The Big Cat Nap

Acknowledgments

Erica Eversman tops the list, but she tops my list always. The Automotive Education & Policy Institute is hers (www.autoepi.org). This good woman drove all the way from Akron, Ohio, to stay in my barn, calling it headquarters despite no air-conditioning or Internet service. She soldiered on in punishing heat, brought me all manner of hard copy, and had the incredible patience to explain just what’s at stake with this issue.

We are so accustomed to seeing any of the Big Three auto manufacturers as the bad guys. In this case, they are not. For one thing, they don’t want you to die in their vehicles. Let’s leave it at that.

Thanks seem inadequate for all that this tall, blonde smarty has done for me and by extension for all Americans, although you may not know about it. Erica and others are fighting the good fight for auto safety.

Mrs. Donna Packard, Academic & Professional Services, always prepares my manuscripts. For this mystery, she actually researched some agriculture questions. Nothing like a last-minute call. She came through, but then Donna always does, whether it’s for her profession, her children, her husband, or her friends.

Thanking a jewelry store—well, is there a woman who doesn’t love a good jewelry store? Keller & George has served Charlottesville for well over one hundred years. Bill Liebenrood of Keller & George, whom I think of as the Big Cheese, asked me to kill him off in this book so he wouldn’t have to go to work anymore. Only Bill. I like him so much I just couldn’t do it, but perhaps in subsequent books I can make him suffer.

I am especially grateful to Bill and Gayle Lowe for their kindness to me during a spectacular reversal in my life. It didn’t help them, or Keller & George, either, but they handled it with their good humor and grace, and I am forever in their debt.

Wherever you live, I hope you are surrounded by good people, as I am here in central Virginia. You see people in business circumstances, social, and it’s pleasant. But when the you-know-what hits the fan, I am overcome with just how helpful and genuinely caring people are. Even better, how they are all busting with ideas, many of which find their way into Sneaky’s books.

Lucky cat. Lucky me.

Ever and always,

Rita Mae