Divas Do Tell Read Online Free PDF Page B

people.”
    “Are your parents still going on their cruise?” Deelight asked as I handed her a glass of wine.
    I groaned. “Don’t remind me. Not only do I have to worry about them being shanghaied in the middle of an ocean somewhere, I’m stuck feeding battalions of cats and a neurotic dog.”
    “At least this time no one has just been murdered,” Gaynelle pointed out. “The last time they went away we had to deal with a lot of trauma while they were gone.”
    “No one has been murdered yet , anyway,” Bitty said with a thoughtful gaze resting on Dixie Lee. “We never know what might happen next around here.”
    While I gave Bitty my sternest look, Cady Lee sucked in a deep breath and blurted out, “Someone has been threatening to kill Dixie Lee.”
    “I can’t say I’m surprised,” Bitty replied. “Who is it?”
    Cady Lee shook her head while her sister sucked down the rest of her wine. “That’s just it. We don’t know. She’s gotten two anonymous letters. Death threats.”
    I poured the rest of the wine from the bottle into Dixie Lee’s glass. “When did all this happen? I haven’t heard a word about it.”
    “That’s because I thought it best not to say anything,” Dixie Lee said. “I thought it was probably just someone trying to get noticed. It happens.”
    “So this is something real?” Carolann asked in a shocked tone. “Not a publicity stunt?”
    “Oh no, it’s real enough.” Dixie Lee took a big gulp of her wine. “Yesterday on my way into the Piggly Wiggly a car just came out of nowhere and tried to run me down. I had to jump up on the curb to get out of the way.”
    A stunned silence fell. Then Carolann asked, “Did you see who it was?”
    “No. And then I wondered if it wasn’t an accident, just careless driving. That was before I got the death threats, though. One was tacked to the front door, and the other was put under the windshield wipers of my car last night.”
    Rayna urged, “Tell the police, Dixie Lee. There’s no telling what nut is out there and may really hurt you.”
    Dixie Lee looked around at all of us. “I did. They think it’s a publicity stunt too. That’s the real reason I wanted to come today. I know you Divas have experience with finding killers—can you keep me from being murdered?”

Chapter 3
    “OH, I THINK DIXIE Lee’s making all that up to get publicity for the movie,” said Bitty as I steered my car out of the airport parking lot and into a slow-moving lane.
    We’d just taken my parents to the airport for the first leg of their journey to Italy, where they’d then board a cruise ship to sites around the Mediterranean. While I was sure disaster awaited them, they looked so happy to be leaving I didn’t have the heart to repeat warnings about pirates or icebergs. So I’d watched them trundle off to security where they’d be X-rayed in the government’s reminder that people are naked underneath their clothes. They didn’t even seem to mind that horrifying intrusion, although my mother had remarked that she should have worn lead underwear.
    Now they were gone, and I was left with dozens of feral cats and a billy goat masquerading as a dog. Brownie is not stupid. The minute he saw their suitcases he knew they were leaving and went into an immediate decline. He’d spent most of the night before in my mother’s arms, a pitiful creature that would recover the moment I got back, only to relapse at first sight of my mother again. They should find a part for him in Dixie Lee’s movie. The dog is an excellent actor.
    “I have to ask—you didn’t write those letters, did you, Bitty?”
    “No, but I did consider something like that. Then I decided it might be too helpful.”
    “I can’t imagine the movie would want that kind of publicity. It’d be negative advertising.”
    “Nonsense. Any gossip generated is better than nothing. I wouldn’t put it past Dixie Lee to have invented that story so we’d all be talking about her and