The Good Girl's Guide to Murder (11 page)

“You’re right. Bad idea.” She set down the spreader and slipped the tainted toast point into a napkin, balling it up in her fist. For a moment, I feared she’d stick the wad into the pocket of her tangerine-colored pants suit, but instead she casually dropped it on the floor and nudged it under the serving table with her heel. As for the bowl on the buffet, she pushed it behind a vase of lilies and draped a linen napkin atop it. “Do tell me what’s safe to nibble on, Andy? And, please, say the caviar canapés are free of bodily fluids?”

So far as I knew
.

I nodded.

“So what’s the dirt?” She asked as she feasted on fish eggs. “Did Marilee make somebody mad in the kitchen? Like that’d be the first time she ticked off someone on her staff. She’s got a turnstile on her employee door, they come and go so fast.”

“She pissed off a guy named Carson. He does something with food on her show.”

Her eyes got as wide as shooter marbles. “Carson Caruthers?”

“If we’re talking about the same man, then he’s bald as a cue ball.”

“Right-o.”

“She reamed him out in front of the rest of her crew,” I dished. “Something about putting the foie gras out too soon and using water crackers instead of toast points.”

“Good Lord.” Janet appeared about to swoon. “He’s the hot young chef that Twinkle Productions imported from Manhattan to take over the job as Marilee’s food editor. I can’t believe she’d risk yelling at him in front of the staff.”

“They’ve got to be paying him an arm and a leg,” I opined. “That’s the only way she seems to keep people around.”

Janet scanned the room before leaning nearer to whisper, “Marilee’s on a power trip that she didn’t pack for, Andy. It’s like she’s bound and determined to make as many enemies as she can. You should’ve seen her at Mrs. Perot’s luncheon last week. I swear on my mama’s grave that I haven’t seen anyone put on such diva airs since that cut-rate duchess came to town. Marilee might as well have a tiara soldered to her forehead.”

I snagged a champagne flute from a passing tray and sipped, the bubbles tickling my nose. “What’d she do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Tried to steal the spotlight, is all. Well, she did more than try, she succeeded,” Janet said, her gaze roving about the room all the while. “She played demure until Mrs. Perot was about to hand over a nice-sized check to the Salvation Army fellow, all dressed up in his uniform. Then right as the
Morning News
photographer was about to snap a photo, Marilee popped out of her seat, flung herself in front of Mrs. P., and whipped out a big ol’ check of her own. Bigger than Mrs. Perot’s by at least a zero. So guess which picture made the paper?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Janet drew an
X
across her heart to prove it was no lie.

Marilee might’ve mimicked my mother’s style of dress, but she certainly lacked Cissy’s finesse.

“Unbelievable,” I said between sips.

“I’ve been doing some research on Marilee’s rags-to-riches story, and there’s a lot more to her than anybody knows,” Janet went on, keeping her voice low.

“Like what?” I asked, licking my lips after another swallow of Dom, then setting aside my glass.

“Her mother died when she was ten, and her father practically abandoned her on the chicken farm. He’d go on benders, hit the road and not come back for weeks at a time. A few of the neighbors felt sorry for her, tried to help out. Gave her feed for the fowl, left her casseroles and hand-me-downs.”

Though I’d heard about the loss of her mother, the rest was certainly a chapter of Marilee’s life I hadn’t been privy to, and I wondered if growing up so quickly is what had turned the woman into such a control freak.

“Her father left her to fend for herself when she was ten?” I felt a lump in my throat just thinking about it. “Didn’t anyone bother to call in social services?”

Janet waved dismissively. “Oh, hell, Andy, that was back in the early sixties, and we’re talking a
rural
community. Stybr, Texas. A teensy-weensy bump in the road between Tyler and Longview. The kind of place that still had a one-room schoolhouse until about five years ago. Sometimes the village did raise the child in those days, or close to it. I found one of Marilee’s old teachers—and I mean
old
—and she told me the girl showed up for class like clockwork until she was sixteen. So she wasn’t truant. Though she did disappear for a spell before she was set to graduate. I’m still digging into that. By then, her daddy had lost the farm to taxes and no one’s sure where she went. I heard she lived with an aunt, taking care of the woman during an illness, before she went back to Stybr long enough to finish school so she could get into college and get out for good.”

I realized suddenly how little I really knew about Marilee Mabry, and I wondered if Mother was even privy to the whole sordid story.

The idea that Marilee had been left to raise herself—off and on—when she wasn’t yet a teenager, amazed me. I couldn’t imagine being alone at that age, not for a day much less for weeks at a time. I thought of how she must have felt, frightened and more than a little lost. Maybe even unloved.

“Her father’s long since passed away, and so have many of the neighboring farmers who’d known Marilee Haggerty when she was a kid. Most of her peers have taken off, too, but I’ve been able to dig up a few old-timers, and the one teacher who remembers her. But I’m not having much luck tracking down her aunt.”

“Why don’t you confront Marilee? Could be the reason no one knows about where she went is because no one’s ever asked her.”

Janet nearly spit out a mouthful of fish eggs. “Confront Marilee? Hmm. Maybe I’ll just douse myself in lighter fluid and throw myself on the grill at Burger King. It’d be a lot less painful.”

“She wouldn’t tell you, would she?”

Janet sighed. “No, dammit. I’d naively assumed she’d scratch my back since I’ve been scratching hers for the past few years, putting her name in my column until it became a household word, at least in this city. Oh, she’ll be sweet as pie to me if I ask about her show or her books, but if I try to dig too deep into her past, I’m hearing a dial tone just like that”—she snapped her fingers, the tips painted the same bright orange shade as her pants suit. “She could’ve made something up, and I wouldn’t have questioned her. Now she’s got me wondering what she’s hiding.”

“Hmm,” I said, because it did seem odd that Marilee would turn down free press, especially with
The Sweet Life
so soon to premiere in the national arena. “I’d imagine she’d like the ink, even if it had to do with her less-than-perfect childhood. Really, what could a teenaged girl have done thirty years ago that was such a big deal?”

“I have my theories, and I aim to find out if I’m on the money. Then she’ll be sorry for the kind of ink I’m gonna give her,” Janet murmured and turned away, becoming extremely interested in the bruschetta.

Abnormally interested.

“She’ll be sorry? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you planning a feature article for the paper? Like an exposé? Something down and dirty?”

“I can’t exactly . . . maybe I shouldn’t . . . oh, hell.” She stuffed a bite of bruschetta in her mouth and looked off in the distance.

“Janet, hey, it’s me, Andy, remember?” I wiggled my fingers in front of her nose. “What’s going on? You know you can tell me anything.”

“Oh, gosh, I think I see Bootsie Ann Wyatt standin’ over by the plasma screen, if you’d excuse me, sugar . . .”

I put a hand on her arm to keep her from bolting.

“
Janet Rutledge Graham
.”

Calling her by her full name—or at least three of them—was the surest way I knew to take her to task. Get her to spill her guts.

But she clammed up instead. Her mouth pinched into a line so tight it would’ve taken a crowbar to pry it open.

Which was strange and so unlike her, at least with me.

I’d known Janet since we were kids, though she was three years my senior. As I’d often felt like one of the lone individualists at the Hockaday School, I’d admired those who didn’t mind standing out. And Janet never failed to set herself apart from the crowd, even in our uniform of plaid skirts and knee socks. Her hair changed color regularly. Some mornings it was blond; other times, a brassy orange or shoe-polish black. She wrote for the school paper, but her true love was drama. She starred in virtually every play or musical until she graduated and went off to UT-Austin, where she ended up majoring in journalism. And I always thought she’d end up in New York on an afternoon soap or an off-Broadway stage.

While I was still in Chicago at art school, Janet began working at the Park Cities paper, covering lots of Mother’s causes on her beat, everything from school board meetings to Girl Scout cookie sales to weddings. Cissy sent me plenty of clippings, all with Janet’s byline, until the prolific Ms. Graham was promoted to “society editor.”

When I returned to Dallas, Janet was the first to hear the news from my mother, which quickly turned to fodder for her column.

“Our favorite debutante dropout’s back in town! You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl, which is why Andrea Blevins Kendricks decided to pack her bags and return to Big D from the Windy City,” she’d written about my homecoming.

I’d called her at the paper shortly after, asking why she wasn’t reporting for the
New York Times
instead of fawning over socialites at sorority alumnae teas, and she’d confessed that she adored her job, that going to the endless string of galas and luncheons with high society was akin to the very best theatre. “It’s real drama, Andy, better than fiction,” she’d gushed, as if I hadn’t recognized that fact very early on with Cissy as my role model.

We kept our friendship up-to-date by meeting for lunch once in a while; but her world revolved around gossip, and she knew I really didn’t care much about the blue bloods who were the gristmill for her columns. So we didn’t talk shop much, mostly we’d yammered about men and the lack of them in our lives.

But I was curious about her suddenly nosing around in Marilee Mabry’s background, more so because she didn’t want to tell me. Unless there was some reason she didn’t want
anyone
to know what she was up to, like it was some deep, dark secret.

Wait a dad-gummed minute
.

A light bulb flickered.

Could it be?

Despite the growing hum of voices, I could hear a tiny warning bell go off in my brain.

“You’re the one writing the unauthorized biography, aren’t you?” I ventured to ask, and Janet’s cheeks turned near as red as her hair.

“I plead the Fifth,” she said.

Which could only mean one thing.

I’d struck crude.

I downed the champagne that remained in my flute and set it aside, leaning a hip against the edge of the buffet table, shaking my head.

“Oh, my God.” The realization struck me silly, and I grinned like an idiot, looking up at her. “It
is
you. You’re writing the book about Marilee. And it’s going to be down and dirty, isn’t it?”

Janet’s crimson curls flew this way and that as she quickly looked around us, making sure no one had overheard. Then she grabbed my hand and squeezed hard enough to wipe the smile off my mouth.

“You’ve gotta promise to keep mum about this,” she quietly pleaded. “Or Marilee’ll be down at the courthouse with her lawyers, filing some kind of injunction to keep me from doing this project. And it’s important to me, Andy.” Her skin looked suddenly pale against the vivid tangerine of her jacket. “This could make my career. It could be my ticket to
Oprah
. I could finally meet Katie Couric in person,” she whispered, breathless.

Katie Couric was Janet’s idol.

I wasn’t so sure that much of her fascination with Ms. Couric didn’t have to do with the hairdo, which Janet did her best to mimic in every way except the ever-changing color.

Despite the longish bangs that kept falling into her face, I managed to hold her eyes and swear solemnly, “I won’t say a word about the book. You know me better than that, for Pete’s sake. Besides, who would I tell? My mother?” I laughed.

She didn’t.

“You think I’d tell Cissy?” Now
that
was funny. “I don’t think I’ve confided in my mother since I was twelve and got my period.”

And that was definitely a moment I’d rather forget.

“Promise me you’ll keep quiet.” She gripped my fingers more tightly, so that I momentarily lost sensation.

“Girl Scout’s honor. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. My lips are sealed.” With my free hand, I feigned locking my mouth shut and tossing the key.

“All right. I believe you.” Janet sighed and let go.

And not a moment too soon.

I’d been on the verge of crying “uncle.” I massaged my white knuckles to get the circulation going.

She turned her head, scanning the room and the ever-growing crowd that loitered about, chatting and drinking. “Speaking of Cissy, has she arrived yet? I figure I would’ve seen her if she’d made her grand entrance already.”

“It’s barely a quarter past eight,” I reminded Janet. “Way too early for Mother to be fashionably late.”

A slow sweep of the studio—the parts I could see—revealed a contingent of politicians from city hall, half the population of Highland Park, and lots of designing types from artsy Deep Ellum boutiques and swanky Lovers Lane antiques shops, men too well dressed and styled to be hetero; unless a few metrosexuals had slipped through the cracks (translation: men purportedly attracted to women who spent nearly as much time at the salon as the gym).

My gaze skimmed over plenty of blondes with hair teased and sprayed to such proportions they looked like bobble-head dolls. Such was the Texas way.

I caught a few strains of the harpist playing something Mozart when Janet gasped and grabbed my arm.

“Ah, it’s Babette von Werner and her grandpa . . . oops, I mean, her hubby.”

“You gonna write that in your column?”

“Not unless I want to get canned, since Fritz von Werner’s company just bought out the newspaper.” She snorted. “But it’s the God’s honest truth.”