Could be there was something to this rosemary-tangerine pore-tightening botanical facial after all.
I got up from the chair and turned to thank him, but Lance was already halfway out the door, mumbling something about having to prepare a room for his next appointment.
So I found my own way back to the reception desk and hung around for a minute, glancing at the products for sale until Janet appeared a few minutes later.
She looked flushed, her frizzy curls even more frazzled, if that were possible. And she cupped her hand over her mouth as she approached and said, “C’mon, Andy, let’s go,” which emerged kind of muffled ’cuz she was speaking through her fingers.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked as we passed through the glass doors of The Pretty Place and then crossed to the mall exit, before heading out to the parking lot.
She didn’t pause to explain until we’d reached her Jetta, at which point she dropped her hand and looked me right in the face.
I blinked a few times, before I went ahead and stared outright.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Say something.”
“What did you do?” I asked, still trying to reconcile the “before” Janet with the “after” Janet standing before me.
“It’s just a little bee-pollen plumper with a shot of Restylane. It’ll go away after three, four months.”
Good God, I sure hoped so.
I kept thinking of the Grinch and how his heart was two sizes too small. It was sort of the same with Janet’s lips. Only suddenly they were two sizes too big.
“So did you get what you wanted from Dr. Sonja?” I asked, meaning the interview, or possibly the giant fish mouth. I squinted at her, thinking, Wow.
“She acted surprised when I told her Miranda was dead, but she didn’t exactly seem crushed.” Janet paused, glaring at me. “Why are you staring, Andy?”
Like she had to ask.
“Wow,” I said aloud this time, because the word was stuck in my head; and because I couldn’t believe she’d gone and done something like this. “Are you sure you can fit those suckers in the car with us?” I teased.
“For Pete’s sake,” Janet snapped. “Just shut up and get in.”
Chapter 8
I had rarely been so glad to get home in all my life.
When I crawled out of bed at seven-thirty and dragged myself to Miranda’s, I’d only envisioned being gone forty-five minutes at most.
By the time I got back to the condo it was after ten o’clock.
I dropped my keys on the kitchen counter as I passed through my tiny digs, half expecting to find Malone at the breakfast table, munching on cereal and toast. Only I was pleasantly surprised to find him still asleep.
After I stripped off my sweats, I slid back between the sheets. He grunted and his arm snaked around my belly, murmuring in a husky voice, “You smell like salad dressing.”
That was probably the nicest thing anyone had said to me all day.
Despite the craziness on my mind, I curled up with him and slept for another two hours. When we finally got up for real around noon, I briefly filled Malone in, and he suggested something to take my mind off things: an afternoon movie.
I hadn’t been to the picture show in a long while, so I happily agreed.
I even turned off my cell the whole time we were in the theater. I didn’t want anything to intrude on my time with Malone. We didn’t get much “us only” moments these days, what with the hours he worked at the firm. So I’d take what I could get, even on a day like this. No, especially on a day like this.
I didn’t switch my cell back on until Brian and I were walking out of Valley View Mall after having lunch and seeing the latest Harry Potter flick.
Malone was right about it taking my mind off more serious matters. It had certainly done the trick. It didn’t hurt that the theater audience was sparse and we’d pulled our usual “sit in the back row” maneuver so he could put his arm around me and I could sling my legs across his thighs and nestle against his neck.
Between snuggling, we’d watched the big screen, whispering to each other throughout about how the next installment of Harry Potter would have to explain why Harry looked middle-aged if they didn’t recruit younger actors for future pics.
Brian had suggested seeing another show and totally blowing our entire day at the theater. Much as I enjoyed holding hands with him in the dark and breathing in the scent of stale popcorn, I realized I couldn’t hide from real life forever.
I just hadn’t figured reality would intrude so quickly upon stepping from the shadows of the mall into the afternoon sun.
My cell had barely been on for thirty seconds before I heard aborted bursts of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
I squinted at the number of messages on my voice mail—twenty-one in a two hour span. Wow, a record for me.
What the heck had been going on while I was in the mall?
I cut off Joe Elliott mid-“Sugar” and flipped it open.
“Yo, Hot Lips, what’s up?” I said, knowing who was on the other end, thanks to good old caller ID.
Your mother? Brian mouthed, and I laughed. Like I’d greet Cissy with a “Yo,” much less call her “Hot Lips.”
I shook my head and mouthed back, Janet Graham, just as Janet started tearing into me.
“Good God, Andy, where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing your cell for, like, ever, and I’ve left a million messages!”
A million wasn’t far off, though it was more like a dozen.
“Sorry,” I told her, “but I was at the movies with Brian—”
“You were at the movies?” she screeched, her tone suggesting I’d committed a mortal sin. “What’s wrong with you? I can’t believe you were out of touch when so much has been going on. Surely, you’ve heard all the dirt by now, yes?”
What dirt? I wondered, until my brain kicked in and I realized whatever it was must have to do with Miranda DuBois.
Terrific.
“First off, why didn’t you tell me you were the last one to have seen the late great Second Runner-Up Miss USA alive before she purportedly killed herself?” I listened to her rant as I followed Brian through the parking lot toward his red Acura. “I was with you for, like, an hour this morning. How could you not share that kind of buzz immediately? And you call yourself a friend.”
The last one to have seen Miranda alive.
Just hearing that phrase made me flinch.
And how had she found out, by the way?
I knew I hadn’t told her.
Oh, oh, no, please, it couldn’t be.
A wave of panic hit me, and I stopped where I was, smack in the middle of a lane of traffic. A horn honked, and I regained my senses fast enough to move aside as an impatient XTerra rolled past.
I was certain Anna Dean hadn’t informed the media about my presence during Miranda’s final hours.
I wasn’t so sure that my mother hadn’t let it slip. And Highland Park was like a small town in so many ways. All Cissy had to do was tell a few of her friends…who told a few of their friends…and then someone was whispering it in the ear of the society pages editor of the Park Cities Press.
Namely, Ms. “I Stick My Nose in Other People’s Business for a Living” Janet Graham.
“Are you there, Andy? Hello? Do we have a bad connection?”
Unfortunately, no, we didn’t. I’d heard every stinking word.
“Who told you I saw Miranda last?” I asked, my voice rising as Brian turned around to look at me, his car keys dangling from his fingers. He stood near the trunk of his Acura, while I was still five yards back. It would take me two days to reach it at this rate. “Have you been talking to Cissy?”
“Well, um, not directly,” came her ambiguous reply.
I scowled into the cell. “What does that mean?”
“Geez, girl, don’t bite my head off. I got the dirt through the most public of channels, and you would’ve already heard about it had you not been hiding in
the cinema with your boyfriend for half the damned day.”
“Go on,” I said through gritted teeth.
“The Highland Park police called a press conference because of pressure from the media,” Janet said, talking so fast I could barely keep up with her. “A reporter from Miranda’s own station heard the chatter on the police scanner, and they got a camera crew over to the duplex just as the M.E. was wheeling her out the front door.”
This all couldn’t have happened much after I’d left Cissy’s house and gone to The Pretty Place at North Park Center with Janet, not long after my conversation with Deputy Dean about the final night of Miranda’s too-short life.
“The HPPD spokeswoman didn’t give details, just kept it simple, saying that a local woman was dead, pending notification of next of kin. It’s not like they were gonna be able to keep something like this a secret, since Miranda DuBois was a celebrity,” Janet went on, acting more like the PCP’s ace crime reporter (which they didn’t even have) as opposed to their one and only society scribe. “Every major media outlet had a microphone there, and the natives got pretty restless when their questions about the cause of death and whether the police were looking for suspects went unanswered.”
I’d kind of been hoping—naïvely—that Miranda could be put to rest peacefully, once her mother returned from Club Suture. I hadn’t even considered that her death might turn into a three-ring circus.
It was that National Enquirer atmosphere we lived in these days, where news about anyone who registered anywhere on the “fame and fortune” scale became instant front page headlines.
I wondered how long it would take before newsprint about Miranda’s passing got buried beneath something more sensational. Like the pastor of an area church getting snagged in a sex scandal—which seemed to happen every other weekend of late—or Ross Perot getting snapped taking out the trash in his BVDs.
Oy.
“So how’d my name come up in all this?” I asked, because Janet hadn’t exactly settled that part yet. The only folks who knew I’d gone into the house with the police, other than my mother, were Deputy Dean and that ponytailed officer. Okay, and Beagle Man and Lycra Woman, but I hadn’t introduced myself to either, and surely neither one had Janet’s number on speed dial.
Toot toot.
Brian had gotten impatient, waiting for me to catch up, and brought the Acura to me instead. The red coupe pulled up, nearly brushing my thigh, and its horn bleated yet again. The passenger door unlocked with a crisp click. I kept the phone to my ear and grasped the door handle with the other, but that’s as far as I got.
Janet took a breath before racing forward: “The deputy chief finally took a shot at calming down us nasty reporters, assuring us it didn’t look like foul play was involved because there was no sign of an intruder at the duplex, and that the decedent appeared to have died by her own hand, using a weapon registered to her, all nice and legal-like. She went on to say there was preliminary evidence supporting the fact that the decedent had gunshot residue on her skin so no one need worry about a killer running around the neighborhood.”
Wow, that was a lot of scoop from the usually tight-lipped Anna Dean.
But Janet still hadn’t answered my question.
“And my name came up when precisely?” I prodded.
“Geez, get thy panties out of a twist, you pushy broad,” she quipped. “I’m getting to that.”
Toot toooot.
Malone laid on the horn a little longer this time, and I opened the door and, holding onto the window, put one foot on the door frame, poised to climb in but not quite making it.
“So, they’re just about to wrap things up, offering a lot of ‘no comments’ and not making anyone particularly happy, which is when your mother appeared out of the blue, wearing the most gorgeous chocolate wool double-breasted trouser suit—”
“My mother showed up at the police station? In a trouser suit?” I repeated, blinking out of dumbfounded confusion, and I heard Brian grumble, “For God’s sake, Andy, get in.”
But I wasn’t listening to him.
“I know, I know,” Janet said, “She normally doesn’t do the trouser thing, does she? But it was Chanel, of course, and she looked perfect, as usual. You should’ve seen her shoes….”
Cissy had shown up at Deputy Dean’s press conference?
Why?
What was she up to?
“I don’t care about what she wore,” I said, interrupting Janet’s fashion commentary. “What did she do?”
“She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I can’t believe you’re so clueless,” Janet said, and I nearly told her there was a lot my mother did that I never knew about until after the fact. That was par for the course.
I hadn’t spoken to Mother since I’d left her alone to phone Debbie Santos at the spa in Brazil. Lately, it seemed, I couldn’t seem to leave anyone alone for even a few hours without disastrous results, could I?
What possible reason would Cissy have for showing up at the police department and interrupting a press conference?
“Janet, spill!” I demanded, because I didn’t intend to go around in circles with her on this one.
“Okay, okay.” The Park Cities Gossip Queen took a deep breath and slowly released it. “Apparently, Miranda’s will leaves her mother in charge of everything, but since Debbie Santos is temporarily stuck on foreign soil, the always dressed-to-kill Cissy Kendricks has been named trustee or custodian or guardian ad litem of Miranda’s remains and her property until her mother can wing it back from South America. Cissy related the dreadful story about Mrs. Santos receiving treatment from Brazilian specialists for a rare strain of the bird flu brought on by close contact with a toucan during an excursion into the rain forest.”
If Mother’s tales of Debbie Santos’s toucan bird flu and rain forest excursion weren’t far-fetched enough, neither compared to the bit about her becoming guardian of a dead woman.
What the heck was going on?
“Cissy’s in charge of Miranda’s remains and her estate until Mrs. Santos returns?” I squawked. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You are kidding, right?”
What was next?
Would Mother knock Priscilla and Lisa Marie aside to take charge of Graceland?
“It appears perfectly legal, yes,” Janet confirmed. “Your mother even had an attorney from ARGH standing at her side throughout. He presented the paperwork to the deputy chief and nodded as Cissy winged her way through her comments.”
“When can Debbie Santos get back?” I wondered aloud, because the sooner she let my mother off the hook, the better it would be for everybody.
“According to your mama, Mrs. Santos won’t be fit enough to fly for at least a week, and so all her demands as sole living heir to Miranda DuBois will be executed by the honorable Cissy Blevins Kendricks,” Janet said with all the hype of a pro wrestling ringmaster. “Oh, and that’s not the best part!”
“There’s more?” I leaned against the roof of Brian’s car, feeling woozy. I wasn’t sure I could take hearing anything else.
But I would get an earful, regardless. Of that, I was positive.
“Your mother, acting on behalf of Mrs. Santos, has hired that Hollywood forensic pathologist, Dr. Larry Woo, to conduct an independent autopsy, as she doesn’t believe her daughter committed suicide and wants Dr. Woo to draw his own conclusions, separate and apart from whatever the M.E. finds. She’s putting pressure on the county medical examiner’s office to get their postmortem done within twenty-four hours. Can you even believe this?” Janet sounded way too excited. “It’s like being in an episode of Law & Order, only it’s real!”
It was real crazy, that’s what it was, I thought, and wobbled, my knees knocking. With one hand I hung onto Brian’s car for fear of sliding to the pavement, with the other I clutched the cell to my ear.
“Your mother was cool as a cucumber, Andy. You should’ve seen her.” Janet’s motor mouth ran on
, droning around in my head like the buzz of cars in a Nascar race. “She promised Debbie Santos she’d hire a private eye to be sure a thorough investigation is done, as if the police can’t be trusted to do their job. Cissy all but wagged a finger at Deputy Chief Dean, noting that she’d be checking in with her and keeping an eye on the proceedings until Mrs. Santos returned. I’ve never seen Anna Dean turn such an ugly shade of red.”
Holy cannoli, but this had quickly gotten out of hand.
I pressed my fingers to my brow, willing away the headache that had so abruptly taken shape there. “This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening,” I said quietly, my own little desperate mantra.
I didn’t worry about interrupting Janet. She had yet to stop yammering about Cissy’s starring role at the press conference and the imagined consequences.
“It’s a good thing her phone is unlisted, or it’d be ringing off the hook! Oh, hey, you’ve got your landline unlisted, too, don’t you? ’Cuz the media’s gonna be after you, too, since the deputy chief forgot to turn off her microphone before she took your mother aside and suggested a conflict of interest, considering you—Guardian Cissy’s own daughter—were the last known person to have seen Miranda DuBois alive and kicking. That’s when your mother suggested the police better get on the stick, because you have some kind of evidence to prove she didn’t commit suicide so they shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions—”
“What?” I screeched.
Oh, God, oh, God.
My stomach lurched.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” I murmured.
“Oh, wait, I’m not done yet,” Big D’s own Lois Lane said gleefully. “Cissy told Deputy Dean that you didn’t believe Miranda pulled a kamikaze with her .22 any more than she or Debbie Santos did. So what proof have you got, Andy?” Janet asked, so eager that it scared me. “You can tell me, can’t you? I can do an exclusive and get it out in a special edition, so you won’t have to deal with the rest of the press badgering you relentlessly.”
Because Janet certainly wasn’t badgering me. No siree.
I smacked a hand against my aching head.
Too Pretty to Die Page 10
