Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (best ereader for academics .txt) 📕

We crossed the front yard. Dehan pulled away the tape from the door, unlocked it and we stepped inside. It was dark, and there was a silence in the place that comes with death. It was a quiet saturated with stillness. The door that had mystified me turned out to be the kitchen door. The kitchen, along with the dining area, took up the whole of the ground floor, and the chimney I’d seen from the car was a flue that rose from an old, blue iron range that stood to the right as you went in. It looked like an antique, and it was spotless.

The floors were hardwood and highly polished. There was a table in the middle of the floor with four chairs placed evenly around it. A doily in the exact centre held a vase of plastic flowers. There was an oak dresser against one wall that also appeared to be an antique. Beside it, a wine rack held twenty-four bottles of wine. I examined them. They were all Spanish, twelve from Rioja and twelve from Ribera del Duero.

After that, I went methodically through the drawers. They were well ordered and, like everything else in the kitchen, very clean. Dehan was watching me with her hands in her back pockets.

“What are you looking for?”

“Agnes Shine.”

“You think she’s hiding in the cutlery drawer?”

“This house belongs to a highly ordered eccentric who doesn’t like high maintenance relationships.”

She smiled and pulled off her hat. “You’re something, Stone.”

“No flowers.” I pointed at the vase. “Plastic.”

An arch in the left-hand wall gave onto a narrow entrance with a door into the carport, and a flight of stairs that led to the upper floor. These were wood too, and carpeted in an ugly, dark green. They creaked as we climbed.

On the upper floor, there was a landing. At the back, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The front of the house was taken up by a large living room. Here there was an open fireplace with a white marble surround. Another antique. Two tall windows overlooked the long lawn and the street. There were low, heavy, wooden bookcases along all the walls, holding books on just about everything, but there was no fiction. Nor were there ornaments, nor pictures on the walls. There were four large, attractive lamps, evenly spaced, and a single overhead bulb with a green shade.

An old television was positioned in the corner, near the fireplace. Opposite, there was a brown sofa upholstered in suede. On either side, at an angle, there were two matching armchairs. One of them was caked with dry blood and peppered with small, black holes.

The silence was total.

Dehan pointed at the windows. “Triple glazing. Probably why the neighbors didn’t hear anything.”

I nodded and took my pen from my inside pocket. I crouched down beside the chair and slipped my pen into three of the bullet holes. Dehan said, “What?”

I shook my head and made a ‘nothing’ face, then stood. “The sofa and the chairs, they are based on the design of Coco Chanel’s sofa at the Ritz. They are very good imitations. That’s buffalo hide. You’re looking at sixty thousand bucks’ worth of furniture right there, Dehan.”

“Sixty grand?”

I nodded. “So he’s sitting in that chair. He’s got a glass of wine on that table, beside him. According to the photograph, she’s probably sitting on that chair on the other side of the sofa, because that’s where the other glass was, and the bottle. Does that seem odd to you?”

“A little.” She shrugged. “But she’s mad at him, remember? Usually they’d probably both be snuggled up on the sofa, watching a movie or something. But today she’s mad at him. So they’re a bit uptight, formal, they’re sitting on chairs having what he thinks is going to be an adult conversation to sort out their problems. Instead, she’s got this Sig.”

I nodded. “She’s got it here, concealed somewhere, ready to shoot him, or maybe she’s left it in her room. She’s thinking if he comes through, she’ll forgive him. But he doesn’t, he just makes her mad, so she gets up, goes to her room, collects the weapon, comes back and lets rip.”

“Eight shots, that’s a pretty mad woman.”

“Yeah. From the photograph, I’d say she was standing here, in the middle of the floor.”

I positioned myself halfway between the two chairs, about seven or eight feet from where Jose had been sitting. Dehan frowned. “So that looks like she went and got the gun, right? Because if she was sitting in the other chair, where her glass was, why would she get up and go over there to shoot him? And, if she had, he would have got up, tried to run or take the gun. So like you said, she’s left the room, got the weapon, and come back to where you are, and shot him.”

I nodded slowly, looked around the room, and stared at Dehan. “There are several things troubling me, Dehan, but you know what’s troubling me the most?”

She smiled. “No, but two gets you twenty it’ll be something that annoys me.”

“I can’t even smell a motive.”

TWO

She pulled off her coat, walked away and stood staring out at the street. Her silhouette against the cold, gray light was long and slim. After a moment, she turned and sat on the windowsill.

“They were close. They were probably having an affair. He was going to ditch her, or there was another woman; story as old as hormones. We don’t know anything about them yet.”

“I know…” I looked around the room. “But does this look to you like a place where there was a crime of passion? Even the wine glasses have coasters.”

“What are you getting