13 French Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

door.
    I’d recognize that perfume anywhere.
    Plenty was wrong, cockeyed wrong. I had to get back to Chicago.
    I went back to bed. The footsteps came back along the hall and paused at my door again. I held my breath again. She waited longer this time. Then she went on.
    Chicago. Chicago. It was like the wild beating of surf against rocks.
Chi—ca—go … Chi—ca—go…
.
    My door opened. “Is everything all right, Alex?”
    “Yes. Fine.”
    “Just wanted to make sure.” Her voice was a whisper. She closed the door very quietly. Some of the perfume remained in the room.

Chapter Five
    “V ERNE ? Oh, he’s gone long ago. I drove him into town at six-thirty. He caught the seven-o’clock train for New York.”
    We were alone in the large kitchen. Petra was seated on a high stool at the lunch bar, drinking coffee. The red shorts and halter she wore were very tight and her skin was very white. Creamy, because it was not a sickly white. It was lush, warm, solid. I noticed how long, how perfectly formed her legs were. Her lips were dark red in daylight, and she looked fresh, wide-awake. In the bright morning, there were traces of midnight in her hair. It foamed about her shoulders, seemed so full of life I expected it to sparkle. It did, when she moved.
    She sipped coffee. “Verne said to tell you again that he was sorry he couldn’t stay. He felt real bad about it.”
    I wasn’t really awake yet. I was in that blank, staring stage.
    “Did you sleep well?”
    “Fine, Petra.”
    “Reason I asked, strange bed and all that, y’know?”
    “Slept perfect.”
    “Hope I didn’t disturb you when I opened your door.” She wasn’t looking at me. She rose, swung over to the electric range, took up the coffeepot, poured herself another cup, returned to the stool. All the time, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Like a magnet, a deadly magnet, even when I tried not to watch.
    “You didn’t disturb me.” I was tardy with that. She drank her coffee black. I suddenly had a strong desire to touch her hair. “What’s for breakfast?”
    She smiled. “I was waiting for you to ask that. Cook’s day off.” Her eyes were black. Jet black.
    “Oh?”
    “But I can cook, my friend.”
    Ten minutes later I was at the kitchen table eating scrambled eggs, country sausage, toast, and coffee. I’d managed to avoid the stool beside her at the lunch bar by saying I liked my feet on the floor when I ate. But it only made matters worse, because she was above me, looking down. She was perched on the stool, her legs crossed, leaning back against the bar, with a cup in her hand. Her breasts filled that red halter like nothing I’d ever seen before.
    The food was perfect. The kitchen was as neat as a pin.
    “Where’s Jenny?” I asked.
    “Gave her the day off.”
    “And Verne’s mother?”
    She glanced at me and chuckled. “Not up yet.” She drank some more coffee. “We’re all alone. Just you and me. But not for long. The old girl will be down shortly.”
    I managed a weak grin. She grinned back.
    “How long has Verne’s mother been with you?”
    “Ever since we were married, right after Verne left the Army.”
    I finished off the last of the sausage. Petra poured me another cup of coffee, returned to her stool. I tried to imagine that old woman unhitching a plow, digging a grave, reading from a Bible. “What happened to the rest of Verne’s family? I mean, couldn’t she sort of shuttle around? It’d make it easier.”
    She stared at me, thinking. “There were two sisters. The rest were brothers. Two killed in the war. One sister vanished. The other married, but doesn’t want the dear old girl around. Husband won’t have it. One brother’s in the penitentiary for arson. Verne says he was a pyromaniac, a fire bug, but nobody’d believe it.” She lifted her hands, let them drop loosely to her thighs. “Others just gone.” Petra motioned with her thumb toward the ceiling. “She sold the farm, Verne discovered. Then