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

She was an actress, and I assumed it was a part in a play or something. I was used to her getting overexcited; she had been going off the rails a bit ever since our parents died. She was always too happy, too excited, too positive. As though she was trying to convince herself, make herself believe that life wasn’t really the black nightmare it had become, that she hadn’t really been robbed of every shred of love she had ever been given.”

“What happened?”

She turned back to face me. “She said she’d met some billionaire, Hugh Duffy. Old money.” She gave an ironic smile. “What you call old money over here. They were in love, and he had asked her to marry him. I was thrilled for her, obviously. But next thing, she phoned me and she was talking crazy. She seemed hyper, hysterical—she was going to New York because she had to square things with Steve.”

“Her ex-boyfriend, the loser from the Bronx.”

She nodded. “She was always fascinated by him.” She gave me a look that was hard to interpret. “This strange attraction bastards have for some women. I told her not to be stupid. She had struck it lucky. Not only did she really seem to love this Hugh character, but he was loaded and seemed to be a genuinely nice man. But she insisted she knew what she was doing, and she came to New York.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and flopped into the chair opposite me.

“It was like that bloody storm all over again. One minute, everything was light and sunshine, and the next, all hell had broken loose. She was on the phone to me, hysterical, sobbing her poor little eyes out. She had done something terrible; there were men hunting for her who wanted to kill her…”

“What had she done that was so terrible?”

She studied my face a long time. I studied hers back. It was expressionless, hard, calculating.

“She had stolen something.”

“From Duffy.”

She didn’t answer. “She had taken something that she should not have taken, and now there were men after her, who were prepared to kill her in order to get it back.”

“What had she stolen?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“If you want my help, sister…”

“I can’t tell you!” She snapped it and stared at me, hard. “I cannot tell you! Don’t ask! You don’t need to know. The point is, she took it, and these men are after her, and they will kill her, not just to get it back, but to make an example of her.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you talking about Duffy, or are you talking about dos Santos?”

She put her glass down and buried her face in her hands. “Dos Santos is a very, very dangerous man, John. He is pure evil.” She looked up at me. “You think you are hard and ruthless, but this man has no soul. He will stop at nothing. There is no point beyond which he will not go.”

“So what did you do?”

“What could I do? I came to New York. Fortunately, I had good friends here. I was involved in the antiques trade in London, so it wasn’t hard for me to find work here. I took Tammy in, made her safe. I met Ulrich, my husband, and we have had an almost normal life until now.”

“Tammy lives with you?”

“No. And please don’t ask me where she is. I can’t and I won’t tell you.”

“How do you expect me to help you if you don’t tell me what she stole or where she is?”

She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

“Wrong. Don’t go to pieces on me, Emma. For once you made the right choice—stay with it.”

She stood. “I need to go home. If Ulrich wakes up…”

I stood and moved toward her. I grabbed her by the arms and dragged her close, pressing her hard against me. “Stay! You can’t leave it like this! You know I will come after you!”

“John, please…!” Her face was barely an inch from mine. Her lips were tender and pink, and her eyes, deep blue, were searching mine for something. I don’t know if she found it, but she placed a hand gently on my chest and whispered. “This has been hard for me. I have never told anybody what I have told you tonight. Give me time. I will come back, I promise, and then…”

I growled, “And then what?”

“Then, I promise, I will share everything with you. Call me a taxi, John, please…”

Five minutes later, I walked her to the cab. Just before she got in, she planted a real, tender kiss on my cheek. And then she was gone. All there was was a pair of red taillights fading into the night.

Nineteen

I went inside and phoned Dehan.

“Do you know what time it is, Stone?”

“One twenty. Were you sleeping?”

“No, I was hanging on the phone, waiting for you to call.”

She didn’t sound sleepy. “You want a drink?”

“Now?”

“I need to tell you what happened.”

“And it can’t wait till the morning?”

I thought about it. “I’m confused.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Sensei is confused. Must be pretty complex.”

“It’s pretty complex, and I am having trouble telling the lies from the truth.”

“Okay.”

“Shall I come over?”

I heard her sigh, then the sound of a computer being switched off. “No, I’ll come to you.”

I dropped a couple of rocks of ice in my whiskey and went and sat on my stoop. Somewhere I could hear the repetitive sawing, croaking of frogs. The air was close and humid, and I took one of the rocks from my drink and rubbed it around the back of my neck, running through in my mind everything that Emma had told me, examining each point, trying