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

by McBride, Susan

  “Did Marilee even ask where her daughter was?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Glancing back at the doorway, I said quietly, “Kendall’s in bad shape, Mother. She was on the floor of Marilee’s bathroom, dead to the world. Okay, not dead dead, at least I hope not.”

  Cissy’s hand went to her throat. “Was she burned in the fire? Smoke inhalation?”

  “No, none of those things.”

  “Then what?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she had too much to drink. Or it could be alcohol poisoning, an allergic reaction.” I’d seen Kendall chug the one glass from the 1973 vintage poured for Marilee’s toast, but I had no clue if she’d had more beforehand.

  “Drugs?” Cissy suggested.

  I hadn’t seen any signs. No spilled pills on the floor, no coke residue, nothing obvious. But then I remembered the litany of physical and mental ailments Kendall had professed to have, and I wondered if she might be taking a medication that didn’t mix with alcohol.

  “I hope it’s not drugs,” was all I could muster in Kendall’s defense. I hated to think she’d made herself sick to the point of unconsciousness.

  My mother clicked tongue against teeth. “Marilee’s always had trouble with that girl. I hope she hasn’t done anything to hurt herself again.”

  Hurt herself again?

  The idea of that merely made me feel worse.

  “Kendall tried to talk to me earlier. She was upset after having some kind of argument with Marilee before the party”—I left out that Dewey the valet had been the one to impart that bit of info—“and she did seem . . . out of sorts, but I was busy checking the live stream and blew her off. Maybe if I hadn’t . . . if I’d just let her vent.”

  “Andrea Blevins Kendricks, you stop that this minute.” She fussed with the clumps of hair clinging to my brow. “You’re not responsible for the rest of the world, though you always seem to believe that you are. Ever since you were a little girl, you’ve had the need to rescue things. Stray animals, endangered species, misfits . . .”

  “If you’d only seen her,” I tried to explain my guilt. But any remaining words caught in my throat as I saw the front doors bang open and a firefighter rush out.

  “Stand back,” he shouted and held the nearest door wide for someone behind him.

  A uniformed cop jumped in for the assist. “Step aside, y’all . . . step aside,” he demanded and waved his arms madly at the crowd of people. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, he created a path for the paramedics who emerged next, the paddleboard clutched between them, Kendall’s limp form lying atop it.

  They rushed her to the EMS van and maneuvered her inside. Before the doors were closed, I saw Marilee crying as she was helped into the back.

  Sirens roared as the van took off, weaving into traffic on Midway.

  All I could do was watch, my insides tied in knots.

  “Where are they taking her?” I asked. “Which hospital?”

  “I’m not worried about Kendall as much as I am about you. C’mon, let’s get you home,” Cissy said, ignoring my questions, and folded an arm across my shoulders. “Fredrik’s waiting with the car, and there’s nothing you can do besides. We need to get you into dry clothes before you catch pneumonia . . .”

  “Mother, it’s at least ninety-five degrees.”

  “Don’t fight me on this, Andrea.”

  But I dug in my bare heels. “I’ll only go with you now if you’ll take me to the hospital afterward,” I said. “I need to check up on Kendall, whether you come with me or not.”

  Even in the dim of night, with the freaky red and blue lights of the police car pulsating, I saw her eyes widen. She lifted her chin and gave her head a toss. “My, my, but you must get that stubborn streak from your father’s side of the family. I certainly doubt it came from any of the Blevins clan. We’re all very reasonable.”

  I didn’t have the strength to tell her she was full of hooey.

  “Is it a deal?”

  She sighed, creasing her smooth powdered brow. “How about this? While you put on something dry, I’ll find out which hospital they’ve admitted Kendall to and then I’ll have Fredrik drive us. Is that all right with you?”

  “It sounds . . . reasonable.”

  “Well, thank heavens.”

  Dewey had my keys, and it took me a few minutes to find him. So many of the partygoers were hounding him to get their cars so they could leave. When I told him I just needed my key ring and would pick up the Jeep the next day, he seemed relieved.

  I’d have to return anyway to claim my purse, which, thankfully, held my cell phone, a tube of old Mary Kay lipstick, and little else of importance. Maybe I’d have Malone bring me, which seemed preferable to asking my mother.

  By the time I picked my way across the parking lot, Cissy’s car was waiting. It wasn’t the champagne-colored Lexus she normally drove but the antique Bentley that had belonged to my Paw Paw (and usually sat in the garage). Cissy only used it on rare occasions, which was good for Fredrik, her chauffeur, as he didn’t like to work more than part-time. He did the Mr. Mom thing while his public-relations-executive wife locked in sixty hours a week for a downtown firm, an arrangement that baffled my mother.

  Fred pulled the Bentley’s back door open for me, and I smiled wanly into his clean-shaven face.

  “Bad party, huh?” he said.

  Let’s see. Spit in the pâté. The hostess engaged in fisticuffs. A fire followed by a drenching from the sprinkler system. The hostess’s daughter on the floor of the bathroom, barely breathing.

  “It stank worse than Livarot,” I told him, earning a blank stare. “Um, it stank worse than Limburger?” I offered instead, and his expression said, “Gotcha.”

  It would’ve been hard to come up with anything that could’ve made the evening any worse except famine or pestilence. We’d pretty much covered fire and flood.

  As Fredrik shut me in, I slid across the soft leather to where Cissy waited for me with a blanket, an old plaid thing we’d used for picnics when I was a kid. The sight of it made me teary. Daddy had always kept that blanket in the trunk, and we’d used it for countless Fourth of Julys for viewing fireworks from the grass at the country club.

  When I scooted close enough, Mother wrapped it around my shoulders and said, “It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  She meant Kendall.

  And me.

  “I hope so.”

  Fredrik turned on the radio, the button preset to the classical station and talk radio, all Mother would listen to. A soothing Beethoven sonata purred through the speakers.

  Still, I shivered, unable to shake the image of Kendall’s bloodless face from my head. The coldness of her skin.

  Cissy tugged the blanket more snugly around me.

  “I ran into Babette von Werner a few minutes ago and would you believe her tan came right off onto her snow-white Versace?” She was trying to take my mind off things, I realized, though it wasn’t going to work. “You can’t imagine how upset she was when she saw that the god-awful burnt orange had washed off onto her dress. She practically tossed Poppy out of his wheelchair and into the limo. Then they tore out of the parking lot like a shot. Wonder if she’ll sue the spa who spray-painted her?”

  Ordinarily, I would have found that tidbit amusing. At the moment, my smile muscles didn’t seem to be working.

  A media van pulled into the parking lot just as we exited.

  I leaned my head against the seat and closed my eyes.

  Cissy seemed to get the message and didn’t attempt to engage me in conversation except to comment that Laura Mercier made a fabulous waterproof mascara guaranteed not to smudge like whatever brand I was wearing.

  Needless to say, I didn’t thank her for the beauty tip.

  Within another fifteen minutes, we’d reached my condo. Fred parked the Bentley and opened the back door on Mother’s side, offering her his hand and helping her out. Then it was my turn, and I scooted across the sea
t with the plaid blanket wrapped around me. Like a butterfly who refused to leave her cocoon, I wiggled free of the car, my naked feet hitting the pebbled sidewalk. Cissy kept reaching out for me as I waddled forward, as if afraid I’d topple over onto the patch of green lawn.

  Fredrik had my key chain and reached the front door ahead of Mother and me. He made sure we were safely inside before he mentioned he’d wait in the car. After depositing the keys in my hand, he promptly exited, leaving us alone.

  It felt great to be home, and I stood for a moment, unmoving, simply looking around at my tiny living room with its sand-colored walls and eclectic furnishings. Even the air I inhaled smelled reassuring, like my favorite vanilla candle with a hint of burned bagel.

  “If you’d rather not go to the hospital, it’s all right, sugar.” Mother trailed a finger along the bookshelf lined with hardcover mysteries. “I’ll go with you in the morning.”

  “Just give me a minute,” I told her.

  “Sure, sweetie. Take all the time you need.”

  She strolled into the kitchen, probably to take a peek in my fridge to see if I had enough to eat, or maybe to do the white glove test on my appliances. (An exam I would surely flunk.)

  At the moment, I was too wiped out to care what she did, so long as it kept her occupied.

  What I really wanted most was to throw off the blanket; shed my wet and impossibly heavy sequined dress and equally damp underthings; hop in a steamy tub, and forget that this night had ever happened.

  What I needed to do, before I could ever consider relaxing in a scented bath, was to find out where Kendall had been taken by the ambulance and go see her for myself. I had to be sure she was all right, before I could truly breathe.

  Discarding the blanket that had draped me like a human crepe, I went into my bathroom and peeled off the limp Escada dress and everything underneath it. I splashed my face with warm water and dried myself with a fresh towel, rubbing my skin from head to toe until the goosebumps were erased.

  On went dry bra and panties, cargo pants, and faded PEROT FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt, flip-flops for my feet. Unruly tendrils curled around my face; the rest of my hair I combed back straight and bound with a clip.

  My eyes looked red-veined and irritated, and I worked out my contacts and put them away. I slipped on my wire-rims, which completed my transformation from “Woo-doggy” to Marian the Librarian. But I felt like myself at last.

  When I emerged from my bedroom, Mother was on the telephone, uttering things like, “Am I related? Well, technically speakin’, no, but I chaired the committee that raised funds for the new equipment for the cardiac wing so you could call me a fairy godmother to the whole danged hospital . . . hello? Hello?”

  She slammed the receiver down and looked up.

  “Kendall’s at Medical City,” she said and tugged at an earring.

  That was in Mother’s neck of the woods.

  “How is she? Is she okay?”

  “Silly privacy laws.” She frowned. “No one would tell me a danged thing even after I reminded them I’d chaired the donation drive that had raised the funds to replace every dad-gummed defibrillator in the place.”

  Okay, I knew she was pissed off, because “danged” and “dad-gummed” were the closest to four-letter words she ever got.

  “You ready?” she asked.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Then let’s go.” Like a woman on a mission, she scooped up the plaid blanket and her Chanel evening bag before hustling me toward the door. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned after all these years of charity work”—she drawled as she waited for me to lock up—“it’s to never conduct business over the phone if you can do it in person. That way, no one can put you on hold, forcing you t’ listen to Barry Manilow. And they most certainly cannot hang up on you.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I murmured, climbing into the Bentley behind her.

  Mother was full of such practical tips. Perhaps someday she’d write it all down in a book and call it: Who Moved My Brie?

  Or, What Color Is Your Prada Suit?

  Maybe I’d send Bill Gates a copy for Christmas (in a box marked C.O.D.), a little repayment for all the trouble I’d had with his various Windows systems through the years.

  I had a feeling he could benefit from Mother’s wisdom as much as anyone.

  Chapter 13

  I’d never much liked hospitals.

  (Except for doctors and nurses, did anyone really?)

  It was more than the overbright hallways where the slap of shoes on vinyl flooring echoed far too loudly. It wasn’t even the thought of green Jell-O and Ensure being passed off as meals, the cloying stench of cleaning fluids, or the annoying voice over the intercom intermittently “paging Dr. Green . . . paging Dr. Green.”

  For me, it was something else entirely, tied to my own ugly experiences.

  Once I set foot inside any place with “medical center” in its name, my mind would fill with frightening scenes from my childhood, appearing in flashes, like short flicks directed by David Lynch or Quentin Tarantino.

  They always began with one particular long-ago incident from Mrs. Cannon’s first-grade class. Cut to homemade mail receptacles strapped to the back of the chairs, used to exchange Valentines. Zoom in on mine, a brown Neiman-Marcus box wrapped with toilet paper. Cut to a line of girls in plaid skirts, queued at the opened door, ready to head to lunch. I’m there, standing in front, the line leader, leaning casually with my hand on the doorframe, my thumb folded into the wedge of space between the hinges. Quick shot of my smile as I imagine the beans and franks on the hot lunch menu; fast forward to the next frame, where I’m howling like a banshee after Holly Hertel stepped out from the line behind me and yanked the door closed.

  Yes, while my thumb was still in it.

  Hello!

  See blood drip to the linoleum as Mrs. Cannon races me down to the nurse’s room near the principal’s office. Light as bright as a klieg hovers over me at the hospital, and a doctor assures me “this won’t hurt a bit.” Hear my heart pound with terror as a needle the size of a turkey baster bears down on my wounded digit.

  Thankfully, that’s when everything fades to black—rather like the electricity in Marilee’s studio. There was another flick, one that dealt with a jump-rope exercise gone bad and more blood (this time, from my head). But I won’t get into that.

  Instinctively, I rubbed at the scar running across the back of my right thumb as I followed Cissy to the admitting desk at Medical City.

  While she scored information from the volunteer at the counter, I squashed down the flashbacks. I didn’t want to see them again, didn’t want to be reminded of why being in this place made my pulse race and my palms sweaty.

  Grow up, Andy, I told myself, but it didn’t seem to matter. Things like that stuck with a person, no matter how old they got.

  “Kendall’s having some tests done before being moved to a private room from the ER,” Mother said, nudging me toward the elevators. “I know Mari must be a total basket case.”

  Stuffing my hands in the pockets of my cargo pants, I trailed behind the click of Cissy’s high heels. We passed a smiling group of women in green scrubs and more than a few grim-looking folks in cut-off shorts or blue jeans, looking lost.

  No one gave Mother more than a passing glance, despite her attire, and I wondered if the hospital’s proximity to Highland Park had made visitors wearing head-to-toe Chanel commonplace.

  The elevator button pinged, and I slipped behind Cissy into the small space that already held a man in a wheelchair and a fellow in blue scrubs transporting him.

  Not a word was uttered until the lift stopped moving with a ping and the doors opened up again.

  “This is us, sugar,” Mother said, and I followed her out.

  At least she knew her way around, so we didn’t have to mess with confusing signs and arrows. Her committee work for the hospital had paid off in more ways than one.

  Past an empty nurs
es’ station, we found Marilee in a small waiting room, sitting on a lumpy sofa amidst discarded coffee cups and magazines. Though she slumped with her head in her hands, she must’ve heard us approach because she slowly raised her chin, revealing a face ravaged by tears.

  “Cissy,” she said, breathing my mother’s name in an exhaled breath. “My dear, dear friend. I’m so glad you’re here. I can’t find Justin, and I’m a total wreck.”

  In a snap, my mother turned into Florence Nightingale, sending me to fetch a fresh cup of coffee for Marilee. She drew a folded handkerchief from her Chanel bag and pressed it into Marilee’s hand, confirming my long-established impression that Mother’s purses were like a magician’s hat, producing whatever was needed in a particular emergency. Whether it be a needle and thread or a breath mint.

  While I moseyed over to a table with a much-used coffeepot, I heard a lot of “there, there’s” as Mother settled onto the sofa and began patting Marilee’s shoulder.

  “How is Kendall? Have you seen her?” I asked when I returned with the black coffee. I offered it to Marilee, though she was sobbing too much to drink. So I cleared away a mess of magazines on the knee-high table and put down the cup in front of her.

  “This night . . . gup . . . has been . . . gup . . . so awful.” She hiccoughed between every other word so that it was difficult to understand her. “How could this . . . gup . . . happen to me? It was supposed to be a celebration . . .”

  “What did the doctors say?” I tried again, interrupting her pity party. “About Kendall,” I added, so there was no mistake.

  With most of her makeup now on Mother’s linen kerchief, Marilee’s face appeared haggard; crisscrossed with lines I hadn’t noticed before. She seemed older than she had just an hour or two earlier. All her smugness drained, she appeared the very portrait of a distraught mother, reminding me of Picasso’s Melancholy Woman with her head bowed, her skin a bluish shade.

  “In the . . . gup . . . emergency room . . . they asked if she . . . gup . . . took any drugs . . . gup . . . like Ecstasy. Her heart wasn’t beating normally, they said. They had to stabilize her cardiac rhythm before they could . . . gup . . . do a tox screen and a . . . gup . . . blood alcohol test.” She gulped in air, trying to stop her hiccups attack, while Mother kept patting. “But Kendall doesn’t . . . do drugs,” she spoke slowly, and, this time, without “gupping” mid-sentence. “Not since Justin’s been around, I’m sure of it. Unless, she did this to hurt me. To pay me back.” She moaned. “What am I going to do with her, Cissy? What?”