The Good Girl's Guide to Murder (26 page)

“I told you I wanted to feature all chocolate, so what the hell is this doing here?” Marilee snarled at Carson, his smooth pate sweating under the ceiling lights.

“It’s a Brandy Pecan Pie, and I’ll drizzle it with dark chocolate. So it’s close enough to qualify,” he explained, barely raising his voice. “We’ve got a Dark Chocolate Mousse Pie, a Chocolate Almond Torte, a Raspberry Fudge Trifle, and the Death by Chocolate, so I don’t think one pecan pie is going to ruin the segment.”

“Are you saying you know what’s better for my show than I do?” Marilee squawked, waving the serving knife. “How dare you!”

“I’m the food editor,
capisce?
Give me some credit, lady, would you?” A red flush spread up the back of Carson’s neck. “Now put the knife down and step away from the pie. Don’t make me have to hurt you.”

“This is my show, I can do whatever I want, and you’d better get that through your shiny skull if you want to stick around,
capisce?
” Marilee thrust the utensil deep into the heart of the Brandy Pecan Pie. “Now get this thing out of here before we shoot!”

Carson winced and clutched his fists over his apron-covered heart, as if feeling the pie’s pain. With a sigh, he removed the offending dessert with the serving knife sticking out of it and took it over to the sink.

Marilee busied herself rearranging the desserts set in front of her. When she’d finished, she whipped the makeup bib from her throat and yelled, “Renée, Renée! Where are you, damn it?”

“I’m right here, Mrs. Mabry.” A breathy voice piped up, and I saw Renata warily approach her boss. “What do you need?”

“Throw this away”—Marilee pushed the paper bib into Renata’s hands—“and get me some dental floss, would you? If I’m going to chat with the Diet Club ladies while I sample dessert, I’ll need backup in case anything gets stuck in my teeth. That’s your job, Renée, to make sure my teeth are clean.”

“It’s Renata,” the young woman enunciated, her smile fading as she crumpled the bib in her fist.

“Whatever,” Marilee brushed her off with a flick of her wrist. “What are you standing there for? Go fetch my floss!”

Carson stepped up and stood in front of Renata protectively. “Hey, don’t talk to her like that. She’s not your flunky.”

“Really?” Marilee laughed.

Renata opened her mouth, but no words emerged. She turned on her heel and dashed off through the butler’s pantry toward the foyer. I wondered if she wouldn’t keep going right out the front door.

I noticed that Carson was watching her exit as well.

“Lovely woman,” Sandy muttered under her breath. “I don’t know how your mother stands her. Or how anyone else puts up with her, for that matter.”

I thought of the six webmasters who’d worked for Marilee before me, and I said, “Most of her employees seem to last about a week.”

“That long?”

Several members of the crew made adjustments to the umbrella lights beaming down on the desserts and on Marilee, who stood behind the counter, waiting until they were satisfied with the setup.

“Quiet on the set!” someone shouted, making me jump, and then two men armed with shoulder-held cameras rolled tape. One seemed to be focused on Marilee while the other zoomed in on the pies and cakes. A woman crouched on the floor held handwritten cue cards, though Marilee didn’t appear to need them.

“I’ve got a very tasty show planned for y’all,” Marilee said, beaming into the camera. “Yes, it’s your good pal Marilee Mabry again, and today I’ll be visitin’ with a group of ladies who call themselves the Dallas Diet Club. I’m gonna share some of their wonderful chocolate dessert recipes with you, so you can truly live the sweet life without a lot of muss and fuss. In fact, our featured recipe for Death by Chocolate cake even uses ready-made mixes to minimize your time and effort. After all, that’s what the Sweet Life is about. Making your busy lives easier without breakin’ your back or breaking the bank.”

Next, they shot Marilee putting together the ingredients for the Death by Chocolate cake, all the bowls already filled with precisely measured ingredients. They even had a bundt pan greased and filled with batter for her to slip into Mother’s stainless-steel oven—despite never turning the appliance on—and,
voilà!
out came a perfectly baked cake, cooled and easily removed from the pan. The only thing Marilee actually did herself was to shake the sifted powdered sugar onto the finished cake.

“Cut!” the director yelled, his shoulder still in a sling from the boom mike accident. “Let’s move it to the living room, ladies and gentleman.”

I saw Carson and his food crew begin unpacking Tupperware containers from large coolers. They removed already-sliced pieces of Death by Chocolate and positioned each one on a china plate. After carefully topping each slice with perfect chocolate curls and a drizzle of raspberry glaze, they set them all on a tray to take into the living room for the segment to be taped with my mother, Millicent, Buffy, Beth, and the rest of the Diet Club. Several of his crew gathered teacups and saucers and filled a china coffee pot from the percolator that had been brewing on the counter.

“You need any help?” I asked Carson, and he looked at me blankly, though I couldn’t blame him for forgetting my name, what with all the Marilee-inspired chaos.

“Andy Kendricks,” I reminded him. “This is my mother’s house.”

He blinked as recognition dawned. “Oh, yeah, sorry, my brain’s kinda fried at the moment. Thanks for your offer”—he shifted the tray on his hip—“but I’ve got it covered. Though you could do me a favor.”

“What?”

He leaned in so close I felt his breath on my skin as he whispered, “How about running over the Divine Ms. Mabry with a train, preferably one that has an extremely large caboose?”

I smiled. “Can’t help you there.”

He winked. “Then get out of my way so I can deliver the poison.”

He and his crew scrambled through the swinging door that led through the dining room. As fast as that, the kitchen emptied, leaving behind a few of Marilee’s staff, who began to pack away the cups, bowls, pans, and utensils used in the baking segment.

Sandy had already headed into the living room, and I followed suit. I didn’t want to miss seeing my mother’s star turn.

The umbrella lights beamed and the cameras were rolling when I finally edged into the room. A crowd gathered on the plywood, behind colored cables, focused on the women comfortably seated in front of the Italian-marbled fireplace. Marilee and the half-dozen members of the Diet Club perched on Louis XVI-style chairs and love seats arranged in a semicircle. The china pot of coffee sat upon a silver tray atop an upholstered ottoman in between. The cups and saucers rested on side tables, as linen napkins and floral plates with slivers of Death by Chocolate occupied the ladies’ laps, so each of them could nibble on the cake while Marilee asked them questions about the origins of the Diet Club.

“So you started the group several years ago?” she asked my mother.

Cissy nodded and began to explain how the group got together. Marilee picked up her fork and shoveled in healthy bites of cake, nodding as she did so, as if to say, “mmm-mmm good.”

I noticed that my mother’s friends seemed too nervous to eat and merely picked at their perfect slices of Death by Chocolate. Playing with their food, as it were. Beth Taylor didn’t even pretend to fiddle with the dessert, instead calmly sipping her cup of coffee, her dark eyes taking in the goings-on.

“ . . . so that’s how the Dallas Diet Club got started, and we’ve been meetin’ several times a month, schedules permitting, ever since. We play a few hands of bridge, then eat dessert and chatter. It’s been a godsend to us, because we’re all so busy with charity work and . . .”

Marilee came half out of her chair, gagging.

“Sugar, are you all right?” Mother asked her, leaning forward in her seat and reaching over.

“Ahhh.” Marilee dropped the dessert plate and her fork to the floor with a clatter. Her eyes went bug-wide and her hands went to her chest, clutching at her blouse, like she couldn’t breathe.

The other Diet Club women suddenly pushed their cake plates off onto the coffee table.

“She’s choking!” someone said as Marilee toppled off her chair to the floor.

I saw Beth Taylor leap up from the sofa before pandemonium struck and moving bodies got in my way.

“Call 911!” one of the crew yelled, as I pushed my way through the crowd and emerged to see Marilee lying on the rug with Beth Taylor bending over her, hands pushing at Marilee’s chest, while everyone else looked on.

If she’d been choking, why was Beth doing CPR instead of the trusty Heimlich maneuver?

Had Marilee had a heart attack?

I suddenly flashed on finding Kendall, lifeless on the bathroom tiles, and my knees felt wobbly all over again.

“Stand back, everyone, give them some space!”

There was barely a sound as Dr. Taylor worked on Marilee, doing CPR without pausing, sweat glistening on her face. With a sigh of exhaustion, she finally gave up, rocked back on her heels and looked up, her dark eyes filled with defeat.

Sirens swelled, coming nearer.

“They’re here!” someone shouted from across the room. “I can see the ambulance at the end of the drive.”

Beth Taylor shook her head.

My gaze fell to Marilee, sprawled upon the rust red of the Persian Serapi rug, her mouth slack and eyes unblinking, staring up at the ceiling. The floral plate lay at her feet, bits of cake still sticking to its shiny surface.

“Why are you stopping?” Cissy prodded Beth. “Don’t give up.”

“It’s too late,” the doctor said. “She’s already gone.”

I heard someone start sobbing.

And it hit me like a fist, squarely in the chest.

It’s too late . . . she’s gone
.

Marilee Mabry was dead.

I
t was a long two hours before Mother got her house back.

I would have said, “back to normal,” only nothing felt remotely normal at that point, not after what had happened.

One hundred twenty minutes of being sequestered in the dining room with the members of
The Sweet Life
crew who’d been present for the shoot, while police officers with clipboards made the rounds, getting everyone’s contact info before letting them leave, one by one.

I sat beside Cissy for the duration, patting her hand, the anxiety palpable among the several dozen others gathered around the Chippendale dining table. Long faces stared blankly, others whispered to each other, asking, “What will happen now? Is it over? What about syndication?”

Because the show would not go on, would it? Could there be a
Sweet Life
without Marilee?

All the while, voices drifted in, along with an occasional shout or bump against the wall, as the crime scene technicians combed through the living room and kitchen, bagging and tagging everything they considered to be evidence, including, I was told, all the cakes, pies, and mousses, the coffee pot, the cups and saucers, and crumbled remains of the Death By Chocolate that Marilee had been eating when she’d keeled over.

The deputy chief of police in Highland Park, a woman my mother’s age named Anna Dean, had arrived on the scene along with two police cruisers not five minutes after the paramedics had given up trying to resuscitate Marilee with portable defibrillators.

The petite gray-haired Deputy Dean stood no taller than five two, but looked plenty intimidating in her blue uniform with the shiny brass badge. With mind-numbing efficiency, she’d assessed the situation and called for the medical examiner and crime scene technicians from Dallas before ordering her officers to corral us all in another room, away from the scene of death.

No one had dared call it a “crime scene” yet, but I got the distinct impression that’s how it was being viewed.

I overheard Dr. Taylor telling the deputy chief it was paramount that Marilee’s body fluids be drawn and tested for the gene mutation that causes long QT, in addition to checking her stomach contents and the cake and coffee she’d ingested.

Which got me to wondering if there was some kind of connection with what had happened to Kendall. Could last night have been a practice run for somebody wanting to kill Marilee? Or was it a mistake?

It didn’t take much to convince me that Marilee’s death was no run-of-the-mill heart attack; something that Deputy Chief Dean all but confirmed once her officers had sequestered the lot of us in Mother’s dining room.

The woman in blue hooked her thumbs in her duty belt, her right hand perilously close to her holstered weapon as she addressed the question that was foremost in everyone’s head. “As of now,” she told us, “we’re calling this a suspicious death. So give your name and address to my officers and don’t make any plans to leave town. We might need to follow up with formal statements, you understand.” Her narrowed eyes surveyed the large group seated around Mother’s enormous Chippendale table. “Any questions?”

No one uttered so much as a peep.

As the hours wore on, I patted my mother’s hand and fought back tears. Tears for Kendall as much as for Marilee.

What would Kendall do when she heard?
I wondered, my chest clenching at the thought. She was so fragile already. Would the police wend their way over to Marilee’s residence to break the news? If that was the case, I felt a grudging relief that she wasn’t alone. As much as I didn’t like Justin, it would be worse if Kendall had no one.

As soon as I could get away from the house, I was determined to head over. In spite of the conflict between them, Marilee had been pretty much it for Kendall in the way of family. I was afraid of what Kendall might do; truly fearful she’d turn self-destructive when it really hit her that her mummy was gone.

And what a way to go.

Death by Chocolate.

Isn’t it ironic . . . don’t you think?

The lyrics of that Alanis song kept running in a loop through my brain, which I guess was a lot better than thinking about Marilee’s body sprawled on the rust-colored rug, her unseeing eyes staring at the ceiling.

Thankfully, by the time the police finished up, there was no body to be seen. Hell, there wasn’t even a rug between the Louis XVI loveseats, just bare wood with a vague rectangular outline on the varnished planks. Though I wasn’t an eyewitness to the rug’s removal—or the body’s, for that matter—I heard they’d rolled up the Persian Serapi and had hauled it away in the crime lab’s van.