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

Cyril. She said he was a pain in the ass and never spoke to anybody. He certainly gave no indication of where he was going, and nobody cared anyway. They were just glad to see him leave. The manager at the time died five years ago, so I couldn’t speak to him. So that was pretty much a dead end.”

“OK, how about his landlord?”

“Amir Javid. He now occupies the house Cyril had back then, corner of Thieriot and O’Brien. Apparently he has several properties he lets out, but this is the nicest, so he lives there now. He’s a chatty guy. He remembers Cyril because of the murder and he is happy to see us in the next half hour, if that suits us. How did you get on?”

I smiled over at Mo and raised my voice slightly. “The chief gave us the go ahead to fly to California as soon as we’re done with Javid.”

Mo turned a baleful stare on me.

I kept smiling at him and talking to Dehan. “He said he agrees with me that it is essential to the investigation that we fly to California as soon as possible, and take as long as we need there.”

Dehan snorted and Mo shook his head. “You, you two, you just… you’re so… yah!” He flapped his hand at me and turned back again to whatever it was he was doing.

Dehan stood and pulled on her coat, grinning. “What you working on, Mo? Something interesting? That mugging on Lafayette?”

“Go to hell!”

“First California,” I said, “then hell.”

We left behind us an unsympathetic silence.

Cyril had lived just one block from Sue’s apartment. It was the last house before the park, on the corner of Thieriot and O’Brien Avenue. Beyond the park was the river, and there was a freezing, blustery wind coming off the water when we arrived. The house was set back from the road among well-kept lawns, behind a very elaborate, green, wrought iron fence. The first thing I saw as I entered the drive was the garage, then a small path that led off to the side and took me to the front of the house. Javid saw us approaching through the living room window, waved and hurried to let us in.

“Please,” was his first word, as he opened the door and gestured us toward the living room, where a log fire was burning in the hearth. “Please,” he said again, “Make yourselves comfortable. My wife is making coffee. It is a most inhospitable day. Can I offer you anything else? Something to eat, perhaps?”

We showed him our badges, confirmed who we were, and I added, “Please don’t trouble your wife, Mr. Javid. We won’t take up much of your time.”

We sat in front of the fire, each of us perched on the edge of our chairs, as though we were all trying to get closer to the heat of the flames.

He said: “You want to know about Cyril Browne? There is not much I can tell you. He was a very private man. Always paid very punctually. No problems there at all. He gave me notice that he was leaving in two months, as per our contract…”

Dehan cut in. “Did he give you any idea why he was leaving, or where he was going?”

He became abstracted, winced slightly at the memory. “He didn’t speak very clearly. No, that isn’t true.” He tilted his head and wagged his finger in the negative. “That isn’t true. He spoke clearly enough, all right, but very quietly. So it was very difficult to catch the things that he said. And his face was always averted, as though he were ashamed or embarrassed by eye-contact. But, once I thought he said that he was going home. It was jumbled in with a lot of other stuff that he was saying, but I got that impression. ‘Time to go home,’ or ‘time to come home.’ Something like that. But why he was leaving? He never said anything about that. Unless,” he shrugged, “it was because it was time to go home!”

It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, so I asked: “How well did you know him, Mr. Javid? Did he ever talk to you about back home, about his family?”

Javid shook his head and smiled. “No, no, never anything like that.”

“Was there anything he said, any passing comments that might give us a clue as to the nature of the man, what made him tick, interests, anything…?”

He shook his head again. “No, no, as I say, he spoke little and what he said was very quiet. He certainly never invited intimacy, friendship or conversation.”

He paused and Dehan gave me a look that was eloquent of despair. We were up against a brick wall and I could sense her thinking this was going to be the case we couldn’t crack. But I could also see Javid frowning, hesitating. I said, “What is it, Mr. Javid? However insignificant it may seem, it might turn out to be helpful.”

“Well, there was one thing…” A look of severity came over his face and his lips stretched into a tight, thin line. “It is a little embarrassing, but, after he had gone, while I was cleaning up and making the place ready for the next tenants, I found, tucked down the side of the cushion on his preferred armchair, a card.”

I frowned. “What kind of card?”

“A business card, belonging to a woman. Her name was Xara, with an ‘X’,  X-A-R-A, and she offered services that were very explicitly sexual. I do not know why America permits this kind of thing. Imagine if a family with children had taken the house, and found that card! It is very immoral and offensive to God.”

I looked at Dehan and she was frowning back at me. I said, “Mr. Javid, this could be extremely important.