Doing It At The Dixie Dew – Ruth Moose

She stood next to the produce counter and balanced a cabbage like a head in her hand. “Weight,” she said, and lifted it as if she wanted to look it in the eye. “That’s what you feel for. Solid for its size.” She held the cabbage out, then palmed it like a bowling ball before putting it in her cart. “Stripped?” I rolled a dozen apples into a bag. I didn’t have my mind on shopping or on Verna. That morning I had found Sherman asleep on the backseat of my car.

He had probably been there all the time, knew a good place when he found it and decided to stay. He’d only yawned when I lifted him out and hugged him. “The housekeeper and that leather-jacket boyfriend of hers. Joe Roderick didn’t have any sense about people. Took in anybody off the streets.”

Verna leaned close into my face, her breath smelling dry as oats, heavy as molasses. “If you ask me, and nobody has yet, but they will, that housekeeper was up to something.” She broke two bananas off a clump and laid them in her cart. “Poor man. Too innocent for his own good.”

Verna pointed to the remaining bananas. “Honey,” she said, “I hope you cut the tips off your bananas when you get home and wash them good with soap and water. You don’t know where they might have been.” I counted out three lemons and put them in a bag. “What did the housekeeper take?” “Everything, honey, everything,” Verna said. “Every dish, spoon, speck of lint. I guess they left the light coming in the windows, but that was all.” She laughed. “Lord, that took gall or guts or both. They just cleaned out the rectory …

couch, chairs, tables, beds, rugs, lamps … they took everything but the curtains and shades.” Verna squeezed a tomato. “I guess that’s one way to get your house cleaned, but I can do without it just the same.” I remembered the moving van at midnight. “What would make anyone do a thing like that?”

I wondered aloud. I moved my cart to the celery and carrots tucked in their shining plastic bags and separated by nosegays of curly parsley. Mama Alice always believed parsley set off anything you served, whether it was sandwiches, soup or just eggs and toast. And she grew her own, year-round. There was a sunny spot by the kitchen door that had been her parsley bed for years. I used it for greenery with the fresh flowers I put in every guest room.

“Who knows why anyone does anything anymore?”

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. OceanofPDF.com To Lyle, Robin, Jordan, Tyler and Barry, Melissa, Mallorie, and Madison Moose, with much love OceanofPDF.com Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Acknowledgments Also by Ruth Moose About the Author Copyright OceanofPDF.com Chapter One People don’t go to a bed-and-breakfast to die, do they?

I’d never heard of it before, but let me tell you about Miss Lavinia Lovingood. She came to my bed-and-breakfast, the Dixie Dew, in Littleboro, North Carolina, checked in and “checked out.” She died. Went to bed in my Azalea Room, fresh with deep pink paint and wallpaper still damp from the hanging, and never got up. I couldn’t believe it. There I was after my first night in the bed-and- breakfast business and I’d had six guests. Two couples and two singles.

A full house. The two couples were a Mr. and Mrs. Elmer Ottinger from Hackensack and Will and Ann Dinsmore from Quebec. The singles, a Mr. Fred Fredricks from Forest Grove and a tiny ivory wisp of a woman, Miss Lavinia Lovingood, who was surely eighty plus but extremely well kept, if you know what I mean.

She’d written for a room weeks ago, even before I knew I’d have a room ready. She’d written in perfect cursive on thick, monogrammed notepaper and enclosed a generous deposit for a three-night stay. When the reservation came, Ida Plum Duckett, “my good right arm” and lifesaver in general, peeked over my shoulder and said, “Come home to die, did she?” “Who?” I asked, wondering how somebody in Rome, Italy (not Rome, Georgia—around here you had to specify), knew about the Dixie Dew Bed- and-Breakfast. “You know her?” “Beth Mckenzie Henry, if you knew anybody in this town, you knew a Lovingood,” Ida Plum said.

“Took the whole hill in the cemetery for themselves until they daughtered out. I guess she’s the last one.” “Imagine,” I said. “Somebody from Littleboro, North Carolina, living in Italy.” I tapped my teeth with the envelope that smelled almost good enough to eat.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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