Cold Winter Rain by Steven Gregory Read Free Book Online Page A

Known her since she was a baby.  Let me know if there’s anything I can do.  Except opening client files of course.”
    “ I’ll see myself out,” I said.  I was saying that too much, lately.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    The sky was still gray and overcast, and the temperature was in the mid-40s.  Cold when it’s damp.
    Leon Grubbs picked me up at the rear entrance of the hotel in a black Ford LTD without markings.  There was a portable blue light suction-cupped to the dashboard and a stubby antenna on the back window.  We took Twentieth Street headed south.  At least Grubbs let me sit up front.
    “I miss the old cop antennas,” I told Grubbs after I got in and fastened the seat belt.
    “ You miss what?”
    “ You know, the old cop antennas.  You knew for sure that black Ford sedan was a police car when you saw one of those twelve-foot whips tied down to the bumper.”
    “ Hmmph.  Progress, Slate.  I’ve heard some cops in the big cities even know how to turn on a computer now.”
    At the Fifth Avenue intersection, Grubbs turned left.  At the end of the block, he pulled up to the fire hydrant and handed me a five.
    “Safari Coffee,” he said.
    I looked down at the money.
    “Right there on the corner.”
    I didn’t move.
    “So I’m addicted,” he said.  “Go in and get two coffees.  For me, tall regular coffee, skim milk, one Equal.”
    I got out of the car without taking the bill.
    “Your money’s no good here,” I said.
    I could smell the coffee from the sidewalk.  In a corner near the front window sat a polished brass coffee roaster.  The place was decorated in a jungle theme and featured Kenya AA dark roast.  There was a line, and I didn’t have a badge to show.  Grubbs would have waited too.  He might park on the hydrant, but he wouldn’t cut in front of a line of citizens.
    I paid for the coffee, mixed in the milk and sweetener at a little bar in the corner, and snapped plastic lids on the cups.
    Grubbs drove north on Twenty-first Street and then took Abraham Woods Boulevard past Linn Park and the Birmingham Museum of Art and down to the cloverleaf onto Highway 280 East.
    I tore the little strip off the plastic top and sipped the coffee.  It wasn’t just good and strong.  It was good and hot.
    “ So how did you know?” I said.
    “ Know what?”
    “ When you called my cell phone just after midnight, you said you were not far from my hotel.”
    Grubbs inclined his head an inch.
    “So how’d you know I was there?”
    Grubbs glanced at me, then back to the street.  “I’m a trained detective,” he said.  “But, Slate, tell me something I don’t know, for once.  Did Kramer tell you whether he’d been contacted by anyone holding his daughter?  Kidnappers?  Could he have been making a ransom drop without telling anyone?”
    “He told me there had been no contact.  And if he was making a ransom drop, he didn’t tell me.”
    Grubbs nodded and drove in silence.
    In spite of the cold and the damp air, shoppers were rolling into the parking lot at Brookwood Mall in their Mercedes and Jaguars and Range Rovers, suburban women in leggings and leather jackets and Hermes scarves ready for a tough day hitting the spa, a boutique clothing store, an Oriental rug dealer.
    Mountain Brook was Alabama’s toniest suburb, a spiderweb of hilly residential streets connected loosely at three hubs called “villages” by the locals.  In the “villages,” – English Village, Mountain Brook Village, and Crestline – just Crestline to the locals, no “Village” -- there were hair and nail salons, specialty groceries, trendy bars and bake shops, and investment managers.
    Grubbs drove and sipped coffee as though he hardly needed to see the road.  He seemed to know the way, so I saw no point in guiding him over the route I’d driven on Sunday.
     
     
     
    Grubbs rang the doorbell, and we waited a minute.  I leaned around and rang the bell a second time.
    Paul