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

coconuts in a funfair shy. Off to one side stood a young woman, attractive in spite of a face caked in yellow paste to combat the ravages of the sun. This was not the fine-looking woman I’d seen in the Internet photos. This one stood beside a heap of watermelons. She wore an ankle-length sarong, a long-sleeved shirt, a straw hat, and a nasty smirk, aimed in my direction.
    At the other end of the lawn, dressed in shorts and a cowboy hat, was my author. He was in good shape for an older man. He had a six-pack. Arny had—I don’t know—a twelve-pack? But he was young and worked out every day. I imagined that, by fifty, my brother would have gone to flab and be embarrassed to take off his shirt. Conrad the mini-Destroyer had no such problem with his body. He was the type of man you instinctively knew would be good in bed. Here’s a confession. We women know. It’s an aura we can read. And don’t give me that “Decent women don’t” line. Culture and tradition and religion might shut us up, but we all get the tingle. This man was ripe. The fact that he was holding an axe did nothing at all to dissuade me.
    In fact, it wasn’t just the one axe. He had an arsenal of them. There was a large case behind him that concertinaed open like a mobile bookcase. Except, these shelves held nothing but weapons with blades. There were knives, machetes, and axes lined up according to size on a rack. It was like a golf bag for lumberjacks. My guess was that the baby he held in his hand was around a nine iron. He was swinging it back and forth beside his leg. His gaze was fixed on the line of watermelons. His stomach muscles rippled as he took in deep breaths, then, like a Russian tennis player, he grunted loudly as he let fly the axe, underarm. It seemed to somersault through the air in slow motion until the last few seconds. If watermelons had ears it would have sliced off the left one.
    The powder-faced girl squealed and clapped, but Conrad looked disappointed.
    “Nice shot,” I said, still searching desperately for wit.
    “No,” he said. “It was supposed to go through his nose and out the back of his brain.”
    “Oh.”
    “Never mind,” he said, and beckoned the girl who ran over with his shirt. He didn’t thank her, so I assumed she was the maid. It was sad to see his body put away. He was over his disappointment by the time he joined me on the steps, and he gave me a very polite wai , which I returned clumsily. Well, he’d sprung it on me. I wasn’t expecting a foreigner to welcome me with a traditional salutation. I didn’t get wai ’d once all the time I was in Australia. Not even by the Thais. Conrad Coralbank was smiling at me. His teeth were too neat to be natural. His eyes were too blue to be eyes.
    “Thank you for coming,” he said.
    “Thank you … for … being here.”
    I was doing really well. He was probably thinking the Chumphon News was a charity rag run by the educationally challenged. I was intimidated. I can’t deny it. He even looked like a famous writer. Some people look so much like a somebody that they have no choice but to become … it.
    “They told me you spoke English well,” he said. He walked to the steps and stopped, so I assumed I was supposed to go with him. He put a hand on the small of my back and began steering me up. Normally I’d hate that. If anyone else had tried it, I would have taken a step forward and back-heeled them in the shin. But I’d seen the Duke of Edinburgh do it to Elizabeth, so I assumed it was a British custom. Who was I to deny a country its culture? His hand was warm and seemed to be connected to some electrical source.
    “I’m sure it wasn’t a result of the Thai school system,” he said. “Where did you pick it up?”
    “Songs,” I said. “I can’t sing to save my life, but I liked to memorize lyrics. And our mother spoke English. She encouraged her kids to use it. It was a sort of game. We’d watch American movies on Beta, and Mair would test