The Christie Caper - Carolyn Hart [142]
Obviously, however, her efforts had not gone unappreciated; witness the call she’d just received from Max. So now that Max was involved in a case, how could she complain?
“Dammit, Agatha, you’d think he could arrange work for office hours!” Annie slammed her hand down on the countertop.
The sleek black cat atop the bookcases devoted to Agatha Christie lifted her elegant head to stare with unblinking amber eyes at Annie. (Was it simply coincidence that the cat considered these particular shelves to be her own or were there matters involved here beyond ordinary human understanding?)
“And what’s so confidential he can’t even tell his own wife?”
Annie heard the hurt in her own voice. And what was so urgent, so important that Max had called to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner—and not to wait up for him tonight. She glanced toward the front windows. She’d just put up the CLOSED sign and was tallying the day’s receipts while waiting for Max to walk down the boardwalk from Confidential Commissions, one of the more unusual businesses on the South Carolina resort island of Broward’s Rock. Annie always thought of Confidential Commissions as a modern-day equivalent to the good offices performed by Agatha Christie’s detective of the heart, Mr. Parker Pyne. Max rather liked that analogy, but he was also quick to point out that he was neither a private detective nor a practicing lawyer, but merely a consultant available to those with problems outside the ken of the licensed professionals.
It had become a happy ritual, the two of them coming together at the close of the business day, each with much to tell. At least, she always had much to tell. But this week Max had said even less than usual. In retrospect, she realized he’d been quite closemouthed, merely observing that things were picking up at the office. Of course, Annie’d swept right on with her reports, how Henny Brawley, her best customer, had sent a postcard from England to report on her tour of Shrewsbury Abbey, the home of Ellis Peters’s incomparable Brother Cadfael (“Annie, I actually saw the small altar to St. Winefride!”), and how busy it had been in Death on Demand—“Would you believe a busload of clubwomen from Charleston?”—since Ingrid Smith, her chief assistant, was bedridden with a spring flu.
Annie felt deflated, a suddenly empty evening ahead. Max hadn’t even said where he was going. Dusk was falling, and soon the air would cool sharply. Nights could be shivery in the spring despite the reassuring harbingers of the new season: the call of the chuck-will’s-widow, the rachet of swamp frogs.
“I wonder if he has his sweater with him?” Her voice seemed to echo in the empty store.
Agatha yawned, a nice equivalent to a human shrug, then rose, stretched, and dropped to the floor to pad lightly down the central corridor toward the back of the bookstore.
Annie followed, pausing to alphabetize several titles in the Romantic Suspense section: My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier, Danger in the Dark by Mignon Eberhart, Widows’ Plight by Ruth Fenisong, Alive and Dead by T. X. Ferrare, and The Clue of the Judas Tree by Leslie Ford.
“Max was so abrupt, Agatha. And abstracted.” She put the latest title by Elaine Raco Chase face out. “Like he was talking to a stranger.”
Agatha waited imperiously atop the coffee bar, which offered customers a different blend every day (Annie’s favorite, of course, was Kona) served in mugs bearing the names of famous mysteries and their authors. Annie offered Agatha a fresh serving of dry food, received an unequivocal feline glare in response, and quickly reached for a can. Agatha did not tolerate frustration well. It was wise, Annie had decided after applying Mercurochrome to numerous scratches, to satisfy Agatha’s needs, wants, and desires promptly. And, if she thought hard about Agatha, she wouldn’t mull over that odd, unsatisfactory call from Max.
As she emptied half the can into Agatha’s bowl, she remarked conversationally, “I have to hand it