Drop Dead Divas by Virginia Brown Page B

was sure would be a frightening mess, but I didn’t care. Fireflies made sprinkles of light like tiny bobbing lanterns in the darkened cotton and soybean fields we passed, and the sweet scent of honeysuckle filled the car’s interior. I remembered why I loved my home state, and thought about how much I’d missed it in my years away. Now I’d come home and everything had changed but my memories.
    Land was slowly being gobbled up by investors, home builders, and corporations intent upon paving every inch of grass within commuting distance to Memphis. It would be sad to see that happen. Progress isn’t always pretty, and isn’t always progressive. In my memories, Mississippi would always be green rolling hills, pine trees, and magnolias. In reality, civilization was making vast inroads on my fondest memories.
    One of the delights of my childhood had been trips to Maywood Swimming Pool. The owners had constructed a huge white sand beach around clear blue water in the shape of a small lake. There was a concession stand, trees to sit under, shallow water for the smaller kids, and a slide and deep water for the bigger kids. People drove down to north Mississippi for the day from Memphis, up from Holly Springs, and from places east and west. You could get sunburned, sand in your bathing suit, and sick from eating too much ice cream all in one great location. A kid’s paradise.
    It’s gone now, the lake emptied, the land sold off to build cookie-cutter homes on large lots. In the upstairs closet at Cherryhill there are scrapbooks with black and white and faded color snapshots of me and my sister and brothers at Maywood, moments captured forever by Kodak and Mama’s Brownie camera. There are a few Polaroid shots as well, the sixties version of digital cameras. Those haven’t survived nearly as well as the wonderful memories.
    Just as I decided that this particular moment would go into my mental scrapbook of memories as well, Kit asked, “So what really happened at Bitty’s tea party?”
    The moment vanished. So far we had carefully skirted the issue that seemed to be on everyone’s mind and tongue these days, and I’d mentally congratulated him on his restraint. I suppose curiosity can only be stalled for so long.
    “Chen Ling happened. I’d put her in the upstairs bedroom before Trina ever got there. She must have chewed her way out. Or maybe Bitty has secret passageways in that house only old ghosts and dogs can find. At any rate, we’d run out of Earl Grey tea and so Rayna and I supplemented with a little Jack Daniel’s. That part is true. But there was no drunken brawl like Miranda and Trina claim. Chen Ling jumped up onto the hassock with the tea tray, and everything went everywhere. Bitty tried to save her teapot. The rest of us were just trying to save our clothes and fingers. Chitling has a tendency to forget people aren’t edible. Raw, anyway.”
    Kit laughed. “I don’t know about that last part. I read in a National Geographic magazine about this native tribe that—”
    “Don’t go one word further with that story,” I warned. Kit likes to try and gross me out on occasion. Men never really get over that entire fifth grade boy mentality on some levels. “I’ve had enough traumas this week.”
    He squeezed my hand. “I know.”
    “All I need now to make my life perfect is for Naomi Spencer to show up dead in Bitty’s coat closet.”
    I don’t know why I said that. Maybe because I haven’t quite gotten over the trauma of being the one to discover Bitty’s ex-husband dead in her coat closet.
    “Naomi got out on bail, you know,” Kit said, and I nodded.
    “So I heard. Rob posted her bond. Rayna said if Naomi tries to leave the state, she’ll go after her with a search dog and a pitchfork.”
    “She probably would, too.”
    “Oh, I know she would. Naomi was making big eyes at Rob the entire time he was writing out her bond papers. Rayna was ready to strangle her. I guess the poor girl just