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

by McBride, Susan

  She bit her bottom lip, fighting tears. I could hardy believe what the past twenty-four hours had done to the tough-as-brass girl. She looked as miserable as any human could. Probably wishing she’d fought less with her mother. Probably wishing for a lot of things she couldn’t have.

  I took a step toward her, but Mother kept hold of my arm, resigning me to a position near the French doors. Which might not be too bad should I need to make a quick escape.

  “Andrea has something she’d like to share,” Cissy said to the room at large. “It’s important . . .”

  The deputy chief cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d like to get a word in first.”

  Mother gave her the floor, much to my relief.

  Anna Dean hooked her thumbs in her utility belt and moved in from the window. “I had promised y’all I’d keep you informed on what the preliminary reports told us about what happened to Marilee Mabry. So that’s why I’m here.” She squared her shoulders, looking very much like a petite General Patton. “We’ve compared initial toxicity results to what Dr. Taylor and the hospital lab found in your bloodstream, Ms. Mabry.” Her chin jerked toward Kendall. “And it appears that there was a foreign substance added to the recipe for the Death by Chocolate which Marilee Mabry consumed.”

  “Ma huang,” I said without thinking, and the deputy chief glanced at me.

  “Yes, that exactly. A highly potent form of ephedra, yes, in a toxic dosage,” she explained. “And we’ve matched the chemical composition with a bottle of liquid ma huang found among Justin Gable’s belongings, left behind at the Mabry house.”

  “Justin killed my mother?” Kendall’s hand went to her throat, and I could see in her face that she didn’t believe it. “No, there’s no way.”

  “We’ve got corroborating statements from the crew of The Sweet Life that Mr. Gable was in the kitchen while the cake was being prepared. So, yes, he is our prime suspect,” the deputy chief said and added, “We’ve issued a warrant for his arrest, and I’ve put out an APB on his BMW, as of this morning. We’ll have him in custody soon, I’ll wager. We’ve got the city police and the state troopers in on this, too.”

  “Oh, my God,” Kendall breathed.

  “Don’t fret, Ms. Mabry, please,” Anna Dean said, lowering her voice. “So far as I understand it, no one but family knows you’re here, so you’re safe for the time being. I’ve got a squad car keeping an eye on your mother’s house around the clock, in case he returns to pick up that passport of his. In fact, I’m heading over there next, to check out a call from the caretaker.”

  “The caretaker?” Kendall curled her fingers beneath her chin and stared at the policewoman, her eyes wide as pennies. “Is it the animals?”

  “Just something fishy in, er, the catfish pond.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the pond . . . nothing wrong. Why can’t you just leave it alone? Why can’t this all just go away? I want to go back.” Kendall’s voice shook, and I saw the way she dug her nails into the flesh of her hands. She would draw blood if she kept that up. “Please,” she whispered to no one, “let me go back.”

  “It’d be better if you stayed here, Ms. Mabry,” the policewoman insisted, but I had a feeling that’s not what Kendall meant. She wanted to go back in time, before her mother passed away, before Justin took off and left her.

  Back.

  I took a step toward her; but Cissy held on to my arm.

  “You’re right, it might be nothing,” the deputy chief went on. “The groundskeeper noticed an oily substance on the surface of the pond this morning. A few of the fish were floaters, so he’s worried about contamination. He thinks it could be vandalism. We’ll see if we can’t figure out whether maybe someone pitched a gas can in there or rolled an oil drum. He figures the tractor may’ve been used. There are tracks leading up to the edge.”

  Kendall moaned.

  My first thought was Justin. What if he was lurking around, angry enough to sabotage Marilee’s property?

  The girl must’ve figured that, too, as I noticed the gleam of sweat on her face, worry pinching her features.

  “You think that’s all it is, right? Vandalism?” I piped up, hoping to reassure Kendall that it could be as simple as a prank, teenaged mischief.

  “Like I’ve said before, Ms. Kendricks”—Anna Dean shot me a narrow smile—“I don’t like to jump to conclusions. We’ll take a look at the pond and figure out . . .”

  “Enough about the pond, for heaven’s sake!” My mother’s voice cut across the room, stunning the rest of us to silence. “There’s a killer running loose, and you’re worried about catfish?” Cissy pointed—actually pointed—at the deputy chief. I’m sure Emily Post rolled over in her grave. “The boy poisoned a cake . . . an entire cake that I nearly ate . . . that my friends could have eaten. He could’ve killed us all, and you’re concerned about a few dead fish?”

  Anna Dean shifted her steely gaze in Cissy’s direction. “From what the lab tells me, Mrs. Kendricks, the level of ephedra wouldn’t have done in a healthy human being with no cardiac risks. But Marilee Mabry had a congenital heart arrhythmia, like her daughter. Mr. Gable had specifically targeted her, not you or your friends.”

  “Marilee had a what? What the hell are you talking about?” Gilbert Mabry asked, reminding us that he was there. He peeled himself from the wall and gripped the wicker frame of the chaise longue that held Kendall. “This arrhythmia Kendall was diagnosed with . . . Marilee had it, too?”

  “It’s called long QT syndrome,” Beth Taylor told him. “It’s often passed down from parent to child.”

  “But Marilee was strong as an ox.” Gilbert scratched his head. “I saw her with my own eyes yesterday morning, and she was full of spit and vinegar.”

  A rather polite way to say she’d bitched him out, I mused.

  “She might’ve been full of spit and vinegar, but she wasn’t strong. At least her heart wasn’t.” Dr. Taylor clutched her daughter’s hand, while Renata sat still. “The arrhythmia isn’t something you see on the outside. Sometimes those afflicted get a sense of what their bodies can handle, they realize their limitations, and they can avoid complications. But it’s like lightning. No one can anticipate when a fatal arrhythmia could occur. But when it’s properly diagnosed, it can be treated with medication.”

  “So Marilee had this problem all along?”

  Beth nodded. “She undoubtedly shared the same gene mutation. We’ll have proof positive when the final reports return in a few weeks.”

  “If the tests aren’t back, how can you sound so certain?” Gilbert Mabry looked as confused as before. “Are you guessing or is there something you’re not telling us?”

  The same thought had crossed my mind.

  How could Dr. Taylor and the deputy chief be so sure Marilee had the LQTS without the results of the gene tests?

  Unless—oh, whoa.

  The answer seemed suddenly obvious.

  I looked at Beth and the young woman beside her.

  “Renata has long QT syndrome, doesn’t she? Because she’s Marilee’s daughter by birth,” I said, barely hearing my own voice. The thump-thump of my heart filled my ears, pounding like horse’s hooves. “Both her children inherited the gene mutation from her, not from their fathers. Your brother Ronald didn’t have it, did he, Dr. Taylor? That’s how you knew that Marilee had the syndrome, as soon as Kendall was diagnosed. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Her children?” Gilbert Mabry’s cheeks flushed purple. “What in the hell are you saying?”

  “No.” Kendall shook her head, adamant. “Mummy didn’t have another baby. I’m her only little girl.”

  “Yes, she did. She really did,” I said, as Cissy squeezed my arm, urging me to finish what I’d started. “Renata Taylor is your half-sister. Your mother was just sixteen when she gave birth, and the circumstances were very . . . difficult . . . for everyone.” I half-expected Beth Taylor to contribute to the conversation, but she didn�
�t. “I can’t say whether what was done was right or wrong, but it happened all the same. Now maybe that the truth is out, some of the damage can be undone.”

  Kendall unwound her legs from beneath her, setting bare feet on the ground, toes curling against the tiles. She drew the robe tighter around her, staring unabashedly at Renata, and I couldn’t blame her. “My sister?” she murmured as she studied the other woman. “How can that be? She’s not even . . . we’re not even the same color.”

  “Renata’s father was African American,” I spelled it out plainly, “but her mother—your mother—was white. Marilee’s blood runs through both of your veins.”

  Kendall touched the mole on her cheek, as if realizing she and Renata shared the same small mark on their skin.

  Renata sat ramrod-straight, her cut-glass features so stoic, that I wondered if she resented Kendall’s remarks, her reaction; if she felt angry at the other girl because Marilee had kept Kendall but let her go. Though I hoped not, for both their sakes.

  “You are sisters,” I said again, because I thought each woman needed to hear it more than once. “You’re not alone, Kendall. You have family.”

  “Of course she has family.” Gilbert came around the chaise and took hold of his daughter’s shoulder. “She has me and Amber Lynn.” He flicked a hand toward Renata, the sunlight setting sparks to the plump gold Rolex at his wrist. “I’ve heard all I want to hear, and now I’m taking my baby home. She’s mourning her mother. She certainly doesn’t need . . . this! Look at what you’ve done to her already. She’s a mess.”

  Tears streaked down Kendall’s pale cheeks, staining the pale pink silk of the borrowed robe.

  “Come on.” Gilbert’s voice softened and he reached for her arm. “Come on, princess, let’s go home.”

  But Kendall didn’t move. She didn’t reply, didn’t even acknowledge her father had spoken.

  “Princess, get up, please. Daddy wants to take you home.” He tugged at her, but Kendall refused to budge.

  “She may stay with me as long as she wants,” my mother said, just shy of snapping. “She’s old enough to make up her own mind of where she wants to be.”

  “And just who do you think you are, lady, the queen of Sheba?”

  “Stop it!” Kendall cried and turned her tear-stained face toward her father. “Why did you even come here? You can’t help me now that Mummy’s dead. You didn’t want me for all these years, but suddenly you want to take me home to live with you and Amber?” Pain distorted her face. “You never loved us, did you? You never cared about anyone but yourself.”

  “You’re wrong, princess, listen . . .”

  “No, you listen!” she screeched and swatted him away. She jumped out of the chair and turned on him, cheeks red with rage. “Why don’t you go back home to your whore and let me be? It’s your fault that Mummy had to work so hard she didn’t have time to mother me,” she sobbed and ran out of the room, her bare feet slapping on the tiles and pink silk trailing behind her.

  I started after her, but Cissy stopped me.

  “Let her go, Andrea,” she said firmly. “This is a lot for the poor child to digest in one sitting.”

  Gilbert Mabry made a lunge after Kendall as well, and Mother stopped him cold.

  “Don’t even think of it.”

  He scowled, but put up no fuss. Maybe it was because the deputy chief was right there with a holster at her hip. Or maybe it was Mother’s tone of voice.

  Cissy wasn’t done with him yet. “I do believe, sir, that it’s time I showed you out. Kendall will call if she needs you. Shall we?” She inclined her head toward the French doors and he followed, red with embarrassment.

  I turned back to the room, so full before and now half-empty.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said to the remaining threesome of Renata, Beth, and the deputy chief, “I think I’ll check on Kendall.”

  Renata let go of her mother’s hand and slowly rose from the wicker sofa, her lips pursed tight.

  “No, Andy. I should go. She’s my blood, after all.” Renata sounded so cool, so calm when she said it, and I wondered if she’d been testing those words in her head for a while. I wondered how long she had known the truth? Weeks, months? How hard it must’ve been for her to stay silent.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” She glanced down at her aunt, who nodded and wiped tears from her face.

  When I looked at Renata, really looked at her, I could fully see the resemblance to Kendall that had seemed merely incidental before: the shape of the eyes, the wide mouth, and small mole on the cheek. It was all there, so obvious now. As subtle as the similarities truly were, they seemed glaring, knowing what I knew now.

  “Kendall’s staying in my old room upstairs,” I said. “Third door on the left.”

  “Thank you.”

  Without another word, she left.

  As I watched her go, a panic settled in my belly, as the full impact hit me, of what this revelation could mean when it went public. I had a bad, bad feeling, deep in my bones, that things were far from finished.

  “I should have come clean before,” Beth Taylor murmured, removing a tissue from her handbag to dab at her cheeks. “Before Marilee was dead, so Renata could have known her birth mother, no matter what kind of person she was.”

  But she had known Marilee.

  She’d seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Okay, the bad and the ugly, anyway. Maybe it had saved her a lot of pain, I thought, knowing what living in Marilee’s shadow had done to Kendall.

  Beth dried her eyes and looked at me. “I only told Renata the truth a few months back, when I realized Marilee’s show was going national. It was like a sign, for me. I couldn’t live with myself, keeping it from her any longer. It took Ron five years to find his baby girl . . . five years of giving up his career in the Army and his life in order to get her home. And it was rough on him, really rough. On Renata, too. She’d been in four foster homes by the time he got to her.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I’d been apologizing a lot lately, for things that weren’t my fault.

  Beth sniffed into her tissue. “At least the worst is over.”

  But I didn’t agree.

  “It’s not over,” I said and turned to the deputy chief.

  “Something else you’d like to confess, Ms. Kendricks?”

  If that was a dig, I was willing to ignore it.

  “I’m not sure how to put this”—I spoke slowly, though my pulse raced—“but I’ve got a really bad feeling that Kendall isn’t safe. If Justin tried to kill her once, he might take another shot. Only this time, he might succeed.”

  Though I was beginning to wonder if Kendall wasn’t more of a threat to herself than Justin Gable would ever be.

  Chapter 25

  Mother was pouring herself a very stiff cognac when I took off, trailing the deputy chief and another squad car over to Marilee’s house, where I’d been dispensed to collect some of Kendall’s things.

  Thankfully, Anna Dean seemed to find my fears founded, enough to advise that Kendall remain at Mother’s, which necessitated my schlepping to Preston Hollow . . . when all I wanted was lunch and a big margarita.

  Maybe there was something to Mother’s early happy hours of late. Must be the stress triggering a sudden yen for booze, when neither of us normally did much partaking of anything stronger than hot tea (Earl Grey for her, organic green for me).

  Though the deputy chief assured me that Marilee’s staff had returned—a few of them anyway—I didn’t see a soul once I drove past the gates where the media had set up camp. While Anna Dean took a stroll around back with her boys in blue, I entered the quiet of the mansion and crept up the stairs to Kendall’s room.

  If I’d had a hankering to poke around, I guess I could’ve. I didn’t see anyone upstairs to stop me from peeking into whatever room had been Justin’s or detouring into Marilee’s boudoir.

  But I didn’t.

  I wanted to get the heck out of th
ere as soon as I’d packed up Kendall’s clothes and toiletries, things she’d left behind in the haste to get her to Mother’s. She’d made me a list, which I’d folded and stuck in my purse for safekeeping.

  On the second-floor landing, I took a right at the top of the hallway, homing in on the room at the very end. Kendall said it overlooked the spread out back so she could hear the crow of roosters before the sun arose each morning.

  Not the kind of alarm clock I’d want, but each to her own.

  I pushed open the door, gearing myself for décor that was over the top, all black and chrome or even Vegas red and glitter. I would’ve expected as much from a teenager whose very existence had been geared toward rebelling against everything her mummy stood for (i.e., good taste).

  When I flipped on the switch, I looked around and my jaw fell.

  Pale walls the soft pink of cotton candy with crisp white trim. The furniture would’ve looked perfectly suitable for a cottage on the beach, all white wicker and distressed wood. Floral Laura Ashley comforter, shams, and drapes with a matching border above a molded chair rail. White wicker shelves filled with enough dolls and stuffed animals to stock a Toys ’R’Us.

  Was Kendall reliving her childhood or just a serious pack rat?

  Even more odd were the wall decorations, framed covers of local magazines that had featured Marilee’s smiling face, as well as feature articles from the Morning News and other Texas papers. Either she was prouder of her mummy than she’d let on, or she was torturing herself. I couldn’t decide which.

  I had the same reaction as when I’d first glimpsed a rack filled with Isaac Mizrahi clothes at Target: what’s up with that?

  Once my astonishment faded a bit, I set about packing the smallest of the Louis Vuitton suitcases fetched from a spacious walk-in closet. Underwear, pajamas, jeans, and tees, her makeup kit from atop the mirrored vanity, expensive lotions and potions from La Prairie situated neatly around the marbled sink.

  As instructed, I popped open her medicine cabinet to locate her birth-control pills, found the pink pack easily but lingered to eyeball the labels on the dozens of brown prescription bottles and silver tubes lined up on the slender shelves.