Dead Cold Mystery Box Set 1

by Blake Banner

  “John, I am very frightened, and I would like to go now.”

  “We are almost done, Emma. I am just trying to ensure your safety in the future. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, and I am very grateful.”

  “Stone! Let me see the box!”

  “In just a moment, dos Santos. I just have a couple of questions I need to ask Emma.”

  Her eyes fixed on me. “Questions?”

  I laughed. “All these years as a cop, it’s become a habit. I have to understand how things happened the way they did. You know what I mean? Like last night, when you just reached over, cool as a cucumber, picked up Ronaldo’s gun, and boom! And then you were about to pop Geronimo here, too. See? I don’t understand that. I don’t understand what made you do that.”

  “I panicked.”

  “You panicked? I can understand you panicking when he’s holding the gun. But after he laid it on the table, and I finally had these fucking idiots talking, then you panicked? Then you pick up the gun, and with no provocation at all, you kill him?”

  She stared hard at her hands in her lap. “Yes.”

  I blew out through my teeth. Dos Santos was watching me like a hawk. I said, “I have to tell you, Emma, you panic with a hell of a lot of cool. Because, you were as cold as ice. And when you went through that door after dos Santos, and you stopped and adopted that stance, you looked just like a pro. You sure you’re not CIA undercover?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “So explain it. How come you were so cold? How come the professional shooting stance?”

  “Training.”

  “Training? What kind of training?”

  “When I moved to the States and Tammy explained to me the kind of trouble she was in, I took several firearms courses, to advanced degree. I suppose it kicked in last night.”

  “Huh. That’s a good answer.”

  “It happens to be the truth.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Yes, Stone, enough of this stupid inquisition. Let us finalize the deal and be done with it.”

  “I am almost done, dos Santos. Let’s see a little of that Christian patience.”

  “It is becoming tiresome, John.”

  “I know. Just bear with me. I am just curious about Tammy.”

  She sighed.

  “What about her? It’s a shame you didn’t bring her. She could have answered these questions herself. You know, she and Duffy got real close. He was, and still is, crazy about her. What I have never understood, from the very beginning, is why she left him? At first I thought she was in love with that loser Steve. But it turns out she hated him enough to shoot him in the heart. So if she was after the kind of money this…” I lifted up the box and waved it at her. “… this box could bring her, why didn’t she just stay with Duffy?”

  “I suppose she just didn’t love him.”

  “Nah.” I shook my head. “Shall I tell you what I think?”

  “I suppose we can’t stop you.”

  “I think she had every intention of going back to Duffy. She is too smart a cookie to pass up a chance like that. But after losing her parents, twice, and her sister, she was not about to start trusting anyone, ever again. What she needed, what she was hungry for, was a fortune of her own. Money in the bank, that is something you can trust. And the only reason she went to see Steve was to have him fence the goods. He was the only connection she had with the criminal underworld. She went to him to help her find a buyer. It was a stupid thing to do.”

  Dos Santos was sweating. “An interesting theory. Now, can we please get on…”

  I sighed. “I guess you were having her tailed, right? It’s the obvious thing to do. And when she took off to the Big Apple, you came after her. You hired Danny to get a couple of heavies together and go and pay her and Steve a visit. Danny picked the Sanchez brothers, and they dropped in on Steve while Tammy was there. This is pure deduction, but I’m pretty sure it’s as near as dammit to what happened.” I watched Emma’s face as I spoke. “They’re laying into Steve, asking him where the box is. Tammy is begging them to leave him alone, but she can see that even the promise of all that cash is not enough to keep his mouth shut. He is going to spill. Especially when they start talking about mutilation and killing. So she makes a play. She pretends she is going for the box, but what she pulls out of the drawer is a .38 revolver that she has persuaded her husband to bring to her from San Francisco.”

  Emma was staring at her hands. She didn’t say anything. Dos Santos looked like a man trying to crush a wasp between his buttocks. He suddenly erupted. “Yes! You are correct in every particular as far as I am concerned. You are a clever man. Unfortunately, Tammy is not here to confirm her part. Now! At last! Are we done?”

  “Almost. Tammy knows that Steve is no longer any damn use to her, plus there is the risk that he is going to talk. So she blows him away. She knows that Danny and the Sanchez boys are going to be in shock for a couple of seconds. Nobody expected cute little Tammy to pull a gun, much less be able to use it. So she blows a hole in Ernesto, too. Danny panics and runs. Now she has a choice: kill Alfonso or go after Danny. She goes after Danny because he is going to report back to you, dos Santos. Trouble is, she loses him in the night, and meantime, Alfonso helps Ernesto to get away, leaving the crime scene that would later go cold. Ernesto died and wound up in the river. Which left Danny. And here is where it gets a bit weird.”

  Her voice was wooden. “Weird how?”

  “Weird because Danny got murdered just a few months later, by a very elegant, beautiful woman with short black hair and green eyes and a deep Southern drawl. She picked him up in a bar and left with him and then shot him.”

  Geronimo was frowning.

  Emma shrugged. “He was mugged by a hooker.”

  “No, that won’t wash. I told you that Tammy made a few mistakes, and this was one of them. I guess she was desperate. But she made the mistake of shooting him with the same gun she used to kill Steve.”

  She looked at me like I was crazy. “You just said she was a sophisticated woman with a Southern drawl, black hair, and green eyes. I can’t imagine a woman less like Tamara. Really, John, this has gone on too long. For goodness’ sake, let’s end it! Keep the bloody money! I don’t want it! Just let me get back to Tammy and start over!”

  “Relax. That is exactly what I intend to do.”

  And then there was a ring at the door.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dos Santos stood. He was trembling. “What now?”

  Emma looked really scared. I picked up the box again. “Come on, have you lost all your faith in human greed? It’s nothing.”

  I stood, crossed the room, and stood with my hand on the door handle. “You see, I kept turning it over, again and again, and whichever way I looked at it, it just didn’t make sense.” I opened the door and smiled. “Hi, just hold on one second, would you?” I walked back a couple of steps so that I could look at dos Santos and Emma where they were sitting, watching me anxiously. “And then one evening, it hit me. It was obvious. I did my research on Google, and there it was.” I turned back to the door and said, “Come on in. Join the party.”

  Dos Santos jumped to his feet. Emma went white. Hugh Duffy saw dos Santos first and smiled at him amiably. “Why, hello! I didn’t expect to see you here. It’s been a long time…” He advanced toward him with his hand held out, and as he did so, he caught sight of Emma. He started saying, “Oh, forgive me…” then stopped and did a kind of double take. Her expression was one of absolute horror. He faltered, stared at me, and then back at Emma. “Tammy?”

  She shook her head furiously. “No!”

  Dos Santos’ jaw dropped. “What?”

  I picked up a glass and poured a generous measure of whiskey into it. I handed it to Duffy. “Sit down, Mr. Duffy, and have a drink. You are going to need one.”

  He stared at me and then at the glass, like he didn’t understan
d what either of us were doing in his life. Then he sat. I put the glass in front of him. He ignored it and shook his head at Emma.

  “Your hair… you look so different. What happened? Why… I don’t understand.”

  I sat again and put the box on the table in front of me. “It is a rare gift that some actors have. Boris Karloff had it; Meryl Streep was another. It’s a kind of chameleon effect, where they take on a role to such an extent that they actually become a different person. The change inside is so profound that they actually appear to change physically. But with Tammy, I think it went deeper even than that, didn’t it, Emma? Because I don’t think even the Tammy you met, dos Santos, was the real Tammy. I don’t think there ever was a real Tammy. I think there was just a hollow shell, searching for an identity, sustained by an unquestionable talent for drama.

  “The first thing that struck me about your house, when I went there, was that there was absolutely no identity in it. Just the picture of your parents, the books by Stanislavski, and a couple of self-help books. Not a single thing to show who Tamara was. Only the scrapbook.”

  “I am not Tammy. I am Emma.”

  Duffy stared at me. “What is going on, Stone. Who is Emma?”

  “Emma? Emma was Tammy’s sister. She died when Tammy was five. But recently, I suspect Tammy has revived her, to keep herself safe in a world where everybody she loves gets snatched away from her. In the end, she came to rely so much on Emma’s strength that she became Emma completely, and Tammy, in fear for her life, hid away inside, where nobody could find her.”

  Emma curled up in her chair and began to sob. Dos Santos still looked like he’d seen his own ghost. “How did I not see?”

  “It struck me yesterday, when you said you had only seen Tammy very briefly. Even then, I figure you were focusing more on what Hugh Duffy was going to be seeing than on what you were actually seeing at the time. With two years in between, some skillful makeup, and Tammy’s talent, I thought it was possible she could pull the wool over your eyes. Even so, she took the precaution of seeing you out on the terrace, by moonlight. It also made sense of why she was more keen to kill you than to get your money. When we had you nailed down and ready to deal, instead of closing, she went and blew the whole thing by trying to kill you. It made sense when I realized, if you had recognized her at any point, she would be screwed three ways to Sunday.

  “The same applied to Baxter, didn’t it, Emma? Somehow he had tracked you down and worked it out. The day I met you, he had just been in to let you know, and start putting the squeeze on you before handing you over to dos Santos. That afternoon I followed you to Baxter’s office. I didn’t realize it at the time, but while I was waiting downstairs, you were up there shooting him through the heart. That’s your favorite shot, right? That’s how you feel—why shouldn’t they?” I shook my head and gave a mirthless laugh. “Once it dawned on me, it all made sense. The way everybody described Tammy was a perfect description of Emma. Looking at Tammy’s photograph, Emma looked exactly like her older sister. Only it was actually her.”

  I turned back to dos Santos. “She needed you dead. With you and Baxter out of the way, she would be free to exploit her expert husband and sell… the box.”

  “Husband?” It was Duffy. He was staring at her. She was still curled up sobbing into her hands.

  “I’m sorry to be brutal, Mr. Duffy, but she has two of them. One back in San Francisco, the other in Manhattan.”

  He shook his head, bewildered. “Why?”

  I nodded. “That is not so easy to explain, Mr. Duffy. But let’s start by acceding at last to Mr. dos Santos’s repeated request.”

  Emma looked up. Her face was drenched, but she was one of those very rare women who do not go puffy and red when they cry. She looked even more beautiful. I pushed the box across the table toward dos Santos. His eyes were bulging, and his hands were trembling.

  Emma was shaking her head. “Stone, no…”

  I glanced at her. Her cut glass English was gone.

  There was a shriek from dos Santos. He was on his feet. “What is this? What is this shit? What are you trying to pull, Stone?”

  I smiled at him, then at Emma. “Isn’t that what this whole thing has been about? The da Vinci portrait of Clarice Orsini? The brand-new wife of Lorenzo Medici?”

  Dos Santos screamed. “What? This?” He held up the painting, smashed it on the floor, and stamped on it. His face was red, and I could see veins standing out on his head and his neck as he slammed his heel down again and again. “This piece of second-rate shit? This piece of fucking shit?”

  He stopped, panting, and glared at Emma. “Where is it?”

  I reached down beside my chair and pulled up Tammy’s birthday present. “I happen to know that Tamara Gunthersen was born Tamara Hunter, in West Sussex, England, on March 16, 1995. So this was never going to be her birthday present. Also, you are Tamara Gunthersen, so there is that too. So if this is not her birthday present, what is it?”

  I turned to Duffy. “I take it you are not familiar with that picture, Mr. Duffy, and that it never went missing from your collection.”

  He shook his head. “It is a very second-rate imitation. I have never seen it before.”

  “How about this?”

  I pulled on the bow and peeled back the paper to reveal a very exquisite wooden box of what seemed to be Byzantine design. Duffy was frowning at it with curiosity. Dos Santos was trembling and sweating, and Emma’s face was creasing up. “John, please…”

  I opened it up. It contained a small, beautifully illuminated bible and a cup ground out of polished stone.

  Duffy nodded. “Yes, that’s mine. It is the Thomas de Ahisi Bible. It is priceless. And the cup…”

  Dos Santos cut across him. His voice was like the voice of a snake. “It is not yours. It belongs to the Holy Mother. You are not even a Catholic; you are an unholy Protestant. That treasure belongs by right to the Holy Roman Church. It is the sacred Holy Grail in which our Lord Jesus Christ converted water into wine, his holy blood.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “This is the Holy Grail? How can you possibly know that? There must be thousands of stone cups like this. You can’t even carbon-date it.”

  “It has provenance.”

  “It has provenance?”

  Duffy, who was still staring at Emma, nodded and glanced at me. “It’s true. It has an unbroken line of documents going all the way back to St. Peter. He took it to Rome and handed it over, upon his death, to the leader of the Christian church who took over from him. Thus it was handed down to successive church leaders until it was given to the Emperor Constantine.”

  Dos Santos took over. “When Constantinople was overrun by the infidels, the cup was rescued by a Spanish knight, Don Rafael de Aragon, Marques de Soto Maior. It was preserved at his castle in Galicia until the eighteenth century, when it was stolen by the then marques’s youngest son, who took it to Mexico, possibly planning to sell it. As an act of penitence, the Marques de Soto Maior devoted his life, his wealth, and his castle to the purpose of accumulating sacred treasures for the Holy Mother Church. There is a Cardinal always in residence overseeing the treasures. And it has been my life’s work to track down and reacquire the Grail.”

  Duffy looked at him curiously, then turned to me. “It was not until 1856 that my great-great-grandfather won it in a poker game from that thief’s grandson. I have examined the provenance and had it looked at by experts. It is almost certainly real.” He turned back to dos Santos. “And I am sorry, Mr. dos Santos, but it is not for sale.”

  I laughed. “Oh, Mr. dos Santos does not intend to buy it from you, Mr. Duffy.” I reached out and pulled the box back. “He employed Tamara Gunthersen to show up at your house and seduce you so that she could steal this treasure and hand it over to dos Santos. But she got other ideas and thought she’d take it for herself instead and sell it on the open market.”

  Dos Santos gave one of his hysterical screams. “Enough! I can’t take it an
ymore! Enough talk! Talk! Talk! You have what you wanted! You have asked your fucking questions! Now give me the box!”

  I pointed at the laptop. “Press the button and show me the transaction has gone through. Then you get the box.”

  His eyes were wide. He hesitated a fraction of a second, then hit the Enter key and spun the computer so that I could see. I had just become a multimillionaire. I smiled at him and then at Emma.

  “Geronimo dos Santos, Tamara Gunthersen, I am placing you both under arrest on multiple charges of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and theft. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used against you in a court of law.”

  And then all hell broke loose.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Dos Santos slammed the case shut, stood, and swung it violently at my head. I put up my arms to protect myself, and the case struck my shoulder. Emma—Tamara—let out a piercing scream and leapt at dos Santos as he grabbed for the box on the table, scratching at his flabby face with her nails.

  I got to my feet shouting, “Sit down! Both of you!” But dos Santos put all his four hundred plus pounds into a huge backhander that sent Tammy sprawling across the room. I reached for him, yelling, “Give me some backup here!” Outside, car doors slammed and feet pounded the blacktop. Dos Santos heard them too, and despair, added to his massive weight, made him a formidable opponent. He put his hand on my face and heaved. I crashed back into my chair. Next thing, he was reaching under his jacket, and he had a sleek, black Sig Sauer p226 in his hand, waving it around like an aerosol.

  I shouted, “Stand down! He’s armed!”

  He glared at me and hissed like a fat snake. “Mozart! You were recording the whole thing! I should shoot you dead right here and now. Tell them to withdraw, or the first to die will be your precious billionaire. Next will be Tammy, and after that, you. Do it!”

  “Pull back, Dehan. You know what to do.”

  He put the box in the hip pocket of his jacket and waved the gun at Duffy. “Up, you. Come on! Up!” Duffy got uncertainly to his feet. “Open the door and step out. Remember, I have you covered at every step.”