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

back at the hotel. The most convincing lies are the ones that are nine-tenths truth. It wasn’t Stephen she was in love with, it was Jack. Like you said, if she was falling for Stephen, why did it take them almost five years to get engaged and married? The answer is, she was still carrying a torch for the man she’d loved and murdered.”

I negotiated Park Avenue and turned right onto East 23rd, then began to cruise toward the river. Dehan was saying, “She fell in love with him and misread his signals. Shaw said it himself: he was the one willing to provide her with an apartment on Riverside Drive. So he got the prize. Penelope read that as a sign that he wanted to give her a home, that he was falling in love with her. She built up this whole fantasy in her head about how he felt the same way for her as she felt for him, and went so far as to break up with her billionaire boyfriend to be with him. Then reality comes crashing in and Jack tells her to forget it. He only wants her for sex. He’s staying with his wife.”

She stared at me while I chewed my lip. We came to the river and I turned left and north and accelerated toward the Bronx. Dehan went on.

“So she kills him. And she thought she’d got away with it. Almost five years roll by and the case seems to be forgotten. She’s moving on, getting married, making a new life as Mrs. Pillar of the Community. Only next thing we show up, digging up the past. So what does she do? She’s subtle. She agrees to talk to us, but by careful phrasing she puts Shaw in the frame. He’s the perfect fall guy. Killing people is his trade.”

“Killing is his trade.” I repeated her words. “You don’t like him for it anymore?”

“When he said he wasn’t jealous, I believed him. And he was definitely shocked when he realized why we were there. Plus, Stone, she lied to us! On two scores: she told us she was going to marry Stephen, not Jack, and, confusingly, she told us she didn’t tell Shaw who she was planning to marry…”

“But implied that he stalked her with the white van…”

“So that we would conclude that he had had Jack killed.”

I scratched my chin. It rasped. “We need to place her at the scene of the murder.”

“We don’t know where the scene of the murder was.”

“That is exactly right. We also need to connect her with the weapon.”

“And we don’t know what the weapon was.”

I nodded. “We are not even sure she had a motive. All we really know is that her story and Shaw’s don’t quite jibe.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “She’s not getting to you, is she?”

I smiled. “Do I see your lovely brown eyes turning green, Carmen?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just guys can be really stupid when it comes to women like Penelope Peach.”

I chuckled. “Girls can be just as blind when it comes to men like Grant Shaw. I think we’ve both been around the block often enough to be on our guard.”

She frowned. “You still think he’s a possible suspect?”

“I’m not sure yet, Dehan. I agree with you that Shaw is intelligent and subtle. When you say he freaked out, what I saw was a man in total control of his reactions. The conversation had reached a point where he no longer wanted to talk to us. So he shut down. His reaction could mean almost anything we wanted it to mean.”

After a moment she grinned. “You thought I liked Grant Shaw?”

“Didn’t you?”

“I thought he was a jerk.”

“But an attractive jerk.”

“He’s got a kind of animal magnetism, but he’s not my type, Sensei. You should know that.”

“I do. We’re straying a little off task here, Dehan…”

“I can’t believe you were jealous…”

“I wasn’t jealous. I just didn’t think his reaction was as telling as you did.”

“The great Sensei, jealous…”

I sighed, rolled my eyes and settled to driving while she grinned at me from behind her aviators.

As we were pulling into the parking lot outside the station, my phone pinged to let me know I had an email. I read it as we crossed the road and made our way into the detectives room. It was from Helena. I dropped into my chair and read it to Dehan.

“‘Dear Detective Stone, blah blah… attached is a list of students whom I remember as having been in my class at the time of Jack’s death. I cannot guarantee that it is complete. However, as far as I recall, these are the students I had at the time…’”

I printed two copies and handed one to Dehan, then dropped into my chair, staring at the page without seeing it. I started to say, “We may be losing sight…”

But Dehan interrupted me. “We have twelve names here. Two are girls.” She looked up at me. “This feels like a male crime to me, but I agree with you that we should be open to the possibility that it was a woman. The rest are all guys…”

She sat, focused on the page, going through the names one by one. I wasn’t thinking about the list, or the names; I was pretty sure none of them would mean much to me. Instead I was thinking about what had brought all those names together, on that sheet of paper.

Then Dehan looked up at me. “Dos Santos.”

“Two saints?”

“Of the saints, it’s Portuguese, not Spanish. Lenny dos Santos. I know that name.”

“It does ring a bell. He’s on the list?”

“Uh-huh… Fifty bucks says he’s got a rap sheet.”

While she checked, I looked through the list: Saul Adebayo, Julio Borregos, Zee Brown, Julian