Duffel Bags And Drownings by Dorothy Howell Page B

was around. I saw that the van was empty except
     for a couple of bins of cutlery, some aluminum foil and plastic wrap. I figured everyone
     had already ferried the food to the buffet tables out back and were busy setting up.
    “Hi, Cady,” I said.
    She gasped and spun around.
    “Oh, Haley, it’s you.” She plastered both hands against her chest.
    “I saw you get out of that Honda Pilot,” I said, and nodded down the block. “Your
     boyfriend’s SUV.”
    Cady froze, then shook her head. “No. No, you’re mistaken.”
    “Rowland Horowitz,” I said. “He’s your attorney.”
    “How did you know? Who told you?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, God. You didn’t tell Faye,
     did you? Does Faye know?”
    Okay, having her sister find out she was leaving her husband and getting a divorce
     seemed like an odd thing to be upset about right now, but I went with it.
    “Faye wouldn’t like it, would she?” I said.
    Cady’s clinched her fists and her cheeks turned red.
    “I
hate
her,” she hissed. “I absolutely
hate
her. This is her fault. All of it.”
    I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant because she kept going.
    “All I wanted to do was make a few cupcakes for friends, for kids’ birthdays. Just
     a hobby. Something I could have fun with,” Cady said. “But no. That wasn’t good enough.
     It wasn’t big enough. Faye jumped in the middle of it—just like she jumps in the middle
     of everything I do. We had to start a catering company. Nothing would do but for her
     to take over.”
    “You didn’t want it?” I asked.
    “And we couldn’t have just a simple, ordinary catering company,” Cady told me. “It
     had to be the biggest, the best. It had to keep getting bigger and better.”
    Cady was becoming more and more agitated. I got the feeling she’d been holding this
     in for a long time.
    “Faye pressured you to do more?” I asked.
    “Faye and everybody else,” Cady said. “My husband. He saw what the company was bringing
     in. He started in on me, too. Do more, work harder. All he cared about was that stupid
     catering company.”
    I remembered that Faye had mentioned Cady’s husband was very interested in the catering
     business, which didn’t seem to make Faye happy at all.
    “Neither of them cares about me,” Cady said. “They only care about how much work I
     do, and how much money they can make off of me.”
    “So you found a boyfriend,” I said.
    Cady closed her eyes for a few seconds and drew in a big breath. “Yes,” she whispered.
    “You two were planning a romantic trip,” I said. “That’s why you brought the green
     duffel bag with you to work.”
    “It was going to be perfect,” she murmured, “spending time with someone who loves
     me for myself, not for what he can get out of me.”
    “That’s why you wanted a divorce,” I said.
    “Yes, and I didn’t care what it took,” Cady said, growing angry again.
    “Including killing Jeri?” I asked.
    Cady froze. She looked at me as if she hadn’t understood my question. “That wasn’t
     my fault.”
    She turned around and started sorting through the bins in the back of the delivery
     van, and said, “That girl at the attorney’s office shouldn’t have told Jeri what was
     going on. It was supposed to be confidential.”
    Oh my God, was I right? Had Cady murdered Jeri?
    I heard the cutlery clink as Cady dug through it, my mind spinning, fitting the pieces
     of Jeri’s death together.
    “Actually,” Cady said, “anyone in my position would have done the same thing.”
    “Murder Jeri?”
    Cady spun around holding a butcher knife in her hand.
    Oh, crap.
     

Chapter 11
     
    “I told you that wasn’t my fault,” Cady said, pointing the knife at me. “I had to
     give that miserable excuse for a husband my portion of the business. I had to. It’s
     the only way he would agree to the divorce.”
    Wow. That was a really big knife. It took me a few seconds to drag my gaze from the
     blade back to Cady,