Bitter Business

Cavanaugh, but she was a long way from sure.”
    “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