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

no longer flickering at Rosie. In fact, she didn’t look at her at all.
    At one point, when Carlota strode to the fireplace and posed with elbow on mantel and wineglass in hand, her eyes flitting all over the room and avoiding Rosie and Nona as though she were afraid of both of them, I suggested that Rosie might like to get an advance look at the hot tub. She agreed, and we went out through the dark bedroom to the tiny backyard.
    The yard was a patch of gravel about ten feet by fifteen, a level spot between a steep downslope and a damp, forty-five degree upslope, its surface obscured by blackberry and broom, that looked like it was about to start sliding any minute. The upper reaches of the incline were lost in trees and brush a hundred feet or so above the house. Someone had built a three-foot retaining wall at that side of the yard. Comforting. Right up against the retaining wall the hot tub squatted on its decking. It was heating. The cover was still on.
    This hot tub was not one of those plastic jobs dropped into a wooden structure like a large sunken bathtub. That kind of thing might be good enough for Oakland, or even Berkeley, but it certainly wouldn’t do for southern Marin. This was the real thing. Rustic redwood. The old hand-hewn effect.
    The canyon was dark, except for a few house lights showing here and there through the trees. The spillway, reduced after two rainless days to a stream, babbled delicately to itself and maybe to the redwoods. The air was cold and so charged with oxygen it smelled funny. Rosie stood there, staring up at the sharp little sparks of starlight, breathing deeply, and smiling like the Mona Lisa.
    The place was too damned beautiful. Too beautiful for murder. Too beautiful for some of the types who lived there, like the tree-slayer. Just about beautiful enough, I figured, for me, and for Rosie, and for the few other perfect people in the world. Artie and Julia could stay. I didn’t know Charlie well enough to know whether he could stay or not.
    I brought myself back from dreamland. “So,” I said to Rosie, “What do you make of Carlota and Nona?”
    She chuckled. “They’re assholes.”
    “Oh.” It was a revelation and a relief. I hadn’t known what to do with them and now Rosie had provided a niche.
    She turned to face me. “Jake, you’re usually pretty good at checking people out. Why did you need me to tell you that those two are jerks? Were you taken in by the too-too-divine act or were you afraid to judge them?”
    I could feel myself blushing and I was glad we were standing in the dark. I hesitated. She chuckled again.
    “It’s okay, pal. I say so and that makes it all right. Yes, these two particular members of my particular minority group are assholes. Okay?”
    I laughed with her. “Okay.” Then I put my arm around her shoulder and we went back into the house. Artie and Julia— I had convinced them to come to the meeting and get their minds off Alan for a while— had arrived. A short, wiry, nervous-looking blond guy was standing in front of the fireplace warming his left hip. An older couple, early sixties I guessed, were sitting on the couch. She had long gray hair held at the back of her neck with a leather clasp, and wore a wildly colorful dress in reds, blues, and yellows, cinched at the waist with a wide cloth belt. When she crossed her ankles I noticed she was wearing cowboy boots. The man sitting with her also had gray hair. He was wearing a plaid wool shirt over a cotton turtleneck, and baggy worn corduroys.
    The wiry blond guy lived in the first house this side of the bridge. His name was Jim something. Jim, I had learned that afternoon, was “in computers.” The older couple were Eric and Mary Anderson. They lived next door to Charlie’s, just beyond Carlota’s and above the lane. Julia had told me that they had a bookstore in Mill Valley, and that Eric also did “something else intellectual,” which she couldn’t remember. Charlie, I had learned,