“Friends who kiss, talk on the phone every day, and can’t wait to see each other again.”
Maggie let her eyes shutter, not quite ready to accept that relationship yet. What would Roger say? After he stopped spinning in his grave, that was.
“What? Why don’t you like them together, Mags?” Jo Ellen pressed when she didn’t answer.
“You know why,” she finally replied. “It’s bad enough that the kids have all become friends again and you and I are spending endless hours reminiscing and laughing and cooking and falling back into old patterns. But if Eli marries a Wylie…”
“You think they’ll getmarried?” Jo couldn’t keep the note of excitement out of her voice.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Maggie shot her a look. “We made promises, Jo. Both of us.”
“Did that include our kids?”
“I don’tknow,” she repeated on a huffed breath. “But that’s why we’re going on this mission.”
“To solveThe Case of the Mysterious Promise.” Jo sang the words, making Maggie smile even though she didn’t want to.
“I hate to break it to you, Jo, but at seventy-eight? We’re moreMurder She Wrotethan Nancy Drew.”
“I hope there’s no murder,” Jo muttered. “Just a dumb promise.”
“We don’t know if it was dumb,” Maggie said, spying her next turn—and using the signal this time. “Here’s the bridge to Santa Rosa Beach, so maybe we’ll find out soon.”
“What are we going to say?” Jo Ellen asked. “Do we tell them everything?”
“I don’t know,” Maggie admitted. “But I sure want to know why Frank told Eli that you and Roger had an affair?—”
“And Betty told Kate that you and Artie did.”
They both chuckled at how preposterous either scenario was, but their smiles faded after a few seconds.
“Maybe they were sauced,” Jo Ellen said as she shifted in her seat. “Kate said they broke out the limoncello.”
“Frank’s favorite,” Maggie recalled. “Betty liked her wine. Remember how she’d bring it to the beach in a thermos? I was always so afraid Crista would drink it by accident.”
“She was fun, though,” Jo Ellen said. “Remember the disco ball in the middle of the deli?”
“Do I remember? I told her it was the definition of tacky and you know what she said?”
“No, what?”
“My ‘obsession’ withGone With the Windwas tacky. She told me I shouldn’t have named Vivien after a movie star.” She gave a sly smile. “So I threatened to hit her with my gold-dipped brick from Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta.”
“You have one?” Jo Ellen asked.
“Roger bought it for me at a silent auction fundraiser. It’s got a plaque on it with the date of the premier in 1939.” She sighed. “There was nothing that man wouldn’t do for me.”
“Except, you know, not commit crimes.”
She fumed at Jo Ellen’s whispered comment, biting back a response. She was right, and Maggie knew it.
“They live on the next corner,” she said, turning onto a tree-lined street and slowing at a one-story brick house with a gaudy red front door.
“Way to be subtle, Betty,” Maggie muttered as she pulled into the driveway.
“The landscaping is gorgeous,” Jo Ellen mused, taking in a riot of bougainvillea and well-tended plant beds. “Frank must still like to garden. Glad they’re not too old for that.”
“Just pray their memories still work,” Maggie said.
