If Looks Could Kill (24 page)

Three people. Or actually four, because I wanted to add Person X. That covered anyone stewing big-time over something that
I had no clue about, perhaps an editor from one of the other magazines who had attended the party or a
Gloss
staffer who’d found a secret reason to hate Cat big-time. I’d have to keep my eyes open. But until I had other info, I was
going to concentrate on the first three. I was due to see Polly Sunday night for dinner, but maybe I could move it up to tonight.
Jeff and Cat were out in Litchfield for the weekend, but I might be able to arrange to see them Sunday evening and have a
better chance of talking to Jeff than I did the day Heidi died. Kip would have to wait until Monday.

I paid the bill and started home. As soon as I got into my apartment I left a message for Polly, asking her if we could move
up our date. I also tried Cat’s place up in Litchfield. No answer, so I left a message. As for Detective Farley, there seemed
to be no need to call him now. I didn’t think the Friday night prowler had any connection with Cat, so why would he need to
know? And since he was apparently heading out to Bucks County to pursue the Tucker Bobb angle, he could draw whatever conclusions
he liked about Bobb’s death.

Finally I set to work on my Marky story. I’d actually made plenty of progress on it over the past couple of days and was just
about finished with the first draft. Though my passion now was for magazine writing, I’d benefited from my years of working
on newspapers. With a daily deadline that could never be ignored, I learned how to crank it out regardless of how much commotion
was going on around me in the newsroom or how much chaos existed at a given moment in my personal life.

There was, however, one aspect of the Marky story that I was going to have to resolve before I could finish it. Since my interview
with Jack Herlihy, I’d reviewed my notes on the various “poltergeist” incidents, and though I could guess how Marky might
have managed to pull off most of them, a few still mystified me.

What I needed to do, I decided, was talk to Jack Herlihy again. I felt a nervous kick in my stomach just thinking his name,
not the kind you get before an interview with a hotshot, but the kind you get when the phone rings and it’s a guy you’ve taken
to imagining naked. I doubted he’d be home on a Saturday afternoon, and I was right. I left word on his answering machine
asking that he give me a call.

At five Polly phoned on her cell from a movie line, saying that dinner tonight wouldn’t work but she could do lunch tomorrow.
The rest of the night was pure pathos. I ate dinner at the restaurant/coffee shop in my building, along with two glasses of
cheap red wine, took all my summer shoes out of shoeboxes from the back of my closet and replaced them with winter pairs,
and watched
Sense and Sensibility
. I crawled into bed at midnight and woke once during the night from a nightmare of someone holding my head underwater.

Sunday I was up at eight, feeling better, less tense, less as though my blood were low on oxygen. Polly and I had agreed to
meet at twelve-thirty in Chelsea, her neighborhood, and I used the morning to start editing the draft of my Marky article.
At around ten, just as I was pouring myself a cup of coffee, Cat finally made contact.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“I’ve been better. It helps to be up here, out of the city, but I’m still pretty much a wreck. Have you found anything out?”

I’d already decided not to share the prowler incident with her, at least not at this time.

“Yeah, I talked to both Darma and one of the doctors at the hospital where Tucker died, and I found out some interesting stuff.
Tucker
may
have eaten a killer mushroom—there’s no way to know for sure—but even if he did, it doesn’t seem very likely that his death
had anything to do with your situation. There’s—”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“It had to do with the timing of him getting sick. People in New York always assumed he came down with something in his office
midweek,” I explained. “But that probably was a relapse.”

“I’m not following this at all.” She turned away from the phone for a second and said something quietly to someone else in
the room, something I couldn’t make out. “Look, we’re trying to pack up and get out of here. Jeff has to edit some film in
the studio this afternoon. Can we get together first thing tomorrow? I need to hear more about this. And I need to fill you
in on stuff.”

“What about tonight?” I asked.

“Tonight’s not good,” she said vaguely, so I told her fine, my Monday morning was clear. She’d be at a photo shoot, she explained,
and suggested that I meet her at the studio in the West 20s.

I was about to hop into the shower when Polly phoned.

“Can I ask a favor?” she said. Damn, I thought, she’s going to reschedule. But what she wanted was for me to skip lunch and
just walk with her.

“I’ve lost three pounds, and I know if I sit down in a restaurant, I’ll eat everything but the menus.”

“Sure, that’s fine with me,” I said, lying. “Where do you want to meet?”

“I’ll ring your bell in, like, one hour—and we’ll just see where the wind takes us.”

My appetite was back, and I’d had my heart set on something like penne puttanesca, eaten at an outdoor café, and now I was
going to be forced to scrounge around my refrigerator, praying for a miracle. The best I came up with was a puckered slab
of duck liver mousse pâté that Landon had sent me home with when I’d eaten dinner at his place. I sniffed it. Probably okay.
After showering and getting dressed, I ate it on my terrace with crackers and a glass of instant iced tea and was just putting
the dishes in the sink when Polly buzzed.

Her appearance nearly knocked me over. She looked not only lovely, but positively carefree. Instead of the perennial Pippi
Longstocking braid, she was wearing her hair loose and flowing, though she had some of the wispy front pieces pinned back
with colored bobby pins. Her skin was glowing, and she’d dabbed on a hint of pink lip gloss. It was hard to imagine the heart
of darkness was beating away inside her.

We decided to head south on Broadway, figuring it would be less crowded in that direction. It was obvious by the first block
that she had no interest in attaining a maximum fat-blasting pace—you’d burn more calories shaving your legs than you would
at the speed we were walking. But that was okay. I wanted to concentrate on Polly, her mood, her attitude about everything
that had happened.

“So what happened to your weekend plans?” she asked as soon as we were in gear.

“They just kind of unraveled,” I told her. Right now I had no intention of sharing what had happened with her. “But tell me,
what’s going on at work?”

“Friday was
insane
. I just wish you could have been there to experience it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Did you see the
Post
on Friday?”

“No, I left town early that morning.”

“Well, they ran an item, a story actually, saying that Tucker Bobb may have been poisoned, too, and his case and Cat’s case
could be connected. Maybe there’s a disgruntled employee who worked for both of them and or even some kind of psychopath who
hates women’s magazines and wants to knock off the editors one by one. It’s like something out of a movie.”

“So everyone was buzzing about it?”

“Too mild a word. Cat left for the country at about eleven, and after that all hell broke loose. People were running around
flapping their lips about it, speculating ridiculously, making things up. The phones were ringing like crazy. Leslie sent
out a snippy memo telling people that if they talked to the press, they’d be fired. And you know that ridiculous beauty assistant,
the one I told you once said she wished she had a stalker because if you have a stalker it means you’re pretty? She resigned
and left that day.”

“Oh, my God,” was all I could manage.

“Wait—it gets worse,” she said. “Detectives came by. There were two of them, and they wanted to talk to as many people as
possible who were at the party that night. We’re all freakin’ suspects, I guess.”

“Did they talk to you?”

“Oh yeah. And I was terrible. I was just so nervous. It’s like going through customs. You know how when they open your bag
and all you can think about is that they’re going to find a kilo of cocaine.”

“Do you have any reason to believe they suspect you?”

“No, no. Their questions were more like ‘Did you notice anything funny?’ ‘Had you seen a box of candy on the hall table?’
‘Did lots of people at the office know that Cat was a chocoholic?’ Plus, I think they could tell just by looking at me that
I’m too much of a nervous Nellie to off anyone.”

Did I believe that? I wanted to. But the jury was still out.

“How were other people acting?” I asked. “I’m sure they were nervous, too.”

“Hard to tell, because things got real quiet once the cops arrived and pretty much everyone who was questioned kept to themselves
after that. Kip didn’t say a word—I believe it’s the first time in recorded history he didn’t have a sarcastic comment to
offer up. Rachel peeled out of there early. Let’s see, who else? Oh, Leslie shut her door and didn’t open it again. I’m sure
she was blabbing with Cat on the phone. Oh, wait, this is a hoot. Our brilliant fashion editor Sasha comes down to my office,
practically hysterical, asking if I think the police are going to want to go through expense account records as part of the
investigation. She’s probably afraid someone’ll find out she charges all of her personal dry cleaning to the company.”

We had reached Houston Street by now, and we stopped to confer about what direction to go from there, deciding on south to
Canal Street, then west for a few blocks before heading back toward the Village.

“Poor Cat, what a mess she’s in,” I said as we continued. I just let the statement hang there, waiting to see how Polly would
respond.

“If you say so,” she said. “It’s Heidi I feel sorry for. Getting too close to Cat has been a liability for an awful lot of
people, but as far as I know, this is the first time someone has actually ended up in rigor mortis from it. Wait, correction.
Second time. I heard once that a guy who was obsessed with her in college committed suicide.”

“Is that how you feel—that being involved with Cat has been a liability?” I asked.

“Yes . . . and no. I mean, working for her magazine has given me a certain amount of professional clout. But she hasn’t done
me any favors, either.”

“She thinks you’re fantastic at what you do,” I said. “I’ve just never understood why she has such a hard time acknowledging
that publicly.”

“You know, I can live with that. A lot of powerful bosses hog the credit, and you accept that and know that you can at least
get to ride their tailwind someplace good. And, of course, Cat’s Cat. From the moment you meet her, you know she’s not the
one you call if you need a bone marrow donor. But she did me dirt lately. A great position opened up in the company and I
wanted it and she made darn sure I didn’t get it.”

“You’re kidding,” I said, attempting to sound surprised. “What was the job?”

“You know what,” she said, coming to a complete stop on the sidewalk and turning to me. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Look,
I’ve been dying to tell you this, but it’s got to be a secret. In about five weeks, I’m going to hand in my resignation. I’m
leaving
Gloss.”

I let out a little gasp. I’d been so preoccupied lately, I hadn’t spotted any signs that she was finally going to act on her
discontent.

“Geez, Polly, I’m speechless. And I’m thrilled for you. Though I’m awfully sad for me.”

“Don’t be. I see this as the beginning of a great friendship between the two of us,” she said. “Working together, with me
top editing you, has always been just a tiny bit awkward. Now we can be buddies, pure and simple.”

“Well, like I said, I’m thrilled for you,” I said, giving her a hug. “I know you’ve been pretty miserable this last year.”

“And it’s not just because of Cat,” she explained, starting to walk again. “The work has begun to bore me. If I could deal
with your pieces all day, it would be one thing, but editing stuff like the beauty and fashion copy has become mind numbing.
One of the beauty editors used the term
buttne
in some copy the other day. Do you know what buttne supposedly means? It’s acne you get on your butt. When I tried to explain
to her that it was stupid to use a word like that, she looked at me as if
I
were the moron. And another thing—I just don’t fit in with the staff these days. They’re all so young and hip. You’re thirty-three
and you get it, but I’m almost forty and I don’t. A few of the girls in articles were talking the other day about something
called booty calls. I asked them what the term meant. I thought they were going to say it’s when a construction worker yells
out a comment about your ass or something like that, but it turns out it’s when you want to get laid and you call a guy you
used to go out with or know casually and you go to his place just for sex. Or maybe he calls you. Not only had I never heard
of it, but no one has ever made a booty call to me in my entire life.”

“So you’re just going to quit?” I asked. “Will you freelance?”

“No, no, I’ve got a job. I’m going to be helping to run that theater group I volunteer with—the Chelsea Players. They’ve figured
out a way to swing having someone handle PR and marketing and that sort of thing. It doesn’t pay great, but I’ve got some
money left from the divorce settlement, and I’m going to do what I want for a change. It doesn’t actually start for a few
more weeks, so I figured I’d keep working at
Gloss
and sock away what I could. I would have told you sooner, but it’s been up in the air for the past two months and I didn’t
want to jinx it.”

We had reached the West Village and I suggested we grab a cappuccino. We stopped at an outdoor café on Bleecker, and as we
sat in the sunshine talking about her plans, I could see how truly happy and exhilarated she was. And seeing that happiness
made it almost impossible for me to believe she had tried to kill Cat. From what she was saying, the possibility of the position
with the theater group had begun to materialize right around the time she had lost out on the job with the gardening magazine.
Rather than nurse a hatred for Cat, it appeared she had quickly begun to focus on a new opportunity. It sounded as if Cat
had stopped mattering to her then, one way or another. Of course, she could have fancied a turn of the screw as she went out
the door, but I didn’t think so. Polly seemed completely checked out from
Gloss
and not the least bit invested in the idea of revenge. I felt relieved.