Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery
Read Blue Blood: A Debutante Dropout Mystery Online
Authors: Susan McBride
This book is dedicated to everyone who has ever felt like an outsider.
Acknowledgments
A
s always, I’m indebted to my mother, Pat McBride, for her support through thick and thin, and to my dad, Jim McBride, for cheering each small success.
Having an agent like Victoria Sanders and an editor like Sarah Durand is akin to winning the lottery! My thanks to both for seeing something special in this book.
My sincere appreciation to the wonderful Alice Peck, whose brilliant insights made the story shine.
I am lucky to have the hardest working Web Diva in the biz, Janell Schiffbauer, who designed SusanMcBride.com and has kept it running like a well-oiled wheel for the past few years.
And, finally, much love to my amazing family and friends for their faith in me and for making every day of my life such a blast! You all rock.
“It’s not your blue blood, your pedigree or your college degree.
It’s what you do with your life that counts.”
—Millard Fuller, Founder, Habitat for Humanity
Prologue
U
nlucky.
That’s what she was.
Molly O’Brien pulled her T-shirt down over her head, not bothering to tuck the hem into her jeans. She squinted at her watch, barely illuminated by the faint stream of light flowing in from the hall, and she groaned when she realized it was well past midnight. God, how she wished she’d weaseled out of helping Bud Hartman close the place! He was creepy enough in broad daylight. If that didn’t bite, now she also owed the babysitter overtime.
She grabbed her purse from its hook, slammed her locker and turned around.
Bud stood in the doorway, watching.
“Christ,” she breathed, her heartbeat thumping overloudly.
How long had he been there?
She swallowed and willed herself to sound far calmer than she felt. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
His lips curved like a Halloween pumpkin. “You girls are too damned jumpy.”
“Hard not to be with you sneaking around.”
“Hell, it’s my joint. I can do what I want. Or
who
I want.”
His eyes gleamed from the shadows, and a chill shot up her spine. She tightened her hand on her purse.
“Well, I’m taking off, okay? The money from the register’s in the bank bag on your desk. I’ve gotta get home to pay the babysitter. I’m already an hour late.”
But he didn’t move. His body filled the doorway, blocking her path.
Molly’s only alternative was to squeeze past him. He put an arm across the threshold, but she bit her lip and ducked beneath. She kept going up the hallway, into the kitchen and toward the rear exit, which loomed dead ahead.
“What’s your hurry, O’Brien?” he growled from behind her and caught her shoulder, jerking her back. He spun her around and forced her against the stainless-steel countertop. The cold metal jabbed hard into her spine, and she grimaced.
“Hey, cut it out!”
“Then stop playin’ so hard to get.”
She felt the hot hiss of his breath on her face as his body pinned hers beneath him. He was six-two to her five-six, and he outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds. He had her trapped, and he knew it.
“You’re hurting me, Bud.”
But he didn’t seem to care.
His brown eyes bore into hers and the stretch of his brow beneath the slicked-back hair glistened with sweat. “What’s the problem, huh?” He smelled of beer and testosterone, and bile rose in her throat. “You were nice to me once.”
“Temporary insanity,” she said.
He grinned.
Her mouth dry, Molly wet her lips and tried again. “I’ve got a six-year-old boy, remember? I’m a mother, not one of your bimbos. I can’t screw around with my life, not anymore.”
For a moment, he hesitated, and his hold on her loosened the slightest bit. A bubble of hope swelled in her chest.
And burst.
His head came down fast and hard, his mouth smothering hers. His tongue rammed past her teeth, choking her.
You disgusting piece of. . . .
With her free hand, she reached behind her, frantically looking for something, anything, to get her out of this. Her fingertips ran into a wooden block and then upward into slender handles.
She slipped a knife from its slot and blindly swung it as Bud came up for air.
He howled and released her.
Molly dropped the knife and sprinted to the exit door.
Flinging herself into her Ford pickup, she took off in a squeal of tires, never glancing back.
M
usic played in the background, a soft tinkling of piano keys that filtered into the yellow-walled dining room at the Palm, a swanky restaurant with white linen tablecloths, pricey lobster and steak, and an even more expensive clientele that Mother had selected for what she’d told me was a “girls’ night out.”
Ha.
I could swear the tune that teased my ears was “Mack the Knife,” a fitting soundtrack for the murderous thoughts running through my head, though I could hardly hear the notes over the careful rise of her voice.
“Did I tell you, Andrea, that Trey has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Southern Methodist?” Cissy drawled above the hum of surrounding conversation, laying a smile so thick on Haskell E. Maxwell III that he blushed and nearly fogged up his Coke-bottle lenses.
“Hmmm,” I turned away from Mr. Maxwell entirely to plant a glare on my mother that could’ve set her fashionably styled blond hair on fire. “Come to think of it, I don’t believe you told me anything at all about Trey.”
She fluttered her eyes, playing innocent. Badly. “Oh, didn’t I? Just an oversight, darling, I swear.”
I swore as well. At her, under my breath.
Her “oversight” had started with a lie about dinner this evening—“Oh, it’ll be fun, Andrea, just us girls at the Palm, what do you say?”—never letting on for a moment that—surprise!—our reservation would include a
ménage à
Trey, as it were. A blind date for
moi.
My prospective match, not surprisingly, was the son of a bosom buddy of Mother’s. He was nearly forty, rather gawky (I’m being kind), and never married, which might be a chronic problem for him if what I’d seen so far was any indication.
“He’s a musician, you know.”
“Oh?” I arched an eyebrow at Trey, studying the long face, drooping hair, and geeky specs with black rims. Did he secretly wield a Fender Stratocaster for a rock band when he wasn’t off philosophizing? For a moment, he almost seemed interesting.
Until Mother answered, just a tad too brightly, “He happens to be a brilliant pipe organist.”
My eyebrow fell, along with any spark of intrigue that had flared at the idea of Haskell III as a closet Rolling Stone.
“It’s a difficult instrument, Andrea, sweetie, one that requires years of study. Trey is nothing if not dedicated, and that’s such a rare quality in men of your generation.” She put the hard sell on me, like a Mary Kay cosmetics lady just a lipstick shy of a pink Cadillac. “Did I tell you he played the most breathtaking rendition of ‘Ave Maria’ at Highland Park Presby last Christmas?”
Cissy clasped a beautifully manicured hand to her silk-covered heart at the memory, drawing my eye to the triple strand of pearls at her throat so that I found myself wondering how tightly I’d have to pull them to cut off her oxygen.
“Please, Mrs. Kendricks, you’re embarrassing me,” Trey feebly protested, and I wondered how a man who’d grown up on a Texas cattle ranch the size of Rhode Island could be so meek and pale. Someone obviously hadn’t eaten his Wheaties.
“A doctor of philosophy who plays the pipe organ. How . . . unusual.” I glanced at the bespectacled buttoned-down fellow across the table without a drop of my mother’s enthusiasm, all the while thinking that a Ph.D. in basket weaving might have been handier. But, then again, Trey had a trust fund that could pay off the federal deficit, so employment probably wasn’t his biggest concern.
“And he’s a member of Mensa, if that isn’t enough.”
“Oh, it’s enough already,” I murmured and felt the pointed toe of a Prada pump poke me in the shin.
Cissy Blevins Kendricks strikes again.
How like her to fix me up with a guy who thought he was smarter than everyone else, played the organ (which doesn’t sound like a good thing any way you put it), and who could quote Plato ad nauseam.
Perfect.
He fit right in with all the others she tried to foist on me when I least expected it. Last month it was an investment banker who wore a black eye patch but “had an impeccable nose for IPOs” and collected Lladro figurines. The month before, it was the heir to an ostrich farm whose long neck, receding hairline, beaked schnozz, and supersized Adam’s apple lent him a striking resemblance to his feathered beasts. Though I was the one who’d wanted to bury my head in the sand.
I wished my mother could just let me be. It’s not as if I were an old maid or anything, at least from my perspective. I was still on the sunny side of thirty and not desperate enough to settle for money instead of love. For Mother, good bloodlines superseded matters of the heart. Any son of Ross Perot would do, even if that meant her grandchildren would have Dumbo ears and a squeaky drawl that made nails on a chalkboard sound pleasant in comparison.
Trying to change her mind was a hopeless cause. Sort of like investing in Enron while they were making packing material out of financial reports.
Part of me wondered why I hadn’t stayed in Chicago instead of coming home again, though I’d felt so guilty for leaving Mother alone and going off to art school after Daddy died that I’d nearly succumbed way back then and remained in Dallas to attend SMU. Cissy had her diamond-studded arrow badge ready to pin on me, expecting I’d go through sorority rush and pledge Pi Phi, as she did. But my father had always insisted I follow my dreams, and so I’d undermined all of Mother’s plans and forged ahead with my own, as much for myself as for Daddy.
Still, it hadn’t taken Mother long after my art school graduation to lure me back where I belonged. Though I’d certainly adored Chicago, with its mix of sophistication and Midwest sturdiness, I’d missed Texas more, down to the scuffed toes of my Tony Lama boots. Must’ve been my DNA. Having both Blevins and Kendricks in my family tree made for some pretty deep roots. Though, sometimes, like now, I had grave concerns about what I’d gotten myself into.
I picked at my hearts of palm salad as Cissy made small talk with Trey, asking about his family’s recent trip to their mock chateau in Telluride, though I knew she’d already gotten a blow-by-blow from Trey’s mother, Millicent Maxwell (after whom Bar Bush supposedly named the book-writing presidential pooch).
And I pondered how the hell I was going to make it through several more courses without screaming and tearing my hair out at the roots. So I gazed at the crowd of faces on the yellow wall above, depictions of the Palm’s famous patrons, scowling when I spotted my mother’s image.