Dead Cold Mysteries Books 5-8

by Blake Banner

  “Would you have some biscuits? What biscuits do you like? Sure, I’ll put out a selection, shall I?”

  She came in on busy feet with a laden tray and set it on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. “Don’t stand there like a couple of trees,” she said. “Sit. Milk and sugar? Help yourself to biscuits. The chocolate ones are my favorites.”

  She laughed for no particular reason as she poured from a large, elaborate teapot. Dehan sat in an armchair and Melanie handed her an elaborate cup of the same design. Dehan took it and cleared her throat.

  “Mrs. Vuolo…”

  “Mel.”

  “Mel, what can you tell us about Kath? What made her go to Colorado? How were things at home with her and…? No milk or sugar.”

  “Mo.” She said it as she filled my cup. I sat and she handed it to me. “He’s a lovely fellow.” Her smile was genuine. “Didn’t he just dote on her! Nothing was too much for him. God forgive me for saying it, but she didn’t know what she had!”

  Dehan bit into a biscuit and spoke with her mouth full. “She was depressed?”

  “God love her. Ever since little Sinead was born. Between you and me, I think it was an accident. She wouldn’t take the pill, you see? And I know you fellers…” She waved a finger at me. “You don’t like the condoms.” She turned back to Dehan. “They say they can’t feel anything. Well, I mean, what’s to feel? But all the same, that’s what most fellers say, according to Mo. I wouldn’t know. I always took the pill. Tony, that was my husband, God rest him, he insisted on it. He was awful demanding. An Italian.” She turned back to me. “Italians are awful passionate, you know. No offense.” She smiled and reached out a hand to touch my knee.

  “Mel, tell us about Kath’s depression.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m saying! I don’t think she was ready to have a baby. Of course, when I was young, we had no time to get depressed, but nowadays it’s different, isn’t it? And after little Sinead was born, didn’t poor Kath get awful low.”

  Dehan sipped and asked, “How did that affect her relationship with Mo?”

  “Well, it wasn’t ideal, was it? But then, when is marriage ideal? You know, marriage was not intended to be a magic panacea for happiness, was it?” She turned to me as though I might want to answer. “It was intended to be a partnership, and like all partnerships, there will be good and bad times. But, God love’em both, things were not easy for them.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Poor Mo was working construction. Him and Isaac both. And just after Sinead was born, didn’t the fecking foreman go and fire Mo, with a newborn baby at home an’ all. He looked everywhere for work, but God bless the boy, hard as he looked, he couldn’t find a thing. But even with that, the two of them were inseparable. They just doted on each other. Did everything together, went everywhere together…”

  Dehan raised an eyebrow. “Except Colorado.” Mel looked surprised, but Dehan pressed on. “What’s the Colorado connection, Mel? It’s an awful long way to go and find a husband.”

  Mel smiled and sighed. “And isn’t that the truth! It was Tony, my husband. He was Italian, like I say, and he was crazy about the westerns! Don’t they call them spaghetti westerns because the Italians love’m so much? Well! He couldn’t get enough of the damn things! So when the girls were small we used to go on holiday to ‘cowboy country’. He worked all the hours that God sent and he made a decent living for us. But he insisted, on the holidays, we had to go west: Texas, Arizona, North and South Dakota, Wyoming…and in the end we went to Colorado. The girls were twelve and thirteen. And we went to Boulder and every fecking day…!” She hooted with laughter. “Every fecking day he’d drag us up into the mountains, till we found this town, Seven Hills. Well, you’d love it! Wasn’t it straight out of the movies! With a saloon and everything! So we cancelled the B&B in Boulder and spent the rest of the holiday in Seven Hills, in the saloon. Booked a couple of rooms there.”

  “And that’s where she met Mo?”

  “And Isaac and Greg.”

  I raised my eyebrows as I reached for another biscuit. “Greg?”

  “Isaac and Mo are brothers. Lovely lads, lovely parents, Ingrid and Alfredo. He was Mexican, but a lovely fellow all the same. And Greg was their friend. His father had a ranch nearby. They was forever together, playing and getting into all sorts of trouble. Happy-go-lucky as you like. Lovely lads. Well, didn’t we end up going back every year after that?”

  “What happened to your husband, Mel?”

  “An accident at work took him from us, 2005. They tried to say that he was careless, but my Tony was never careless. He was meticulous in everything.” She sipped her tea. “He left us cared for, all the same, and the company settled out of court. I mean to say, would they settle out of court if it was his fault? I don’t think so, do you? Bastards.”

  “So you continued going to Seven Hills.”

  “Well, we had to, didn’t we? For his memory, and also because the girls loved it there. It’s a different world. The freedom! And it’s clean, and the people are—no offense—well, they’re kind and honest and decent. Not like, you know, a lot of people in the city. And didn’t they love their little friends?”

  Dehan said, “Kath would have been fifteen?”

  Mel nodded. “And I think that was when she fell in love with Mo. It was Isaac at first, when they were kids, and we always said that Isaac and Kath would end up together, and Mo and Pat. And poor Greg, well, he had nobody. But that summer it all changed, and to be honest, I think Isaac was a bit upset. It was OK in the end, because he married Anne-Marie, who’s a lovely girl. Just lovely!” She sighed. “But Mo had grown in just a year into a very handsome young man, and he was funny, you know? Had a great sense of humor. All the girls were crazy about him. And she being so upset about her father, he made her laugh.” She turned to Dehan. “That counts for a lot, doesn’t it, love? When a man can make you laugh.”

  Dehan’s cup was empty. She put it on the table and took another biscuit. “So what happened to Pat?”

  Mel’s face seemed to contract in on itself. For a moment it looked as though she might start crying, but there was a strength there that held her in check. She waited a moment, then took a deep breath.

  “They were both hit real hard by Tony’s death. Kath was lucky in that she found love and consolation with Mo. God love him, he was a rock for her. But Pat wasn’t so fortunate, and she…” She stopped and stared out of the French windows, at the unseasonal sunshine. “She got in with the wrong crowd. Greg was a good lad, but he had some bad friends. Pat started drinking, and then it was the pot, smoking pot, and then it was the hard stuff.”

  I asked, “Where is she now?”

  “She’s been dry for a couple of years now, staying off the pot and that. She’s out with friends.”

  “She lives at home with you?”

  She burst out laughing. It was a startling sound, almost like the screech of a parrot. “Sure! Don’t they all feckin’ live at home with me! Jaysus! What I wouldn’t give for them to all feck off and get their own feckin’ places! But they’re all still at home with mummy!”

  She fell back on the sofa laughing. It was infectious and I glanced at Dehan. She was laughing, too.

  When she’d settled a bit, I asked, “Who is ‘all’?”

  “Ah, love’m. I know life is hard these days, and I don’t begrudge them. Mo and, uh,” she hesitated, “and Sinead, they’re living at home. He’s working at the car dealer and she’s started the nursery. Pat’s at home, you know, she can’t look after herself. She just slips back and starts drinking and smoking again, and mixing with the wrong crowd…”

  I smiled, thinking of Dehan’s prediction about the matriarch. “What about Isaac and…”

  “Oh, well, that didn’t work out. Him and Anne-Marie broke up.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just a couple of months after Kath… you know, was…”

  I nodded. “I see.” I pointed at one
of the photographs. Dehan was already nodding, like she had wanted to ask the same question. “I notice a picture there. I gather that’s Mo, because there are several of him with Kath. But there he is not with Kath. Who is that girl?”

  She looked a bit embarrassed. “Well, that’s Anne-Marie.” She took a deep breath. “Kath’s death was a terrible upheaval for all of us. A second tragedy, and it seemed not so long ago that Tony had died.” She shrugged and shook her head. The gesture seemed to say that it was just one of those things. “Mo was devastated. Anne-Marie was just there for him. A tower of strength. He’d lost his job, Isaac was working… one thing led to another…”

  I nodded again. “It always does. So Anne-Marie is living here, too?”

  “Yes. She and Mo were married last year.”

  Dehan smiled at her. “So you are helping them to rebuild their lives.”

  “I’m doing what I can, love. In hard times, family has to pull together. All you’ve got is your family, and thank God we have each other.”

  I pulled my notepad from my pocket. “We are going to need to talk to Mo. Where can we find him?”

  “Him and Anne-Marie are both at the Used Car Mart on 177th Street. She does the paperwork and he sells the cars.”

  I made a note. “How about Isaac?”

  “The last I heard from Isaac, he was living out in Hunts Point. Poor love, things didn’t go so well for him. He works for a building supplies company on Halleck Street. Leastwise, he did. He rents an apartment at 841, Longfellow Avenue, bless him.”

  I glanced at Dehan. She shook her head so I stood.

  “Thank you, Mel. You have been very helpful. We may have to talk to you again at some point, or to Pat. But we’ll try not to disturb you.”

  She told us it was no trouble at all and showed us to the door. We stepped out into the warm fall midday and heard the door close behind us. Dehan walked around to the passenger side of the car and leaned on the roof, watching me unlock the door.

  “I need a beer,” she said. “And so do you.”

  THREE

  We drove east along Van Nest as far as Bronxdale, then turned north. We had the windows open and cruised at a nice, easy speed, enjoying the temperature. We didn’t talk for a bit, till I glanced at her and asked, “Impressions?”

  She had her elbow out the window. Her hair was streaming across her face, so she reached back and tied it in a knot at the back of her head. It looked good, but she was totally oblivious to the fact. She was the best-looking woman I had ever met, and also the least vain. She turned to face me and I saw myself duplicated, looking back at myself from her aviators.

  “I gotta say, Stone, I didn’t get a damn thing.” She shrugged. “Mo? Killed her so he could be with Anne-Marie?” She made a face and shook her head. “That’s stupid, especially as Anne-Marie went and divorced Isaac just a few months later. Mo could have done the same. Besides, she was killed in Colorado.”

  I nodded once. “I agree. But we should find out where he was at the time anyway. What about Isaac?”

  She made a face like she’d just smelled sour milk. I pulled over and parked outside The Grill House. We pushed in and ordered two beers and a couple of hamburgers, then grabbed a table near the window.

  Dehan took a pull and gave herself a froth mustache which I didn’t tell her about. “You know what?” she said. “If Mo had been killed, I’d be looking at Isaac. But that would have happened a long time ago. Why would he kill her after she gave birth? And why would he go all the way to Colorado to do it?”

  I took a pull on my beer and sighed noisily through my nose. She pointed at me and grinned. “You have a mustache.”

  I wiped it away with the back of my hand and smiled back. “That reasoning applies to everybody she knew in New York. I am not convinced that her depression was exclusively postpartum. I think there may have been more going on in her life that we don’t know about. There’s a connection here between her depression, her trip to Seven Hills, and her death.” I paused and pointed at her. “Speaking of which, I was surprised you didn’t ask her more about Kath’s depression.”

  “You didn’t either.”

  “You first.”

  She squinted out the window, like the view didn’t quite convince her. “I don’t know, Stone. She didn’t seem to me to be quite in touch with reality. In fact, I get the feeling she’ll go to any lengths to avoid an unpleasant reality.”

  I laughed.

  She ignored me and went on. “Kath and Mo doted on each other. They were crazy about each other. He was mad about her and he was so supportive. But when they have a baby, she goes into a depression and goes to Colorado, and when she gets murdered, he marries his brother’s wife.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m being judgmental, but that doesn’t sound to me like a couple who are doting on each other and are crazy about each other.”

  I was nodding. “So your point is?”

  “I think if I had asked her about Kath’s depression, I think I would have heard what Mel wanted to believe about her depression. And I already know that. The useful information is going to come from Mo and Pat, and maybe Anne-Marie. That what you were thinking?”

  “Yup.

  The burgers arrived and she took a big bite, spilling salad on her plate. She spoke around a mouthful of meat and bun.

  “Sho wha-oo wa’ do mow?”

  I ate for a while without answering her, watching the anonymous people hurrying past on the sidewalk, wondering how a cute young mother from the Bronx winds up dead, beheaded, and probably raped, in the woods in Lefthand Canyon in Colorado. What was the sequence of events that led to her death? At what point did she tip the domino that lead, irrevocably, to her murder? Did it happen here, or there?

  I wiped my mouth as she drained her beer. “I guess,” I said, and leaned forward with a fresh paper napkin, “We go and talk to Mo.” As I said it I carefully wiped the froth from her upper lip. She watched me with a curious mixture of alarm and amusement in her huge, brown eyes. I smiled. “You had a Santa Claus mustache.”

  It was a short drive down White Plains to East Tremont, and then onto East 177th. It’s a grim, soulless part of the Bronx, with gray concrete wastelands as far as the eye can see. And if you move off the avenue, into the back streets, you find decaying red brick and rusting iron, boarded-up windows and graffiti, and the haunted eyes of people who don’t even despair, because hopelessness is the only thing they have ever known.

  I pulled up on the stark, gray forecourt and we climbed out. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and thrummed with the steady flow of trucks and cars on the avenue and the four freeways that surrounded it. Nobody stopped here. People only passed through, in a hurry.

  As we slammed the doors, a man in his late twenties or early thirties stepped out. He was good-looking in a Latin kind of way, with brown eyes, dark curly hair, and a shiny suit that was too baggy and probably too expensive. He smiled with very white teeth and nodded at the Jag.

  “Nice wheels. You looking to sell it?”

  “Not while I can still drive. I’m looking for Moses Olvera.” I showed him my badge. “That you?”

  For a moment, he looked worried. “Sure. Is there a problem?”

  “We just wanted to ask you some questions about Kathleen.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Kath? Well…” He looked from me to Dehan and back again. “Kath is dead. She died five years ago…”

  Dehan frowned at him. “That’s why we want to ask you about her, Mo.”

  He gave a small, nervous laugh. “But that was in Colorado.”

  I studied his face a moment, trying to read what was going on behind it. Finally, I said, “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “Well sure, come on in to the office. Anne-Marie is there…”

  “We’d like to talk to her, too.”

  He led us out of the glare and the noise into a cool, shaded interior where everything was shiny: the floors, the plate glass windows, the cars—his suit and his teeth fit right
in there. We followed him across the showroom and into a small office at the back. Anne-Marie looked up and smiled as we came in. She was an attractive woman with blonde hair and dark blue eyes. She had a natural elegance that was missing in Mo.

  “Good afternoon.”

  I smiled back and showed her my badge. “You Anne-Marie?” The smile faded and she turned to Mo before answering, like she was checking with him. “Yes. What is this about?”

  There was a small table with four chairs around it set to one side, where customers could sit and sign their contracts of sale. Mo gestured us to it and Anne-Marie joined us. As she did so, Dehan spoke.

  “The Lee County Sheriff’s Department has asked us to make some inquiries on their behalf regarding Kath’s murder five years ago.”

  Mo sat slowly, as though he was somehow deflating. He said, “Oh… I thought we had left that all behind us.”

  Anne-Marie reached out and touched his arm. She held his hand and stroked his hair. “How could it be, sugar? They never caught who did it, did they? They ain’t gonna stop till they do.” She turned to smile at Dehan. “Are you?”

  I said, “The colder a case gets, the more difficult it becomes to solve it. But we never give up.”

  Dehan put her elbows on the table and sucked her teeth. “What we’re really interested in at the moment is Kath’s state of mind when she went to Seven Hills. What made her do that, all on her own, with a newborn baby…?”

  “Maybe you’d better answer that, sugar.” Anne-Marie turned to Mo. “You knew better than I did.”

  There were some glossy brochures on the table, and now he moved them about a bit, as though he didn’t like the way they fit and he was trying to organize them into a better arrangement. “This’s kind of come out of left field. I’m not sure…”

  Dehan had her eyes narrowed at him, like she was trying to peer through a dense fog. “Is that a difficult question, Mo?”

  He flushed and looked straight at her. “No! No, I guess not. It’s just unexpected, after all this time.”

  I gave him an understanding smile and said, “Sure. The report said she was depressed.”