Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery

by McBride, Susan

  “They’ve got cause to charge her with murder,” he told me, giving his glasses a little shove. “Unfortunately, from the sound of things, they’ve got enough on your friend to lock her up and throw away the key.”

  “It’s all circumstantial.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I tapped my foot on the floor, wishing I could cover my ears with my hands, not wanting to hear another word.

  “They have a witness who saw her run out of the restaurant at close to one o’clock this morning. The shopping center security guard watched her exit the back door, hop into her truck, and take off like Mario Andretti.” Malone ticked off each point on his fingertips. “He got her license plate, which is what led them to her so quickly. Did you know she has a prior conviction for writing bad checks?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “They got a warrant to search her apartment, and turned up a white T-shirt and a pair of sneakers with traces of blood. And they have the knife from Bud’s back, which is covered with her prints.”

  “Enough,” I stopped him and let out a held breath, feeling like a balloon with a slow leak. It didn’t look good for my old friend. That was abundantly clear. It didn’t hit me until then how deep in trouble Molly was. I’d imagined before that it was all a mistake, a fluke that could be cleared up with the right words, the right kind of persuasion.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  A man named Bud Hartman was dead, and all the evidence pointed to Molly.

  I felt a light touch on my arm and found Malone’s eyes on me, the pity so plain in them I had to glance away.

  “Maybe you don’t know her as well as you thought you did,” he suggested. “Your mother told J.D. that she was someone you’d befriended in high school. That you’d lost touch years ago. Maybe she isn’t the same person you used to know.”

  I shook my head and shrugged off his hand, denying his words with a vehement “No.” More vehement because I had wondered the same thing myself and didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I didn’t know everything about Molly, but I knew enough to be sure she was no killer.

  “She didn’t do it,” I said and met Malone’s gaze, seeing my own bespectacled eyes reflected in his glasses. “Molly told me what happened, that Bud forced himself on her and she fended him off. She might have cut him with the knife, but he was alive when she left. She heard him shouting.”

  “So she says.”

  “She didn’t stab him to death.”

  “It may have been self-defense.” He rubbed his chin. “She’s a very pretty lady. If the guy got rough with her, it makes sense. It’s a common enough scenario. Juries usually take pity on the woman and sentences aren’t so stiff.”

  “She’s innocent, for Pete’s sake!”

  “I’m only being realistic.”

  “Pessimistic is more like it.” My hands curled to fists, and it was all I could do not to swing at him.

  A half-smile took shape on his mouth. “You’re amazingly loyal, Ms. Kendricks. And different than I expected.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know your mother,” he explained, tugging on his earlobe. “She has quite a reputation at the firm. I thought you’d be more like her.”

  “A demanding diva, you mean?” I filled in the blanks. “Dressed to the nines? As you can see, I rarely wear haute couture.” I swept a hand over my paint-smudged sweatshirt and blue jeans, an outfit that Cissy wouldn’t be caught dead in.

  “Your words, not mine.” He smiled fully now, not embarrassed in the least, which made me believe he might have more backbone than I’d suspected.

  “Fair enough.”

  “Listen, Ms. Kendricks . . .”

  “Andy,” I said instinctively, and I felt my anger draining away as quickly as it had surged.

  “Andy,” he repeated, nodding. “It doesn’t look good, but I’ll see what I can do for Ms. O’Brien. I promise.”

  He appeared so earnest and well meaning. Somehow I knew he was doing the best job he could.

  I glanced toward the door through which they’d taken Molly, and I felt wiped out. My head was heavy, my mind unable to focus. Perhaps someone would shake me, and I’d wake up to find this was all a bad dream.

  The fatigue must’ve shown in my face because Malone said gently, “You might as well go home. There’s nothing you can do here.”

  I didn’t even look at my watch, but figured it wasn’t yet seven. I’d promised to go over to Molly’s apartment complex and get David from the landlady. It would give me something to do, something to keep me from feeling completely useless.

  “I’ll stick around until they take her to Lew Sterrett, then I’ll head downtown myself and handle her bond hearing. Though I don’t think they’ll let her go. She has no family in town, no one except her son. There’s nothing to say she won’t flee.”

  “Whatever she needs, I’m good for it,” I told him. “Do you have to use a bail bondsman? Where do you find them anyway? Are they listed in the phone book, like plumbers and florists?” I was babbling, and I might have gone on forever had Malone not placed a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ll call you if the judge grants her bail, okay? But don’t bet on that.”

  I started to protest, then shut up. I couldn’t argue with him. If I were in Molly’s place, I might take David and run as far as I could without a second thought.

  “You have to trust me, Andy.”

  I nodded, wondering if that would be enough.

  Chapter 4

  The sun had risen to flesh out the deep purple of dawn, tinting the air a soft blue and shell pink.

  I got caught up in traffic on Belt Line, each green light way too short, the lines of cars far too long. I turned on the radio to KRLD but only half-listened to news updates and weather reports. My mind was on Molly and how she’d come back into my life ten years after running out of it. And I wondered if I were going to lose her again as abruptly.

  I thought of what Malone had said, that the evidence against Molly appeared airtight. I didn’t know much about the law except what I saw on TV, and I found myself imagining the worst: Molly being found guilty of murder and sentenced to spend the rest of her days behind bars, separated from a son who would be forced to grow up without his mother. Would David be placed in a foster home like Molly? Would he feel abandoned, too? Would he turn out to be a criminal, his face featured on America’s Most Wanted, his mug shot tacked up in every post office from Dallas to Duluth?

  Stop it, Andy, I chastised. This wasn’t helping. Molly needed support. She needed someone who believed in her innocence. And right now, I was all she had.

  A horn honked behind me, and I realized the light had turned green. In my rearview mirror, I saw a guy in a black Seville scowl.

  I plunged ahead, shifting gears, watching as the Cadillac maneuvered around me, changing lanes as if it owned the road.

  Caddies were as omnipresent in Texas as cockroaches. As oversized, too.

  My father had driven one, and I’d always cringed when I had to get in it. The Cataract, I’d called it, because of the tinted windows that made me feel as if I had a glaze over my eyes. I never liked that car, feeling as if I were trapped inside an ostentatious cage where I couldn’t touch sticky fingers to leather seats or put muddy shoes on the carpet. I had envied kids whose mothers had hauled them around in station wagons. I’d wished I were one of them, sitting in the rear seat gazing at the car behind, making faces and pressing noses to the glass, eating greasy McDonald’s French fries without fear of leaving stains on the upholstery.

  I shifted in my seat, gripping the steering wheel tightly, uncomfortable suddenly as old sensations seeped up to the surface.

  Had I been an ungrateful child? Unappreciative of the things my parents had given me? Shiny new bikes, closets full of designer-label clothing, more dolls than I could ever play with, expensive birthday parties attended by gobs of children they’d handpicked, as my close friends had been few.

  When all it took to ma
ke me happy was an easel with a blank canvas and a set of basic oils, or a big sheet of butcher’s paper and finger paints the colors of the rainbow. I had never been good at pretending to be someone I was not.

  I can still picture my mother with her hands on her hips, tiny frown lines wrinkling her slender brow. “Daddy said you didn’t want to play tennis at the club this afternoon because the light was perfect for painting the gazebo? Now, Andrea, I adore the idea of your work someday hanging in the Louvre, but young girls need to exercise regularly or they end up spending their summers in fat camp. You don’t want that, do you?”

  I hadn’t even tried to explain, not back then.

  At one point, I wondered if I’d been adopted. I’d even dared to pose the question to Mother.

  “How could you ask such a thing?” she’d cried, taking my charcoal-smeared, nail-bitten hands into her perfectly manicured ones. “I was in labor with you for twelve hours while your father passed out cigars in the hospital lobby. It was too late for an epidural, and I didn’t take so much as an aspirin. I have never been in such pain in my life. And if that isn’t proof enough that you sprang from my loins, my dear, I don’t know what is.”

  I couldn’t tell her the truth, that I wasn’t at ease in her world, where who I was inside didn’t seem to matter as much as what I looked like or the size I wore. Being pretty had always seemed so important.

  Which is why Molly and I had gotten along.

  She had never understood pretension. Her world had been a harsh one, rough where mine was glossy. Neither of us had felt like we belonged.

  At times, I still didn’t.

  The light shifted to red, and I slowed the Jeep to a stop behind a Camry. The sunlight poked into my eyes, and I drew down the visor, turning to look the other way.

  I found my gaze drawn to a shopping center near the tollway.

  To Jugs.

  High above the asphalt at the Villa Mesa Plaza—a fancy name for a plain old strip mall—an enormous sign depicted a pair of moonshine jugs shot from above, giving the undeniable impression of very round female breasts. Several squad cars were parked below the soaring billboard. A van with the Channel 8 logo rolled into view and then another from Channel 5. I bet it wouldn’t be long before the other television and radio stations joined them.

  A horn honked, and I jumped, quickly fixing my attention on the road ahead of me. I sent the Jeep lurching forward.

  Ironically, Molly’s apartment wasn’t but a couple miles from where I lived, located on Montfort past a dozen other complexes that looked nearly identical. The names were similar as well: Montfort Oaks, Montfort Landing, Montfort Acres. They all passed in a blur.

  Finally I reached Montfort Lakes.

  I pulled into a street book-ended by brick walls and trimmed shrubs. A few pickup trucks and compact cars lingered beneath skeletal carports. The four-storied buildings surrounded a very small manmade lake.

  I homed in on Molly’s unit without difficulty and pulled into an empty parking space.

  She’d told me her apartment manager lived on the ground floor, and I checked the piece of paper on which I’d scrawled the number. Then I locked up the Jeep, crossed the pavement to #121, and knocked on the door.

  I heard a click before it opened as wide as a chain would allow. A brown eye peered at me from above an unsmiling mouth. “Yes?” Even the voice was suspicious.

  “Maria Rameriz?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “I’m Andrea Kendricks.” So what? Her silence seemed to shout. “I’m an old friend of Molly O’Brien’s. I saw her this morning,” I proceeded carefully, just in case six-year-old David was anywhere around.

  “Ah, yes, Andy,” she said after a slight pause. “Molly told me you were once like su hermana. Her sister.” A hand waved at me from the crevice. “Just a minute.”

  The door shut and reopened minus the chain. I could see all of her now, from the fuzzy pink toes of her slippers to the pilled chenille robe knotted tightly at her middle to the brown hair pinned up in sponge rollers. “Come in, please.” She stepped back to let me in.

  I waited until she’d locked us in, then followed her up a hallway with off-white walls into a brightly lit living room with furnishings that would have made my mother wince in horror. Dark woods and lots of orange and brown that screamed, “1970s.” But the place was spotless, and I didn’t hesitate when she offered me a seat on the plaid sofa. She perched on an arm, a slippered foot dangling, and looked me over.

  “David’s sleeping,” she said. “It was rough for him, the police coming for his mama and dragging her away. He doesn’t understand.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The boy is smart. He knows something’s going on. Something bad.” The light in her dark eyes flickered. “All I would say is that the police made a mistake and think his mama did something she didn’t do. I promised him it would be fixed soon, and his mama will be home again.”

  I only wished it were that easy.

  “She has a lawyer,” I told Maria. “He’s from the best firm in the city. If anyone can clear this up, he can,” I added, wanting to believe it as I said it. What I yearned for was the aggressive style of the rhyming Johnny Cochran or the down-home confidence of Gerry Spence. I tried hard to blot the image of the clean-scrubbed Brian Malone from my mind.

  Maria nodded. “How is Molly?”

  “Scared.”

  Her fleshy face tightened, the slashes of dark brow low over her eyes. “Díga me la verdad. Tell me the truth. Does it look real bad for her?”

  I fiddled with my purse strap, remembering Molly’s tearful eyes, the terror in her face as they’d taken her downstairs for booking. I finally rallied the courage to meet Maria’s unflinching stare.

  “The police have evidence they believe points to Molly, and right now they’re not looking for anyone else,” I admitted. “The man who was killed, her boss . . .”

  “Bud,” she spat, mouth wrinkling. “Molly told me all about him, that he was a cucaracha.”

  Unfortunately, he was a very dead cockroach, I thought, pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose.

  Maria watched me closely.

  “They’ve charged her with murder,” I said and my own voice sounded foreign to my ears. Soft and afraid. “Malone . . . her lawyer . . . he doesn’t think they’ll let her out on bail because she has no family in town. They’ll be scared she’ll take David and run.”

  “Madre de Dios,” Maria sputtered and crossed herself. She started rocking, back and forth. “David,” she breathed, a hand at her breast. “What will happen to him? They’re not going to make me turn him over to strangers?”

  “No,” I quickly answered and sat up straighter. “Molly asked me to take care of him, and I will. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go to a foster home,” I told her, though I wondered how I would keep my promise. What would I do with a little boy? There wasn’t much room in my tiny condo for anyone but me.

  “He’s quiet,” she said. “A good child.”

  But a kid just the same, I thought, with the need to run and jump and play. The last time I’d done any babysitting, I’d been a teenager, and I hadn’t even liked the gig much back then. I didn’t even own a cat, for Pete’s sake.

  An idea popped into my head. One that wouldn’t win me a Nobel Peace Prize, but it would solve the problem at hand.

  “He’s not in school now, is he?” It was mid-May, so there was a good chance classes were over, even if he were enrolled somewhere. “No one will miss him if he’s away for a bit?” I asked, figuring that, unless Molly had him signed up for a summer day care program, it would go unnoticed by teachers or truant officers if he took a little cross-town trip.

  “No, no escuela ahora. Molly’s got him in the mornings and then he either stays here at night while she works or she has a girl from the next building sit with him.”

  Great. So I cranked up Plan A.

  “Can you wake him?” I asked. It was now past seven o’clock,
and I wanted to get him settled as soon as possible.

  Maria nodded and rose, smoothing squared fingers over her robe. She seemed more relaxed, perhaps even relieved that I’d be taking David with me, even though I could see how much she cared for him and Molly.

  “Un momento,” she said and shuffled out of the room.

  I got up and slipped my purse over my shoulder, checking out the framed photographs on the walls. The nearest to eye level featured a pair of girls in plaid skirts and knee socks, uniforms not unlike the one I’d worn at Hockaday. Maria’s daughters? I wondered. Probably grown now with children of their own. Other pictures showed families, women with Maria’s olive skin and strong features standing alongside men who held babies in their arms.

  Crossing the room, I went to the patio doors and pushed aside the curtains. Dead leaves floated upon the murky water of an in-ground swimming pool.

  Behind me came the rustle of footsteps and hushed voices.

  I turned to see Maria prodding a small boy forward. The laces of his sneakers had come untied.

  “Hey, David.” I squatted low so we were eye to eye.

  He shrank back into Maria, his head squashing her belly. He looked so like his mother, I realized: the same heart-shaped face, the thick-lashed eyes and good bones. He’d doubtless drive the girls crazy before he could drive.

  I held out my hand. “I’m Andy,” I said. “I’m a very old friend of your mommy’s. We went to school together.”

  He tipped his face to Maria, who gave him a gentle shove. “It’s okay,” she told him. “Andy’s a nice lady.”

  Shyly, he lifted his hand to shake mine. His “hi” was barely audible.

  “Good to meet you.” I took the small fingers in mine and gave a gentle squeeze before letting go.

  “I have his things,” Maria told me, indicating a faded green knapsack on the floor. “I got them from the apartment after”—she caught herself, gaze shifting to David—“after Molly had to leave. He has his pajamas and a toothbrush. Some clean underwear, shirts and socks.”