Acknowledgments

This is not to thank the members of my long-ago Charlotte writers’ group who disliked this manuscript from word one.

My husband, who said “Whatever you do, don’t write a novel. It takes too long. You’ll never get it published and you can’t plot.”

My sons, who asked, “What do you know about running a bed and breakfast?”

Note to my academic cell mates: Doing It at the Dixie Dew has the only two subjects W. B. Yeats said were worth writing about: sex and death. Plus the third one: food.

Seriously: I do want to thank my good friends Mignon Ballard and Molly Weston, who eat, sleep, and breathe mysteries. A trillion thanks to Jane Dunlap, who is my computer guru and best buddy. Judith Stanton, who alternately calmed and cheered. The Saturday group at Joyce Allen’s. Also, more thanks to Karen Pullen and Sisters in Crime. Plus the Writers’ Police Academy. Cathey Kidd—and she knows why. And more thanks than anyone can imagine to my genius editor, Toni Kirkpatrick, whose talented pen made this a better book in every way.