A Duke Noble Snippet

I'm sorry I haven't posted much over here so far this year.  It's supposed to be three days a week here and four over at The Writing Spectacle, but this blog is strictly for writing related stuffs and I just haven't been in the zone.

I've been working a bit on editing Duke Noble, PI: Rumor Has It.  Not a lot, but a bit.  I really need to pull my gumption out of the deep well it's been residing in, slough off all the goo, and get to work.  

Anyway, here's the latest incarnation of the beginning of the story.

“Are you asking me kill you?” 

I stared at the woman sitting across from me.  I hadn't seen her in years, but she looked as mentally sound as you or I.  Then again, a person doesn't have to be insane to want to end their own life. 

Part of me wondered if her choice to come to me was due to my profession and the life I led.  I wasn't sure how much Sara Hughes knew about the things I'd done since those long ago days when she made me lemonade and tussled my hair before sending me off to play ball with her own kids.  A lot of people seemed to have the idea men in my line of work might be willing to do anything for the right price.  Murder included.

This seventy-year-old woman giggled and I could picture the girl she might've been.  Once, she'd been a close friend of my mother.  Hell, there were times when she'd been more of a mother to me than my own. 

“Goodness, no, Duke." she said, breaking into my thoughts as she handed me a plate of Danish Windmill cookies.  They were my favorite.  Or at least they had been when I was ten.  I took the plate and set it on the coffee table between us without taking one.  I didn't have the stomach for eating. 

“I want to hire you," she continued, "so you will, at the right time, insure none of my heirs are arrested for my murder.”

I shook my head.  “So, you're planning on paying someone else to kill you.”

"You sound offended I'd place the burden elsewhere.  Would you do it if I asked?"