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with techno-surveillance electronics, making her hips appear wider than they really are.
    The tattoo I was faux admiring ran along her upper right arm.
    Everybody in The Wild Clover drew closer to see what Patti had done to herself.
    “A snake?” Milly Hopticourt asked after looking it over and breaking the silence. She’d just arrived with fresh bouquets of flowers from her garden to restock a bin near the entrance. In addition to being the one who would bail me out of the menu situation, Milly supplemented her retirement by growing flowers, and we shared the proceeds from the bouquets she sold at the store. “A cobra, I believe,” Milly added with perfect confidence after another moment of study.
    Patti rolled her eyes. “Noooo,” she said. “It’s a dragon. Like that woman in the book, the one who sticks it to everybody with her incredible technical skills. It doesn’t look anything like a snake.”
    “I thought it was a lizard,” Carrie Ann said, staring at it right along with the rest of us.
    “That must have really hurt,” I added.
    “Drunk at the time, I bet,” Carrie Ann, the recovering alcoholic, said, looking like she hoped it were true. My cousin seems to find unnatural delight in learning about other people’s alcoholic missteps.
    “Can’t anybody say one nice thing about it?” Patti said, with a monster whine in her voice. “Story is the only nice one around here. I went through a lot to get it, almost passed out even. The least the rest of you could do is pretend to like it.”
    “Okay,” Stanley Peck said, coming into the store just in time to join in. Stanley is a widower and the only other beekeeper in Moraine. “I’ll say I do.”
    “It doesn’t work if you tell me you’re pretending,” Patti said in a huff.
    “Nobody’s ever sticking needles in me,” Milly said, wincing at the thought.
    “It’s not permanent,” Patti said, and I could see the relief circling around the room. None of us wanted to have to look at that thing on a daily basis.
    “Then why are you making such a big deal about fainting and all?” Carrie Ann said for all of us.
    “The fumes,” Patti said.
    “Must have been one whopper-sized bubble gum,” Stanley said, referring to those little tattoos we used to find inside gum wrappers.
    “It’s henna,” Patti told us. “And you all can forget it. Forget I even showed it to you.”
    “We couldn’t help seeing it,” Milly said. “You didn’t have to show us. It’s right in our faces.” Then she turned to me. “I was thinking an arugula and tomato salad for tonight, maybe some popovers with honey butter . . .”
    “Let’s go in the back,” I interrupted, glad that Milly had started thinking about our dinner project, but hoping I was in time to do damage control, “and talk about it there.”
    But I was too late.
    “What’s going on?” Patti said, pouting. “You’re planning a party, and you didn’t invite me?” She gave me a hard look. “And I thought I was your best friend.”
    Patti’s false assumption about our relationship was getting old. Sure we were friends, but at a distance . . . more like distant friends. Too bad she lived right next door, making the distance between us shorter than I was comfortable with.
    I sighed when Milly moved away, leaving me to deal with Patti alone. “Holly and Max are the ones entertaining,” I said, angling my way toward the front door. “Milly and I joined forces to prepare dinner for their guests.”
    “But you were going to invite me, right?”
    “It’s a business meeting,” I lied again, breaking out into the sunshine. “With out-of-town guests.”
    “So am I invited or not?”
    “Not.” Sometimes the only way to handle Patti is to take a firm stand.
    Her face crumpled. “You know how hard I’m working to keep my stories fresh. I’d like to see
you
find interesting news in a place like this. Lately, I’ve been covering kids’ birthday parties. How pathetic is