When I turned into the half circle in front of Cissy’s house on Beverly Drive, I saw her peering out from the doorway, waiting for me.
As I exited the Jeep, the smell of roses filled the air, and I eyed the lush pink blooms as I ascended the stone steps. No matter the season, the grounds always looked so pretty, kind of like my mother. I’d always felt so rumpled in comparison.
“Good, you’re here.” She put an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you fed,” she said, and she ushered me inside, her Cole Haan loafers clicking softly on the marble tiles. “I found a dozen eggs in the refrigerator,” she remarked brightly, as if that was a huge accomplishment, though I guess it was for her since she so rarely set foot in the kitchen. “I located a small mixing bowl and a whisk but I’m not quite sure if I should use a skillet or the griddle for the actual cooking part, and I’m concerned about turning on the gas burner. I don’t have to light it with a match, do I? Heaven knows, I don’t want to set something on fire while Sandy’s away,” she remarked, guiding me toward the kitchen. “If you’d do me a favor, sweet pea, and pick out the right pan and get a burner going, I’ll start crackin’ the eggs.”
Um, maybe I should just make the eggs myself.
Martha Stewart she wasn’t. But it was sweet that Cissy was clucking over me like a mother hen. When I was growing up, it was more often than not Sandy Beck who’d assumed that role, bandaging my scraped knees and making me Toll House cookies when I’d had a bad day at school.
I was about to tell my mother that cereal would be fine—I wasn’t really that hungry—and I opened my mouth to do just that. But as we neared the stairwell my mind suddenly shifted in a different direction entirely. I stopped at the base of the steps and reached for the carved wooden finial. What ended up coming out of my mouth instead was, “If you don’t mind, I think I need to go up to my old room for a while.”
“What?” Cissy swiveled on a loafer. She looked equal parts relieved and concerned. “Andrea darlin’, do you feel ill? Would you like some tea? And, yes, I do know how to make that. Or how about a Xanax?” she asked, and she wasn’t kidding. “I would have fallen apart without them after your father died.”
Like a tiny pill could rid me of all my worries.
“No, thanks,” I said, because I wasn’t big on medicating myself when I didn’t truly need it. Plus, I was counting on my adrenaline to fire up my brain and help me figure out what to do next. “I just need to go upstairs for a few minutes if it’s all right.”
“Do you want company?”
I shook my head.
“I understand.” Mother closed the gap between us and touched my cheek. “Take all the time you need. If you feel like napping, you should do it. I don’t have anything important on my schedule today so I’ll be around.”
“Great.” I gave her a halfhearted smile.
Then I wandered up the staircase, which creaked and groaned despite the thick Oriental runner. When I reached the first room at the top of the steps, I paused as I always did. It had been my father’s study, and Cissy had left it untouched through the years. If I sat in the worn leather chair behind the desk, I could still smell the Cuban cigars Daddy had given up after his first heart attack. My artwork hung on the walls between actual masterpieces. Old books with richly colored leather covers filled built-in shelves.
Would Stephen change things once he and Cissy got married? I guessed he could if he wanted to (or rather if Mother would let him). I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, moving into a house that held decades of memories; taking over another man’s closet; trying to feel at ease while walking in another man’s indelible footprints.
Much as I liked my mom’s fiancé—and I did, I really did—the idea of him turning my father’s study into his den made my heart hurt. But I couldn’t expect it to remain untouched forever. The house wasn’t a museum. It was for living, and my mother had done a bang-up job continuing to live after my father had passed, despite how that loss had shaken her. It had shaken us both to the core.
My heart heavy, I continued down the hallway to my old bedroom. With a flick of the switch, I lit up my childhood. Bypassing the canopy beds and rows of Madame Alexander dolls, I walked straight toward the built-in shelves above my desk. First, I pulled out an old Hockaday yearbook, and I thumbed through the senior pictures, finding my own—dear God, what was with the frizzy perm?—and then homing in on Olivia La Belle’s.
She wore pearls and had her blunt-cut blond hair flipped up at the bottom. She smiled with perfect white teeth, and her pale eyes appeared so at ease with the camera. My picture looked like a Glamour magazine fashion don’t, while Olivia’s looked like an ad for Pantene. During our senior year, Seventeen magazine had come to Dallas searching for students for a special back-to-school issue. Of course, Olivia had been picked for the feature because she was tall and pretty in the way of Texas pageant girls who seemed to emerge from the womb leggy and slim and perfectly groomed. Janet Graham had been hanging out with me when the issue showed up in my mailbox. Surprise, surprise, Olivia’s face was on the cover. Janet had torn it off and set it on fire in my bathtub.
Frowning, I stowed away the prep school annual and glanced up at the next shelf, which held my collection of Nancy Drew mysteries. I felt drawn to the row of yellow spines, and I ran my fingers across the titles: The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, The Bungalow Mystery, and on down the line. My father had given me a complete set of the hardcover Nancy Drew books when I turned eight, and I had treasured them all. Someday when Malone and I had a daughter—and I thought of it as when not if—I would pass them down to her. I only hoped she would love them as much.
How I wished I could channel Nancy Drew now and figure out The Secret of the Dead Wedding Belle. I had my own Ned Nickerson, didn’t I? And I had a widowed mother who stuck her nose into everyone’s business, which trumped Nancy’s father the lawyer who was always out of town, leaving Nancy alone with the housekeeper. I was just missing one thing—
I heard the distant ring of the doorbell, the tap-tap of my mother’s shoes on marble, and then the front door coming open.
Shortly after, Cissy called up the stairs, “Andrea! Janet Graham is here to see you,” as she had so many times when I was a kid and Janet came over to play.
Ah, there was my Bess! Or was she George?
It didn’t matter, I thought as I turned off the light in my old room and headed down. Janet Graham had it going on over either of Nancy Drew’s best friends. Neither Bess nor George had been a reporter. Having a buddy whose profession involved asking questions was a big bonus when there was a mystery to be solved.
“Hey, Jan,” I said as I descended the stairs and caught sight of Janet in her long magenta skirt with clunky boots poking out beneath. Her blouse was a deep shade of purple and her hair was pretty much burnt orange, maybe in deference to her alma mater, the Texas Longhorns. She was a feast for the eyes, to be sure, and she’d brought along a feast for my belly, if the bag from La Madeleine in her hand was any indication.
“Chocolate croissants,” she said. “They’re still warm.”
“Nice,” I replied, and I would have hugged her if either of us had been the hugging type.
“Oh, Janet darlin’, how lovely of you,” my mother said and clasped her slender hands together. “Looks like I won’t have to fix breakfast, will I, sweetie?” She gave me a quick pat on the back. “Why don’t you take Janet to the kitchen, and I’ll head upstairs to call Stephen and catch him up on the goings-on.” Mother clicked tongue against teeth. “He’ll probably feel compelled to cut his golfing weekend short and race home,” she said with a look on her face that had me wondering if that wasn’t exactly the result she was hoping for.
The stairs creaked gently as Mother headed up. I motioned Janet to follow me into the kitchen. Once I’d poured us each an orange juice and we settled at the old pedestal table that predated my birth, the conversation instantly turned to Olivia La Belle’s demise.
“Can you believe the bitch is really gone?” Janet said without an ounce of sympathy in her voice, “and, I mean, gone as in dead as a doornail.”
Still slightly numb from the morning’s turn of events, I stared at Janet, not sure how to react. I was glad that Cissy wasn’t around to hear her remarks. My mother frowned on cursing in her house, and I’m sure she would have taken Janet to task for speaking ill of the newly dead as well.
But I had to agree with her.
“Brutal but honest,” I said with a sigh and pulled a croissant from the bag. It smelled heavenly so I took a big bite. My stomach growled like it was hungry, but the anxious lump in my throat was making it tough to swallow.
“I thought only the good died young,” Janet went on. “I guess this proves that theory wrong, huh? It’s just so bizarre knowing someone’s dead that you hated so much. Do you realize how many birthday wishes I wasted hoping some kind of doom would befall Olivia? I prayed she would move to China or fall off the planet.”
“Me, too,” I said. Similar thoughts had passed through my head upon seeing Olivia lying on the blood-smeared rug in her office.
“Well, there goes one more bully in a world full of bullies,” Janet said, sounding so bitter I could taste it on my own tongue. Her eyes flashed fire behind her smart girl glasses. “She may have been all that on the outside but she was ugly as hell on the inside.” When I didn’t speak up, she loudly sniffed. “C’mon, Andy, you didn’t like her any better than I did.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t. She picked on us both.”
“Picked on?” Janet’s voice rose. “She humiliated us at every turn. I can’t tell you how many times I found pictures of clowns taped to my locker. She called me Bozo.”
Ever since I’d known her, Janet had always been loud in personality and voice and her bold color choices, both for her clothing and her hair. Because she’d never been a cookie-cutter prep school drone, she’d been on the receiving end of Olivia’s taunting, too. I couldn’t blame her for sounding so cold about Olivia dying. She wouldn’t miss Olivia’s presence on this planet any more than I.
“I’m not sure how people like that can sleep at night or look in the mirror every morning without hating themselves,” she grumbled between bites of a croissant. Clearly, Olivia’s death hadn’t spoiled her appetite.
“She won’t have to look in the mirror anymore,” I said, and I wondered who else would not be grieving over the untimely passing of Olivia La Belle. How many other girls from Hockaday alone—now grown women—would breathe a sigh of relief knowing they’d never have to risk running into her from this day forth?
“What a nasty piece of work,” Janet said and brushed crumbs from her blouse. “Olivia was hateful from her fake blond roots to her toes. I couldn’t believe when she became a wedding planner. That woman wouldn’t have known what love was if it had walked up to her and punched her in the nose.”
“She did get to boss people around,” I commented, having seen it for myself.
Janet snorted. “She would have been a better prison guard than a wedding planner. How did you even bump into her again, Andy? I thought you stayed as far away from Olivia and her ilk as possible. You didn’t exactly run in the same circles.”
While I’d mentioned on the phone that I’d dropped by Olivia’s office and found her dead, I hadn’t taken the time to explain the events leading up to my morbid discovery. So I drew in a deep breath and told Janet the whole sordid tale of Cissy dragging me to Penny Ryan’s wedding, including how I’d caught Olivia screaming at Millie, ended up in the borrowed bridesmaid’s dress, and found myself seated with the former president and Lester Dickens at the reception dinner.
By the time I was done, Janet’s eyes had gone wide. “Oh, my God, that’s like being Alice and falling into the rabbit hole and having tea with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare.”
Yep, add in the Dormouse who kept falling asleep, and that pretty well described my experience in a nutshell.
“I wish I’d known you were going to Penny Ryan’s wedding,” my friend said wistfully. “I only got wind of it being moved up about an hour beforehand. I tried like hell to get an invite but they weren’t letting any of us media types in. Did you snag any photos the PCP could pilfer? My boss would love me if I could get something for the Society pages.”
I shook my head. “They confiscated cell phones at the door.”
“So no pics at all?”
“There was a hired gun taking photographs,” I told her. If I’d overheard the wedding photographer’s name, I couldn’t recall it. But I did remember another name. “Olivia had a cameraman following her around for her reality show. She called him Pete. All I know is he had a beard and tattoo sleeves.”
“Sounds like every camera guy I’ve ever worked with,” Janet murmured. “I’ll have to call Salvo Productions and see if they’d give me a still. Sometimes reality shows like to leak photos, you know, to pump up the publicity. I still can’t believe Olivia has her own show. When I first heard about it, I had to wonder who she was blowing—”
“Janet,” I said sharply, thinking of my mother’s bat ears and hoping she hadn’t heard that one.
My friend shrugged. “Well, I figure it was either that or blackmail. Why else would anyone want to give that bitch a show? She wasn’t that interesting.” Janet pulled out her phone and started thumb-typing on the keyboard. “Samantha Garber,” she said, nodding. “That’s who I dealt with in The Wedding Belle’s production office for a piece I wrote for the paper. I should follow-up and see what they’re going to do now that Olivia’s out of the picture. That would make a great Page One feature. I’ll bet Sammi’s more than happy to give me whatever I need to write it.”
I was hardly surprised that Janet was speaking so dispassionately about Olivia’s murder and penning a story for the Park Cities Press. That was how her mind worked. Everyone was a potential lead. And it wasn’t like either of us had lost someone worth grieving over.
“Hey, would you talk to me, Andy, on the record, I mean?” She put her cell down and looked over at me eagerly. “You were first on the scene when Olivia’s body was found, right? I could use the angle that Penny’s wedding was the last one Olivia would ever plan. It’s just so dramatic what with your showing up to return that borrowed dress and seeing her lying there—”
“Janet, stop,” I said, cutting her off. Maybe I wasn’t mourning Olivia either but I wasn’t quite ready to dance on her grave yet. Heck, she wasn’t even in her grave yet. And if Millie was arrested for her murder, it would be partially my fault.
“Stop, what?” She blinked bespectacled eyes. “You don’t like the idea?”
I almost blurted out, “Like it? I hate it.” No matter how I felt about Olivia, I didn’t want to be part of a story about her violent end. And I wasn’t sure Malone would embrace the idea of me blabbing about what I’d witnessed to a newspaper. He had his work cut out for him already.
“You can interview every guest at the wedding and write whatever you want about Olivia and her last wedding, but leave me out of it, okay?” I told her and felt the bits of croissant I’d eaten curdle in my belly. “I don’t want anything I say at this table used in your exposé.”
Janet didn’t look any too happy about that. But after a moment’s pause she said, “What happens at Cissy’s house stays at Cissy’s house. Got it.”
That was something we used to tell ourselves as kids when we got into my mother’s walk-in closet while she was gone and Sandy was babysitting or even when we found the keys to the liquor cabinet and got our first taste of fifty-year-old Scotch (blech).
“Thanks,” I told her.
Truly, I understood why my friend wanted to write such a piece. It could be a career maker, or a solid notch on her J-School belt at the very least. Maybe once everything was sorted out and the police had the actual killer in custody, I’d feel more comfortable going on the record about what I’d walked into this morning. But I didn’t think that would happen before the story was old news.
“I’ll see if I can chat with Penny Ryan about her wedding being Olivia’s final affair,” Janet said. Then she sighed. “With my luck, she’s honeymooning on some Pacific island without cell towers.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Jan, but I have to watch myself. I don’t want to say something to make Millie Draper look worse,” I tried to explain. “I’m so worried about what’s going to happen to her. What if she’s arrested and tossed in jail with hardened criminals? She’s a sweet old lady who bakes cakes.”
“Oh, God, you’re right. I forgot about Millie.” Janet paled.
But Millie was all I could think about. “I feel like I’m the reason she’s in so much trouble,” I confessed, and a rush of tears filled my eyes. “I’m the one who walked in on her at Olivia’s office. She was so scared. She wanted to get out of there but I made her stay until the police arrived. I should have gotten her out of there . . .”
“Andy, for God’s sake, it’s not your fault!” Janet pushed her plate aside and half stood to reach across the table for my hand. She patted it gently. “What were you supposed to do? Aid and abet? Then you would have been an accomplice.”
“But she didn’t do it,” I repeated.
“Even still, the police were going to catch up with her,” my friend said as she released my hand and sat back down. “Millie admitted that she pulled the knife out of Olivia’s neck. There was blood everywhere. They would have found her bloody fingerprints on the knife and a bunch of other places. Someone would have seen her or they’d find her on the footage of some traffic cam at just the right time, and it would have looked even worse for her then, if she’d run.” With a nod, she added, “Worse for you, too.”
She was right. I couldn’t have done anything other than what I did.
“I know, I know.” I wiped at my eyes and sniffled. I felt guilty nonetheless. “I have a bad feeling Millie’s going to be booked for Olivia’s murder. Malone’s still at the DPS with her. I don’t know what’s going on but it’s taking forever.”
“They can’t book her this fast, can they? Unless she confesses, I mean, or they have footage showing Millie in the act.”
I shrugged. I might have been engaged to a defense lawyer, but that didn’t mean I was as well-versed in criminal law as Brian.
“Millie’s such a lamb.” Janet put her elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. “We used to call her the Cake Lady when we were kids, remember? You think she’s really the prime suspect?”
I recalled the look on Officer Shands’s face when she realized the blood on Millie’s clothes and hands hadn’t come from Millie. “Yeah, I think they do.”
“That stinks.” Janet loudly exhaled.
“Yeah, it stinks,” I repeated. “I know she didn’t kill Olivia, and I’m hoping you can help me prove it.”