Too Pretty to Die (23 page)

And where the heck was Janet?

I still hadn’t heard a peep from the bedroom. She must’ve been going through every one of Miranda’s photographs with a fine-tooth comb, or at least with the zoom feature.

“Jan?” I called out as Suzy tugged on my hair with a flat iron and I felt the heat against my neck. “Are you alive in there?”

“Give me five,” my long lost friend hollered back while Suzy mussed my hair with her fingers.

I glanced at my purse, planted on Janet’s dining room table, not quite within an arm’s length, and I willed my cell to ring, figuring it was about time Malone surfaced from the Stars-Blues game and started looking for me. Unless the Blues had caught up and they were headed for overtime, even a shootout. Tack the postgame onto things and it could be close to midnight before Brian realized I wasn’t sitting at my computer and started looking for me.

Nice to know I was so sorely missed.

“Your face is done,” Suzy said, whipping the towel from around my neck and tugging me out of the chair. “Now it’s time to dress you properly.”

Since when were jeans and a sweatshirt not
proper
?

“We’ll have you looking chic in two minutes flat!” Suzy promised, dragging me over to where she had clothing on hangers neatly laid over the back of Janet’s sofa. She picked up a bright red jersey dress, shook her head and muttered, “Too flashy.” Then she held up a pearl gray jewel-necked sweater and tweedy A-line skirt, squinted at me, and declared, “Too prim and proper. Janet said you need to look bedable.”

Bedable
?

Seriously, was that a word?

Without further ado, she grabbed up a creamy cable knit dress with pearl buttons up the back and a Peter Pan collar that had a Ralph Lauren label.

“You wear size seven shoes, right? That’s what Janet told me.” She pushed a pair of black spiky-heeled leather boots at me as I stood there, gawking. “It’s the naughty prep school girl look,” she explained. “Men love it.”

I suddenly felt the urge to sing Britney Spears’s “Oops! . . .I Did It Again,” which surely should be punishable by an afternoon in detention, bare minimum.

Oy vey.

Despite my better judgment, I took the clothes in my arms and started to head toward the bathroom.

But Suzy zipped around in front of me and cut me off.

“You can change right here,” she said. “I don’t want you catching sight of yourself in the mirror, not just yet, and you might mess up your hair besides. You’ll need me for the back buttons, too.”

I’d been dressing myself since I was five, but I guess that didn’t matter much. The skeptical side of my brain imagined this as part of Janet’s evil plan to ensure I didn’t run screaming out the door.

“Fine,” I said.

But I did turn around modestly while I changed in the middle of Janet’s living room. Suzy Bee fussed and fluttered every step of the way until I was done, the pointy-toed boots pinching my feet and the Peter Pan collar fairly strangling me.

“
Violà
!” Suzy the Stylist cried, and stepped back to admire her handiwork. Then she shuffled me around Janet’s furniture until I came face-to-face with a full-length mirror. “So?” she asked, peering at me over the top of my right shoulder. “What do you think?”

I stared at the girl in the mirror, feeling like I should introduce myself, because she wasn’t someone I knew.

Certainly, she wasn’t me.

T
he woman gazing back at me from the silvered glass had eyes that were almond-shaped and smoky, twice as big as they ordinarily were; her cheeks looked smoothed and defined by a subtle blush of bronzy pink. Her mouth was luscious as dewy strawberries, parted lips an earthy pink against white teeth. And her hair . . . good God, where had the unruly mess of wavy brown gone? And it wasn’t bundled in a hasty ponytail, no siree, Bob. Against all odds, it actually appeared chic, smooth yet messy, sexy and tousled and framing a heart-shaped face in a way I’d only seen on airbrushed women pouting from the covers of fashion magazines.

As for the Girl in the Mirror’s attire, it was as far removed from sweatshirts and jeans as one could get. The clingy knit dress actually showed off curves instead of hiding them, and the four-inch spike heels on the boots suggested tall and slinky rather than petite.

“What have you done to me?” I wailed, and Suzy blinked, obviously taken aback. “I look freaking
gorgeous
!”

I was groaning instead of raving, but it wasn’t out of disrespect for Suzy’s handiwork. It was because the woman in the mirror wasn’t Andrea Blevins Kendricks. Not the one I recognized, and I should know best.

It was the chichi countenance of someone else entirely. Someone who’d obliterated every tiny brown freckle with makeup and had fussed with her hair until each strand did as it was told; someone who’d spent forty-five minutes getting groomed to death by a stylist from the Fashion section of the newspaper and had turned into a complete and total stranger in the process (at least on the surface).

God help me if my mother ever caught me looking like this.

She’d start expecting way too much from me, and I wasn’t about to waste half my life prettying myself up just to go grocery shopping, as was the Dallas way (unless one had servants to hit the Tom Thumb for them, which was most definitely the Beverly Drive society matron’s way).

“So do you like it? Or don’t you?” Suzy was asking, though any attempt at a response on my part was interrupted by a very loud wolf whistle.

Odd, since there was no construction site in Janet’s apartment that I was aware of.

I turned my head with its carefully tousled ’do to see that Janet had emerged from her bedroom, big mouth agog.

“Well, butter my biscuit!” she said, apparently as shocked as I was by the transformation. “I can’t even believe it’s you, Kendricks. You look like a . . .”

“Fraud,” I finished for her, because it was the truth.

“Not what I was about to say at all”—she wagged a finger at me—“no, no, you look like a high-class babe that the Caviar Club would be itching to add to its roster.” She gave Suzy a thumbs-up. “You done good, Ms. Bee. I wasn’t sure the transformation could be accomplished, but I knew if anyone could turn the Goodwill Girl into Beluga Barbie, it was you.”

Goodwill Girl
?
Beluga Barbie
?

Geez.

“You promised a private meeting with Manolo when he’s in town, don’t forget,” Suzy chattered as Janet urged the reed-thin blond and her bait box full of makeup toward the door. “And backstage passes at the Tom Ford show—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good for it, Ms. Bee, no worries,” Janet said as she hustled the stylist out of the apartment and shut the door. Dramatically, she leaned against it, letting out a big sigh. “I thought she’d never leave.” She took a few giant steps in my direction then stood before me, wringing her hands. “Oh, God, Andy, this whole thing’s getting crazier than I imagined. Did you look at
all
the pictures on Miranda’s camera from the parties?”

I thought I’d already told her that I hadn’t, but I shook my head anyway.

She exhaled slowly then said, “Girl, we need to talk before I send you out to the barracudas.”

“Don’t you mean the Belugas?” I tried to joke, but she obviously wasn’t in a joking mood.

“Sure, that’s what I meant,” she replied, and reached for my arm. “C’mere and chat a sec before you go.” She tugged me toward the sofa but changed her mind and waved me up again. “Wait, you’ll wrinkle, and we can’t have that. Can you just lean against the wall or something? I’ll be quick.”

“I’ll stand,” I said, not inclined toward wall-leaning. “Well, go on.”

I was ready to get my Mata Hari act over with, though I had nothing against a good briefing before I infiltrated enemy turf.

Janet didn’t sit for long, either. She bounced off the couch, doing a bit of pacing as she talked about the photographs on Miranda’s memory card, starting off with the fact that she was as sure as I was that the pictures were taken at Caviar Club parties. But Janet had some evidence to back up her instincts.

“I zoomed in on half a dozen shots, and the Caviar Club’s watchdog, Theresa Hurley, was in the background of several of them. She’s holding a clipboard in one,” Janet told me. “Like she was doing her bulldog routine, checking off names from a list.”

Speaking of clipboards, how could I ever slip in without the Bulldog knowing right off the bat that I didn’t belong?

I posed the question to Janet, but she waved it off like it wasn’t important.

“Unfortunately, I really didn’t see anything much more than vaguely blackmailworthy. It takes an awful lot to shock these days,” she said, and sniffed. “Let’s see, we’ve got a couple of city councilmen in semicompromising positions, and several party girl heiresses going at it with each other.” She shrugged. “Nothing for anyone to get whipped into a frenzy about, much less drive them to commit a murder.”

I had a feeling I knew why the big bombshells were missing.

“The really incriminating stuff must be on Miranda’s laptop,” I said, voicing my thoughts aloud. “And whoever went over to her house last night and shot her realized that. They could have even glimpsed something on the screen”—as I had—“while the laptop was out on the coffee table.”

“Well,
that
we’ll never be able to prove, any more than we can prove Miranda didn’t shoot herself,” Janet said, and I glumly agreed. “Still, we’ve got something, Andy.” She sat up straighter. “Did you recognize anyone when you took a gander at the jpegs?” she asked, and there was a gleam in her eye that told me
she
had.

“I thought the blond guy in the hot tub with Miranda looked a little familiar,” I said. “It was hard to tell, but he reminded me of Dr. Sonja’s beau. I’m not sure about anyone else. It was kinda hard to see.”

“The blond dude with his tongue in her ear looked familiar? I’ll bet he did.” Janet laughed. “Yeah, my eagle eyes spotted Lance Zarimba, too. I wonder how Dr. Botox feels about her dude messing around with other women. Miranda DuBois in particular, considering she and Dr. Sonja were hardly pals.”

“Oh, Lordy,” I breathed, considering all the implications.

Could Lance have been the “unavailable” man that Miranda had babbled about while Suzy Bee did her make up for
D Magazine
?

“There’s definitely a story there,” Janet remarked, and, boy, did she look pleased with herself. Her overinflated lips had curled up into a Cheshire cat grin. “It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, if Dr. Madhavi’s boyfriend belonged to the Caviar Club, did she know about it? Or is she a part of things, too?”

“Whoa.”

“Whoa, indeed.”

Take about a tangled web. I don’t think they get any more complicated than a love triangle, particularly when one of those involved has a medical degree.

So, let’s say that Miranda and Lance had gone at it, and Dr. Sonja found out about the affair.

Could she have given Miranda bad Botox on purpose? To mess her up? To make Lance dump her?

All right, maybe that was a stretch—a big stretch—but my mind was open to anything, like Dr. Sonja having been the one who’d retrieved Miranda’s gun from the floor. It was certainly a possibility. And if she had, there’s nothing to say she couldn’t have dropped by the duplex later on and used Miranda’s own .22 to kill her.

“Andy? You’re not listening, are you?”

“What?”

Janet had crossed her arms and stamped her foot impatiently on the floor. “I was saying that I also spotted a dear friend of ours in the background of Miranda’s photos. A woman we all know and loathe.”

I shrugged, because that could be just about anybody.

“Cinda Lou Mitchell,” she enunciated, ever so clearly, and my jaw dropped.

Now
that
went beyond a mere “No way.”

Cinda Lou had gone to Hockaday, as had Janet and I. Ms. Mitchell had been in my class, and I knew her well (unfortunately). She’d ended up as a reporter for Channel 11, never quite making the top anchor spot as Miranda had at Channel 5. Though Cinda had beat out Miranda in one department: wedding bells. Cinda Lou was on her fourth husband—or was it her fifth?—a geriatric fellow who spent most of his time napping and funding Cinda Lou’s shopping excursions, from what I’d heard from my mother.

“Cinda’s in the Caviar Club? What if her geezer of a husband found out?” I asked.

“He’d toss her to the streets, wouldn’t he?”

“His money-grubbing son would, anyway,” Janet corrected. “Which is how we’ve got an in, or how you’ve got an in, rather. I made a quick phone call and took care of things,” she said smugly. “Cinda Lou has ‘tagged’ you for tonight. That’s the term for inviting a new member, apparently. She’ll go along with anything, so long as I don’t breathe a word about her wild ways. She swore this is her last fling, and she’ll be a good wife to the Honorable Wallingford Matterhorn from this point forward. So if anyone asks, you’re there because of your old prep school pal. Got it?”

“I’m there because of your story,” I said, “so you’ll remain gainfully employed at the
PCP
.”

“Oh,
contraire
.” Janet raised a neatly drawn eyebrow at me. “You will not mention the story, much less my name, got that? Not only could it be dangerous for you if you did, because we don’t know who you might bump into—for goodness’ sake, look what happened to Miranda—but they’d toss you out on your ass before you took a sip of bubbly.” She tapped a finger in the air as she instructed, “Play it like this, okay? You’re joining because you’re bored with your boyfriend, and if you’re curious about what happened to Miranda DuBois, what’s the big deal? You went to school with her, after all. No harm, no foul.”

What did she just say
?

I pretty much blocked out everything after the “bored with your boyfriend” part.

“I’m cheating on Brian? That’s the story you came up with?” It hurt even to repeat it aloud. “Can’t you think of something else less tacky?”

Dear God, she hadn’t told Cinda Lou
that
, had she? The bimbo would probably lap up every word and have it spread across the grapevine by morning that I was a swinger. Forget about where Cinda had gleaned such information. No one would care. They’d just gobble up the news that Cissy Kendricks’s daughter, the one who’d bailed on her deb ball, was being naughty.