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

question. I perched on the arm of the sofa, the towel tucked around me, a bare leg dangling. My freshly washed hair drip-dripped on my shoulders. “Unfortunately, it’s not optional.”
    “Your mother won’t let you get out of it?”
    “Worse.” I sighed. “She bribed me with Escada.”
    “The nerve of her.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I mean, how dare she?”
    “It’s despicable,” I said, playing along, and he laughed, doubtless thinking, “ Poor little don’t-wanna-be-rich girl .”
    Still, he knew my mother, so he had to feel some pity.
    I imagined his boyish, slightly crooked grin, and his unruly brown hair, tousled upon his forehead. It amazed me that I was attracted to someone so centered, so preppy, and so, um, white bread. Well, he was Ivy League—a Harvard law grad—so I guess he couldn’t help it. Not a single tattoo or piercing graced his lean body. And, believe me, I’d done a fair amount of investigating in that respect.
    Nope, Malone was entirely too presentable for my taste, which leaned toward longhaired poets with sad eyes, brilliant minds, and always-empty wallets. But, in spite of his passion for things buttoned-down, I liked him. A lot. He made me feel warm all over and tingly at the same time. A little like prickly heat.
    “So you want me to go with?” he offered. “You know I own a tux, if that’s an issue. It’s Armani.” Quick pause. “All right, it’s a knock-off, but it looks real.”
    “It’s not the tux. The issue is Cissy,” I said, feeling horrible when I had to turn him down. “Mother insisted I go solo. She’s hoping I’ll meet an eligible bachelor.”
    “What am I? Chopped liver?” He sounded hurt.
    “It’s not that exactly. She does like you, Malone. It’s just that”—how did I explain Penny George’s spying and that stupid “milk for free” theory without completely humiliating myself and Cissy?
    “Just what?”
    I tried a different tack. “Think of my mother as the little socialite that could. She won’t let up until I’m the ball on someone’s chain.” Preferably, someone with a pedigree dating back to Plymouth Rock or with at least an oil well—or three—in his pocket.
    “She wants us to get married?” Did his voice shake, or had I imagined it? “Is that what you’re saying?”
    I nervously played with the cord of my old Princess phone. “Hey, it’s not what Cissy wants, anyway, right? It’s what we want. And I don’t plan to be anyone’s ball and chain”—I assured him, lest he started thinking I was implying anything—“not for a while anyway. I like things as they are.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes.” I did want a ring on my finger someday. I just didn’t want it to be a rush job, even if that would make my mother happy.
    “Well, all right, then.” He grunted. “How ’bout I crash the party . . . put on my penguin suit, and pretend I’m with the wait staff?”
    “Cissy would kill you.”
    “Probably put a Jimmy Choo up my ass.”
    “A Ferragamo, at any rate.”
    “So the answer is ‘no’?”
    “Yes.”
    He sighed.
    “Look, I’ll do my best to sneak out early, okay? I’m hoping I won’t have to stay any longer than it takes to get a blister from my new shoes.”
    “Cissy got you shoes, too?
    “And a matching handbag.”
    He whistled. “Whoa, Andy. That’s some bribe. Like a Winona Ryder shoplifting spree without the probation.”
    What a lawyerly thing to say. “Don’t make me feel any worse,” I grumbled.
    “Give me a call if you make a jailbreak.”
    “It’s a deal.”
    We said our goodbyes, and I hung up, grinning.
    There was definitely something to be said for white bread.
    In another twenty minutes, I had the sequined Escada zipped and my toes wedged into the pointy pink sling-backs. My minimalist makeup and hair wouldn’t exactly have gotten me far in a pageant—at least not beyond Miss Congeniality—but it felt like plenty for someone not used to wearing much more than Chapstick. As much as I