Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery (31 page)

I wanted to reach out to her, to reassure her with a touch, to tell her things would be all right. But that was too big a lie, one I couldn’t even bring myself to tell.

Besides, what she’d done had put my friend in jail.

I couldn’t forget that, no matter how hard I tried.

“You stabbed Bud Hartman.”

It seemed to take a minute for her to digest what I’d said.

Then, abruptly, she laughed. The sound made me jump, it was so unexpected.

“I only wish I’d done something sooner. Then my baby would never have been hurt. She’d still be whole. She’d be home.” She hung her head, adding hoarsely, “I should have stopped him long ago.”

“You went to see him that night.” The scenario played in my head, how it must have gone down. “You had on dark scrubs and a baseball hat, and you wore booties to cover your shoes and latex gloves so you wouldn’t leave prints. You hid until after the restaurant closed and everyone left. But Molly was still there. She’d stayed to help Bud.”

She didn’t interrupt to tell me I was wrong, so I kept going.

“You saw what happened between them. You watched him attack her . . . watched her grab the knife and cut him in the face. And then you picked up the knife after she ran out, and you plunged it deep into his back.”

Peggy shook all over, and she hugged herself as if that would steady her.

It didn’t.

“I wanted to make him suffer for what he did to my baby. I wanted him to hurt the way that he’d hurt her.” Mucus ran from her nose, wetting her lips. “I’d brought along a syringe filled with insulin. I wanted to scare him, to make him sick and afraid of me, scared enough to leave the girls alone.” Her eyes flickered, moving, reliving it all over again. “If he hadn’t forced himself on your friend, he might still be alive. If he had only let her go.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else. “I’m sorry for what happened to Sarah. I’m sorry for you.” But there was more I had to know. “What about Fred Hicks? Why’d you go after him, too?”

She wiped a hand beneath her nose. “He saw me leave the restaurant before he found the body. He knew who I was, because of the protests. He’d learned I was divorced from a doctor and that I’d opened the clinic, so he figured I had money. He called me here and demanded I pay him or he’d go to the police and tell them I was the one who murdered Hartman.”

“How much did he want?”

“Fifty thousand.”

My mouth formed an
O,
and I realized it might as well have been fifty million to someone like Peggy Martin. Hicks had been wrong in assuming Peggy had cash to spare, if my mother’s sources at the Junior League had gotten it right about her pouring her divorce settlement into funding the clinic. No wonder she’d felt so backed against the wall.

“I didn’t have that much, and there was no way I could get it.” She paced the room once more before she slumped against the exam room door. “Hicks was heading to the airport and wanted the cash before he took off, so I arranged to meet him behind the closed-up peep show. I wore clean scrubs and booties, and I had on gloves, but it was too dark for him to notice until it was too late. I shot him up with the insulin, and he reacted to it quickly. I waited until he was unconscious, then I checked his pockets. He had nearly five thousand in cash in an envelope inside his jacket.”

The missing money from the bank deposit bag. Hicks had stolen it.

“I figured he wouldn’t be needing it, so I took it.” Her eyes begged me to understand. “The clinic is always running in the red, and I put it to good use, thinking it would help make up for what . . . what I’d done.” She flung her arms in the air, and then wrapped them around her middle. “It’s all his fault. All . . . his . . . fault.”

I blamed Bud Hartman, too, for all the trouble he’d caused.

“You’ll have to talk to the police,” I said softly, taking a cautious step toward her. “You can’t let another woman—another mother—pay for a crime she didn’t commit.”

“I know,” she sobbed, sliding down against the door, sinking to the floor, and burying her head in her knees. “I know, I know, I know.”

I thought I’d feel different when I found the truth, when I’d proved Molly’s innocence. Like I’d won the lottery.

But I didn’t.

“Kendricks, are you in there?”

A fist pounded the door.

Malone.

“Is everything all right? Can you hear me?”

He banged again.

“Andy?”

“I’m okay,” I called back, quickly lifting my glasses to rub the damp from my eyes, while across the room, Peggy Martin moaned and rocked herself, wounded beyond repair. “It’s going to be all right,” I told him.

Another lie.

One too many.

“W
ould you like more tea, Andy?”

I glanced up into Sandy’s smiling face and shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m fine.” My glass of iced tea was still more than half full.

“How about you, Cissy?”

“Just a little would be lovely.”

Sandy topped off her glass, set down the pitcher, then descended the stone steps toward the lawn below where David rolled around on the grass with the new puppy Mother had given him. At least it was a cocker spaniel and not a Great Dane, so maybe Molly wouldn’t have a heart attack when she saw the pair when Malone arrived with her—I checked my wristwatch—any minute.

I looked over to the chaise longue where Mother had settled herself. She’d donned a hat and sunglasses to protect herself from the sun streaming on the back terrace. All she needed was a cigarette in one of those long holders, and she’d have been a dead ringer for Gloria Swanson in
Sunset Boulevard.

Okay, maybe not a dead ringer, but close enough.

She caught me grinning at her and said, “You certainly look like the cat who swallowed the canary.”

I didn’t let on to her what I’d actually been thinking. I doubt she would’ve found the comparison to Norma Desmond flattering.

Instead, I tipped my chin toward the lawn, where David and Sandy alternated tossing a ball to the puppy. “I do believe you’re going to miss him.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said and sniffed, closing her
Town & Country
with a snap and setting it down in her lap. But I saw the twitch of emotion at her mouth, and I knew I was right.

“Mother?”

“Well, he is well behaved.”

“Molly’s a good mom,” I quietly commented.

Though Cissy didn’t agree with me, neither did she disagree. Which I figured boded well for Molly. Mother could have just as easily made a snide comment about “that scholarship girl” who’d been arrested for murder.

But she didn’t.

“Maybe you could help her out,” I dared to suggest. “You know everyone who’s anyone in Dallas. She can’t go back to Jugs, and she has to support herself and David. She always did love fashion, so maybe Terry Costa or the Gazebo?”

“I might be able to arrange something,” she murmured from beneath the wide brim of her hat, and I knew it was as good as done.

“I want to tell you how, um, great you’ve been through all of this, Mother, and how much I, uh, appreciate your, er, assistance,” I stammered, sounding like Malone when he got riled up. My family didn’t do emotions well. They were awkward. Like hugs. Neither the Blevins nor the Kendricks had ever embraced sentimentality. Believe it or not, I was the sappiest of the bunch.

She turned to me, pulling her 1930s-style Donna Karan shades down to the tip of her powdered nose to reveal the twinkle in her pale blue gaze. “You might not feel so grateful when you find out what it’ll cost you.”

I sank back against the cushions and groaned. “I’ll accept whatever punishment you dish out. Just
please
don’t recruit me to walk the runway at one of your charity fashion shows. You know how I hate to play dress up.”

“Really? So those purple shorts and tight T-shirt were, what, a new look for you?”

Oh, hell.

I turned to glare at her, and she winked.

The second time she’d done that in a week. What was going on?

“I think you’ll rather enjoy what I’ve got planned for you, Andrea, dear. I certainly will,” she added with a laugh as disconcerting as breaking crystal.

“Mother.” I didn’t like the sound of this. In fact, it frightened me. “Maybe we should talk about whatever you . . .”

My plea was drowned out by a joyful squeal.

“Mommy!”

David dropped the red ball he’d been about to toss to the cocker and rushed across the lawn as Molly and Malone appeared around the corner of the house.

Getting to my feet, I scurried over to the low stone wall and waited, a shiver dashing up my spine as I watched Molly lift her son into her arms. She held on to him, burying her face in his shoulder, turning round and round until I thought she might fall down, dizzy.

“Baby, my baby,” I heard her saying over and over as she planted kisses on his face.

“I wanted to make him suffer for what he did to my baby.”

For an instant, Peggy Martin’s sobs rang in my ears.

I had to remind myself that life wasn’t always fair.

Molly let David down, and they both fell to the grass, giggling.

Her gaze came to rest on me, and I grinned.

The smile she gave me in return made me feel like I floated on air.

Okay, maybe life
was
fair on occasion.

Malone loped up the stone steps and stood beside me.

“So it’s over,” I said as he tried to smooth down wavy hair ruffled by the wind.

“It’s definitely over,” he assured me. “All charges against Molly have been dropped. They couldn’t hold her, not after they had Peggy Martin’s confession and the digitally enhanced tape.”

“Poor Peggy,” I whispered, turning so that my hip touched the low wall. “It’s all so horrible.”

“Poor Peggy stabbed a man to death and put another man in a coma,” Malone said, as if I needed reminding. He loosened the paisley-print tie at his throat and unbuttoned the top buttons of his starched yellow shirt.

“Bud had violated her daughter, or have you forgotten?” I nudged him with my foot. “And Fred Hicks tried to blackmail her. They weren’t exactly shining examples of human nature.”

“Point taken, but that doesn’t justify double murder, which is what the D.A.’s going to charge her with since Hicks won’t make it off life support.” He crossed his arms and looked at me in that earnest way of his that reminded me of Jimmy Stewart. “Ms. Martin can plead temporary insanity and take her chances in court. If she gets a sympathetic jury, maybe she’ll get off with a stay at a mental health facility. A
long
stay, if you get my drift.”

As in the rest of her life. I got it.

“It’s one of those cases where no one comes out a winner,” he remarked, and, for once, I didn’t argue with him.

“I still don’t understand why no one ever pressed charges against Hartman. If just one waitress he’d harassed had spoken up, had actually gone to the authorities, maybe none of this would ever have happened.”

“Most people tend to avoid conflict if they can,” Malone said and pressed a finger to the bridge of his glasses to hike them up. “Sometimes it’s easier to ignore a bad situation, pretend it doesn’t exist.”

He was probably right.

Still, if there was one thing my father had taught me—and my mother, too, mostly by example—it was never to take crap from anyone.

If you didn’t stand up for yourself, no one would.

The puppy barked, and I turned to see David on his knees, arms around the wiggling creature. Molly knelt at his side, a hand on his arm as if she were afraid to let him go.

“She’s lucky to have you, Andy,” Malone remarked, and his fingers brushed mine so that I thought he’d take hold.

But he didn’t.

“If it weren’t for you, she’d still be in jail with a pretty bleak road ahead of her. I don’t know too many people who’d go to the lengths you did in order to bail out a friend you hadn’t spoken to in years.”

“You don’t understand.” I sighed, still watching David and Molly.

“Try me.”

I took a deep breath and hoped I wouldn’t sound like a fool. “If you’re lucky in life, you’ll meet at least one person who’s true-blue,” I started gingerly, not sure how to explain the bond Molly and I had forged or if it could even be explained at all. “Molly was like that. She didn’t care how I looked or what I wore or if my daddy was rich. She liked me for myself, or maybe in spite of myself.” I shrugged. “You don’t forget friends like that.”

His mouth curved upward, a silly grin that made me wonder if he were mocking me.

“Maybe that sounds silly.” I couldn’t look at him.

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound silly at all.”

“Oh.” I stared down at my hands, embarrassed regardless.

He toed me with his loafer. “Hey, you’re not the only one who’s loyal to a fault.”

I squinted up at him.

“Seems the cops couldn’t get Reverend Jim Bob to ’fess up to being blackmailed by Hartman or anyone else. He wouldn’t even admit to having an affair with Julie Costello. Just claimed they were good friends who prayed together now and then.”

“Oh, God.” I couldn’t believe it. “So that means Julie’s still got Jim Bob by his, um, collection plate?” I actually felt sorry for the guy. “So who was it who said crime doesn’t pay?”

“Well, I know that it wasn’t a lawyer.”

I
climbed the staircase leading to the foyer at the Morton Meyerson Symphony Center, listening to the click-clack of my footsteps on the peach marble as I carefully ascended in the high-heeled Manolo Blahnik sandals that Mother had insisted I wear that evening.

“Come now, Andrea, quit dawdling,” Cissy scolded from behind.

I sighed, picking up the pace as much as I could without falling on my face. Above us, the tinkle of piano keys resonated, floating above the hum of voices.

I emerged into the foyer and hesitated, surveying the crowd in black tie and gowns that milled about with champagne flutes in hand.

Mother came up beside me and hooked an arm through my elbow. “Please, Andrea, try to look happy to be here. It’s a benefit, not a funeral. No one died.”