Free Draw (The Jake Samson & Rosie Vicente Detective Series Book 2) Read Online Free

companion piece, so, feeling like the opener in a J. Arthur Rank movie, I used it to give the gong a solid whack. The noise bounced and echoed and lingered in the amphitheater of the canyon. I was wondering how Carlota Bowman’s neighbors liked her doorbell when she opened the door.
    “Mr. Samson?” she queried.
    “Ms. Bowman?”
    “Do come in.”
    She was wearing a purple silk wrapper and three-inch pumps. The purple went well with her shoulder-length gray hair. The gray must have been premature because her face hadn’t seen more than thirty-five years. I followed her into the house and I couldn’t help but watch her walking ahead of me. She was tall and thin and she moved her hips in a way that, if it developed naturally at all, developed in bed.
    I felt a little gauche and underdressed in my pedal-pusher length jeans.
    The entry door led directly into a small, fastidious kitchen, complete with the requisite butcher block and expensive cookware displayed on the wall beside the stove. I followed her through another doorway into a large living room that looked as if even more money had been spent on it. Everything was in primary colors except the wood.
    At the end nearest the kitchen was a round Victorian oak dining table. A baby grand piano squatted dramatically at the far side of the room near the French doors leading onto a deck. There was a bookcase, but it held stereo equipment and a lot of artsy-craftsy items and very few books. The paneled wall across from the stereo was a gallery of clustered drawings and paintings, all of them originals, all abstract or at least not easily recognizable, and all vaguely sexual. I couldn’t read the signature. On the same wall, as part of a composition of rectangles, was a full-length mirror. Another mirror, also full-length, hung on the wall with the French doors, near the piano, and next to the mirror was a single painting, about two feet by three. It was a portrait of a dark-haired woman.
    Bowman waved her hand at a yellow corduroy loveseat and I sat.
    “Would you like a glass of wine, Mr. Samson?”
    I said I thought that would be nice. She opened a cabinet under the shelf that housed the stereo turntable and pulled out a cut-glass decanter and two discount store wineglasses. A chink in the perfection. I guessed that she either had a lot of parties or used up a lot of wineglasses herself.
    She brought me a glass and sat down facing me in an oak rocker.
    I took a sip. Good California burgundy, plain but honest. I didn’t recognize the vineyard or the vintage year, but then I never can.
    “So, Mr. Samson, you work for Artie Perrine’s magazine?”
    I explained that I was not regularly employed but free-lanced from time to time. I didn’t say what I was not regularly employed at or what it was I did free-lance. “And,” I said, “I’m following up on a piece about the company this Smith— that was his name, the dead man you found— the company he worked for. So I need information about his death.” I couldn’t tell whether she believed me or not, so I added a little something. “And of course if I can learn anything that might, well, clear up the, uh…”
    The woman wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully, sipped at her wine, and nodded.
    “Yes,” she said. “Of course.” She pursed her lips and sucked in her cheeks. She had more facial twitches than a junkie. “I can tell you basically what I told the police.” She got up and sashayed to the piano, leaning against it chanteuse fashion. “I heard someone shout, I went out on the deck, I saw that young man running up the path. Then I went down the stairs and found… it.”
    I took her through the scene, step by step, slowly. It was pretty entertaining. She acted the whole thing out for me, complete with gestures. The first scene was Carlota Bowman pouring herself another glass of wine. I stayed with the half glass I still had.
    She strode to the mirror near the piano and stood facing it, wineglass held at