Birthday Cake and a Murder

by Kathleen Suzette

I shook my head. “Listen, Sue, I’ve got to get to work. I appreciate the cake and I’ll definitely talk to Cade about the stain in the bathroom. It doesn’t really look like blood, but it’s good for him to check it out. In fact, Cade said he thought Silas was killed somewhere else. The alley, I think was what he said.”

  “You know I killed Silas. Don’t play stupid with me. I didn’t want to. I had to do it. And now I have to kill you. If you weren’t so nosy, asking all over town about Silas’s murder, I could sit here, home free. But, no. You had to get involved. Well, I’m not going to jail just because you can’t mind your own business.”

  “I don’t believe you killed him,” I said, still hoping for an out. If I could get in a position to knock that knife out of her hand, I could get free. “I know Cade is looking at Harry.” I had no idea who Cade was looking at, but if it worked to distract her, then I would use it.

  She looked a little uncertain, and then her mouth formed a hard line again. “I killed Silas. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice. He was two-timing me with Karen. He said he would break it off with her, but he didn’t.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry, then. No one deserves to be cheated on. But, he was seeing Karen for so long. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that he couldn’t break it off,” I pointed out.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. I realized I had probably taken the wrong track with her in pointing out that he would have trouble breaking up with Karen.

  “He belonged with me!” she shouted.

  “Was it worth killing him over?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet. I wondered if anyone else was in the boardinghouse. I might need some backup and I hoped it was someone spryer than Harry.

  “I asked him to marry me. He just laughed at me. Can you believe that? He laughed at me!”

  I heard a creak from the floor in the hall, but Sue didn’t turn around. “Why would he do that?” I asked, hoping to keep her talking. “He seemed like a nice guy.”

  She snorted. “He was a cheating liar. He promised to break it off with Karen. He said he didn’t love her like he loved me. I gave him discounts on rent and free meals. He used me!”

  Karen peeped around the corner of the kitchen doorway and put a finger to her lips. I tried to keep from looking at her.

  “That’s terrible,” I said, keeping my eyes on Sue. “Some people have no ethics. I’m sorry he treated you that way. I wish you had talked to someone before it came to murder though. Maybe we can talk to Cade and see if there’s a solution to your predicament.” It was a long shot that she would buy this, but I wanted to give Karen time to get closer to Sue. She was now tiptoeing very slowly behind her.

  “I—I don’t think there’s a solution at this point. Is there? I mean, Silas is dead, after all,” she said, softening. “I just wish he had listened to reason. That man never did. He was always so hardheaded. I tried and tried to get him to understand he was better off with me. He already lived here. How much easier would it have been to just marry me?”

  “Some people are like that,” I said as Karen reached around from behind Sue and hit the hand she held the knife in.

  Sue became startled and screamed as the knife flew from her hand, clattering on the linoleum beneath the table. I scrambled and grabbed it while Karen wrapped her arms around a struggling Sue.

  “You stop that!” Sue screamed and tried to break free of Karen’s grip. “Let go of me!”

  “Silas loved me!” Karen insisted, holding on to Sue as tightly as she could. “You were nothing to him!”

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Cade. He was never going to believe this one.

  “Stop it!” Sue cried. “Silas said he couldn’t stand you! Silas loved me! He loved me!”

  “You fool! If he loved either of us, he never would have cheated,” Karen grunted as she held Sue’s arms tightly.

  Truer words were never spoken.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I leaned against Cade, and stared into the fire. It was the first fire I had built in my fireplace in my new house. Actually, Cade built it, but it didn’t matter. The weather had turned chilly and it was warm and comforting. The light from the fire illuminated the living room and we each had a cup of cocoa, complete with floating marshmallows on top.

  “What happened with Sue when you got her to the station?” I asked after staring at the fire and feeling myself begin to nod off.

  He chuckled quietly. “Kind of a sad case, really. She loved him. But when he laughed at her proposal, she had finally had enough and stabbed him. She said she didn’t know why she did it. She just went into a rage and it was over before she knew it.”

  I nodded. “Why was he in my alley?”

  “It was a random choice. She managed to drag him out onto the front porch of the boardinghouse, then into the back of Silas’s pickup.”

  “That porch is just about the height of a pickup bed, isn’t it?” I said.

  He nodded. “Made it easy on her. It also helped that Silas was so skinny. He couldn’t have weighed much.”

  I shook my head. “What a waste. No one is worth murdering. It’s not like she gets to be with him now. One life snuffed out and another ended by what will be a long jail sentence.”

  “The love lives of some people are complicated,” he said and took a sip of his cocoa. “Not like mine, of course.”

  “You can say that again. It’s not like she was going to get away with it with you on the case, and at her age, she’ll never see freedom again.”

  He chuckled. “And with you on the case. You’re a nosy one, have I ever told you that?”

  I giggled. “You may have mentioned that in the past. It’s what I’m good at, and I figure I should do what I’m good at.”

  “I don’t know why Sue bothered with the proposal in the first place. She was the one that made it look like someone broke into his room. She stole his journal, read it, and knew he was still with Karen. She admitted she wanted to scare him and find out how he really felt about her, when she broke into his room. Turned out he never even mentioned her in the journals and that made her angrier.”

  I sighed. “Maybe she wanted to give him one last chance to change his mind about her before she killed him. I don’t understand some people. If you ever decide you want to see someone else, then do it. But know that I am not going to kill anyone to win you back or to get revenge.”

  “What? I’m not worthy of such passion? I’m hurt.”

  “You’ll have to be hurt then. You aren’t worth murdering. Seriously, let me know if you want to be with someone else.”

  He snickered. “Just like that? It’s over if some cute girl crosses my path and I take a liking to her?”

  “Yup.”

  He pulled me closer and kissed me, then looked me in the eye. “I don’t intend to hurt you. Let the past go.”

  Tears sprang to my eyes. He knew me better than I knew myself. I nodded. “Okay.” All men weren’t like my ex-husband. I needed to keep that thought at the forefront of my mind or I was going to destroy this relationship.

  We spent the rest of the evening together, not saying much. We didn’t need to. We were happy. I felt bad for both Karen and Sue. Silas wasn’t worth the effort. If he couldn’t decide which woman he wanted to be with, they both should have walked away. Playing both was a deadly game.

  Author’s Note

  I love the fall as much as I love the direction Rainey and Cade’s relationship is going. Rainey is finally getting free of her past and that can only be good for the two of them. I hope you enjoyed this episode of A Rainey Daye Mystery.

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