An Ace and A Pair (Dead Cold Mystery #1)

by Blake Banner

The door was open, but I knocked anyway. The captain looked up from her desk. She was one of those women who should have been attractive. She had thick black hair and deep brown eyes, and olive skin that in her midforties looked like it was still in its twenties. She had all the right bits in all the right places, but she was somehow unlovable. Her eyes gave me that “what the hell do you want” look. Then I guess she remembered she’d called me, and gave something that should have been a smile but wasn’t. Captain Jennifer Cuevas was all about what should have been. “John, come in. Take a seat. Close the door, would you?” I closed the door and sat. She laid her pen very carefully in front of her, like everything would go wrong if it wasn’t perfectly aligned. “How long have you been with the NYPD, John?” “Twenty-eight years, Jennifer.” She glanced at me. It was okay for her to call me John, but I should call her Captain. I smiled nicely. “You just turned forty-eight.” “Last November.” She sighed, like it was

My definition of most modern professional women.