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

badly damaged from having fallen onto, say, for argument’s sake, a garden rake. It might have been a hoe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, anything with a metal edge. Try to imagine how he would react. His daughter is lying there dying, choking to death, and Lee, the kid who has been threatening to blackmail him and destroy his future is right there, watching, perhaps bent over her...”

Dehan spoke almost dreamily, “He freaks. Rage and frustration overwhelm him. He goes crazy. He grabs the knife and plunges it into Leroy’s back, just as Emma is walking in. There is a moment or two of hysteria, and then they both realize they are going to have to call the cops and explain what happened. I don’t know which one of them decides, my money is on her, either way, one of them decides they have to make it look like Lea was killed by the same person who killed Lee. Otherwise, suspicion will fall on them. So they must alibi each other, and they must cut Lea’s throat. Marcus witnesses all this and goes into shock, which becomes chronic catatonic depression.”

Joe gave his head a sideways twitch. “That is heavy.”

Dehan narrowed her eyes at me. “But we are still left with the question, why the hell is Brad so willing to cooperate? Why is he willing to give us access to the kid, while Emma is so violently opposed? If they are coconspirators, they should be at one, but they’re not.”

“Because he is a very subtle psychologist with many years of experience, and he knows that if he opposes us we’ll go after him, whereas if he cooperates, behind the scenes he can pull strings, call in favors, and even manipulate Marcus if he decides to talk.”

Dehan dropped into the chair again. “So let me get this straight. We are now saying that Brad is the guy. We are saying that he killed Leroy and then Sonia Laplant, and that Lea was killed by accident.”

Joe turned to watch me. I thought about it for a few long seconds and finally shook my head and said, “I don’t know.”

Fifteen

We walked through the cold, dappled sunlight, under the whispering trees, toward

where Dehan had left the car. I had my cell to my ear and after a couple of rings Frank, the ME, answered.

“I’m busy, what do you want?”

“Aside from your babies?”

“You can have them. I’ll even pay you to come and take them away. While you’re at it, take my wife and her mother too. Again, what do you want?”

“You remember the Mitchell case…”

“Yeah, hard to forget, especially in light of the Sonia Laplant murder.”

“Right.” We had arrived at the car and I leaned against the trunk. Dehan leaned next to me. I put the phone on speaker. “So here’s what I am wondering: The girl, Lea, if she had been running, tripped and fell, and hit her throat on something hard, like the edge of a wheelbarrow, or a hoe or a rake, could that have been disguised as a knife wound by cutting her throat with the same knife that was used to stab Lee?”

He was quiet for so long I wondered whether he had walked away from the phone.

“Frank?”

“Yeah, I’m thinking. It’s pretty farfetched, but stranger things have happened. Yeah, possible, it’s certainly possible, sure. Why not? The cut would have to be rough, brutal and bruising. A razor or a scalpel would not do…”

“But the knife in that case was a rusty gardening knife.”

“Yes, I remember. The answer is yes, that kind of cut, administered very soon after the accident, could certainly conceal the original wound. Is that what you think happened?”

“I’m not sure yet, Frank. I’m just exploring ideas right now. Thanks.”

I hung up. Dehan opened the car.

“We need to pull them in.”

She climbed in and I got in beside her. She spoke as she fastened her belt.

“Brad in one room, Emma in the other, and we take turns good-copping and bad-copping them. Make ’em think the other is selling them down the river. ‘Brad says it was your idea to kill Leroy,’ ‘Emma says she came into the shed and saw you stab Leroy.’ Sooner or later one of them is going to crack.”

As we pulled out onto Morris Park I drummed a rapid tattoo on the vinyl dash and said, “What about Dr. Margaret Wagner?”

“What about her?”

“What’s her involvement in all this?”

She frowned at me. “Does she have to be involved?”

“I’m not sure. It seems to me that she and Brad have had plenty of opportunity to have sex.”

She glanced at me again with a curious smile. “Crude…”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. If their relationship was just sex, they have had plenty of opportunity. She’s single, we are assuming, at least to some degree, an open marriage…”

“What are you getting at, Stone?”

“Well, you saw the photographs. They looked like a couple. They went away together on a holiday or a break. They posed as a couple, in the same car, walking on the beach…” I trailed off. “I’ve never had an extramarital affair, but as far as I know they usually involve sneaking in and out of motels while nobody is looking. But what Brad Mitchell and Margaret Wagner have seems to be more of a relationship than an affair. I mean, how long has it been going on? Several years.”

“I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

Well, how likely is it that he would receive this threat of blackmail—a threat which affected her directly—and not tell her about it?”

“It’s not likely, at all.”

“So, I mean, I am just playing with ideas here, Dehan, but what if she was the sixth person at the house?”

“Jesus, Stone!”

“We have to consider that possibility, that all three of them were involved, like in The Orient Express.”

“So, what the hell…?”

I sighed, feeling like the blind guy who was leading the blind.

“OK, here’s what we do. Take me to Broadway, to collect my car. Then you go pick up Brad