Free The Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Susan McBride Page B

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