The Royal Wulff Murders Read Online Free PDF

association he had tried to make earlier. But before he could resolve it there was a rustle of silk and a woman brushed his elbow as she walked to the stage, weaving with leonine grace between the tables. She trailed a scent like oranges.
    “Thank you,” the woman said to the scattered applause.
    A wolf whistle pierced the room. Stranahan didn’t have to turn around to identify the maker. It was Phil Halverson, an unshaven logger who had one of those pinched faces typically associated with cousin kissing and hog calling, and whose deep-set eyes were as black as a coon’s under his grungy hat with a McCulloch Chain Saw logo. Everybody called him Punxsutawney Phil, after the famous groundhog, because he began every conversation by telling you whether he’d seen his shadow that morning. If he had, then it was going to be a bad day. With the town of Bridger being on the east or sunny side of the Continental Divide, Phil had a lot of bad days.
    “Ah, crawl back into your hole, Phil,” Doris said in a booming voice, and there was another scattering of applause.
    “And I thank you, too,” Miss Lafayette said as she took her seat at the piano and spread her fingers against the keys, “even if some women don’t hold that kind of Cro-Magnon appreciation in high esteem. Back in Mississippi—that’s M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, something every schoolchild knows how to spell by the time he’s knee-high to a sunflower—romance isn’t always ‘May I have this dance, ma’am.’ Sometimes it’s a whistle from the kudzu. Sometimes it’s just a look, you know, under a willow tree at a picnic on the bayou. And sometimes, even if you don’t want it to happen at all, it happens just the same; it happens just like this.”
    She dropped her head over the piano.
    Falling in love again
    Never wanted to
    What am I to do?
    Can’t help it.
    She had a husky contralto voice that painted each note with a smooth, sweeping brushstroke while letting the song stand by itself. Stranahan thought her a little theatrical in her gestures, but the voice was like her name, with none of the hysterical palpitations that pop diva vocalists used to turn singing into a gymnastic event bordering on orgasm.
    Men cluster to me like moths around a flame
    And if their wings burn, I know I’m not to blame
    Falling in love again
    Never wanted to
    What am I to do?
    Can’t help it.
    She wore a black sleeveless dress with a floral appliqué of hibiscus that clung like crimson fingers to her right hip and wrapped around the bodice to flower over her left breast. Her auburn locks draped in loose waves across her shoulders; between stanzas, while her fingers rippled over the piano keys in jazz counterpoint, she closed her eyes and tilted her chin so that her hair fell in a waterfall down her back.
    And the songs were real songs: “Wayfaring Stranger,” “But Not for Me,” “The Nearness of You.”
    Stranahan sipped his beer and let her voice wash over him. He scarcely acknowledged Doris when she took the empty chair next to him as the set was coming to an end.
    Velvet Lafayette bowed her head as the applause sounded. She waited until it had completely died before opening her eyes and smiling.
    “That’s very kind of you. I’ll be playing here the next couple of nights, so make sure you tell your friends. Y’all have a good night, now.” She stepped off the stage, bowed slightly to exchange some pleasantry with a young couple at a front table, and then walked directly toward Stranahan. She looked to pass him, then caught his eye. She said, “I certainly hope you figured out where it was you were going this afternoon. A man ought not get too lost, lest someday he can’t find his way back.”
    “Thank you for your concern,” Stranahan said gravely.
    She flashed a smile and Stranahan followed her with his eyes as she climbed the coil of the stairway toward the guest rooms on the upper floor.
    He turned to find Doris staring at him.
    “Now Doris…” he