Free A Little Class on Murder by Carolyn G. Hart Page B

her hands in despair last night and neglected to prepare.
    Preparation was paramount. She was determined, at all costs, to hew to the line. Nothing was going to deflect her from the task at hand. Nothing. In such a doughty fashion would Inspector French pursue even the most tedious investigation.(And he was as fond of food as was Annie, though, of course, this had nothing to do with her admiration for him.)
    So she smiled encouragingly at her husband. “Max, work is
fun
. Look at it that way.”
    “At eight o’clock in the morning?” he asked dismally.
    “It’s for your own good. You haven’t been busy enough. I can tell,” she said firmly.
    “Really? Does my hair turn green? Do my ears droop? What signal do you receive?”
    She grinned. “It’s much more subtle. You are as languid as a sunning cat. Max, you need to be stirred up. Activated. Energized. Now, I want you to promise me you’ll take on a new challenge today.”
    “Hmmph.”
    They reached the front door to Confidential Commissions, Max’s agency which specialized in solving problems. He had formed it and purposefully kept its nature and function vague, because the sovereign state of South Carolina has quite rigorous requirements for the establishment of private detective agencies. So Max ran a tasteful ad in
The Island Gazette
and
The Chastain Courier:
    Troubled, puzzled, curious. Whatever your problem, contact CONFIDENTIAL COMMISSIONS , 555-1321, 11 Seaview, Broward’s Rock
    Annie stood on tiptoe and slipped her arms around his neck.
    Max immediately looked much more cheerful, and he caught her up in a vigorous embrace.
    “Max! Not here. That’s too—”
    Annie was trying to make her point, but somehow she lost track of it.
    In a moment, he surfaced. “Oh, yeah,” he said happily. “Hey, Annie, let’s go home. Just for a little while.”
    Honestly, he was appealing, his thick blond hair, now ruffled, those dark blue eager eyes, and the warmth of his lips.
    Annie almost succumbed, then drew herself up—and away—with a stern shake of her head. “Duty, Max. It calls.”
    “Lunch at home?” he asked hopefully. His vivid eyes took on a look of cunning. “Some R and R, Annie. It does wonders for morale.”
    One of Max’s stepfathers had been a bird colonel in the army, and, taking a fatherly interest in Laurel’s son, early explained the efficacy of rest-and-relaxation periods. Laurel had been so pleased at Max’s warm response to this military influence.
    “Well—” Annie temporized.
    Max bent close and his lips traveled from her cheek to her throat.
    “Oh Max, you make it so hard to be serious.”
    “This isn’t serious?”
    “Lunch,” she finally agreed feebly. But it was nice to leave a cheerful Max behind. She turned once to wave, but he was already inside Confidential Commissions.
    Annie hummed a little tune. She always enjoyed going to Death on Demand. Her bookstore. Her very special, wonderful lair of mysteries. As she unlocked the front door, she paused to admire the window displays. The south window featured Tony Hillerman’s supremely original books, so evocative of the glory and grandeur of New Mexico and its people,
The Blessing Way, The Dark Wind, Dance Hall of the Dead, Listening Woman, The Ghostway, People of Darkness, A Thief of Time
, and his only non-Indian book,
The Fly on the Wall
. (Hillerman wryly recounts how his agent responded to
The Blessing Way
, instructing him, “If you insist on rewriting this, get rid of all that Indian stuff.”) The north window contained an exhibit of golf mysteries,
Murder on the Links
by Agatha Christie,
Death on the First Tee
by Herbert Adams,
The Murder on the Sixth Hole
by David Frome,
An Awkward Lie
by Michael Innes,
Lying Three
by Ralph McInery, and
Fer de Lance
by Rex Stout.
    As the door swung in and she smelled the particular, exhilarating (to her) fragrance of Death on Demand, a compound of freshly ground roast coffee, ink, paper, and moist Whitmaniferns, she felt a