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

it would have meant a police investigation and a trial that would have ended my career before it had even begun. As far as I was concerned, she had betrayed me and screwed the wrong guy. End of story.” Then he stared hard into my eyes. “You know who did this, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

He said, “I have to go. Thanks for bringing me the news.” He slid along the bench to stand up, then stopped and hesitated. “I’m sorry I got it wrong. I should have stepped up.”

He left twenty bucks on the table to cover his lunch and walked out, hunching his shoulders into the rain.

I shifted around to Chad’s seat, where I could see Dehan across the table, picked up his burger and started eating it. Dehan watched me do it and said, “Boy, did we ever get it wrong.”

I said, with my mouth full, “I never liked Lenny for the murder.”

“I gotta hand it to you, Stone. You were right on the money.” She picked up her own burger and bit into it. We stared at each other across the food, ruminating like two sheep. She swallowed and took a long pull on her beer, then showed her empty glass to the waitress and made a ‘V’ sign with her fingers. After that she shifted her ass so she was sitting in the corner, looking at me and eating.

“So,” she said after a while, “We have Chad and Celeste, post infidelity trauma, in post make up sex bliss, and they promise each other that they are going to try to make it work. She is longing for the family she’s been promised all her life by her crazy dad and brother, and he has these values he’s learned from his dad—focus and commit! So between them, they are starting to build a dream. They are going to make a family.”

I was nodding and chewing. I agreed with what she was saying.

She took a big bite out of her burger and spoke with her mouth full. “She gomph hom…”

“She goes home?”

“Mm-hm…”

I took over to give her the chance to eat for a while. “But Dad and Sam are, literally, as mad as hell. As far as they are concerned, her behavior over the last couple of days…”

“Lasht couple beers!”

“Last couple of years, indeed, has been sinful, wicked, even evil. There is an unspoken, perhaps even un-admitted, perception in the family that Celeste killed her mother. Dad denies it furiously: she is his baby girl. But Sam certainly believes it, and so does Helen. I get the impression that there is an idea that Helen was driven into her psychotic state by her mother’s death. In short, Celeste is held responsible for all the evil that has befallen that family.”

I took another bite of my burger. Dehan took a swig of beer and pulled the third burger over to her. “You want to share?” I shook my head and chewed. She went on. “So if her behavior until that point has been evil and sinful, that weekend she really crosses a line, staying out Friday night, Saturday night and coming back late Sunday morning, probably talking about staying out Sunday night too. All hell breaks loose, in more senses than one. She goes upstairs, breaks up with Lenny over the phone and cries herself to sleep.”

“Chad calls.”

“She tells him she is on her way. She has her second row and leaves. Now, Lenny calls her from the landline, telling her to come home. He is coming after her. She stops at the playground to wait for him because, as we have said before, she doesn’t want Chad to witness what her crazy family are like. Lenny calls while she is waiting, but contrary to what we thought, she tells him to leave her alone—and he does. Chad calls. She says that she is almost home. Samuel turns up in his truck. Parks. She gives him a mouthful. They struggle, she starts screaming, and he chokes her to shut her up, or maybe because he is venting all the hatred and resentment he has stored up against her since she killed his mom. Suddenly, he snaps out of it and realizes what he has done. In a fit of grief and remorse, he hugs her. We know he’s strong enough to hold her upright. And that is when Chad shows up and sees what he believes is Rod and Celeste in an embrace. Samuel picks her up in his arms and, as you said, carries her to the truck.”

I finished my burger and sat licking my fingers and sucking my teeth. The waitress delivered my second beer and I took a pull. “Unless Lenny pulls through and can substantiate some of that, we haven’t got a shred of evidence to support it, aside from some very weak eyewitness testimony. It is all circumstantial. How do we prove it?”

“We have one chance,” she said. “We show how he disposed of the body. Maybe we can nail him if we can show how, and why, he disposed of the body the way he did.”

I nodded. “Yup, I think you’re right. We need to get back on that, even if it means going in person to each business along the river, one by one.”

SIXTEEN

My phone pinged, letting me know I had an email, and a second later, it began to ring.

“Stone.”

The inspector’s voice said, “Ah, John, it’s John.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Indeed, listen, I have word from the hospital. Lenny is dead. He died this midday. They did all they could in surgery, but it seems the damage to his left lung was too extensive and he had lost a lot of blood. They couldn’t save him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I glanced at Dehan. She mouthed, Lenny? Dead? I nodded. She closed her