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

I sipped my wine. “No, Dehan, I never did.”

“He pulled a mussel.”

It made her laugh and that made me laugh. After that, we ate in silence for a while, enjoying the food and the excellent, ice cold wine. When we had finished, she sat back in her chair, wiped her lips with her napkin and wagged a finger at me.

“You know what this reminds me of?”

“Nope.”

“Peter Smith, Revere Avenue, two arms found in his lock up.[1]”

I nodded slowly, thinking back to the second case we had worked together. “Jealousy…” I said absently.

“Different kind of jealousy, or maybe not. Somebody has something you haven’t got.”

“The dismembered body parts left in a place where they are sure to be found… There are parallels, that is true.” I frowned. “As I recall…”

The wine waiter appeared by my side and poured me a drop of the red wine to taste, then, respectful of the new age of equality, he poured Dehan a drop too. We both sniffed and tasted and he poured. Meanwhile the meat arrived, and we fell to with the kind of appetite you get from being by the sea. The meat was superb and so was the wine, and we got sidetracked into talking about all sorts of things that had nothing to do with Jack Connors’ head, or the box it was in. But I didn’t forget Dehan’s observation, and it played on my mind all that night and into the next day.

We rounded off the meal with black coffee and Bushmills, and then a little more Bushmills, and finally left the dining room as they were switching off the lights and putting the chairs on the tables. By that time, Dehan was giggling at things that really were not funny, and I was smiling because I thought I was the luckiest man in the world.

I was.

* * *

The next morning, a cold shower followed by eggs, bacon, fried mushrooms and lots of black coffee dispelled a small hangover, and by eight o’clock we were on our way back to New York, with Dehan looking up Shaw Line Defense on her phone. As we turned onto the I-95 and started to accelerate west, she sighed and shook her head.

“If we just turn up, they are going to stonewall us. I think we’ll save time calling and making an appointment.”

She dialed and put the phone to her ear. After a moment, she said, “Morning! This is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD. I would like to make an appointment to see Mr. Grant Shaw… No, I don’t want to tell you what it’s about. That is something I will discuss with Mr. Shaw, when I see him. And believe me, I don’t think he would appreciate my telling you either.”

She went quiet, looked at me, sighed quietly and raised her eyebrows. Then she listened attentively, sighed noisily and said, “Ten-thirty, we’ll be there, and pal? If we need more than thirty minutes, he’ll have to delay his damned flight. We’re from the New York Police Department, we’re not coming to measure him for a suit.” She hung up. “Dickwad.”

“I guess he knows who we are now.”

“He can grant us—grant, note!—he can grant us thirty minutes at ten thirty and then he has a flight to catch.”

“I gather you spoke to his secretary.”

“Yeah. And I get the feeling the secretary is going to be pretty typical of the company.”

I nodded. “I guess it goes with the territory. Arrogance.”

At ten fifteen we pulled into 5th Avenue off West 23rd and parked just past the bus stop. I got out and looked up at the building. It was one of those attractive, gray stone, early 20th century buildings, with discreet moldings on the outside, and big, white, sash windows. Penelope had been right, it didn’t look like much, but to those in the know, to run that business in that location meant something. Dehan came and stood beside me.

“We’re early.”

I offered her a small shrug and we went in. The lobby was small and mainly white. There was a metal detector and beside it a young, athletic security guard all in blue. He inspected our badges and called up to the top floor. They must have told him it was OK because he let us through and pointed us at the elevator.

The elevator was all shining steel and mirrors that concealed cameras and microphones. The only indication you had that it was moving at all was the changing number on the digital display, which went from one to seven in fifteen seconds, then stopped and the doors slid silently open.

Reception was an almost featureless room, fifteen feet by twelve, without windows. Comfortable chairs on either side of the elevator faced a white desk that was made of a material that was hard to identify, but looked bulletproof. On the desk there was a logo, and the same logo appeared on the wall behind the desk. It was a circle bisected by a diagonal red line. The upper section was blue and the lower section was white. I figured that was the Shaw line.

The receptionist was an expressionless blond guy who seemed to be constructed of pale granite. His hair was very short and almost white, and his eyes were a shade of blue you could use to halt global warming.

We showed him our badges and I said, “We’re here to see Mr. Shaw.”

“You’re early.”

“Yeah, we’re early.”

He took an electronic pad, like a tablet, and put it in front of us. “Can I have your thumbprints, please, then look at the laser for an iris scan.”

Something about him, his boss and his company made me feel irrationally uncooperative. I gently moved the tablet to one side and held my badge a few inches in front of his face.