Free A Little Class on Murder by Carolyn G. Hart

forgetting her determination to ignore the first row. Henny smiled back, Miss Dora elevated a sardonic eyebrow, Laurel radiated quiet pride.
    The hall door burst open.
    Annie knew the ropes. Like a minister with a wailing child in the congregation or an actor with a restless audience, sheignored the interruption. As a drama instructor had once admonished, “
Project, project, project!
” She raised her voice and continued, “These three women profoundly affected the course of the mystery novel, marking the genre forever afterward with the stamp of their own individual genius. The course of true love marred by murder, an intellectual content that amazed, plotting so brilliant—”
    “I’m sorry.”
    Annie paused.
    Georgia Finney, her face even paler than before, hesitated just inside the classroom and looked at Annie imploringly. The red-haired photographer carried a rolled-up newspaper in one hand. “Please forgive me for interrupting.” Her voice quivered.
    “What’s wrong?” Annie’s query was instinctive, a response to genuine distress.
    The girl swallowed convulsively and her sea green eyes swung from Annie to the student newspaper editor. “Brad, I got your class schedule. I have to talk to you. Now.”
    Kelly frowned. “I’ll be at
The Crier
this afternoon, just as usual. How about three o’clock? That’s a pretty good time, before everything gets hairy with our deadline.”
    Georgia thrust the rolled-up newspaper toward him. “It says there are going to be more articles. Brad, you’ve got to stop it! Please come out in the hall. We’ve got to talk.”
    Kelly’s square face looked suddenly implacable. He stared at her solemnly. “It’s the duty of a newspaper to report the truth.”
    “Brad,” her voice was low and stricken, “these are people you know. Brad, you’re hurting people. Please.”
    “No,” he said shortly, and Annie remembered how he’d faced down the giant with the synthesizer music. “These are people who are being paid with tax dollars. The public has a right to know who they are and what they do. I’m just doing my job.”
    “Are you?” Anger flushed Georgia’s cheeks. “Your job? Or Mr. Burke’s? Is he behind this?”
    “My source is confidential,” Kelly retorted quickly.
    Annie had had enough. Whatever quarrel these young people had, it wasn’t her quarrel. And this was her classroom. “Wait a minute,” she said sharply. “Mr. Kelly, you may go out in the hall for this discussion. If you please.”
    He shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t please.”
    Georgia’s face hardened. “You’re going to regret this, Brad.” In a swift and violent gesture, she ripped the newspaper in two and flung the pieces on the floor, then turned and plunged out into the hall.
    The students, including Laurel, Miss Dora, and Henny, followed her exit with fascinated eyes.
    Annie took a deep breath. “Mary Roberts Rinehart grew up on Archer Street and this street would figure—”
    Max tried to look supportive, indignant, and apologetic without assuming any faint hint of responsibility. “Sweetheart, of course I didn’t know she was coming!” Guessing and knowing were not, of course, synonymous. “This comes as a great shock to me.”
    Annie paced in front of his desk. She was obviously steamed, but the angry sparkle gave her gray eyes an unforgettable vividness and her tousled blond hair (she’d probably paced on the ferry all the way across the sound) reminded him of rumpled sheets in the morning sunlight. Not that there was anything remotely loving in the glares she was emitting right this moment. Her glances were right on a par with Bertha Cool scanning Donald Lam: suspicious, testy, and decidedly grouchy. Fortunately, the similarity ended there. Annie was still his sexy, sweet (sometimes) wife, though afternoon delight might be temporarily on hold if he couldn’t convince her of his noncomplicity in Laurel’s unheralded arrival.
    Annie stopped, braced her hands