Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [readnow TXT] 📗

through the door, Maria was on the desk. She jerked her head at me.

“Hey, handsome.”

“Hello, beautiful.”

She glanced up and down. The place was almost empty. She said, “C’mere.”

I stepped over. She leaned forward on the desk and half-whispered, “I been meanin’ to ask you since you got back, how’d it go?”

I frowned. “How did what go, Maria?”

She grinned. “How’d it go in Goa? You know… ‘go in Goa?’” She waggled her eyebrows.

I sighed. “Really?”

“C’mon! You can tell me! Did you…? You know!” She leered.

“Mind your own business! And also no, of course not!” I pointed at her. “And don’t you start spreading gossip or I will have your hide!”

She gave me a look that could only be described as compassionate. “You struck out. What happened?” She glanced around again, then leaned forward and whispered again, “Well you’re doing something wrong, John! Because that girl likes you! And I do mean like!”

I pointed at her and made a warning face. She sighed and I went into the detectives’ room, pretending I was not aware of all the surreptitious glances I was receiving. I dropped Dehan’s sandwich on the desk and lowered myself into my chair. She stared at me, eyes slightly narrowed, as I unwrapped my sandwich.

“Get this. The Toyota—just hazard a guess who it’s registered to…”

I shrugged and bit into the sandwich. As I chewed, I spoke with my mouth full. “I always assumed it was Angela’s.”

The smile faded from her face. “Son of a bitch! How could you assume that?”

I shrugged again and swallowed. “It didn’t make much sense that they were arriving at that time. It made more sense that they were leaving. I figured maybe they went there from Lynda’s. So the odds were good that they were borrowing her car to go home.”

She nodded a few times, then smiled and shook her head. “You’re right.”

“Still doesn’t get us very far.”

“But it will give us a little more leverage when we talk to her this afternoon.”

“That it will.”

She grabbed her sandwich and started to unwrap it. She took a big bite and leaned back in her chair to chew. We both sat like that, chewing and staring at each other. After a moment, Mo, at the desk across the aisle from ours, looked over.

“Do you know how weird that is? It’s… unsettling!”

Dehan grinned at me and I chuckled. She looked over at Mo, who had turned back to whatever it was he was doing. “It’s a Zen technique. It helps to focus the mind, right, Stone?”

I nodded. “Mm-hm…”

“It’s from the Sacha Naso school of meditation. You should try it with Gus.”

He stared at her with his mouth slightly open for a moment, then sighed and returned to his work.

I stuffed the last piece of sandwich in my mouth, screwed up the paper, and threw it in my trash can. “I want to talk to Sue again. I want to know what goes on between her and the Irizarrys. She made some quip about Luis holding Sebastian back, remember? And Ed has an obvious problem with Luis. We need to know what goes on there. After that, I want to talk to Angela, if she’s up to seeing us. She lied about why the boys were there, and failed to mention she lent them her car. I want to know why.”

Dehan looked at her watch. “If she took a pill, she’s probably still out for the count.”

“OK, let’s go talk to Sue again. And if Peggy the Dragon is there, you have my permission to perform a rugby tackle on her.”

She stood and smiled. “That will be my pleasure, Sensei.”

Mo looked at me like I was a six-month old lettuce he’d just found in his fridge. “Sensei…?”

I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled with real humanity and compassion. “If you feel lost, you too can come to me, Mo, and I will show you the way of the inner axolotl, the path of Sacha Naso.”

“Take a hike, Stone!”

“Be at peace, Mo.” I patted his shoulder and left.

In the car, as I climbed in, I said, “Sacha Naso?”

She suppressed a smile, backed out of the lot, and pulled away. Then, with the worst kind of Hollywood Chinese accent, she said, “Detective Mo, he such an asshole!”

* * *

At three PM, we stood on the steps outside Sue Mackenzie’s house, ringing her bell again. She eventually came to the door after about five minutes, looking groggy. Her clothes were rumpled and slightly askew, like she’d been sleeping dressed. She saw who we were and opened the iron gate to us without saying anything, then led the way indoors. I saw there was a blanket on the sofa. She moved toward it, then stopped and ran her fingers through her hair.

“You want tea, coffee?”

I was about to say we didn’t, but Dehan said, “You want me to make it?”

Sue nodded. “Yeah, tea.” She pointed vaguely. “It’s in the cupboard.”

Dehan went to the kitchen and we sat. Sue curled up in the corner of the sofa and pulled the blanket up around her.

“You feel up to talking, Sue?”

She nodded.

I thought for a moment, then asked, “What’s the deal with you and Ed?”

She didn’t answer for a bit, then said, “What do you mean, ‘the deal?’”

“When we spoke to you this morning, you said Luis was a bad influence on Sebastian. When we spoke to Ed and Mary Irizarry, Ed said that Sebastian was a bad influence on Luis.” I spread my hands. “You were all real close. Then when they moved to Morris Park, you lost touch. Mary speaks kindly of you. He doesn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you two have some kind of issue.”

She spent a while