Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (types of ebook readers txt) 📕

but he was doing OK. He was becoming successful. I don’t remember anything about his wife, except that Mom used to say it was a shame he didn’t look out for her rights as much as he did for the crooks he helped set free. That was my mom all over. So those four used to hang out, have barbeques and talk the good talk.”

“And these are…?”

She seemed to nod with her whole body while she spoke. “These are the parents of our vics. Now, shut up while I tell you. Mom never hung out with them. They invited her to a couple of barbeques but she never went. And after a while, she stopped hanging out so much with Rosario, because, she said, there was too much cuchi cuchi.”

“Cuchi cuchi…?”

“Hanky panky.”

“So what, there was wife-swapping going…?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Or husband swapping. I don’t know, Mom was never more specific. She was pretty straight-laced and it may have been no more than flirting while drunk. Point is, it only took Rosario to tell her about a couple of these get-togethers, and Mom stopped seeing her so much.”

“So what happened?”

“Give me a chance and I’ll tell you. Next thing, Mom doesn’t hear from Rosario for a while, it might have been a couple of weeks, I’m not sure, and suddenly she turns up dead. Turns out, according to the cops, she’s been raped and murdered.”

“And they never caught who did it.”

“Not even a suspect.”

“And Angela is Rosario’s daughter. Where’s the dad?”

“She was a widow. I don’t remember her husband. He left her a pension or something.”

“And she was killed in that house?”

She looked at me and nodded. “In that same house.”

I looked out at the limpid light and the sleepy storefronts of Morris Avenue. Sunrise was still an hour away and the cars and the streetlamps seemed to be hung with amber dreams, still warm from the beds where people slept behind dark windows. For a moment, I envied those sleeping bodies. And then I pitied the two we were going to wake, to tell them their son was in hospital, shot in the chest.

Outside Rosario’s house.

“They’re connected. That is a simple fact.” I turned toward Dehan. Her face was momentarily washed with orange light, then went into shadow again. “But the connection doesn’t seem to mean anything. It may well be that the people are connected, but the crimes are not. If they are not, this is not a cold case.”

She sighed, then shrugged. “So we inform the families, make some initial inquiries, report to the Inspector later this morning, and see what he says.”

I nodded absently. My brain said that made sense. My gut said my brain didn’t know what it was talking about.

Three

We pulled into Herring Avenue. I said something about it being a fishy address, but Dehan didn’t laugh. It was a broad, attractive street with large, detached houses and well-tended front lawns. She pulled up outside a double-fronted red brick with two horse chestnuts standing guard by some stone steps that made a path through a slightly over-ornate garden. We looked at each other. Dehan heaved a big sigh and we got out. The doors slammed and echoed in the stillness. We climbed the steps to a white door and I leaned on the bell several times. After a minute, a sash window opened above, and an angry voice shouted down.

“Who the hell is it? Get the hell out of here or I’ll call the cops!”

I stepped back out into view and looked up at him. I held my badge so he could see it.

“Detectives Stone and Dehan, sir. Are you Eduardo Irizarry?”

He scowled. He was a thick-set man of about forty, with a balding head, hairy shoulders, and dark, Hispanic features.

“I am he,” he said, rather pompously. “What the hell is this about? Can’t it wait to a more civilized hour?”

Hell was a word he seemed to like. I thought sourly that it was a place he was soon going to become familiar with.

“Mr. Irizarry, we need to talk to you, in private…” I looked with meaning up and down the street.

He hesitated.

I said, “It’s about your son…”

He closed the window and after a moment, a light showed through the glass panels in the front door. Next thing, the door opened to reveal Ed Irizarry wearing a silk dressing gown and a foul expression.

“What the hell is this about?”

I tried to suppress the anger that was beginning to warm my belly, but failed. I said, brutally, “Your son has been shot. He is in hospital in a critical state, but we can come back at a more civilized hour if it’s inconvenient now.”

Dehan’s eyebrows rose high on her forehead and she turned to stare at me. Irizarry went a pasty gray color. “Good God… Shot? By whom…?”

“Do you think we can come in, sir? This is probably not something you want to discuss in front of all your neighbors.”

He nodded once, then again several times and stepped back. “Yes, yes, of course… Come in.”

He led us through a large, middle-class house that was in fancy dress, pretending to be a Rococo palace. Evidently we weren’t the kind of people he would have in any of his drawing rooms, so he led us to the kitchen, which was not so much Rococo as Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He switched on the lights and stood staring at us with his mouth slightly open, like he’d expected us to be somebody else when the lights came on.

After a moment, I said, “Mr. Irizarry, perhaps you should get your wife.”

He frowned. “Mary?”

“Is that your wife’s name?”

“Yes, of course it is!”

I nodded. “Then that is who you should get. She needs to