Too Pretty to Die (7 page)

I’d never thought of Miranda DuBois as someone who gave up easily. She’d always had such a fight in her.

“This is crazy,” I whispered, and Anna Dean looked up from the notebook she’d been writing in.

“Did you say something, Andy?”

I bit my lip, shaking my head.

She moved on to her next question: “So you ended up driving Ms. DuBois home from the party? She was incapable of driving herself? Why was that?”

“She was drunk,” I said, deciding there was no reason to lie. I did leave out the fact that Miranda had reeked like she’d bathed in gin, as if she’d been drinking for hours beforehand. Why slander a dead woman?

“You left her car there?”

“Yes, and her keys,” I told Anna Dean. “Delaney swore she’d have someone bring the Jag over today. I hadn’t considered that we might not get into Miranda’s place. But when we pulled up, the front door was unlocked and the garage door was open. Though I made sure everything was shut tight before I took off.”

“What about her gun? Did you see it?”

“Her gun?”

“Did she have it with her when you brought her home? As in, on her person,” the deputy chief clarified.

That one I could answer with a good dose of certainty. “No, Miranda was unarmed when I packed her into the Jeep.”

Like, I would’ve given her a lift if she’d been drunkenly waving her .22.

Right.

“Are you sure?” Anna Dean didn’t look at all pleased with my response.

“Without a doubt,” I told her, because I knew I was telling the truth. “At the party, someone else picked up the gun after Miranda dropped it.”

The policewoman didn’t take a breath before pouncing on that one.

“Who picked it up, Andy?”

“One of the other guests, I assume, or maybe Delaney since it was her house. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “All I know is Miranda didn’t take it.”

“But you didn’t see who retrieved it?”

Um, that was kinda like asking if Dorothy recalled all the bits of debris blown around by the twister.

“It was awfully chaotic at the time,” I explained, picturing the crazed crowd of people in Delaney’s living room after the shot rang out. “All I remember is trying to help Miranda up and noticing that the gun was gone. Someone else must have grabbed it.”

Someone other than Miranda.

“So you’re saying unequivocally that Miranda DuBois didn’t pocket her own gun?” Anna Dean came at me from a different angle. “You’d be willing to make a formal statement to that effect?”

Man, she was nothing if not persistent.

I was sure, yeah.

But was I
unequivocally
sure?

Enough to swear to it in a police report?

Gulp.

Miranda hadn’t exactly been wearing a muumuu, seeing as how she’d had on skintight jeans and a T-shirt with a bright pink blazer. I’d skimmed the blazer off her shoulders before she sprawled out on her couch, and it wasn’t like her gun had fallen out of a pocket; because it hadn’t.

But was I one hundred percent positive without a reasonable doubt, not even a teensy-weensy ounce of “maybe”?

I sighed. “I guess I can’t be certain, no. Not a hundred percent.”

Even ninety-nine percent sure left one percent wiggle room.

“Thank you for your honesty, Andy.” The deputy chief gleamed approval at me as she squared her shoulders and scribbled down another note.

Why so much interest in Miranda’s .22?

It wasn’t like she’d done any damage with it except to Delaney’s artwork, though Anna Dean seemed to be trying awfully hard to put Miranda’s gun back here, at the duplex, after the Pretty Party.

Oh, crud.

Deputy Dean’s insinuations smacked me upside the head.

Call me dense, but, by George, I think I finally got it.

“Is that what killed her?” I ventured to ask, my voice meek as a mouse. “She was shot with her own gun?”

“I’ll let the M.E. determine cause of death, if that’s all right with you, Andy, and then we’ll know more,” was all the deputy chief would offer. “I don’t want any misinformation leaking to the press prematurely.”

I’d take that as a yes.

I didn’t say it, but I was thinking it.

The instrument of death must’ve been Miranda’s own gun.

“Who found her?” I asked, because it seemed benign enough, and I was wondering whether if I’d arrived any earlier, would it have been me.

The deputy chief blew out her cheeks, obviously mulling over what she wanted to share with me. “The woman who lives in the duplex next door heard noises in the early hours of the morning.”

“What kind of noises?”

“A woman’s raised voice and then a pop, like a door slamming. She said it wasn’t the first time she’d been awakened by sounds coming from next door. Ms. DuBois could apparently throw quite the temper tantrum,” the policewoman explained. “So Mrs. Cameron assumed it was nothing and went back to sleep.”

Of course she had.

This was Highland Park.

No one woke to noises and assumed something nefarious was going on next door. Any thumps in the night were likely caused by the hired help sneaking leftover tiramisu from the fridge, spoiled teens without curfews slipping in the back door, or a restless ghost.

“Around 6:00
A.M.
, Mrs. Cameron went outside to retrieve her newspaper,” Anna Dean went on, “and she noticed the front door to Ms. DuBois’s duplex was ajar . . . ”

Ajar
?

“But . . . ” I’d shut and locked it when I’d taken off. I’d double-checked to make sure, even though I hadn’t closed the dead bolt because I didn’t have the key. Had Miranda gotten up sometime during the night and wandered out? Or, perhaps, let someone in? She’d been so zonked out when I’d departed that either seemed unlikely.

“ . . . Mrs. Cameron knocked at first then let herself in, sensing something was wrong. She discovered Ms. DuBois on the living room sofa.”

Right where I’d left her.

So, a nearly comatose Miranda had awakened from a drunken stupor, unlocked and opened the front door, before lying back down on the sofa to kill herself?

“That can’t be right—” I started to protest, but Anna Dean didn’t seem inclined to listen to my protests.

Maybe she was used to those around the victim saying,
No, that couldn’t have happened. She wouldn’t have gone there, done that.

I wet my lips, moving in a different direction, figuring there was surely one thing that would prove one of us right and the other wrong. “Did she leave a note?”

“We haven’t found one, no. But we did find this.” Deputy Dean produced another plastic bag, sliding it across the counter.

The paper within the bag was crumpled, but not so I couldn’t read it.

“Do you know what the Caviar Club is?” she asked, and I shook my head.

“No.” I’d never heard of it, though it sounded like any one of innumerable private cliques around the city, part of why I liked staying out of the world of the Dallas glitterati. The games they played made my head hurt. And this one apparently didn’t want a member who had an eye tic or a droopy mouth.

“Could be a wine- or food-tasting club,” I said, the best guess I could offer. “Those are popular. But why would they kick her out just because she had an eye twitch and a sneer?”

“Whatever it is, rejection can be killer,” Anna Dean said soberly, and I silently concurred.

Too many women these days sought acceptance in places they shouldn’t; and, when they didn’t get it, life seemed hopeless.

Had Miranda’s botched injections made her feel like her life was over? Had she made a middle-of-the-night snap decision to forego retaliation and book a stay six feet under?

You
could
be too rich or too thin, I thought. Or too pretty.

I sighed, passing the plastic-encased note back to the deputy chief. I mumbled an apology, wishing I knew more, wanting so much to shed light on what had happened; but I was just as confused as she was about Miranda DuBois’s final moments.

“Did you check her computer?” I asked, as it had been sitting right there on the coffee table near the sofa. “Maybe Miranda left some kind of message on it.”

Deputy Dean squished up her forehead. “What computer, Andy?”

“Her laptop,” I said. “It was in the living room. I turned it to sleep mode before I left because the screen was so bright.”

The deputy chief fairly squinted at me. “There was no laptop in there, Andy. Perhaps she put it away after you left. We’ll look around.”

I suddenly thought of something else. “Did you check her phone for the last number dialed?” I asked. I just couldn’t fathom Miranda pulling her own plug without reaching out to someone. Like her mother. They’d always been so tight. “Maybe she tried to call someone.”

“We’re still looking for her cell phone.”

No laptop or cell?

“That’s odd,” I said, because it was. “And you don’t think she was burgled?”

Deputy Dean looked affronted. “The house appears neat and intact, but we’re being very thorough, rest assured of that. And if you don’t mind”—her voice turned impatient—“how about you leave the questions to me?”

I shut up, my cheeks no doubt a warm shade of pink.

“All right, then”—her calm restored, she continued the grilling—“what time did you leave?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, warding off a vaguely woozy sensation, then forced myself to look directly at the policewoman, wanting desperately to emulate her cool exterior and feeling anything but. In fact, I was feeling downright nauseous.

“It was around nine-thirty.” My mouth tasted funny, as if I’d swallowed old mothballs. “I spoke to Mother on my cell first. Cissy Kendricks of Beverly Drive,” I clarified. “I can give you her number if you want to double-check with her. I’m sure she knows exactly how long we talked. She was, um, in the middle of something, and I interrupted her.”

“Oh, I’ve got Cissy’s number,” she said.

I would’ve laughed under any other circumstance. Instead, I laced my fingers together to steady them and nodded. “Of course you do.” I remembered then that my mother and Anna Dean had cause to connect, beyond the dead body in the living room. Cissy had joined the deputy chief in chairing the most recent Widows and Orphans fund-raiser.

“Go on, Andy,” Deputy Dean’s firm voice nudged. “What happened after you hung up with your mother?”

“Yeah, after.” I cleared my throat. “I took off for home about five minutes later, once I was sure Miranda was fast asleep and locked in.” I turned my hands palms up on the granite island. “That was it, really. I didn’t hear from Miranda, so I figured she’d slept through the night. I came back this morning to see if she was okay.” Despite myself, tears welled, and I sniffled. “I should never have left her alone, should I?”

But Anna Dean obviously didn’t have any comforting words to offer. I doubted anyone could say anything that would make me feel better about this.

“When you talked to your mother, did you mention to her where you were? Who you were with?” she quizzed.

“Yes.” My head bobbed. “I’d called to ask for help. Cissy’s lifelong friends with Miranda’s mother, Debbie Santos, and I thought Cissy might phone Mrs. Santos and let her know how upset Miranda was. I thought she might need someone with her to support her, someone close.”

Much closer to her than I ever was.

“Mother suggested I bring Miranda to Beverly Drive, so she and Sandy could keep an eye on her. But Miranda was sound asleep. I hadn’t wanted to wake her.” My voice cracked as I said it, wishing in hindsight I’d done things differently.

“Did you say Miranda’s mom’s name is Santos?” Anna Dean’s pen stopped moving. “It isn’t DuBois?”

“Not anymore. She’s been married more times than Elizabeth Taylor,” I explained, “and her latest husband was Ernesto Santos, a diamond importer from South America. They’re divorced.”

“Ah,” said the deputy chief, stopping pen again to ask me, “Do you have a number where Mrs. Santos can be reached? That would save us some time digging up the information ourselves.”

Speaking of South America.

“She’s in Brazil, on a two month vacation,” I said, repeating the line provided by my mother. “The, um, spa where she’s staying doesn’t allow cell phones, and they have no television, radio, Internet, or landlines.”

I didn’t add that the plastic surgeons who’d be overseeing Mrs. Santos’s “vacation” didn’t allow distractions to healing . . . well, besides the cabana boys in Speedos, or so I’d heard. “Cissy might know some way to reach her,” I offered.

Mother had connections everywhere. She could pull strings like nobody’s business, which sometimes came in mighty handy.

“Are there any siblings?”

“No.” That was one thing Miranda and I had found in common. We were both only children.

“Where’s her father?”

“Dead,” I said, and proceeded to recount what I knew about Jack Reynolds DuBois having been killed in a yachting accident; around two years after my father had his fatal heart attack. Miranda had been in college.

Make that two things Miranda and I had shared: losing our daddies.

The deputy chief sighed, and none too happily. “That’ll make it hard to contact her next of kin.”

“I guess it will.”

The knot of responsibility in my belly had turned into an ache, and I tried not to dwell on the fact that Miranda had been alone in the end. She had one of the most famous faces (and cleavage) in all of Dallas, and yet she’d had no hand to hold when she needed it most.

It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been her bosom buddy.

That I’d barely seen her since prep school graduation had no bearing.

A girl I’d known had died.

And I’d likely been the last person who saw her alive.

The last one who could’ve helped, who might have made her change her mind . . .

Aw, crap.

That did it, plain and simple, and all my emotions flooded up to the surface.

Sobs rose in my throat, and I put my hands to my face.