Lead a Horse to Murder by Cynthia Baxter Page B

said, looking around nervously. “Meester Mac, he expects me to be working. Luisa, too. It would not be good for him to see that—”
    “Of course, Inez. Don’t let me keep you.”
    My interest in the emotional entanglements here at Heatherfield aside, I once again found myself with no one to talk to. I decided to find Mr. MacKinnon, report on Braveheart’s improvement, and get on my way.
    I studied the crowd in the spacious living room more carefully, then eased into the dining room to continue my search. I didn’t see Andrew MacKinnon anywhere. After depositing my half-drunk iced tea on a tray of empties, I wandered down a short hallway that was lined with oil paintings of men and women with severe expressions and hardened eyes. At the end was the kitchen, an enormous room that was easily as large as most restaurant kitchens I’d seen. The walls were painted a pale yellow, while the curtains and cushions were covered in a deep rust-colored fabric printed with small sprigs of flowers, capturing the look of Provence—or at least an interior designer’s interpretation of it. Huge cabinets, painted white, hung from the ceiling, the glass panels revealing so many bowls, plates, and glasses that I wondered if the catering service had bothered to bring its own. There were several sinks, interspersed among colossal refrigerators, industrial-looking stainless steel stoves, and more counter space than most diners.
    I expected that the crowd would have spilled into this room, like most of the parties I go to. Instead, I saw only one person. Her back was to me, but I could see she was bent over a large tray of cookies, grabbing handfuls and stuffing them into her mouth so quickly that I suspected even my dogs would have been impressed.
    I was about to sneak back out when I heard the loud clicking of high heels against the ceramic tile floor right behind me.
    “Callie, what is wrong with you?” the woman teetering on top of them demanded shrilly. She was tall and excruciatingly thin, dressed in a clingy black dress that anyone who’d ever eaten even a single French fry would find impossible to wear. Her smooth black hair, cut perfectly blunt, just skimmed her shoulders. Her features were delicate, complemented by a great deal of makeup that had been applied with an expert hand. I noticed that even with her life-endangering shoes, she was doing an excellent job of balancing a very large glass of something clear and brown. “Honestly, sometimes I think you want to be fat—that it’s your selfish, malicious way of making me miserable!”
    The cookie snatcher whirled around, still clutching some of her booty in her fists. She was a teenager, I saw, a chubby girl of fourteen or fifteen whose face was twisted into an angry snarl. The coarse, dark blond hair that streamed down her back looked as if it could use a good brushing, a strange contrast to the well-made but unflattering dark blue skirt and top she’d been stuffed into.
    “It’s always about you, Mother, isn’t it?” the teenager returned angrily. “Everything in the entire universe is—”
    She stopped, having just noticed that an interloper— me—had barged in on what was clearly meant to be a private mother-daughter moment.
    “Don’t you knock before you enter a room?” Callie barked, turning her fury on me.
    “I’m sorry,” I replied sincerely, my cheeks burning. “I—I was looking for Mr. MacKinnon.”
    “Figures Dad would just disappear, even on a day like this,” Callie complained.
    “Funny, him doing his usual disappearing act doesn’t bother me at all,” the girl’s mother mused. “But I suppose I have the magical powers of bourbon to thank for that.” She held up her glass and peered into it admiringly. “But we haven’t met, have we? I’m Jillian MacKinnon. The so-called lady of the house.”
    “I’m Jessica Popper,” I told her, relieved that, at least for the moment, we were all back to addressing each other civilly. “I’m a