If Looks Could Kill (7 page)

She suggested that I come to her place, where we could talk, but that it might be best to first see if I could connect with
the friend and the ex. She told me to get in a cab and call her from my cell phone for the info—this way we’d save time. I
told her I was on my way.

As I was packing up my tote bag, Dr. Petrocelli returned my call. I launched into my gruesome discovery yesterday.

“Not a very nice way to spend a Sunday,” he said.

“That’s for sure. Can you hazard a guess about cause of death?”

“How old was she—and when was the last time someone saw her alive?”

“Just twenty-two. And her boss talked to her Saturday afternoon.”

“God, she was young for sudden death. The first thing I’d wanna know is whether or not there was any sign of trauma.”

“Not that
I
could see. There was no blood or obvious bruising. She was on the floor, but it looked almost as if she’d slipped off the
couch.”

“Any underlying medical conditions?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It sounds like you’re probably looking at a toxicology case.”

“You mean drugs?” I asked. “That’s what jumped to my mind, of course.”

“Yeah, drugs. Heroin can make you vomit copiously. Or alcohol. Or some kind of combination of both. The patient vomits and
then chokes or aspirates the vomitus. If you’re drunk or stoned, your gag reflex is depressed and your airways end up getting
blocked. We see it all the time.”

“The only thing is I didn’t notice any signs around the apartment that she’d been drinking or doing drugs.”

“She could have—Hold on a second.” He turned to give some kind of order to someone. “Okay, where was I? She could have done
it someplace else. I’d also consider Ecstasy—that can make you vomit. Or a date rape drug—GHB or rohypnol. Someone could have
slipped it to her at a bar or party without her knowing it.”

“I suppose that’s a possibility,” I said. “But she’d said she was staying in. What about food poisoning—salmonella or botulism?”

“That’s not sudden death. It usually takes three or four days to die from something like that. There are some other possibilities.
An aneurysm or a fatal pulmonary embolism. They can both trigger vomiting before they kill you. But those don’t usually occur
in someone so young. I’d say it’s a tox case. Something she took—or maybe foul play.”

When he said the words
foul play
, I got an instant case of goose bumps.

“Thanks, this helps,” I told him. Though I actually felt even more confused—and concerned—than I had before.

I
TOLD THE
cabdriver to head up Central Park West, then cut through the park, and that I’d provide him with the exact destination in
just a sec. As we sped around Columbus Circle I called Cat on my cell phone and she gave me the info on the two people she
wanted me to try to see this morning.

The other nanny was named Janice and she had apparently been Heidi’s closest friend, her only friend, in fact, as far as Cat
knew. Like Heidi, Janice was American, something that according to Cat was fairly unusual in the New York City nanny world.
Cat had seen Janice on only a couple of occasions, knew practically nothing about her, and had her number only because it
had been offered up by the housekeeper, Carlotta.

The other person to contact was the ex-boyfriend, name of Jody Ransom (or possibly Radson). He worked at a Starbucks on Third
Avenue at 90th Street, but Cat had no idea where he lived. She believed he had begun dating Heidi sometime early last fall
and had gotten the boot after the first of the year, though he had turned up sporadically in the new role of “friend.” In
fact, according to Carlotta, he had stopped by

Thursday evening when Cat was giving a party for former
Gloss
editor in chief Dolores Wilder.

“When they were dating, did this Jody guy sleep over?” I inquired. “I mean, were they shacking up?”

“On the weekends, I think,” Cat said. “We’re usually gone then, you know, but Carlotta comes in once in a while on the weekends
and I believe she got a shot of his bare ass once.”

“Was that against the house rules?” I asked.

“No. I mean, I certainly didn’t want guys traipsing in and out, and she knew better than to have anyone over during the work
week. But on the weekends it was okay, as long as I didn’t have to have it shoved in my face.”

I told her I’d make an attempt to connect with both of them and then swing by her house. I’d finally have the chance to ask
her about the things that had been bugging me.

As soon as I signed off, I called the number Cat had given me for Janice and she answered the phone herself. I explained that
I was a friend of Cat’s and that she had asked me to get in touch. Yes, she had heard about what had happened and was in her
words “totally freaked,” particularly because she had been unable to get through to the house for details.

“Well, that’s why I’m calling,” I said. “Cat wanted me to talk to you about some things. I was hoping I could drop by this
morning.”

Yes, she said, come by. She was going to be home until after lunch, and I told her I’d be there within the next hour or so.

After I’d tossed my cell phone back into my purse, I leaned back against the seat of the taxi, closed my eyes, and summoned
the memory of the first time I’d laid eyes on Heidi. It was late last summer in Cat’s garden at a dinner party she’d given
in honor of someone who’d done something of note, but I couldn’t remember who or what. As we were sitting down to eat, Heidi
brought Tyler into the backyard to say good night to his parents. Cat looked mildly annoyed at the intrusion—probably because
the delay was going to take the chill out of the gazpacho—but everyone else sat there in awe. Heidi, who had just started
the week before, was stunning to behold. She was about five feet seven and curvy in only the right places. She had long blond
hair, with streaks as light as butter, and her eyes were khaki green. I remember thinking that if I were married, I’d never
have the nerve to bring someone that gorgeous to live in my home, but then Cat had supreme confidence in her own beauty as
well as Jeff’s ga-ga-ness over her.

What struck me that night as much as Heidi’s stunning good looks was her aloofness. She seemed like an ice princess, the kind
of girl who would choose a horse over a guy any day, but it was clear that she connected with men on some imperceptible level,
kind of like the way a dog whistle works. A few of the men in the garden got goofy faced at the sight of her, and that included
my date (whom, by the way, I later ditched on the corner of 91st and Park, leaping into a cab as he attempted to scrape gum
off the bottom of his shoe).

After that night I bumped into Heidi occasionally at the house, and though she was polite, there was always that coolness
and we never became friendly. I had no sense at all of what she was really like.

My first stop was Starbucks, where I hoped to hook up with Jody. It was eleven forty-five and the place was almost deserted.
In the background some annoying merengue music was playing, all wrong for the mood and the time of day.

“Can I get a large cappuccino to go?” I asked a twentysomething girl in a green apron and black Starbucks cap. As the milk
steamed, she stared off into the distance, with the boredom of someone who’d heard that annoying whine a million times before.
I waited until she was handing me the change to pop my question.

“Is Jody here today?”

“Is it about a job?” she asked.

“No, it’s personal.”

“He
was
here. But he had to leave. You a friend of his?”

“Actually a friend of the family his former girlfriend worked for.” Her eyes widened and I could tell that she was in the
loop about what had happened. “I wanted to see how he was doing.”

“Not so good,” she said.

“How did he find out?” I asked.

“I think he saw it in the paper.”

“Did you know her—Heidi?”

“She used to come in all the time—with that little boy. But not so much lately.”

“You don’t have an address for Jody, do you? I need to get hold of him to make sure he’s okay.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t have an address. But I could give you a phone number.”

Number in hand, I headed for 93rd and Second Avenue, where Janice lived with the family who employed her. The apartment building
turned out to be one of those forty-story-tall condos that had gone up in the 1980s, full of yuppies who, as Cat had once
pointed out, could afford the mortgage but didn’t have enough equity to snag a more fashionable place west of Lexington Avenue.

The concierge announced my arrival and directed me to go to 31E. It took Janice about a minute to answer the bell. I could
hear her hushing a kid, and then the sound of her making her way to the door, her shoes or sandals flip-flopping across the
floor. Her looks surprised me. Probably because of Heidi, I had expected Janice to be pretty, too, but she was short and plump,
and her long, brassy blond hair was styled in a bad version of Farrah Fawcett’s
Charlie’s Angels
do. She was squeezed into a pair of jeans and a black CK T-shirt—about three sizes too small.

“Hi, Janice, I’m Bailey,” I said, sticking out my hand. “Thanks so much for seeing me. I’m sure this must be hard for you,
since you and Heidi were so close.”

As soon as I said Heidi’s name, tears began to fall, depositing streaks of mascara as they slid down her face.

“I’m so upset,” she said. “I’ve been calling the house over and over to see if someone would, like, talk to me, but I keep
getting the stupid machine.”

“Well, the press is pestering the family—because of Miss Jones’s job. May I come in?”

“Oh yeah, sorry.”

The apartments in these kinds of New York City buildings all look pretty much the same—rectangular rooms without any ornamentation,
parquet floors, tiny kitchens—so I was surprised by the place as I got my first full glimpse of it. The owners must have totally
gutted the existing apartment—several apartments, for that matter—and had created a loftlike space with a large open kitchen,
dining, and living area. The furniture was mostly contemporary, and though the space was decorated decently, there was stuff
piled on every possible surface—shrink-wrapped packages of Pampers, tubs of baby wipes, Blockbuster videotapes, magazines,
mail, catalogs, unfolded laundry, a six-pack of vanilla pudding. In the living area was a huge TV screen, practically the
size of ones they use in football stadiums to show the replays. Parked in front of it in a baby walker was a nearly bald baby,
probably just over a year old. He was gumming a bagel to death and watching a show or videotape featuring a giant blue-spotted
dog.

Janice flip-flopped her way in a pair of black mules to the dining room table and plopped down in one of the chairs. On the
placemat in front of her was a can of Diet Coke and a plate of half-eaten French fries, the kind with ridges that you buy
frozen and heat up in the oven. I sat down at the spot directly across from her, with a stunning, unbroken view to the East
River and Queens.

“You wanna soda?” Janice asked, pushing aside the plate of fries and picking up her own can. Her inch-and-a-half-long nails
were painted purple and had little flower decals on them.

“No thanks, I’ll just drink my cappuccino,” I replied. As I took a sip, Janice glanced over at the baby. He was bouncing up
and down giddily in his walker, watching the blue-spotted dog roll in a puddle.

“What happened to Barney?” I asked. “Do kids still like him?”

“Barney is
sooo
over,” Janice said, giving her head a shake of disgust. “And I’m glad, too. He makes me sick.”

“Did you and Heidi meet as nannies?”

“Yeah, at Gymboree,” she said. “We were, like, the only two nannies who weren’t from the Islands.”

“Gymboree’s a place for kids?”

“Yeah, it’s like these classes where you hold the kid and help him go down a slide or you bounce him on a trampoline and sing
that song, you know, ‘Three Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’?”

“How did you hear that Heidi was dead?” I asked.

“A friend called—she heard it on the news.” Tears began to roll down her face again, and she wiped them gingerly with the
pads of each index finger, careful not to lance a cornea with her nails. “But I don’t get it. How do you get sick and die
in a day?”

“They don’t have any idea right now. It’s a complete mystery. They’ll do an autopsy and some tests. When was the last time
you spoke to Heidi?”

“On Saturday. I talked to her on the phone.”

“About what time?”

She thought for a moment, twirling one of her hair wings. “It was like one o’clock or so. I tried to talk her into going out
with me that night, but she didn’t want to.”

“She had other plans?”

“No, she just said she didn’t want to go out. She never wanted to go out at night anymore. We used to go to this place on
Third Avenue all the time—the Caboose. She loved it. Guys there thought she was awesome. But lately she’d become like this
homebody.” She walked two fingers on nail tips toward the plate of cold fries and picked up one of them, holding it as if
she were dangling a night crawler.

“Did she give any indication she wasn’t feeling well?” I asked.

“No, she just said she felt like staying in.”

“Was she depressed, down in the dumps?”

“No, I don’t think so. She said she just wanted to read—and listen to music.”

“What kind of music?” I asked, remembering what she’d had playing in the apartment.

“Jazz. She’d gotten a thing for jazz lately. Go figure.” She folded the cold French fry into her mouth.

“When was the last time you saw Heidi in person?” I asked.

“On Friday. Wait—I mean Thursday. We took T and G out and had a coffee together.”

“T and G?”

“Oh, that’s what we call Tyler and George for short.”

“When the two of you used to go out at night together, did Heidi ever have too much to drink?”

Janice snorted. “No—I mean, once in a billion years she’d have a glass of white wine, but she didn’t like to drink. Seltzer
was her drink of choice.”