Murder in the Raw Read Online Free

out what happened out there on the rocks.”

At seven that evening, the Winslows accompanied Rex and Brooklyn to The Cockatoo Restaurant, located just west of the resort. Chinese lanterns swung in the palm trees, lighting their way along the beach. The bay glimmered dark and unfathomable. Ever since Rex could remember, he’d mistrusted water he couldn’t see through.
    Elizabeth wore a flame-colored pareo knotted at her hip, regal in her bearing, in spite of breasts that were beginning to sag. Her husband had donned a wrap. When they reached the deck of the restaurant, Rex saw that the rest of the clientele was dressed in similar attire. Despite the nude torsos, he decided to keep his shirt on as he could not conceive of sitting down to dinner bare-chested.
    “Rex Graves, QC, from Edinburgh,” Paul Winslow announced to the group seated at the large outdoor table strewn with an assortment of drinks.
    A plump teenage girl fed pistachios to a snowy-white cockatoo perched on the wooden balustrade. “What is QC?” she asked with a light Germanic accent.
    “Queen’s Counsel. Mr. Graves is a barrister appointed by the Queen of England.”
    “We’re called advocates in Scotland,” Rex explained to the girl.
    Winslow began introducing the guests. “Age before beauty,” he said, putting a hand on the shoulder of a Kirk Douglas look-alike of military bearing. “Vernon Powell.”
    Rex shook his hand. This was Sabine Durand’s husband. Hard to conceive of the delicate beauty wed to this wooden marionette.
    “Herr Doktor von Mueller,” Winslow then informed him.
    “ Nein, nein! ” the bespectacled doctor objected affably. “Max. Und may I present my wife Martina und daughter Gaby.”
    The wife and daughter, flaxen-haired and Rubenesque, smiled in fixed beatitude. The von Muellers were not suspects, Rex recalled; they had been in Philipsburg the night of Mademoiselle Durand’s disappearance.
    “My good friends David and Toni Weeks,” Winslow said, continuing the introductions. “Our new chef at Swanmere Manor is a graduate of David’s school of French cuisine.”
    Rex extended his hand, studying the couple whose statements seemed to divulge so much about them. David Weeks, slight in frame like Paul Winslow, and with the legs of a stick insect, had a noticeably weak chin. His wife, Toni, more solidly built, appealed to the eye with her exotic dark looks.
    “Duke Farley,” boomed a broad-shouldered Texan, without waiting for Winslow to introduce him. “And my wife Pam.”
    “Enchanted,” Rex replied, inclining his head politely at the couple seated at the far side of the table, and attempting not to ogle Pam’s breasts, which were the largest he had ever seen while still managing to defy the law of gravity. She reminded him of the full-blown roses he had seen cascading from the walls of a chateau in the Rhône Valley at the peak of their bloom.
    “Dick and Penny Irving from Toronto,” a bodybuilder said, pursuing the self-introductions.
    His wife didn’t look like she carried a spare gram of fat either, her arms toned to perfection.
    Paul Winslow hastened to make the last introduction. “Sean and Nora O’Sullivan from Dublin, owners of the Coolidge Theatre.”
    “Pleased to meet you,” the elderly man said in a cultivated Irish brogue, his mischievous features reminding Rex of a leprechaun.
    “Likewise,” his petite, gray-haired wife added. “Come sit down.” She indicated a seat by her husband.
    The Winslows took the vacant chairs by David and Toni Weeks, while Brooklyn squeezed in next to the teenager Gaby.
    “What’s everyone drinking?” Paul asked, beckoning a waiter.
    “You should try a Hemingway,” Weeks told Rex.
    “What is that?”
    “A magical drink,” Sean O’Sullivan chimed in. “Ice-cold coconut water, fresh lime, Gordon’s gin, and a dash of bitters.”
    “I’ll try it.”
    “Good man.” The flushed Irishman looked as though he might have had one too many magical drinks