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

by McBride, Susan

  “Andy Kendricks,” I reminded him. “This is my mother’s house.”

  He blinked as recognition dawned. “Oh, yeah, sorry, my brain’s kinda fried at the moment. Thanks for your offer”—he shifted the tray on his hip—“but I’ve got it covered. Though you could do me a favor.”

  “What?”

  He leaned in so close I felt his breath on my skin as he whispered, “How about running over the Divine Ms. Mabry with a train, preferably one that has an extremely large caboose?”

  I smiled. “Can’t help you there.”

  He winked. “Then get out of my way so I can deliver the poison.”

  He and his crew scrambled through the swinging door that led through the dining room. As fast as that, the kitchen emptied, leaving behind a few of Marilee’s staff, who began to pack away the cups, bowls, pans, and utensils used in the baking segment.

  Sandy had already headed into the living room, and I followed suit. I didn’t want to miss seeing my mother’s star turn.

  The umbrella lights beamed and the cameras were rolling when I finally edged into the room. A crowd gathered on the plywood, behind colored cables, focused on the women comfortably seated in front of the Italian-marbled fireplace. Marilee and the half-dozen members of the Diet Club perched on Louis XVI-style chairs and love seats arranged in a semicircle. The china pot of coffee sat upon a silver tray atop an upholstered ottoman in between. The cups and saucers rested on side tables, as linen napkins and floral plates with slivers of Death by Chocolate occupied the ladies’ laps, so each of them could nibble on the cake while Marilee asked them questions about the origins of the Diet Club.

  “So you started the group several years ago?” she asked my mother.

  Cissy nodded and began to explain how the group got together. Marilee picked up her fork and shoveled in healthy bites of cake, nodding as she did so, as if to say, “mmm-mmm good.”

  I noticed that my mother’s friends seemed too nervous to eat and merely picked at their perfect slices of Death by Chocolate. Playing with their food, as it were. Beth Taylor didn’t even pretend to fiddle with the dessert, instead calmly sipping her cup of coffee, her dark eyes taking in the goings-on.

  “ . . . so that’s how the Dallas Diet Club got started, and we’ve been meetin’ several times a month, schedules permitting, ever since. We play a few hands of bridge, then eat dessert and chatter. It’s been a godsend to us, because we’re all so busy with charity work and . . .”

  Marilee came half out of her chair, gagging.

  “Sugar, are you all right?” Mother asked her, leaning forward in her seat and reaching over.

  “Ahhh.” Marilee dropped the dessert plate and her fork to the floor with a clatter. Her eyes went bug-wide and her hands went to her chest, clutching at her blouse, like she couldn’t breathe.

  The other Diet Club women suddenly pushed their cake plates off onto the coffee table.

  “She’s choking!” someone said as Marilee toppled off her chair to the floor.

  I saw Beth Taylor leap up from the sofa before pandemonium struck and moving bodies got in my way.

  “Call 911!” one of the crew yelled, as I pushed my way through the crowd and emerged to see Marilee lying on the rug with Beth Taylor bending over her, hands pushing at Marilee’s chest, while everyone else looked on.

  If she’d been choking, why was Beth doing CPR instead of the trusty Heimlich maneuver?

  Had Marilee had a heart attack?

  I suddenly flashed on finding Kendall, lifeless on the bathroom tiles, and my knees felt wobbly all over again.

  “Stand back, everyone, give them some space!”

  There was barely a sound as Dr. Taylor worked on Marilee, doing CPR without pausing, sweat glistening on her face. With a sigh of exhaustion, she finally gave up, rocked back on her heels and looked up, her dark eyes filled with defeat.

  Sirens swelled, coming nearer.

  “They’re here!” someone shouted from across the room. “I can see the ambulance at the end of the drive.”

  Beth Taylor shook her head.

  My gaze fell to Marilee, sprawled upon the rust red of the Persian Serapi rug, her mouth slack and eyes unblinking, staring up at the ceiling. The floral plate lay at her feet, bits of cake still sticking to its shiny surface.

  “Why are you stopping?” Cissy prodded Beth. “Don’t give up.”

  “It’s too late,” the doctor said. “She’s already gone.”

  I heard someone start sobbing.

  And it hit me like a fist, squarely in the chest.

  It’s too late . . . she’s gone.

  Marilee Mabry was dead.

  Chapter 21

  It was a long two hours before Mother got her house back.

  I would have said, “back to normal,” only nothing felt remotely normal at that point, not after what had happened.

  One hundred twenty minutes of being sequestered in the dining room with the members of The Sweet Life crew who’d been present for the shoot, while police officers with clipboards made the rounds, getting everyone’s contact info before letting them leave, one by one.

  I sat beside Cissy for the duration, patting her hand, the anxiety palpable among the several dozen others gathered around the Chippendale dining table. Long faces stared blankly, others whispered to each other, asking, “What will happen now? Is it over? What about syndication?”

  Because the show would not go on, would it? Could there be a Sweet Life without Marilee?

  All the while, voices drifted in, along with an occasional shout or bump against the wall, as the crime scene technicians combed through the living room and kitchen, bagging and tagging everything they considered to be evidence, including, I was told, all the cakes, pies, and mousses, the coffee pot, the cups and saucers, and crumbled remains of the Death By Chocolate that Marilee had been eating when she’d keeled over.

  The deputy chief of police in Highland Park, a woman my mother’s age named Anna Dean, had arrived on the scene along with two police cruisers not five minutes after the paramedics had given up trying to resuscitate Marilee with portable defibrillators.

  The petite gray-haired Deputy Dean stood no taller than five two, but looked plenty intimidating in her blue uniform with the shiny brass badge. With mind-numbing efficiency, she’d assessed the situation and called for the medical examiner and crime scene technicians from Dallas before ordering her officers to corral us all in another room, away from the scene of death.

  No one had dared call it a “crime scene” yet, but I got the distinct impression that’s how it was being viewed.

  I overheard Dr. Taylor telling the deputy chief it was paramount that Marilee’s body fluids be drawn and tested for the gene mutation that causes long QT, in addition to checking her stomach contents and the cake and coffee she’d ingested.

  Which got me to wondering if there was some kind of connection with what had happened to Kendall. Could last night have been a practice run for somebody wanting to kill Marilee? Or was it a mistake?

  It didn’t take much to convince me that Marilee’s death was no run-of-the-mill heart attack; something that Deputy Chief Dean all but confirmed once her officers had sequestered the lot of us in Mother’s dining room.

  The woman in blue hooked her thumbs in her duty belt, her right hand perilously close to her holstered weapon as she addressed the question that was foremost in everyone’s head. “As of now,” she told us, “we’re calling this a suspicious death. So give your name and address to my officers and don’t make any plans to leave town. We might need to follow up with formal statements, you understand.” Her narrowed eyes surveyed the large group seated around Mother’s enormous Chippendale table. “Any questions?”

  No one uttered so much as a peep.

  As the hours wore on, I patted my mother’s hand and fought back tears. Tears for Kendall as much as for Marilee.

  What would Kendall do when she heard? I wondered, my chest clenching at the thought. She was so f
ragile already. Would the police wend their way over to Marilee’s residence to break the news? If that was the case, I felt a grudging relief that she wasn’t alone. As much as I didn’t like Justin, it would be worse if Kendall had no one.

  As soon as I could get away from the house, I was determined to head over. In spite of the conflict between them, Marilee had been pretty much it for Kendall in the way of family. I was afraid of what Kendall might do; truly fearful she’d turn self-destructive when it really hit her that her mummy was gone.

  And what a way to go.

  Death by Chocolate.

  Isn’t it ironic . . . don’t you think?

  The lyrics of that Alanis song kept running in a loop through my brain, which I guess was a lot better than thinking about Marilee’s body sprawled on the rust-colored rug, her unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling.

  Thankfully, by the time the police finished up, there was no body to be seen. Hell, there wasn’t even a rug between the Louis XVI loveseats, just bare wood with a vague rectangular outline on the varnished planks. Though I wasn’t an eyewitness to the rug’s removal—or the body’s, for that matter—I heard they’d rolled up the Persian Serapi and had hauled it away in the crime lab’s van.

  I heard other things as well.

  Like the fact that the deputy chief had spoken to Carson Caruthers privately, before she’d allowed him to leave. She’d chatted with Beth Taylor again, then Renata and Janet, too.

  Guess she’d saved Mother and me for last.

  We were the only ones remaining in the dining room when Deputy Chief Dean ambled in and sat across the table, arms folded on its edge. She broke the tension by chatting with Mother for a few minutes about an upcoming fundraiser for the Widows and Orphans Fund, before she eased into questions about Marilee, how long we’d each known her, if she’d been in ill health or if she’d had any problems with particular employees that we were aware of.

  I admitted that Marilee wasn’t exactly beloved on her set, but that I couldn’t imagine anyone who’d actually resort to murder. I did spill what I’d heard about the spider incident and the falling boom microphone, though the deputy chief nodded like those were old news.

  It was Mother who brought up Justin Gable and his romancing Kendall before worming his way into Marilee’s life. As I cringed in silence, she shared her theory with the deputy chief that Justin was responsible for Kendall’s near-fatal dose of ma huang.

  For some reason, that prompted Anna Dean to look directly at me, locking her narrowed eyes on me like a bomber pilot zeroing in on a target. “You were over at the studio this morning, is that true?”

  I slid my hands into my lap, wedging them between my knees. “I had to drop by to pick up my evening bag and my Jeep. I’d left them both there after the fire.”

  “Were you in the kitchen while the food was being prepared for the shoot?”

  Okay, who’d blabbed? Carson? Renata? It could’ve been either one, I guessed.

  “I wasn’t in the kitchen for more than thirty seconds,” I said, finding myself blinking rapidly, while Deputy Chief Dean stared like an eyelid-less gecko. “First, I ran into Gilbert Mabry . . . well, he ran into me, coming out of Marilee’s office. They’d been arguing.” I winced. “I really hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but they were shouting.”

  “About what?”

  I sighed, knocking my knees together, hating to be put on the spot. “He was mad that she hadn’t called him from the hospital to tell him about Kendall. She told him he’d been a crummy husband and father. He accused her of stealing a three hundred fifty dollar bottle of 1973 Dom Perignon from his stash in their basement before their divorce . . .”

  “Hold on a second.” The deputy chief pulled a slim notebook from her breast pocket, licked her forefinger, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. “The 1973 Dom Perignon Oenotheque that Kendall Mabry drank before she collapsed?”

  I glanced at my mother, who appeared to be listening as intently as the policewoman. She had her arms crossed, her head tipped, and her lips pressed into a thin line that worried me.

  “Yes, that bottle,” I confirmed before resuming my story. “After Gilbert left, I went in to Marilee’s office to get my purse. I asked about Kendall and then I asked Marilee why she didn’t get tested for the long QT. I read about it online, and it’s usually genetic.”

  “So I’ve been told. Dr. Taylor was pretty insistent about that, so we’ll have the lab check it out. We’re putting a rush on the results, and I’m gonna lean on them myself, so we should have preliminaries pretty fast.”

  “Marilee mentioned having physicals for insurance purposes, for her TV show, and that nothing serious had ever turned up. She got a call from the mayor, so she blew me off, but not before she suggested I go to the kitchen and remind Carson that they had to pack up and leave within the hour.”

  “Carson Caruthers?” Anna Dean asked, her notebook still out.

  “Yes.” I wet my lips. Mother hadn’t shifted position, and I figured she’d have a fairly painful crick in her neck by the time I was through. I didn’t think I’d mention Carson’s remark before he took the cake out to the living room: “Get out of my way so I can deliver the poison.” He’d been joking, after all, and I couldn’t see getting him in any trouble because he had a dark sense of humor.

  “You saw Mr. Caruthers at the studio earlier?” the deputy chief prodded.

  “Yes,” I picked up where I left off. “Carson and I went into the hallway to talk. The kitchen was too crazy. He said it was like Grand Central Station, that even Mr. Mabry—as in Gilbert—had been there already, getting some water to take his headache powder.”

  The deputy chief thumbed through a few pages, nodding. “Mr. Caruthers noted that Justin Gable and Kendall Mabry visited the kitchen as well, helping them finish up with the desserts.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, not personally.” Though Marilee had told me as much on the telephone. “The only other person I saw was Renata Taylor. We bumped into each other before I left the building. She had her arms full of papers.” I squinted, trying to recall what I’d seen. “Call sheets for the crew, scripts, medical insurance papers.”

  “Anything else, Ms. Kendricks?” Anna Dean asked, eyes pinning me down, like she could see I was holding back.

  “There is one thing, maybe,” I started, wetting my lips. “It’s about Justin Gable.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that he’s . . . never mind.” I clammed up and glanced down at my lap.

  Oh, man, how I itched to confess what I’d learned about Justin’s past from Janet in the car coming over, but I couldn’t. I’d promised I wouldn’t repeat a word, but it was killing me to keep it in.

  “The boy’s a con man,” Cissy stepped in. “He’s left a trail of lovesick older women from Galveston to El Paso, perhaps even points beyond. He steals their hearts and then their money. Marilee was just another notch on his bed post.”

  I raised my eyes to stare at my mother, my heart pumping. So she had known, just as I’d suspected.

  The deputy chief smiled dryly. “We’re running a background check on him, so we’ll see what turns up. By any chance, did Marilee Mabry know about his past relationships?”

  Mother glanced at me sideways before she admitted, “Yes, she knew. Because I told her.”

  I stared at her, wondering what else she’d been hiding from me.

  “How did she react?” Deputy Dean asked.

  Cissy tugged at the tail end of her scarf. “I thought she’d be upset, but she wasn’t. She took it in stride, told me that it didn’t matter what Justin had done with other women. She insisted she didn’t care, because she wasn’t in love with him. He gave her great pleasure and he doted on Kendall, was how she put it, and she said that’s what mattered at this point in her life.”

  “Thank you for your candor, Mrs. Kendricks.” She nodded at Mother, then at me. “Thank you both for your cooperation. I’ll be in touch.”<
br />
  “Will you be going over to see Marilee’s daughter now?” I asked. “If so, I’d like to come. She’ll need a friend.” And I didn’t count Justin as one, I left unsaid.

  Anna Dean shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ms. Kendricks. I’ve already asked Dr. Taylor to ride along, because of young Ms. Mabry’s heart problem. What we don’t need is an audience.”

  An audience?

  Mother pressed her pump into my shin, and I sighed. “Okay. But please tell Kendall I’m around if she needs me.” I fished into my purse and withdrew one of my business cards, which I passed across the table to Anna Dean. She scooped it up and slipped it in her breast pocket.

  The deputy chief apologized again for the inconvenience and the mess—since the police wouldn’t let the crew remove any of their equipment, and they’d confiscated the tape from the shoot. She did request that we stay out of the living room, at least for another day or two, until they had some answers from the medical examiner’s office.

  She pushed away from the table and stood.

  Before she’d taken a step, I blurted out, “You think she was murdered, don’t you, Deputy Chief?”

  For an instant, I didn’t think she was going to answer me. Then she said, very deliberately, “They don’t hire me to investigate what I think, Andrea, just what I know. And I’ll know soon enough in this case. We should have some preliminary blood work back before long,” she remarked, then excused herself.

  Mother gave me one of her looks.

  But I didn’t care if I’d been rude.

  Anna Dean was more than suspicious about Marilee’s death.

  So I wasn’t the only one.

  “I’m pouring myself a brandy and then retiring to the sun porch,” my mother said as she rose from her seat.

  “You never drink before five o’clock,” I said.

  “I’ve never had anyone die in my living room, either,” she tossed over a shoulder as she sashayed off.

  My cell phone let loose a muffled ring, and I reached over to free it from the purse at my feet. The number was Janet Graham’s work extension, and I braced myself as she went into a breathless monologue about how exciting the past few hours had been and how she’d already gotten a thumbs up from her editor at the paper to do a piece about Marilee, a three-part feature on her life and death. Which, she added, would be great publicity for the book she was writing.