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

not expensive, but did not look cheap, and you could tell he had already decided at twenty-one exactly where he wanted to be at thirty-one. Now, at twenty-six he was about half way there and looking pleased with himself. As we came into the interrogation room he smiled without warmth and said, “I have to tell you, detectives, right off, I haven’t seen Angela, or heard from her, in over two years.”

We sat opposite him and Dehan said, “Yeah, you guys broke up, right?”

He shook his head emphatically. “No. She broke up with me. I didn’t break up with her.”

She frowned. “Her mom told us you two were crazy about each other.”

“That’s what I thought. But the fact is you just don’t know people till you live with them, and even then you can’t be sure. I wouldn’t tell Elisa this because to her Angela was, well, just that, an angel. But the truth is, as soon as she arrived in New York she began to change. Seems she was only using me.”

I said, “Using you for what?”

“To get away from home. Elisa is a sweet lady, but man!” He laughed. “She is really controlling!” He nodded several times, watching us, still smiling. “She is one controlling woman. You know? She’ll have you sit at the dining table so you don’t mess up the cushions on the couch. If you go to have dinner at her house, if she knows you at all, she’ll have you eat in the kitchen so’s not to mess the table. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She controlled every aspect of Angela’s life. And I guess that included me. Elisa wanted Angela to marry an Irish Catholic, so Angela picked me, took me home, got me approved by her mom, and right away started telling me we should move out of Berwick to New York.”

Dehan leaned back in her chair. “So, you are telling me that Angela only moved in with you to get away from her mother.”

“That’s the way it seemed to me! I think we’d lived together for a week, maybe ten days, when I first noticed she was seeing another guy.”

“How was that?”

“It was Saturday morning. I’d been to the gym. I usually have a good work out on Saturday morning.” He gave a smile that was rueful and shook his head. “It’ll show you what a sap I was. I was just starting my routine and I thought, ‘What the hell! I got the most beautiful girl in the world, just moved in with me, and I’m working out at the gym? I’m going home, and I’m going to take her out for lunch in Manhattan!’ See the sights. Have a magical day to remember. So I get in the car and I’m driving up Zerega, and I pass a bar, and who the hell do I see in the window, but Angela, sitting with a guy. Deep in conversation. You know, like they had a lot to talk about.”

I said, “What did this guy look like?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say. It was fleeting and I was looking at her.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, at that stage I was still crazy about her and trusted her. So I parked the car and called her, and I said, ‘Baby, I’m not doing my workout today. I’m going to take you out on the town.’ ‘Oh, don’t do that!’ she says. ‘Don’t do that just for me. You need your workouts.’ So I say, ‘Well, I’ve already left. I’m at home. I’m just wondering what you’re doing.’ Because I’m beginning to think maybe there’s something wrong. And she says, ‘Well, I’m at the hairdresser. I won’t be home for another hour at least.’ And then I knew she was cheating on me.”

Dehan asked him, “What did you do?”

“I said, ‘Baby, I want you to come home right now ’cause I’ve got something real important I need to talk to you about.’ And she could tell from my voice that it was serious. So she came right home. And I told her I had seen her at the bar and I had seen her with a man. And I wanted to know why she had lied to me, and who that man was.”

I held up a hand. “Before we go on, Mr. Shine, what was the name of the bar?”

“Oh, Teddy’s All Night Bar.”

“And the man you had seen her with, was this Jimmy?”

“That’s what she said. She said she only lied because she didn’t think I would understand. There was nothing romantic or sexual between them. He was just offering her a job.”

I frowned. “What kind of job?”

“Some kind of bullshit about production assistant in a production company. They got talking when she went there for a pizza at lunchtime one day. They got talking, she said she was looking for a job… I don’t need to tell you how it goes.”

Dehan said, “So what happened?”

“What happened was that I told her she was naïve, and that I didn’t want her seeing this guy anymore, and I didn’t want her going to bars on her own, even at lunch time. She promised but you know how it is, once you start suspecting, it’s real hard to shake it. So a couple of times I made an excuse at work and drove around the area. And it was maybe a week or ten days after I saw her in the bar, I saw her there again. Only this time they were holding hands. I felt sick. You can imagine. I waited till she came out and I followed her. She went home. I went up after her and I told her, ‘I saw you at the bar with that guy. You were holding hands. What’s going on?’ She told me they’d met a few times, they’d fallen in love.