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

“Nope.” Suddenly, I was starving and I attacked my plate with zest. “Humor me. I just need to confirm a couple of things. Then, if I am right, I’ll share.”

She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, and we ate in comfortable silence.

The rain had stopped overnight and the sky, looking freshly scrubbed, was glowing in luminous blue patches through huge white bundles of whipped cloud. I hit the ignition and pulled away.

“Is that why you said you didn’t want me to pick you up, because you had made up your mind to come over?”

She angled herself in the seat to face me. “I guess. You want to know what I think?”

“Always.”

“The big pain in the ass in this case is fitting all the bits together. Humberto, Paul, Brazil, Simon, Jacob, El Chato, the Church…”

“And there is more to come.”

“Cool. So here is how I am beginning to see it...”

I turned onto Morris Park Avenue. The blacktop looked like washed steel, reflecting the early morning sky.

“Paul and Sylvie were, maybe still are, lovers.” She wagged a finger at me. “And I think the whole damn case hinges on that. Elizabeth said it. He’s a rake. But like I said before, I think Sylvie knew how to play him, hooked him, and kept him.”

“Okay.”

“Now, we know that Simon does not approve of sex. Sex is for procreation and the greater glory of God. His big thing, if you’ll forgive the pun, is work. So he works all the hours that God sends, plus overtime, including Sundays. Meantime, Sylvie is starting to get lonesome and pulpit Paul is just across the garden, waiting to give her sweet consolation.”

“You are beginning to sound a little lurid.”

“Shut up. The inevitable happens and they start having an affair. At first they keep it together, but it starts to get out of hand, and on the Sunday in question, she is left alone, yet again, with little Mary, and Paul comes over. She already told us that she forgot to turn the lights on and get things ready for Simon that evening when he returned. Why? Because they were both tangled in blissful, post-coital bliss.

“Simon comes in, calling for her. They panic. Paul tries to escape but Simon catches them both on the stairs. Now!” She held up a hand as I turned onto Bronxdale. “Here is the interesting part where we never went before. These are both men of God, right? You, big bad John Stone, come home and find your chick in bed with another man, you’d probably throw them both out the window. But not these guys. These guys guilt trip each other instead. Simon, as the victim, has the moral high ground and invokes God and rails against them both, especially Sylvie, calling down fire, brimstone and damnation on her head…” She paused, smiling. “But El Chato is watching all of this. Paul flees and El Chato steps in and kills Simon.”

I frowned and scratched my head. “What does El Chato gain by killing Simon?”

She spread her hands. “He burgles the house! That’s why he was there in the first place, right? But while he was casing the joint, he took a fancy to Sylvie. He as much as told us that. So he kills Simon, takes whatever he wants, tells her that if she talks, Paul will most probably go down for the murder, and he, El Chato, will be back to punish her. So she feigns amnesia, he goes out the back, and, here is the smart part, he wipes the knife, puts it in a sandwich bag, and gives it to Humberto. That way, when Humberto takes it out of the bag, it will have his, Humberto’s, prints on it. It implicates Humberto and, possibly, Paul. What did Humberto tell us? That the Diavolo Incarnato had killed Simon.”

“Huh…” I made a ‘you might have something there’ face. “Okay, so now connect it with Jacob.”

She was quiet while I turned onto Bruckner Boulevard. Then, she said, “Here is where it gets a bit creative, but I believe Jacob was Paul’s son, and knew it.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah. It is a bit of a reach, I know. But think of the timing. Then there’s his character—wild, rejecting authority, you got to admit, he sounds like a young Paul. Maybe he went too far. Maybe he told Sylvie and Paul that he was going to blow the whistle on them. We know what that would have meant for Paul. I think Paul persuaded Sylvie to get Mary out of the house that afternoon, while he had a chat with Jacob. They had a row and he pushed him down the stairs.”

“The knife?”

“The cops looked for a missing kitchen knife at the Martin’s house and didn’t find one. I’m willing to bet there is, or was, one missing from Paul’s kitchen. How Humberto got it is less clear. Paul gave it to him? He hid it in the garden and Humberto found it…” She shrugged.

“Paul kills his own son.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a parent killed their own child.”

“That is one hell of a theory, Dehan. How do we prove it?”

She sighed. “That’s tricky. Let’s see what the fingerprints and blood tell us from the knives. We also need to compare Jacob’s DNA with Paul’s. If we can get a hit on either or both of those, maybe we can force a confession from one of them.”

I pulled into the lot on Fteley Avenue outside the station and killed the engine. We sat in silence for a while, turning over her theory. She shrugged. “It’s the closest we’ve got to a complete theory so far.”

I nodded. It was.

I didn’t get the call till that afternoon.

“Stone.”

“Good morning, Stone. Frank here, your friendly ME.” I put it