The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club (19 page)

My gaze swept over the place, from ground to rooftop, while I rolled the bag forward, but I saw nothing overtly sinister. A bird twittered from a nearby tree, and a squirrel scurried along the covered gutter.

Perfectly benign, I told myself, coming to stand behind my mother as she unlocked the front door.

Still, a prickle of dread raised the hair on the back of my neck as I followed her inside. I rolled the Tumi to a stop in the foyer and waited as Cissy went around clicking on lights and opening drapes to let in the sunshine. As illumination filled every dark corner, I made myself walk around, trying to forget that a woman had died upstairs a mere four days before.

Found dead on Thursday—I mentally tapped off—buried on Friday, memorialized on Saturday. And Sunday was proving no day of rest for the weary.

At least, not for Chief Inspector Cissy.

What did she expect to find here?
I wondered. Notes that Bebe had left behind, stating, “To whom it may concern, if you should find me dead, dressed in a lacy nightgown and tucked into bed, it means I was the victim of homicide and the killer is . . .”

“Andrea?”

“Huh?” I turned to find my mother staring at me—well, squinting, really, in that critical way of hers—plenty frightening enough when she wasn’t wearing glasses with lenses that made her eyes as big as half-dollars.

“I asked if you’d come sit with me in the living room so we could chat a spell.”

“Only if you take those . . . things off your face”—I waved a finger at her Mr. Magoo spectacles.

“Don’t like them, do you, sugar?”

“They scare me to death,” I said without thinking of my poor choice of words. “I don’t much like any of this.”

“I’m still getting used to being Miriam Ferguson myself,” she announced but obliged, removing the glasses and sticking them atop her frothy black head.

“You sure they won’t get swallowed up?”

“What, you don’t like my ’do, either?” She fingered her inky cotton-candy wig and let out a lilting laugh. “If only your father could see me now, he’d think I was stark-staring mad.”

Um, ditto.

It hadn’t escaped me that she seemed to be enjoying this, and I wasn’t sure if that boded well for her emotional state. Wasn’t there always laughter before the tears? Smiles and grins before the nuclear meltdown?

She’d hardly done more than get misty-eyed at the church. If she bottled up her grief for too long, she’d surely burst.

But I knew how good she was at holding things in.

That was one trait of hers—one of many—that I had not inherited. I couldn’t any more hold my emotions in check than a career politician could stop making promises he couldn’t keep.

“Come here, sweet pea,” Mother said, sashaying into the heart of the living room and sitting down. She patted a spot on the sofa beside her. “Let’s talk, just you and me without interference from Miss Annabelle Meade or anyone else. Sweet as she is, the girl is a tad overemotional, don’t you think?”

Talk about the crackpot calling the kettle black.

I crossed toward the sofa, admiring the vastness of space, the cathedral ceilings and tall windows, the furnishings that seemed straight out of the pages of
Architectural Digest
. Lots of earthy tones with splashes of red. Leather chairs mixed with patterned fabrics and glossy woods. It was hard to imagine that Bebe could find anything wrong with this.

The fireplace mantel held a striking silver candelabra and a vase filled with tall strands of sea grass, though it was missing anything personal, an heirloom clock or framed photographs. Ah, surely the cousins had already been here and had pocketed whatever had belonged to Bebe, or had set it aside to be packed and shipped.

After covering the distance between us, I dropped onto the cushion next to Cissy, and she put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed. I breathed in the Joy on her skin, and I nearly remarked that she and Miriam shared the same taste in perfume. Sadly, I couldn’t say the same for their choice of wardrobe.

“It seems strange,” she said, glancing around us, “to be in this room without Bebe, holding a glass of wine, sharing stories, and listening to those old records of hers. Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw.
That
, my dear, was music.” She sighed. “Now it’s so still.”

“How can you stay here?” I blurted out, worried to think of her alone in this house, not so much because of Bebe’s ghost; but because, much as I hated to admit it, I still wasn’t 100 percent convinced someone hadn’t harmed her friend. “Won’t it . . . creep you out?” An indelicate question, yes, but well intentioned.

She looked toward the stairwell, and I saw apprehension tighten her jaw. “I won’t stay in her room, of course,” she told me. “But there’s a guest room and a pull-out sofa in her study.” She faced me again. “I was really hoping, sugar, that you’d move in with me. Surely Mr. Malone wouldn’t mind if I borrowed you for a few days. You said he was working on a big case?”

“Yeah, big and out of town,” I grumbled. “Gone until Wednesday,” I blurted out before I realized what I’d done.

“Ah, well, then he’s out of the equation, isn’t he? It’s up to you, pumpkin.” She pounced. “Would you stay here with me? Pretty please?”

Had I fallen right into that one, or what?

I’d been waiting for another shoe to drop—besides the slides Annabelle had returned—and this one beaned me with a resounding
thunk.

Daddy had always called me “pumpkin,” and I had a soft spot for that term of endearment, beyond all others. Hearing it now made my heart skip a beat. She wasn’t playing fair, and she knew it. It also made me realize how dad-gummed determined she was, how much she needed me around to act like Superglue and hold her together.

Quicksand
.

I felt it sucking at my feet.

Move into Bebe’s?
That would mean sacrificing my normal routine for Mother’s cuckoo scheme. Not an appealing option by any measure.

Oh, boy.

Why had I assumed that my part in this operation would involve no more than a few afternoons, keeping an eye on Cissy while she peered into closets, looking for skeletons, until I went home for supper?

I had my own life to live, a job to do, so why was I even considering this?

“No way, José,” came to mind, as I wanted desperately to decline, but my mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Something about what Annabelle had told me in confidence had unnerved me, more than I wanted to acknowledge.

“Andrea? Will you do it or not?”

I felt that pang in my chest again, and I knew what the answer was, no matter how I fought it.

Despite our differences, I loved my mother beyond rhyme or reason. I wanted to protect her and, however much I wished she wouldn’t do this, there was no stopping her, short of sedation.

If I walked away and she was hurt—or worse—I could never forgive myself.

Never.

“I know this is an imposition on you,” she said, pressing her cheek against mine, a rare intimate gesture. “But you have to realize how important this is to me. Can you understand what it means, getting to the truth of what happened? Making sure there’s justice served, if need be?”

“I think I do,” I told her.

“Truly?” She drew back, blinking with disbelief. “You’re not just humoring me, Andrea Blevins Kendricks? Or coddling me because you think I’m particularly vulnerable after losing two of my dearest friends?” Her arm slid away.

Caution: land mines ahead!

I wet my lips and composed my thoughts, determined to avoid commenting on her emotional state or her sanity. What I did want to do was convince her that I knew all too well about loyalty and doing right by the people you love. It had everything to do with why I was sitting next to her.

“It’s not like I haven’t jumped through a few hoops myself to help someone I once cared about, have I?”

And, as she’d pointed out in Annabelle’s office, I had stuffed my sports bra and shoehorned my butt into hot pants to do it.

Enough said.

“You most surely have gone out on a limb for an old friend, haven’t you, sugar? I saw it for myself, and I thought you were crazy to do it. Before I realized how determined you were to see it through to the end, so I supported you as best I could, didn’t I?”

Dang it. “You did.”

She gazed warmly at me, with her extremely made-over face and unsuitable black tresses. The pale blue of her irises seemed so soft in that harsh palette, making me already miss the way she was
B
.
M
. (Before Miriam): the blond hair and pink mouth, the pale colors and pearls. The absence of leopard print.

“Sometimes you have to go with your heart,” I said, and she nodded. “Even when it seems illogical to everyone around you.”

“That’s it precisely. I can’t ignore my own instincts, not when everything inside”—she tapped the cheetah-spotted patch over the center of her chest—“tells me something is seriously rotten in Denmark.” She paused, and her orange-brown lips pulled taut, her expression turned pensive. “If I don’t try to find out what really happened to Sarah and Bebe, I’m letting them down. I have to be sure, or what kind of friend am I?” Her chin gave a quiver.

I had never seen my mother so open about her feelings, not with me, anyway. I didn’t want to put a damper on this moment of empathy between us. Still, I found it impossible not to share my own misgivings.

“But what if”—I began softly—“you don’t find anything? What if this is a wild goose chase you’re on, and Bebe and Sarah Lee truly died natural deaths? Will you really be able to let it go in a week or even a few days, if you can’t let go now?”

Because, that’s what worried me most: that she wouldn’t be able to drop this so easily when it was over, however it ended. I didn’t want the loss of her friends to become a true obsession.

If it wasn’t already.

“That won’t happen, I promise you.” She sniffed and raised her chin, gestures so typical of her that anyone who really knew her would’ve seen through the wig and the makeup and the unsuitable clothing. “Besides, I’ve already found proof that I’m on the right track.”

Yeah, yeah.

“I know, the nightgown and the worn-off lipstick,” I said, hating to be the purveyor of gloom. “But those things wouldn’t be evidence enough for an arrest warrant, much less a conviction.” Hey, I watched
CSI
. “You need witnesses, fingerprints, blood stains, something tangible.”

“Oh, this is tangible, all right,” Mother said and rose from the sofa, gesturing that I follow. “Housekeeping hasn’t yet touched this place and won’t until Bebe’s things have been removed. Bear that in mind. Bebe’s cousins didn’t want anyone from the cleaning crew in here until the smaller, most priceless pieces had been properly dispensed with. They were afraid things might be misplaced.”

Translation: the cousins didn’t want to risk anyone palming an expensive brooch until they had the chance to comb through the townhouse for whatever wasn’t in Bebe’s safe-deposit box, so they could pack it up and take it back to merry old England.

“Andrea, are you coming?”

Reluctantly, I pushed to my feet and trudged after her, through the opened archway that led to the kitchen, much the same layout as Sarah Lee Sewell’s townhouse.

Other aspects were similar as well: the granite-topped center island, ample space for a table and chairs, plenty of cabinets, and racks for pots and pans. A butler’s pantry and utility room off to the side. Though no copper-bottomed cookware hung from the ceiling, just empty hooks. Moving boxes sat in one corner, marked with a UK address, so I figured Jillie or Stella had decided to keep some of Bebe’s nicer culinary doodads. The shiny surfaces looked remarkably bare. I wondered if the fine china and silver had already been wrapped and shipped?

I found myself thinking of what Mabel Pinkston had said about Bebe at the reception:

“I didn’t think she had anybody left in the world besides her lawyers and a couple of long-lost cousins from across the puddle who didn’t give a hoot or holler about her until she dropped dead.”

“Over here,” Mother was saying, and I stopped my inventory of the room to join her by the sink. “This is what I’m talking about, Andrea.” She gestured at a dishtowel that had been folded in half, upon which sat two wine glasses, turned upside down. “Just
look
at this, would you?”

Humor her
, I reminded myself, the same advice I’d given Annabelle, although I hadn’t realized then that Annabelle would take it to such an extreme.

“Okay.” I leaned over, peering at the glasses closely, noting a scratch on one and a slight chip in the base of the other. “Yeah, I see what you mean. The quality’s not great and . . . yuck . . . they’re spotty as heck. What kind of dishwashing liquid does she use? Is it something generic? Probably not biodegradable, either.”

Mother snorted rather indelicately. Though maybe that was part of her newly adopted, less graceful persona of Rhinestone Cowgirl. “For heaven’s sake, it has nothing to do with the dishwashing liquid! Doesn’t this remind you of anything?” She swung her hand back and forth over the goblets, as if she were David Copperfield, preparing to pull a rabbit out of their stems.

Here we go again.

I squinted fiercely, willing my amazing powers of observation to kick in. But they still looked like ordinary glasses. Nothing fancy or expensive, just the kind you could get in a six-pack at Target. Obviously, Stella and Jillie had left them for the trash bin, and I couldn’t blame them.

Straightening up, I gave my best guess. “Er, someone drank wine recently.” I stated the obvious.

“Yes, yes,” Mother said, head bobbing, encouraging me to continue. “And, what else?”

“Um, well, afterward, somebody washed the goblets and left them to drain.”

Double duh.

“Go on, go on.” Her eyes took on an unnatural glint.

What else was there?

“Well, er, they didn’t put them in the dishwasher with the Jet Dry, which would have rinsed off the spots and made them squeaky clean.” My voice went up as I finished the sentence, because I had no idea where the heck I was supposed to go with this.