The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder Read Online Free

snowy Saturday in the library auditorium.
    I turned on the television to catch up on the weather while waiting for the pizza. Woodbridge had been suffering under a ton of late-season snow, including some serious snowfall the last week of March. On April 1, people started asking themselves if this was a joke.
    “Ack. Who switched the channel to WINY?” I said.
    “Not me, for sure,” Jack mouthed.
    “Where’s the remote? I’ll be blinded by Todd Tyrell’s teeth. You know I hate his program. Let’s watch—”
    “I didn’t switch it. The dogs must have,” Jack said, rejoining me. I guess he thought I’d fall for that.
    “Did you forget the anchovies?”
    Jack plunked his lanky body on the sofa and made a face. “The pizza has been ordered according to your specifications.”
    I should have bitten my tongue. Jack is just short of a finished thesis for his PhD in philosophy. If he could get his head around those dusty nineteenth-century eggheads, surely he could order a pizza. Even one with anchovies. I’m told I can be just the tiniest bit bossy. I’m trying to fight that. Sometimes, I lose.
    Meanwhile, on WINY Todd Tyrell was a vision of barely suppressed excitement.
    Woodbridge Police are seeking a hit-and-run driver after an unidentified woman was struck and killed near the corner of Long March Road and Amsterdam Avenue this evening. There were no witnesses to the crime, in which the pedestrian was tossed in the air by the speeding vehicle and left to die on the deserted street. Police are suggesting slippery road conditions may have been a factor. The victim’s name has not been released, as police have yet to contact the next of kin.
    “That’s horrible,” Jack said. “Long March Road and Amsterdam Avenue? That’s just around the corner from my shop. People drive way too fast for this snow.”
    “How do they know she was tossed in the air if there were no witnesses?” I grumbled. “I never believe a word that jackass says. How many times has he insinuated that I was implicated in a crime when I was absolutely innocent? That’s why I hate this show. Did I say hate? I also meant loathe and detest. Where’s the remote? I want to turn it off.”
    Of course, the remote was nowhere.
    Perhaps the dogs had hidden it. I used the prehistoric method of touching the off button with my index finger. But our good mood had been punctured by the thought of a woman who’d gone out for a walk on an ordinary Friday night and ended up dying alone in the snow. Had she just achieved something she’d been striving for? Was she planning on celebrating, hurrying through the blowing snow to get home? To a husband? Children? People who loved her and didn’t know she was lying cold and wet on a dark, quiet street?
    I shivered.
    Jack leaped up to answer the door as the pizza arrived, and the perfume of tomatoes, cheese and, yes, anchovies filled the room.
    I dashed into the kitchen and opened a bottle of our favorite cheap merlot to go with the pizza. I filled two glasses and left Jack to put the pizza on plates. He prefers to eat it straight out of the box, but we’re working at being grown up. We alternate: box one time and plates another. Grown-ups compromise. Truffle and Sweet Marie got the first bites. A well-deserved reward, with dog biscuits for dessert. Luckily, there wasn’t a vet or a nutritionist within spitting distance.
    I was just about to bite into my pizza when the phone rang.
    Jack said, “Let it go to message.”
    I would have loved to let it go to message, but it was from Mona.
    She said, “Oh my God!”
    “Mona?”
    “I didn’t hit that woman.”
    “Hit that—”
    “It wasn’t me. And stop repeating what I say.”
    “Of course it wasn’t you, Mona. It never crossed my mind that you had—”
    “It’s just that I told you I had that fantasy that I wanted to hit her with my car and see her face splatter all over my windshield and you might have thought I acted on it. Since that seems to be