Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) by Blake Banner (most inspirational books of all time .TXT) 📗

before she saw the article about the clinic and Dr. Wagner. In fact, it was that anger which prompted her to bring the article to me. I want to know what sparked that anger, and why she didn’t tell me about it when she came to see me. What she told me was that the Mitchells were good people, and Lee should have been grateful to them.”

She watched me for a moment, then said, “I know that look on your face, Stone. You think you already know what made her mad.”

“Do I? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m not sure.”

She pointed her finger at me. “You better not be cutting me out, Stone! It makes me really mad when you do that! I am not Dr. John Watson, here to make your brilliance shine brighter by contrast!”

I frowned and gave my head a small shake. “That is such a hurtful, unkind thing to say, Dehan.”

“Jackass!” She made for the driver’s side and opened the door, then pointed at me across the roof. “Sofa. Sofa tonight.”

“More unkindness.”

“Sofa!”

“You’ll come looking for me when the night grows cold and dark. You’ll see.”

“Sofa!”

And she slammed the door.

Twelve

The chief was watering the bonsai tree on his windowsill when we entered his office. Dehan stood staring at the tree as he gestured us to the chairs at his desk. I always had the feeling with Inspector John Newman that instead of talking to the senior officer at a police precinct in the Bronx, I was visiting a kindly but absentminded uncle somewhere in deepest New England.

Dehan pointed at the small tree. “Japanese, right?”

“Indeed, Carmen. In fact, the term ‘bon-sai’ is Japanese and means literally, ‘planted in a pot’ or ‘planted in a container.’ The art of cultivating bonsai trees originated in ancient China, but was brought to its highest artistic expression in Japan, among Zen Buddhists.”

“And the idea,” she said, “is to care for it and tend to it, so it doesn’t grow?”

He roared with laughter, sat in his chair chuckling and nodded. “Yes, that is precisely it, yes.” He chortled some more and, as we sat, asked, “So, what can I do for you?”

I told him, “We’ve just come from Sonia Laplant’s house, sir. Her nephew, you recall, was Leroy Brown, the boy adopted by the Mitchells…”

“Ah, yes, the Mitchell case you’re working on.”

“Well, Sonia Laplant has been murdered, sir. Three shots to the chest with a .22. There was no sign of forced entry or robbery, attempted or otherwise. So it seems reasonable to assume she allowed her killer in, he was known to her and was there for the purpose of killing her. That being the case, sir, it also seems reasonable to assume the murderer has something to do with our investigation.”

He made a noise that suggested he thought I was making assumptions I wasn’t entitled to. Dehan pushed up her sleeves and tied her hair behind her neck as she spoke.

“Here’s the thing, sir. Sonia was involved a long-term relationship with Dr. Garrido, the director of the Bronx Rehabilitation Clinic. He was the one who drew to her attention the article about Dr. Brad Mitchell opening a new clinic in White Plains, and installing Dr. Wagner as the director.”

He raised a hand. “As I recall, you told me the boy Leroy wanted to blackmail Dr. Mitchell because he believed he and Wagner were having an affair.”

Dehan answered. “That’s right. And Brad Mitchell told us that he had a feeling Sonia might have been involved in that blackmail attempt. Now, what’s interesting about her murder, sir, is that according to Dr. Garrido, Sonia had become obsessed with Brad Mitchell some three or four weeks before Garrido showed her the article about the clinic.”

“Obsessed in what way?”

“Angry, accusing him of killing the kids…”

I stepped in. “Something happened, about a month ago, that triggered this obsession in Sonia. According to Garrido, suddenly Brad Mitchell was all she could talk about. She apparently called him a skunk and stated that he had betrayed his wife. She said he deserved to be exposed for what he was, a man capable of killing his own daughter, as well as Lee. Now, I think it is very important that we find out what it was that triggered that obsession a month ago. Because it is that obsession that brings her to the article—Garrido only showed it to her because she was talking about him so much—and with the article, to me. And just twenty-four hours after she comes to me with that article, she is murdered.”

He made a deep, rumbling, hmmm… sound. Then added, “Something tells me you are going to ask me to authorize something controversial.”

“I am going to go through all her emails and every other form of communication she had that I can lay my hands on, focusing on the period four to five weeks ago.”

“Good.”

“I also plan to go through her financials. I don’t know exactly why, but I need to know what she was doing and what was going on a month ago. Did she go somewhere, did she have an extra large expense or receipt…?” I shrugged. “Something happened that turned her against Dr. Brad Mitchell. We don’t know what. But I have a pretty strong hunch we’ll find out from her communications and her bank account.”

He arched an eyebrow at me and rumbled. “I suppose you’re right. But you are of course at liberty to do both those things. What do you want from me?”

“I want to look at Dr. Brad Mitchell’s communications and his financials too, and his wife’s.”

“Good heavens, John! On what grounds? They are the victims, for heaven’s sake.”

“Are they? There is one pretty persuasive theory—held by Sonia Laplant, incidentally—that says Leroy was blackmailing Brad Mitchell, and Brad Mitchell killed him for it.”

He frowned a frown that was almost a scowl. The chief didn’t like ideas that involved kindly middle-class fathers killing adopted children.

“You consider that theory is persuasive?”

“I do when it turns out