Too Pretty to Die

by Susan McBride

  “You shouldn’t be here, ma’am,” the younger cop piped up, and hopped down from the stoop, thumbs hooked in her utility belt. “We’ll need you to stand back there on the sidewalk with the rest of the folks. Can’t have you contaminating the scene.”

  The scene?

  So it was officially a “crime scene,” or some version thereof?

  Yowza.

  I told myself that could mean many things, like the site of a robbery or a burglary or vandalism. It didn’t have to mean homicide.

  Did it?

  I told myself not to panic.

  “Is Miranda all right?” I asked, for the second time in the past five minutes, though all it earned me was a pair of disapproving glares.

  The younger cop tried again, “Ma’am, if you’d please move to the sidewalk, like I asked—”

  “I’m Andrea Kendricks. I’m a friend of Miranda DuBois,” I said in a rush, though calling myself Miranda’s “friend” was a wee exaggeration. “I was here last night. I dropped her off after a party,” I went on, directing my rambling at the deputy chief and ignoring the ponytailed officer who was trying her damnedest to shoo me off like a horsefly.

  I was about to explain about a less than sober Miranda crashing Dr. Sonja’s collagen-fest at Delaney Armstrong’s when Deputy Chief Dean put a hand up and stopped me.

  “I know who you are, Ms. Kendricks, and I’d like you to come inside with me, please. I have a few questions to ask you about your final moments with Ms. DuBois.”

  Well, huh. That didn’t sound good.

  My stomach clenched. “Questions for me…my final moments with Ms. DuBois…come inside with you”—I stumbled over my tongue, repeating her words like an autistic parrot. My feet felt frozen to the stoop.

  “So you’re Andy?” The young ponytailed officer stared at me, her nearly browless eyes assessing, as if I were suddenly far more interesting than I’d been just a moment before.

  I didn’t like how she said my name. Didn’t like it a bit.

  I wet my lips and dared to ask again, “Is Miranda all right?” My gaze swung back and forth between both women in blue, though neither did more than give me a purse-lipped look that surely boded ill. “What’s going on? Does she need a doctor?” I frantically spun my mental Rolodex. “Or an attorney?”

  I could get either for her in a jiff, particularly the latter, since I knew a defense attorney who happened to be sleeping in my bed at that very moment.

  “Officer Danforth, would you tell the M.E. to hightail it in as soon as he arrives,” the deputy chief said, rather than answer my question.

  Her subordinate nodded, giving a crisp, “Yes, ma’am,” before heading toward the street to scout for the medical examiner’s van.

  “You, Ms. Kendricks, follow me,” Anna Dean said, in the same tone of voice my mother used when she meant serious business.

  Could you blame me for dragging my heels?

  “I don’t want to contaminate the, um, scene,” I told her, because I didn’t have plastic booties on over my sneakers…and I didn’t want to squish through anything that shouldn’t be squished.

  She almost smiled at me. “You’ll be fine. We’ll keep our distance,” she said, and I wasn’t sure yet what we’d be keeping our distance from.

  Whatever it was, I felt very uneasy.

  I still hadn’t glimpsed Miranda.

  And no one seemed willing to tell me if she was okay or not.

  My daddy had always told me not to jump ahead of myself, so I was trying hard not to; but I couldn’t help but wonder.

  And worry.

  She jerked her chin toward the door. “This way, please.”

  I took a tentative step behind her, into the tiny pink foyer I’d passed through last night when Miranda had been leaning so heavily on my shoulder I thought she’d take us both down. Instead of leading me forward into the living room where I’d left Miranda sleeping on the couch, the deputy chief took a hard right, into the kitchen.

  She gestured at a bar stool surrounding the granite-topped center island, and I went straight to it and sat down.

  Rather than take a seat herself, she rounded the island and stood on its other side.

  She picked up something with her latex-gloved fingers, and I swallowed hard when I saw what it was.

  The note I’d scribbled to Miranda before I left, the one asking her to call if she awakened and needed something.

  “You wrote this?” Deputy Chief Dean asked.

  I clasped trembling hands in my lap. “Yes,” I said.

  “We were just about to dial that cell number when you showed up,” she told me. “You may be as close to a witness as we’ve got.”

  A witness?

  To what? I wondered.

  But I had a more important thing to ask. I tried again, “Is Miranda all right? She didn’t hurt anyone, did she?”

  “Hurt anyone?” Anna Dean’s eyebrows peaked, and I bit my lip. “Why would you think that, Ms. Kendricks?”

  “Well, um, because—” I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know what I’d walked into, and no one was filling in any gaps. If there was the slightest chance Miranda had done something horrible after I’d dumped her on the sofa because I preferred spending the night with my boyfriend to babysitting a thirty-one-year-old woman, I would never forgive myself.

  Ever.

  “Because what?” Deputy Dean prodded.

  For a split second I came closer still to blurting out what happened at the Pretty Party, because I figured Anna Dean would find out soon enough, if she didn’t know already. And if she didn’t yet, heck, when the latest edition of the Park Cities Press hit the newsstands and subscribers’ mailboxes later in the day, the cat would be so far out of the bag ain’t nobody could catch it.

  “Andrea, please, whatever you can tell me about Miranda’s whereabouts last evening, the more you’ll help us all,” the older woman said, her voice softening, obviously using my first name to establish a connection with me, to entice me to confide in her; to make me crack.

  It worked like a charm.

  I couldn’t stand the pressure.

  Raising my gaze, I looked the gray-haired deputy chief directly in the eye and said, “Miranda was pretty upset last night. She crashed a gathering at Delaney Armstrong’s place on Bordeaux.” And I wouldn’t have been there had Janet not tricked me into accompanying her. “I hadn’t seen Miranda all that much since Hockaday. Then, all of a sudden, she came barreling through the door and nearly knocked me over.” Which is when I’d smelled the alcohol on her, but I didn’t mention that part. “By the time I got to the living room, she was threatening Dr. Sonja.”

  “Dr. Sonja Madhavi?”

  “Yes.” I had to swallow hard to get enough spit to continue. “Miranda was sobbing, saying her career was over and that it was all Dr. Madhavi’s fault. Then she pointed a gun at the doctor and fired”—ah, hell, I let it all spill, even though doing so made me queasy, like I was betraying Miranda—“but her aim was way off, and she nicked the frame of a Picasso hanging over the fireplace.”

  My voice wobbled as I finished, “I don’t exactly know Miranda well, Deputy Chief, at least not anymore. Our mothers used to set us up for play dates when we were little”—though Miranda used to delight in bulldozing the castles I made in the sandbox—“and we both attended the same prep school, but we hardly stayed in touch. Still, I don’t think she intended to kill anyone. She’s a pageant girl, you know. If they want to dust someone, they have their mamas hire a hit man.” I flashed a shaky grin, so she’d see I was kidding (although it had happened once that I knew of).

  Only she didn’t laugh.

  She didn’t even grimace.

  I swallowed again, my smile gone. “Miranda…is she in trouble? Someone from the party pressed charges, is that it?”

  “No,” Deputy Dean said, solemn as a grave digger.

  No? Oh, well, then.

  “Did she try to stop a burglar?” I asked, my voice seeming to echo
in my skull. “The man outside with the beagle said there’ve been lots of break-ins in the area lately, so I thought maybe she woke up and found someone here….”

  “No.” Deputy Dean shook her head and sighed. “No, Andy, Miranda DuBois didn’t encounter an intruder, not that we’re aware of.”

  “If there wasn’t a burglary, and Dr. Sonja didn’t press charges, then why all the fuss—” I started to ask, because it made no sense if this place were a crime scene and no one had even been injured.

  So what was going on?

  Wait a minute.

  The gears finally clicked.

  I heard Miranda’s voice, soft and slurred, whispering: That’s not how I wan’ this to end. How does that go, something about how the truth will set you free? That’s what’ll happen, you know. Then it’ll be all over.

  Her final words to me.

  I hadn’t thought much about them until now, hadn’t dwelled on what they meant.

  How I want this to end…truth will set you free…it’ll be all over.

  “She didn’t hurt herself, did she?” I blurted, and looked at Anna Dean, looked as hard as I could, at the same time scared to death I’d see the truth in her eyes. “She didn’t—”

  I couldn’t finish.

  Couldn’t bring myself to say kill herself.

  I didn’t need to.

  The answer was written all over Deputy Dean’s grim face.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Kendricks.”

  I stared at the note in the Baggie until my eyes blurred, and I wondered, if I hadn’t taken off last night, would Miranda still be alive?

  Chapter 4

  Miranda DuBois had committed suicide?

  No way.

  No how.

  How could that be?

  I was with her, saw her snoring on the sofa, barely ten hours before. I wouldn’t exactly have called her “perky” or “exuberant,” but I never for a moment thought she might take her own life.

  I wouldn’t have deserted her if I had, not even for Brian.

  “Tell me more about last night,” Deputy Anna Dean prodded as I sat on the kitchen stool, wringing my hands the way a cleaning woman with OCD would wring a dirty mop. Over and over and over. “Why did Miranda show up at Delaney Armstrong’s house? Did she know Dr. Madhavi would be there?”

  I wasn’t an expert on the Pretty Party circuit, by any means, but I did know they operated a lot like the cookware parties, the candle parties, the lingerie parties, the sex toy parties, the whatever-the-latest-fad-was parties, ad nauseam (make that, nausea). A hostess sponsored the event at her home, invited a dozen of her closest friends, then the doctor showed up with her assistant and a slew of potions and lotions available for purchase on the spot. Dr. Sonja also gave “sample” injections on the house, sort of like door prizes with the object of getting the women hooked so they’d schedule serial appointments to stay wrinkle-free.

  The deputy chief listened intently until I was done, at which point she drew out a notebook, flipped it to a clean page and aimed her ballpoint pen at the first line.

  “Can you tell me who was at the party, Andy?”

  My throat felt so dry I had to swallow a few times to moisten my mouth enough to continue. I then proceeded to spill the names of the dozen or so who’d attended, including myself, Janet Graham, Delaney Armstrong (since it was her place), Dr. Sonja, and the dermo’s buff assistant, a blond dude with trim mustache and unbelievable biceps. I didn’t know his full name, but I’d heard him called “Lance,” as in, “Pack up my stuff, Lance, and let’s get the hell out of here!”

  Deputy Dean’s pen didn’t pause until she’d finished making a list. Then she quizzed me about Miranda’s face. “She told you Dr. Sonja gave her injections that had disfigured her?”

  Um, she’d told the whole Pretty Party that, basically, with that you stinking quack, you ruined my face line.

  But I put it more simply to the deputy chief. “I clearly got the message she believed Dr. Sonja’s injections had caused her eye to twitch and her mouth to droop. She’d been off the air for three weeks because of it. She assumed her career was over, because the damage didn’t appear to be going away.”

  “She wanted revenge?”

  “I guess so.” What was it Miranda had said to me? Something about the truth setting her free and bringing them all down with her. I’d assumed she had plans for revenge, as any good pageant girl would, but had she meant she’d put a pox on the good doctor’s practice by killing herself and smearing Madhavi’s name instead?

  My mind was too confused—none of it made any sense.

  I flashed back to a moment from childhood when Mother had dragged me to the Miss Tiny Texas pageant, or some such nonsensical thing, in order to see a pint-sized Miranda take runner-up in the contest, something she didn’t cotton to very well. Instead, she’d let out a plaintive howl and ripped the winner’s sash off her wee shoulders, declaring, “It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine.”

  I’d never thought of Miranda DuBois as someone who gave up easily. She’d always had such a fight in her.

  “This is crazy,” I whispered, and Anna Dean looked up from the notebook she’d been writing in.

  “Did you say something, Andy?”

  I bit my lip, shaking my head.

  She moved on to her next question: “So you ended up driving Ms. DuBois home from the party? She was incapable of driving herself? Why was that?”

  “She was drunk,” I said, deciding there was no reason to lie. I did leave out the fact that Miranda had reeked like she’d bathed in gin, as if she’d been drinking for hours beforehand. Why slander a dead woman?

  “You left her car there?”

  “Yes, and her keys,” I told Anna Dean. “Delaney swore she’d have someone bring the Jag over today. I hadn’t considered that we might not get into Miranda’s place. But when we pulled up, the front door was unlocked and the garage door was open. Though I made sure everything was shut tight before I took off.”

  “What about her gun? Did you see it?”

  “Her gun?”

  “Did she have it with her when you brought her home? As in, on her person,” the deputy chief clarified.

  That one I could answer with a good dose of certainty. “No, Miranda was unarmed when I packed her into the Jeep.”

  Like, I would’ve given her a lift if she’d been drunkenly waving her .22.

  Right.

  “Are you sure?” Anna Dean didn’t look at all pleased with my response.

  “Without a doubt,” I told her, because I knew I was telling the truth. “At the party, someone else picked up the gun after Miranda dropped it.”

  The policewoman didn’t take a breath before pouncing on that one.

  “Who picked it up, Andy?”

  “One of the other guests, I assume, or maybe Delaney since it was her house. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “All I know is Miranda didn’t take it.”

  “But you didn’t see who retrieved it?”

  Um, that was kinda like asking if Dorothy recalled all the bits of debris blown around by the twister.

  “It was awfully chaotic at the time,” I explained, picturing the crazed crowd of people in Delaney’s living room after the shot rang out. “All I remember is trying to help Miranda up and noticing that the gun was gone. Someone else must have grabbed it.”

  Someone other than Miranda.

  “So you’re saying unequivocally that Miranda DuBois didn’t pocket her own gun?” Anna Dean came at me from a different angle. “You’d be willing to make a formal statement to that effect?”

  Man, she was nothing if not persistent.

  I was sure, yeah.

  But was I unequivocally sure?

  Enough to swear to it in a police report?

  Gulp.

  Miranda hadn’t exactly been wearing a muumuu, seeing as how she’d had on skintight jeans and a T-shirt with a bright pink blazer. I’d skimmed the blazer off her shoulders before she sprawled out on her couch, and it
wasn’t like her gun had fallen out of a pocket; because it hadn’t.

  But was I one hundred percent positive without a reasonable doubt, not even a teensy-weensy ounce of “maybe”?

  I sighed. “I guess I can’t be certain, no. Not a hundred percent.”

  Even ninety-nine percent sure left one percent wiggle room.

  “Thank you for your honesty, Andy.” The deputy chief gleamed approval at me as she squared her shoulders and scribbled down another note.

  Why so much interest in Miranda’s .22?

  It wasn’t like she’d done any damage with it except to Delaney’s artwork, though Anna Dean seemed to be trying awfully hard to put Miranda’s gun back here, at the duplex, after the Pretty Party.

  Oh, crud.

  Deputy Dean’s insinuations smacked me upside the head.

  Call me dense, but, by George, I think I finally got it.

  “Is that what killed her?” I ventured to ask, my voice meek as a mouse. “She was shot with her own gun?”

  “I’ll let the M.E. determine cause of death, if that’s all right with you, Andy, and then we’ll know more,” was all the deputy chief would offer. “I don’t want any misinformation leaking to the press prematurely.”

  I’d take that as a yes.

  I didn’t say it, but I was thinking it.

  The instrument of death must’ve been Miranda’s own gun.

  “Who found her?” I asked, because it seemed benign enough, and I was wondering whether if I’d arrived any earlier, would it have been me.

  The deputy chief blew out her cheeks, obviously mulling over what she wanted to share with me. “The woman who lives in the duplex next door heard noises in the early hours of the morning.”

  “What kind of noises?”

  “A woman’s raised voice and then a pop, like a door slamming. She said it wasn’t the first time she’d been awakened by sounds coming from next door. Ms. DuBois could apparently throw quite the temper tantrum,” the policewoman explained. “So Mrs. Cameron assumed it was nothing and went back to sleep.”

  Of course she had.