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

“Why are you lying?”

“I’m not!”

“You are both lying! Why?”

“Stop it!”

“What was happening in the house, Sylvie? What was going on when you went back for the brownies?”

She stood suddenly and the chair fell back with a loud clatter on the floor. “I am leaving, and you can’t stop me. Where is my daughter?”

I straightened up. “We will find out, Sylvie. And you would be wise to level with us before we do.” I moved to the door. “I’ll go and get her.”

I found Dehan outside room three, stretching her arms. As I approached, she said, “She’s clammed up. She wants to go home.”

“That’s fine. Her mother is here to collect her.”

I pushed into the room. Dehan followed. I went and leaned on the table. Mary looked up into my eyes. She looked really frightened. “Your mother says that she sent you back for the brownies, Mary. So one of you is lying. And I have to ask, what would make somebody lie about something as stupid as who went back for the brownies? I am going to give you one last chance. What did you find in the house when you went back for the brownies?”

Her face screwed up and she started crying again. She could barely speak, but between gasps, she said, “I didn’t… It was Mom… She found him.” She shook her head, biting her lip. “I was upstairs…”

Then Sylvie was in through the door, shouting. “Mary? Mary, honey, come to Mama!”

I turned. Mary rose and ran to her mother and they stood hugging in the doorway. She kissed her daughter’s head, stroked her hair, and glared at us. “You have no call to be doing this. You found your killer. Now for God’s sake, leave us alone!”

And they left.

I heard Dehan sigh and turned and saw her running her fingers through her hair. “Is she right? Are we obsessing? Are we going crazy?”

“None of those is the question, Dehan. The question is, what is making them lie about who went back for the damn brownies?”

“How do you know they are lying?”

“Because they both went pale when I asked them about it. The blood drained right out of their faces. That’s a fear reflex, a reaction of the autonomic system, Dehan. It’s something you can’t control. Mary says Sylvie went back. Sylvie says Mary went back. One of them is lying.”

She dropped onto a chair. “Okay, so they left the house about nine. According to the report, they stayed at the fête all day and returned home around four, and that was when Sylvie found Jacob’s body. But now, it seems one of them returned home around eleven to get the brownies they’d left behind; and neither of them wants to admit it was them.”

“That pretty much sums it up.”

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I know, especially as Mary wasn’t even at the fête at that time.”

“What?”

“Mary didn’t go to the fête that morning.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

I felt suddenly exhausted. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. “There are a couple of things. First of all, she told me she was ill…”

As I drew a breath to continue, Dehan’s phone rang. She looked at the screen, looked at me, and sighed. She put the phone to her ear. “Yeah.” She was silent a moment. “I’m at work. I can’t take personal calls at work.” She listened for a moment, then glanced at her watch. “Yeah, okay. Half an hour.” She hung up. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

I rose and went down the stairs to my desk. There I dropped into my chair, pulled out the Jacob file, and started to read it. A couple of minutes later, Dehan came down. She stood looking down at me. “What are you going to do?”

I looked up at her and shook my head. “I won’t do much more tonight. I’ll throw a steak on the barbeque and study the Jacob file.”

She looked down at her boots, like she was embarrassed. I hesitated a moment, then sighed loudly.

“Look, Dehan, why not take a week or two off? The Martin case is almost wrapped up. Spend some time together, get to know each other properly, not snatching evenings while working a case. Give yourselves a chance.” I shrugged. “Then, when you come back, if you still want to work the cold cases, great. Just explain to him that we have unsocial hours and he can’t keep phoning you at work. If you don’t, if you want to move on and do something else, well, you know I’ll give you a great recommendation.”

She didn’t answer. She just kept staring at her boots. After a bit, I took the file and my jacket and stood. I hesitated a moment.

“You want me to pick you up in the morning?”

She shook her head. “No, thanks.”

Eighteen

The rain had settled in and didn’t look like it was going anywhere anytime soon. The sidewalks were spilling people expanded to twice their size by coats, hunched shoulders, and umbrellas, all busily, blindly jostling each other in the dying, wet light of early evening. Shop fronts, traffic lights, streetlamps, and headlamps were all creeping out like nocturnal predators, to sniff the rain and ease into the night.

The windshield wipers squeaked and thudded, washed away a fractured, soaked image of an autumn evening in the Bronx, only for another to build up, speckle by speckle, in its place.

I got home, threw the Jacob file on the table, and poured myself a generous measure of Bushmills. I drained the glass and poured myself another, then rummaged for steak in the fridge. I found two. I’d bought them a couple of days back, assuming Dehan would be coming over. She usually stayed at least two or three times in the week, to