Too Pretty to Die by Susan McBride

outside in that chilly air. You’ll catch pneumonia.”
    She drew me inside and shut the door behind us. “Your mother’s up in her sitting room, finishing her toast and coffee. Go on and talk to her. She’s why you’re here, isn’t she?”
    Sandy Beck had always been able to read my thoughts like a psychic. Or maybe I was just that obvious.
    “I have some bad news about Miranda DuBois,” I said.
    “What kind of bad news?”
    “The worst,” was all I could think to muster, unable to voice the phrase, She’s dead. I think Sandy guessed pretty well what the worst was, considering my puffy eyes and hangdog expression.
    “I’m so sorry, sweetheart.” She tucked a thumb beneath my chin and gave me a good long look, before she sighed and took my hand, patting it. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”
    “Thank you.”
    Then she let me go, and I headed up the stairs, as I had so many times before; treading carefully on the Oriental runner, my weight causing each step to gently groan.
    I slid my hand up the banister, the carved length of it polished smooth, glistening with the Murphy’s oil soap that I knew I’d smell on my palm long afterward.
    At the top of the stairs I glanced aside to see my father’s study, and found myself giving a wave at the door, as if he still sat behind his mammoth desk and would look up, calling out, “Hey, pumpkin. How was school?”
    Some things you just never forgot.
    There was a time when I would have knocked before entering my mother’s sitting room, but on this particular morning I didn’t even pause at the threshold.
    I walked straight in and found her perched on her settee, the newspaper settled on the cushion beside her; on the table in front of her sat a coffee-filled Limoges cup atop its matching saucer. The plate that had once held her toast was bare of all but the smallest crumbs and a smear of strawberry jam.
    She glimpsed my approach over the top of her reading glasses and quickly removed them, as I know how she hated to be seen wearing them.
    “My God, Andrea,” she drawled, the thin curve of her eyebrows arching. “You look like death warmed over.”
    That good, huh?
    “It’s Miranda, and it’s my fault. I never should have left her alone last night,” I got out before I choked up, feeling guilty all over again, and began to hiccup.
    My mother swept the newspaper off the settee and plunked me down beside her. “There, there,” she said, and rubbed my back until my hiccups stopped.
    Then I told her what had happened when I went to Miranda’s duplex that morning, how Anna Dean was there, awaiting the arrival of the medical examiner’s van.
    “Miranda’s dead?” she repeated, and the pale slip of her forehead puckered. “Are you sure?”
    Well, I hadn’t exactly seen her death pose, but I think I trusted the deputy chief of the Highland Park Police Department to know a live person from a dead one.
    “Yes, I’m sure.”
    “I don’t believe it.” Cissy’s blue eyes went wide. “She’s as full of life as anyone I know, and far too pretty to die.”
    I nearly choked, trying to swallow down that one.
    Too pretty to die, huh ?
    I doubted that being pretty could ever stave off death the way garlic and crosses could ward off vampires, but I knew what she meant, despite the overt flippancy of her remark.
    Miranda had been one of those women who’d seemed too beautiful to be real, the kind who floated through life without a care in the world. Or, at least, that’s how it looked from the outside.
    But I knew better.
    I had witnessed Miranda’s last few hours—well, the last few hours before her last few hours—and they’d hardly been a cakewalk.
    When I told her Deputy Dean had suggested that Miranda orchestrated her own demise, Mother reared her head, her lips tight, obviously no more convinced than I. In fact, she looked downright mad.
    “Anna Dean thinks Miranda DuBois killed herself? Pish posh!” Cissy sniffed, as if catching a whiff of