Bitter Business (36 page)

“Jack Cavanaugh!”

“Don’t get so excited. We showed Jack’s picture at the other stores and nobody remembered having seen him.”

“Do you think maybe that’s why he fired you? He found out that you were showing his picture around and he decided that wasn’t what he wanted to be paying you for?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s got something to hide and all of a sudden he feels like I’m getting too close.”

“You can’t think it was Jack. He had no reason I can think of to have wanted to kill his own daughter. He’s been just crushed by her death—just crushed. Your scenario would fly a little better if the perfume really had gone to Peaches, but it was Jack who turned around and gave it to Dagny. The more I think about it, that’s where the killer’s whole plan went wrong—if we assume that Peaches was the intended victim. He or she had no way of predicting that Jack wouldn’t take it home and give it to her.”

“That’s what makes me think that the perfume was meant for Peaches. Nobody raised a whimper after Cecilia died. I don’t think the killer realized she’d been poisoned; he was too busy waiting for Peaches to drop dead.”

“Nobody realized she was poisoned.” Neither of us said anything for a minute. I sat at my desk, thinking. Suddenly the picture of Dagny and the invitation to the party for Jack and Peaches caught my eye.

“What day did the saleswoman who remembers talking to the man about the perfume say he came in to the store? Does she remember?”

“She only works on the weekends. She said she wasn’t sure, but she thinks it was a Sunday.”

In an instant, I was shifting files on the crowded surface of my desk, clearing things off to find my calendar that was buried in the rubble. As soon as I found it, I began frantically turning back the pages to the second week in February.

“Shit, will you look at this!” I exclaimed. “There was only one Sunday in February that it could possibly have been. You said yourself that they didn’t sell the stuff before February first. Well, there’s only one Sunday between the first and the day the package was mailed to Jack’s office—Sunday the eleventh.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Elliott demanded, starting to flip through his notes. “If that’s the case, then he had to buy the stuff either on that Sunday or on the Monday it was sent. Let me see what happened at the other stores. There was only one bottle sold on the eleventh—at Saks Fifth Avenue—for cash.”

“That’s pinning an awful lot on that one clerk’s story,” I cautioned, frightened by my own enthusiasm. “What if it wasn’t him? What if it was just some guy from Dubuque who was shopping for a birthday present for his wife and decided that the perfume was too much money?”

“You’re right. I don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“And still, the dates—the dates can’t be a coincidence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything keeps on coming back to that party for Jack and Peaches that Dagny threw.”

“I don’t get it. What’s so special about the party?”

“Everything. For one thing, the board met that afternoon—it was the meeting where Philip did his little show-and-tell about the properties of Fluorad. I remember Dagny telling me they’d had to reschedule the meeting at the last minute. She was furious. Lydia was down in Georgia grilling her old nanny about her past and didn’t get back until the morning of the party. It infuriated Dagny because the party was at her house and she needed to be there while they set up, but because of Lydia they had to have the board meeting that afternoon. And after all of that, Lydia didn’t even pay attention; she sat there and wrote out the checks for her bills. But that wasn’t the only time that day that one of the Cavanaughs lost their temper. That night at the party Lydia caused a huge scene because Jack had given Peaches a necklace that had belonged to her mother. Daniel told me that he’d never seen anything like it—that by the time her brothers managed to hustle her out of there, she was literally foaming at the mouth. And after that, when they took her back to her house, she got into another fight—this time with her brothers.”

“About what?”

“Claire—that’s Dagny’s daughter—was listening with her cousins from upstairs, so I only know what she overheard, but she said that Lydia and Philip were going back and forth about Philip covering something up for their father—something that happened around the time their oldest brother died.”

“What brother is that?”

“His name was Jimmy. He drowned more than thirty years ago trying to rescue a girl who was trying to kill herself. The whole thing happened down in Georgia, where the Cavanaughs have a place. I don’t think it’s got anything to do with this; Lydia was just dragging out everything she could think of. But don’t you see? From the very beginning, these murders haven’t made any sense because nobody seems to have gained anything from them. We’ve always been thinking that because it was poison, it was a rational act, a planned crime, not a crime of passion. But think about it—the day of the party emotions in the Cavanaugh family went off the Richter scale. Dagny was furious at Lydia for forcing her to postpone the board meeting until she came back from Georgia and then didn’t even bother to pay attention to what was going on. Lydia was rabid about the necklace, and Peaches, no doubt, was horrified by the scene her stepdaughter had caused at what should have been a lovely party. Lydia then turned around and savagely attacked her brother. The whole day was filled with nothing but hatred. It can’t be coincidence that the very next day someone bought a bottle of expensive perfume, laced it with poison, and sent it off to Peaches. It just can’t be!”

“But what about the poison?”

“They all had access. They were all there when Philip showed them what the Fluorad could do. Really the only one who would have had even the smallest problem would have been Lydia, who didn’t as a rule come into the plant. But she could have stopped by and asked to borrow someone’s keys—she could have come up with some kind of excuse—and no one would have given it a second thought.”

“But what was her motive?”

“Malice. Hatred. According to Dagny’s daughter, Claire, Lydia went on and on that night about how much she hated her father. She’d just come back from Georgia, where she’d been trying to unearth evidence that she’d been assaulted as a child. Who knows? Maybe she had been. It would explain her desire to strike back at her father. Maybe she just decided that the best way to hurt him would be to kill Peaches—take away his last happiness as an old man. She also went through a real sick period right after Jack and Peaches were married; they caught her making nuisance calls to her father’s house in the middle of the night. Also she changed her appearance to look like Peaches. Maybe this is all part of the same thing?”

“And you said Lydia had just come back from Georgia?”

“Yes. The day of the party.”

“May I use your phone?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Your mentioning Georgia just made me think of something.”

“What?”

“You know that Joe got the phone records for the Cavanaughs for the three months before the murders. He pulled records on all five houses on Astor—Jack’s and all four of his kids.”

“And?”

“And the night of the party there was a fifty-two-minute call from Lydia’s house to a rural exchange in Thomas County, Georgia.”

32

Driving like a maniac, I managed to get Elliott to the airport just in time to catch the last plane to Tallahassee. He would rent a car at the airport and drive to Bainbridge first thing in the morning. That was the name of the little town where the woman the Cavanaughs called Nursey lived.

I was certain that whatever happened the day of Dagny’s party for her father and Peaches was central to understanding why and by whose hand two women lost their lives. No one calls an old woman who lives in the country at nearly midnight to chat, and yet the phone records showed that Lydia had placed a call that lasted close to an hour to Nursey’s number on the night of the party. Elliott had sternly warned me not to get my hopes up, but I was convinced that Nursey held the key.

Pulling up to the curb in front of the Delta terminal, I handed Elliott copies of the bank records for the annuity that Jack Cavanaugh still paid to his old housekeeper. I figured that questions about the account would be enough to get him through the door. From there he’d have to improvise. I thought it shouldn’t be too hard to get a lonely old woman to talk about the people she’d worked for all those years.

As an afterthought, I dug into my briefcase for a copy of the Zebediah Hooker trust. I figured it might be worth looking into as long as Elliott was poking around Thomas County—especially since it was me and not Jack Cavanaugh who was paying for the trip. As I handed him the document Elliott surprised me by leaning over toward me in the front seat as I said good-bye. I thought he meant to kiss me and I drew back in confusion. But he stopped just short and gently smelled the perfume on my neck.

“Very nice,” he said quietly. Before I could reply he was gone.

I went home to an empty apartment. I was too nervous to sleep and too anxious to settle down to work. My mind kept on straying to Elliott Abelman and what it was that he might find in Georgia. Finally, I forced myself to go to bed and spent the night restlessly sorting and resorting the little I knew about the circumstances leading up to the deaths of Cecilia Dobson and Dagny Cavanaugh. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke up at half past nine, numb and exhausted. Feeling horrible, I dragged myself into the office.

It wasn’t until I arrived at Callahan that I realized that it was Friday—the day Stephen would be returning from Geneva and expecting an answer about the apartment. Cursing myself for cowardice—I had neither the stomach for hurting him by saying no nor the conviction to say yes—I took refuge in petty anger at him for having put me in the position of having to make any decision at all.

Arriving at my desk, I peevishly picked up the vase of roses that Stephen had sent me, marched them down the hall, and gave them to Madeline to brighten up her day. What depths I’ve sunk to, I remembered thinking to myself, that I was feeling pressured by a bouquet of flowers.

This exorcism complete, I was able to turn my attention to the last few odds and ends on the Frostman Refrigeration file. I also had several long conversations with the investment bankers at Goodman Peabody about the correct depreciation of Superior Plating’s equipment as it related to the valuation of the company. When Cheryl buzzed to say that Philip Cavanaugh was on the phone, I was surprised. He was the last person I expected to hear from.

“I thought you were at Tall Pines,” I said, picking up the phone.

“We are,” he replied. “Dad sent us down here the same way he used to send us to our rooms.”

“So what can I do for you?” I asked, worried that Nursey had called Philip to complain about the private detective snooping around her.

“The company plane is fueled up and waiting for you at Meig’s Field. I want you to fly down.”

“Why?”

“We need a lawyer.”

Darlene met me at the door of Jack Cavanaugh’s house at Tall Pines in a ruffled apron, a wooden spoon in one hand. She looked disgusted.

“They’re waiting for you in there,” she said. I didn’t need to ask where. I just followed the sound of angry voices into the living room.

It was obvious that Philip, Eugene, and Lydia had been arguing for hours. From their rumpled clothes and red-rimmed eyes, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been at it all night. They were surly and sick of each other, clearly having reached the point in their debate where the sight of a new face, even mine, was a relief.

“Oh look, if it isn’t the fucking cavalry,” announced Lydia. She was still dressed in her arty, person-in-black wardrobe, which looked even more incongruous in Georgia than my plane-rumpled navy suit.

“So what’s going on?” I asked, sitting down on the couch and laying my briefcase on the coffee table in front of me in the manner of lawyers the world over. “Have you reached some kind of agreement?”

“We have,” Eugene announced.

“We may have,” hedged Philip.

“You know what your problem is, Eugene?” Lydia demanded, as if addressing a child. “You think everything in the world is black and white. This is a very complicated financial transaction we’re talking about. I don’t expect you to understand it completely, but I do think you have to accept that there are subtleties to be considered.” There was no mistaking the put-down in her voice. I couldn’t help thinking that whoever killed Dagny Cavanaugh had murdered the wrong sister.

“What financial transaction are we talking about?” I prompted.

“We’ve agreed—” Philip began, but Lydia immediately cut him off.

“In theory!” she snapped. “We’ve agreed in theory. I don’t know about you, but I’m still a long way from signing anything.”

“Well, surprise, surprise. You’re always willing to be flexible and accommodating just as long as it doesn’t mean anything. As soon as it comes time to put it down on paper, you come up with a million objections. You forget we’ve seen you pull this shit before.”

“Oh, have you?” his sister inquired sarcastically.

“Stop it!” I half shouted. “I’ve just flown two thousand miles. Was there something you wanted me for or did you just need an audience?”