Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery

by McBride, Susan

  I stood back a couple yards, enjoying the exchange, rooting for the cop and hoping the reporter didn’t move. I wouldn’t have minded seeing her take a pop to her collagen-enhanced pie hole. There had been times I’d wanted to punch her myself.

  Unfortunately for me, the blonde with the mike did a 180-degree turn and drew a finger across her throat. “That’s a wrap, Kevin,” she told her cameraman, who cut the high-powered light and lowered the contraption from his shoulder. “If you’ve got enough footage, then we’re done here.”

  She very nearly walked through me, but I lifted a hand in a small wave and said, “Hey, Cinda Lou.”

  Only then noting my presence, she stopped and stared through the descending dusk until recognition dawned. “Andy Kendricks? Is that you?”

  “Last I checked.”

  “Well, whaddaya know.”

  Oh, hell, I knew plenty.

  Cinda Lou Mitchell had been in my class at Hockaday. If she wasn’t the most popular girl, she was runner-up. Mother had always hoped Cinda and I would strike up a close friendship, but it hadn’t happened and never would. It didn’t help that I could hardly stand to be around the girl for more than five minutes. Still, her mother and mine cochaired so many society soirees that I’d never completely lost touch, occasionally bumping into her at whatever dinner or dance Mother guilted me into attending every once in a blue moon. I knew Cinda had already been married three times, and each divorce had left her wealthier than the last, so that her reporting gig was basically a hobby.

  “For heaven’s sake,” she murmured and, still clutching her microphone, set her hands on the hips of her red tailored suit. The trademark smile for which she was renowned throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex beamed so brightly I felt like a deer caught in headlights. “I haven’t seen you since Cissy dragged you to last summer’s charity ball to raise funds for the homeless.”

  “I’ve been busy with work,” I explained, and it wasn’t a total fib. “I don’t have much time for a social life.”

  Cinda Lou tossed pale-gold curls, a knowing look in her eyes. “Well, I guess Cissy has social life enough for you both. I don’t think she’s missed a charity event in thirty years. Why it wasn’t but two days after your daddy passed that she showed up to emcee at the Calf Fry and Rodeo for Battered Women.”

  Leaving me alone to bawl my eyes out, I wanted to add, but held my tongue. Mother had always been—and would forever be—a social butterfly. It’s what had kept her going since Daddy died, and I didn’t begrudge her it. It’s who she was. Even in grief, she could air kiss with the best of them.

  “So what brings you over to the Villa Mesa parking lot?” Cinda asked without further ado, peering at me as though I were hiding a deep dark secret. “Don’t tell me you managed the web site for this outfit? Though I can’t imagine our goody two-shoes Andy getting her hands dirty working for a guy like Bud Hartman. I heard he was a real swine despite being great-looking and”—she bent her head toward mine—“wild in bed.”

  I felt a blush creep into my cheeks. “No, no, I don’t work for Jugs.” Not yet anyway. “I’m doing a favor for Molly O’Brien.”

  Cinda Lou lifted finely plucked brows. “The woman they arrested for stabbing Hartman?”

  “She went to school with us,” I reminded her, though Cinda’s expression was blank. “She was my closest friend.”

  “The waitress from Jugs went to Hockaday?”

  “Yes.”

  She squinted at the purple sky, then her eyes abruptly rounded. “Oh, my God! The scholarship girl. She lived in a foster home or something. She’s the one who stabbed Bud Hartman?”

  “Well, yes and no”—I squirmed—“but she didn’t kill him.”

  “Geez, Andy, thanks for the tip.” She yelled for her cameraman. “Kevin! Call my mother, would you? Tell her to dig up my yearbooks so we can swing by and pick ’em up on our way back to the studio.”

  “Cinda Lou.” I tugged at her sleeve, but she was already focused on creating a new angle for her story. Thanks to my big mouth. “Keep Molly’s private life out of this, please. She has a little boy. Besides, she’s innocent until proven guilty, right?”

  “Sure, sure, whatever.”

  Cinda brushed me off like lint. Her mind was already at work. I could practically see her eyes spinning.

  “From Hockaday to the hoosegow,” she said, punctuating each word with a stab of the mike in the air. “Catchy, don’t you think?”

  “Cinda Lou Mitchell,” I said, slow and low, so she’d know I meant business. The Filet-O-Fish and fries churned in my stomach. “Don’t do this.”

  “But, honey, it’s my job.”

  “She was a classmate.”

  “Which makes the story more personal.”

  “Have some compassion,” I begged her, but Cinda just laughed.

  “I’m a journalist, Andy. I don’t get paid to have compassion.”

  I didn’t get the chance to respond.

  A red Corvette pulled up behind Jugs with a screech of tires. Abig-haired blonde jumped out of the driver’s side and rushed toward the police-guarded back door.

  Cinda froze. “Ohmigod, that’s Julie Costello.” She nearly dropped her mike, but did a quick save and shouted for Kevin to bring the camera pronto. Like a tornado, she spun off in pursuit of the ex-professional cheerleader who, if Molly’s info was correct, had been the dead man’s lover.

  Maybe I should have left at that point, having opened my yap once too often.

  But my curiosity got the better of me, and I hung around to catch the action between Cinda Lou, girl reporter, and Julie Costello, grieving girlfriend.

  This could be a really big shoe, to quote Ed Sullivan.

  If only I had some popcorn.

  Cinda had her microphone in Julie’s face as the cameraman fixed his bright light on them both. Ms. Costello certainly didn’t seem to mind being the center of attention. She primped at hair teased to cotton-candy fullness and batted big eyes painted with enough makeup to rival a drag queen. She wore a cut-off JUGS T-shirt that bared her very flat midriff and accentuated grapefruit-shaped breasts. Ah, the fine art of plastic surgery.

  “He was special to me, Bud was,” I heard her remark as I worked my way nearer. “He liked to flirt with pretty women, sure, but he was a decent man at heart. I don’t care what anyone else says about him. No one knew him as well as I did.”

  A single tear glinted in the spotlight’s glare and slipped down her cheek.

  “Speaking of flirting with pretty women, do you believe the prime suspect, Molly O’Brien, killed your boyfriend in self-defense?” Cinda asked in her best Baba Wawa imitation.

  Ms. Costello turned directly to the camera and howled, “I should’ve stayed on my shift! I felt sick last night and left early, but if I’d toughed it out instead of letting Molly help Bud close up the place, he’d still be alive! I know he would! That bitch took something precious from me, and I hope they fry her for it.”

  I couldn’t listen to another word. It was like watching a bad soap opera, only I knew it was all too real.

  I didn’t wait to say goodbye to Cinda.

  Twilight darkened the sky as I drove down to Highland Park to Mother’s house.

  By the time I arrived, Sandy was tucking a tired David into bed in one of the guest rooms, so I dropped in on Mother. She was staring at the TV screen.

  Her bifocals pushed low on her nose, she glanced at me over the rims and shook her head. “They’ve got constant break-in updates about the murder, Andrea. On every channel.”

  “Just make sure David doesn’t see them, will you, please?” I leaned my back against the doorframe, needing its support.

  “What if they discover the child is here and flock to my door?”

  “Have Sandy scare them away just like she does the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

  “Andrea . . .”

  But I ducked out before she could say anything else. I headed up the hallway toward the room where David would
stay until . . .

  Well, just until.

  I heard his soft crying even before I’d entered. He was sitting up in bed, wrapped in Sandy’s arms.

  “Rest easy, sweet pea,” she hushed him. “Everything will work out fine, you’ll see, and your mama will come after you soon.”

  “P-promise?” the boy softly wailed.

  “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye,” Sandy told him, the closest thing to a sure bet that I’d ever known.

  The little boy nodded against her chest.

  My heart tightened, and I closed my eyes, fighting tears of my own.

  “Don’t worry, David, your mama loves you,” Sandy soothed him, muffling his sobs against her shoulder. “She’ll be home soon.”

  Even I wanted desperately to believe her.

  Chapter 10

  I waited to head home until after David had fallen asleep, glad for the cozy solitude of my condominium. Being at Mother’s house even for a few minutes had made me feel tense from head to toe. With all that was going on, I was beginning to grind my teeth.

  I changed from my wrinkled clothes into a pair of boxer shorts and a much-washed, oversized Tee. Victoria’s Secret had scratched me off their mailing list years ago, no doubt putting me in their “hopeless” file. Well, it wasn’t as if I had anyone around to impress with silk teddies or lacy negligees. I didn’t have to worry about how I looked, and I liked it that way.

  For now.

  The beige wall-to-wall carpeting flattened underfoot as I padded to the galley kitchen and fired up a Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese in the microwave. With that in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, I plunked myself down in front of the boob tube and tried to relax for the first time that day.

  I didn’t have cable, so there weren’t many channels to choose from. I found a rerun of Matlock and ate with my bare feet propped up on the blanket chest that had been my mother’s and her mother’s before that. It was a hope chest, actually, though I think Cissy had already given up hoping I’d ever store a trousseau in it. I wasn’t in the market for a husband. I was simply enjoying the freedom of living each day on my own without too many eyes peering over my shoulder.

  As I finished up the last bite of mac and cheese, I looked around at my walls, thinking how different my place was from Mother’s. No real antiques, save for the chest and an Eastlake bed handed down from an uncle. Whatever else I owned I’d purchased at consignment stores and flea markets. My mother thought my idea of conserving money and sticking to a budget was silly. Maybe it was my way of asserting my independence, of distancing myself from the child who had grown up with everything, but had lost what was most important of all.

  My father.

  I liked knowing what I had was mine. Most of the framed art consisted of charcoal etchings or acrylic work I’d done through the years. A few were original oils I’d dug up at estate sales, someone else’s castoffs that suited me beautifully. The pretty 1930s dresser in my bedroom had been refinished with my own elbow grease, the black drippy varnish replaced by a warm walnut. I’d done the same with the four dining room chairs I’d bought for a steal at the Junior League rummage sale (five bucks apiece!). I felt proud just looking at them, like I’d accomplished something.

  “Why does a well-endowed girl like you with no need to work live the way you do?”

  Anna’s query seeped into my consciousness, and I wiped the back of my hand across my milk-damp mouth, wondering if I was truly as eccentric as everyone seemed to believe.

  Daddy had set up a trust fund for me when I was born. He’d wanted to make sure I could go to any college of my choosing and could become whatever kind of person I wanted to be without student loans or financial insecurity hanging over my head for eternity.

  I used the money only when I simply couldn’t afford not to; but most of the interest and annuities I reinvested carefully.

  I wondered if all my money—hell, all my family’s money—could have gotten me out of jail had I been in Molly’s shoes.

  I’d like to believe that justice was truly blind and could neither be bought nor sold, but I’d seen quite a few of Mother and Daddy’s acquaintances pay the right lawyers and get off the hook for things like insider trading, fraud, and embezzlement. Even murder. (Okay, murder for hire.) The Great State of Texas liked to keep its rich out of the pokey so they could build more houses, drill for more oil, raise more cattle, buy more land, and sell more IPOs. The kind of things that were supposed to keep the economy rolling. I wasn’t sure if the high-priced defense attorneys were really that good or if prosecutors just had a hard time convicting and sentencing well-groomed men and women dressed in Armani.

  So what would happen to Molly?

  She wasn’t rich. I’d bet she didn’t own an Armani.

  Would the jury look at her and see a killer? Would they assume she was a desperate woman who’d stabbed a man in order to make off with five thousand dollars of restaurant receipts? Would the security guard’s testimony and her fingerprints on the knife be all the proof they needed to put her away for life?

  The mere idea that Molly might actually be convicted rankled me to the core. Heck, I was a Libra. I always wanted the world to be fair—which it rarely was—so the whole thing didn’t sound right to me. It was different for the rich. Just ask good ol’ O.J.

  Would Molly stand a chance against those odds?

  Sighing loudly, I drew my legs up and wrapped my arms around them, setting my chin on my knees.

  “I ran out of there so fast. I heard him call after me, so I figured he was pissed as hell. But he was alive.”

  Molly hadn’t stabbed Bud to death. The superficial cut on his face proved to me that she wasn’t lying. It explained why her prints were on the murder weapon and accounted for the blood-spattered shirt and shoes.

  I thought of the missing bank bag containing the day’s receipts and tried to figure out where it might be, who might have taken it. Its disappearance made me surer than ever that someone had been at Jugs after Molly had run off. Maybe there was more than one person involved in Bud’s death.

  My head throbbed, and I reached up to rub my temples.

  “Do you know what you’re doing, my dear? Getting entangled in the troubles of a woman you haven’t seen in years, one who’s been accused of murder?”

  I groaned.

  Mother’s warning returned to nag at me, and the pounding in my brain increased.

  “. . . now for an update on the murder of the local restaurateur . . .”

  I glanced up to see the ten o’clock news anchors for Channel 11 filling the television screen. They quickly switched to a close-up of Cinda Lou Mitchell wearing her “I’m a serious reporter” face. The tape of her interview with Julie Costello rolled and ended with a mug shot of Molly on a split screen with her senior class photo from the Hockaday yearbook.

  Oh, Cinda was good about using the word “alleged,” as in “alleged knife-wielding murderer,” but it pissed me off just the same.

  Snatching up the remote, I flipped channels only to find the story playing out on the news at every other local station.

  Except for one.

  A twenty-four-hour local UHF setup (Channel 3, if you had cable) featuring the Reverend Jim Bob Barker and his purple-wigged cohort who cried “Amen!” every time the man uttered a word. Just watching the two was enough to cause indigestion. No wonder I had nightmares about them.

  Though the number for their prayer line running constantly across the bottom of the screen tempted me briefly.

  With a jab of my finger, I shut the television off and sat in the quiet of my living room, wondering what had ever made me think I could actually help free Molly from Lew Sterrett when even the Dallas P.D. believed she’d killed a man.

  “You’re a good friend,” I heard her voice then, soft and tremulous, and I saw the tears in her eyes when she’d said it. “Coming to my rescue, getting me a lawyer, taking care of David.”

  Yikes, what had I d
one?

  Was I giving her false hope where there was none?

  Were Malone and my mother both right? Should I have stayed out of this entirely and allowed the chips to fall where they may?

  I hugged my knees harder.

  My daddy had always told me to listen to my gut, to believe in myself and in whatever I did (so long as it wasn’t immoral or illegal). With that in mind, I swallowed down the nasty taste of uncertainty in my mouth.

  I was all Molly had.

  Even if I’d wanted to listen to Mother and bail out now, I couldn’t have done it.

  I liked to think Molly would have done the same for me.

  Chapter 11

  I called Mother’s first thing in the morning to check on David. I felt sorry for the kid. No doubt he was scared to death. Thrust into new surroundings, not knowing when his mom was coming back to him. Living in a sort of limbo in which no six-year-old should have to live.

  Sandy answered on the kitchen extension. I heard the sizzle of bacon frying on the griddle.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked right off the bat. “Did he sleep through the night?”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Oh?” A lump of anxiety rose in my throat until I heard her soft chuckle.

  “Would you believe I found him snoozing in the den with Cissy?”

  I nearly dropped the phone. “What?”

  Sandy’s drawl thickened with amusement. “They must’ve both had insomnia. The second half of Gone With the Wind was stuck in the VCR, though I doubt either of ’em made it much past the burning of Atlanta.”

  I grinned. Score one for Mother. “I’ll be by later on to see him, okay?”

  “We’re having Kentucky Fried Chicken tonight for dinner if you’d like to join us,” she said, quickly adding, “David’s choice.”

  Mother serving food from a paper bucket?

  This was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, far rarer than a total eclipse of the sun.

  I’d have to bring my digital camera.

  “Cissy has a meeting of the Dallas Diet Club at Millicent Maxwell’s so she won’t be around this evening,” Sandy said, as if reading my mind. The Diet Club was a group of Mother’s cronies who gathered once every few weeks to play bridge and eat desserts named “Death by Chocolate” or “Killer Crème Brûlée” whipped up by the city’s best pastry chefs. It had zero to do with dieting, obviously.