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

out to sea and was slowly being carried away by the backwash from the waves. Mom was sitting on the sand, looking at her phone and the kid was now chasing the dog instead of the ball.

I said, “And then her first book was accepted for publication.”

“Yeah, and slowly everything began to change. I could sense it in the way she looked at me, they way she touched me… Small changes in frequency and intensity…” He frowned at me with anxiety in his eyes. “Do you know what I mean? You can just tell that the smiles are less frequent, she spends less time with you because other things are becoming more important, she discusses her work with other people more often and more in depth than she does with you.” He shrugged and looked down at the sand again. “You can see, you can read the signs, you know it is inevitable…”

Dehan said, “So, what? It was a year, eighteen months?”

“About eighteen months, and she told me she had made arrangements to spend more time in New York. Lots of excuses: her publisher was there, like that made any difference, she had switched to a New York agent her husband had found for her, she wanted to help underprivileged victims in the Bronx… A million and one apparently legitimate reasons, but at the root of it all was that her feelings for me were changing. Being with me was no longer important.”

Dehan seemed to speak to his long, black sneakers. “This may be a painful question to answer, Alornerk, but it could be very important. Would you say that Helena and Jack were moving toward some kind of reconciliation? Were they growing closer again?”

He nodded for a while. “I don’t know if it was a reconciliation exactly. They had a weird, fucked up kind of co-dependent relationship. She was fucking me, he was fucking some other woman, but they needed each other. Is that love? I don’t know.”

We were silent for a moment, and as I drew breath to ask a question, he started speaking again. “She moved back to New York to be closer to him, to start living together again as husband and wife. The publication of her books was instrumental in that happening, and yet, on the day of the publication of her second novel, she was fucking me…”

I felt Dehan go very still. I looked out to sea. The ball was a tiny dot out on the ocean. I turned to look at him.

“Really?”

He nodded.

I said, “That isn’t what you testified at the time.”

“I realized that as I said it.”

Dehan asked. “So where were your European friends while you were making the beast with two backs?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “There never were any European friends.”

I gave a small laugh. “I’m sure you are aware we never really believed there were.” He gave a small shrug and Dehan gave a small frown to go with it. I ignored them both. “What you seem to be telling us, Alornerk, is that from about twelve midday to three or four o’clock, rather than having lunch at some unspecified restaurant with friends, you and Helena were having sexual intercourse.”

I glanced at Dehan, who ignored me. Alornerk nodded. “She will be mad at me for telling you, but what have I got to lose now?”

“We’ll come to that in a moment. First of all, I need you to tell me where this happened.”

Dehan had her notebook out and was taking notes. Alornerk said, “In her house, in the guest room, because she didn’t want to desecrate the sanctity of the matrimonial room. I should have…”

He stopped. I said, “What? What should you have done?”

“I should have walked out on her and gone back to Boston. Instead I believed that I could persuade her to leave that shallow, materialistic egomaniac.”

I sighed. “Alornerk, what you are telling us is that the only alibi you have for the time of Jack’s abduction and murder is Helena, with whom you were very much in love, and having an affair at the time of his death.”

“I guess that is what I am telling you, yeah.”

“Did you kill Jack Connors, Alornerk?”

“No. I was with Helena. We hadn’t seen each other for some time. When we were alone together, she tried to resist, but the attraction was always too strong. He went to work in the morning. We finished breakfast, then went for a walk and talked things over. Next thing, we fell into bed and stayed there all morning. Eventually, after lunch, around three or four I suppose, she went off to her damned classes, and a couple of hours later, all hell broke loose.”

Dehan studied his face for a moment.

“We will have to confront Helena with this, Alornerk, you realize that.”

He shrugged. “I really don’t give a damn anymore. Do your worst. She didn’t kill him, and neither did I.”

TEN

I spent a moment thinking through the complexities of arresting him in Massachusetts as a New York cop and came to the conclusion it wasn’t worth it, at least not yet. Instead I told him:

“I’m going to need you to come to New York to amend your statement. Are you willing to do that?”

“Are you going to arrest me for obstruction of justice or something?”

“I think we’d rather have you cooperate.”

“You going to take me in now?”

“No. I need you to come of your own free will. But if you don’t, we’ll have to go down the whole extradition route and probably call in the U.S. Marshals, and you really don’t want to go down that path, Alornerk. Right now you’re probably going to get a smack on the wrist. But mess this up any further and then you’ll find yourself in a real mess. I’ll expect you at