And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) by Warren Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

time, insurance. Want to buy a sunburn policy?”
    “How pedestrian,” Mrs. Neddleman said. “Do people still buy insurance?”
    “If they’ve got something to lose.”
    Mrs. Neddleman closed her eyes.
    “Don’t waste your time talking to them, Trace,” Felicia said. “They’re absolute scumbags as people. I keep them around because both of them are named Francis. Francis and Frances Neddleman. I think that’s cute.”
    “No accounting for taste,” Trace said.
    “You say you’re in insurance?” said a man who was lying on a large towel a half-dozen feet away. He was very tan and wore the smallest bathing suit Trace had ever seen on a male. He had wavy, long dark-blond hair, swimmer’s muscles, and was good-looking. His accent was vaguely continental.
    “You might say that,” Trace said.
    “At the airport, those lunatics scratched my luggage,” the man said. The accent was Italian, Trace decided. “Can you help me collect?”
    “No.”
    “What good are you?”
    “I make a very good potato-chip dip. With chives,” Trace said.
    “Trace,” Felicia said, “this is Paolo Ferrara. He says he’s a count, but he’s not. He’s just a rich playboy.”
    “What’s he into?” Trace asked her.
    Ferrara answered. “Drugs, basically. Coke, grass, hash. Want something?” He reached for a little leather case that lay next to him on the pool deck’s rough tiled surface.
    “No, thanks. I’m into alcohol basically,” Trace said.
    There was another man lying on a towel on the deck. A copy of Gentlemen’s Quarterly covered his face. He slid it down to his chin. Another foreign accent.
    “Are you a detective?” he asked. He was a painfully lean man with a neatly trimmed moustache and beard and treebark-brown hair. He had laugh lines in the corners of his eyes.
    “Kind of,” Trace said.
    “Investigating the murder, right?” The man’s own words seemed to interest him, and he slapped the magazine aside, sat up, and shook Trace’s hand.
    “This one is real,” Felicia said. “He’s a baron. Edvel Hubbaker. He’s after my body. This is Trace.”
    “Of course I’m after her body,” Hubbaker said. “Did you ever see tits like that anywhere else?”
    “Nice butt, too,” Felicia said.
    “Are you going to catch the killer?” Hubbaker asked.
    “If you do,” Ferrara said, “Please do it somewhere else. I’m not into sordid.”
    Trace ignored him and said to Hubbaker, “I don’t know. I’m just looking around.”
    “You have a theory, though, right? All detectives have theories. What is it? Burglar surprised while cracking a safe. What does that mean, anyway? Cracking a safe? Why not busting a safe? Anyway, safecracker surprised, fights to escape, bops poor Jarvis on the noggin, and flees with ill-gotten gains. Like that?”
    “It’s as good as anything else,” Trace said, and then he stopped talking to Hubbaker because the two people on the far side of the pool stood up and Trace could see them. Or, more specifically, one of them.
    She was a platinum blonde, six feet tall, stark naked. Her body was an erotic fantasy, and looking at her bosom, Trace thought of words like “ballooning,” “bazooming,” “galoomphing.” Standing still, she quivered with sexuality. She was either a natural blonde or had a very close relationship with her hairdresser.
    “Gee whillikers,” Trace said softly.
    “You like that, huh?” Felicia said. “I’m disappointed in you, Trace. I thought you were into subtlety, hints of smoldering sensuality. A lowered eyelid, a pouty lip, that kind of thing.”
    “I am. But for her, I make an exception. Raw, sweating sex. Gee whillikers.”
    “Well, come on, I’ll introduce you. But be warned, you’re not her type.”
    “I can change.”
    “Did you ever read The Golden Ass of Apuleus? ” Felicia asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Then you know the struggle that awaits you,” she said. She grabbed Trace’s elbow and pulled him toward the woman.
    “Sweetheart,” she