Duffel Bags And Drownings (2 page)

I could have tried out Cady Faye Catering on a small, simple event, but I’d gone with
something bigger—a St. Patrick’s Day party being given by Xander and Nadine Brannock,
a young, up and coming Hollywood couple. I’d figured that at a rip-roaring St. Pat’s
bash I could see how Cady Faye operated—plus hardly any of the guests would be sober
enough the next day to remember the food at all.

I circled to the back of the shopping center and parked at the rear entrance alongside
two of Cady Faye’s delivery vans. Nearby were a truck unloading bread and a van from
Maisie’s Costume Shop, as well as a couple dozen other vehicles. Another catering
delivery van was backed up to the open double doors. Cady Faye was expanding so construction
work was underway on both sides of their shop. I grabbed my portfolio and squeezed
past the delivery van into their small receiving area.

Inside, a line of workers in white smocks and hairnets carried boxes and trays to
the van, preparing to head out for a luncheon somewhere, apparently. A dozen or so
guys and girls—servers, I figured, since they looked like college students—milled
around, some wearing a Cady Faye Catering uniform, others in street clothes. Construction
workers hauled around equipment. The place smelled like sawdust and fresh baked bread.

I spotted Faye Delaney right away. She was an average looking late-thirties gal with
sensible hair and comfortable shoes. She was talking to a leprechaun—or, at least,
a young woman in a leprechaun costume.

The costume was beyond cool—green vest, bow tie, and jacket over a white shirt, green
below-the-knee pants, green and white striped knee socks, and black buckle shoes.
The girl looked great in it. She was a couple of years younger than me, tall with
brown hair. She’d probably look great in anything

Neither she nor Faye looked happy.

As I walked closer I heard Faye say, “I don’t know why she can’t get here on time.
Especially today. She knows full well that—”

“Oh, hi,” the leprechaun said to me, cutting Faye off.

Faye spotted me and instantly morphed into everything’s-great mode.

“Haley, so good to see you,” she said, smiling broadly. She gestured to the leprechaun
beside her. “This is Jeri Sutton, one of my hardest working employees. She’s trying
on the costume for the Brannock party for me. What do you think?”

“Looks great,” I said.

“Maisie’s Costume Shop is here fitting the servers,” Faye said, and managed a brave
smile. “On top of everything else that’s going on.”

I glanced around at the hustle and bustle that bordered on chaos.

“But it’s nothing we can’t handle,” Faye said.

“I’ll go look for Cady,” Jeri said. “Somebody said they thought they saw her here
a few minutes ago.”

“Thank you, Jeri,” Faye said, and exhaled heavily. “But don’t be gone too long. I
need you to model that costume with a skirt.”

Jeri moved away and Faye said to me, “She’s one of my trusted agents. I don’t know
what I’d do without her. She’s in culinary school, you know.”

I didn’t, but Faye kept talking before I could say anything.

“Let me show you our newest toy.” She talked as we walked, telling me about upcoming
events.

The place was a bit of a maze, since they’d taken over the stores on each side of
their original shop. Construction workers, the catering staff and servers were coming
and going as we passed storage rooms, the huge kitchen, a cool room, and a utility
room and janitor’s closet.

Faye stopped at the entrance to one of the rooms and gestured grandly.

“The ice room,” she announced. “We’re the first catering company in the area to have
one.”

I walked inside. Bare walls, a concrete floor, harsh overhead lighting, several chest
freezers, and some sort of hoist. There was a big open water tank sitting atop a metal
frame about eight feet off the floor with steps leading up to it and hoses sprouting
from it.

I guess Faye picked up on my where’s-the-ice expression because she said, “It’s for
making ice sculptures.”

“I thought they were cut out of big blocks of ice with a chain saw,” I said.

“They can be, but look.” Faye opened a big metal door across the room. Inside was
a huge walk-in freezer and shelves lined with dozens of ice sculptures ranging in
size from a few inches to several feet—green shamrocks, stars, leprechauns, rainbows,
and just about everything else Irish you could think of.

“Cool,” I said. “These will look great at the party.”

“We can make them for any occasion,” Faye said. “Let me tell you how it’s done.”

She closed the freezer door and launched into an explanation of how colored water
was mixed in the big tank, then pumped into rubber molds and lowered into chest freezers
by a hoist, and then everything turned into blah-blah-blah and I drifted off.

That happens a lot.

Edie, Priscilla, and whatever the heck was going on at L.A. Affairs popped into my
head. I wondered if I could find a way to stay out of the office for the rest of the
day. Maybe tomorrow, too. I mean, jeez, if I wasn’t there, they couldn’t fire me,
right?

Faye jarred me back to reality by walking away. I followed, pulled the door closed,
and we headed toward what I thought was the front of building—my sense of direction
isn’t the greatest—where the display room and offices were located.

We stopped at the entrance to the employee lounge. Inside were tables and chairs,
vending machines, a fridge and microwave. On one wall was a bulletin board pinned
with announcements, and on another ran a row of lockers; duffel bags and backpacks
were piled up under them.

Near the restrooms, two clothing racks held leprechaun costumes. Guy servers rotated
in and out trying them on, while the girls sat idle at the tables. I’d worked with
Maisie’s Costume Shop on other events and knew they’d do a great job.

Maisie, a stout woman in her forties who owned the shop, checked the fit on each server
as they came out of the restroom, and her assistant Wendy entered their sizes on her
iPad.

“Hey, Haley,” Wendy called.

Like most of the wardrobe people I’d met, Wendy had a fashion-forward sense of style
that bordered on outrageous. Today she had on boots, tights, shorts, a tank, and vest
in progressive shades of purple. But since she probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds
on a rainy day, she really pulled it off.

Faye’s cell phone rang. She stepped away and answered it.

“Awesome costumes,” I said.

Wendy gestured toward the clothing racks. “We brought skirts for the girls. Jeri is
going to try on one so we can see how it looks. What do you think?”

“I think it will be great,” I said, “as long as the servers don’t look better than
the guests.”

Wendy laughed, then stopped as Fay’s voice rose.

“She didn’t get back to you?” she said into her phone. “She assured me she would.
I’m so sorry. I’ll get on it right away. Yes, of course. You have my word.”

Faye snapped her phone closed and exclaimed, “Has anyone seen Cady?”

“Wasn’t she here just a minute ago?” someone asked.

“I thought I saw her car out front when I came in,” one of the girls said.

“Well, is she here, or not?” Faye asked, looking more annoyed by the second. “And
where is Jeri? She’s supposed to try on the skirt with her costume. Why aren’t people
here, where they’re supposed to be? Things have to get done.”

“I’ll look for them,” one of the girls said.

“Me, too,” another one added.

“All of you,” Faye said, “please, look for them. And tell them to report back to me
immediately.”

Faye blew out a big breath as the girls hurried out of the room, then caught sight
of me standing nearby.

“Oh, Haley,” she said. “Please don’t think this sort of thing happens often. Really,
we’re all dedicated to the success of this business. I’m sure Cady is here somewhere
and she’s anxious to go over the menu with you.”

“No problem,” I said.

I thought there definitely was a problem but this didn’t seem like the time to say
so.

“I’ll look for them, too,” I said.

Honestly, I didn’t know how I’d have any better luck finding Cady and Jeri than anyone
else, but it seemed like a great excuse to get away and call Kayla at the office to
see if there’d been any new developments.

I walked along the hallways amid the hustle and bustle of the people who were doing
actual work, and called Kayla’s cell phone. Her voicemail picked up so I left a message.
I tried the office line. Her voicemail picked up there, too.

Yikes! Did that mean Kayla was in with Edie and Priscilla getting fired? Of course,
if that happened, it might be safe for me to go back to the office.

I mean that in the nicest way, of course.

I tucked my cell phone into my handbag and strolled along, trying to look as if I
intended to actually accomplish something. It did seem weird that both Cady and Jeri
were nowhere to be found. Maybe they’d both slipped out to a nearby Starbuck—I’d done
that myself a time or two during the workday.

I opened doors along the hallway and peered inside. One was a storage closet containing
plates, glasses, bowls and cups. Nobody there. The next door was linen storage; plenty
of tablecloths and napkins but no people. The one after that was the ice room. I pulled
the door open and looked inside. No one there either, except—

Something was strange about the room. I heard water dripping.

I got a weird feeling

Water pooled on the floor under the big tank. I hadn’t noticed that when I was in
here earlier.

My weird feeling got weirder.

I looked up and saw a black shoe sticking out of the water tank. Yikes!

I raced up the stairs. Facedown in the water was a leprechaun. Dead.

I’d been involved with a few murder investigations in the past—long story—and homicide
detectives had always wanted to talk with me simply because I’d had the misfortune
of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Today was no exception. After all,
I’d discovered the body. And it didn’t help that the sleeves of my fabulous navy blue
suit jacket—now hanging in the women’s restroom--were dripping with the same water
in which the victim had died.

After spotting Jeri in her leprechaun costume floating in the water tank, I’d pulled
her out. I’d hoped that maybe, somehow, she was still alive. But then I’d seen the
scratches on her face and the big dent in her skull.

So here I was seated across the table from Detective Elliston, one of LAPD’s finest,
in a small conference room at Cady Faye Catering. Elliston had seen 50, easily, but
hadn’t seen the inside of a gym lately. He seemed anxious for his partner to arrive
so he could get this interview over with—and, I suspected, have lunch.

“So, let’s go over this one more time, Miss Randolph,” Detective Elliston murmured,
consulting the little notebook in his hand. “You arrived here at—”

A blood curdling scream sounded from outside the conference room. Oh my God, had somebody
else been found dead?

Detective Elliston turned his head in that direction. I bolted out of my chair and
flew through the door into the shop’s display room.

Standing just inside the shop entrance, surrounded by several people, was Cady Wills,
sister of Faye Delaney, the “Cady” in “Cady Faye Catering.” Cady was the same size
and shape as her sister, but with blonde hair rather than brown, and she was in the
throes of an all-out hysterical rant.

“She’s dead?
Dead?
Jeri’s
dead
?” Cady screamed. She flung out her arms, then plastered her hands on her head. “She
can’t be
dead
!”

Everyone around Cady tried to calm her, but she wasn’t having it. Her screams grew
louder. I was tempted to bitch-slap her—just to get her to calm down, of course—but
her sister Faye showed up and led her away.

As her screams faded into the bowels of the building, I walked over to a young woman
who’d stayed behind. I’d seen her here on my previous visits, but had never officially
met her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

I figured her for a couple of years older than me, maybe, short with dark hair. Pretty—except
for the stunned expression on her colorless face.

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to upset Cady like that. She walked in so I told
her. I mean, I had to tell her, didn’t I? Somebody had to tell her.”

“You work here, right?” I asked.

“Lourdes Vaughn,” she said. “I’m Faye’s assistant.”

I guess I should have figured that, given that she had on nice pants, blouse, and
blazer, and wasn’t wearing a hairnet.

“I’m sure Cady will feel better after she goes home and gets some rest,” I said.

I had no idea if that would help or not, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“With all the work we have scheduled for today? No way will Faye let her leave,” Lourdes
said. “Besides, Cady wouldn’t get any rest at home. Not with that husband of hers.”

That didn’t sound good.

Lourdes glanced toward the hallway that led to the rear of the shop. “I hope Faye
won’t be mad at me for telling her,” she said.

“Did you know Jeri well?” I asked.

Annoyance flashed across Lourdes’ face. “I’m afraid so,” she told me. “Everybody knew
Jeri well. She made sure of it.”

Lourdes huffed irritably, then turned to me and gasped, as if really seeing me for
the first time.

“Oh, you’re Haley. From L.A. Affairs. Sorry, I didn’t recognize you right away.”

She was in all-out back-pedal mode now, anxious to make a good impression on me, the
person who’d given Cady Faye Catering their big break.

It was kind of cool.

“Look, this is all probably nothing,” Lourdes said. “I don’t see how Jeri could have
been murdered, like the cops are saying. I mean, lots of people didn’t really like
her but that doesn’t mean somebody—somebody
here
—actually killed her. Who would dislike her that much?”