A Romantic Way to Die Read Online Free PDF

a bunch of hens cackling,” Jeanne said into the sudden silence.
    Though he’d been thinking along the same lines, Rhodes was glad she’d been the one to say it. If a man had made a crack like that, he’d have been in big trouble.
    “Keep it down and let the sheriff do his job,” Jeanne went on. “This is not a time for yakking.”
    There was no response, and Jeanne said, “It’s all yours, Sheriff.”
    “Thanks,” Rhodes said. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Who can tell me what happened?”
    Chatterton raised his hand. “I can. Or at least I think I can.”
    “Fine,” Rhodes said. “Why don’t you give it a try.”

5
    A CCORDING TO CHATTERTON, THE EVENING HAD GONE ALONG just fine, at least at the beginning. Most of the conference participants had arrived at the campus between noon and five o’clock, and around seven they’d had dinner in the main building.
    “There’s a nice room on the first floor that I had converted to a dining room,” Chatterton said. “The dinner was catered by the Round-Up, and—”
    “And there was no vegetarian plate!” a woman said loudly.
    “I’ve already apologized for that,” Chatterton said. “The Round-Up’s management doesn’t exactly understand vegetarians, but there will be something for everyone from now on, I assure you.”
    “There’d better be,” the woman said, clearly quite angry.
    She was a willowy blonde with startling blue eyes. She wore a dark green robe, and Rhodes was sure she’d put on makeup before coming into the sitting room, or else hadn’t yet taken it off. Rhodes wondered what kind of person worried more about what she ate and how she looked than about some dead woman in another room of the same building.
    “Never fear,” Chatterton told the blonde in a placating tone. “At any rate, Sheriff, after dinner we had our first general session, sort of a welcome aboard, and then Ms. Arnot gave us some insights into the kind of books she’s looking for at her agency.”
    “Good ones,” Jeanne said. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
    “Yes,” Chatterton said. “After that, some people had appointments with Ms. Arnot to discuss their manuscripts. Everyone else was free to mingle and talk either in the dormitory rooms or in the main building. There’s no television here. I believe in the value of reading and conversation.”
    Rhodes was sure that was commendable, and he felt a little guilty for having watched The Comancheros instead of reading a few chapters of David Copperfield.
    But he had other things to worry about, like where everyone had been when the commotion had started. It took him a while to get it all sorted out. Jeanne Arnot had been in the main building, meeting with prospective clients one after the other at thirty-minute intervals, and though the meetings had been over before the disturbance began, she had remained in the main building.
    “Because there’s no smoking in here,” she said. “Can you believe that? I could use a cigarette right now.”
    Rhodes said he didn’t make the rules and asked who else was in the main building.
    “Serena was there,” Jeanne said. “She might be a vegan, but she doesn’t mind if I smoke.”
    “That’s because you got so much money for her last book,” someone said, and Jeanne laughed.
    “You could be right. How about it, Serena?”
    The willowy blonde smiled enigmatically and said, “Anything’s possible, Jeanne.”
    “With you, I’d say that was an understatement. Anyway, she’s the only one I can vouch for, Sheriff, but that’s just because I don’t know many of the others. There were still quite a few people there.”
    “What about here?” Rhodes asked. “Who was in the dormitory?”
    “I was,” Chatterton said. “I was checking to make sure everything was all right and that everyone had everything she needed before I went to the president’s house for the night. That’s when the screaming started.”
    “It wasn’t screaming, exactly,”