'Til Death Do Us Part by Kate White Page A

visit. Them crossing their Ts. And like I said, I didn’t have much to offer. I’ve been out of the loop since October.”
    “How well did you know each of the girls who died?”
    “Jamie I didn’t know at all. I met her the day before the wedding, and I doubt we said more than two words to each other the whole weekend. I’d seen Ashley at the farm a few times, of course. We’d chatted briefly, but that was about it. But Robin—well, I
did
know her fairly well. We worked together on some of Peyton’s television gigs and big cooking demonstrations. She used to help pull in props for us. I was very upset when she died.”
    “Did any alarms go off in your head when you heard about the
way
she died?”
    “I have to say no. Like everyone else, I assumed that Jamie’s and Robin’s deaths were just—”
    “I know, a bizarre coincidence.”
    I took her then through my side of things—the visit from Ashley, her fears that Robin and Jamie had been murdered, our trip to the farm yesterday.
    “My God, we really
could
be next,” she said, her voice cracking.
    “Think back on the wedding, will you?” I urged. “You were working with Peyton then. Can you imagine any reason someone would want to harm one of the bridesmaids? Did anyone have an issue about the wedding or a complaint or a grudge?”
    “The
wedding
?” she exclaimed. “Can’t you see? This has nothing whatsoever to do with the
wedding
.”

 
     
    CHAPTER 6
     
     
    W HAT ARE YOU saying? Do you know of some other connection they had with each other?” I asked Maverick, caught off guard by her remark.
    “Not some other connection. I absolutely think they died because they were Peyton’s bridesmaids. But it’s not because someone has a grudge about the wedding.”
    “Then what?”
    “Don’t you see?” Maverick asked. “It’s because someone has a grudge against
Peyton
. They’re out to get her, bring her business down.”
    I took a sip of my wine, staring out at the twinkling city.
    “I’ve considered that,” I said. “But if someone wanted to get Peyton, why go about it in such an indirect way? Why not sabotage her business instead? They could burn down her catering barn, for instance.”
    “Because if you did a direct hit to her business—burned down her barn, as you say—people would be outraged on her behalf. They’d probably rally around her. And Peyton would also be able to confront the situation, deal with it directly. There’s practically nothing she can do with
this
. There’s no proof even that anyone did anything. It’s what in my business I call an ‘ether attack.’ You can’t see it or touch it—but it can kill you.”
    “But how can the deaths possibly hurt her business? They’re a tragedy, and tragedies usually produce sympathy.”
    “Not if the tragedy is that people around you are dropping like flies,” she said. “Peyton’s business is successful in huge part because of her image, the aura she has as a supersuccessful domestic diva. This situation is going to create a stain of some kind on her. The food she makes in her catering business, the recipes she demonstrates on TV—those won’t change. But there’ll be this free-floating sense that there’s a negative force around her. And people don’t want to be connected to that.”
    I took another sip of wine, rolling her words over in my mind. Considering the way the media had reacted so far, she could very well be right.
    “I take it you saw the article in the
New York Post
.”
    “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” she said. “They’ve even got a name for it—the Peyton Cross Curse. The irony is that I gave Peyton a big lecture on this kind of thing last summer.”
    “Why? Did something happen?”
    “Nothing major, but it had the potential to be a problem. Peyton burned her arm while testing recipes in the barn. I happened to be there that day and I saw her do it. It was bad enough that it had to be bandaged. Well, she was being