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

and I can confirm that Helena Magnusson was booked on that flight, first class.”

“Thanks.”

I hung up. Dehan was on the doorstep looking at me. “What?”

“She was on the eleven twenty.” My phone pinged. “That will be the flight manifest.”

“Mother…! What a stupid, pointless…”

“Yeah…”

“We’ll have to start extradition proceedings. Who was the guy? Alornerk? I guess he’ll be on the manifest too.”

I shook my head. “He’s not exactly nondescript or average height.”

“She must be crazy. She let you go because she wanted redemption. Then she just goes right ahead, kills Ebba and flees the country? What’s the sense in that?”

I stared at her for a long moment, nodded and looked down the street to see the inspector’s car turning in from Morningside Avenue. He pulled up behind my Jag, climbed out and stood staring up at me for a moment. Then he sighed and climbed the stoop to stand in front of me.

“I am not a man inclined to swearing, John, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Helena Magnusson has gone AWOL, sir. It looks as though she killed her maidservant before she left with a man. She was booked on the eleven twenty Norwegian Air flight to Copenhagen.”

“Good Lord! What are you telling me?”

Dehan answered for me. “We were in the hospital, sir.”

“Where you belong,” he said to me, with some severity.

“Stone was, probably still is, suffering from partial amnesia. But he began to remember bits and it came to him that the person who abducted him was Helena Magnusson…”

“Are you sure, John?”

“He was drugged, sir, and his vision was blurry, but it looked like her, and…” She gestured at the house. “It is looking very much like she has murdered her maid and fled the country.”

“But… why?”

I got in before Dehan. “Presumably because she feared that with this second investigation it would be discovered that she murdered her husband. It is the behavior of a very emotionally unstable person.”

“So, she murdered her own husband, decapitated him and mailed herself his head? Is that what you are telling me?”

Dehan shrugged. “It sounds crazy, sir, but then I guess decapitating people is pretty crazy in itself, right? She discovered that, not only was he having an affair, but he was planning to leave her for Penelope Peach. Penelope had broken up with the man who was keeping her and they had arranged to meet at Penelope’s apartment. Only he never showed up, because Helena intercepted him, brought him here and killed him. Mailing herself the head was the perfect way to deflect suspicion. Plus she had her lover provide her with an alibi.”

She looked at me. “We’ll have to pull him in, see to what extent he was involved. We should also go down to the basement and see if you recognize it.”

The inspector frowned at Dehan, then at me. “You sure you feel up to that?”

I nodded. “Sure. I have a feeling it wasn’t here anyway.”

We followed the crime scene team into the kitchen. The door was beside the fridge. I opened it and flipped on the light. There was a long, narrow, wooden staircase that descended eight or ten steps, then made a right angle down into an ample cellar with a concrete floor. There was a boiler, a washing machine and a dryer, the usual junk stashed up against one wall. The walls were bare brick, but there was no table, and there was no cheese cutter. I stood in the middle of the floor and shook my head.

“No. This is not the place.”

The inspector frowned at me again. “Are you sure? You said you were drugged and your vision was blurry.”

I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure this is not the place. We’ll get the CS guys in to have a look, but the stairs are all wrong, there is no door. This isn’t the place.”

He sighed heavily. “Well, in any case, I guess we can start wrapping up the investigation and tying up the loose ends. It was a challenging case and all credit to you for closing it. We’ll request extradition from Denmark, but I don’t hold out much hope. She’ll disappear within the European Union and probably fly out east or to South America before we can get the bureaucratic machinery up and running.” He patted my shoulder. “I’m sorry, John. It was a great job and you deserved to get your man. But I guess you can’t win them all. There is always one that gets away.”

“I guess so, sir.”

Dehan made a face of ruefulness and smiled through it at me. “Funny how she warned us right from the start that it might be a woman...”

I grunted. “I thought she was hinting at Penelope.”

The inspector adopted a paternal air. “Well, look, you two. I think you have done quite enough and you must be exhausted, especially you, John. There is nothing more for you to do here. I insist you go home and take a few days off. The crime scene team can take it from here. I’ll ask Alor…”

“Alornerk.”

“Thank you. I’ll ask him to come in and we’ll question him in light of these new events. You can deal with that, Carmen, can’t you, tomorrow or the day after? We can consider the case solved, if not yet fully closed. The rest is up to the lawyers. Now, off you go, home and rest.”

We thanked him and made our way up the steps and through the kitchen, where Frank’s boys were lifting poor Ebba onto a gurney and out onto the stoop. As we went carefully down the steps, I held out my hand. “Keys, please. I feel the need to drive the old burgundy bruiser.”

“You up to it?”

“Of course. I was only drugged and buried alive. Don’t fuss, dear.”

She snorted a laugh and