Free Divas Do Tell by Virginia Brown

minutes later. He was a handsome man, with thick blond hair and sleepy green eyes. He lifted a brow inquiringly and said, “Are you selling Girl Scout cookies?”
    “Not this year,” Rayna replied with a smile. “We’re from Holly Springs, and we want to ask you a few questions about Dixie Lee Forsythe.”
    His smile vanished, and his expression turned grim. “I don’t have a damn thing to say about her.”
    “Wait,” Gaynelle said as he started to close the door, “we know you weren’t really to blame for all that happened.”
    As far as I knew we didn’t know any such thing, but Gaynelle had caught his attention.
    “Yeah?” he said. “And just how do you know that?”
    “Because I remember your mother saying that Dixie Lee went off with you willingly. Did she?”
    Johnny leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nobody wanted to listen to that back then. I don’t think anybody cares about it now. Dixie Lee wouldn’t know the truth if it bit her in the ass.”
    “But the truth is that the two of you ran off together, and when her daddy found out she got scared and said you’d taken her against her will. Is that right?”
    After a hesitation, he nodded. “Yeah. I tried to tell him that, but he wasn’t about to hear anything I had to say.”
    “You must harbor a lot of resentment toward her.”
    “Damn right I do. She lied. She lied on the witness stand, and I went to prison for three years. I was eighteen. When I got out I couldn’t find a job anywhere because I’m a convicted felon. It was ten years before I got a job in a warehouse.” His mouth thinned into a bitter line. “I’d been accepted down at Mississippi State. I was going to be a marine biologist. Now I’m driving a forklift and supervising warehouse workers. As far as I’m concerned Dixie Lee doesn’t deserve a damn penny of all that money she’s making with the book and the movie.”
    “Then you wouldn’t care if she just fell off the face of the earth, I suppose,” said Rayna, and he nodded.
    “You got that right. If I could I’d be glad to give her a push. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m fixing breakfast for my grandkids.”
    He shut the door, and we stood on the porch a minute just looking at each other. Then Rayna said, “The plot thickens.”
    “So it does,” Gaynelle agreed. “We’re back to square one. We have three people who would love to see Dixie Lee dead.”
    “Four,” I reminded them, and when they looked at me I said, “Bitty.”
    “But she didn’t write the death threats.”
    I shook my head. “No. Bitty’s more direct. She’d tell her to her face instead of go behind her back like that. My point is that we have no idea how many people feel the same way as they do. We could be missing a lot of suspects.”
    “So who wants to tell Dixie Lee?” I asked as we got back into Rayna’s SUV. “She asked us to investigate, and all we’ve found out is that there are too many suspects to figure out who sent the letters.”
    “We could always let Bitty do it,” Rayna said after a moment. “She’d enjoy that so much.”
    We laughed, but it was true. Bitty would derive so much satisfaction from telling Dixie Lee she was hated by quite a few people.
    “I’ll talk to Cady Lee,” Gaynelle said after a moment. “She’ll know how to tell Dixie Lee.”
    “Sometimes I get confused with all the Lee names,” I said. “I wonder how their parents did it. I had moments when I called my one child by the dog’s name. And my parents were always calling us by each other’s name. It got to where we just all showed up when they called for any of us.”
    “I do the same thing with my dogs and cats,” said Rayna. “I don’t know what I’d do if I had any kids.”
    “Try teaching thirty of them at a time,” Gaynelle said with a laugh. “That’s one reason I chose to never have children. I wasn’t sure I could spend all day in the classroom and then go home to more sticky hands