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

went a bit crazy around that time.” She looked at me and shrugged. “She was smart, and sometimes smart people go crazy, you know? She started hanging around with this communist crowd. I don’t know about politics.” She waved her hand again, dismissing politics. “But I know that some people who say they are communists…” She waggled her head, waggled her hips, and started laughing. “Really, it’s not politics what they are doing! They are making parties, taking drugs…”

I smiled. “Cuchi cuchi.”

She laughed and pointed at me. “That’s what they are doing!” She sighed, stopped laughing, and dropped her hands onto her lap. “My poor Rosario, she wanted to live a little. She thought she had met people who were smart like her, you know? But they weren’t like her. They were not good people.” She gestured at Dehan. “Even your mom, God rest her! You know your mom was open-minded and tolerant, but even she stopped seeing her, because she said to me, ‘Pauli, your sister’s friends are a bit crazy!’ She was worried about her.”

I scratched my chin. “What exactly was worrying her, Pauli?” I shrugged and gave her a meaningful look. “Or who?”

She nodded a lot and pointed at me. She said to Dehan, “El no es tonto! El sabe!” Which I understood as, ‘He’s not stupid, he knows.’ Dehan gave a noncommittal shrug, but before she could say anything, Pauli was talking again.

“There was one guy. She was crazy about him. And she told me he was crazy about her, too.” She started waving her hands around in the air. “Oh! He is wonderful! He is so handsome! He is so smart! He is good, and passionate, and committed to his cause, and one day, he is going to be president!”

Dehan frowned. “President?”

“That’s what she said. You know what I told her? I told her, ‘Wake up! Wake up, Rosi! He just wants to get you in bed!’ ‘No! No! No! We gonna get married! He’s in love with me! He’s gonna leave his wife! He don’t love her anymore!’”

Dehan was nodding. “This guy was married? So, were he and Rosario sleeping together?”

“She told me no! An’ I believe her. She always told me everything, and I asked her, ‘Rosi! You been sleeping with a married man? Tell me!’” She raised her hands again and made a horrified face, mimicking her sister, “‘Nonononooo! Pauli! I never do that! I told him, you want this body?’” She made a coquettish move that made me smile. “‘You put a ring on it, boy!’”

She laughed out loud and we laughed with her. I asked her, “Can you remember his name?”

She puffed out her cheeks and stared at the ceiling, blowing. “It was fourteen, fifteen years ago, but there was only five of them in that group. There was Rosario, Mateo…” She nodded. “He was a nice man. I liked him. He was married to that Irish girl, or Scottish…” She made a kind of beckoning sign at Dehan with her fingers, “You know her. What was her name? Susanna! They were nice people. I don’t know why they hang out with that gang.”

I raised an eyebrow. “They were half of that gang. The other half were Mary and…”

She cut me short, pointing at me. “Maria and Eduardo! I remember now. No, you are right! You are right!” She turned to Dehan again. “I told you, no es tonto!” She turned back to me. “Eduardo! He was like the devil. He was a bad influence on people. Everybody follows him and do what he tells them. He was a big success, made lots of money, telling everybody he is a community leader, he is gonna help the Puerto Ricans and the Latinos... I think he was selling his soul to the devil!”

“And this was the man she thought was going to marry her?”

“Yes, Eduardo Irizarry.”

I scratched my head and Dehan voiced the question I was about to ask. “So when she was raped and strangled, why didn’t the cops investigate Irizarry?”

She made a huge shrug, “Don’t ask me! How should I know?”

“Did you tell them about him?”

“Of course! Me and your mom, we told the detective, ‘This is the man who done it, for sure! For sure! Because she didn’t want to go to bed with him!’ But nothing happened.” She looked embarrassed and put her head on one side. It was a kind of apologetic gesture. “It was different back then. There was a lot of corruption in the cops. People said Eduardo had friends in the precinct.” She hesitated. “Look, I show you something.”

She got up and went to the sideboard. She opened the cupboard and, crouching down, she pulled out a photo album, which she brought back to her chair. She leafed through it until she came to a particular page. There she stopped and peeled back the cellophane to extract one particular photo. She handed it to Dehan.

“This was one of the last parties they had. It was a barbeque at Eduardo’s house. She was excited because there was a police detective there as a guest. She was saying that Eduardo was real well connected. I told her, ‘Rosi, that is not a good connection. He is a defense counsel, what’s he doing making a barbeque with detectives?’ Anyhow, I knew this detective, we all did. He was not a good man…”

Dehan stared at me and handed me the picture. They were all about fifteen years younger. There was Sue Mackenzie with a man I guessed was Matt. Mary Irizarry was standing next to a pretty Latino girl whom I assumed was Rosario. Next to her, with his big arm around her, was Ed, holding a beer, and next to him was a big, broad-shouldered hulk of a man in shorts and a floral shirt. Pauli knew him, Dehan knew him, and I knew