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

against the far wall set around a coffee table. On the coffee table there was a coffee pot and a single cup. There was also an open magazine.

On the sofa, Ebba was sitting staring at us. She looked astonished, and strangely immobile. There was a neat, black hole in the middle of her forehead, and the wall behind her head was a mess of gore and blood that had begun to dry.

I pulled my cell from my pocket. I said to Dehan, “Tell the guys this is now a crime scene. Have Hart seal the place off and see what they’ve got upstairs. I’ll call this in.”

She left the kitchen, I made the call and had a look around. There was nothing. Nothing I could latch onto and work from. She had been sitting having coffee and reading a magazine. Somebody had come into the kitchen and shot her. Somebody who was already in the house, otherwise she would have had to get up to answer the door.

I pulled latex gloves from my pocket and put them on, then made my way back through the drawing room, past the front door where Hart was putting up the yellow tape, and up the stairs to the bedrooms and the morning room where she had received us on the first day. Dehan was there looking around. As I came in, she said, “The ashes in the fire are still warm, but not hot. The cushions on one of the chairs have been disturbed, and also on the sofa. There is a glass of sherry on the occasional table beside the chair, but no other glasses anywhere else in the room. It looks like she was alone in here.”

“Doesn’t make much sense. She’s sitting having a glass of sherry in front of the fire on her own. Suddenly gets up, goes down to the kitchen and shoots Ebba in the head with a 9mm pistol. Then leaves.”

“I’ve had a look for her purse or any form of ID. I can’t find any. I told Hart and his partner to stay on the door. I told the other guys they could go.”

“OK.” I nodded. “Ebba is downstairs in the kitchen. She’s sitting drinking coffee and reading her magazine. So her killer is already in the house. There is no sign of struggle up here or in the drawing room downstairs, in the dining room…”

“Or in the bedrooms.”

“There is no blood immediately apparent. What would make Helena…”

Hart stepped into the room. “Detectives, there is a neighbor downstairs who wants to talk to you. She says she saw Mrs. Magnusson leave with a man.”

Dehan skipped down the stairs and I followed more carefully, trying to ignore the blunt axe wedged in my skull and the waves of nausea that occasionally washed over me.

The woman at the door was tall, dressed in jeans and a Columbia sweatshirt. She was in her early thirties and had wide hips and narrow ankles, and her hair was piled up on her head like she thought she wasn’t tall enough. Dehan approached her.

“Hi, I’m Detective Dehan, this is my partner, Detective Stone. You have some information for us about Helena Magnusson?”

She had the trick of talking as though she was asking questions. “Well, I’m guessing you’re looking for her? She went out this morning? I was putting the kids in the car to take them to school? So that would be like, seven thirty? She was with a man and they were getting into her car and I waved over to her. Cause you know? I don’t often see her early like that? So I said, like, ‘Hey, you’re up early!’ and she says, like, ‘Yeah, I’m going away for a bit.’ Like, you know, she was going away for a long time? Which I thought was strange ’cause she had no luggage, you know? So, you know, I don’t know, like, when she’s coming back.”

I said, “Can you describe the man?”

She cocked a hip and sighed, staring up at the sky. “That’s kinda hard because he was like one of those like nondescript guys? Kind of average height, average build, and he, like, got straight in the car? So I didn’t really get a chance to look at him?”

Dehan asked, “Did she say where she was going?”

In the distance, we heard the wail of police sirens approaching. The woman glanced away up the street, then looked back at Dehan. “She said she was going back home. She said, one of those kinda Scandinavian countries: Switzerland? That’s Scandinavia, right? Or Norway?”

I said, “Denmark?”

She nodded. “Yeah, Denmark. It was Denmark. That’s right. She was going back home to Denmark.”

I pulled my cell from my pocket. “OK, Sergeant Hart here will take your statement. Thanks, you’ve been very helpful.” I stepped out onto the stoop as two patrol cars, the crime scene van and the ME’s car came into the street and crowded around my Jag outside the door with their lights flashing.

Dehan was just behind me on her phone. She said, “I’m looking at morning departures, New York-Denmark. We have JFK Copenhagen, Norwegian Air, departed at eleven twenty this morning. Call, I’m still looking.”

“That’s the one,” I called. It rang a couple of times. Frank climbed the steps and Dehan took him inside. On the sidewalk, the CS team were climbing into their suits.

Then a man’s voice said, “Norwegian, how can I help you?”

“This is Detective John Stone of the NYPD. I need your manifest for flight 7014 out of JFK for Copenhagen at eleven twenty this morning.”

“Sure, of course I can do that. I will need your police email.” I gave it to him and heard the rattle of keys. “Is there any particular passenger you are looking for?”

“Yeah. Helena Magnusson.”

He rattled a little longer. “I have sent you the manifest, Detective Stone,