Janet waved dismissively. “Oh, hell, Andy, that was back in the early sixties, and we’re talking a rural community. Stybr, Texas. A teensy-weensy bump in the road between Tyler and Longview. The kind of place that still had a one-room schoolhouse until about five years ago. Sometimes the village did raise the child in those days, or close to it. I found one of Marilee’s old teachers—and I mean old—and she told me the girl showed up for class like clockwork until she was sixteen. So she wasn’t truant. Though she did disappear for a spell before she was set to graduate. I’m still digging into that. By then, her daddy had lost the farm to taxes and no one’s sure where she went. I heard she lived with an aunt, taking care of the woman during an illness, before she went back to Stybr long enough to finish school so she could get into college and get out for good.”
I realized suddenly how little I really knew about Marilee Mabry, and I wondered if Mother was even privy to the whole sordid story.
The idea that Marilee had been left to raise herself—off and on—when she wasn’t yet a teenager, amazed me. I couldn’t imagine being alone at that age, not for a day much less for weeks at a time. I thought of how she must have felt, frightened and more than a little lost. Maybe even unloved.
“Her father’s long since passed away, and so have many of the neighboring farmers who’d known Marilee Haggerty when she was a kid. Most of her peers have taken off, too, but I’ve been able to dig up a few old-timers, and the one teacher who remembers her. But I’m not having much luck tracking down her aunt.”
“Why don’t you confront Marilee? Could be the reason no one knows about where she went is because no one’s ever asked her.”
Janet nearly spit out a mouthful of fish eggs. “Confront Marilee? Hmm. Maybe I’ll just douse myself in lighter fluid and throw myself on the grill at Burger King. It’d be a lot less painful.”
“She wouldn’t tell you, would she?”
Janet sighed. “No, dammit. I’d naively assumed she’d scratch my back since I’ve been scratching hers for the past few years, putting her name in my column until it became a household word, at least in this city. Oh, she’ll be sweet as pie to me if I ask about her show or her books, but if I try to dig too deep into her past, I’m hearing a dial tone just like that”—she snapped her fingers, the tips painted the same bright orange shade as her pants suit. “She could’ve made something up, and I wouldn’t have questioned her. Now she’s got me wondering what she’s hiding.”
“Hmm,” I said, because it did seem odd that Marilee would turn down free press, especially with The Sweet Life so soon to premiere in the national arena. “I’d imagine she’d like the ink, even if it had to do with her less-than-perfect childhood. Really, what could a teenaged girl have done thirty years ago that was such a big deal?”
“I have my theories, and I aim to find out if I’m on the money. Then she’ll be sorry for the kind of ink I’m gonna give her,” Janet murmured and turned away, becoming extremely interested in the bruschetta.
Abnormally interested.
“She’ll be sorry? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you planning a feature article for the paper? Like an exposé? Something down and dirty?”
“I can’t exactly . . . maybe I shouldn’t . . . oh, hell.” She stuffed a bite of bruschetta in her mouth and looked off in the distance.
“Janet, hey, it’s me, Andy, remember?” I wiggled my fingers in front of her nose. “What’s going on? You know you can tell me anything.”
“Oh, gosh, I think I see Bootsie Ann Wyatt standin’ over by the plasma screen, if you’d excuse me, sugar . . .”
I put a hand on her arm to keep her from bolting.
“Janet Rutledge Graham.”
Calling her by her full name—or at least three of them—was the surest way I knew to take her to task. Get her to spill her guts.
But she clammed up instead. Her mouth pinched into a line so tight it would’ve taken a crowbar to pry it open.
Which was strange and so unlike her, at least with me.
I’d known Janet since we were kids, though she was three years my senior. As I’d often felt like one of the lone individualists at the Hockaday School, I’d admired those who didn’t mind standing out. And Janet never failed to set herself apart from the crowd, even in our uniform of plaid skirts and knee socks. Her hair changed color regularly. Some mornings it was blond; other times, a brassy orange or shoe-polish black. She wrote for the school paper, but her true love was drama. She starred in virtually every play or musical until she graduated and went off to UT-Austin, where she ended up majoring in journalism. And I always thought she’d end up in New York on an afternoon soap or an off-Broadway stage.
While I was still in Chicago at art school, Janet began working at the Park Cities paper, covering lots of Mother’s causes on her beat, everything from school board meetings to Girl Scout cookie sales to weddings. Cissy sent me plenty of clippings, all with Janet’s byline, until the prolific Ms. Graham was promoted to “society editor.”
When I returned to Dallas, Janet was the first to hear the news from my mother, which quickly turned to fodder for her column.
“Our favorite debutante dropout’s back in town! You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl, which is why Andrea Blevins Kendricks decided to pack her bags and return to Big D from the Windy City,” she’d written about my homecoming.
I’d called her at the paper shortly after, asking why she wasn’t reporting for the New York Times instead of fawning over socialites at sorority alumnae teas, and she’d confessed that she adored her job, that going to the endless string of galas and luncheons with high society was akin to the very best theatre. “It’s real drama, Andy, better than fiction,” she’d gushed, as if I hadn’t recognized that fact very early on with Cissy as my role model.
We kept our friendship up-to-date by meeting for lunch once in a while; but her world revolved around gossip, and she knew I really didn’t care much about the blue bloods who were the gristmill for her columns. So we didn’t talk shop much, mostly we’d yammered about men and the lack of them in our lives.
But I was curious about her suddenly nosing around in Marilee Mabry’s background, more so because she didn’t want to tell me. Unless there was some reason she didn’t want anyone to know what she was up to, like it was some deep, dark secret.
Wait a dad-gummed minute.
A light bulb flickered.
Could it be?
Despite the growing hum of voices, I could hear a tiny warning bell go off in my brain.
“You’re the one writing the unauthorized biography, aren’t you?” I ventured to ask, and Janet’s cheeks turned near as red as her hair.
“I plead the Fifth,” she said.
Which could only mean one thing.
I’d struck crude.
I downed the champagne that remained in my flute and set it aside, leaning a hip against the edge of the buffet table, shaking my head.
“Oh, my God.” The realization struck me silly, and I grinned like an idiot, looking up at her. “It is you. You’re writing the book about Marilee. And it’s going to be down and dirty, isn’t it?”
Janet’s crimson curls flew this way and that as she quickly looked around us, making sure no one had overheard. Then she grabbed my hand and squeezed hard enough to wipe the smile off my mouth.
“You’ve gotta promise to keep mum about this,” she quietly pleaded. “Or Marilee’ll be down at the courthouse with her lawyers, filing some kind of injunction to keep me from doing this project. And it’s important to me, Andy.” Her skin looked suddenly pale against the vivid tangerine of her jacket. “This could make my career. It could be my ticket to Oprah. I could finally meet Katie Couric in person,” she whispered, breathless.
Katie Couric was Janet’s idol.
I wasn’t so sure that much of her fascination with Ms. Couric didn’t have to do with the hairdo, which Janet did her best to mimic in every way except the
ever-changing color.
Despite the longish bangs that kept falling into her face, I managed to hold her eyes and swear solemnly, “I won’t say a word about the book. You know me better than that, for Pete’s sake. Besides, who would I tell? My mother?” I laughed.
She didn’t.
“You think I’d tell Cissy?” Now that was funny. “I don’t think I’ve confided in my mother since I was twelve and got my period.”
And that was definitely a moment I’d rather forget.
“Promise me you’ll keep quiet.” She gripped my fingers more tightly, so that I momentarily lost sensation.
“Girl Scout’s honor. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. My lips are sealed.” With my free hand, I feigned locking my mouth shut and tossing the key.
“All right. I believe you.” Janet sighed and let go.
And not a moment too soon.
I’d been on the verge of crying “uncle.” I massaged my white knuckles to get the circulation going.
She turned her head, scanning the room and the ever-growing crowd that loitered about, chatting and drinking. “Speaking of Cissy, has she arrived yet? I figure I would’ve seen her if she’d made her grand entrance already.”
“It’s barely a quarter past eight,” I reminded Janet. “Way too early for Mother to be fashionably late.”
A slow sweep of the studio—the parts I could see—revealed a contingent of politicians from city hall, half the population of Highland Park, and lots of designing types from artsy Deep Ellum boutiques and swanky Lovers Lane antiques shops, men too well dressed and styled to be hetero; unless a few metrosexuals had slipped through the cracks (translation: men purportedly attracted to women who spent nearly as much time at the salon as the gym).
My gaze skimmed over plenty of blondes with hair teased and sprayed to such proportions they looked like bobble-head dolls. Such was the Texas way.
I caught a few strains of the harpist playing something Mozart when Janet gasped and grabbed my arm.
“Ah, it’s Babette von Werner and her grandpa . . . oops, I mean, her hubby.”
“You gonna write that in your column?”
“Not unless I want to get canned, since Fritz von Werner’s company just bought out the newspaper.” She snorted. “But it’s the God’s honest truth.”
And that was no lie.
Babette was a slender woman in her forties, while her spouse was at least twice that. Flashing laser-whitened teeth, Babs nodded her “hellos” as she pushed her beloved (and very rich) Poppy von Werner in his wheelchair. I admired her maneuvering skill, especially since she was wearing high, high heels and a backless white Versace gown that showed off her perfectly bronzed skin, absent of strap marks.
“Have they been on vacation? Lolling about the Mediterranean on his yacht, perhaps?” I asked Janet, who knew the comings and goings of virtually every member of the philanthropic set in Dallas.
“You’re talkin’ about her tan, right?” My society columnist friend bent nearer. “It’s spray-on, Andy. She stands in a booth and turns around while a machine shoots out the paint. It’s all the rage.”
“I wonder if they use Benjamin Moore or Behr,” I quipped, but Janet’s eyes were already on another pair entering the studio.
Her elbow winged into my side. “Ohmigawd, I can’t believe they’re here!”
“Who . . . who?” I sounded like a stuttering owl.
I tried to follow her line of vision, but the arriving guests multiplied by the minute; a never-ending stream of big blond hair, so many red lipstick smiles, and enough beading and glitter to make my eyes blur. It was getting louder and louder, too, setting off a faint ringing in my ears. Voices had risen well above the “hum” level and nearly drowned out the sounds of the harp altogether.
“I’d heard a rumor they might show, but I didn’t believe it. I wonder what Marilee’s got cooking? Damn, where is my photographer? He was supposed to show up right at eight.”
“Who, for God’s sake?” I asked again, stomping a foot on the floor and barely missing Janet’s toes.
“Them.” This time, she pointed.
All I saw was a rather plain-looking middle-aged man in a dour gray Brooks Brothers suit and a younger woman with the biggest red ponytail I’d ever seen, like Barbara Eden’s hair from I Dream of Jeannie, only on steroids. It poured out of the top of her head like a fountain, and I wondered how many bobby pins it had taken to hold that critter on. I figured at least a bucket.
“Gilbert and Amber Lynn,” she hissed.
Okay, I’d heard of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Gilbert and Amber Lynn rang zero bells.
“Who are they?” A little champagne surely couldn’t have impaired my brain that much. The names sounded familiar, but I couldn’t grasp exactly why they were so important to Janet.
She nudged me. “How can you not know them, Andy? You work for the woman. It’s Gilbert and Amber Lynn Mabry. Marilee’s ex-husband and his trophy wife.” Janet’s whole body was aquiver, like a racehorse raring to spring from the gate. “Sorry, Andy, but I’ve gotta scoot. There’s definitely a story here, and I’m gonna find it.”
I watched her maneuver her way through the crowd, nodding here and there as she went, careful not to snub, always the consummate pro.
It amazed me, too, that she never took notes. She was afraid doing so would inhibit the people around her. So she locked every observation, every bit of overheard dialogue, into her head. She didn’t even write up the piece until the next morning, after she’d had time to let things simmer.
A bespectacled man in black tie paused near me. “Champagne, ma’am?” he said, proffering his loaded silver tray.
I nearly told him, “no, thanks,” then I realized I’d have to stick around until Mother arrived, which could mean a while yet.
“Yes, please,” I told him, snatching a flute before he sidled away, muttering something about having to open another case.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only guest hoping the Dom would make it easier to get through Marilee’s soiree.
So I looked around me and sipped, figuring I’d hang back and observe until Mother showed up. After that, I’d linger just long enough to pay off my debt to her—oh, let’s say, at least twenty minutes. Then I’d duck out to meet Malone somewhere quiet.
Someplace far away from demanding domestic diva Marilee Mabry.
From Mari’s ex-hubby Gilbert and trophy wife Amber Lynn.
From part-time lovers Justin and Kendall.
From angry food editor Carson Caruthers.
And from Tincy Kilpatrick philanthropist cum ashtray thief.
Chapter 9
I hung on to my glass as I purposefully slipped away from the crowd that had gathered around the buffet tables. A bouffant-haired woman layered in pink chiffon stood with her hip glued to the chocolate desserts display, “ooh, ooh, ooh-ing” with delight as she masticated.
Then I spotted the back of a slim woman in a black minidress, dark hair twisted into a knot on the back of her head. She had a black pashmina wrapped around skinny shoulders, so I couldn’t see much else.
Kendall, I thought, and wove my way in her direction. I wanted to apologize for ignoring her earlier. Didn’t want the girl to get a complex.
“Hey,” I said and tapped a thin shoulder. “I’m sorry I”—was all I got out as the woman turned around, and I realized my mistake.
There was a similarity in their features, but this woman was older than Kendall, at least my age as opposed to eighteen. She had no ring in her nose, but did sport a tiny mole on her cheek. Her eyes were hazel, her face broader, and her skin tone a pale cocoa as opposed to Kendall’s porcelain paleness. Quickly, I owned up to my error.
“I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.”
“That’s okay,” she said, smiling sheepishly and looking at me as if I were someone she thought she should recognize, too. “Do you work here?” she asked.
“Sort of,” I said,
then quickly ended further conversation with a fast “It was nice to meet you.” Though we really hadn’t met at all.
No time for detours.
I tiptoed along the fringes of conversing groups, hoping no one would notice me. I tried to convince myself that wearing designer duds enabled me to blend in so seamlessly that I was invisible, as innocuous as a dust mote.
“Andrea, lamb, is that you? Why, child, you look good enough to serve for supper. Come and give me a hug.”
Rats.
I shot a smile at the woman who called my name, but hesitated long enough to take a deep, wet sip of Dom. When there was nothing left to swallow, I wiped a hand across my mouth, set the empty glass down, and wobbled on my high heels toward the reincarnation of Norma Desmond.
“Darling.” Tincy Kilpatrick held out her arms to me, her satin evening bag dangling from a wrist. I could see it bulging in the middle, like a small snake that had swallowed a baseball.
“Good evening, Mrs. K,” I said to her, and let her smother me against her breasts, her purse whacking me squarely between the shoulder blades. I clenched my teeth and wondered if the stolen bauble would leave a bruise.
“Where’s our darling Cissy?” she asked, drawing back so I could clearly see her penciled-in eyebrows and the spidery legs of her false lashes.
“If she comes a minute before nine o’clock, I’d be surprised,” I told her with a grin plastered to my face. I was feeling pleasantly giddy from my champagne buzz, seeing things through booze-colored glasses. “Nice party, huh? Have you tried the pâté?”
Bad, bad girl.
Perhaps I was channeling Kendall.
“Good God, no.” Tincy put a hand to her heart and toyed with the enormous diamond dangling from her throat. “Oscar and I are doing low fat, low carbs these days. High cholesterol, you know. Don’t want to keel over from clogged arteries, like Norbert Dobbs at the symphony gala last week. Splat!”—she clapped her hands together, making me jump—“face down in his steak tar-tar. It was a dreadful sight to see.”
I’m sure Mr. Dobbs wasn’t thrilled about it, either.
The Good Girl's Guide to Murder: A Debutante Dropout Mystery Page 9