The Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Susan McBride Read Free Book Online Page B

sweat. With a contented grunt, I settled back in the cushioned wicker chair—a true Haywood Wakefield, part of the set clustered around me—and I gazed out at the gardens.
    The riot of colors cheered me, as they always did. They’d been concocted by a hoity-toity landscape architect ages ago and were still Mother’s pride and joy. The yard-workers must’ve been around recently as the hedges were neatly trimmed, the grass mowed and edges clipped, so that everything appeared crisp and symmetrical. I wondered how the crew avoided sunstroke, laboring beneath the unforgiving Texas sun.
    Which led me to consider the musclemen I’d seen dragging furniture from the huge orange truck into the house I’d passed on my way to Mother’s.
    Who’d be crazy enough to move in the middle of summer?
    “Did one of Mother’s neighbors die?” I said.
    “What on earth?” Sandy blinked. “Where did that come from, Andy?”
    “The eighteen-wheeler up the street.”
    Recognition dawned on her age-softened features. “Oh, yes, that.”
    The cool way with which she’d dispatched that nonanswer made my antennae go up.
    “So what’s the story?” I cocked an ear and waited.
    “There’s no story, just new neighbors.” Sandy shrugged, brushing me off, which only proved that I was right.
    Something was up.
    I leaned forward, propping elbows on knees. “If it’s nothing, then why was there a camera crew from Fox News hanging around on the lawn? Is a rock star moving in? It’s not a Kennedy, is it?”
    “A Kennedy?” She chuckled. “Land sakes, Andy, but you’ve got the most vivid imagination.”
    Like I hadn’t heard that a couple hundred times before, dating way back to my earliest school days when I’d drawn a Picasso-esque image of my third grade teacher on the blackboard during recess. (No, she wasn’t flattered.) “So what’s the big secret? And you still haven’t told me who died.”
    “There’s no secret.” She fiddled with the bottom button on her cardigan, pushing it into the buttonhole then out again. “As for the other, Cissy must have mentioned to you that Ethel Etherington passed several months back?”
    That was news to me.
    “I don’t think she did,” I said, though admittedly there were times when I only listened to my mother with half an ear, if that.
    “Well, she’s gone, bless her heart.”
    “I’m sorry to hear it,” I told her honestly, but I wasn’t surprised. “So, old lady Etherington finally went boots up, huh? I thought she’d live forever. What was she? A hundred-fifty?”
    “Andy.” That earned me a stern look.
    “At least a hundred?”
    “Ninety-eight.”
    “Is that all?”
    She wagged a finger at me.
    Really, to call Ethel Etherington “old” was like saying Methuselah was “getting up there.” Even when I was a kid, Mrs. Etherington had seemed ancient. I don’t remember much else about her, except that Mother had her over for tea occasionally, usually with other church ladies who’d dressed in gloves and hats and pearls, like someone’s maiden aunts. If there had been a Mr. Etherington, I’d never met him. Maybe she’d been widowed early on, which would account for the “missus” in front of her name. I’d never heard her called anything else. I do know there’d been no children.
    “So when did the house go on the market?”
    “Well, it took a while for it to get through probate. I think it was finally put up for sale about three weeks ago. It sold quick as a jackrabbit. Low mortgage rates, hot market and all that.”
    “Who bought that old castle?” I asked, because that’s what it looked like, complete with turrets and a massive carved front door that seemed big enough to allow a contingent of horsemen through. As a kid, I used to imagine it was Camelot and that King Arthur lived behind its limestone façade.
    “It’s a nice couple from Tyler who’d been subletting an apartment until now.”
    “Couple, as in a man and a woman?” I asked, because you