Divas Do Tell

By Virginia Brown

Lights! Camera! Murder! Trinket and the gang, beware!
Hollywood descends on Holly Springs, and soon it's up to the Divas to keep the stars from falling like magnolia blooms in a trailer-park tornado. Someone doesn't want DARK SECRETS UNDER THE HOLLY to reach the big screen. He--or she--is willing to kill locals, movie stars, and maybe even Divas to stop it.
Diva-sister Dixie Lee Forsythe wrote the juicy tell-all about a historic Mississippi town very much like Holly Springs, and a lot of townsfolk would be happy to strangle her. Bitty is in a blond lather over a gossipy story line about a philandering Senator who very much resembles her late husband. And even Trinket's a little miffed at Dixie Lee's oh-so-recognizable Trinket Truevine character, described as, "built like a girls' basketball coach--not necessarily a female one."
Dixie Lee starts getting mysterious death threats, an actress brings being a diva to heights even Bitty can't match, and a production assistant is murdered.
If Trinket, Bitty, and the Divas don't solve this case quick, Oscars season in Tinsel Town will be short a whole bunch of stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Oct 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611943863

Virginia Brown

Virginia Brown has written more than fifty historical and contemporary romance novels. Many of her books have been nominated for Romantic Times' Reviewer's Choice Award, Career Achievement Award for Love and Laughter, and Career Achievement Award for Adventure. She is also the author of the bestselling Dixie Diva mystery series and the acclaimed, award-winning, mainstream Southern drama/mystery, Dark River Road.

Book preview

Lights! Camera! Murder! Trinket and the gang, beware!

Dead Divas tell no tales.

Sixty years ago a scandal rocked Holly Springs. Now Diva-sister Dixie Lee Forsythe has written DARK SECRETS UNDER THE HOLLY, a juicy tell-all about a historic Mississippi town very much like Holly Springs, and Hollywood’s in town to film it. A lot of people are none too happy about that.

For one, Bitty is in a blond lather over a gossipy story line about a philandering Senator who very much resembles Bitty’s late husband. And even Trinket’s a little miffed at Dixie Lee’s oh-so-recognizable Trinket Truevine character, described as, built like a girls’ basketball coach—not necessarily a female one.

Bitty’s neighbor and town matriarch, Ida Tyree, is incensed over Dixie Lee’s portrayal of a torrid romance between Susana Jones, a young black housekeeper, and a seductive white good old boy during the tense times of the nineteen sixties. Ida, who parlayed her years as housekeeper into a lucrative cleaning business, says Dixie Lee played fast and loose with the facts.

Billy Joe Cramer, the man accused of the seducing, swears he’s innocent. He sure doesn’t want the world to see him as a cradle robber who fathered Susana’s child, igniting a firestorm of prejudice that drove her and her family out of town.

No surprise! Dixie Lee starts getting mysterious death threats. Billy Joe turns up dead. The actress hired to play Susana brings Difficult Diva-ness to heights even Bitty can’t match. A production assistant is murdered.

If Trinket, Bitty and the Divas don’t solve this case quick, Oscars season in Tinsel Town will be short a whole bunch of stars.

Virginia Brown’s Novels from Bell Bridge Books

The Dixie Divas Mysteries

Dixie Divas

Drop Dead Divas

Dixie Diva Blues

Divas and Dead Rebels

Divas Do Tell

The Blue Suede Memphis Mysteries

Hound Dog Blues

Harley Rushes In

Suspicious Mimes

Return to Fender (2013)

General Mystery/Fiction

Dark River Road

Historical Romance

Comanche Moon * Capture the Wind

Savage Awakening * Defy The Thunder

Storm of Passion * Wild Heart

Legacy of Shadows * Moonflower

Desert Dreams * Heaven Sent

Wildfire * Renegade Embrace

Emerald Nights * Hidden Touch

Wildflower * Wildest Heart

Jade Moon * Highland Hearts

Divas Do Tell

Book 5 of The Dixie Diva Mysteries

by

Virginia Brown

Bell Bridge Books

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

Bell Bridge Books

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-386-3

Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-368-9

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 by Virginia Brown

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

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Cover design: Debra Dixon

Interior design: Hank Smith

Photo/Art credits:

Popcorn and film © Loopall | Dreamstime.com

Clapboards © Jimmyi23 | Dreamstime.com

:Etdd:01:

Dedication

For Laura, Lisa, Gwen, Ginger, TJ, Kathy, Gena, Alexa and Waunell, my real Dixie Divas, with love and appreciation. You ladies rock!

Warning:

Diva books are not to be taken too seriously. Some of the events may be slightly exaggerated. Or not. Being Southern, I freely use my prerogative for embellishment. While public events such as Holly Springs’ annual pilgrimage and Kudzu Festival are real, and general locations set in the town and its surrounding areas are also real, I’ve taken great liberty by altering some details to fit the storylines. Any errors and changes are mine alone.

Chapter 1

IT WAS A BOOK that started all the trouble. A bestselling book, at that. It stirred up more dust and disaster than an F-5 tornado. Holly Springs, Mississippi hadn’t seen so much excitement and mayhem since The War, when General Van Dorn’s troops burned Yankee supplies piled at the railroad terminal, and a few houses caught fire. The fallout from the book was certainly more entertaining than watching your house burn, but just as deadly.

Perhaps I should clarify.

My name is Eureka May Truevine, but I prefer to go by Trinket. I live in a house named Cherryhill that sits just outside the Holly Springs city limits. It’s my ancestral home, and my parents live in the downstairs while I have all the upstairs to myself. They’re in their seventies, so they don’t like climbing the staircase anymore. It works out well for all of us. When I moved back home after my divorce to care for parents I thought were feeble and needed nursing, I discovered they were in great health but had developed a penchant for jetting around the country. I was needed to stay home and take care of their dog and a couple hundred feral cats while they caught up on their youth. The mayhem and mischief caused by the bestselling book took place when they went out of town, and I was stuck with food and doody duty. It was a very inconvenient chapter in my life. Pardon the pun.

At first we were all thrilled that someone we knew had written a book set in our hometown of Holly Springs. Then we read it. It was a good thing the author had used a pen name. Otherwise, she might have been hung from the clock tower in the court square as soon as it came out.

Some of us, however, knew her true identity.

I can’t believe this, raged my first cousin and best friend Bitty Hollandale. "How dare this . . . this woman go telling the entire world all about Philip’s flings with that home wrecking little slut? She paused to suck in a deep breath then added, Bless their hearts."

If she’d been Catholic, Bitty would have crossed herself. Since she’s not, she just added the last three words in a pious tone suitable for a Methodist. Seeing as how Bitty’s ex, Philip Hollandale, is dead, as well as the home wrecking little slut, I pretended the blessing was said on that account.

Yes, I said. Bless their hearts. Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little, Bitty? I mean, it’s just a book, and it’s sold as fiction. That means it’s not real, just fantasy. Made up characters and events.

Bitty eyed me rather sourly. Have you read it yet?

Well . . . no. Not yet. But I intend to as soon as I have a spare minute or two.

Get back to me when you’ve read it. We’ll see how you feel about it then.

Bitty was so irate she forgot she had enough hair spray on her head to paralyze a goat and put her hand through the carefully coifed blonde nest. I watched with interest as she tried to get her hand back out without dislodging a diamond ring as big as a butter bean.

We sat in her parlor, a small room adjacent to the actual parlor and just off the wide entrance hall. It used to be a butler’s pantry or breakfast room or something like that, but since Bitty doesn’t have any full-time servants she’s put it to better use. It was quite cozy on a cold January day. A small fireplace, shutter-covered window, two big plush chairs that suck you into their depths, a flat screen above the mantel—disguised with an oil painting when not in use—and a couple end tables with lamps furnish it in comfort. Bitty’s house is an antebellum beauty with a sign out front and scrolled lettering that says Six Chimneys CA 1845.. In April every year the Holly Springs Garden Club conducts a pilgrimage during which gracious old homes are fancied up and opened to the public for tours. Bitty’s house is one of them.

When she finally got her hand out of her lacquered hairdo without losing her ring or a finger she said, Cady Lee just better be careful is all I have to say.

I knew that wasn’t all she had to say, and I was right. Bitty still fumed and sputtered.

Can you believe her sister has the nerve to show her face in this town after writing that horrible book? She’s just showing off. That’s so tacky.

It’s on all the bestseller lists. They’re making a movie out of it. Why shouldn’t she show off?

Read the book, Trinket. Just read the book. She got up, left the room, and in a minute came back with a hardcover book covered in a fancy book jacket. She tossed it in my lap, so I picked it up.

Dark Secrets Under the Holly was printed across the top, and in big letters beneath that title, by Desirée DuBois. The background was pale pink, and a huge magnolia blossom and Spanish moss provided no clue as to the content except that it was set in the South. New York publishers obviously thought Spanish moss grows throughout the entire state of Mississippi. It doesn’t. I shook my head.

Well, the hint about Holly Springs is a bit too obvious, and her pseudonym is rather extravagant and clichéd, but other than that it looks okay.

Oh for heaven’s sake, Trinket, you know you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Speaking of clichés . . .

Open it up. Pick any page. Just start reading. Then tell me what you think.

I thumbed through the book, pages flipping under my fingers. I’ll have to have more wine if it’s as bad as you say it is.

That can be arranged. Bitty got up, once more dislodging her personal gargoyle, a disgruntled fat pug wearing a bib, diamond studded collar, and a sweater that said Mommy Loves Me across the top. The pug’s name is Chen Ling. I call her Chitling, mainly to irritate Bitty. We live to annoy one another.

While Bitty fetched my wine I scanned a random page. A section immediately caught my eye.

Jewel Twining and her twin sister Ruby looked nothing alike. Ruby was petite and blonde while Jewel had the physique of a girls’ basketball coach—not necessarily a female one. Seeing them together always struck me as funny. It was Jewel who played with the sharecropper kids down the road and became best friends with a black child named Birdie. Later in life, Birdie would become a housekeeper just as her mother before her, and her mother’s mother before that. Generations of housekeepers cleaned up after Holly Springs children and their parents. Morning maids, afternoon maids, evening maids toiled in the huge antebellum homes with scant pay and plenty of prejudice. This was the Mississippi of the fifties and sixties when Jim Crow ruled, and the ‘colored’ housekeepers knew their place. Those who forgot were swiftly and sharply reminded.

I felt my face get hot. Jewel Twining could only be me, and while my twin sister Emerald is blonde and petite, I do not have the physique of a girls’ basketball coach. I’m tall, yes, and while I could stand to lose fifteen or twenty pounds, I’m hardly gym teacher material. They’re in much better shape.

By the time Bitty returned with my wine, I’d read enough to know that Desirée DuBois had skewered most of the Holly Springs Garden Club as well as half the people she called old friends. Bitty took one look at my face and smiled.

See? I told you. Here’s your wine. Sure you don’t want some Jack and Coke instead?

I’m sure. Sufficiently liquored up, I might show up at Cady Lee’s house with a torch and a pitchfork. I slammed the book closed. What is Dixie Lee thinking?

Dixie Lee is Cady Lee Forsythe’s younger sister. The Forsythe family has been in Holly Springs for generations and done quite well for themselves. Their daughters, Cady Lee, Dixie Lee, Delta Lee, and Mossy Lee had gone to our elementary school while their daddy was the mayor; once he was voted out of office they went to more prestigious schools. All four girls and their two brothers—Jefferson Lee and Robert Lee—had graduated from Ole Miss, their father’s alma mater. Their mother had had the oversight of graduating from Mississippi State, but her family forgave that error when she became Queen of the Tailgating Party at The Grove in Ole Miss. She has crystal chandeliers hung from the top of the tent and serves exquisite finger sandwiches, caviar, and the most expensive champagne at every Ole Miss home game.

Her Forsythe family tree limb claims a familial relationship to General Robert E. Lee, hence the profusion of Lee forenames in their children. Floy Anne Lee had married into the Forsythe family in the fifties and immediately began producing a flotilla of namesakes.

Cady Lee Forsythe, now Kincaid, is a member of the Dixie Divas. The Divas are a group of women in the Holly Springs area who get together every month to drink wine or bourbon, eat chocolate and other delicacies, and generally have a good time. There is usually entertainment at these functions. No men are allowed as members or even guests, but have provided hours of excellent amusement on occasion. What happens with the Divas, stays with the Divas, so I shall not divulge any details here. Suffice it to say only a few men have been brave enough for a repeat performance. The Chippendales’ booking agent no longer takes our calls.

Mark my words, said Bitty in a dark tone, someone’s going to whack Dixie Lee upside her head before this is over with. I’ve thought about it myself.

I can see where this kind of thing would rile up folks, I agreed. What about the movie? I heard it’s going to be made mostly in Holly Springs.

If you ask me, that movie is better off not being made anywhere. You know people are going to talk, and I think Dixie Lee has lost her mind writing something like this, much less making a movie out of it. Besides, it’s too much like that book written by the woman down in Jackson. Dixie Lee probably plagiarized it.

Well, her book and movie did well. I read a newspaper review that said even though this novel may sound similar, it focuses more on the personal lives of the white residents instead of the trials of the black domestics.

Tell that to Ida Tyree, Bitty said dryly. She was up in arms over it, said it doesn’t tell half the story, and what it does tell is wrong.

Mrs. Tyree is Bitty’s next door neighbor, a former housekeeper who became a much-respected local leader during the Civil Rights movement, then built her job into a cleaning empire that she sold for a lot of money about twenty years ago. Mrs. Tyree is a matriarch of both the black and white community in Holly Springs. Not anybody to mess with, either. She has a tongue sharp enough to skin a catfish when she gets indignant.

I can see I’m going to have to read the book from the front, I said after a few sips of wine. If she says about other people what she’s said about me and Emerald, she’s not going to have any friends left in this town.

Bitty sucked down half her Jack and Coke. She did and she doesn’t, she said while stroking Chen Ling atop her furry little head. I can’t imagine what got into her to do that. She may have changed the names around, but it’s obvious who she’s talking about. She has unmitigated gall, doesn’t she?

Well, you and Dixie Lee were never friends, I reminded. You were always rivals.

That’s only because she’s a backstabbing little hussy.

I decided to ignore that. I wonder what Budgie thinks about being referred to as a sharecropper’s child in a long line of housekeepers.

Probably close to the same thing you think about being referred to as a girls’ gym teacher.

I ignored that, too. Since she now owns the café, I’m sure she’s not too thrilled. Budgie worked hard to get where she is and have what she has despite a no-good husband and years of working in someone else’s kitchen.

If I were Dixie Lee, I wouldn’t sashay into the café and order so much as a biscuit. Budgie might just drag it across the floor before she serves it to her.

I nodded agreement and then asked, So what did she have to say about you?

Only that I’m a serial bride whose last husband was murdered and found stuffed in my closet. Then she hinted that his affair with a ‘beautiful blonde high school cheerleader’ caused his murder. In other words, that I killed him. I’m ready to strangle Dixie Lee. I wonder if she still has a peanut allergy.

I had to say, "Well, Philip was murdered and stuffed in your closet. She got that part right even if she got everything else wrong. And yes, I’m sure she still has a peanut allergy. I assume you’re going to send her a box of GooGoo Clusters?"

No, that’s too obvious. I’m thinking a nice tin of popcorn popped in peanut oil.

Ah, suitably devious. All joking aside, once I—

What makes you think I’m joking?

Because you would hate prison. No hairdressers or manicurists, and Chitling would have to stay with me.

When Chitling heard her name she pricked up her ears and gave me a baleful look. Her little black mask hides a dragon cleverly disguised as a pug. She’s what’s called a fawn color, meaning a light shade of brown, and her muzzle is black. She has three fangs left in front but does very well in intimidation and payback. Brownish-black eyes that look too big for her head followed my every movement as I gestured with my wine glass.

They wouldn’t let you decorate your cell, either. And your Egyptian cotton sheets would have to stay behind. Besides, you’d miss all your Garden Club meetings, Daughters of the Confederacy meetings, and Diva meetings. We’d have to toast you in absentia.

I’m sure you wouldn’t mind. Bitty narrowed her blue eyes at me, and I smiled.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind, I replied dutifully. I’d have free access to your wine cellar, right?

I’m not going to prison, Trinket. Even if I did do something awful to Dixie Lee—and I’m still thinking about it—Jackson Lee would get me off with probation or some community service.

Jackson Lee Brunetti—no kin to any of the Forsythes—is a well-known lawyer in Marshall County. His family is a respected firm of excellent attorneys. He’s also madly in love with my cousin and she with him. Both are too cautious to do more than moon around after each other and exchange syrupy sweet baby talk in front of people, but I suspect a little more goes on behind closed doors. It’s not a topic I care to dwell on too long.

So what are we going to do about this? Bitty wanted to know, and I shook my head.

"Nothing. What can we do without people thinking there’s a possibility that we are gym teachers and black widows? It’s hard to prove a negative."

I thought Bitty was going to have a fit right there. Her face turned red, her blue eyes turned red, and I could swear puffs of steam came out her ears. Chitling looked up at her and immediately got down from her lap and off the chair and trotted out of the parlor. That dog has great survival skills.

I’ll think of something, said Bitty after a moment, and cold fear grabbed me by the throat.

Think of your children, I pleaded. Don’t do anything rash, Bitty. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.

Of course I won’t do anything stupid. That doesn’t mean I won’t do anything, however. Dixie Lee must be punished.

Oh lord . . .

EVEN MY MOTHER was talking about that book when I got home. She’d read the part about me and Emerald, and she didn’t like it. She especially didn’t like the part about her and Daddy taking in hundreds of homeless cats just like the disturbed people who hoard animals.

Mama’s eyes flashed fire when she said, We aren’t anything like those people on TV who have a hundred cats in each room and poop in piles high as the roof. We’re responsible. We spay and neuter. We vaccinate and vet them, and we provide good food and fresh water every day.

I knew this was true because I was often responsible for feeding, watering, and treating the legion of cats that live in their barn. The barn has been remodeled and outfitted with ample cat corners and cat cushions. Cats roam in and out at will. I would like to report that the Marshall County rat and mouse population has been decimated, but alas, I cannot. Cats fat on expensive dry food and tins of cat tuna don’t see much need to rid the woods of vermin. An occasional offering will be left as a gift, but I’m usually the one who steps on it or in it and spends a good part of my day retching. These offerings are always left on the deck or doorsteps. Mama says I’m too sensitive.

Look at it this way, I said to her, now people will know they can drop their unwanted litters of kittens on our doorstep. You’re providing a service.

That did not amuse or comfort my mother. She cuddled her dog closer to her and said, Dixie Lee should know better than to write things like that. And bringing up all that mess about things that happened over forty years ago—what was she thinking?

What mess? I haven’t read the book. When did publishers start releasing books at the same time as it’s being made into a movie anyway? It takes all the anticipation out of things.

Apparently Hollywood and New York are in league and recognize a blockbuster when they see one. Dixie Lee certainly has created a lot of gossip and dragged out old scandals.

What scandals? What mess? What am I missing?

Mama cocked her head to one side and looked at me. You’re probably too young to remember. It all happened in the sixties. Right at the height of the Civil Rights movement, too. If it’d been just a few years later maybe so much wouldn’t have been made of it, but Darcy Denton—she’s gone now—wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

Let who get away with what? And while I’m thrilled there are some things left I’m too young to recall, I remember the mid-sixties fairly well. What does Dixie Lee remember that I don’t?

Oh, she was too young to remember any of that. I imagine she heard about it from her parents or maybe someone who was involved. I don’t know. It was something, though, and had the entire town up in arms and taking sides for a while.

I felt like shrieking but managed to ask calmly enough, And what is it that she may or may not have heard from her parents or someone else? What had the entire town taking sides?

It was awful, a terrible time. Even I thought he must be guilty because there’s always fire where there’s that much smoke, and Darcy Denton wasn’t known as a liar or a person who’d accuse someone of such a thing without good reason.

My head got light. My blood pressure rose, and my face got hot. Sometimes my mother can take the long way around a story. At least she hadn’t tossed in any irrelevant information concerning neighbors or people I never heard of or don’t know well and don’t care to hear about.

As usual, I congratulated myself prematurely. Mama launched into an entirely different topic.

Of course, as I recall, Arlene Purcell was pregnant, and we were all worried about her since she’d been having trouble. It was touch and go with that baby, and then when he was born he was just fine and fat as a little pig. You wouldn’t remember her, of course. They moved off up to Knoxville when you were still young. I’m trying to think of that baby’s name. Frank? Arnold? No, it was Jerry. I’m sure that was it. Or maybe it was Barry.

I saw where this was going so interrupted, Did Arlene Purcell have anything to do with the terrible time, fire with smoke, Darcy Denton, or the whole town taking sides? I bet not.

My mother gave me a strange look. Trinket, sometimes you say the oddest things. I don’t know what goes on in your head.

At the moment, the only thing going on in my head is complete confusion. I still don’t know what happened that such a fuss is being made about that part of Dixie Lee’s book.

Well, Billy Joe Cramer—his name is Joe Don Battles in the book—was in his mid-twenties back then. Susana Jones was maybe fourteen or fifteen. A pretty little thing. Her mama worked for the Denton family, so when Susana got old enough, she went to work for them, too. I’m not sure how Billy Joe met Susana, but he did somewhere so when he got her pregnant, there was a big to-do about it.

I shook my head. She was so young. So when you say her mama worked for the Denton family, in what capacity?

They were housekeepers.

It took a moment for me to grasp the implications. Then my eyes got big as saucers, and I gaped at my mother. "Oh. My. Are we talking about the same Cramers who live a few streets over from Bitty? The family that’s been in Holly Springs forever and were so dead set against integration? The rednecks who have Rebel battle flags hanging in their front yard and whose grandfather was once the grand wizard of the local KKK? That Billy Joe Cramer?"

That’s the one, said Mama. And I don’t think he was the grand wizard. There’s only one of those, isn’t there?

Thankfully, I’m not up to date on their hierarchy details. So Billy Joe got Susana pregnant, and then what happened? Was there a shotgun wedding? A lynching?

"Back in those days it just wasn’t done, you know. Not like now when people fall in love and get married to whoever they want no matter what race they are. It was a big scandal then. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so big if Darcy Denton hadn’t been so blamed mad and raised a huge fuss about it so that everyone knew. She wanted to make Billy Joe at least do right by the baby. She said the baby wouldn’t care about things like race as much as it would diapers and enough to eat.

But the Cramer family stuck together, said Billy Joe didn’t have anything to do with it, and Susana must have just gone and gotten pregnant by some other boy and tried to blame it on him. Not long after all that Susana and her family up and moved away. Went up north, I heard, to live with relatives. Or was it down to Jackson? I don’t remember. They never have come back, either.

I shook my head. That’s really sad. I mean, I understand the times were different back then, but he could at least have supported the baby.

Mama nodded. Some men have no sense of responsibility no matter what the circumstances. I don’t think the Cramer family has changed that much since then, either. Still don’t do right half the time.

Do their dogs still run loose and turn over garbage cans, run through flowerbeds, and try to bite the mail carrier?

They do. Poor things. They get fed enough, but I don’t think they get treated well, and it’s aggravating to the neighbors. They’re always getting the police down on the dogs because of the Cramer family.

Bitty calls them white trash, I said. But I don’t always trust Bitty’s opinions. She’s said the same thing about anyone who wears white before Easter or after Labor Day.

Bitty, said Mama, is sometimes right by accident.

A scary thought. I wonder why she didn’t mention any of this? All she’s worried about is that Dixie Lee wrote about Philip and Naomi’s affair and hinted that Bitty was behind his murder.

People do tend to focus on what affects them directly. Bitty often wears blinders.

That summed up Bitty nicely. A bubble-headed blonde with blinders. I liked it.

Then Mama said, There’s going to be trouble, mark my words.

That’s almost exactly what Bitty said. When Mama looked at me I shrugged. In different words, of course.

Bitty can be a menace, Mama said after a minute, and I nodded.

Yes. I know. I have high hopes Cady Lee and Dixie Lee will be proactive in their survival. If not, we may see chaos in the streets. I shudder to think.

There are times when I’m really prophetic.

Chapter 2

BITTY AIMED HER brand new BMW convertible in the general direction of Snow Lake. It was Diva Day, and we were all meeting at Cindy Nelson’s home. Her husband had graciously taken their several children off somewhere for the day, and we’d been invited down for a celebration of Groundhog Day. It was still three weeks away, but we were optimistic the furry mammal would signal the approaching end of winter and beginning of spring. Winter can get tiresome even in the Deep South where scant snow and ice hamper our progress but is always greeted with long lines at the grocery store when the weathermen even mention the possibility of a quarter inch of white stuff.

I was loudly bemoaning my parents’ impending departure on a Mediterranean cruise that I was certain would end with their being abducted by pirates or striking an iceberg.

I’d thought they would change their minds, I whined. But they’re leaving tomorrow.

Bitty expressed sympathy with a grinding of gears as we climbed a hill. Her last car had finally needed a clutch replacement, so she’d traded it in for another car that would probably end in the same shape. The new car was also a convertible, but fortunately the top was up on this brisk January day.

I thought they’d seen the sense in not going off so far where anything can happen, I moaned. "I thought they’d realize that cruises often end in disaster. Look at the Titanic."

For the last time, Trinket, there are no icebergs in the Mediterranean, said Bitty a little sharply.

There are pirates, I pointed out. Fire. Electrical malfunctions. Storms. Cruises to hell.

Speaking of hell, did you hear that the movie crew has already rented several houses in Holly Springs for not only movie sets but for their stars to stay in while it’s being filmed?

I eyed her rather petulantly. We’re talking about my parents taking off for watery graves, not a stupid movie.

Sorry. It’s just on my mind about all this craziness. And some people are acting like it’s the best thing to happen since the last movie was filmed here. Can you believe that?

Those are the people who will be making lots of money, I said. And who were asked to rent their houses. Are you still upset they didn’t ask you to rent your house?

Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I want a bunch of Hollywood riffraff roaming about my lovely home, tearing things up, building sets that just don’t belong? It’s enough that they’ve already begun to remodel rooms in Cady Lee’s house, and she’s letting them. Money will buy anything these days.

I looked down at the expensive leather seats and wood trim of the sports car, the diamond ring on Bitty’s hand that had been known to temporarily blind people when it reflected light, and I said, Yes, money is often a curse.

Not a curse that I’ve ever enjoyed, I might add. Bitty may have money, but my divorce had left me with a slender 401K and a bit of savings. Bitty’s divorces earned her huge cash settlements and ample alimony until her next marriage. While she’s not a serial bride as the book claimed, she has been married and divorced four times. Since her last husband, the senator, was murdered, she’s gotten in the habit of calling herself a