Cereal Killer

to reply, Kevin Connor shot up out of his chair and rushed over to the open door.
    “I’ll tell you what happened, Leah,” he said, glaring at the woman. “Let me be the one to tell you. Cait’s dead. She died. She’s lying upstairs on the bathroom floor.”
    The woman gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
    “That’s right!” Kevin shouted at her. “She starved herself and abused herself, trying to lose your stinking thirty pounds, and now she’s dead. Are you happy? Well, are you?”
    Savannah couldn’t help feeling sorry for the woman, who had suddenly gone pale beneath her carefully cultivated tan. Even the cocker puppy seemed to sense the distress of the humans around her and whined, gazing up at her mistress with worried eyes.
    Taking a step forward, Savannah gently placed herself between them. Whatever this “Leah” had done to incur Kevin Connor’s wrath, she didn’t need to hear such awful news delivered in such a callous manner.
    “My name is Savannah Reid,” she said softly. “May I ask who you are and how you know Ms. Connor?”
    The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know? Are you a cop?”
    “No, a private detective. I sometimes work with Sergeant Coulter, the police detective who’s in charge of this investigation.” Again she gently asked, “And you are...?”
    “She’s Leah Freed, Cait’s agent,” Kevin interjected. “She’s the money-grubbing bitch who got Caitlin the rotten gig in the first place and then called her every day, hassling her about how much weight she’d lost. That’s who she is.”
    Savannah glanced quickly from Kevin to Leah, expecting her to bristie at being called a bitch and accused of causing her client’s death. But her reaction was minimal. The horror she had initially registered seemed to slip off her face, which was now completely passive as she stared blankly at Kevin Connor.
    “We don’t really know anything yet, Kevin,” Savannah told him. “Until the coroner’s report we won’t even know what killed her, let alone who might have been responsible.”
    “She’s responsible.” He pointed his finger, shaking it only inches from the agent’s nose. “Her and that damned ad company and the Wentworths. They were willing to let Cait kill herself just to sell cereal!”
    “It’s premature to affix blame right now,” Savannah repeated. “Really, Kevin... you’re hurt and upset, and you’re saying things you may regret later.”
    “No way,” he said. “I’m just telling the truth, and you know it!” Once more he shoved his finger in Leah’s face; then he turned around and strode across the patio to a gate in the whitewashed, six-foot-high fence that surrounded the pool area.
    “I think you should stick around, Kevin,” Savannah called after him. “Detective Coulter will probably need to speak to you and...”
    But Kevin Connor already had the gate open and was on his way out. “I’m just going to walk on the beach for a few minutes,” he said, “and when I get back I want her off my property.”
    He slammed the gate behind him and the sound echoed across the patio. The pup whined again and plastered herself against her mistress’s leg.
    Neither woman spoke for a few long, tense moments. Then Savannah quietly said, “He’s distraught.”
    “He isn’t the only one,” Leah replied. Now that Kevin had disappeared, her façade began to crumble and tears filled her eyes. “Cait was more than my client; she was my friend. For years. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
    “I’m sorry for your loss,” Savannah told her, thinking of all the times she had uttered those words and how it never got any easier. Being with people in some of the worst moments of their lives had taken a toll on her. Sometimes she felt like forty-something going on ninety.
    Sometimes—like when a beautiful, vivacious young woman lay dead upstairs on her bathroom floor—it was hard to remember that the world was a good place to spend your allotted years of life.
    A sound from inside the house caught Savannah’s attention, and she looked beyond Leah Freed to see the technicians carrying a gurney up the steps. In a little while, they would be coming back down with Caitlin Connor’s body. And that was a sight that the victim’s agent and longtime friend should be spared.
    Besides, Savannah was pretty certain from the look in Kevin Connor’s eyes when he left that he meant it when he said that Leah had better be gone when he