Too Pretty to Die (3 page)

I’d been two years behind her, but had felt every bit the outsider that Janet seemed proud to be, so I couldn’t help but admire her. I had cheered from the sidelines as she’d left Big D in pursuit of a career in the theater, returning less than triumphant after mere bit parts on soap operas and off-off-Broadway shows that closed within hours of opening, and taking on a stint as a society reporter with the
Park Cities Press
on a lark, only to realize she was damned good at it.

Janet wore vintage clothes, dyed her hair red as a fire engine, and had all of Dallas society at her fingertips. Literally. She could speed-dial Mrs. Ross Perot or Mrs. Jerry Jones via cell phone if the mood struck her.

So why the heck was she suddenly worried about thin lips?

Janet had never put a lot of stock in her appearance, beyond looking like, well, herself. She wasn’t like the dozen society snobs in Delaney Armstrong’s living room who practically lived and died by the sword (or, rather, by the scalpel); who thought that winning meant the tiniest nose, the roundest breasts, the fullest mouth, and the thinnest thighs.

If Janet wasn’t out to one-up other women in the eternal “who’s the fairest of them all” debate, then it had to be because . . . oh, gosh.

“You’ve got a man,” I blurted out, because it was the only thing that made sense. Why else did a normally sane and rational woman suddenly turn nonsensical?

Her eyes went wide, and her mouth—with its perfectly normal-sized lips—hung open just a spell, long enough for me to figure I’d hit that sucker on the nose.

“You’ve met a man who thinks Angelina Jolie is the feminine ideal,” I went on, sure that I’d figured it out, brilliant detective that I was (well, I’d read enough Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes in my growing-up to qualify for a GED in Detection, at least). “So you want fat lips to please him.”

“Andy, you know me better than that,” she remarked with a lift of her chin, only to tag on, “I’m just maybe a little too caught up in something I’m working on, for the paper. It’s got me to thinking about perception.”

“Perception?”

“Looks, perfection, what men want from women, how others view us, what makes someone attractive. Lots of things.” Her eyes clouded for a moment, then she shook it off. “I can’t say more about it yet, Andy. But I will reassure you that I will not change any part of my body to please anyone but myself.”

Uh-huh.

I’d told myself that same story before I’d fallen for Malone. It was easy to make all those feminist proclamations before your heart completely turned to mush. Look at what Ted Turner had done to Jane Fonda. Nothing on that woman was real anymore. And good ol’ Ted had dumped her for a younger model regardless.

So had Janet found her own Ted? After so many years of being single—and professing she would remain so forever?

Hmm.

But I didn’t debate her or interrogate her. I’d find out any scoop soon enough. It was inevitable. Janet was a gossip columnist, for heaven’s sake. Eventually, she’d have to spill her guts.

“Then promise me you’ll leave this Botox bash tonight without going all Morgan Fairchild on me, okay?” I said, and put a hand on her padded shoulder.

“Good God, girl, that’s why I invited you to tag along with me,” she quipped. “To remind me that I’m not like them. I just write about ’em.”

“Did you say you
invited
me?” I parroted. “Wasn’t it more like
tricked me
.”

“Semantics.” She wiggled bejeweled fingers—Janet did so appreciate good costume jewelry. “You give me strength, my friend, so I will pass on Dr. Sonja’s freebies and do a little more research before I make a decision. I don’t need to jump into lip plumping right this minute. What I do need is a decent steak and some onion rings.”

“Now you’re talkin’.” I grinned.

The aliens from Planet Superficial that had momentarily possessed my friend’s brain had released it with no obvious residual damage.

Phew.

After a final glance in the mirror—and a quick primping of her curly ’do—Janet turned to me, suggesting, “How about we take off now and go get that dinner? I don’t need to stay till the end for the door prizes. I’ve seen enough here to write my story. Besides”—she shrugged—“if I hang around any longer listening to well-to-do women bitch about boob jobs and face-lifts and liposuctioned thighs, I think I’ll have to throw myself under the nearest Mercedes. I might have to chronicle the self-absorbed insanity of the rich and plastic, but I don’t want to catch it.”

Ah, now there was my comrade who liked to color outside the box. It was good to have her back after that
Nip/Tuck
moment.

I grinned. “That’s the Janet Graham I know and love.”

She nudged my arm, and the familiar spark returned to her eyes. “How does Bob’s Steak and Chop House sound? You can’t even tell there was ever a fire,” she added, because there had been one, a year or so back. But it wasn’t because of overcooked tenderloin.

It sounded lots better than hanging out at Delaney’s with a bunch of wine-sipping women lining up for needle sticks.

Yuck.

“Give me smashed potatoes over a vial of cow placenta any day,” I said, and headed out of the quiet of the posh loo, catching the opening beat of the Village People doing “YMCA” and praying we could slip past the living room unnoticed.

As I led the way toward the front door, I buttoned my jacket to ready myself for the cool November air, ignoring Janet’s whispers about slowing down.

We were so close to getting away, I could smell freedom as clearly as I could Delaney Armstrong’s overpowering White Linen perfume.

“I should probably let Delaney know we’re leaving,” she whined, glancing behind her. “She was kind enough to add me to the guest list so I could research a story.”

“Make up your mind,” I said, and paused as she contemplated whether to keep moving or head back to bid Delaney farewell.

While I tapped my foot on the floor, I stared at Delaney’s family portrait, hung above an elaborate Italian console in the foyer, in which the Armstrong clan posed in their English garden out back. Delaney smiled so tight it looked like it hurt. Beside her sat her husband Jonathan, who had
GQ
looks from his thick brown hair to the cleft in his chin. On either side stood their twin girls, wearing matching lavender dresses.

Glancing at the picture-perfect tableau made my teeth ache.

“All right”—Janet turned back toward me—“you win. I’ll just give Delaney a jingle in the morning to say
merci
.”

“Let’s boogie then, chickie!” I caught Janet’s wrist, eager to hustle her out of there, and we would’ve surely snuck out unchecked if at the very moment I reached for the nickel-plated handle, the door hadn’t pushed wide open, nearly butting into my nose as a woman in pink barreled in.

She was drunk as a skunk, stumbling forward on tottering high heels, big poof of blond hair flying, waving something dark in her hand—a clutch purse?—and leaving the reek of gin in her wake.

“Oooph,” Janet gasped, running into my back as I came to a cold hard stop.

Who the heck would be nuts enough—or, rather, smashed enough—to crash Dr. Sonja’s Pretty Party, one being covered by the society editor of the
Park Cities Press
, no less?

I caught the crasher’s profile as she charged toward the living room, and a familiar name rose to my lips. I was sure I was wrong, until I heard the slurred voice as she howled, “You quack, you ruined my face!”

Nope. I was right on the nose.

Miranda DuBois, I knew without a doubt, co-anchor of the Channel 5 evening news, famous for her dimpled smile and ample cleavage; but, long before that, a classmate at Hockaday, one of the pageant girls I’d avoided like the plague. Not that she wasn’t nice enough, but it had always felt more like saccharine than sugar to me.

“
Look at me . . . I’m a monster!
My life is ruined
!”

By the sound of her raving, I guessed that the long-term effects of bleaching her hair had damaged her self-control.

The woman was acting totally bonkers.

“Oh, my, now
this
is what I call a story,” Janet murmured as she stepped around me to get a reporter’s eye view of the goings-on.

Despite my best intentions, I followed in Janet’s wake, reaching the threshold of the living room in time to glimpse Miranda shaking her tiny black purse around the room and sputtering about exposing the truth and making them—whoever
they
were—pay for what they’d done.

Once I got close enough, though, I saw that it was no clutch bag Miranda was jabbing in the air.

In case my eyes weren’t to be trusted, my ears picked up the gasps of “She’s got a gun!” as the less-than-sober Ms. Miranda DuBois took aim at Delaney . . . then at the mustached blond dude who’d come with Dr. Sonja . . . and finally pointed the tiny pistol right at Dr. Sonja’s heart.

The women started shrieking and dodging for cover in a blur of autumn-colored cashmere and wool.

“Get down!” Janet cried, and grabbed my shoulder, pushing me toward the floor with her just before a shot rang out.

I
f I’d been smart, I would’ve hightailed it out of Delaney’s place ASAPP (As Soon As Pistol Popped). No one would’ve thought less of me. Heck, no one would’ve noticed had I gone, since I’d hardly been the life of the Pretty Party.

Only I didn’t do the wise thing. I did what I usually did: opened my mouth when I shouldn’t, raised my hand when I should’ve kept it firmly entrenched at my side, and generally played Dudley Do-right.

Ugh.

Which explained how I ended up driving a drunk and unhappy Miranda DuBois to her duplex après the fiasco at Dr. Sonja’s Botox bash.

My buddy Janet Graham deserted me—and aborted our dinner plans for Bob’s Steak and Chop House—instead calling a cab and hightailing it to her
Park Cities Press
office. She had a juicy story to type up and was determined to get it into tomorrow’s edition. If she waited until morning, it would have to go in the second biweekly edition, not out for three days, and by then it would be old news.

There was little Janet hated more than being old news.

So I got left behind and stuck with Miranda.

Call me a sap, but after witnessing the goings-on, I felt suddenly protective of Hockaday’s prettiest graduate. I felt sorry for her, even.

Strange, because she’d doubtless felt sorry for me back in prep school, since I wasn’t anyone’s idea of “most beautiful” or “most popular.” She’d been the golden girl, the kind of woman every guy wanted to be with and every woman wanted to be; while I’d been gawky and more of a loner. I was the artsy kid, the one with glue in her fingernails and paint in her hair.

I was still artsy.

Only, Miranda DuBois was hardly the golden girl anymore.

The woman was obviously in the midst of a meltdown, and could well have killed a woman had her aim been square. Assuming her driving would be equally erratic, I didn’t want to be a party to the former Miss Dallas propelling her Jaguar off the road and into a tree.

So I retrieved her keys from the ignition—she’d left her car running right out front—and I handed them over to Delaney Armstrong, who promised to have someone drop the silver Jag off at Miranda’s by morning.

Personally, I could not have cared less what happened to Miranda’s fancy vehicle. My brain was still trying to wrap around the sight of my former classmate having a nervous breakdown in front of a dozen women who’d be on their cell phones all night, spreading the word about Miranda’s messed-up face and lousy gun handling.

I assumed that Miranda had at least a few snooty friends among the party guests, and I expected one of them to step forward and assist the broken-down beauty queen. But when no one volunteered a shoulder for Miranda to lean on, I stupidly offered an ear and a Kleenex, reaffirming my title as “Collector of Strays.”

I couldn’t turn my back on a wounded creature, even the dumbest of the two-legged variety.

Besides, Miranda could hardly stand upright without assistance, much less drive a car, and her state of mind was too questionable to just stick her in the back of a taxi and send her off alone.

I figured that once I got her safely to her door, I’d call her mother. Or, rather, have my mother call her mother. Cissy had been pals with Deborah Santos since their own stint at Hockaday, many moons ago. Debbie had been married more times than Erica Kane on
All My Children
, but she’d always doted on her only daughter. In fact, when I’d exasperated Cissy, she used to sigh and say to me, “Why can’t you be more like Miranda DuBois? That girl respects her mother.”

Only I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with Miranda’s mummy, since she wasn’t exactly listed in the yellow pages and more often than not was gallivanting around the globe to her villa on the Riviera or her palazzo on Lake Como or her beach house in Costa Rica.

I wanted to find her, though, if I could, as Miranda needed someone with her who truly cared . . . and who might possibly drop her off at her therapist’s for a new Prozac prescription first thing in the morning. I’ll warrant someone like Miranda had her shrink on speed dial. The bigger the ego, the more fragile the psyche, wasn’t that how it went?

And Miranda’s psyche had shattered tonight like Tiffany glass, scattering into a million sparkly pieces.

Following her bungled attempt to put a bullet in Dr. Sonja—or, at least, threaten her with a bullet—she’d dropped the gun, broken down in tears, and sobbed about Dr. Sonja ruining her life and her career.

When I came up off the floor after the gunshot, I’d seen little beyond Miranda’s tragic figure kneeling in the midst of Delaney’s living room, her head in her hands; the dozen women who’d taken refuge behind furniture emerging to surround her, all the while yammering like squawking geese.

I’d heard Delaney profusely apologizing to Dr. Sonja, who’d been busy herself, packing up her syringes and potions and lotions and vanishing with her hard-bodied sidekick before the air cleared.

One of the other guests must’ve removed the .22 during the melee, because it was no longer on the floor near Miranda by the time my reflexes kicked in and I went over to help her stand. I figured someone had snagged it for safekeeping, which wasn’t a bad idea.