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soup. ”
    “ No, thanks. ” Alix fumbled with her key s .
    “ Let me do that. ” I grabbed the m from her cold fingers and pushed open the door.
    After flipping on the inside lights, I turned to face her where she still stood on the step, immobile as the proverbial deer in the headlights. Dark shadows under her eyes highlighted her exhaustion.
    “ Aren’t you coming in? ”
    “ Y es. ” She spoke and moved like a wind-up doll with a low battery as she moved past me. She dropped her bag on a floral loveseat and leaned against its back. “ I’m going to bed. ”     
    Compassion for my weary friend warred with annoyance at her summary dismissal. Annoyance won. I was hungry, tired, and I’d missed an evening with Nick over worry for her . I bit back what I wanted to say and perched on the sofa arm near her. “ Come on, Alix. I know you like your privacy, but you ne ed to let me in. I want to help. W e’re friends. That’s what friends do. ”
    “ Friends? We have lunch together and discuss books and kid around. But you don’t really know me . ”
    “ I know you didn’t kill that man. Is that what’s worrying you? After all we’ve gone through , you can’t possibly think I’d consider you capable of murder . Neither would any of your other friends, who, by the way, I had to forcibly restrain from coming with me tonight. They’re waiting to hear what happened, not because they want to gossip about you, but because they care . ”
    “ Fine. I’ll tell you. Then we’ll see how much you—any of you—want to be my friends. ” A fire ignited in Alix’s eyes and she pushed away from the loveseat.
    I took a step backward, startled by the abrupt change from the withdrawn woman I’d driven home.
    She forced her next words through a throat so constricted with emotion or pain that I could imagine hands squeezing her windpipe. “ Arnie had a high old time asking me questions about Hunter Blackburn. ” Alix motioned quotation marks around the name and nodded with a bitter smile.
    “ Hunter Blackburn? Is that the man who was killed? ”
    “ That’s right. He was a con man, a crook who changed his name for whatever current scam he was running . He was a real peach, even stole money from little old ladies. Whatever he wanted, he took. And now, it appears that somebody finally got fed up with t hat mean, disgusting , sorry excuse for a human being . ”
    “ You knew him. ” I mout hed the words, astounded .
    She knew Hunter Blackburn. I didn’t say anything out loud, but she must have caught the dawning awareness in my expression. She sagged back against the loveseat , the fight leaving her . “ Oh, yeah , ” she said quietly. “ You could say I knew him . ” She looked up at me. “ And when I finish what I have to say, you may wish you’d never known me. ”
    I kept my tone matter-of-fact. “ I’d never wish that. ”
    She put an arm over her face, hiding her eyes as she spoke. “ You know all those ex-husbands I don’t talk about? He was the first . ” I could barely make out her next words. “ And the worst . ”
    Images from the past year crowded my mind. Alix driving the badly injured Wendell to the vet’s office in her immaculate convertible, Alix standing up to the deputies when Bianca was in jail, Alix unobtrusively managing Thornton’s while Laurence was in the hospital.
    She had wisecracked her way through every crisis, mocked any hint of sentiment, but she’d repeatedly come through in the clutch for me. For all of us . She’d even manufactured a creative job for Bianca at the Wedding Belle, an opportunity that had allowed Bianca to flourish. Alix was prickly and aloof, but she was no murderer.
    I knelt in front of her, speaking softly. “ I can’ t pretend to understand how you got mixed up with someone like that, but we all make mistakes. ”
    Alix abruptly leaned forward, resting elbows on knees so that her hair covered her face once again. “ Not quite like that. ”
    “