Divas Do Tell Read Online Free Page A

century than it is to The War, which, of course, is always referred to with capital letters in the South. It’s a story of the people who lived during such a trying time and the reconstruction that followed as well. The Holly Springs Garden Club is responsible for arranging the events. This takes an enormous amount of work and expert planning. I’m glad I’m not involved in the preparations. I’d have to get a degree in business management just to take notes.
    Gaynelle greeted us at the door. She’s in her mid-sixties and colors her gray hair ash brown or blonde or whatever she feels like at the moment. Since her retirement she’s gone from wearing dowdy dresses to wearing silk blouses and nice pantsuits. Her cat’s-eye glasses have been exchanged for either contacts or frames with a modern look, and the occasional twitch in her eye has completely disappeared.
    She had one of Cindy’s dogs by the collar. He was huge, a lovely pit bull with a wide smile and tongue hanging out one side of his mouth. “Come in quickly,” she said, and I could see she was hanging on to the dog with grim determination. The dog seemed just as determined to add his own greeting.
    I put my money on Gaynelle when it came to a struggle of any kind. She’d been a school teacher for so long she commanded obedience and attention from even the most wayward of creatures. After a sharp word from her, the humongous dog sat on his haunches and didn’t budge.
    From the way his eyes followed my cake, I knew he wasn’t as interested in me as he was the chocolate. Dogs don’t know that chocolate isn’t good for them. Bitty’s fur-child is quite good at sneaking Oreos, for instance. Brownie, my parents’ pet kleptomaniac cleverly disguised as a dog, has been known to eat an entire chocolate bar then devour a roll of Tums just in case it didn’t sit well on his stomach. He also eats errant jewelry. It can be very inconvenient, but since his penchant for devouring inedible objects got me an introduction to the local vet—a charming man with whom I’m now keeping company—I don’t complain as much.
    While we put our Diva offerings in the kitchen, Gaynelle convinced the dog to go down to the basement with the other dog and a cat or two. Cindy has a vast menagerie of pets, including a duck with one wing that her kids found on the lake. Not all duck hunters are successful. The view out the windows was lovely: sunlight chipping at the water, a single pontoon boat in the middle of the lake, a fisherman sitting back with a pole in his hand. He probably didn’t care if he caught fish or not. It was just a nice day to be out. January weather is fickle, so any nice day is an invitation outside.
    “I’m surprised you didn’t go with a Mardi Gras theme,” Bitty was saying to Cindy when I set my cake on the kitchen counter. “But Groundhog Day?”
    Cindy is a cute, bouncy young mother with more energy than I remember ever having. Her brown hair was cut in a short style that only flatters youth. She laughed. “Mardi Gras is too far away. It was either Presidents’ Day or Groundhog Day.”
    “We’re running out of themes,” said Bitty. “Next we’ll be celebrating our dogs’ birthdays.”
    “Fluffy’s birthday isn’t until May,” Cindy replied.
    Fluffy is the pit bull. Cindy’s four-year-old named him. The poodle’s name is Killer. Go figure.
    Bitty eyed a couple crockpots on the kitchen counter. “You’re not serving groundhog, are you?”
    Cindy laughed. “Not as the first course. But I did put Groundhog Day in the Blu-Ray for us if you want to watch it again. Come on. Rayna and the others are in the den.”
    Rayna Blue is our local artist extraordinaire and married to Rob Rainey, a bail bondsman and insurance investigator. Rob stays pretty busy just bailing Divas out of jail. We tend to get ourselves in a mess at times. Our families have pretty much given up any hope that we won’t end up in prison one day.
    Slender and artsy, Rayna