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

by McBride, Susan

  Janet took the lead, stepping forward with her right hand outstretched. “No, ma’am, we haven’t met. I’m Janet Graham, the society editor with the Park Cities Press newspaper from Dallas.” She flicked her wrist in my direction. “That’s Andrea, my associate.”

  “Society editor from Dallas?” Doreen repeated, not paying me the slightest attention.

  Hey, even I was impressed.

  Janet pulled a straight-backed chair up beside the La-Z-Boy. “I’ve come to ask you a few questions, ma’am, about your niece Marilee.”

  “Marilee?” The wizened face screwed up further. “Why? What’s she done now? Does she still have that TV show in the city? Did she get herself fired?”

  Janet glanced over her shoulder at me, giving me an “uh-oh” look, and I realized, too, that no one had told Doreen Haggerty that her niece was dead. Though maybe no one even knew she existed. It had taken Janet weeks to run down an address on her.

  When I shrugged, Janet turned back around and said, “I’m actually writing a story about Marilee, and I’m trying to find out more about her early years, like what happened when she left Stybr to live with you when she was sixteen.”

  The big eyes behind the round glasses blinked, and the blue-veined arms crossed defensively. “Oh, no, no, I don’t talk about that, not with anyone. It’s family business, and Marilee made me sign a paper that I wouldn’t tell, not so long as she lived. Or else she said she’d stop my monthly checks, and they’d kick me out of this place.” The loose skin beneath her chin trembled. “And I couldn’t afford to go nowhere else ’cept those cesspools for folks on Medic-aid. You ever set foot in one of them places?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t,” I heard Janet say.

  I walked across the tiny room to the only window with its cheerful yellow calico curtains, avoiding Janet’s eyes, because I didn’t want to be a party to what I knew was coming next.

  “Well, Miss Doreen, you don’t have to worry about those checks anymore,” I heard Janet say as I gazed out upon a small courtyard with a shuffleboard deck. “And you don’t have to stick to any contract you signed with Marilee, because”—she cleared her throat, and I felt mine close up—“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your niece passed yesterday.”

  “She passed what? A stone? I had me one of those, and it hurt worse’n hell.”

  “No, she didn’t pass a stone, Ms. Doreen. She passed away,” Janet explained, and I winced, afraid of what would happen next, how the poor woman would react.

  “Marilee’s dead?”

  “As a doornail. I’m so very sorry.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Yes.”

  I stood on the sidelines, watching Janet do her best to convince the woman about Marilee’s demise, though I was starting to think Doreen Haggerty would demand a death certificate as evidence.

  “You’re positive?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m 100 percent positive,” Janet insisted. “I was present when it happened, ma’am.” Her cheeks were pink with her effort. “Again, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Doreen leaned back in her easy chair, glassy-eyed with disbelief, her lips moving as she murmured to herself, words I couldn’t hear.

  I cringed inwardly, wondering what kind of damage hearing the news from a stranger would do to the woman. I expected the sound of sobs, maybe moaning or a pitiful wail, but not the whoop of relief that blew past Doreen’s lips.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” She slapped a hand against a polyester covered thigh. “And I thought only the good died young. That girl was ornery as her pa.”

  I heard the preacher on the television shout, “Say, Amen, brothers and sisters! Say, Amen!”

  “Amen, amen, amen!” Doreen chanted like a mantra, and I turned away from the window to see her reach for Janet with a clawlike hand.

  “Well, that changes everything, don’t it?” She squinted behind those huge magnifying lenses. “So what is it you want to know about my dear departed niece? ’Cuz there ain’t no cause to keep quiet now, is there? And I’ve got a mind like a steel trap.”

  Chapter 24

  Once she got started, Doreen Haggerty didn’t stop talking for over an hour.

  The story that unfolded from her chapped lips wasn’t pretty, and the ending wasn’t anything close to “happily ever after.” It was more like a big fat question mark. But neither Janet nor I stirred until she was finished, right as Nurse Edna strode into the room with her torpedo-shaped ’do, clutching a container of Metamucil and announcing it was time for Miss Doreen’s midmorning fiber.

  After Janet had kissed the old woman’s cheeks and thanked her profusely, we departed in the Jetta. No Wilco blasting on the stereo this time. Just a tension-filled silence. Behind those cat’s-eye shades, I knew Janet’s mind was going a mile a minute, already writing her bombshell of a feature on the life and times of Marilee Mabry.

  Exposing Marilee’s dirty laundry to the world.

  Ensuring that two lives would never be the same.

  I wasn’t so sure how I felt about that.

  So I gazed out the window, barely seeing the blur of pasture, trees, and road signs, watching a picture come together in my head, pieces I hadn’t realized fit so neatly together. Or maybe not so neatly, considering all the jagged edges.

  I heard the shaky voice of Doreen Haggerty as I replayed snatches of her monologue over and over again.

  “ . . . her good for nothing daddy left her alone on the farm for days or weeks at a time, though nobody told me what was goin’ on until it was too late to do any good because the girl went and got herself pregnant by a boy headin’ off to the Army. A Negro boy, if you can picture that, and she was afraid to tell a soul until she knew she was in trouble. So she came to me until it was over. Bore herself a child with dark eyes and black nappy hair to remind her of her sin. Mari cried and cried and cried, knowin’ she couldn’t take that baby home or everyone would know what kind of a girl she was . . . that she was no better than trash . . . oh, it might not sound like such a tragedy now, with teenagers havin’ babies like they’re dolls to play with and everybody actin’ like they’re colorblind . . . but it was thirty years ago . . . mixing races like that wasn’t tolerated, not in Stybr . . . she wouldn’t have been able to show her face in that town again and her father would’ve beat her to a pulp had he known what she’d done . . . so we did the only thing we could’ve . . . once it was born, delivered in my house by my hands, we turned the child over to a foundling home that didn’t ask too many questions . . . we prayed together and washed our hands of the whole mess like it had never happened . . . I didn’t think Mari was ever gonna tell the baby’s father, but she must’ve or else he got wind of it somehow . . . ’cuz he came looking for his daughter some years after and I couldn’t tell him where she was because I didn’t know and Mari didn’t know either . . . besides Mari had moved on by then and didn’t want to look back. . .”

  The young black soldier who’d fathered Marilee’s baby was named Ronald Hull.

  Beth Taylor’s brother.

  Renata’s deceased daddy.

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave, I mused, still finding it hard to believe.

  Renata Taylor was Marilee’s by birth.

  A daughter she’d been too afraid to keep; a child she’d kept mum about for thirty years. My God, how much pain she’d caused with her deception!

  How Ronald must’ve wept when he’d learned he had a baby somewhere out there. It was a miracle he’d even found her without much of a trail to follow. But he had tracked her down eventually. Sometime after he’d been discharged from the Army and before he’d been killed in a car wreck—at least according to Kevin Snodgrass’s article—at which point Beth and Richard Taylor had raised the little girl as their own.

  I couldn’t imagine they hadn’t felt angry at Marilee for what she’d done, for the lies she’d told that had kept a child hidden from its rightful family for so long. />
  I leaned my head against the seat rest and sighed, sure that Marilee had assumed her secret would die with her and Miss Doreen.

  But now Janet and I knew what had transpired.

  And we weren’t the only ones.

  My cell started ringing as Janet pulled onto my quiet street in Prestonwood, and I eyed the number on the CallerID before I picked up.

  Mother.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, as Janet guided the VW into the parking lot.

  “Hey, sweetie, mind if I ask where you are?” Only the most seasoned expert could have picked up on the slight rise in her smooth-as-silk drawl, a subtle signal of inward panic.

  “We’re in front of my condo . . .”

  “Well, get in your car and get down here this instant,” she lowered her voice to a hiss, no longer bothering to hide her nerves. “Marilee’s lawyer dropped in, the deputy chief is back, Gilbert Mabry showed up on my doorstep demanding his daughter go home with him, and Kendall’s refusing to talk to anyone.”

  “Where’s Sandy?” I asked.

  “She’s visiting her mother at the Blue Belle Home for the Aged like she does the third Sunday of every month, Andrea, for goodness’ sake.”

  “Geez, I forgot, okay?” I glanced at Janet, who was watching me with interest. “I’ll be right there. Give me twenty minutes.”

  “Make it fifteen,” Mother said and disconnected.

  Yes, ma’am.

  I slipped the phone into my purse, unhooked myself from the belt, and reached for the door.

  “Anything I should know about?” Janet asked as I pushed on the handle and let in the noon heat.

  “Just Cissy, freaking out,” I said and rolled my eyes. “She’s got a mouse trapped under the refrigerator. She’s scared to come down from a chair. So I’ve gotta run down there and rescue it before she calls an exterminator to annihilate the poor thing.”

  “Uh-huh.” She looked skeptical.

  “Well, it’s been a real, um, trip,” I said and closed the door, giving her a wave from the other side of the window.

  Before she’d even backed out of the space, I rushed over to my Jeep and hopped in, though I waited until the Jetta disappeared from the parking lot before I put her in gear and peeled rubber all the way to Beverly.

  Cissy must’ve been watching for me out the window, as she appeared on the doorstep, waving impatiently as I parked behind a pair of squad cars, a red Lexus, and the Mercedes with the vanity plates that I knew belonged to Dr. Taylor. If the media had been swarming earlier, the police had done a brilliant job of dispersing them. I’d only spotted one television van with a satellite on its roof settled across the street.

  “Thank God you’re here!” As soon as I was near enough, Mother—appropriately funereal in black silk top and pants—caught my arm and drew me into the foyer. “I was beginning to think you’d never arrive.”

  Though it had taken no more than fifteen minutes—as she’d demanded—and involved my tearing through a couple yellow lights and traveling a wee bit over the speed limit.

  “They’re all having tea and cookies in the sunroom,” she leaned near to inform me as she ushered me through the front hallway, away from the cordoned-off living room and toward the rear of the house. “I finally got Kendall to dress and come downstairs.”

  “How’s she doing?” I asked.

  Cissy made a face. “She hasn’t eaten a thing, even refusing Sandy’s chocolate chip pancakes. I think she’d stay in bed with the drapes drawn all day if I’d let her. Poor child. Someone from Twinkle Productions phoned to say they’re shutting down the studio for a while, until they figure out what to do. I took the call when Kendall wouldn’t. They said they’re arranging a memorial service for the crew to attend, so they can have some kind of closure.”

  I couldn’t blame them for locking up the studio. They had no cause to rush repairs, not since taping was suspended indefinitely. I wondered if they could save The Sweet Life without Marilee, or if they’d have to shut down forever.

  “You said Marilee’s lawyer was here?”

  “Yes, about an hour ago.” Her footsteps faltered, and she stood still, her brow settling into a half-dozen creases. “I’m apparently the executrix of Marilee’s estate,” she said, and I couldn’t stop my mouth from hanging open. “I don’t imagine there were many people she trusted, and I’m just thankful that Justin Gable didn’t talk her into putting him in charge of her affairs before she died. Because she had talked about changing her will in the last few weeks, giving that con man a share of her assets, babbling on about how he reenergized her sex life, for pity’s sake. Thank heavens she didn’t get around to doing it.”

  “She didn’t leave him anything?”

  “As a matter of fact, she didn’t, not in the will, anyway. He’ll get nothing more than what she’d already given him, like the car, new clothes, watches, and what not.” She frowned and touched the gold bauble clipped on her earlobe. “Mari’s bequests are quite simple, really. Basically, all of her worldly goods go to her surviving heir, which would be Kendall, naturally.”

  Or not.

  “Oh, God,” came out of my mouth before I realized that I’d said it.

  Mother stopped fiddling with her earring and eyed me strangely. “What is it Andrea? Do you have something to say on the subject?”

  “No, I mean, yes.”

  Rats.

  With a sigh, I hurriedly confessed to what had gone on at the Pecan Grove Retirement Home in Gunner, Texas.

  Cissy frowned, but didn’t interrupt. Though, when I’d finished, she quietly asked, “Are you sure this old woman’s brain wasn’t addled?”

  “She was as coherent as you or I.” Though maybe that wasn’t saying much.

  Mother hesitated, putting a finger to her lips before declaring, “I can’t believe Marilee never breathed a word of this. I never imagined she had another child. And it’s Beth Taylor’s girl, Renata? Who’s actually her niece by blood?”

  It sounded like a soap opera, putting it that way.

  “There’ll be DNA tests, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But, yes, I believe it. It fits, don’t you see?”

  My mother sighed. “I wish now that I hadn’t talked to Kendall already about her mother’s will, but I figured she’d learn soon enough, what with the formal reading being tomorrow afternoon.”

  “You’re right. She has no clue she’s not the sole surviving heir,” I said

  “Oh, dear,” Cissy breathed. “What a mess. Marilee has another daughter,” she repeated, as if saying it again made it real. Then she clutched at my arm. “Does Beth realize who Renata’s birth mother was?”

  “She must.” It didn’t make sense any other way. “I’ve got a feeling that’s why they moved to Dallas, to find Marilee.”

  I thought of how Dr. Taylor had slipped up at the hospital when Kendall was admitted, saying, “since her daughters have been positively diagnosed” before correcting herself, claiming weariness for the mistake. Only it hadn’t been a mistake. She had known the truth but she’d kept it to herself.

  “What about Renata?”

  “I’d guess she knows, too.”

  “So Kendall’s the only one out of the loop?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, then we have to remedy the situation,” Cissy said, her normally placid expression showing strain. “It seems as good a time as any to tell Kendall she has a sister. Better she hear it now than read about it on the front page of the Park Cities Press. You did say Janet was doing a feature?”

  “A three-part series.” And a book, I would’ve added, but I had crossed my heart and sworn not to tell.

  “You okay, sweetie?” she peered into my face. “You look green.”

  That’s exactly how I felt. Kermit had nothing on me.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her. I’d been saying that a lot lately and not meaning it. One of those little white lies that nobody counted.

  “Then let’s get t
his over with, shall we?” She tucked her hand in the crook of my elbow and propelled me the rest of the distance to the sunroom. Her heels clicked staccato-sharp on the tiles. My sneakers squeaked as I dragged my feet, wincing at the thought of what—and who—awaited us.

  Heads turned as we entered, and I surveyed the group that had gathered at Mother’s, rather like the cast of characters attending the Mad Hatter’s tea party. Though no one seemed to be doing much sipping. The cups looked full, the plate of cookies untouched. With all the poisoning going on, I couldn’t blame them.

  Deputy Chief Anna Dean stood by the windows overlooking Mother’s roses.

  Dr. Taylor and Renata sat side by side on the wicker sofa.

  Kendall Mabry curled on the chaise longue, hair tied in a ragged ponytail, wearing a robe borrowed from my mother, pink silk with an embroidered C at her right breast.

  Behind her, Gilbert Mabry leaned against the wall, arms crossed, bland features puckered with distress.

  The notable missing player from this drama was Justin Gable. I assumed, by his absence, that he was still on the lam. I wondered just how far he’d been able to run without his passport.

  I figured that’s why the second in command of the Highland Park police had made an appearance at Mother’s house on Sunday noon, doubtless to give us an update on Justin’s whereabouts.

  “Nice of you to join us, Ms. Kendricks,” the deputy chief said and gave me the thinnest of smiles.

  “I was out of town this morning,” I said by way of apology, though I didn’t know why I should feel guilty for being late to this impromptu gathering. “Hello.” I nodded at Beth and Renata. Gil Mabry squinted at me, ostensibly trying to figure out who I was. Did he even recall running into me at the studio yesterday after his and Marilee’s shouting match?

  My gaze settled on Kendall. “Are you okay?” I mouthed.