Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

noisily through her nose, closing her eyes and smiling. “Mmmmm… the smell was just intoxicating!” I sat watching her, wanting to laugh. She said, “You coming, or you just going to sit there and smirk all day?”

Seven

It was a ten-minute drive through the hiss and spray of the I-278 and then Bruckner Boulevard. And at ten thirty-five, we pulled up in front of a modern red brick on Throgmorton street. It was pretty and leafy, or would have been if there had been any leaves on the trees. I killed the engine, then we climbed out and crossed the wet blacktop to climb the steps to the front door.

Dehan rang the bell and stood looking at me with flushed cheeks from the cold wind. Her hands were plunged in her pockets, and she was bouncing on her toes.

“I love this weather,” she said. I shook my head, and she said, “No, seriously. It’s honest, real.”

“The weather is honest and real?”

She nodded and the door opened. There was a woman in an apron and carpet slippers. She had permed silver hair and a face that said she was broken but coping. We showed her our badges and told her who we were, and she ushered us toward her living room, telling us to come in out of the cold.

She sat us down at a dining table that she had set for tea and went into the kitchen, calling, “Robert! The detectives are here!”

She came in with a kettle and poured scalding water into a teapot, while soft feet came down the stairs. A man with a bracket of soft hair around the back of his head and a sage-green V-neck sweater came in. He was smiling and had reading glasses hung around his neck. He held out his hand, and we rose to shake.

“Sit down, sit down. Marion has made an event out of this. She is hoping you will finally put us out of our misery one way or another.”

Marion returned from the kitchen, and we all sat again.

I smiled at Marion and said, “I’m afraid not. But we may”—I stressed the word—“have found a lead that will help us to find out what happened to your daughter. We are reviewing a number of cold cases, and it seems your daughter’s disappearance may have some connection.”

Marion was holding the teapot halfway to Dehan’s cup. Her expression was eloquent. It said that unendurable anxiety can become endurable when it becomes your everyday experience. She gave a small sigh and poured the tea.

“Is she dead, Detective Stone?”

Honest and real, like the weather. “We don’t know, Mrs. Holly. That is what we need to find out. Right now, I’d like to know what Lynda was like as a person, about her relationship with Hank, and about the days leading up to the bike rally that weekend in Connecticut.”

Robert drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and you could tell he was biting back tears. Dehan, in one of those surprising moments of tenderness she displayed sometimes, put her hand on Marion’s shoulder and said, “I know this hurts, Marion. Don’t give up hope. We are here to help you.”

Marion clung to her hand, and tears welled in her eyes. I turned to Robert. There was nobody there to hold his hand. I am not given to moments of tenderness, but I was moved to lean forward and put my hand on his shoulder. He nodded and we sat in silence for a moment, listening to the interminable rain pattering on the patio, as though we were honoring the dead.

Marion sighed. “Where do I begin? She was a sweet, adorable child. Full of spirit, mischievous, but with a great, kind heart. Then she hit fifteen and, like a lot of kids, she went a bit wild. She started going to parties, coming home late, drinking. I think she smoked pot a few times. We tried talking to her, but she just didn’t want to hear what we were telling her.”

Robert cleared his throat. “We made an appointment with a child psychologist. She told us we were crazy and we should go. She said she was fine and just having a bit of fun. We did go…” He glanced at his wife. “The psychologist told us we should maybe give her a bit more space, not become her enemy but go along with her a bit, then reel her in gently. She said a lot of kids went through this rebellious phase, then settled. We tried that.”

“How did that work?” It was Dehan.

Marion made an uncertain face. “I think it was working. She introduced us to Hank, which was something. Robert didn’t like him to begin with, but they started working out their differences, didn’t you?”

Robert nodded, then gave a small laugh. “Hank liked to appear the tough guy, but it was more an act than anything else. What he really wanted in life was a family.” He looked at me. “He was an orphan, you know? Grew up on the mean streets. I know something about that. He put on a big display to protect himself, but when we opened our arms to him, he began to soften, stopped showing off, was nicer to Lynda. Confessed to me in private that he was thinking of leaving his gang and asking Lynda to marry him. May God forgive me, I advised him to wait.”

Marion shook her head. “No, Robert, you were right. She would have run a mile. As it was, the nicer he became, the more she started getting bored! A marriage proposal right then would have had her running for the hills!”

Dehan was giving me that “well, whaddaya know?” look. I gave her my “I can’t help always being right” look. I asked Marion, “Do you think she was bored enough of Hank to go off with somebody else