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

“I think you’re sure.”

“The blow must have been delivered with considerable force, which adds weight to the theory that he was lying on his back at the time he was stabbed. So his assailant was able to put all their weight behind the knife.”

“Okay, so the picture suggests that the killer was the unknown element that prevented Sylvie from putting on the lights and dutifully greeting Simon at the door. And, as soon as he came in, the killer struck. The position of the body was, if I am not mistaken, at the foot of the stairs…”

“Correct, which would suggest that the killer was either on the stairs or up the stairs when Simon came in the door.”

“And from what Sylvie has told us, she was found sitting on the stairs, with the telephone in her hands. The actions around the trauma all center around the stairs.”

Dehan nodded. “The 911 call was made from the phone she was holding.”

I stared at the dry rings on the mahogany tabletop, seeing my imagined version of the Martins’ entrance hall. “So the idea is that Sylvie is being held upstairs by the killer. Simon comes home, calls her, and the killer rushes down, punches him twice with his right fist, first in the ribs and then on the jaw, and, when he falls to the ground, he sits on him and stabs him through the sternum.” I frowned at Dehan. “How many stab wounds?”

She smiled. “I was wondering when you’d ask that. Two.”

“Hmm… So our killer is in a bit of a frenzy and is certainly not a seasoned assassin. He has delivered two blows where one would have been ample, and he has stabbed him in the most difficult place on the chest. While, presumably, Sylvie is standing on the stairs watching him. It is very odd.”

She turned her glass around a few times on the table, like she was trying to screw it down, or wind it up. After a moment, she said, “You’re not wrong. I keep asking myself, ‘Where was the phone?’”

She looked up at me and I nodded. It was what I had been asking myself, too.

She went on, “What did she do? Stand there and watch her husband get murdered, then go to fetch the phone and return to sit on the stairs to call 911?”

I pulled a face, like I knew I wasn’t convincing her and I wasn’t really convincing myself, either. “Maybe it was upstairs.”

She echoed my expression with a shrug. “Maybe. Same thing applies. Anyway, motive and opportunity: Prima facie…”

I smiled. “I like that. That’s good. Prima facie. It’s nice.”

“You like that? It’s good, huh? Thank you. So, prima facie, the only motive we can be sure of is Sylvie’s.”

“The life insurance.”

“It has got to be pretty generous because it is paying either for the rent on a substantial house, or the mortgage. Plus, it’s giving her enough to live on without having to work. If, on top of that, he was a miserable bastard to be married to …”

“That is a big assumption, Dehan.”

She offered me a smile that was richer in scorn than in mirth. “Come on! He saw, ‘little point in fun,’ and ‘joy was to be achieved exclusively through devotion to God.’ I call that being a miserable bastard. And remember…” She wagged a finger at me. “For a woman like Sylvie, divorce is not an option. The vow is ‘till death do us part’, and God holds them to that. The penalty is not just hell, but being ostracized by their community. Hell is just an imagined future. Being reviled and ostracized is a hard reality to live with, especially for someone like Sylvie.”

“So she was stuck with him for life.”

“For the next sixty years.”

“Unless…”

“Unless he died before that. Drink up. The next ones are on me.”

“I have to drive.”

“We are a ten-minute walk from your house. We’ll be having spaghetti tonight.”

“We are? Okay, sounds great to me.”

I watched the streetlights come on through the darkening glass in the windows, and the attitude of people’s walk shift from a businesslike stride to a homeward hurry, as evening enclosed around them, past parking cars with amber headlamps. I thought of Sylvie, curled helpless against Dehan’s shoulder, weeping, hiding from the truth in the shadows of amnesia.

Dehan sat and placed a glass in front of me. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “Sylvie hasn’t the strength, either physical or of character, to knock her husband to the ground and stab him twice through the sternum. And I would have to agree. But that doesn’t take away the fact that, so far, she is the only person with an apparent motive.”

I took another pull on the beer. “So are we talking about an accomplice? That would imply a second motive.”

“Do you ever wish you smoked, Stone?”

“Sometimes.”

“Right now I could definitely use a cigarette.”

“I read that nicotine helps ward off Alzheimer’s.”

“He didn’t actually have the disease. It wasn’t his.”

“No, he just discovered it.”

“So, who else stood to gain by Simon’s death, Stone? The kid, Mary, was only about one year old. Reverend Paul Truelove?”

“Love? Sex? If that’s the case, why haven’t they gotten together since?”

She shrugged and sipped, then shrugged again as she put down the glass. “Maybe her Christian guilt kicked in and she repented after the deed was done. But we might equally ask, how come she hasn’t gone back to Texas? Remember, Reverend Truelove was keen for us not to pursue the investigation because, and I quote, she was ‘healing, working for God’.”

“Good points all three. Plus, he has no alibi for the night in question. Still, this is mere surmise at this stage, we need hard evidence to make it stick.”

“I will contact her insurance