Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

Park, north and west of Don’s house. Jane lives in the opposite direction, south and west of Don, but only a half hour’s walk away. So why would Paul say, A, it was the longest drive of his life, and B, that he ‘continued on his way’? This, this is what has been bugging me. Something else he said: He said they packed up the camp and went back to Don’s place, and then, over breakfast, um…” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember. “‘…even over breakfast, all her conversation was for Danny. She was making comments about his van, kind of teasing him…’”

We were speeding over the bridge. She was shaking her head. “OK, it’s odd… but, so what? What does it mean?”

I looked at her. “They packed up the camp, on Macomb Mountain, then they had breakfast at Don’s? That’s got to be two hundred or two hundred and fifty miles as the crow flies. That has to be four or five hours’ drive.” I shook my head. “How could I be so stupid?”

“So…” She frowned. “So they have a cabin up there…?”

I nodded. “Yeah, they have a cabin up there.”

She was silent for ten minutes, staring through the windshield. Finally, she said, “This is important…?”

I nodded again and slowed to come off the Bruckner Boulevard. “If I am right, it blows the whole damned thing open.”

She pulled her shades over her eyes as I accelerated down Castle Hill toward the creek. The tires complained as I braked outside her house, spun the wheel, and pulled into her drive, blocking her garage door. As we climbed out, Dehan made a grimace at me. “Sensei, I confess, I don’t know what’s going on.”

I shook my head. “Later.”

I hammered on the door and rang the bell. There was silence inside the house. I tried to peer through the window, but the drapes were drawn. I turned to Dehan. “I’m going to cover the front. Take the path, have a look ’round the back. See if the kitchen door is open.”

She disappeared down the concrete path and I called Jane’s telephone, tried the bell again, hammered some more on the door. Nothing. After a couple of minutes, Dehan reappeared, shaking her head. “Kitchen door is locked, all the drapes are drawn. You want to tell me what’s on your mind?”

I chewed my lip at her. “We need to get inside.”

A woman’s voice called to us from the road.

“Can I help you?”

She was in her forties, in expensive jeans and a silk blouse. She had her shades on her head and her keys in her hand. Two doors up, I could see her SUV in a driveway with the trunk open. There were bags of shopping in the trunk and in the doorway.

“Are you a friend of Jane Harrison’s?”

She smiled, but it was more courteous than friendly. “Who are you?”

I showed her my badge. “I’m Detective John Stone. This is my partner, Detective Dehan. We urgently need to talk to Jane. Do you know where she is?”

She looked surprised.

Before she could answer I said, “Was it you who phoned her in sick at work?”

“I haven’t seen Jane since yesterday evening. She has a pretty chaotic schedule sometimes. I saw she was home and I came over. We had coffee and talked. She seemed fine.” She hesitated a moment. “She did say she’d been invited to some kind of reunion, but she wasn’t going to go.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind an alarm bell went off. “This could be very important, Ms…”

“Garrido, Olga Garrido.”

“What kind of reunion? Where? Anything you can remember…”

She looked distressed. “Oh, gosh! Um… She said it was old friends she hadn’t seen for a long time. She didn’t seem keen, said they were a bit weird. An old boyfriend. But it was like midweek and she had work, so she wasn’t going to go. I have a morning job. I’ve just got in…”

“OK, thank you, Ms. Garrido. Go back to your house.”

“Is she OK?”

“We’ll take care of this.”

She went back toward her SUV, glancing at us over her shoulder. I took my Swiss Army knife from my pocket and selected the small screwdriver, then examined the lock to see if it had been picked. It hadn’t, so I photographed it, then rammed the screwdriver in the keyhole, fiddled around for a bit till the lock gave, and eased open the door. I looked back at Dehan. She had her weapon in her hands. I called out, “Jane! This is Detectives Stone and Dehan!”

There was only the oppressive silence. I gestured with my head at the living room and moved toward the kitchen-diner at the back. As I inched my way in, I heard the living room door creak behind me. Soft light filtered through the drapes over the sink. The big, silver fridge was humming softly. There were no dirty plates, no pots or pans on the cooker. The dishwasher was open a few inches. It was empty. The pine table in the middle of the floor was clean. Apparently no dinner had been eaten, and no breakfast.

“Stone.”

I turned. Dehan was in the doorway, staring at me. Her skin looked gray. I felt a sudden, terrible sadness.

She said, “She’s in the living room. Brace yourself.” She pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed. “Yeah, Detective Dehan, we need a crime scene team and the ME. There’s been a homicide…”

It was shocking, in the most literal sense of the word. I stood in the doorway, looking at what was left of her, of a human being I had sat and spoken to, and for a moment the room seemed to rock. There was a ghastly unreality to the scene, and the smell was nauseating. It wasn’t the smell of decay, it was the overpowering iron