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

face that should have been a smile but wasn’t and said, “Do you remember a couple of years back, you made a statement to the police? It was a murder investigation?”

“Uh-huh. But I don’t remember much. It’s rained a lot since then, right?”

I gave her a warm smile, which made her grin again. “Just tell us what you saw.”

She shrugged. “Not a lot.” She pointed across the road. “It was like nine o’clock, maybe a bit earlier. It was dark. I’d left the drapes open. It was around this time of year, November. It was cold. I dunno, I guess I’d been in the kitchen, whatever, I left the drapes open. So I went to close them. And when I did, I saw this girl just, like, standing, right over there on the corner, near the tree.”

She pointed at the giant chestnut outside the gate to the playground. We both turned to look. I said, “She was just standing there?”

“Uh-huh. I thought at first she was a whore, and that made me mad ’cause we don’t get whores around here. This is a nice neighborhood. But then I thought she didn’t really look like a hooker. Her clothes, her hair. She looked a mess.”

“Can you remember how she was dressed?”

“Oh sure. I wouldn’t forget that. It wasn’t raining, but it was kind of drizzling? And she had on this big-ass old red jacket. I think it was a couple of sizes too big for her, with the hood over her head. And she was standing, with her hands in her pockets…”

I asked, “Which way was she facing, Remedios?”

“Oh, she was facing down toward White Plains…”

“East.”

She grinned. “If you say so. Anyhow, next thing I see, there’s a guy there, and they are talkin’ and he seems to be mad. She looks pretty mad, too.”

Dehan said, “Can you describe him?”

“He was tall, taller than her, anyhow. Big. He had a leather jacket, I think, and one of them woolen hats that roll down? Can’t say more than that.”

I said, “What happened next?”

“Next thing, she’s shouting at him. We got triple glazing, so I couldn’t hear what she was saying. But he grabs her shoulders and starts kind’a shaking her. She slaps him and she turns and disappears behind that big tree there…” She pointed at the second giant chestnut. “After that, I lost sight of them and closed the drapes.”

I frowned. “Did you see if he went after her?”

“Oh, for sure. He definitely went after her. He was kind of half running and reaching out for her.”

Dehan shook her head. “You didn’t think to call the cops?”

Remedios rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me no lecture, sister. If I called the cops every time I see a boy put his hand on a girl, or a girl give a boy some attitude, this place would be crawlin’ with cops twenty-four fockin’ seven. I called the cops when I read about the girl in the river, with the big red coat. You feel me?”

I said, “Yeah, we feel you. Did anybody else see anything?”

“Nobody talked to me about it.”

“OK, thanks, Remedios. You’ve been very helpful.”

“Sure, any time.”

She watched us cross the road through the traffic again and continue west toward Croes Avenue.

Dehan fell into step beside me, watching her boots as she trod the wet sidewalk. She spoke to no one in particular, simply voicing her thoughts.

“So she spends most of Friday and Saturday with Chad. The whole day and the night. She comes home Sunday midday. She and Samuel get into a big row in the kitchen and dad comes in to break it up, but winds up joining Samuel in giving Celeste a piece of his mind.” She looked up at me. “Have you noticed how Samuel calls his dad Daddy? Is that weird?”

I nodded, but I didn’t say anything.

She added, “Especially when they talk so much about family. It’s like he never grew up and became a man. Am I being judgmental?”

“Probably, but I know what you mean. Keep going, she gets mad and storms upstairs,” I said. “We don’t know what she does up there, but she doesn’t come down for a few hours.”

“Some time between half past eight and nine o’clock. One thing stands out a mile. She was sick of her father and Samuel, and Samuel had had about a bellyful of her. And I think that goes for her dad, too. He makes a big show of not criticizing her, but privately, I am pretty sure he and Samuel had both had about as much of her as they could swallow.”

I looked at her curiously. “Are you suggesting Samuel killed his sister?”

She stuck out her bottom lip and shoved her hands in her back pockets, then looked up into my face. “No… not necessarily. But I sure as hell wouldn’t rule him out.” She shrugged. “Five, ten minutes after she walked out of the house, she stops at the playground to wait for somebody. A guy who could fit Samuel’s description turns up and they have a row. She tries to walk away and he goes after her. Next time anybody sees Celeste, she’s dead, washed up on the banks of the Bronx River. And…” she half turned back the way we’d come. “She was waiting, looking back the way she’d come.”

“So you think, what? That Samuel phoned her, told her to wait for him, and came after her to continue their row?”

“It’s not an impossible scenario.”

“No, it’s not impossible, but is it likely she would stand waiting for him to continue a row she has just walked out on twice before?”

She grunted.

I pointed up ahead. We were approaching a twenty-story tower block on the right. “This is it, here on the left.”

Chad’s house was an ugly, flat,