?”

She looked down at her hands and gave her head a small shake. “You better contact him through the company.”

Dehan made a question at me with her face. I shook my head. She turned to Penelope. “I have only one more question, Penelope. On any of those occasions when you noticed the van, were you with Jack?”

She didn’t answer for a while. She didn’t look as though she was trying to remember. She looked more like she wished she could forget. Finally she sighed and said, “Yes. Twice it was parked outside the apartment when he was there. I told him about it and he dismissed it as silly paranoia.” She hesitated just a moment, then said, “Shaw, Grant Shaw.”

She took hold of her purse and made to stand. “Is there anything else?”

I shook my head and Dehan said, “Not for now, Penny.”

She stood and left.

FIVE

It wasn’t exactly a moon, it was a thin crescent sliver of a moon, suspended a couple of inches above the water: just enough to make the horizon translucent and dapple the inky liquid with a luminous splash. The spring weather was not warm enough for going barefoot, but we wandered along the shore and Dehan nestled comfortably under my arm, with both of hers around my waist, and we muttered quietly to each other as we went.

“You’d seriously consider retiring to a place like this?”

We paused, looking out at the black bulk of Tuxis Island silhouetted against the pale glow of the moon.

“Why not? It’s halfway between Boston and New York, it’s one of the safest communities in the country, it’s pretty, peaceful.” I kissed the top of her head. “Don’t you ever get tired of the in-yer-face hostility, and the vast, overpopulated dirtiness?”

She nodded, then looked up at me. “Be a hell of a change, huh? What does a Bronx girl, born and bred, do in Utopia?”

I gave her a squeeze. “I don’t plan to retire for a while yet, kiddo. But when the time comes, I can think of worse places.”

“Could we buy a boat?”

“Why not?”

“And will you promise me you’ll never join the country club or the yachting club?”

“You have my solemn oath.”

The delicate smell of cooking reached us through the dusk. A car parked and people climbed out, chatting, laughing. The lazy echoes of the car doors, and the voices, dispersed like chimney smoke on the evening air. We turned and started strolling back.

“I guess,” she said, “that men like Grant Shaw, and women like Penelope, are drawn to the big cities, where there are richer pickings.”

“This is your way of telling me we are about to talk shop?”

“You know it is.”

“Hit me.”

“Well, set me right if I am way off, Sensei, but it seems to me pretty obvious we’re looking at Grant Shaw as our prime suspect.”

I had my right arm around her shoulders. She released her right arm from my waist and took hold of my dangling fingers, then thrust her left hand in my back pocket. We walked like that for a moment, pushing through the sand as she watched her feet.

“It’s a pretty classic situation,” she said at last. “A tough guy hooks up with a prostitute, they have some kind of chemistry and he starts to form a dependency. He wants to own her, have her exclusively for himself. He thinks he’s in love, but really he just has a violent, emotional addiction. So he tells her he wants to marry her. She says no and so he either kills her, or the guy she’s with. It’s one of the reasons hookers have pimps.”

I grunted and sucked my teeth. She kept on going.

“In this case, our possessive John happens to be a billionaire with a