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

had not arranged to go and to see them. Two, what is Greg’s motive for killing her?”

She bit into her burger and shook her head. She chewed and swallowed while I bit.

“No problem. One, her plan is to go and see them. She will stay the night with Greg and then come and see them the next morning. Two, Greg thinks she has come to have an affair with him, but she is a sweet kid who is still in love with Mo. Either she regrets it and backs out, or never expected to have sex in the first place. She’s naïve. She thinks they are just friends. He gets mad and rapes her.”

We sat chewing and staring at each other. I swallowed.

“So, while we wait for the captain to arrange the records, we need to talk to the Olveras. Then we go and see Greg.”

She nodded slowly. “He’s the guy, Stone.”

Eight

Alfredo and Ingrid Olvera had a severely humorless house on the outskirts of the town. It was a white clapboard affair with a gable roof and a small front garden given over to the cultivation of beans and peas. A simple, stone path led through the center of the garden to a plain front door. You could imagine, as you approached that door, that the words ‘simple’ and ‘plain’ figured large in the Olveras’ lexicon.

It was Ingrid who opened the door to us. She was probably in her early sixties, but looked older. Her skin looked desiccated and leathery. Hair that had been blonde was now turning to gray, and blue eyes that must once have laughed now judged the world and found it wanting. She didn’t say anything, so I spoke.

“Mrs. Olvera?”

She nodded once. “You must be the detectives from New York.”

“This is Detective Dehan. I am Detective Stone. May we talk to you for a moment? We need to ask you a few questions.”

“Make it quick. I ain’t got long.”

She led us through a dead hall to a soulless living room where a round table stood in the center of the floor with four hard chairs about it. Two very basic captain’s chairs stood in front of an open fire, which at the moment lay unlit. The room was cold. There was a simple dresser, a writing desk, and a credenza, little else. There were no photographs, no pictures of any sort, and no ornaments. The mats on the floor were basic rush. She gestured us to the table and we sat.

Dehan looked around the room. “Is your husband home, Mrs. Olvera?”

“He’s tending to the animals.”

“We’re going to need to talk to him, too.”

She didn’t react, just sat looking at Dehan with eyes that had grown obstinate through years of denying herself joy. I said, “Would you go and get him, please, Mrs. Olvera?”

She didn’t argue. She rose and left the room. Dehan shook her head. “Kathleen wasn’t coming here.”

“I agree.”

“Who would?”

“The penitent?”

We heard the measured tread of shoes on bare boards and Ingrid returned accompanied by a small, gnarled man with gray hair and a large, unkempt beard and mustache. We rose to greet him and he shook our hands, searching our faces with his pale eyes.

“Ingrid, tea. We have guests.” He sat and she withdrew to the kitchen. “Our home is simple, plain, but we can offer hospitality.” There was a trace of an accent, but only a trace. “What is a Christian who does not offer hospitality?”

“Mr. Olvera, we don’t want to take up your time. We just have a couple of questions for you and your wife. We are collaborating with the county sheriff’s department in the investigation into Kathleen Olvera’s murder.”

He nodded once. “I know.”

“There are a couple of things we are not clear about. Were you aware that Kathleen intended to come and visit you?”

He shook his head. “No. We had no contact with Kathleen, or her sister or her mother for that matter. They were papists. We did not approve of our boys consorting with them, but there was precious little we could do to prevent it.”

“And look where it has led them…” Ingrid stood in the doorway, watching us with a face like curdled milk. “One of them a drug addict, the other murdered after fornication, and our boys consorting with God knows what whores in Babylon…”

“Go back to the kitchen and get the tea, woman.” She withdrew. He continued. “Kathleen Vuolo is an Irish Catholic, who was married to an Italian Catholic. He was an infantile man, always playing like a child, consumed with idle curiosity about cowboys and the wild west. Stupid man. And his wife…” He curled his lip. “Not a good woman. A painted harlot.”

Dehan’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? What makes you say that?”

He fixed her with hard, unforgiving eyes. “After her husband died, he was barely in the ground, she was in the bars, drinking alcohol, mixing with the men. Her children in the hotel, alone, and her out in the bars, with men.”

Ingrid came back in with a tray. On it there was a plain, undecorated pot and four plain mugs. She set it down on the table and poured. She didn’t ask if we wanted milk or sugar. Instead she said, “We told Moses and Isaac not to mix with those girls, for the Lord was surely going to punish them. And he surely has.”

Dehan gave her a look that was admirable for its restraint. “With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think it was God that raped, strangled, and beheaded Kathleen Olvera. I think it was a man. And I don’t know if God’s Law says that her rape and murder was acceptable because her mother drank and used make up, but the law of the United States says it’s a heinous crime. And I have