Divas and Dead Rebels

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Book: Divas and Dead Rebels by Virginia Brown Read Free Book Online
Authors: Virginia Brown
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths
Allgood, her business partner in the shop, are our newest Divas. Carolann is a year younger than I am, a little chunky in size, and addicted to the New Age lifestyle. Or maybe just clothes style. While her shop has the most up-to-date designer garments in lingerie and silk blouses, Carolann wears tie-dyed peasant dresses and beads with peace signs around her neck. She has red, curly hair and an infectious laugh.
    Rose is tall, slender, and a cool blonde. She manages the Blue Velvet Room in the shop and sells exotic panties without a crotch and rainbow colored, sometimes iridescent, dildos. There’s other merchandise in her retail cases, but those are the two things that stick out most in my mind. They stick out on her shelves, too, lined up like happy little—or big—soldiers.
    Anyway, both Carolann and Rose said they would be at Bitty’s at five, since on Sunday afternoons the shop closes at four. It’s a small town, and she makes the hours that suit her and her clients best.
    “Oh my,” said Carolann, “an emergency Diva meeting again so soon?”
    It hadn’t been an awful long time since we’d had another emergency meeting to help cheer up one of our Divas.
    “Bitty needs some advice,” was all I said, and Carolann nodded.
    “Just as long as it’s not about murder, I can offer all the advice she needs.”
    I smiled.
    Rose picked up on my smile, somehow, or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t say it wasn’t about murder, because she lifted her eyebrows at me.
    “Oh no,” she said, her voice a cool contrast to Carolann’s louder tones. “Again?”
    “Well . . . not really. At least—I mean, it’s nothing like the last time. We just need a few extra opinions on what should be done, that’s all.”
    Rather dryly, Rose observed, “Maybe I should bring my lawyer.”
    I shrugged. “It couldn’t hurt.”
    Carolann said, “Good lord!” in a tone so loud it rattled the glass prisms of one of her pretty overhead chandeliers. “Is this about another murder?”
    “Be prepared to discuss many topics tonight,” I said, “and I’m sure one of them is going to be about murder. Oh, and bring something chocolate.”
    Chocolate and murder , I thought when I went back to my car parked across the street on the court square; as incongruous as the latter may be in conjunction with a nice evening with friends, they’re becoming a regular ritual at our Diva meetings. It could be worse. If we ran out of chocolate, for instance.
    First I stopped at the Pig—our local name for the Piggly-Wiggly grocery store—to buy something delectably chocolate for the evening, then I leisurely made my way down 311 Highway toward my ancestral home named Cherryhill. I share the house with my septuagenarian parents, who are very active. It’s where I grew up, and I have many fond memories of my childhood with my twin sister and two older brothers. We may not have had a lot of money, but we did have a lot of fun.
    My sister Emerald lives across the continent in the Pacific Northwest, my brothers both died in Vietnam when I was still very young, and Mama and Daddy are usually off to some part of the country they always wanted to see but never had the money or time. I am the pinch hitter; that means when they take off for a trip, I hold down the fort at home. It might be easier if all I had to do was ward off invading hordes of Vikings or whatever while they’re gone, but my time is spent feeding and caring for feral cats, and to render my services to their spoiled, neurotic dog. Brownie makes Chen Ling look like a piker. Both of them shamelessly manipulate the women who adore them. It’s simply not true that dogs cannot reason. I have seen canines at work far too many times.
    That said, I was looking forward to the holiday season this year. Last year I’d still been moving when Thanksgiving arrived, and by the time the Christmas season rolled around I was still numb from the trauma. Moving isn’t a picnic, but I thought at the

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