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

she received a number of calls. One was from this landline, another was from Chad, but there were a couple of others that came from an unregistered phone belonging to Lenny. Our theory is that she broke it off with him that day, by phone. Later that evening, he called her from the station house while she was on her way to Chad’s.”

Reynolds had started shaking his head again.

I ignored him, watching Samuel, and continued. “He asked her to meet him at the Watson Gleason Playground. We have a number of witnesses who saw her meeting a man on that corner. The witnesses say the man turned up in a white truck, like Lenny’s…”

Reynolds was suddenly half-shouting, “No, no, no, no, no, Lenny did not do that! No! Don’t tell me Lenny did that! He did not do that!”

His face seemed to fold in on itself, tears spilled from his eyes and saliva ran from his mouth. He buried his face in his sheet, rocking and making appalling moaning noises that seemed barely human. “No, no, Lenny didn’t do that. Ask him, for God’s sake! He’ll tell you you’re all wrong.”

“I’m afraid Lenny is in hospital.” I glanced at Samuel again. His eyes were wide. “We went to talk to him and he fled. He tried to leave the country. He pulled a gun on officers at the airport, stole a vehicle and tried to drive away. There was an accident, and he is now in the operating theater at the hospital.”

Samuel scowled at his sobbing father. “You’ll say what you like, Daddy. You’re always protecting her, but that girl had the devil in her soul as sure as my name is Samuel Reynolds.”

His father’s voice was a sobbing squeak. “You’ll not talk about your sister like that! She was misguided, a lost soul…”

“Evil is what she was and is. A black heart and a black soul! You know it as well as I do, but you won’t accept it! Look how she has you! Even from beyond the grave, she’s destroying you! An old man before your time!”

“Don’t! She was my little baby. She was your poor mother’s parting gift to me when the Lord took her. She was a sweet angel of a child.” His head dropped back on the pillow, his eyes squeezed tight and his mouth open, making him look oddly as though he was either dead or snoring. His body quivered. “She was my little girl.”

Samuel’s voice was shrill: “Will you stop saying that! Can you not see she is destroying us all! She’s killing you! She dwells still in Helen!”

His father twisted on his side, turning his back to us, pulling the sheet with his fists to cover his face, kicking his feet like a small boy. He gave an odd, small scream, then, “She’s family! Family! She’s your little sister! She’s my baby girl!”

Samuel stared at him with bulging eyes. Slowly, his face started to collapse, like his father’s. Tears slipped from his eyes and his bottom lip too curled in under his teeth. He spoke in a strangled, distorted voice. “How can you say that? She killed Mom. Before she was even born, she killed Mom! She lives now in Helen, driving her into madness…”

“Don’t say that!”

“Look what she’s doing to you! Family? We were a family, before she came and destroyed us all! She has the Devil in her heart. Even from the grave, she is killing us one by one! And you can’t see it!”

Reynolds was whimpering, “Get out. Leave me alone. Get me a doctor. I’m dying. It’s you killing me, not her. Leave me alone…”

I glanced at Dehan and stood, wincing with the pain as I straightened. Samuel was still staring at his father with bulging eyes, his mouth drawn down into an ugly, silent sob. Dehan stood, too.

I said, “You’d better let him rest, Samuel. And call the doctor, to be on the safe side.”

He stood and followed us silently into the hall, then turned to walk away toward the kitchen. I said, “Samuel, do you work with a partner?”

He frowned at me like the question was an insane one, then shook his head. “No, I work alone, like my dad before me.” Then he added, almost by rote, “Don’t see no sense paying out good money when I can do the work myself.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

He turned and continued on his way to the kitchen, and we made our way to the front door. As I was opening it, I became aware of a presence on the stairs and turned to look. Helen was standing halfway up, with her bare legs and feet caught in the light from the hall, but her upper body in semi-darkness.

“Hello, Helen.”

Her voice was unemotional. “Is Celeste killing us?”

“No. She’s not.”

“I thought, once she was dead, she couldn’t hurt us anymore.”

I nodded. “She can’t. Good night, Helen.”

“Good night.”

We stepped out into the drizzle and closed the door behind us. The porch light made the wet concrete path shiny, but the street was mainly in darkness because the streetlamps were enclosed by the trees. I looked again at the white pickup with its blue tarp on the back, covering the plastic sacks of rubble. I stepped past it and it occurred to me I must be getting old, because the sight of my ancient burgundy Jaguar, with its leather and walnut interior, was somehow calming and reassuring. I limped over to the passenger side and climbed in as Dehan got behind the wheel again. The doors clunked shut and she put the key in the ignition.

“You ready to go home now?”

“I am.”

“You sure you don’t want to go and drop any more bombshells on any more dysfunctional families before bed?”

“Quite sure, Dehan. You can’t deny,” I said as she turned the