Too Pretty to Die

by Susan McBride

  “Later, Mother,” I said, because Janet wasn’t done with her questions, and I had something to add as well. Janet cleared her throat loudly, and I whispered, “Later,” again to Cissy.

  “So what about the note, Andy?” Janet asked, her silver pen poised above her notepad. “When I asked Anna Dean, she mentioned a letter they’d taken into evidence, but she wouldn’t clarify what it was about.”

  If they’d found a suicide note, it was after I left the duplex.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, because I wasn’t.

  “The letter,” Janet verbally nudged at my blank look. “The one that purportedly gave Miranda the heave-ho from a club she belonged to. Anna Dean indicated it might’ve pushed Miranda over the edge.”

  “Oh, that letter,” I said, realizing what exactly she was yammering about.

  The missive from the Caviar Club.

  “I saw it,” I told her, and she cocked her head attentively. “Deputy Dean showed me the stationery, to see if I’d heard of the group. It was from the Caviar Club,” I explained, and I saw Janet’s eyes go round as pennies. “It said something to the effect that she’d been dropped from membership because of her current unfortunate circumstances. It was all crumpled, like she’d wadded it into a ball.”

  Janet scooched to the edge of her seat. “The Caviar Club, you said? Miranda DuBois was a member? Are you sure that’s what it was?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I said, and noticed Janet’s cheeks turn all pink and shiny. “You’ve heard of it?”

  Well, of course she had. Janet knew about every club in the city. That was part of her gig.

  “I’ll say I’ve heard of it.” She put her pad and pen on the coffee table—well, dumped them with a clatter, really—and gave a jerk of her head toward Cissy. My mother kept glancing at her watch, like her handbag revelation couldn’t wait another minute.

  “Do you mind if we talk alone?” Janet hissed in my direction, though my bat-eared mother obviously heard her, as she fairly jumped out of her chair.

  “My goodness, but I should see how Stephen’s doing with Milton Fletcher in the kitchen. Janet, dear, do you need anything? Coffee, tea, or lip balm?” Mother offered, cocking her head to one side as she gazed at my friend.

  “Uh-uh.” Janet shook her head, self-consciously touching her mouth.

  “All right, then.” Cissy turned toward me. “Andrea, you come find me before you leave, you hear?”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “You’d better,” she threatened before disappearing faster than a quarter up the sleeve of a magician.

  The private eye’s name was Milton Fletcher?

  I thought that sounded like a relative of Jessica’s from Cabot Cove. I imagined him a gray-haired and grizzled older man with patches at the elbows of his corduroy jacket.

  “Andy, yo, are you listening to me?” Janet said, her impatience making her prickly. Or maybe it was the bee pollen and Restylane.

  “I’m listening.”

  Yeesh.

  “Please, Andy, focus. This is important,” she said, and gestured toward the sofa, patting the cushion beside her.

  I dutifully went over and plunked down. She made no move to scoop up notebook and pen, so I guess whatever we said henceforth was truly off the books.

  “The Caviar Club,” she whispered, though there was no one else in the den. “Do you know for sure that Miranda DuBois had been admitted? Are you positive?”

  “Yes, positive,” I said, because I’d seen with my own eyes the “Dear Miranda” letter telling her she’d been unadmitted. “Anna Dean bagged the letter telling Miranda she’d been booted. It’s as good as a suicide note as far as she’s concerned. She figures Miranda getting rejected was related to her death.”

  “As in, she killed herself because the Caviar Club gave her the heave-ho?”

  “Deputy Dean seemed to believe it was a contributing factor, yeah.”

  Janet looked like someone had lit a fire under her, and it wasn’t just because her bright red hair had been spiked out in all directions, which seemed a little at odds with her magenta Joan Crawford suit, which fit her like a shoebox. She quivered like a rattlesnake’s tail, hardly able to sit still.

  “What an interesting coincidence,” she murmured, drumming her chin with her fingertips. Then the drumming abruptly ceased. “Did the deputy chief know what the Caviar Club was, by any chance?” she asked.

  “No, she didn’t have a clue, and neither do I,” I admitted, though it didn’t take a genius to realize Janet had one up on me. “I’m guessing it really doesn’t have to do with wine tasting, does it?”

  Janet merely smiled; a quirky grin that assured me she knew better. “No, it’s not a wine-tasting club, although they do go for pricey champagne,” she said, and scooted closer, though there was less than a hairbreadth between us. “It’s about something more old-fashioned than apple pie.”

  “I thought it wasn’t about food.”

  “It’s not.” Red-tinged eyebrows went up. “It’s about good old-fashioned S-E-X.”

  Oh, that kind of club.

  Well, hello.

  Chapter 11

  “Remember when I told you I was working on a feature story for the paper?”

  The one about superficiality and appearances and Dr. Sonja Madhavi that had inspired her to blow up her lips like an Angelina wannabe?

  “Yep, I remember,” I said.

  Janet opened her mouth, glanced at the open door, and reconsidered. She popped up from the sofa and crossed the room to shut us in. I heard a click and realized she’d locked the door.

  Geez, Louise.

  What was going on with her? She’d been acting odd all day.

  She dropped back down beside me, leaned her knees toward mine, and said in a most hush-hush tone, “All right, here’s the Cliffs Notes version, so stick with me.”

  I nodded.

  “I was working on the piece about Pretty Parties and the Park Cities’ obsession with looking perfect, and I decided to do a sidebar on the Caviar Club, after I started hearing buzz about it on the social scene. The kind of buzz that’s whispered behind hands, if you get my drift.” She picked up her pen again and fiddled with it, her eyes on the Mont Blanc as she said: “If you weren’t so out of the loop, Andy, you’d probably have gotten wind of it, too.” She gave me a quick glance.

  “Whatever.” I shrugged.

  If she’d intended to hurt my feelings, she hadn’t. I was out of the loop with regard to where the moneyed set partied these days, and I didn’t mind a bit.

  “So what is the Caviar Club?” I asked, seeing as how Deputy Chief Dean thought Miranda might have wanted to die after being ejected from it.

  “It’s all about the pretty people, you see. The beautiful ones…” Janet paused. “…at least on paper. Photo paper,” she clarified. “They pick and choose their members based on looks, or looks that they find appealing. They don’t want any average folks at their secret parties messing up the ambience. And I guess that means me, because they wouldn’t let me in, not to any of the real parties. They just invited me, as the PCP society editor, to something specially arranged.” She gave her spiky red hair a toss, her fat lips pouting.

  “Who’s doing the picking and choosing?” I asked.

  It sounded awfully narrow-minded and snobbish. What intelligent, well-rounded person only wanted to meet others solely based on looks? It was like buying a gift wrapped in a Tiffany’s box and not having a clue what was inside. It could well be a multicarat diamond ring; but then again, perhaps it was a big fat CZ worth nada.

  “I’m not exactly sure who’s playing judge and jury, deciding who the Caviar Club lets in,” Janet admitted. “That’s one part of the story I still need to find out. I can’t get the skinny from anyone I’ve interviewed. The members I’ve been able to track down say as little as possible. It’s like they’re bound to secrecy or something.”

  “So who did you talk to?” I asked, convinced at t
his point that the Caviar Club mentality was what had started her obsession with meaty lips.

  “They set up a special cocktail party so I could meet some of the club’s players and supposedly get what I needed for my story. But it was just a bunch of token nobodies.” She sniffed. “Okay, sure, they were good-looking enough, though the women more so than the men. Big surprise, huh? The guys could be bald, so long as they had power and money.”

  “Power and money are the male equivalent of pretty faces and big breasts,” I said.

  “Speaking of faces,” Janet kicked in, “I could tell Dr. Sonja had worked on quite a few of them.” She touched her chin. “All their lips were like fat strawberries. And their cheeks…they had that supertight, shiny look. You know what I mean?”

  “The Sandra Bullock Apple Cheeks,” I said, because I’d heard several of the women at the Pretty Party request them specifically, as if it were a name brand.

  Janet pursed her own fat strawberry lips, and I gawked.

  If she’d been self-conscious of her mouth before, I figured she was doubly conscious now. I found myself wondering what would happen if she pricked those babies with a pin. Would they pop like balloons?

  Janet ignored my staring and went on: “I didn’t meet anyone worth quoting, just your typical Park Cities wannabes who’d only spout the party line about the club.” She cleared her throat then mimicked an East Texas drawl that sounded a lot like my mother’s. “Oh, hon, it’s such a wonderful way to meet like-minded people who are successful in their fields and oh-so-philanthropic, always giving, giving, giving.”

  I guffawed. “You have got to be kidding? Philanthropists who belong to a private club that caters to narcissists. What a bunch of hypocrites.”

  “And that’s not the half of it, Andy,” Janet went on, this time in her own voice. “I spoke to a woman named Theresa Hurley, the mouthpiece for the owners, and she gave me a general password to get into the Caviar Club’s Web site. There’s not much there, mostly a submission form for interested parties. But there is a mission statement.” She laid a hand on her heart. “‘Our goal is bring together those of the same level of aesthetics so as to avoid intermingling with those of lesser aesthetics.’”

  “Are you kidding me?” I snorted.

  She laughed. “I swear. God, Andy, you’d die if you read it. It’s like the Pretty People’s Nazi Party credo. If you’re not deemed physically attractive enough to get in, go piss on yourself.”

  “Lovely,” I remarked, once again happy to not be a joiner. I would’ve rather mixed with the apes at the zoo than with a bunch of jerks who judged each other on something as artificial as size and shape and placement of features.

  Janet pursed her lips, making them appear almost normal for a moment. Until she opened her mouth again. “Of course, I decided, what better way to get the inside scoop than to join up, see how things really worked? They don’t give you the members-only password that grants access to where the secret parties will be held unless you’ve gotten your manicured toe in the door. But I couldn’t apply as myself, not after having met some of the anointed ones. So I lifted the photo of a model from a New York modeling agency. Slam-dunk, I figured.”

  She sucked in a breath, only to slowly release it. “Boy, was I wrong. They sent an immediate e-mail rejection. ‘Not what we’re searching for,’ was the line they used. Good Lord”—Janet cackled—“if I couldn’t get in with a photo of a Tyra Banks look-alike, I give up. Now I’ll never really know what’s really going on.” Her eyes met mine, and they were hard as steel. “The whole thing smells fishier than the Gorton’s factory, Andy.”

  “I’d say let it go,” I suggested. “I mean, what’s the big deal? It sounds like a club full of mirror-obsessed ninnies who pick and choose fresh meat that appeals to them. It’s not like being superficial in Dallas isn’t a citywide pastime. I’m not sure it’s even worth a story. Why don’t you let it drop, huh?”

  “I can’t,” she said, adamant.

  “You’re seriously compelled to write another piece about Beemer-driving snots who only want to mix with other Barbies and Kens?”

  It was redundant, really.

  Weren’t we just at a Pretty Party last night, where women lined up for free injections of gunk into their creases? Didn’t she just drag me to Dr. Sonja’s boutique in the mall this morning so I could get a salad-dressing facial and she could get her Angelina Jolie kisser?

  How many articles could she write about the beauty-obsessed in the Park Cities?

  Maybe if the whole world stopped worshipping shiny objects, the shiny people would cease parading around in butt-baring jeans and too-tight T-shirts, showing off bodies carved by scalpels and hair glued into place with more gel than the cranberry mold at Thanksgiving.

  “You don’t get it,” Janet said, sniffing. “It’s much more than a dating service for the plastic set. Waaay more. I’ve heard the rumors, Andy. I just have to find another way to prove the whispers are true.”

  I swear I saw the sheen of sweat on her upper lip. Her eyes kept straying toward the door, as though afraid someone could overhear our conversation through solid wood and walls thick as cinder block.

  It was like she was about to confess that she had the paperwork proving Tom Cruise was an alien life form, and she was afraid the Scientologists had her oversized lapels tapped.

  She ran a tongue across her lips before she hissed, “Here’s what I need to confirm, because speculating isn’t enough for a front-page feature. Once the club owners decide you’re gorgeous enough to get you in the door, that’s just step one. When you’re there and you pass some kind of loyalty test, they move you up in the ranks. Then it’s Sodom and Gomorrah. I’ve heard what goes on in the back room at their secret gatherings makes Caligula seem like a Disney flick.”

  “Caligula?” Wasn’t that, like, a million years old? Heck, I hadn’t even seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show yet. I was way behind on watching cult films, particularly the X-rated kind. “Isn’t that, like, from the seventies or something?”

  “My God, girlfriend, it’s been called the Ben-Hur of Porn.” She paused to fan herself with her notepad. “Has a bit of something for everyone, shall we say.”

  “Um, okay.” Was I the only grown woman in the world who’d never seen porn before, even old stuff? “So you’re saying the Caviar Club is a sex club,” I deciphered. “Like for big-time swingers.”

  “Very prominent swingers with a lot to lose if they’re outed,” she clarified, and her cheeks turned a shade of pink that nearly matched the magenta of her outfit. “I don’t have names, not on the record. But the buzz is there are some biggies involved.” Her eyes had a freaky kind of gleam. “I tried to get Theresa Hurley to cough up something incriminating, but she wouldn’t bite. She’s like a very thin bulldog, guarding the door.”

  All very interesting, I mused, but I wasn’t sure why she was telling me this.

  “Um, Janet, I hope you don’t mind my asking,” I said, “but what does your Caviar Club story have to do with me?”

  It’s not like I was a member, or even cared about the secret society.

  On a good day over lunch at Patrizio’s, I may have been in the mood for sordid stories about Orgies of the Rich and Famous. But it had been a stinky past twenty-four hours, I was dying to fetch Brian and head home for some alone time, and I still needed to chat with my mother.

  “First off, oh, pal of mine,” Janet said, leaning nearer, “I’m going to need your help again.” I started to protest, because I’d already done her a huge favor that morning, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Caviar Club besides.

  “Look, Jan, didn’t I help you out at North Park already? So I don’t really think—” I tried to gracefully decline, but she talked right over me.

  “Consider that I’m calling in a few markers. Because you owe me more than one, lest you’ve forgotten all the things I’ve done for you.”

  Markers.

  Oh, boy.

  She
would have to bring that up.

  Yeah, yeah, Janet had come to my rescue more than once, like when she’d filled me in on the background of folks in a chichi retirement home that I thought might be involved in a couple murders, or when she’d informed me that a boy-toy who’d been dating a lifelong friend of Mother’s had a well-recorded history as a gold digger.

  “Okay, okay”—I relented, because I was indebted to her, and she clearly knew it—“but make it a small favor, would you? I don’t want to do anything illegal. I’m already no favorite of Anna Dean as it is.”

  She flashed a brief, fish-lipped smile. “We’ll talk about specifics later, okay? I’ve got to figure out logistics.”

  “Whatever.” Maybe I’d be locked inside my condo later, not answering my telephone.

  Then she seemed suddenly nervous again, clearing her throat and glancing over at the door. “I’ve got something else on my mind at the moment, and, not coincidentally, it concerns Ms. Miranda DuBois.”

  “What about her?”

  What else was there to discuss? Hadn’t we done that topic to death already (no pun intended)?

  “I’m not a hundred percent, but I firmly believe Miranda sent me an e-mail last night,” Janet said out of the blue, and I nearly fell off the couch.

  Last night?

  “But that’s impossible. She—” I started, unable to finish, as Janet jumped in.

  “She died last night, I know. So it must’ve been sometime shortly before that. The e-mail wasn’t signed, not with a name, but it was sent from the news department of KXAS. Sometimes I get tips from the anchors or the news writers, so I wasn’t sure it was from Miranda specifically until I knew about her connection to the Caviar Club. Unless there’s someone else on the Channel 5 staff who had a bone to pick with the club, it’s gotta be her.”

  I sat up straighter.