Free A Murderous Glaze by Melissa Glazer Page A

If you do, then I’m your gal.”
    “She meant on the pottery wheel, Mom.”
    Hannah turned to her son. “David, I know perfectly well what she meant.”
    “I’ve got some work to do in back,” I said, “if you two will excuse me.” It looked as though Hannah and David were going to have a heart-to-heart talk, and I didn’t want to intrude.
    “Stay, Carolyn. This involves you, too.”
    I shrugged and waited for what she had to say. Hannah nodded her approval, then looked at her son and said, “David, I’ve been talking to your professors at school.”
    “I can’t believe you,” David said loudly. “You can’t do that, Mom.”
    “I can, and I did,” she said. “They all say you’re doing wonderfully, by the way. I’m sorry I came down so hard on you last night.”
    The poor guy didn’t know what hit him. Before he could say another word, Hannah looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I owe you an apology, too. I shouldn’t have deserted you this morning, especially with what you’re going through at the moment.”
    “There’s nothing to apologize for,” I said, then added with a grin, “but today was my turn to buy, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to pick up the check tomorrow.”
    “Fair enough,” she said.
    David, clearly puzzled by what was going on, said, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a class.”
    He tore out the door before we could get out our goodbyes. Hannah waited a second, then started laughing. “That child can surely make an exit, can’t he?”
    “When he wants to. Are you sure we’re okay?”
    “Absolutely. He really is doing well in school. His advanced ceramics instructor told me David has a gift for glazes.”
    “I could have told you that myself. Listen, I don’t have anything special planned for tonight, but would you like to have dinner with Bill and me? We’d love to have you.”
    “Thanks, but I’ve already got plans.”
    “A date, by any chance?” Hannah rarely went out, nearly always with disastrous results. She claimed she had bad luck when it came to men, and from what I’d seen, it was a fact I couldn’t dispute. Even when I’d tried to fix her up, the evening had been a debacle.
    “No, I really do have to wade through those Shakespeare essays. I’ve put them off as long as I dare. I’d love to take a rain check, though.”
    “Done.”
    After Hannah was gone, I ran the reports on our cash register and transferred our meager funds from the till to my “safe.” Actually, I didn’t have a real safe on the premises—I had a ceramic pig in the back room that I used for one. No one in their right mind would suspect I was actually hiding my cash in a piggy bank.
    I was almost ready to go home when I remembered Larry Wickline. Some detective I was. I looked up his number, called it, but got a busy signal. At least he was home.
    Just as I put the receiver back, the telephone rang in my hand. “Hello?”
    “That was fast,” my husband said on the other end of the line. “What were you doing, standing there waiting for me to call?”
    “What can I say, I’m psychic. You’re calling about dinner, aren’t you?” I swear, that man lived by his stomach.
    “Yep, that’s right. Sorry, but I’m running into some problems with one of those dressers, so I’m going to work here at Olive’s shop. Don’t worry about me tonight. I already ate.”
    “What did you have?”
    “A salad.”
    I didn’t have to see his face to know that he was lying. “Okay, suddenly you’re a worse liar than I am. Now what did you really eat for dinner?”
    He chuckled softly. “What’s a salad have in it? Lettuce, right? Well, I had lettuce.”
    Then I got it. “Did you have pickles and onions, too? You ate a hamburger, didn’t you?”
    “I had the lettuce with it,” he said stubbornly.
    “Bill Emerson, you need to eat better than that, and you know it. At least tell me you skipped the French fries.”
    He sounded almost smug as he said, “They went great