Worse than Death (Anna Southwood Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the music down a bit.
    He grunted and jerked a thumb towards the circular drive in front of the house, where there was an elaborate portico with flagged sandstone steps. “Cor,” I breathed as I got out of the car. The door was opened before I hit the top step, and another sullen Asian man, in a black silk trouser suit, beckoned me inside and down a hallway lined floor and ceiling with enough imported marble to restore the Colosseum. It was the sort of house I’d always suspected Clyde had secretly lusted after — ostentatious to a fault — but he’d let me have the final say in our home decorating.
    The butler, or whoever he was, opened a huge fumed-oak door and bowed me inside. The room was a Playboy vision of a real man’s den, with white nauga-hide couches, a conversation pit, thick-piled cream carpet, eighteenth-century hunting prints. There was even an antique pipe-rack on a Regency tallboy by the long, sea-filled windows.
    “Mrs Anna Southwood,” came the gravelly voice I remembered from the phone. He sat behind an enormous desk — half the lost southern cedar forest there, at least — and I blinked at him, a dark bulky shadow against the sunlit view.
    “Clyde’s widow,” he said. “Playing funny buggers. Sit down.”
    Oh shit, I thought, but I sat, on one of the most beautiful parlour chairs I’d ever seen. I furtively fingered its silk-upholstered seat. You’d swear it was the original cover.
    Rex Channing was a big man, and not especially graceful. He had one of those potato-Irish faces, ruggedly attractive, really, and ice-cold blue eyes. He wasn’t at all what I’d expected, and I wondered again about Leonie and Beth eking out their bleak outer-suburbs existence. He’d obviously outgrown them both long ago. “Well?” he said. “What’s the real story?” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say and sat staring at him like a mesmerised rabbit.
    “You’re a private detective, I hear,” he said, flicking a cigar from an inlaid box on his desk. “Amateur.” He bit the end off of the cigar and held it in front of him. I had a nervous urge to chatter at him about how interesting these obscure male rituals were, but I suppressed it. When he had the noisome thing lit and glowing, he leaned back in his chair and pointed a large finger at me. “Are you working for my ex-wife?”
    “No.” I gulped. There, it was easy to speak. Pull yourself together, girl.
    “Who, then?” He didn’t waste words, this bloke.
    “No one. Just…” I was really getting rattled. I remembered the exercise our old drama coach had given us for first-night nerves, and I imagined I was swallowing a boiled egg whole. It worked to some extent, then it seemed to get stuck half-way down.
    “Look, Mr Channing…” I said, round the egg in my throat. I was damned if I’d say “I can explain…”
    “Rex,” he said, and smiled, a disarmingly charming grin. “Call me Rex, and I’ll call you Anna. Let’s put this on a friendly basis.”
    “Um, okay then, Rex.” I floundered, then found myself giving him a garbled and highly inventive version of why I was involved. I put a lot of the blame on Graham, playing as dumb as I thought I’d get away with. Just acting on orders, sir — that sort of thing. Graham and Paul Whitehouse, who were casual acquaintances from first year Law, became bosom buddies in an instant. Mate-ship, I thought, was something Rexie would understand.
    “That’s enough,” he said, and sat frowning at me. For a wild moment I wondered if he had a secret button under the desk that would bring his sulky employees running in to tie me up and dump me in a lonely spot somewhere. I used to watch ‘The Rockford Files’, too.
    “Ask your… partner, or your boss, or whatever he is… if he’ll take a retainer from me,” he said, and it took all my willpower not to fall off the chair.
    “I haven’t seen my daughter for nearly two months,” he went on, turning to stare out the window, speaking