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

“What does a guy need to do to get some sympathy around here?”

I eased myself behind the wheel and fired up the big old growler. Dehan climbed in beside me. I put it in first and pulled away, headed east toward the FDR Drive. We drove in silence for a few minutes and finally she said, “We are going to need a few days, Stone.” I nodded and she went on. “It was traumatic for me. I really thought you were dead. I can’t imagine what it was like for you.”

“Hell.”

“It must have been.”

“I’ll need breakfast in bed for the next week at least. Maybe two.”

“Don’t joke about it, Stone. You’ll probably have PTSD. You need to take this seriously.”

“I will.” I grinned at her. “I will add it to the list of things I need counseling for.”

“You’re a jerk, Stone. I’m being serious.”

“I know you are. So am I. You know what still gives me nightmares? When I found you in that lock up, inhaling gas. I still get flashbacks from that. And when you were abducted in the Westchester Angel case[2]. I really thought you were dead then. Those are the events that have traumatized me, Dehan.”

She exhaled through her teeth and turned away. “You big, old…”

She was quiet for a while then, blinking a lot until she finally wiped her eyes on her sleeve, pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. When she spoke, she sounded like she had a cold.

“Well, even if you don’t get counseling, I think we need some time. You know, to kind of process this and… you know what I mean.”

“Back at the dawn of time, when I was young, before we had counselors and everything had an acronym, we didn’t process things. We took time to get over them. Sometimes that involved getting drunk, other times it involved lying on a beach and sunbathing a lot. Or both. For girls it also involved crying, because, back then, guys didn’t cry, but we would stare at the horizon a lot, and throw stones into the sea. Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?”

She giggled wetly and started crying again. Then she nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Sounds good to me, Dehan. I could use some of that.”

She sniffed and blinked at the road for a bit. Then she frowned. “Where are you going, Stone? We don’t need to go to the station. We’re going home.”

“Yeah, I just need to take a small detour on the way.”

We were on the Bruckner Expressway and I peeled off to join the Boulevard at White Plains Road. Dehan’s face had become rigid. At the bridge, I turned left and crossed over the expressway. Then I turned left into Watson Avenue. Her jaw dropped and she turned to look at me.

“Son of a bitch!” she said.

I raised an eyebrow at her. “You hadn’t worked it out?”

“Last night, but this whole thing with Helena… I thought I was wrong. What was that all about?”

“It had been nagging at my mind since I glanced at the list of students. I didn’t know. I was drugged and groggy and my memory was patchy. It had to be explored. I wasn’t sure of anything.”

We came to St Lawrence Avenue and turned in. There I stopped outside the white, clapboard house and climbed out.

Peter Heseltine opened the door and smiled at us in some surprise.

“Detectives! What can I do for you?”

“We just want a few minutes of your time.”

“Well, of course. Come in. You’re lucky to find me here, I would normally be at work.”

I shrugged. “We were passing by. It was on the off chance.”

“Sure.”

He led us into a comfortable living room on the ground floor overlooking the front yard. The furnishings were good, but old, and had a feminine quality to them. “I had assumed, when we dropped you off, that you had an apartment upstairs.”

“Oh, no, I inherited the house from my mom. I’ve never really done anything with it. Please, sit. Coffee?”

I shook my head and we sat. He sat too, on the sofa. I gave him an expressionless stare and said, “Is Helena Magnusson here?”

He went white. “Of course not! Why would she be?”

I gave another shrug. “She’s not at her house. I know you have a big crush on her. I thought she might be here.”

“Good Lord! A crush? Me? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Well, you were pretty complimentary about her in the car. You described her as ‘superbly, elegantly European’. You also avoided talking about her and dodged Detective Dehan’s question about how well you knew her. So I put it all together and decided you had a crush on her.”

He laughed. “Forgive me for saying so, Detective, but I think you have put one and one together and made five. I did not have a crush on Helena.”

I nodded. “No, I have understated the case. You didn’t have a crush. You were insanely in love with her.”

His eyebrows rose up high on his forehead. “Based on my describing her as elegantly European?”

“That and the fact that you joined her creative writing classes.”

He stared at me for a long time. His mouth was working but nothing was coming out. Finally he said, “That’s hardly…”

“It would be nothing at all if you had told us about it from the start. But the fact that you never mentioned it is odd to the point of being highly incriminating. You must have gone there the night she received the package with her husband’s head in it. You must have known all her pupils in the class. You must have known Lenny dos Santos. You might have been a key witness, and yet you never said a word. You didn’t tell