The Good Girl's Guide to Murder Read Online Free Page A

his own apartment, paid his bills on time (so far as I knew), and hadn’t broken the law lately.
    She glanced around, before bending nearer the table and lowering her voice. “Penny George tells me she’s seen Mr. Malone’s red car parked in front of your place. Overnight .”
    Penny George was one of my elderly neighbors, a busybody who served on one of Mother’s church committees. I rolled my eyes. “Doesn’t she have anything better to do than spy on me? It’s none of her business besides.”
    “But it is mine, because you’re my daughter.” Cissy sighed again in that disappointed way of hers. “I thought you were smarter than that, Andrea. Surely you realize that men won’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free.”
    “For God’s sake, Mother.” Not that tired old analogy.
    “Do you really want to drag God into this, sweetie? Because I don’t think he’d approve, either. Nor would your father.” She suddenly became fascinated with her wedding band, doing a little finger wiggle so I wouldn’t miss it, diamonds gleaming. “Your daddy was a gentleman, Andrea, and I was a good girl. He never would have considered dallying with me, not before our engagement.”
    Dallying? Is that what she thought Malone was doing? Being ungentlemanly, getting the milk for free, tarnishing my sterling reputation?
    Yeesh .
    I reminded myself where she was coming from, an era very different from this one, full of traditions that had been trampled in the last few decades. Still, the fact that she was holding me to her impossible standards didn’t sit well with me.
    I looked her squarely in the face. “Mother, it’s the twenty-first century. Queen Victoria is dead. My relationship with Brian is mutual. No one’s doing any dallying.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yes.”
    She smoothed the napkin in her lap, murmuring, “Free milk is free milk, no matter the century.”
    I bit the inside of my cheek.
    Let it go, Andy, let it go .
    “Can we talk about something else?” I begged, because sex was the last thing I wanted to discuss with my mother.
    “Something else? Well, hmm, let me see.” She drummed her French manicure on the table. “All right, how about an interesting item I read this morning in the Park Cities Press? ”
    Neiman’s at NorthPark was having a sale? A-line skirts were out of style? Collagen had been banned by the FDA? Ralph Lauren had been elected governor of New York?
    I could hardly wait to hear.
    “There was a rather large announcement on the wedding page,” she began, cocking her head the way she did when she wanted to study my reaction, like a scientist intent on a petrie dish full of staph infection. “Seems your old friend Cinda Lou Mitchell just got remarried. That’s number four, if I’m counting correctly. Amazing how some women can make commitments over and over while others”—she sighed and continued to fiddle with her earring, though her eyes didn’t leave my face—“just keep draggin’ their feet.”
    “Please, don’t go there again,” I moaned, thinking that hot bit of news hardly qualified as a change of subject. Though I realized it was merely her way of reminding me that my former Hockaday classmate—not someone I’d exactly call a “friend”—had managed four weddings and quite a few funerals (including geriatric hubbies number one and two) while I had yet to take a single stroll down the aisle as anything other than a bridesmaid.
    “You really need to get out more, Andrea, instead of staying cooped up in your place with your paints and your computer. Practically the only men you ever see are the gas station attendants.”
    “I use self-serve.”
    “See what I mean?” She plucked at nonexistent lint on her blouse. “It’d be good for you to go to Marilee’s party and meet people.”
    Meaning, go solo.
    Malone-less.
    I tossed my battered napkin on the table. “Okay, okay, I’ll do it, if it’ll make you happy.” And settle the score, I nearly