Free Chill Factor by Chris Rogers Page A

this morning.”
    Belle’s pencil tap-danced on her notepad. “A woman in love with the wrong man, a woman
jilted
, perhaps, by a man—heartsick, humiliated, after having already lost two important people from her life—might decide the world had taken one cruel turn too many.”
    Dixie frowned, not liking the picture Belle painted. Standing abruptly, she looked through the glass expanse at a city filled with men as deceptively charming as Ralph Drake, with his roving eyes and six-going-on-seven divorces. Then she turned and headed for the door.
    “So, Flanni, what are you planning to do?”
    “About the will? I guess that’s up to Marty.” She reached for the fancy brass doorknob on the richly polished mahogany.
    “About this whole business,” Belle persisted. “You were there when the robbery took place. Did Mrs. Pine act nuts?”
    Dixie paused, her hand on the knob, and looked back.
    “She wasn’t raving, if that’s what you mean. She knew exactly what to say and do. She didn’t waste any time taking the cash and getting out. She certainly didn’t hesitate to shoot—but I think she might’ve missed intentionally. Fired a warning.”
    “Nice old friend turned bank robber—and you’re willing to let it go? Doesn’t sound like you, Flannigan.”
    Dixie sighed. She did want to know what made Aunt Edna go bizocko, but she didn’t want to discover a senile-in-lust story. “What is it you think I should do?”
    “I haven’t a clue. But if I ever rob a bank at gunpoint without any explanation, I hope someone cares enough to find out why.”
    Riding down in the skyscraper’s art deco elevator, Dixie considered Belle’s comment. Was it possible Edna had been swept off her aging feet by a man? That would explain the physical rejuvenation. The excitement of being in love gave awoman renewed energy and an outer glow that could take years off her appearance. A woman in love was likely to buy new clothes, change her hairstyle—
    Dixie raked a hand through her own spiky mop.
    As a kid, her hair had been an embarrassment—thick, long, frizzy. Combing the tangles out each morning hurt so bad Dixie longed to chop it off. For her tenth birthday, Carla Jean, her birth mother, allowed her to go to a beauty parlor alone, expecting her daughter’s waist-length locks to be done up in corkscrew curls—a style Carla Jean associated with pretty little girls in romantic old movies. But a cute boy at school had made a snide comment about the frizz, and to her mother’s intense disappointment, Dixie coaxed the beautician to cut it chin-length and blunt.
    Almost three decades later, she’d finally allowed it to grow past her collar. She’d also started wearing lipstick and occasionally slipped into clothes more feminine than her usual jeans and boots. All because of a man.
    The man responsible for her new interest in girly stuff was also responsible for the seventh, and final, message on her pager that morning during defense class. Parker Dann. The only man Dixie’d ever seriously considered snuggling down with for eternity. Not that he’d asked. Their relationship remained a part of Dixie’s life she couldn’t quite make work.
    Having lived in the Houston area all her life, Dixie had no desire to go elsewhere. But Parker thrived on change, and three months ago, when he moved to Galveston, she hadn’t been sure she’d ever see him again. After a bodyguard job she was working turned sour—Dixie and the principal nearly killed—Parker had decided that being romantically involved with a woman who repeatedly courted danger only invited heartbreak. In addition to the eighty miles that separated his new house on Galveston beach from hers in Richmond, Parker maintained an emotional distance: They were “just pals.”
    Over the months, they’d progressed from chatting daily on the phone to also enjoying a casual dinner together each Friday night. Yet, before his move, they’d spent six fun and intimate weeks under the