Color Him Dead Read Online Free

your name?”
    In the few seconds before her eyes dropped, the play of emotion across her face was as revealing as a suddenly illuminated screen. Here was a girl who had married wealth expecting to find the end of her troubles, only to discover that the nagging feeling of insecurity didn’t go away. Now the answer had been dropped into her lap; the money wasn’t really hers.
    She looked down and twirled her glass silently for a minute. She spoke without looking up, her voice uncharacteristically low and hesitant. “May I make a suggestion?”
    “You’ve been making them all day. Shoot.”
    “Let’s go over to Honeymoon Beach with the picnic basket. Get some boy-girl scenes.”
    She asked in a way that made it impossible for Drew to say no, even though warning bells jangled in his mind. Honeymoon Beach was a quarter-mile across the lake, tucked under a twenty-foot cliff. They’d hauled in white sand and put up a little shack which would hold a refreshment stand and bathroom. Drew put on swim trunks, set the self-timer on his camera, and got some shots of Edith and himself sitting on the blanket. Then opening the lunch basket. Then strolling down the beach hand in hand. (Her palm was a hard pad of flesh, but smooth as chamois. Her skin had a clean fresh-water smell, her breath held a touch of her after-dinner wine. Every cell in his body was tense with awareness that they were alone on this tiny beach, that the hotel was a quarter-mile across the water, and that she had been strangely quiet and pliant since lunch.
    The sun grew low, sending a pale yellow light across the water. “I can’t shoot anything in this light.”
    “How terrible.” She dropped to the blanket and rolled over on her back. Her eyes looked sleepy; inside the green bathing suit, her breasts were twin cones pointing at the red sky; her legs were slightly open, and the sun gleamed gold on a few hairs high on her thighs. “I had the bartender fill our jug with martinis,” she said.
    He sat beside her, lifted out the jug, and filled the plastic cup. “We’ll have to drink out of the same cup.”
    “My lips are pure. But you drink first.”
    He took a drink and felt the warmth spread within him. He gave her the cup and she half-raised to drink; he put his hand under her head and spread his fingers. The nape of her neck was warm and covered with soft down. He took the cup and set it aside, then bent to kiss her. He felt her hands on his back; her lips were soft; her breath tasted of martini, but the clean fresh smell was still there. He felt her muscular tongue dart between his lips, and he knew he’d find no resistance. He slid his hand up her leg and found the hard, elastic cloth of her swimsuit. He tried to get his fingers under it, but she caught his wrist. Her lips moved against his: “You’re married.”
    “So are you,” he grunted.
    “With me it doesn’t make any difference. Can you say that?”
    Still her strong fingers held him away from the ultimate discovery. He drew away and saw a half-smile on her face. He saw that he’d read her mood correctly, but he hadn’t read far enough. First she wanted him to renounce his wife, just as she’d tried earlier to make him admit that she was more lovely, more shapely than Marianne. Edith was a girl hungry for reassurance, and he wasn’t that eager for what she offered.
    He sat up with his back to her. “No, I can’t say that it makes no difference that I’m married. I doubt if you can, either." “But I
can,
Drew. Listen, when I first got married I used to lie there and wait for him to come to bed. Five nights out of six he’d just poke his head through the door and say goodnight. Lord! I’d parade around with my clothes off, and he’d just smile wistfully and say, ‘You’re very lovely, Edith. I hope you’re happy.’ If I hinted that I wasn’t, why the next day there’d be a bracelet or a ring or a new coat. It got so bad I’d break out in a heat rash if I stood close to a