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

She started to laugh. I sighed and shook my head.

As it turned out there was little that was remarkable about Pam Anderson. She arrived at the 43rd punctually at nine and we took her up to interview room number one. She declined coffee and sat across the table from us, looking vaguely worried.

“Pam, Detective Dehan and I run a cold cases unit and, as part of a wider investigation, we are having another look at the disappearance of Rosario Clemente. We understand she was a close friend of yours and she had been staying with you just before she disappeared.”

Her skin was pale, but her pink cheeks now turned a little pasty. “Yes, she attended a couple of interviews for jobs, one in Manhattan, the other was in Brooklyn. Our house was a convenient place to stay. Plus…” She sighed and looked down at the table. “We got on well and it was great to catch up.”

Dehan was watching her carefully, chewing her lip. She asked, “So what day did Rosario arrive, Pam?”

“She arrived on the Wednesday, in the morning. Her interviews were on Thursday and Friday…” She trailed off.

“Did she meet anyone during that time? Did she go out, see anyone…?”

Her eyes, very blue against her pale skin, darted from Dehan to me and back again. She shook her head. “No…”

I sighed. “What is it you are not telling us, Pam?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I smiled at her the way you’d expect a kindly uncle to smile right before he smacks you around the back of your head. “Here’s the thing with cops, Pam: over a career as long as mine, you get literally thousands of people lying to you and trying to conceal the truth. You learn to recognize the signs pretty quickly, and here’s the bit that is important for you: when you realize somebody is lying to you, that person immediately gets promoted to your suspects list.” I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table. “Is that a place where you want to be?”

Her cheeks were glowing bright pink. “I don’t know what you want me to say. She didn’t…” She faltered.

“You were going to say she didn’t go out, but she did, didn’t she?”

“No…!” Again she faltered. “Not exactly. We went out, together.”

Dehan shrugged. “Why is that a big deal?”

“It’s not. You’re making it into a big deal.”

Dehan shook her head. “Come on, Pam. You deliberately concealed the fact. That means you didn’t want us to know about it.”

“What is it exactly,” I said, “about going out with Rosario that you didn’t want us to know?”

She buried her face in her hands and sighed loudly. Then she ran her fingers through her fine hair and flopped back in her chair. “Nothing,” she said obstinately. “Rosario’s mom, Alicia, is really cool. She is not a typical mom. She gave Rosario a lot of freedom…”

“But?”

“But it was freedom to work! Or improve herself. They got on real well, Rosario loved her and admired her, but there was always like this huge guilt trip. Even watching TV was like this big thing, you know? And when she came to see me I was like, come on! Relax! You will not go to hell just because you watch a bit of TV!”

Dehan nodded. “Or go out for a drink.”

“Right! So we went out and had a few drinks. It wasn’t like we got hammered and the cops had to take us home. We had a couple of glasses of wine and walked home.”

I scratched my chin. “When was that?”

She looked at me with steady eyes.

I waited. “Pam? When was that?”

“Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”

I smiled. “Every night.”

“I figured she needed it. She was so uptight. And it was great to see her chill and relax. We had a laugh.”

“You said you walked home. Where did you go?”

“Teddy’s. It’s like a ten, fifteen minute walk from my house.”

“On Zerega Avenue.”

She nodded. Dehan was making notes. Now she looked up. “I need you to think really carefully about this before you answer, Pam. Did anything happen on any of those nights, anything out of the ordinary, however trivial it may have seemed at the time.”

She looked around, as though seeking memories located in the various corners of the room. Finally she shook her head and said, “I honestly can’t think of anything.”

I gave a single nod. “But if you could, what would it be?”

Dehan looked at me like I was crazy, but the question didn’t seem to faze Pam at all. She said, “Only that there was a guy who tried to hit on her. But that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Guys were always trying to hit on her. She was beautiful. We ignored him and he went away.”

I said, “That was Thursday, right?”

Now she looked a little surprised. “Yeah, Thursday.”

“Tell me about Saturday morning. You went with Rosario to the bus station.”

She looked over to her right, at Dehan’s hands resting on her notepad. She shook her head. “There’s nothing to tell. I drove her to the bus station. We had a coffee. She got on the bus and I came home.”

I leaned back in my chair and scratched my head. “So, wherever Rosario disappeared, it had to be between the bus station and Deadham.”

She shrugged. “I guess so.”

“What did the guy look like?”

She frowned. “What guy?”

“The guy who hit on her at Teddy’s on Thursday night.”

She looked up into the corner of the room behind me, like there was a picture of him pinned to the wall up there. She bit her lip and her eyes drifted down to the table top, and wound up looking at Dehan’s hands again. “He