The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

wondered.
    All I could see from the gate was a curved driveway flanked with bougainvilleas. In the hot season they would be a glorious explosion of color, but they didn’t take kindly to being lashed by monsoon rains, so there they drooped, apologetically green. A button on the fence post had a semi-quaver logo at its center, so I pressed it. In the distance, I heard the first few notes of something classical. Something a more arty person than me would be able to name to impress a famous author.
    “Oh, I noticed you had Barry Mendelssohn’s Opus Four in G-strings as your bell charm,” I would say.
    But I didn’t have a clue what it was. I heard a click and the gate began to slide open noiselessly. I decided to wheel my motorcycle down the slope to avoid an ungainly dismount in my little black dress. The wicked garment had already caused a smoldering in a group of house-builders I’d passed. They didn’t exactly shout or wolf-whistle, but I could tell I’d excited them. It’s disgusting how men can be such slaverers at the sight of an attractive woman in revealing clothing. I hoped Conrad wouldn’t get the wrong idea. I do have very nice legs, and my lips, as Mair is constantly reminding me, are sensuous. The bits in between could use some work, but eating is one of my few pleasures.
    I don’t know why those thoughts were going through my head as I rounded the downward curve and came very quickly to a futuristic house. What wasn’t glass was orange-rendered concrete. It was a house that would change color with the seasons, as the rain soaked into the cement and then dried and baked. I could already see the entire living room through the glass with a full-sized pool table and a wall full of books. A cello, painted red, was suspended from the ceiling on a hangman’s noose. I had most certainly left Kansas.
    A small male person who looked about twelve rushed up to me, shouting something. He had a deep baritone voice. He wrestled the motorcycle from me and shouted something else. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I did recognize it as Burmese. I asked him in Thai where Mr. Coralbank might be and he might have told me, but I don’t speak Burmese. He wheeled my motorcycle away and I was left standing on the gravel in my good shoes. Only then did I look up.
    Wow.
    Our Gulf Bay Lovely Resort was a motel with a two-dimensional vista. You could only attain a third dimension by climbing up a coconut tree. Ahead of me was the same murky body of water I ignored every day. It was still full of garbage the disgusting people in Lang Suan threw into the river, but from here it was the Mediterranean off the South of France. The view was majestic. You could see the beach road and the cliffs of Ny Kow. You could see the islands and the white breakers out deep in the Gulf and our home village being bombarded by the elements. Watch our palm trees topple and float away. With a high-powered telescope you might even see our family’s comings and goings. Watch me step recklessly from the open-air shower.
    “You must be Jimm,” came a voice.
    English. I was comfortable with the language, but I always seemed to lack that witty opening gambit that might establish my linguistic credentials.
    “How are you?” I shouted to the breeze.
    “Down here,” came the voice.
    I looked down the forested slope that eventually gave in to the sea, and I made out a head in a cowboy hat peeking above a bush.
    “Come and join us,” he called.
    A cobblestone path led down from the veranda, and it was clear that there was nothing accidental about the vegetation. It was custom-designed to look aggressive and impenetrable, but it was a wimp of a jungle, landscaped to within a centimeter of its natural life. Every frond fell seamlessly against the next. At the bottom of the path were four blanched coral steps leading onto a manicured lawn about the size of two good paddy fields. It was a bizarre scene.
    To my left stood four watermelons on posts, like