Murder in the Raw Read Online Free PDF Page B

charge, at least not in English law. St. Martin, part of the Department of Guadeloupe, was subject to French law. What he needed to ascertain was whether Sabine Durand had been murdered and who had killed her. The French authorities could take it from there.
    Spotting a vacant lounge-chair next to Pam Farley, he asked if he might ask a few questions.
    Pam flashed him a toothy smile. “Go right ahead,” she said in a welcoming Southern twang. Winslow had told him not to be taken in by her dazzling blonde looks. She had graduated magna cum laude from an Ivy League college and been clever enough to snag an oil and cattle tycoon.
    Rex perched on the chair. “Your statement pretty much fits with the others. What I wanted to ask you was about Sabine herself.”
    “What about her?” Pam settled more comfortably on her saffron-colored towel.
    Like the other women he had seen au naturel , she was shaved to within an inch of her life. He concentrated instead on the attractively proportioned features of her face.
    “Your personal recollections, how she behaved the last time you saw her, that sort of thing.”
    “The last time I saw her was a week ago Tuesday at Happy Hour. We were at l’Apéritif, that tiki bar over there. It must have been around eleven a.m. We were drinking piña coladas—the usual crowd, except for the Irvings who had gone to St. Barts for the day. There’s not much to see on that island, so we declined their invitation to join them. After drinks, the von Muellers went to pick up their daughter from the airport and stayed on the Dutch side for dinner. Sabine, Toni, Nora, and Elizabeth went into Philipsburg for lunch. I had booked a session at the resort spa at three so I didn’t go with them.”
    “And then?”
    “After my massage and facial, I stayed in my cabana to wash and set my hair, and didn’t see my friends, all but Sabine, until dinner. I can’t remember exactly what time Duke got back from his dive, but he was already showered and changed when I was through getting ready.”
    “How did Sabine seem that day?”
    “Much the same as usual. I mean, when you talked to her, you always wondered if she was listening to a word you said. Her aquamarine eyes would just drift away and then, just when you thought you’d lost her, she would smile vaguely and say something apt.” She waved to a bronzed couple at the water’s edge.
    “So, you weren’t exactly close?” Rex prompted, drawing her attention back to him.
    She inspected her immaculate manicure. “This is the third year I’ve been coming to the Plage d’Azur and I can’t say I ever figured her out. Sabine was private about her past life. I believe she came from a well-to-do family of bankers in Paris, but fell out with her mother and had not seen her father in years. In any case, that’s what she told me. I think she was close to her father, and that may explain her air of tragedy. Unless that too was an act.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “I thought her a bit of an actress, even outside of work. She was my least favorite woman friend of the group, to tell the truth—which, of course, I’m duty bound to do.” Pam beamed him another brilliant smile. “You are, after all, investigating her disappearance in a semi-official capacity. Still,” she added, “I couldn’t help but admire her, just as you would have to admire a Lalique statuette.”
    It was becoming apparent to Rex that Sabine did not have many fans among the female guests. He wondered what other reactions he might receive. Across the beach he could make out a tall form reclining on a lounge chair beneath an umbrella, a bejeweled right hand clasping a tall drink, the straw hat bobbing as the owner chatted to a neighbor.
    “Is that Elizabeth Winslow?”
    Pam squinted. “Yes. She’s talking to Nora.”
    “I’ll go and bother them now. Your husband will be wanting his chair.”
    “Duke went to play racquet ball with Vernon. They play every morning. As the oldest