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

“See this badge? This is all the ID that you need to see. Now we can do this in Mr. Shaw’s office, or we can do it at an interrogation room at the 43rd Precinct. It’s all the same to me. But as Mr. Shaw has a plane to catch, I suggest you tell him we’re here and we would like to talk to him. Now.”

He sized me up, and then he sized Dehan up, and he thought about kicking us out. I guess he decided it wasn’t such a good idea, because he picked up the phone and after a moment said, “Sir, the cops are here early. They want to see you now.” He waited a moment and said, “Yes, sir.”

He hung up and pressed a button on his desk, then jerked his head at a featureless, white door in the wall to my right. “Through there. At the end of the corridor. His secretary will let you in.”

The door was steel and probably blast proof. I pulled it open and followed Dehan down a short passage to an antechamber with an oak desk in front of an oak door. Behind the desk was another Aryan clone with platinum hair you could sand rocks with. He looked at our badges without interest and said, “You’re early.”

“We covered that.”

He curled a lip that said it was cops like us that were sending the country to the dogs and pressed a button on his desk. The oak door behind him buzzed and he jerked his head at it. “You can go in.”

Clearly the big thing here was to have a button on your desk and jerk your head at the doors. Dehan sighed loudly and pushed through. The office was big, old world and luxurious, with oak paneled walls, a burgundy Wilton carpet, chesterfields and an open fireplace that now stood cold. On the walls I saw two drawings by Matisse and a painting by Picasso. Grant Shaw was standing behind his desk putting things into an attaché case. He didn’t look up as we came in. He just spoke loudly.

“We’re on the clock, gentlemen. Make it snappy. We have ten minutes, then I am out of here. What can I do for you?”

I didn’t answer him. We crossed the floor to his desk and got there as he was snapping his attaché case closed. Then he looked up and saw Dehan. The twitch of his eyebrows said he was surprised. I showed him my badge.

“This is the fourth time I’ve shown this badge since I stepped into your building. You’re on the clock, Mr. Shaw, we are not. We are on a homicide investigation. I am Detective Stone, this is my partner Detective Dehan, NYPD, and we need to ask you some questions. Is that a problem?”

He listened to me carefully, with no expression on his face. When I had finished, he said, “No problem at all. But I’d appreciate it if you make it quick.”

“We haven’t got time to waste either, Mr. Shaw. Can you tell us about your relationship with Penelope Peach?”

He laid his case down on the desk and stared at it for a moment. I moved around and sat in one of the two leather armchairs he had facing his desk. Dehan sat in the other and after a moment Grant Shaw sat in his own big, black leather chair on the far side.

“Penny, what has she been up to?”

“Please don’t answer my questions with questions of your own, Mr. Shaw, especially if you are in a hurry. We’ve all been around the block a few times, let’s not waste time. Tell me about your relationship with her.”

He shrugged. “What’s to tell? I met her at some party, I think. She was a party girl. It’s what she does for a living; at least it was back then. I’m going back about five years. We hit it off. She looked good, she was fun, so we went out for a while.”

Dehan looked down at her hands, puffed out her cheeks and blew.

“We have to do this, huh? We know. You know that we know. We know that you know that we know, but we still have to go through the bullshit.” She looked up at his face. “We’re not going to go away just because you bullshit us a bit, Mr. Shaw. Exactly the opposite is true. The more you bullshit us, the more we are going to keep coming at you, because here’s the thing, bullshit and guilt smell just the same.”

He went very still. “Guilt? Guilt of what?”

She gave an elaborate shrug and pulled the corners of her mouth down. “I don’t know. You’re the one bullshitting, Mr. Shaw. What are you trying to hide?”

I shook my head. “See how much time we’re wasting? And you in a hurry. How about we start again, you cut the bullshit, and maybe we won’t even have to take you in. So, tell us about your relationship with Penelope Peach.”

He sighed deeply and flopped back in his chair. “There really is very little to tell. I haven’t seen her for a few years, but back then, four or five years ago, she…” He shrugged. “She made her living as a kept woman. That was what she did. And she was great. I really liked her. She already had an apartment that some joker was providing paying for, and she had a few other friends, that was what she called them, and me. So we started seeing quite a lot of each other, to the point where she actually phased out one or two of her other guys.”

Dehan asked him, “So what are you saying? That you and she were getting serious?”

He thought about it, sat forward, put his hands flat on the attaché case and drummed a tattoo with his fingers.

“Yuh. Obviously