Free Drop Dead Divas by Virginia Brown

been an expensive toilet seat for him to want it.”
    “It’s been a while since I worked there,” I said, “but The Peabody didn’t have gold toilet seats or any other reason for a guest to want to take it. Not even a duck motif on it.”
    For those unfamiliar with “The South’s Grand Hotel,” The Peabody is a famous hotel in the heart of downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis is about forty-five minutes up 78 Highway from Holly Springs. There is a local saying that the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of The Peabody Hotel. It’s also said that if you sit in the lobby long enough, you’ll see everyone you know and a few people you would like to know.
    In the hotel lobby is a gorgeous marble fountain with a gigantic fresh flower arrangement atop the exquisite center and wild ducks swimming in the water. Yes, ducks. Mallards, to be precise. Back in the 1920s, when the hotel owner and a few friends returned from duck hunting in Arkansas, one of the inebriated gentlemen released a live duck into the fountain to swim. While it’s normal to bring dead ducks home from hunting, this gentleman apparently got confused. At any rate, the duck in the fountain became a huge tourist attraction, and thus began the practice of live ducks in the hotel lobby. There is a complicated ritual to it now; a red carpet stretches from the fountain to the elevator for the ducks to walk down while the Duck Master accompanies them to the lobby from an elegant and very expensive penthouse suite built especially for ducks. The John Philip Sousa March plays while tourists crowd the strip of red carpet with cameras. The ducks go on duty at eleven in the morning and return to their penthouse at five in the evening, all to great fanfare. While The Peabody has ducks in the lobby, you can rest assured there is no duck on the menus except as photos. It would be just too unsettling for guests to wonder if they were eating a duck they’d seen happily swimming the day before. The Peabody ducks retire to a farm outside Memphis where they live out the remainder of their lives in contented ducky fashion.
    So when Bitty asked, “Have they ever served duck on the menu?” I smiled.
    “Not officially.”
    “What on earth does that mean?”
    “Well, there was that time a group of college frat boys got drunk, stole a duck from the fountain, and tried to cook it in their hotel room.”
    Bitty looked scandalized. “No! I tell you, some colleges just let their students go wild. It’s terrible. What sleazy college were they from?”
    I hesitated, then said: “Ole Miss.”
    Nonplussed, Bitty fumbled for a response. I could see she was torn between her distaste for bad manners and loyalty to her alma mater, as well as the fact she pays a great deal of tuition money each semester for her twin boys, Brandon and Clayton, to attend Ole Miss. So I softened the blow:
    “The Peabody banned that fraternity from their premises for a while, and the boys responsible were sternly disciplined by the school and made to pay restitution. It was dealt with quite well, I believe.”
    That made Bitty feel better.
    “Well, I should hope so. Thank heavens not every university condones such behavior. Then I would worry about my boys being off at Ole Miss.”
    “When are your boys due back in town?” Rayna asked Bitty.
    “This week sometime. They’re still in Miami right now, visiting my aunt. They’re keeping her pretty busy, I imagine. On the way home they intend to stop by and visit Frank.”
    While I had my doubts two young, handsome, healthy boys were spending all their time in Miami visiting Bitty’s senior aunt, I was intrigued to learn they kept in touch with their father.
    “So,” I asked rather delicately, since Bitty doesn’t always like being reminded of her first husband and the twins’ father, “how is Frank?”
    “Still in prison. The idiot. Why I ever thought he was smart is beyond me.”
    “Well,” Rayna said, “he was always smart; he just got