Naked Once More Read Online Free Page B

it all to Kathleen Darcy. She had been his first important client, his first best-seller. Her success had brought other writers to his office.
    Jacqueline’s eyes lingered on the fifteen-by-eighteen photo showing Stokes with his most famous client. It was surrounded by a wide mat of black velvet; on a table below it, a bud vase contained a single white (silk) rose. Kathleen seemed to cower in the circle of Stokes’s arm. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder, and her eyes were wide and innocent. She looked much younger than her actual age. She had been twenty-eight when
Naked in the Ice
was published.
    Jacqueline’s eyes lingered on the pictured face. Kathleen appeared somewhat overwhelmed by the enormity of the acclaim she had won, and yet, despite its reserve, her face held both strength and humor; the lips were firm, the eyes steady. Who could have imagined that in two years she would be dead, possibly by her own hand?
    Jacqueline found it difficult to imagine. And that was her ultimate reason for accepting the challenge she had initially rejected.
    She would have been the first to admit that curiosity was one of her most prominent characteristics. And what—she was wont to ask—was wrong with that? The question was purely rhetorical, because she never gave anyone a chance to answer it before proceeding. “Curiosity drove Columbus to cross the ocean in those rickety little boats. Curiosity inspired every major scientific discovery. Without curiosity we’d all be sitting in caves scratching ourselves and eating raw meat. If it weren’t for curiosity—”
    Someone usually interrupted her at this point in the speech, which she permitted because she considered that she had proved her case.
    She had always been curious, to put it mildly, about Kathleen Darcy’s death. Like many of Kathleen’s readers, she had been fascinated not only by the book but by its author. Why would a woman who was young, healthy, and brilliantly gifted, want to end her life? And if she hadn’t done so, what had happened to her? The question had nagged at Jacqueline for years, not to the point of keeping her awake nights—very few concerns had that effect on Jacqueline—but as one unfiled item in the cluttered storehouse of her mind. Being essentially rational as well as curious, she had known that her chances of solving that mystery were slim verging on nonexistent; but then she had had no rational reason to expect she would be offered an opportunity to rummage through Kathleen’s papers and her past. It was an irresistible temptation; she saw no reason why she should try to resist it.
    Her gaze moved from Kathleen’s face to that of the man beside her. Stokes had been slimmer and fitter then, and not bad-looking except for his shrewd, close-set eyes. The later photos showed an increase in girth and at least one additional chin. He had kept his thick, wavy dark hair, though. At least Jacqueline hoped he had. Wigs were disgusting things to have in bed with you. There was the time…
    Speaking of time… She rose to her fect. “I can’t wait any longer,” she announced. “Tell Mr. Stokes—”
    As if on cue, the inner door opened.
    Whatever else he might have been doing, Stokes had spent some time primping. No one could look so much like a Hollywood version of a busy literary agent without working at it. His shirt sleeves were rolled above his hairy wrists, his heavy silk tie was slightly awry, and a single lock of hair curled boyishly across his brow. One hand held a pen, the other a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He waved both at Jacqueline and bared a set of blindingly white teeth.
    “Mrs. Kirby! Fulsome, abject apologies! I grovel, I abase myself.”
    “Not on my account, I beg.” Jacqueline bared her own teeth, which were just as white and just as large. Unlike Stokes’s dental apparatus, hers owed their perfection to nature rather than art.
    “Do come in,” Stocks said. “Coffee? Tea? Take this chair, it’s the