Carolyn G. Hart Read Online Free Page A

the great financial clans of America.
    Annie had answered sharply. “You don’t need to change your name. You need to change your habits.”
    “You sound like my prep school counselors,” he retorted equably. “And you’re much too pretty for that.”
    “Don’t be condescending. Look, you’re smart and capable. Why don’t you—”
    He interrupted primly, “Live up to your potential?” He shook his head. “I’ve heard it all, Annie, chapter and verse. ‘Maxwell, it’s such a waste. Why don’t you become a lawyer/journalist/doctor/foreign service attaché/stockbroker?’ ”
    “Why don’t you?”
    “Lovey, my great-great-grandfather made enough money to buy anything the world has to offer.” The laughter fell away. “The funny thing is, there isn’t anything I want to buy. The world isn’t clamoring for my services. I’m a fair writer, a competent actor, a damn fool at figures. I’m bored by business, I hate quarrels, and my interest in science stopped with a sixth-grade film about a turtle giving birth in the sand.”
    “What do you like?”
    The grin was back. “People. People in all their wonder. I hawked sausages at the World’s Fair in New Orleans. I’ve dived for pearls off Japan. Now I’m massaging talent as an off-Broadway producer. What the hell, Annie. Why can’t you go with the flow?”
    But she couldn’t. She bunched a pillow more comfortably behind her. Damn him. Why did he have to reappear in her life?
    Irritably, she slapped her hand against the chair arm. She had to decide what to do about Elliot and the Regulars tonight.
    Tonight.
    The Regulars.
    There was no way she could afford another thousand amonth in rent. Could Elliot really do that? Her lease expired in two months. She groaned. He probably could. The only shop presently vacant on the harbor front was much too small. He probably owned that one, too.
    She couldn’t lose her bookstore. It was the first thing in all her life that had been her own, and it was her only link with the happiest portion of her past, those idyllic summer days, curled up in a hammock behind Uncle Ambrose’s tiny house, poring over the adventures of mousey Miss Silver, elegant Lord Wimsey, and gimlet-eyed Miss Marple.
    Annie relished running Death On Demand. She’d loved mysteries since her first Nancy Drew. She loved mystery readers, who ran the gamut of society, with a small
s
. She enjoyed tipping readers to new, good writers, such as Jane Dentinger, Dorothy Cannell, and Charlaine Harris. She liked the way readers could surprise you: the wispy-haired spinster who never missed a McBain, the island plumber whose favorite author was Amanda Cross. Now, there was an accomplishment: to become a best-selling mystery writer and also win tenure at Columbia—the twin achievement of Carolyn Heilbrun, who writes as Amanda Cross.
    She’d enjoyed meeting writers during her summer visits, but she’d never until now had a chance to know any of them well. She had to admit she didn’t exactly love all these mystery writers. Still, she liked some of them a lot. Elliot was a stinker.
    The phone at the cash desk rang.
    Blast Max. He probably needed directions.
    Steeling herself, she stayed put.
    Would everybody come tonight?
    Her Sunday Night Specials, when the store was open only to writers, were popular. At least, they had been until now. Every Sunday evening, one of the Regulars provided an informal program. One Sunday, the Farleys, who wrote children’s mysteries, told the Regulars about Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who built a mansion high above the Hudson with her profits from the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and several other series which first her father, then she, authored. The Stratemeyer syndicate had worked under nearly fifty pseudonyms and sold over one hundred million books. During one session, Harriet Edelman, whose own hero was infamously clever, traced the historyof the comedy mystery from Mary Roberts Rinehart’s first injection of mild