If Looks Could Kill (29 page)

I kept jotting down notes after he was done talking because I hadn’t been able to keep perfect pace, plus I added a few questions
to myself, things to ruminate on later. What he said was nudging something in my brain, the way someone jostles your shoulder
lightly when they’re trying to rouse you from a nap on a train, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I would have to pull out my
Marky notes later at home and see if anything came to me.

The paella arrived and we dug in. He jumped on the chance to ask questions about me, about where I was from, and what brought
me to New York, and how I ended up writing the kinds of stories I did. At first I gave brief, superficial answers, trying
to keep an interview feeling to the evening. But I gave up eventually because the wine was making me slightly giddy and he
was doing such a good job of listening. In describing one point in my career, I mentioned that I’d been married and divorced,
which is a wet blanket for a certain percentage of guys, but he seemed unperturbed. Then, to confuse matters even more, a
mariachi band emerged from the back of the restaurant and began serenading everyone in the place. They lingered by our table
for an entire song. Though I couldn’t tell the meaning of the song, they sang the word
amor
around seventy-five times. I felt my cheeks getting hot, and I prayed the place was too dim for Jack to notice.

The waiter asked if we’d like coffee. I said yes, not wanting to be rude. But I felt I needed to clear out of there before
things got complicated. I gulped down my coffee and announced, after a shocked look at my watch, that it was time to get home
and tackle a bit of work before bed. I offered to contribute to the bill, but he insisted on picking up the entire thing.

“Let me walk you back to your place,” he said after we’d left the restaurant and had sauntered down to the corner of Thompson
and Washington Square South.

“No, no. That’s not necessary,” I protested. “It’s totally out of your way. I need to make a quick stop at the deli anyway.
But thank you. I so appreciate your giving me all this help.” I was turning him down, boxing him out. But I didn’t feel I
had a choice.

He looked at me slightly perplexed, eyes squinted a little, as if he were trying to decide what was going on with me—was I
being coy, or was I just plain blowing him off ? But it quickly morphed into benign resignation, an expression that said,
“So you really
are
giving me the brush-off—well, I’m too polite to act miffed.” He reached out to shake my hand.

“Well, thanks for introducing me to more of the Village. The restaurant was great.”

Then, as if I were speaking in Pentecostal tongues, I opened my mouth and something flew out that caught me totally by surprise.

“Maybe, if you’re around this weekend, I can give you a tour,” I announced, chirpy as a bluebird.

“Sure,” he said, only half believing me. “Let’s talk later in the week.”

He turned and headed east on Washington Square South, the back of his jacket flapping up the way it had the other day. Had
I lost my brain? What was I doing letting a man like that get away? It seemed that since my divorce my ability to interpret
what my heart and libido were really telling me had shriveled up. I felt a brief urge to run after him, grab the tails of
that jacket, and suggest a nightcap. But I thought better of it and crossed over to the park.

The night was almost balmy, and though it would have been nice just to stroll, I hightailed it back to my place, stopping
for two minutes on University Place to grab a take-out cappuccino. I had the strangest feeling all of a sudden. Partly I was
exasperated at myself over being such a moron at love. But mostly it was the sensation I’d had in the restaurant of having
my brain jostled. It was as if I’d forgotten something that was now slowly surfacing to consciousness. I was beginning to
sense, though, that the feeling had to do with Cat, not Marky.I wanted to get back to my apartment and read through my notes.

No messages waiting on my machine, just two hang-ups, numbers blocked. What was the actual point of them? I wondered. Though
the hang-ups were unsettling, they had not gone beyond that—no heavy breathing or threatening words, for instance. Maybe it
was less about scaring me than keeping tabs on my whereabouts.

I picked up my notebook from my office and took that and my cappuccino out on the terrace. There was just one light out there,
a lantern-style fixture on the wall, but it was enough to read by.

I started at the first page, which I’d titled “Death of a Nanny.” Funny I’d chosen that, even when I knew Cat was supposed
to be the victim. I went through page after page, but nothing jumped out. The disquietude I felt was growing, like something
becoming waterlogged and heavier by the minute. As I thought back over the evening, I realized that I had started to feel
the nudging when Jack and I had talked about misdirection. Was it simply because the case appeared to be a study in misdirection?
The killer, by using poison, had tried to misdirect everyone into thinking that there was a plot against women’s magazine
editors when it was only Cat who really mattered.

I closed my notebook and leaned back in the wrought-iron patio chair. The air was crystal clear, and my view tonight had a
wonderful fake quality to it, like the painted backdrop for a Broadway show—inky blue black sky; a few faint stars, nothing
more than pinpricks; buildings whose lit windows seemed too perfectly random. At eleven I locked up and stuck a tape of
Witness
into the VCR in my bedroom, hoping that because I’d seen it a dozen times, I would fall asleep from sheer boredom. And I
did—before Harrison Ford even drove into Lancaster.

Just after three A.M., though, I woke up, my heart racing. It seemed as if a noise had startled me awake, something perhaps
from the living room. I got up, turned off the TV, which at this point was offering nothing but a bright blue screen, and
made a quick check around the living room, including the door to the terrace. Nothing. As I crawled back into bed, I realized
I’d had a dream, a nightmare, really, about Heidi. In the dream I’d walked into her apartment and this time she was alive,
standing in the middle of the room with one of the sea foam green towels draped around her neck as if she were planning to
head for the beach. I’d started to speak to her, but before I could even say a word she shook her head in annoyance. And that
was all I could remember.

I pushed myself up with an elbow and leaned, half sitting, half lying, against the backboard of the bed. I stayed there for
a few minutes in the darkness, watching my clock radio jump from 3:16 to 3:17 to 3:18. And suddenly it came to me, along with
a rush of fear. I knew what had been bugging me earlier in the evening. And I knew why I’d dreamed of Heidi.

I
T WAS EIGHT-THIRTY
A.M. on Tuesday when I finally dragged my butt out of bed. After my nightmare about Heidi, after my middle-of-the-night epiphany,
all attempts to get back to sleep had proved futile. I’d tossed around in bed for a while, just to remind myself how damn
good I was at it, watched the part of
Witness
I’d missed earlier, and read through almost the entire May issue of
Gloss
, including an item on whether it’s safe to tweeze hairs around the nipple (yes!). I’d wanted to fly out of bed early and
start checking out the theory that had wiggled its way into my consciousness last night, but when I finally began to feel
sleepy around dawn, I shut off my alarm, deciding it was best to grab whatever z’s I could. I needed to be at the top of my
game.

It was warm out, though slightly overcast again. Since I’d be racing around, I threw on khaki pants, a black T-shirt, and
a pair of Merrells. As soon as I’d defrosted a bagel from a package of frozen ones, toasted it, and wolfed it down with coffee,
I called Cat’s house to tell her I wanted to come up there and go through Heidi’s things again. There was something specific
I was looking for, and if I found it, everything would change. Carlotta informed me, much to my surprise, that Cat had gone
to the office. Maybe she’d finally decided to take the bull by the horns and begin running the magazine again—before it was
rudely snatched away from her. I phoned her office at
Gloss
, only to be told by Audrey that Cat was in a meeting. I didn’t feel comfortable showing up at the town house without first
obtaining Cat’s permission, so it looked as though I’d have to hook up with her at
Gloss
. I was planning to go there anyway in order to connect with Kip.

There was a delay of some kind on the R line, and by the time I finally stepped off the elevator at
Gloss
it was almost tenthirty and things were in full swing. The big surprise: When I rounded the corner from the lobby into the
pit, Cat was sitting at the black conference table, holding a meeting of about seven or eight editors, all from the articles
department. With her back to me, she didn’t notice my presence, but several editors, including Polly, glanced discreetly in
my direction.

Cat despised big meetings and therefore rarely held them. She had regular planning meetings with the most senior players—they
were a necessary evil—but bigger ones she called only when she was on a tear about something, like she suddenly hated the
magazine and wanted to take it in a whole new direction. As a freelancer I was exempt from these meetings and eternally grateful
for that: They not only went on forever, but jump-started the jackal in everyone—those who had the weakest ideas or quivered
when they spoke were often reduced to a bloody pulp. And if Cat didn’t like the direction things were moving in, she was bound
to get bitchy. Once, when someone had attempted to stifle a yawn an hour and a half into the meeting, she had asked in mock
concern, “Are you
okay?”

Cat was doing the talking right now—though I caught only the phrase
put the reader in a stupor
. People appeared simultaneously nervous and bored, the kind of look you’d expect if someone were on hold with the Herpes
Hot Line. Noting that Kip wasn’t among the revelers, I hurried along to my office.

As I was settling down at my desk, something struck me. The red mug that held my pens and sat just to the left of my computer
had shifted position to the middle of my desk. Maybe I’d pushed it over and didn’t remember. Maybe the cleaning person had
moved it. Or hey, maybe Marky had stopped by when I wasn’t here. I swung my eyes around the rest of the desk, and then the
rest of the room, looking for anything else amiss. Nothing. Next I pulled open the center desk drawer. A take-out menu for
Just Soup, which had been lying on top of the mess the last time I looked, was now scrunched off to the side. Someone had
been in my office on a reconnaissance mission.

From the hallway I could hear Sasha’s voice, and stepping outside, I found her, dressed in a red mini and black tank top,
in a tense conversation with the model editor.

“I don’t want to use Nadia,” Sasha was saying. “This is ten pages. We need a girl who’s . . . a girl who’s more major.”

“I put a hold on Nadia, though,” whined the model editor. “What do I tell the agency?”

“I don’t know,” Sasha said, shrugging. “Say we needed a blonde because of the location and the way Keith wants to shoot it
and dit dit dit. Okay?”

The model editor, named something that sounded like toboggan, went off in a snit and Sasha glanced over to me.

“How was Palm Springs?” I asked.

“Okay. But then I come back and everything here is insane.”

“Yeah, I know. Look, did you see anyone in my office this morning? Maybe someone waiting for me?”

“No. Well, the door was closed this morning when I got here. I thought you were in there working.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.” The door had been open when I arrived.

I went back into my office and looked around again. There were no warning messages this time, like the chocolate Kiss. It
appeared as if someone had been snooping around, searching perhaps for files and notes in order to see if I’d left behind
any information I’d collected. It felt creepy just to be sitting there.

I picked up my phone, punched Cat’s extension, and asked Audrey to give me a time frame for the meeting. This one had just
started, she said, and she expected it to go on for at least an hour.

Change in game plan. I needed to go through Heidi’s apartment—and it now looked as if I were going to have to do it without
official clearance from Cat. I couldn’t wait one more minute. Besides, Cat had given me permission to turn over every stone,
and Carlotta would be there to supervise.

As for Kip, a talk with him could wait. And if my theory was right, it wouldn’t even be necessary.

I took a cab to save time, but when I got to the town house, no one answered the bell. I waited for fifteen minutes near the
corner, in view of the house, sitting on a brick ledge that bordered a church and trying to control the ants in my pants.
Just when I was wondering if I would have to bag it, Carlotta came down the sidewalk across the street, lugging two shopping
bags. Cat didn’t make her wear a uniform, but she was dressed nicely, in a long, full navy skirt and white shirt. I lowered
my head so she wouldn’t see me and gave her a few minutes to unlock the door and get settled before I headed back toward the
house.

“Hi, Carlotta,” I said a little too perkily as she let me in, having first checked on the intercom who it was. “I’m back.
I’ve got to finish going through Heidi’s room.”

“Okay,” she said, obviously not finding anything suspicious about my request. “I’m in the library, doing the vacuum.”

As I trailed her through the living room and down the staircase, I noticed that all the windows were closed. They’d bat-tened
down the hatches here on East 91st Street, relying on central air rather than spring breezes to keep them cool.

When we reached the library, Carlotta leaned over to pick up the hose of a small red Electrolux squatting in the center of
the room. She was obviously going to leave me to my own devices. I spoke before she had a chance to switch on the machine.