The Good Girl's Guide to Murder: A Debutante Dropout Mystery

by McBride, Susan

  “I would appreciate it very much if you’d take Andrea off my hands,” I heard Cissy tell him as he held onto a small red tray filled with Styrofoam cups.

  “Take her off your hands?” The tray rattled, causing coffee to slosh over the rims. “How do you mean, Mrs. Kendricks?”

  “What do you think I mean?”

  “Mother.” I stepped between them as fast as I could.

  What the hell was she doing? Forcing him into a lifelong commitment right here in the hospital waiting room? If she started in on her “getting the milk for free” lecture, I was going to have to bean her with the sludge-filled Mr. Coffee.

  Cissy brushed me out of her way and wagged a finger at Brian. “I mean for you to take my daughter’s hand and . . .”

  “Mother,” I hissed, through gritted teeth, about to throw myself atop her and tackle her to the ground.

  “. . . get her out of here,” she finished. “Andrea obviously needs to go straight to bed, so if you could drive her home, I’d appreciate it since I’d like to stay at the hospital a while longer and keep Marilee company.”

  One of these days, I will kill her for this, I promised myself, letting out a held breath.

  Malone did one of those sigh-coughs, practically doubling over with relief. “Get her out of here? Yes, ma’am, no problem there. I’ll do that right now. Take her straight to bed . . . um, tuck her in tight . . . drive it right home . . . aw, hell, you’re right, it’s getting late.” His cheeks stained pink, he wandered away, setting down the tray and digging in his pocket for his keys, as if he couldn’t wait to get going.

  Neither could I.

  But first things first.

  I glared at my mother so fiercely even she shifted on her feet. “Not funny,” I mouthed, but she merely raised her eyebrows, as if to say, “What did I do?”

  When she knew damned well.

  It was like she had a severe maternal form of Tourette’s.

  And meddling in my life was the tic.

  Chapter 16

  Brian didn’t exactly put me to bed, as directed by Attila the Mom.

  He didn’t “tuck me in tight” or “drive it right home,” either.

  Not that I’m complaining. I really did have a headache, and he looked as drained as I was from hanging out with Cissy at the hospital for the past hour or so.

  All in all, it had been a truly miserable evening. It ranked right up there with a blind date I’d had with a thrice-divorced real estate mogul who lived with his mother in a Turtle Creek high-rise. He had a roomful of Star Wars collectibles obtained through eBay, complete with full-sized cardboard cutouts of Han Solo, Luke, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I didn’t mind so much when he suggested we watch the first episode of Star Wars on DVD, but the setup quickly escalated from bad to worse when he asked me to don a Princess Leia wig and “talk Jabba” to him. I’d feigned a sudden attack of PMS cramps and made a getaway worthy of a Jedi knight.

  Since returning to Dallas from Chicago after art school, my romantic life hadn’t exactly been chock-full of men with whom I’d wanted to settle down and make a commitment. In fact, I’d considered swearing off the dating scene altogether, for a while, anyway; figuring life was too short to keep chasing Mr. Right when maybe he didn’t exist.

  Then I’d met Malone, something for which I had to give Cissy credit (even if she was regretting the arrangement for whatever old-fashioned reasons).

  Granted, he didn’t fulfill all the superficial criteria on my “perfect boyfriend” wish list, but he did pass the sanity test with flying colors.

  So he wasn’t creative or poetic. Maybe he was a tad too responsible and stable for my tastes. But he was also gentle and compassionate; characteristics I’d never associated with a defense attorney.

  And tea and sympathy were smack at the top of my wish list tonight.

  He even offered to draw me a bath—full of my favorite Crabtree & Evelyn lily of the valley-scented gel—but I’d spent enough time being waterlogged in sequins. Despite how great bubbles sounded, I preferred to stay dry.

  So, he made me hot tea and then he nestled beside me on the sofa, stroking my hair as I babbled on about what had happened at Marilee’s studio. My mind felt so jumbled with the night’s events that I needed to sort them out, and talking helped, at least a smidge.

  He kept dozing off then snorting indelicately each time I nudged him awake, until I finally gave up and let him snooze.

  Well, I never said he was perfect.

  Another thing I liked about Malone was that he could sleep through anything, including tornado sirens or the telephone ringing. It was a gift, one that I hadn’t been dealt. I’d inherited my mother’s horrible ineptitude for falling—and staying—asleep. My brain didn’t turn off easily, and it certainly wasn’t shutting down tonight.

  I lay my head on his chest, though my eyes were wide open.

  If I shut them, I saw things I didn’t want to see.

  The blood red rose, the discarded shoes, the crumpled body.

  I felt things I didn’t want to feel.

  The bump against my shoulder, the breath on my cheek as someone pushed past me in the pitch-dark hallway.

  Believe me, I desperately wanted to convince myself that Mother’s suspicions about Justin were nonsense, but I couldn’t help wondering if Justin had been responsible for Kendall’s collapse.

  He’d had no boutonnière in his lapel at the hospital. He’d lied to Marilee about where he’d been during the fire evacuation. He’d been doling out herbs to Kendall to cure whatever ailed her, like a holistic Dr. Feel-Good.

  I know, I know. As Malone had said, it didn’t necessarily make him guilty of anything. But still.

  “Hurt . . . me. Mummy . . . help.”

  Was it worth reading anything too deeply into Kendall’s gibberish? She’d been sedated, for God’s sake. I was acting like my mother, looking for hidden meaning when there probably was none.

  Right?

  I peeled myself away from Malone and scooted off the sofa, heading into my tiny spare room no bigger than a walk-in closet. I didn’t even bother with the light as I slipped into my desk chair and booted up the Dell.

  Within minutes, I was online, Googling for “long QT syndrome.”

  Site after site appeared, and I began clicking on them, one by one, squinting at the screen in the dark of the room, my eyes moving across the text that appeared as I tried to grasp all that I read, feeling ignorant for knowing absolutely nothing about this condition. I’d never even heard of it before tonight.

  I picked up a pencil and took some notes in the light of the monitor, scribbling down what seemed the most pertinent facts.

  Long QT syndrome, aka Romano Ward syndrome, meant the ventricular heartbeat was prolonged, causing an arrhythmia (Torsades de Pointes). One in 50,000 people was suspected of having LQTS and 3,000 deaths a year were blamed on it. When the arrhythmia occurred, a syncopal episode (passing out) was often the result; or it could cause sudden death. LQTS could be genetic or caused by certain medications that prolonged the QT rhythm. But there were no routine genetic tests to diagnose it, not yet. Though it had been determined that if one parent was known to have LQTS by ECG, then there was a 50 percent likelihood that any offspring would have it. Only research labs did testing, and those results often took years to return. Common drugs could initiate the Torsades de Pointes, including antidepressants, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatories. Ephedrine was clearly listed on the “contraindicated” list. There was an increased risk of LQTS for females during adulthood, while males often experienced symptoms in childhood. Because it was hard to diagnose without an available ECG, otherwise healthy folks who died unexpectedly—with “sudden cardiac death of unknown etiology” listed as the cause—could be victims of LQTS. In order to find the disease in a dead person, the body fluids (blood) would have to be tested for a known gene mutation.

  My God.

  I wondered if Kendall’s arrhythmia was genetic. And, if so, did Marilee suffer from
it, as well? Maybe, like Kendall, without even realizing that she was ill?

  Just for kicks, I did a Google search for “ma huang” and came up with more Web sites than I could count. Whatever ban the government had placed on ephedra-related products didn’t seem to be stopping sites around the world from selling the stuff.

  Scary, I thought as I shut down the computer, and I put a hand to my chest, feeling my own heartbeat, waiting for it to stutter. But it didn’t.

  My mind even more clogged with “who knows” and “what ifs” than before, I dragged myself back into the living room and insinuated myself into my former position against Malone’s chest. He grunted, shifting slightly, but didn’t awaken.

  I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, but instead the kitchen scene at the party replayed itself in my head, again and again.

  There was Justin holding the 1973 Dom Perignon. He’d turned away for a moment, shielding the bottle from view. Then he’d faced the crowd again to publicly uncork the pricey vintage.

  What if the bottle had already been uncorked? What if someone had opened it ahead of time and spiked it with ma huang?

  I had watched Kendall gulp down her glass before she’d dropped it. The flute had hit the floor and splintered into pieces. She’d ducked her head as she’d run past me, crying. But I remembered something else. The way she’d clasped her arms around her belly.

  Was it the ephedra that had her doubled over? Or was her reaction merely a response to Marilee’s hurtful remarks?

  Oh, man.

  What was I doing?

  My eyelids flipped up like window shades, and I stared at the ceiling, listening to Brian’s even breathing, sure I was going nuts, which was probably genetic. My mother had obviously plunged over the deep end, cooking up theories that were more ridiculous than sublime.

  It had become a hobby, like knitting or crosswords.

  She and her pals liked to sit around, playing cards and dreaming up nonsensical answers to questions nobody asked but them. Okay, them and possibly John Hinckley.

  For instance, they believed that the e-mails were invented to subvert the art of writing proper thank-you notes. Another popular idea with the Dallas Diet Club was that pop stars like Britney Spears and Madonna were puppets of Victoria’s Secret, mere tools to sell lingerie to prepubescent females.

  Their most idiotic hypothesis was that JFK’s assassination had zilch to do with politics, Oswald, or the School Book Depository. Instead, they’d decided it was a botched plot by the Sixth Avenue mafia against, not Jack, but Jackie for exclusively wearing Oleg Cassini during her White House years and forcing pillbox hats on every woman’s crown, causing a wave of bobby pin-induced migraine headaches.

  “Cockamamie,” I muttered.

  In the morning, everything wouldn’t look so suspicious, I decided. Everything seemed worse, more dramatic, in the bleak of night.

  Having reached that conclusion, I raised up on an elbow, reaching over to slip Malone’s glasses from their cockeyed perch on his nose. Then I did the same with mine, putting the pair in a tangle of wire frames onto the coffee table.

  That was the third beautiful thing about Brian Malone.

  He was as blind as I was without his specs.

  Minus our glasses, neither one of us could see what the other really looked like in the unflattering light of dawn.

  As far as I was concerned, it was a huge bonus to have a boyfriend with 20/50 vision.

  Ranked right up there with not having to wear a Princess Leia wig or talk like Jabba the Hut—whatever the heck that meant—in order to flick his Bic.

  Normalcy.

  I liked that in a man.

  Almost as much as a sense of humor and firm lips that knew how to kiss. And Malone knew how to kiss, all right.

  Curling up against his chest, I closed my eyes and, eventually, drifted off.

  Chapter 17

  The white noise of the shower awakened me.

  It sounded like rain, only the sun streamed through the partially opened louvered blinds. Which is when I realized Brian was already up.

  I squinted at the coffee table, then reached out with my fingertips to detect only one pair of glasses.

  As long as he had a head start, I wasn’t going to worry about my bad breath or tangled hair. Besides, I had no reason to rush. It was Saturday. And, even if it wasn’t, it’s not as if I had a job to rush off to. My office was no farther away than my desktop PC.

  So I sighed and snuggled deeper into the malleable old sofa cushions, cocooning beneath a crocheted throw that a woman had knitted me as payment for setting up a Web site for her nonprofit group, a bunch of former Pan Am flight attendants better known as CRAP, short for Crocheting Retired Airline Personnel, an acronym that had earned them a feature in the Dallas Morning News, which was picked up by AP and reprinted in USA Today. Just goes to show that being brassy can pay off. They made, well, crocheted things for women and children in shelters. Hats, sweaters, scarves, and blankets.

  I pulled the throw up to my chin, and a pink pseudocabbage rose tickled the skin at my throat, so comfortable that I didn’t want to move.

  I must’ve dozed off, because when I opened my eyes again, the shower was off and I smelled toast. Yawning, I fumbled for my glasses on the coffee table and put them on. I finger-brushed my hair and ignored the foul taste on my tongue.

  Wrapping the throw around me, I struggled off the sofa and shuffled into my tiny kitchen to find Malone there, wearing his khaki pants and Polo T-shirt from the day before. He stood at the counter, buttering a pair of browned slices of wheat bread.

  “I love a man who can cook,” I said as I settled down at the table, into one of the refinished oak chairs I’d picked up at the Junior League rummage sale for five bucks a pop. All they’d needed was a bit of elbow grease to bring out their natural beauty (not so different from the rest of us).

  He brought the toast over on a chipped Pier One plate, and I greedily reached for a slice. I’d forgotten to eat at Marilee’s studio opening, though I had swallowed my share of champagne as the dull ache behind my eyes reminded me. I was such a wuss when it came to liquor.

  “You should go back to bed, Andy, unless you’ve got something pressing on your agenda. You deserve a day off after last night.”

  His hair was still damp from the shower, brushed back from his clean-scrubbed face. I could see the glint of my reflection in his glasses and wondered if he could see himself in mine.

  “I was hoping you’d drop me off at the studio to pick up my Jeep. My purse is there, too.” I hesitated, wondering if I’d assumed too much. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No, it’s fine.” He swallowed a bite of toast and brushed crumbs off his fingers. “I’ll take you over on my way home. Better still, I’ll hang around, wait for you to do whatever you need to do.”

  It was clear by his tone of voice that he was worried. Mother had doubtless scared him to death with her tales of mishaps on Marilee’s set.

  After the fire and Kendall’s collapse, I was feeling a little jittery myself.

  Still, I put down my toast and touched his hand with buttered fingertips. “Nothing to worry about,” I assured him. “I’ll grab my purse and the Jeep, then I’ll be out of there. Besides, I promised Mother I’d come down for her Diet Club meeting this afternoon. Marilee’s crew is filming a segment for her show, and I want to make sure Cissy doesn’t have a meltdown if someone spills on her Persian rugs.”

  He laced his fingers together with mine. “Be careful, Andy. I mean it.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Defense Attorney.” I dredged up a smile. “I promise to call you if someone dies.”

  Funny, but he didn’t smile back.

  A half-hour later—after I’d had a hot shower and two Extra-Strength Excedrin—Brian pulled his Acura coupe into the parking lot of Marilee’s studio in Addison.

  The place was nearly as full as it was a dozen hours before but, instead of a hook and ladder truck, paramedics vans, and po
lice cruisers, a host of repair trucks filled the yellow grids. HARVEY & SONS WATER DAMAGE RESTORATION read the painted side on one, FEINSTEIN ELECTRICAL REPAIR another. Though my favorite was BIG BOY’S STEEL ERECTION. A flatbed truck held stacks of lumber, and I tried not to dwell on the number of trees that had sacrificed their lives to rebuild Marilee’s studio kitchen.

  The front entrance had yellow CAUTION tape stretched across it to keep us regular folks away. A big white sign on the glass front doors read, USE BACK ENTRANCE! The repairmen obviously had a different set of instructions entirely, and strutted back and forth, dragging gear inside and hauling small dumpsters swollen with debris out.

  There was no sign of any media activity, and I figured the news jockeys had gotten enough tape after the fire to last them a while. Besides, they’d surely had more fun poking their mikes up the nose of Marilee’s party guests in their drenched designer attire than they would interviewing the fix-it guys in their wife-beater shirts and crack-baring blue jeans.

  “Doesn’t look to be much damage from the outside,” Brian said.

  “It was pretty much contained to the one set,” I explained. “The sprinkler system kept it from spreading, I guess, but there was water everywhere.”

  Besides, the worst of the damage wasn’t caused by the fire or the artificial rain, I mused, thinking of Kendall.

  I asked Malone to drive around to the rear, and I glimpsed my Wrangler parked against a chain-link fence without a lick of shade. I hated to think how hot the inside was. Though it was barely past ten, the sun crept ever upward in the sky, unfettered by clouds of any kind, save for a few feckless wisps no more solid than gauze.

  Before I got out of the car, Brian grabbed for my hand. “I’ll be working at home all day, so I’m easy to find.”

  I squeezed his hand and said, “Um, just what kind of trouble do you expect me to get into?”

  “Well, if you’re going to your mother’s, it could be any number of things.”