Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #4: Books 13-16 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (read aloud books TXT) 📗

floor, heavy linen chairs and a sofa were scattered with careful abandon around the fire, and at the far end of the room there was a massive, wooden table that seemed to be hand-made out of raw hunks of tree. Each of the six chairs around it was different, but carefully so. Everywhere there were paintings; some on the walls, others stacked against the walls in reams of five and six, and everywhere there was the small of turpentine. A giant easel stood near the fireplace, with a large semi-abstract nude on it. I stood and looked at it for a moment, thinking how far we had come from Picasso. To him an abstract was an abstraction of form. This was just an ugly distortion of it.

I turned my attention to Giorgio. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I noticed he was barefoot. Looking at him made me feel cold, but I realized the room was very warm.

He gestured at us, and there was mockery in his eyes, a mockery I figured was habitual. “You can take off your coats. I got triple glazing, and the fire makes a lot of heat, you know?”

He fell onto the sofa, with his arms thrown carelessly along the back, and watched us sit, unbuttoning our coats. His expression seemed to suggest that he was both wise and liberated, and that we drones of the ‘Establishment’ were endemically stupid and did stupid things, like wearing coats in warm rooms. He looked at Dehan as she dragged off her hat.

“You should wear your hair down, guajira, it suits the shape of your face, and your neck.”

She sighed. “Gee, thanks, Sancho.”

A spasm of irritation crossed his face. “What do you want to know about Sue? It was a long time ago.”

Dehan spoke, looking at her hat. “How close were you two?”

“You mean was I fuckin’ her?”

She frowned hard, still looking at her woolen hat, then placed it on her lap and turned to him. “Is that what I asked you?”

He spread out his arms and crossed his bare ankles, smiling at how stupid the whole damn world was. “I’m just asking. You know, people are usually so scared to talk about sex. They use this crazy euphemisms…”

“What did I ask you?”

“Sure, but I thought maybe…”

“I asked you how close you were. You want to answer the question instead of offering me half-assed theories about social repression? Would that be OK?”

“Woah!” He held up his hands. “Hostile, baby!”

I sighed. My stomach was telling me it was lunch time and this guy was standing between me and lunch. I said, “Mr. Gonzalez, would you mind answering the question, please? The question was very clear. It doesn’t need interpreting. How close were you to Sue Benedict?”

“My apologies, man. Just trying to be clear. She was my private student. I think at one time she maybe had a thing for me. A lot of my students do. We became friends. That was about it.”

“What about in the rest of the group? Was there anyone else she was close to?”

His face was a perfect blank, like the question didn’t mean anything to him. He gave his head a small shake. “I don’t know.”

Dehan said: “You met three times a week?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lot of dedication on their part.”

“What can I tell you? I’m a good teacher, there was a nice feeling in the class, we had a good groove, you know what I’m saying? We’d put on some music, have a little wine, and paint, man. Paint the night away!”

He laughed and Dehan smiled. “So you had a good rapport with your students. Did they confide in you, discuss their feelings with you? Was it that kind of thing?”

He gave a lopsided smile which you got the feeling he’d practiced a lot in front of the mirror. “Hey, babe, I am just a private art teacher, you know what I’m telling you? You gonna hear some lost souls out there say I got a lot of natural wisdom and insight into people’s souls. I did my peyote back home with the shaman, I seen my eagle, but I am just a regular guy who knows how to paint. Maybe…”

I sighed loudly. “Mr. Gonzalez, you’re preaching to the choir. I believe you. You convinced me. You are just an ordinary guy and if I need philosophy, I will go to John Locke or David Hume. Believe me, I won’t come to you. We are not asking for insights into anybody’s soul. All we want to know is whether Sue had any close relationships in the group, or if anybody was trying to get close to her.”

He watched me a moment, shaking his head. “Hey, man, you guys are real hostile, you know that? I invited you into my home, and you’re coming at me with this shit.”

Dehan stared down at her boots. “Is there any reason, Mr. Gonzalez, why you don’t want to answer this very simple question? Did Sue have any close relationships within the group?”

“No.” He shook his head and was beginning to look mad. “No reason, and no close relationships.”

“What about with Fernando?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Fernando?” He shrugged. “They fooled around a bit, you know what I mean? She liked to flirt, liked to play around, but she was never serious about Fernando. Fernando is a pendejo. I love that guy, but you can never take him seriously. He’s a player, always on the surface, playing games. He never goes deep, you feel me?”

The question was directed at Dehan, with what he probably thought were smoldering eyes.

I asked, “So there was no rivalry between you and Fernando for Sue’s affection?”

He threw his head back, with his arms along the back of the sofa, and laughed out loud. It was too loud and went on