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

by McBride, Susan

  “She already made someone cry.”

  “Who?”

  “Her daughter.”

  Ah, Kendall.

  I barely knew the girl—well, young woman, since she was eighteen and out of school—but I felt sorry for her nonetheless. Not that she was the most pleasant person I’d ever met, but she had a good excuse for her shortcomings. It wasn’t that I accepted the “blame the mother” theory that seemed so popular with Ricki Lake and Maury Povich, but, having rubbed shoulders with Marilee for two weeks, I believed that, in this case, it was true.

  I had firsthand experience with a mother who was demanding, a true perfectionist, and it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t imagine that überdriven Marilee had much time for her daughter, and I was certain that Kendall was feeling particularly neglected with the attention the national syndication of The Sweet Life was raining down on her mom.

  “There you are, Andy. I’ve been waiting for you. I thought you’d be here half an hour ago.”

  Every muscle in my body tensed at the sound of the voice. A somewhat refined East Texas drawl with an edge to it. Rather like Scarlett O’Hara with PMS.

  Speak of the devil.

  I drew my eyes from the photograph-lined walls and looked ahead of me, to the far end of the green runner where a woman sheathed in vintage black Valentino stood staring at me, hands on hips. She tipped her head, so the chunky highlights of light blond in her ashy hair glinted beneath the track lighting. Plenty of bling bling winked from her clavicle, ears, and wrists. Regardless, she didn’t look happy.

  “Sorry, Marilee. Traffic,” I shot back, unwilling to let her get to me. I didn’t want the word to spread that the charming Ms. Mabry had made two women cry this evening.

  “Well, hurry up, then,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Let’s get going. We don’t have much time.”

  “That’s okay, since I don’t need much,” I assured her, following her quick footsteps into the belly of the studio.

  Spotlighting shone from above, illuminating the enormous vases and pots of flowers that abounded. I heard the sweet sound of strings as a harpist tuned up from a corner of the soundstage. Polished silver candelabra filled every surface that flowers did not, and a cadre of staffers in black—the men in tuxes and the women in cocktail-length dresses—scurried about, lighting tapered candlesticks.

  Large plasma-screen monitors hung here and there, where snippets from upcoming episodes of the The Sweet Life would play soundlessly throughout the evening. Gauzy sage green chiffon swags floated down from metal grids, in between pastel-hued bulbs that would shower the most flattering lighting on Marilee’s guests. The whole atmosphere seemed surreal, as if I’d walked onto the pages of a decorating magazine. I felt like Dorothy awakening in a Technicolor Oz after starting out my day in black-and-white.

  “Nothing can go wrong tonight, Andy,” she said without breaking her stride, despite the height of her pointy-toed mules. “Everything must go as I’ve planned, though I do have a few surprises in store.”

  Hopefully, that excluded poisonous spiders and falling boom mikes.

  “Surprises?”

  “Don’t worry. They have nothing to do with you. They’re merely a gift to myself, sweet revenge, as it were. All you need concern yourself with is what happens online.”

  “We’re in good shape, really. I set up the web cams a few days ago,” I reminded her, “so I just need to make sure they’re all functioning properly.”

  She kept her back to me, tossing over her shoulder, “Is the site animation working?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the media clips I asked you to load?”

  “Done.”

  I pretended that we hadn’t already gone through this a million times before, an Oscar-worthy performance, if I do say so myself.

  “And how about the blog?” she asked, referring to the web log where she kept in touch with her fans by posting messages daily. Okay, she didn’t actually keep in touch; one of her production assistants did, pretending to be Marilee herself.

  “It’s already generating an amazing response,” I told her. “Your fans are looking forward to seeing what goes on at this party. The e-vite you suggested was a stroke of brilliance. I’m expecting the number of hits from people wanting to catch a glimpse of you and your guests to surpass our expectations.”

  She stopped in midstride and turned around, the pinch of displeasure gone from her face. A slow smile crept across her impeccably painted mouth, and she lifted a hand, pointing a manicured finger at me. “Cissy was right. You are a genius, my dear. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  And the six webmasters before me.

  Aw, shucks.

  I felt a blush coming on. “Well, thank you, Marilee. It’s been, um, great working here, and I think I’ve got things in good shape for my replacement.”

  “Replacement?” She narrowed her eyes. “What on earth are you talking about? I don’t want to replace you, Andy. You’re doing magnificently. You seem to understand just what I want, and I don’t have to tell you over and over a hundred times.”

  No, just ninety-nine.

  Crap.

  That’s what I’d been afraid of.

  I reminded myself to stand my ground. “Um, remember I told you when I agreed to take the job that it would only be temporary. Usually I prefer to work with nonprofits. It’s kind of a personal thing,” I tried to explain.

  But I wasn’t even sure she’d been listening.

  Her gaze shifted, her attention turned elsewhere.

  “Carson!” she screamed at someone over my shoulder, the sudden rise in her voice causing my hair to stand on end. “What the hell are you doing with my homemade foie gras? Didn’t you hear a word I said about putting it out too soon? And are those water crackers? Did I not tell you a dozen times that I wanted toast points?”

  Only a dozen?

  Without so much as an “excusez-moi” she whisked past me, leaving me standing there with my mouth half-open. I felt like one of the many potted palms set about, draped in twinkling lights. A mere prop for Marilee and nothing more.

  Was she coming back?

  Or had she deserted me for good?

  I wasn’t sure which to wish for.

  I stayed put for a moment, gripping my purse in one hand and looking around, watching Marilee’s staff scurry about, the men in tuxedoes with red rosebud boutonnières and the women in cocktail dresses. Marilee surely meant for their “uniforms” to convey elegance and class, but I found the effect rather funereal.

  Was it an omen, I wondered, all those people garbed in black?

  Marilee was nowhere in sight. She’d disappeared through a closed door, stomping after a fellow whose head was hairless as a cue ball.

  Poor Carson, I thought and gave him a fifty-fifty shot of having a job after tonight. Marilee went through employees faster than Hugh Hefner did bunnies.

  Carson Caruthers and I had never crossed paths, since I normally restricted my work to Marilee’s office when I had to come in. I wasn’t sure exactly what his position was beyond the fact that food was involved. All the names on the site had my brain scrambled, and the crew was so large it was hard to keep track.

  Anxiously, I tapped my shoe against the floor.

  What to do, what to do?

  I couldn’t wait for her to return, not that she would. It was closing in on twenty minutes to liftoff, and I still had to double-check the cams and the live stream on the computer. I didn’t want to find a glitch in the system after the party had begun. Then the head on Marilee’s platter would be mine instead of Carson’s.

  Hop to it, I told myself, deciding things would go a lot faster without Marilee looking over my shoulder and grilling me like the Spanish Inquisition.

  After doing a quick inspection of the web cam locations and finding everything as I’d left it, I headed away from the soundstage, down a mazelike rear hallway, with various cubicles and offices shooting off right and left.

  Thoug
h the overhead strip lights were on to illuminate my passage, most of the rooms appeared dark and deserted. The members of Marilee’s production staff were either en route or out in the studio, buzzing around like worker bees under the close inspection of their queen.

  My destination was the queen’s office. I’d been there quite a few times in the past two weeks, and it was a sight to behold. The space was at least the size of my condo if not a couple hundred feet beyond. It was as plush and pretty as the pages of House Beautiful magazine, and I fleetingly considered hiding out there for the duration.

  I approached the closed door, marked with a star (of course) and MARILEE MABRY lettered in delicate calligraphy. With a twist, I turned the knob and pushed my way in, reaching for the light switch and flipping it on.

  Realizing, too late, that I wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 7

  A sudden squawk emerged from the silence: a masculine, “Oh, Christ,” along with a feminine squeal along the lines of “eeeek!”

  Then two bodies popped off the butter-cream leather sofa, each grabbing at various items of loosened clothing, hastily buttoning and zipping.

  I stood in the doorway, strangely mesmerized, not sure of what to do exactly. As far as I knew, this wasn’t a subject covered by Emily Post.

  So what’s a not-so-good girl to do?

  I gawked.

  The man came toward me first—once he’d shrugged back into a dove-gray jacket, white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sans tie—combing fingers through silky blond hair, face flushed but otherwise cool as the proverbial cucumber. He checked the red rose boutonnière in his lapel, reassuring himself it was there.

  A red rose, I noted, just like the rest of the hired help.

  If Marilee was making a statement by having Justin wear one, I wondered if he realized what that meant.

  He approached, ducking his handsome head to avoid looking me in the eye. He murmured, “excuse me,” before he rushed past, leaving only the faint scent of almonds in his wake, making an escape that would’ve done Houdini proud.

  Before he disappeared entirely, I glanced with blatant admiration at his well-shaped posterior. It was plain enough to me why Marilee kept him around and showered him with expensive treats.

  Woo-doggy, indeed.

  But wasn’t he playing it awfully fast and loose, messing with his lover’s teenaged daughter?

  I tried to come up with a good excuse for what Justin had been doing with Kendall—a quick check of her body fat that required both of them to disrobe, perhaps?—knowing that their activities had less to do with any real personal training than with cuckolding Marilee on her own sofa.

  Tsk, tsk.

  The young woman took her time setting herself to rights, adjusting a black under-wire bra and slipping her sticklike arms into a pair of spaghetti straps, before tugging a zipper up her side.

  I summoned a calm I didn’t feel and shut the door behind me. Stepping farther into the room, I shook my head with disbelief.

  “Kendall, Kendall, Kendall,” I murmured, for want of anything remotely witty. “What on earth are you doing with your mother’s boyfriend? And in her office, too?” I clucked tongue against teeth. “You must be clueless or completely insane.”

  “Don’t you know how to knock?”

  The heavily made-up eighteen-year-old scowled as she fiddled with the elaborate French twist on the back of her head, trying unsuccessfully to tuck dismantled strands back in place. She looked like a skinny kid playing dress-up.

  “Don’t you know how to lock a door?” I said.

  I mean, duh.

  She stopped fooling with her hair and gave me a long, slow smirk. “What if I tried, but the lock was broken?”

  Call me gullible, but I went back and checked the mechanism myself, and it seemed perfectly fine. “Nope, it works like a charm.”

  “Really? Silly me.” Kendall laughed, and I lifted my eyes to hers, seeing something in them that made my toes curl.

  Oh, my.

  Suddenly, I had a darned good idea of her true intentions.

  To get nailed being, uh, nailed. Only the wrong person had come along and caught her in a compromising position with Marilee’s boy-toy.

  She’d been shooting for her mother to appear and flip on the light.

  Talk about an attention-getter.

  That certainly would’ve done the trick.

  “You must have a serious death wish,” I scolded, pushing the door shut again and skulking toward the desk.

  She ignored me and tugged at her pantyhose before stepping into a pair of lethal-looking Jimmy Choos. The spiked heels were stiletto-slim and at least four inches high. Kendall obviously liked to live dangerously in more ways than one.

  If Marilee had made her cry earlier, she’d long since dried her tears. She didn’t seem sad so much as spiteful.

  “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Bite me,” she said.

  “Not even if you were a Krispy Kreme.”

  So much for my attempt to reach out to a troubled teen.

  It struck me then that there were good reasons people sent their kids to boarding school. If I were Marilee, I would’ve packed Kendall’s bags and put her on a plane to the most remote location in Vermont long ago, and I wouldn’t pay for her return ticket until she turned thirty.

  Okay, maybe I was being a little harsh, but Kendall’s tough-girl attitude made it hard to like her. Yet I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  Perhaps that’s how my mother felt about Marilee.

  As my daddy used to say, that’s called a “pair a ducks.”

  I set down my purse and pulled back the padded leather chair before sinking between its arms. As soon as I turned on the computer, I felt Kendall’s presence behind me. I didn’t turn until I had booted up the program and connected with the web-hosting network for Marilee’s site.

  “I apologize,” she said quietly, a far cry from her snooty tone of moments before. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. You’re not going to rat me out, are you?”

  From “bite me” to contrition in ten seconds flat.

  Yo, Sybil?

  I swiveled around so I could see her face. The heavy black liner around her eyes was smudged, whether from earlier tears or her tryst with Justin, I couldn’t be sure. A tiny diamond glinted from above her right nostril, replacing the usual gold ring. So she’d broken out the formal nosewear. How classy. A small round mole dotted her right cheek where a dimple would have been, if she’d had dimples.

  She had enough blush in the hollow of her cheeks to more than enhance her prominent bone structure, lending her a skeletal air. The black of her hair had inch-wide platinum streaks in it, reminiscent of Lily Munster. She managed to look fragile and frightening at the same time.

  Kendall was so thin her exposed arms seemed all bones and taut ligaments. Her clavicle jutted out above the low-cut line of her cocktail dress, a flashy number that screamed Dolce & Gabbana. Size zero.

  “You can relax. I won’t blab about Justin,” I promised, figuring the girl had enough troubles as it was. Besides, I figured, she didn’t need me making things worse for her. Kendall seemed determined to screw up her life all on her own. “Look, I know you have problems with your mother, but . . .”

  “Problems?” She snorted, cutting me off. “Problems are like one plus one equals two. It’s not that simple. You can’t possibly understand what it means to be the daughter of Marilee Mabry. Everyone assumes she’s so perfect, that she does everything right, and it’s so far from the truth it isn’t funny.”

  “But maybe I do understand,” I said. “A lot better than you think. It hasn’t been easy being the only child of Cissy Kendricks.”

  “Give me a break.” She twirled a strand of hair around a knobby finger. The uncountable silver bands around her wrist jingled. “Your mother’s a saint compared to mine. I’ll bet she remembers your birthday and stays home on Christmas.”

  Well, she had me there. Cissy never mi
ssed a holiday or special occasion. Quite the opposite. She made a huge flipping deal out of every event. Overdoing was her problem, not forgetting.

  Still, I found myself springing to Mama Mabry’s defense. “But Marilee raised you single-handedly, Kendall, and she didn’t have much to work with . . . financially, I mean. It had to be hard for her.”

  “Made her hard up, is more like it.” The raccoon eyes narrowed. “I’ll wager your mom has never stolen one of your boyfriends.”

  Cissy as Mrs. Robinson?

  I think not.

  Particularly considering the kind of guys I’d dated in my rebellious youth (i.e., before Malone), mostly artists and musicians who didn’t fit any of Cissy’s criteria for a son-in-law, the first of those being “gainfully employed.”

  I laughed until I realized that Kendall was dead serious.

  “Oh.” I quickly sobered up. “You mean Justin? That before he was with your mother, he”—I started, but she finished for me.

  “Used to be with me.”

  “Ah,” I said, ever the scintillating conversationalist.

  “It’s true.” She stopped fiddling with her hair and sighed. “He’d still be mine if not for her.” She braced her palms on the edge of the desk and glanced down at her hands. Her fingernails looked as ragged as mine. “If Marilee hadn’t stepped in and waved her money in front of his face. She calls him our ‘fitness guru,’ but he mostly earns his keep by screwing Mummy dearest. I guess that makes me her pimp, doesn’t it? I am the one who brought him home from the gym. Stupidest move I ever made.”

  Her jaw tightened, and I could see the angry beat of her pulse at her throat. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt so much, the way he hopped so fast from my bed into hers, like it was nothing. But it does. It hurts a lot.”

  And Justin continued to hop like the Energizer Bunny, if what I’d dropped in on was any indication.

  “If it hurts so much, why are you still sleeping with him?”

  Her face froze, and something like fear flickered in her eyes before she blinked it away. Then she shrugged. “We care about each other. Mummy can’t take that away from us.”