Doing It at the Dixie Dew Read online

  If you looked closely at the photo you could see someone sitting on the front porch in the swing, wearing a bulky blanket and enough jewelry to almost be considered a breastplate. She seemed to be singing and had her arms raised toward Heaven.

  Happy is as happy decides to be, I thought.

  All was well in Littleboro. The rest of the world I couldn’t worry about.

  The doorbell still rang, and I picked up Sherman on the way to the front door. The Dixie Dew was still in business.

  Maybe.

  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.

  Also by Ruth Moose

  Short Fiction

  The Wreath Ribbon Quilt

  Rules and Secrets

  Neighbors and Other Strangers

  Dreaming in Color

  Poetry

  Tea and Assorted Poems

  The Librarian and Other Poems

  About the Author

  RUTH MOOSE is the 2013 winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. She won the PEN award for Syndicated Fiction, the Robert Ruark Award for the Short Story, and the Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award. She has received three Pushcart nominations and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. She’s published three collections of short stories and six collections of poetry. She was on the Creative Writing faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for fifteen years and received the chapman Award for teaching. She lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina.

  Visit her on the Web at www.ruthmoose.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

  DOING IT AT THE DIXIE DEW. Copyright © 2014 by Ruth Moose. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

  Cover illustration by Tom Hallman

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  e-ISBN 9781466846555

  First Edition: May 2014