The Good Girl's Guide to Murder (22 page)

“Good. I’m glad she’s better.”

“Yes, we’re very relieved. I think Justin was up all night, pacing the floor, worried sick about Kendall. He took off early this morning. He said something about going to the hospital to check on her.”

“Justin went to Medical City by himself?”
For crying out loud
. I just hoped that Nurse Alice had talked to Dr. Taylor about restricting Kendall’s visitors and had kept Justin out of the girl’s room. I still wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t some kind of threat to her, to her emotional stability at the very least.

“Yes, he went alone.” She rubbed her arms and sighed. “He’s such a sweet man, and he cares so much for both Kendall and myself. You can’t imagine how far he’d go in order to take care of us. He’s so devoted.”

Oh, yeah? I can do more than imagine. I saw for myself how much he cared for Kendall, right on that sofa
.

I had something to ask her, and I wasn’t sure how to put it. So I figured I’d blunder dead ahead. “Um, Marilee? I was wondering about something. I looked up long QT syndrome on the Web last night, and it’s often passed down from a parent to a child. So if Kendall has been diagnosed with it, there’s the possibility that either you or your ex-husband has the mutated gene as well . . . and the arrhythmia that goes with it. Have you ever had an ECG to check?”

“Please, Andrea, don’t worry about me.” She placed a hand on her chest. “I am fine, really. I’ve had checkups for insurance purposes for the past several years, and the physician for Twinkle Productions just gave me a clean bill of health. So let’s blame this one on Gil, shall we?” Her jaw tensed. “He is responsible for so much of Kendall’s pain as it is.”

The phone rang, screaming like a child for attention, and Marilee hustled over to her desk to pick it up. “Why, hello, Mr. Mayor.” Her drawl turned so molasses sweet that it’s a wonder she didn’t go into sugar shock. She perched a hip on the edge of her desk and twirled the cord around her finger. “Yes, yes, I’m fine, just fine, and we’re already at work rebuilding the set. Things should be back to normal in a few days’ time. No, no, the fire department didn’t fine us, though you’re a doll to offer to intercede . . . hold on a sec.” She put a hand over the mouthpiece and glanced at me, as if finally remembering I was there.

“Listen, hon, would you do me a big favor and scoot into the kitchen to see how Carson’s coming with the desserts for the Diet Club. Tell him we’re going to have to start packing up and heading to your mother’s house within the hour.”

“Sure, I’ll tell Carson,” I said.

“You’re a life saver.” She shot me a prom queen smile before turning back to her phone call.

Not that I wanted to hang around the place, but I was curious as to what the damage really looked like in broad daylight. I’d only seen the set in the dark. Actually, I’d mostly seen rubber boots sloshing through several inches of water on the floor as the nice fireman had caveman-carried me to safety.

Anyway, Marilee had basically given me a hall pass to roam around, so I figured I’d use it.

As I wove through the tunnel of hallways, moving from the back of the building toward the front, the cacophony of power tools grew louder until I felt a permanent buzzing fill the back of my ears.

Yellow tape blocked my path out into the studio set, though I wouldn’t have wanted to go farther anyway. Klieg-type lighting had been brought in with thick orange and black cables running to a humming generator. Men in plaid with hard hats and tool belts swarmed like bees, crawling up ladders, sawing plywood in half, using nail guns, and wet-dry vacuums, cleaning and replacing and restoring what the fire and the sprinklers had wrecked.

Dangling the purse from my wrist, I put my hands over my ears and stood to watch for a moment, impressed by all that testosterone in action. Several of the fellows nodded in my direction, and a wiry fellow with a long gray ponytail streaming from beneath his yellow hardhat graced me with a clear view of his butt crack as he squatted to check out an electrical circuit.

Oh, I’d say I saw a quarter-moon, maybe a half-moon. A little early in the day for a lunar sighting, but it gave me something to honestly grin about for the first time in twenty-four hours.

After a few minutes, I’d had my fill of men wielding power tools, and I took a back route to the test kitchen, where the actual food was prepared for Marilee’s show.

Until I’d spent time here, I hadn’t realized that Marilee had next to nothing to do with the actual cooking, baking, or craft projects that appeared on the episodes of
The Sweet Life
. Now I knew firsthand that people like Carson did the real work, and Marilee took the credit.

There were dozens of staff whose sole purpose it was just to figure out how to make puppets out of fabric remnants or how to turn burned-out light bulbs into Christmas ornaments by adding bric-a-brac and glitter.

Marilee merely had to stand in front of the cameras with the pieces of a project laid out before her—and a finished piece hidden behind the counter on a shelf—chatting casually in her down-home drawl about how she’d had to figure out this simple idea of using old dishtowels to create stuffed animals for children when she couldn’t afford to buy toys for her baby daughter all those years ago.

And the viewers bought it all, ate it up, if the ratings were any indication.

Ah, the magic of television
, I mused, as I crossed beneath the open archway that led from the hall into the kitchen.
Nothing was ever as it seemed
.

I stopped in the doorway, looking around for Carson’s bald head, surprised to see so many bodies running about. I’d thought maybe everything but the offices would be shut down until the studio kitchen was repaired, but apparently life—and electricity—went on in the test kitchen as well.

In some ways, the setting seemed a mirror image of the tableau I’d viewed with the workmen. A handful of people purposefully moved around the stainless-steel island and between the stainless-steel appliances. Mixers whirred, food processors spun, oven timers dinged. And an apron-wearing Carson Caruthers reigned above all, shouting instructions, pausing to stir a pot, stopping a mixer to check the consistency of batter. His placid-looking face seemed at ease, despite the hustle and bustle.

“Come on, gang, chop-chop,” he rallied the troops, clapping flour-whitened hands.

“Get those rum balls out of the fridge, Debbie, please.”

“But Marilee said she wanted them to chill at least two hours,” a ponytailed worker bee spoke up, before Carson shut her down with a growl.

“I don’t give a damn what Marilee said, you got that?” His placid expression turned fierce, caterpillar eyebrows scrunching together, creasing his hairless brow. “She may sign our paychecks, but the woman doesn’t know what’s best for my chocolate rum balls or anyone else’s balls, for that matter. Did she graduate from the Cordon Bleu? Ha! I’ll bet she couldn’t bake her way out of a box of Betty Crocker. Did she study pastry and chocolate-making in Italy with the famed Luca Mannori?” He wagged a finger. “No, no, no, I think not. So if anyone brings up her name again in my kitchen, they’re going to be sorry,” he promised and drew a floury finger line across his throat. “Sliced and diced, and set to stew in the crock pot.”

“Um, then I guess I’m the first ingredient,” I said and took a step farther into the room, hugging my pink evening bag to my belly as all eyes fell upon me, and not in a friendly way. “Because that person I’m not supposed to mention under penalty of death wanted me to remind you that you’d better have things packed up and ready to drive down to Highland Park within the hour.”

“Is that so?” Carson squinted at me, wrinkled up his nose, and asked, “And, to quote the venerable Roger Daltrey, who the hell are
you?
”

O
nce we got formalities out of the way—and got ourselves out of the way of the kitchen crew—Carson’s face relaxed, and I decided he wasn’t half bad looking. He reminded me of Kojak in disguise as a chef, a tough guy in an apron.

“I’ve seen you around the last couple of weeks, haven’t I?” He crossed well-muscled arms and leaned against the wall in the rear hallway, nodding as he checked me out. “Usually you’re with Marilee, so I wasn’t sure if you were cozy with her. And I only came down from New York a few months ago, so I’m still learning how things work around here. Who I can trust.”

“My mother is a good friend of Marilee, but I’m just an innocent bystander,” I assured him.

“Your mother?”

“Cissy Kendricks. The show is taping at her house this afternoon. She’s one of the founding mothers of the Dallas Diet Club.”

“Ah, gotcha.” There was a hint of Brooklyn in his accent, which you didn’t hear much in Dallas. He ran his fingers over his smooth pate, smearing a bit of flour on his skull. “I don’t understand this whole Diet Club thing. How’s it a diet club if all they do is eat desserts?”

I grinned. “My mother and her friends were tired of everyone they knew being on Pritikin or Atkins, so they formed the Diet Club as revenge. It’s really an antidiet club, and there’s a waiting line a mile long to get in. Pretty much someone has to die to make room for a new member.”

“You’re kidding?”

“If you make it exclusive, they will come,” I told him. “At least in the Park Cities.”

“The Park Cities?”

“Highland Park, where my mother lives, and University Park, where Southern Methodist University is located. Pretty much, that’s where the Old Money is.”

“Ah, like Park Avenue in Manhattan.”

“Exactly like that, Mr. Caruthers.”

“Carson, please,” he said, smiling right back at me. He had such nice straight teeth, and I was a sucker for a good smile. “Mr. Caruthers is my old man, and he still lives in Flatbush.”

“Okay, Carson.” I had to glance down, away from his thick-lashed blue eyes.

A guy who could whip things up in the kitchen and not look half-bad without hair on his head made a dangerous combination. Just to have something to do, I fiddled with the rectangular silver links on the Escada bag.

“Look, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression about what you heard in there a few minutes ago,” he picked up the slack. “It’s not that I hate the Divine Ms. M, it’s just that she rubs me wrong. She tends to interfere with my creative process. I realize she’s the star of the show—hell, she
is
the show—but she’s really no more than an actress. You’ve been around long enough to know how things work, right? Everyone else does the crafts and the cooking and the gardening, and she just pretends in front of the camera.” He rubbed his palms on his chocolate-smeared apron. “You ever been to her house?” he asked.

“No.” My mother had, but I’d never had a reason to go.

He set his hands on his hips. “Behind this freaking enormous mansion, she’s got at least an acre of land. She’s got a pen for the geese, a hen house for chickens, incredible gardens, and even a man-made pond for her organic catfish that’s bigger than the Y’s swimming pool. But you think she gets her own hands dirty?” He shook his head. “No way. Just like here, she’s got people who take care of everything. Marilee’s forte is running things with her mouth, if you get my drift.” His own mouth screwed up, like he was chewing on the inside of his lip. Then he lifted his hands, gesturing surrender. “But who the hell am I to comment, right? I’m just a minion.”

I remembered what Janet Graham had told me, that he was some big deal in New York until
The Sweet Life
had lured him here to take over as the food editor. I got the feeling he was second-guessing his decision.

“I saw Marilee come down kind of hard on you last night before the party,” I told him, and his eyes rounded. “Is it tough for someone of your reputation to be working for a woman who’s so . . .”

“Bitchy?” he finished for me and chuckled. “Hey, pardon my French.”

“I was going to say ‘controlling.’”

He shrugged. “Same difference. Technically, I don’t work
for
Marilee. Twinkle Productions hired me, not her. But she pretty much pushes the buttons. If she doesn’t like someone, pffft”—he jerked a thumb across his throat—“so I’m always on my toes, mostly trying to avoid her so we don’t come to blows. Sometimes it works. Sometimes not so well. But I keep tellin’ myself that this show is good exposure, and I’ve gotta put up with the woman, even when she’s yanking my short hairs.” A deep purple stain rose upward from his neck, as if the mere thought of Marilee getting on his nerves was enough to pump up his blood pressure.

“Do you know Kendall well?”

He squinted. “Marilee’s kid?”

“You heard about what happened to her, I presume.”

“She got hurt during the fire at the party?”

“Um, sort of. She’s in the hospital,” I told him. “She had a bad reaction to something she ingested.”

His eyes widened. “Ingested? As in something she
ate?
Not here? Please tell me it wasn’t something from the buffet?”

Like the foie gras? I felt tempted to ask, but refrained.

“No, no, the doctors think she had too much of one of those herbal supplements she’s been taking”—at the behest of Justin Gable, Chinese herbalist and personal trainer. “Though maybe it was the champagne, that special vintage Marilee had been saving.” And had apparently swiped from her ex-husband. “Was that particular bottle stored in a public place? In the kitchen maybe, where anyone would have access to it?”

“Yeah, yeah, there’s a wine refrigerator, and a humidity-controlled wine closet. Neither one is locked, if that’s what you’re asking. The Dom, it was a 1973, right?” He scrunched up his forehead. “Did the bottle go bad?”

“Um, in a way,” I said. “But she’s all right. Kendall, I mean.”

“Glad to hear it. She’s a little off, but she ain’t had it easy.” He glanced toward the kitchen, where voices and the clang of pots and pans kept floating out. “The girl hangs around a lot. She likes to tell people she’s Marilee’s assistant, but I think it’s in name only. Marilee can’t keep a real assistant to save her life. I’ve seen two, three of them come and go already, and I haven’t been here that long.”