Free The Bohemian Murders by Dianne Day

call her the Poor Drowned Woman, since she hadn’t drowned) die as a result of her own carelessness? Or did some unknown person hit her on the head hard enough to kill her, and throw her into the sea? Who was she? Why weren’t the police doing anything? Or if they were, why was there nothing in the newspaper? And mostimportant of all, how could I find the answers to any of these questions?
    Thus occupied in my mind, I hopped off the streetcar at the corner of Lighthouse and Grand and did not even see the person waiting on the sidewalk outside my office until I was practically upon her.
    “I must say, it’s
about
time!”
    That voice made my toes curl. The waiting woman was Artemisia Vaughn.

CHAPTER FIVE

    S he was dressed all in shades of purple, from head to foot. Where she got such clothes I could not imagine, but I did have to admit (to myself—never to her, or God forbid to Misha!) that they looked good on her. She seemed to be swathed in layers of veils. Like me, Artemisia does not wear a corset. Unlike me, she is so generously endowed that one cannot help noticing she does not wear one.
    “I apologize for being late,” I said, as sincerely as possible while unlocking the door, “but I had some business in Monterey and it took longer than I’d thought it would.” I gritted my teeth and uttered the expected: “How nice to see you again, Artemisia.”
    She flowed gracefully through the door. “Likewise, Fremont. Misha assures me you are absolutely
the
perfect person to whom I should entrust my manuscript, which I have brought with me. Oh, what a
darling
office! I adore these yellow chairs.”
    It was the cushions, not the chairs, that were yellow; but to say so would be nitpicking. Grudgingly I noticed that the lavender and purple of her dress presented quite a pretty picture against the yellow cushion, like a patch of spring crocus.
    No sooner had she sat than she bounced up again. Very sprightly for a woman of thirty-some-odd. Her hair was down in the way I myself prefer, and intertwined with narrow purple ribbons. “Is this the typewriting machine? It’s very handsome, isn’t it? You know, Fremont, what you need is a few pictures on these walls. I always think a blank wall looks so
naked,
don’t you?”
    “My budget does not extend to paintings,” I said dryly.
    Artemisia whirled around, and I saw that her ensemble was not made of veils after all. There was actually a dress under there of solid fabric in a medium-purple shade, and over it several top layers, each of a different cut and different shade, in a thin material such as georgette. “Oh, I’ll get some together for you. We’ll all contribute one or two. Myself, Tom, Dick, and Harry, Khalid—”.
    I said without thinking, “Khalid is the Burnoose Boy?”
    She laughed: the gold-shower-of-coins effect. “Exactly!”
    Her laugh was so infectious that I laughed, too. Then I recovered myself. “I couldn’t possibly allow you to do that. You see, I can’t afford insurance either, and original artwork—”
    She interrupted me, laughing again. “You are living in some other world, Fremont.
Insurance?
Do you think any of us could possibly care about something so
mundane?
Of course I do sell my paintings, and so does Khalid but only to Irma’s friends, and Tom, Dick, and Harry can’t
give
theirs away but I’ll sort through them and find some that aren’t too bad.”
    “Artemisia, are Tom, Dick, and Harry their real names?”
    “I doubt it.” She plopped down again and all herlayers subsided with a little
poof.
“Just between us girls, I call them the Twangy Boys.”
    “Twangy Boys? Oh, I see. At least, I think I do.” In spite of myself, I giggled. “All three of them? Together?”
    Artemisia giggled, too. If her laugh was like a shower of golden coins, her giggle was like pixie dust. “They are a ménage à trois of a different kind!”
    We both whooped. I hadn’t laughed so hard in months. For the moment I didn’t care that I