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

Dehan was frowning hard at her.

I arched my eyebrows. “It wasn’t like two years ago. It was exactly two years ago, and Pam, I have to tell you, I think you’re lying. I think you remember very clearly what he looked like.”

Her cheeks colored again. “I’m not lying. He was just a guy.”

“Black or white?”

“White.”

“Latino?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I shrugged and spread my hands. “So not an olive complexion, fair hair, blue eyes…”

“I don’t know… no, not olive, white. I don’t know what color hair. Dark. I didn’t notice his eyes.”

“Fat.”

“No, normal.”

I smiled. “Four foot three.”

She gave a nervous laugh. “No, normal, maybe six feet. We were drinking. I was trying to ignore him.”

“Armani suit?”

She sighed. “No, um…probably jeans, a pale shirt?” She hesitated. “Uh, maybe he worked there. I’m really not sure. It was two years ago and I was trying to ignore him.”

I smiled in a way you could describe as knowing. “But Rosario wasn’t trying to ignore him, was she?”

“Rosario was just real polite. She kept answering his questions and then asking him to leave us alone. You can’t do that. If you talk to them, they stay.”

Dehan said, “So she got into conversation with him.”

“Not exactly, but in the end I had to say to her, you know, like, either ignore him or I’m leaving. Then he stopped and left us alone.”

I nodded my understanding. “Sure, that makes sense. Was that why you didn’t go with her on Friday?”

Her eyes went wide and her mouth sagged. “What?”

“Friday night, she went alone to Teddy’s. Did she ask you not to go or did you just decide you didn’t want to be the spare wheel?”

“How did you know that?”

“Would you just answer the question, please, Pam?”

She puffed out her cheeks and blew out, staring down at the table. Then she held up her hands. “OK, you got me. Rosario wanted to do the whole Friday night thing, party, have a few tequilas. That’s not my scene. I like to go out with friends, have a few drinks, a laugh, and go home. Rosario is either one extreme or the other. Work, work, work, like a good Catholic girl, or, if you give her an inch, she goes crazy. So I told her I wasn’t going and frankly I think she was relieved.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “So she went to Teddy’s to party with this guy.”

“Pretty much.”

“Did she come back?”

She sat up straight, wide-eyed. “Yes! Of course!”

Dehan spoke to the pad as she was writing. “But you two were kind of tense, right?”

Pam shrugged and sighed. “She came back at two AM, smelling of booze, giggling and making a noise, bumping into things… I guess it could have been funny, but it made me mad.”

I knew where Dehan was going, because I was headed to the same place. I said, “So in the morning you were not on really good terms.”

She shook her head.

“You dropped her at the bus station but you didn’t have coffee and you didn’t see her on to the bus.”

She went very still. After a moment she said, “She told me she didn’t want me to stay. I was already mad that she had wanted to hang out with that dork instead of with me, her friend, and when she said that, I just dumped her bag on the sidewalk, turned around and went home.”

We were quiet for a long moment. Finally I said, “When she disappeared, you felt guilty. You felt people would blame you for letting her go alone to the bar, and above all for not staying with her until she got on the bus. So you lied.”

She took a handkerchief from her pocket, blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. It was the only indication that she was crying. “I felt so ashamed. She was my best friend, and a fit of stupid jealousy… Who could have imagined that a small argument…” She trailed off, then looked at me. “How could I face her mother, look her in the eye?”

Dehan laid down her pen and clasped her hands in front of her, as though she were praying. “Pam, do you appreciate how important this is?”

Pam frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Has it occurred to you that Rosario, after meeting this guy at the bar, arranged to meet him again the next day? That she didn’t want you to stay at the bus station because she was not going to get on the bus, she was going to go and spend the day with the guy from the bar?”

Pam’s pale skin turned even whiter. Her eyes stared and flooded with tears. She shook her head. “No. No, she wouldn’t do something like that. No, you’re wrong…”

I sighed. “Pam, it’s not your fault. Nobody could possibly hold you responsible. She was an adult and she knew what she was doing. You were her friend, not her nanny. But we have reason to believe that this man may well be responsible for the deaths of three women. So it is really important that you try to remember everything you can about him; anything, the tiniest detail could prove crucial.”

She covered her mouth with her hand. Her voice came muffled, “Oh God, Rosario…” and she began to cry. It wasn’t now the restrained tears she had shown before, but the full, grotesque realization of what had happened to her friend. Dehan took her hand and held it in both of hers.

“He’s right, Pam. Grieve for your friend, but you cannot blame yourself. If somebody hurt her, then the person who is responsible is the guy who did it. Help us to find him. Try