The Good Girl's Guide to Murder (8 page)

My daddy used to drive a Caddy. A Brougham d’Elegance that he’d often bragged was inches longer than the Lincoln Town Car. It was definitely the biggest sedan I’d ever seen. Through my little girl eyes, it had seemed the size of a cruise ship. All it had needed was Gopher and Julie McCoy, and it could’ve been
The Love Boat
on wheels. I’d hated that car as much as my father had adored it. Though it was one of the few things he’d splurged on for himself. Nothing was too good for Mother or me, but Daddy didn’t indulge himself, not often. Certainly not the way he could have (that so many of his friends did).

Case in point: he hadn’t worn a Rolex like so many of his contemporaries (like so many of
my
contemporaries). He’d never seen the need. He’d told me once that “a watch is a watch is a watch,” and, to prove it, he’d had the same stainless-steel Omega strapped around his wrist for as long as I could remember. He’d been wearing it when he’d died.

Now I kept it in a carved wooden box—one that used to hold Daddy’s cigars—on the shelf of my nightstand, along with the paper strip from a fortune cookie I’d gotten from the Chinese take-out the evening after Daddy’s funeral. The message:
ALL IS NOT LOST
.

At the time, I’d surely felt like I’d lost everything. It had taken me a while to realize it wasn’t true.

My father had left me with so much. More than he would ever know.

Busy with my thoughts, I’d hardly noticed the countless restaurants on Belt Line that I’d bypassed, though the neon lights flashed in my rearview mirror. The colors set off nicely by the faded gray of the evening sky.

At the Midway intersection, I slipped the Jeep into the right-hand-turn lane and followed a slew of cars heading deeper into Addison. I glimpsed the antiques mall to my left, a big old box of a structure that housed aisle after aisle of treasures.

Marilee’s studio wasn’t much farther up, and it would’ve been hard to miss even if I hadn’t known where I was going.

Though dusk had yet to bury the setting sun, the place glowed like a house afire. The tiny trees lining the front parking lot sparkled with a million tiny lights. Garlands of flowers entwined with more of the glittering bulbs gracefully draped the deep green awning stretching forth from the front doors.

I swung the car around, looking for an empty space, as a young man in white shirt, black vest, and bow tie ran out to greet me. Marilee even had nattily garbed valets for early birds, I mused, what with the party thirty minutes away. I was running a little later than I’d hoped, but there was still plenty of time to make sure the web cams were properly placed.

I slowed to a stop as the fellow approached my window and motioned for me to roll it down. Perspiration clung to his freckled skin, and I smiled at him. It was Dewey, an intern from UT-Dallas who was spending the summer earning college credits as one of Marilee’s assistants. In other words, he was slave labor.

“Hey, Andy. I’ll be happy to take care of this for ya,” he said, looking eagerly at my dusty Wrangler.

And who was I to deny him his fun?

Or his tip?

“Thanks, Dew.” I put the car in Park and unbelted myself as it idled, rumbling familiarly. As he popped open the door for me, I grabbed my purse and began my less than graceful slide out, accepting his proffered arm gratefully.

“You be careful in there,” he advised, wiping sweat from his brow with a sleeve. “It’s even stickier inside than out.”

“Marilee’s in a foul mood again?” I dared to ask him as I tugged down the hem of my dress so it covered my thighs or a small portion thereof.

“Let’s say, I’d rather be out here sweating.”

“That bad?” I grimaced.

“She already made someone cry.”

“Who was it this time?”

“Her daughter.” He sighed. “They had another fight. God knows what this one was about.”

Kendall?

The girl could be a bitch and a half, but she was still no match for Marilee.

Poor thing
.

I swallowed hard.

“Hope you have your thick skin on under that cute little number. Try to have a nice evening, ya hear?” Dewey said and grinned, looking pleased as punch not to be in my pretty pink shoes.

He hopped into the Jeep quickly, and I almost dove in after him. I kept my eyes on the taillights until I saw it round the nearest bend, no doubt aiming for a bank of empty spaces around back.

Didn’t take me but another moment of standing on asphalt, breathing the remnants of exhaust, before I sucked in my gut, gritted my teeth, and told myself that, if Marilee made anyone cry, I was leaving.

Especially if it were me.

A
couple of Marilee’s regular security guys in blue suits and watch caps were taking a lap around the building when I crossed to the front doors. A tuxedoed man I didn’t recognize stood inside, whisking the glass portals open for me as I approached. He checked my name off on his clipboard before letting me pass with a hesitant, “Um, good, um, evening.”

As if even he didn’t believe it.

“Lord help me,” I said under my breath as I proceeded up the wide hallway toward the soundstage, the sage green walls on either side of me filled with framed poster-sized photographs of Marilee doing various things domestic: baking, gardening, scrapbooking, decorating, and stenciling.

There was even a shot of her in a yoga pose that had me wondering if someone hadn’t done a bit of airbrushing to get that foot behind her head. Or else she was double-jointed. I marveled at the gorgeous lighting that made Marilee look amazingly ethereal, so calm and sweet, hardly resembling the demanding diva for whom I’d been working these past two weeks.

If only real life could be so picture-perfect.

But even supermodels had cellulite (seriously, I read it in
Cosmo
).

If Marilee had any cottage cheese on her thighs it would soon be public knowledge, according to the rumor mill. I’d heard the buzz around the office that an unauthorized biography was in the works, supposedly being written by a thus-far anonymous reporter who was well acquainted with her subject. If any dirt were unearthed, it would surely be gobbled up by the masses.

Thus far, Marilee had managed to stay under the radar.
The National Enquirer
still seemed unaware of her existence. But that surely wouldn’t last long, not once
The Sweet Life
debuted on television sets across the nation.

I’d dug up articles and interviews online, mostly back issues from
D Magazine
and
Texas Monthly
, that didn’t reveal much about my new client except that she’d built her business from scratch after a divorce had left her a penniless single mom. There was barely a mention of her life before that, except to say she came from a hole in the wall called Stybr, Texas, and had attended Texas Christian briefly before dropping out to marry her college sweetheart.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t more to it than that.

Because I’d come to realize that the image Marilee had created was based more on fantasy than reality. She peddled an illusion of herself as Earth Mother cum Household Whiz, and people seemed to eat it up. Everything she touched suddenly seemed in great demand. Her books and audiotapes sold like hotcakes. There were whispers that she was about to embark on a joint venture with a large retail chain—linens, cookware, furnishings, and paint, all bearing “The Sweet Life” brand—that would net her millions. Well, even more millions, considering her syndication deal was worth a bundle. She wasn’t quite in Oprah’s territory yet, but she was hell-bent in that direction.

Though all the money in the world couldn’t buy friends.

Okay, real friends.

From what I’d seen, Marilee had very few people she trusted, besides her daughter Kendall (and even that seemed iffy).

And, of course, Marilee’s staunchest supporter: Her Highness of Highland Park. The venerable Cissy Blevins Kendricks.

Now,
there
was a story to make an unauthorized biographer drool.

Mother had met Mari while volunteering at a food bank half a dozen years ago, shortly after Marilee’s divorce. Marilee’s finances had been tight, and she’d been fighting to stay off welfare. While my mother had filled up the food pantry bags, Marilee had started talking. She’d been working at the cleaners by day and writing at night. She’d even sent in samples of her proposed column to the
Morning News
without luck. To make a long story short, Cissy had stepped in and changed the course of Marilee’s life forever. Though my mother didn’t generally brag about her good deeds (to anyone but me), I never doubted she’d had a hand in Marilee’s swift rise in Big D. Cissy knew all the right people, and Marilee hadn’t known a soul, not then.

Now Marilee had the world knocking down her door.

My mother never publicly—or even privately—took credit for her involvement. It was just one of the many “projects” she’d thrown herself into after Daddy died.

When I’d asked Cissy what else she knew of Marilee’s background, she’d fed me the “you know I don’t like to gossip, darlin’” line before she’d spilled a few measly beans.

She told me that Marilee used to run around barefoot on a chicken ranch, hardly the Beaver Cleaver upbringing that Marilee alluded to in those interviews where she mentioned her childhood at all.

The “barefoot” part was tough to imagine.

The hard-edged businesswoman on display at the office would never run around without shoes much less without full makeup. I’d never even seen her wearing jeans, except on her show’s gardening segment. Otherwise, it was most often twin-sets and trousers or Chanel suits, much like my mother.

In fact, I often wondered if Marilee hadn’t mimicked Cissy’s style on purpose in order to land on the annual “Best Dressed List” alongside my mother in the
Park Cities Press
.

Though I guess that wasn’t a crime. You couldn’t be tossed in jail for nicking another woman’s fashion sense.

Cissy also confessed that Dallas’s “diva of domesticity” had lost her mother when she was very young, which is why she was so intent on creating the perfect nest, for herself and for everyone else on the planet. Though the few times I’d seen Marilee with her daughter, they’d been bickering.

“
She already made someone cry
.”

“
Who?
”

“
Her daughter
.”

Ah, Kendall.

I barely knew the girl—well, young woman, since she was eighteen and out of school—but I felt sorry for her nonetheless. Not that she was the most pleasant person I’d ever met, but she had a good excuse for her shortcomings. It wasn’t that I accepted the “blame the mother” theory that seemed so popular with Ricki Lake and Maury Povich, but, having rubbed shoulders with Marilee for two weeks, I believed that, in this case, it was true.

I had firsthand experience with a mother who was demanding, a true perfectionist, and it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t imagine that überdriven Marilee had much time for her daughter, and I was certain that Kendall was feeling particularly neglected with the attention the national syndication of
The Sweet Life
was raining down on her mom.

“There you are, Andy. I’ve been waiting for you. I thought you’d be here half an hour ago.”

Every muscle in my body tensed at the sound of the voice. A somewhat refined East Texas drawl with an edge to it. Rather like Scarlett O’Hara with PMS.

Speak of the devil
.

I drew my eyes from the photograph-lined walls and looked ahead of me, to the far end of the green runner where a woman sheathed in vintage black Valentino stood staring at me, hands on hips. She tipped her head, so the chunky highlights of light blond in her ashy hair glinted beneath the track lighting. Plenty of bling bling winked from her clavicle, ears, and wrists. Regardless, she didn’t look happy.

“Sorry, Marilee. Traffic,” I shot back, unwilling to let her get to me. I didn’t want the word to spread that the charming Ms. Mabry had made two women cry this evening.

“Well, hurry up, then,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Let’s get going. We don’t have much time.”

“That’s okay, since I don’t need much,” I assured her, following her quick footsteps into the belly of the studio.

Spotlighting shone from above, illuminating the enormous vases and pots of flowers that abounded. I heard the sweet sound of strings as a harpist tuned up from a corner of the soundstage. Polished silver candelabra filled every surface that flowers did not, and a cadre of staffers in black—the men in tuxes and the women in cocktail-length dresses—scurried about, lighting tapered candlesticks.

Large plasma-screen monitors hung here and there, where snippets from upcoming episodes of the
The Sweet Life
would play soundlessly throughout the evening. Gauzy sage green chiffon swags floated down from metal grids, in between pastel-hued bulbs that would shower the most flattering lighting on Marilee’s guests. The whole atmosphere seemed surreal, as if I’d walked onto the pages of a decorating magazine. I felt like Dorothy awakening in a Technicolor Oz after starting out my day in black-and-white.

“Nothing can go wrong tonight, Andy,” she said without breaking her stride, despite the height of her pointy-toed mules. “Everything
must
go as I’ve planned, though I do have a few surprises in store.”

Hopefully, that excluded poisonous spiders and falling boom mikes
.

“Surprises?”

“Don’t worry. They have nothing to do with you. They’re merely a gift to myself, sweet revenge, as it were. All you need concern yourself with is what happens online.”

“We’re in good shape, really. I set up the web cams a few days ago,” I reminded her, “so I just need to make sure they’re all functioning properly.”

She kept her back to me, tossing over her shoulder, “Is the site animation working?”

“Yes.”

“What about the media clips I asked you to load?”

“Done.”

I pretended that we hadn’t already gone through this a million times before, an Oscar-worthy performance, if I do say so myself.