Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

I shrugged. “One day, Dehan, but not today.”

I turned the key and the big old engine growled. I spun the wheel and we turned back, south, toward Philadelphia and the Ibarri family.

After about half an hour she reached over and squeezed my knee. It was a gesture that made me smile. I looked at her. She was smiling back at me, with the wind whipping her hair across her beautiful face. “You don’t have to,” she said. “You’re an old, Anglo-Saxon dinosaur. I get that, and I like it. But when you’re ready, I’m here.”

I nodded. “I know.”

And we drove on in comfortable silence.

FOUR

It was seven o’clock by the time we arrived at the Maple Shade Township and turned into Buttonwood Avenue. The Ibarri home was, like the Clemente home, a gabled, clapboard house. It was painted in white and gray, well kept and surrounded by well tended gardens and lawns. It lacked the urbane elegance of the Clemente house; it had more the feel of a genteel country cottage. It was pretty and homey. Dehan spoke absently, half to herself: “I bet the kitchen smells of apple pie and baking bread.”

I looked at her, nodded, sighed and climbed out. The slam of the car doors echoed in the evening street and we followed the flagged path to the blue front door. It was opened by a man who looked to be in his late sixties. His black hair was receding and turning to gray and he had a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses hanging around his neck. Dehan said, “Mr. Ibarri?”

He nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“We’re detectives Dehan and Stone, from the NYPD.”

We showed him our badges and he nodded again and stood back. “My wife is in the living room.”

The living room had the same cottagey look as the outside of the house. The sofa and chairs arranged around the coffee table were upholstered in white chintz with pink flowers that were echoed by the curtains. There were paintings on the walls of landscapes and kittens, and everywhere you could put a doily there was a doily. Mrs. Ibarri was standing in front of one of the armchairs, with her hands linked, one holding the other, in front of her belly. She was trying to smile, but her face was too rigid with anxiety. Dehan told her who we were and she nodded and glanced at the sofa and the chairs. We all sat. They didn’t offer us coffee. Instead Mrs. Ibarri said, “Have you found Sonia?”

Dehan shook her head. “We don’t know. We are hoping you can help us. When did you last see Sonia?”

Mr. Ibarri frowned. “We already explained to the police when we reported her missing…”

I said, “Was that the Philadelphia PD?”

“Of course.”

“We are from New York, Mr. Ibarri. We only have the very basic information they emailed us. I know it is very hard to go over it again…”

He nodded. “No, I see.” He stared down at the carpet. “Sonia went to New York on Tuesday, the twenty-fourth.”

“May?”

“Yes, the twenty-fourth of May. She was going to stay there for a week, with Mary’s sister…” He stared at us a moment, then gestured at his wife. “Mary is my wife. She is originally from New York. Her sister used to live there.” He closed his eyes, frowned, and waved his hand at us, as though he was saying goodbye. “I am digressing. I mustn’t do that. My father used to do the same thing. It’s infuriating…”

His wife touched his knee. “Nelson…? When we last saw Sonia.”

He covered her hand with his and looked at her. It was a tender gesture, though he was frowning.

“She took the bus. She was looking for work. She was thinking of moving to New York. No disrespect.” He smiled at us without much humor. “I can’t imagine why, but she thought it would offer her more opportunities. Opportunities for what? That’s what I asked her. ‘Opportunities for life, Papito!’” He shrugged, then sighed. “Papito. That’s what she called me. So she phoned us on the Thursday. We talked. She said maybe she had a job. She had met somebody who said he might have work for her. I asked her, what kind of work? She didn’t go to college, you know? She said college wasn’t for her. We told her, ‘We’ll pay, whatever it costs.’ But, ‘No, Papito, I want to work. I want to make money.’ So she went to New York.”

He went quiet, blinking, staring at the wall. Mary gave his hand a small squeeze. She said, “She told us Olga, that’s my sister, Olga said she could stay with her as long as she liked. They were real close. Olga never had kids, you know? So our Sonia was like the apple of her eye. She loved her like her own child. When she went missing it killed her. Literally. She died like a month later.”

Dehan had been making notes. Now she was frowning at her pad. “So she was due back Tuesday thirty-first?”

Mary nodded. “In the morning. But Olga phoned me on Tuesday night. She was half crazy out of her mind, crying. She was hysterical.”

“Why?”

They were both quiet for a long moment. Then he buried his face in his hands and started sobbing noisily. She looked away from him, then put her fingertips to her lips and blinked away her own tears. After a moment she said, “Sonia had met a man, a man who told her he could give her work. On Friday she told Olga she was going to spend the weekend with him. She was twenty-two, an adult, there was nothing Olga could do…”

Nelson’s voice came shrill and twisted. “She should have told us! An adult? She was a child! In her