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

She swiped the screen a couple of times and said, “It’s from the inspector.” She glanced at me. “Cyril’s financials.” She looked back at the screen and spoke absently. “I guess they’re pretty much irrelevant now.”

After that, she was quiet for a while, reading, swiping occasionally, then reading some more.

“That’s odd.”

I glanced at her as I turned onto South Wells Avenue. “What is?”

She frowned out the windshield at the long road ahead. “He disappeared from New York in the early hours of November 1st. He showed up in Reno November 8th and killed himself November 10th.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He booked a ticket on October fifteenth, flying from San Francisco to Geneva on November 12th.”

We were quiet for the length of the avenue. I turned right into Plumb Lane and then right again into a large shopping mall with a parking lot. There I saw a bar called Shenanigan’s Old English Pub and decided the gods were smiling on me that day. I parked outside and we went in. Dehan was still reading Cyril’s financial records on my phone.

I ordered two pints of best bitter and two Chicago beef melts. We found a table and sat. I put down the beers and she put down my phone, took a sip and said, “There was no activity at all on his account, or his credit card, after November 10th.”

I gave a nod. “There wouldn’t be if he was dead. But we need to have a very close look at those records. What was the state of his account on the morning of the 10th?”

“One hundred and ten dollars.”

I took a pull and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “He wasn’t going very far on that in Geneva, was he?”

She stared at me a while, half wincing, like her mind hurt. “What the hell was he planning to do in Geneva?”

“What is Geneva famous for, Dehan?”

“Banks…?” She looked away. “What the hell was he up to?” I drew breath, but she held up a hand. “No, wait, I got this. Just let me think for a minute.”

The waitress came with the beef melts, told us to enjoy and went away. I was halfway through mine when Dehan looked at me and said: “He had built a whole, damn fantasy in his mind. Like his sister said he did. You know what?” Her cheeks colored. “I could take Fernando and beat seven bales of shit out of that son of a bitch.” She pointed at me. “Sue and Cyril didn’t get close the night of the party. They were already getting close, but as friends. Anyone who managed to get below the surface with Cyril says the same thing: He was a nice guy. And Sue was a nice girl. And because of Fernando’s interfering, they started to get to know each other. Trouble is, Cyril fell in love and built this big fantasy about her. He was planning something.” She paused, staring at nothing. “He was smart and I am willing to bet my next paycheck that he was planning some kind of heist, robbery, swindle—some smart way to make a lot of money. And in his fantasy, him and Sue were going to escape together to Switzerland, where he was opening, or had opened, a bank account. That is why he was going to Switzerland and that is why there was practically no money in his account. Because he had already transferred it.”

I spoke around a mouthful of food. “If I suggested something like that to you, you’d tell me it was a hell of a reach based on very little.”

“Think about it, Stone. He hands in his notice at work, why? Because he won’t need to work anymore. He hands in his notice with his landlord. Why? Because he won’t need to live there anymore. He goes to Switzerland. Why? For the banks. His account, despite the fact that he is moving house, is empty! Why? Because he has transferred the funds to another account. I bet when I look at these records properly, I will find a large transfer just before Halloween 2006.”

I nodded. “I am sure you will.”

She finally picked up her melt. “And I’ll tell you something else, that son of a bitch Fernando and his pal Giorgio killed Sue and framed Cyril. As far as I am concerned they may as well have put a gun to his head and shot him too. And they are going down for it.”

Twelve

We got back to Elk Grove at shortly before 8 PM. Dehan had managed to book two seats on a Jet Blue flight out of Sacramento at just before midnight, landing at JFK at ten past 8 in the morning, just five hours later. So we packed, had a light supper at the Little Buddha Thai restaurant and tried to sleep the best we could on the plane.

The best we could was about three hours and we climbed off next morning, in a dark, frozen, cloudy New York, feeling ragged and unhappy. We found the Jaguar in the parking garage where we had left it, and it whispered to me of home, of log fires and a long sleep on the sofa. I told Dehan what the Burgundy Beast had whispered to me and she frowned disapproval, first at me and then at my car. Her expression said we should meet with the inspector and decide on a strategy for proving Fernando and Giorgio’s guilt. I pretended not to notice and unlocked the trunk.

It was as we were chucking our bags in that my phone rang. It was the inspector.

“Good morning, sir. I hope you had a good sleep. We managed a little less than three hours.”

Dehan made a face that was