Too Pretty to Die by Susan McBride Page A

Dollar Store cologne. “I don’t believe it for a minute. That young woman took care of herself like an Olympic athlete. You know how pageant girls are.”
    “I know, I know.” Something I’d already told myself a million times over. Anyone who’d ever come up against a Texas beauty queen realized they might look like candy on the outside, but on the inside they were as hardy as a cockroach. “That’s exactly what I said to Deputy Dean, but she doesn’t agree. A neighbor heard a noise in the wee hours. When she went out for her paper later, she found Miranda’s door open and went inside.”
    “Dear Lord.” Mother’s hand went to her heart. “I can’t imagine anything more awful. It’s just not right to lose someone so young and vital,” she moaned. “No child should die before her mother.”
    Miranda might’ve been youthful and vital, but she was human after all, and lately life had thrown her curves that had her questioning her own worth and doubting that it amounted to much.
    Was it so implausible that her anguish over the damage done by Dr. Sonja’s botched injections had triggered doubts and insecurities that were too much for her to bear? Not to mention getting booted from a club that sent her a formal “kiss off” on letterhead.
    I shared my concerns about Miranda’s state of mind with my mother, though she mostly shook her head, repeating, “It would be so unlike her, really, so unlike her.”
    But Cissy hadn’t watched Miranda’s emotional collapse in front of a dozen guests at Delaney Armstrong’s. If she had, she would’ve understood that Miranda’s pain had been all too real.
    “She brought a gun with her, Mother, to shoot Dr. Sonja, or at least frighten her,” I reiterated, “which isn’t exactly something a rational person would do.”
    “So Miranda was a smidge melodramatic? That doesn’t make her suicidal,” Cissy countered, and crossed her arms defensively. She seemed to get angrier the more I attempted to lay groundwork for the notion that Miranda might have indeed ended her own life, and I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me or at Miranda.
    “Maybe she figured her life wasn’t worth living if she wasn’t perfect anymore,” I said, putting it out there, plain and simple, and Cissy’s frown deepened.
    Beneath her pale shade of powder, her skin turned a hot shade of pink. “Beauty isn’t everything,” she announced, her drawl less molasses and more venom, “but for some, it’s all they’ve got. Or so they believe. And it’s too bad, isn’t it, sweet pea? God gives us all a million different ways to shine, and sometimes we just have to look a little deeper than the glitter.”
    Great balls of fire.
    Had my mother really said that?
    I blinked at her, half expecting her to morph into Mother Teresa.
    But, nope.
    She hadn’t changed into anyone else.
    Cissy was still Cissy.
    Sometimes we just have to look a little deeper than the glitter.
    Wowee kazoo.
    That was quite a profound statement, coming from the Queen Bee of Dallas Society aka Her Highness of Highland Park, a woman who’d spent most of her life keeping up appearances and doing her damnedest to convince me that being a well-heeled society matron with the perfect house, perfect clothes, perfect marriage, and perfect life was the only dream worth having.
    Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a smidge (but only a smidge).
    Just when I thought I had Cissy nearly figured out, she proved me wrong. Then again, grief affected each of us in mysterious ways. It certainly had made her philosophical in this case.
    “Miranda was such a strong-willed child, so full of energy,” my mother said quietly. “I still can’t buy the idea that she’d do something so final”—she flicked a hand across the air—“and without so much as a word to her mother. You said she didn’t even leave a note behind?”
    “The police didn’t find one.” So Anna Dean had let drop.
    “But Debbie and Miranda were so close, like two peas in a