Murder on a Hot Tin Roof Read Free

hall.

    “You’re late to the gate, Kate!” she piped, speaking in rhyme as she often liked to do, and giving me a new name in the process. She flipped her thick, black, waist-length braid of hair off her shoulder and stepped all the way out onto the landing. “Half the ice in your drink has already melted! This gunk is sunk.”

    I tried to think up a clever reply, but couldn’t. My brain had melted, too. “That’s okay,” I said, wiping my sweaty forehead on my sweaty forearm and trudging the rest of the way up the steps. “I’m so thirsty I’ll drink anything—as long as it’s wet.” To prove my words, I grabbed the glass from Abby’s hand, threw my head back, and poured a good third of the diluted cocktail down my dehydrated throat.

    I considered pouring the rest of the drink down inside the front of my lavender linen dress, but quickly ditched that idea. It would cool me off for a few glorious seconds, I knew, but then later—as the sugary concoction warmed to the rising temperature of my skin—I’d feel steamier and stickier than ever. And my new dress would be ruined. So, instead of giving myself a Tom Collins dunk, I guzzled the rest of the watered-down gunk. (Okay, you caught me. I don’t often speak in rhyme, but I have, on occasion—I’m thoroughly embarrassed to admit—been known to write that way.)

    “Way to go, Flo!” Abby said, her stunning Ava Gardner face lighting up in a satisfied smile. Aside from drawing and painting, listening to jazz, and pursuing her bohemian interest in the taboo practice of free love, the preparing and sharing of exotic alcoholic beverages was Abby’s all-time favorite pastime. “Come on in,” she said, beaming. “I’ll make you another one.”

    A welcome breeze was blowing in Abby’s apartment. Actually, three welcome breezes. One came from the electric fan sitting on the floor at the rear of the kitchen area, right in front of the wide-open back door (which led out to the rusty fire escape landing, which led down to the small, weed- and, no doubt, rat-packed courtyard behind our building). A revolving draft blew from the fan perched on the kitchen counter, and another came wafting from the tall, whirring contraption set near the easel in Abby’s living room-cum-art studio.

    I plopped myself down at the kitchen table, in the spot I thought most likely to benefit from all three breezes, and lit up an L&M filter tip. “Oh, God!” I exclaimed. “Please kill me right now! I can’t endure this unbearable heat for even one more second.” (I am, as you will eventually discover, somewhat prone to hyperbole.)

    “Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” Abby said, sighing. She poured a healthy dose of gin into my fresh drink, gave it a vigorous stir, then, nestling the glass in a cocktail napkin, carried it from the kitchen counter to my place at the table. “I was working on a new illustration all day,” she said, nodding toward her easel, “a cover for Husky Male magazine, and it was so crazy hot in here I thought I was going to faint.” She sat down at the table, lit up a Pall Mall, and took a deep swig of her own drink. “It got so bad I had to take off all my clothes and work in the nude.”

    Uh oh. I knew what that meant. It meant the crazy heat wave had probably been of her own making—that Abby had likely worked with a handsome young Husky Male model that afternoon, and that she’d spent more time seducing (or, as she would say, shtupping ) him than painting him.

    “I take it you weren’t alone,” I said, letting more than a shred of sarcasm seep into my tone. (I disapprove of Abby’s promiscuous ways, you should know, while she thinks I’m a total prude.) “Anybody I know?” I asked. “Or did the model agency send you a brand-new toy?”

    “Oh, shut up, Paige! You’re such a prig!”

    “I am not. I’m a healthy, passionate, open-minded woman who just happens to believe that the beautiful and intimate act of procreation should be