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

the background against which the crime was committed.” I offered her a smile which was not unkind and added, “You have already admitted with your silence that you did have an affair with Dr. Mitchell. If you hadn’t, you’d have had no problem telling us so, very firmly, I would imagine. What we need to know is when it started and, if it finished, when?”

She was not happy. “If I am not a suspect, I am not under arrest…”

I knew where she was going, and so did Dehan. She beat me to the punch and cut her off.

“June, 2014, were you together?”

Her face clamped up, but her eyes spoke volumes. Then her mouth joined in. “I think I’d like you to leave now.”

I nodded once, looking out of her window at the cold, green landscape, silent and still through triple glazing. “Sure,” I said, and shifted my gaze to meet her eyes. “But please bear in mind, Dr. Wagner, that if we decide you are a material witness, or even a suspect, we can have you picked up and taken into custody with a whole fleet of patrol cars, all with flashing lights and wailing sirens. If you were not involved in the murder, but you have relevant information, it is always in your interest to cooperate with us.”

Her voice was almost a whisper. “What murder?”

“Were you lovers in June 2014?”

She didn’t answer. I stood and took a card from my wallet and handed it to her. “Call me or Detective Dehan at these numbers, any time, day or night. If we’re not at the precinct they’ll forward the call.”

Dehan pulled the door open. She paused as I went through it and turned back toward Dr. Wagner. “The victims were children, Doctor. Think about it.”

We made our way down the marble stairs among cold echoes and crossed the gloomy hall, out into the bright, crisp noonday sun. In the car, we cut through White Plains and took Bloomingdale Road south until it became Mamaroneck Avenue. We followed that till we came to Lombardo’s on the left. There I did a U-turn and pulled into the large parking lot.

“Pizza and lamb chops,” I said to Dehan, “and cold beer.”

She shook her head. “No, oysters, pizza, lamb chops and cold beer.”

“You’re right.” I nodded and we climbed out of the ancient growler.

We found a booth and gave our order. Dehan drummed her fingers on the table and drew breath. I said, “It’s too soon to start formulating theories, Dehan.”

“I say to you what Nero Wolfe would say to you.”

“And what would that be?”

“Phooey!”

I laughed. “Fine, let’s hear it. And then you can tell me what it’s based on.”

The beers arrived and she took a pull, then wiped the foam from her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You told Wagner she had pretty much confessed to having an affair with Mitchell when she refused to answer…”

“That was a bluff, Dehan, and has no probative value at all…”

“Shut up and listen, Stone. Sure, it has no probative value in court, but we’re not in court. It’s just you and me, nosing around. We both know if she hadn’t been having an affair she would have told us so right away.” She made a scandalized face. “What, me? And Brad? Are you out of your minds?”

I smiled. “Fine. I’ll shut up.”

“Well, the same applies to the date. When we asked her if they were involved in June 2014, if they hadn’t been she would have taken that way out and told us no way.”

“Why?”

“Because clearly the date tied their affair to the murder in some way, might even make one of them a suspect. If the date had been wrong she would have seized on that with both hands. Instead, she freaked out. She clammed up and told us to leave. That means one thing and one thing only, Stone. She was with him at that time.”

“Maybe.”

“Phooey, sir!”

“I think I preferred it when you read Mickey Spillane.”

“They had an affair and they were involved in June 2014, when those kids were killed. That’s what we came here to find out, and that’s what we found out. Now I am going to ask you the kind of question you ask: what was it about their being involved at that time that made us want to know?”

“I think I might have phrased it more tersely, with more brevity.”

“Whatever. So what was it about their having an affair at that time that was important to us? Answer: if they were having an affair at that time it increased the possibility that Brad might have reacted to Leroy’s blackmail by killing him. Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“So?”

“So we continue with the investigation, for now, but I am still finding it very hard to believe that Mitchell would kill his own daughter. Maybe when we meet him I’ll change my mind. But right now it does not fit his profile at all. A liberal academic who adopts an orphan because he reads about him in the papers and feels compassion for him, is not the obvious choice for killing his five-year-old daughter to cover up the murder of that same adopted orphan.” She grunted and I went on. “Besides, Sunday midmorning, with all the family there, is not the ideal time. Surely he could have chosen a better opportunity.”

She grunted again. A moment later the waitress arrived with the oysters. She left and we sat in relative silence, making only those noises you make when you’re eating oysters. When Dehan had devoured the last of those edible, bivalve mollusks, and I had drawn off two-thirds of my beer, I smacked my lips and said, “There is something else.”

She picked up a paper napkin and wiped her mouth. “What?”

“Leah, Mitchell’s daughter, was killed with a knife.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So was Leroy.”

“OK…”

“And so were Leroy’s mother and father.”

She frowned hard at me. “You are reaching, Stone.”

I screwed up my napkin and dropped it by my plate. “In 2019, six thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight people were