If Looks Could Kill (23 page)

“Which way did he go?”

I flung my arm in the direction of the back door. “Through the backyard. I heard a car start on the street behind us. It might
have been him.”

“Stay here,” the cute cop said, and he and his pudgy partner took off, hands on holsters again. I heard the table being dragged
away from the door and one of them say something over a radio about an attempted burglary. Once they were gone I flipped on
some more lights and snuck back out into the kitchen. The door was partially ajar, and without touching it I took a closer
look. There were no signs that anyone had tampered with the lock. The glass in the window was totally intact. I glanced around,
looking for anything the prowler might have left behind. Nothing. Unless you counted the total terror I was still feeling.

I could see and hear the two cops moving around the backyard, the beams of their own flashlights bouncing against the darkness.
I tried to think straight. The cops had used the word
burglar
, but I didn’t buy it. The one night I’m in Landon’s house alone turns out to be the night a burglar decides to strike? That
would surely fall under the category of coincidences my mother wouldn’t accept. This was about me. Maybe the killer
did
live out here and had somehow learned I was here and where I was staying. Or maybe he had followed me all the way from Manhattan.

I left the kitchen and sprinted upstairs. After stripping off my pajamas and pulling on jeans and a T-shirt, I began flinging
my belongings into my overnight bag. The police wouldn’t be here forever, and there was no way I was going to hang around
waiting for the intruder to come back.

As I set my bag down at the bottom of the stairs, the two cops strode down the hallway from the kitchen, the pudgy one slightly
out of breath.

“You’re Mrs. Hayes?” the cute one asked, ushering me to a chair in the parlor. They must have checked before they got here
who owned the residence. I explained who I was, where I was from, and the circumstances of my being in the house alone.

“Tell us what happened.” From the cute one again. “Oh, by the way, I’m Officer Andrews and this is Officer Persky.”

I went through the whole story, explaining that the only description I could give of the prowler was that he was on the tall
side. When I got to the part about him shoving me, they both looked shocked and wanted to be sure I didn’t need medical attention.

“No, no. I’m okay. Just a scrape on my knee. Could you tell how he got in?”

“There’s no sign of forced entry,” said Andrews, “and since you say you locked the door, my guess is he used a credit card
on the back. It’s one of those locks you can do it with. Would you know if anything’s missing—or maybe that’s something your
friend will have to determine.”

“I doubt he had time to take anything. When I surprised him in the kitchen he must have just gotten in.”

“That’s your car in the driveway, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, it’s such an obvious sign someone’s here. We get burglaries around here, but generally it happens when people are working—or
away.” He paused. “You don’t have any enemies, do you? I mean, it’s hard to believe, but I’ve got to ask.”

“Like I said, I’m not even from around here,” I said carefully.

“No jilted boyfriend who might have followed you out here?” Andrews asked with a smile.

“No.” I smiled wanly. “Not these days, anyway.”

“Did you go out tonight? Could someone have seen you and followed you back?”

“I ate at the inn. I did walk back alone. I was paying attention, but there’s a chance someone could have followed me without
my being aware of it.” This was the moment to reveal what had been going on back in New York, but I let it pass. It seemed
too complicated to get into at this moment, with this particular cop. I would get hold of Farley when I got back to New York.

“Well, we’ll get someone out here first thing in the morning. We’ll see if we can lift any prints.”

“He wore gloves.”

“Okay then. But he left his footprints out back. They’ll take some impressions.”

“You’ll have to wait till Mr. Hayes gets here tomorrow,” I said.

“Where are
you
going to be?”

“I can’t stay here. I’m going to head back to New York.”

In near unison they both held up their hands in protest. It wasn’t a good idea, Andrews said, he didn’t like the idea of me
on the road at this hour, and I was in no shape to drive. He promised that if I stayed, they’d drive by every fifteen minutes
or so. No way, I told them, no way in hell.

Realizing that convincing me was a hopeless cause, they of-fered to tail me out of town—just to make certain no one followed
me. As we stepped outside, I saw that some of the neighbors, wrapped up in bathrobes, had gathered on their porches, and a
man from across the street scurried over to inquire if everything was okay. Andrews explained what had happened and asked
if he’d seen anything suspicious, and the neighbor said no and explained breathlessly that they’d never had a single problem
on the street before.

I shook hands with both cops, unlocked the Jeep, and climbed in, tossing my bag into the backseat. As promised, they followed
directly behind as if we were an official motorcade. They stayed with me even after I turned on to Route 611, but after about
ten minutes, they flashed their lights, indicating my escort was over.

I was on my own now. The road was lined mainly with commercial buildings, all with security lights on the edges of their roofs,
which cast an eerie glow into empty parking lots. I checked my rearview mirror every minute, making sure I wasn’t being followed,
but there was no one in sight, and just a couple of cars passed me going the other way. Eventually I had to leave Route 611
and wind along rural roads on my way to I-78. My hands trembled as they gripped the steering wheel. The houses I passed were
dark, deserted looking, except for one that had electric candlelights in every window. I had been on this route five or six
times, but never in the dead of night, and I was worried I’d get lost. As it turned out, I found my way without trouble and
saw only one car on the entire fifteen-minute stretch, a souped-up sports car coming the other way, probably full of Friday
night revelers. The worst thing that happened: I picked up the smell of a skunk, which seemed to stay with the car forever.

I felt better when I finally merged onto I-78, though the driving there was hardly a day at the beach. Trucks and more trucks
barreled along beside me as I stayed meekly in the middle lane. I stuck in a CD of Maria Callas’s Puccini arias, opened a
bottle of Poland Spring water that I kept in the Jeep, and chugged half of it down in one gulp. Should I have been more forthcoming
with the two state police guys? I kept asking myself. It had just seemed like too much to get into with two patrol cops who
wouldn’t know what to do with the info. Farley was the one to share everything with. Though he might kill me when I told him.

In the sky directly ahead of me, the gray light of dawn began to seep though the blackness and the first flames of sunrise
reached over the horizon. It should have been comforting, but my hands would not stop shaking.

I
PULLED INTO
the parking garage just before five-thirty A.M. and rushed home the half block to my apartment building. The lecherous night
porter was still on duty in the lobby, wearing a doorman cap three sizes too big that he’d obviously borrowed from one of
the day guys. He gave me a disgusting “Hey baby, big night, huh?” smirk and I brushed past him with a look that I hoped revealed
that I considered him the most absurd-looking turd ever to appear on the planet. Once in my apartment with the door closed
and the lights on, I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief. I overrode my temptation to wake Landon and pour out the story
and instead wrote him a note saying that I was home and not to leave without talking to me, and slipped it under his door.
All of a sudden I felt nailed by fatigue. Afraid of not hearing the doorbell, I flopped down on my couch instead of the bed,
pulling a chenille throw over my shoulders. I’d slept for just two hours when Landon rang my bell. My note had thrown him
into a tizzy, which quickly escalated into shock when I described the break-in. Before he had a chance to assume “burglar,”
I relayed my theory that the episode was connected somehow to my involvement in Cat’s situation rather than to someone’s interest
in his sterling silver. Regardless, I told him, I didn’t like the idea of him being alone in his house that night. He explained
that he had other houseguests arriving later in the day, so he’d have plenty of company. His biggest concern seemed to be
leaving me on
my
own, possibly in the throes of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I insisted I’d be fine and sent him on his way with the info
on the two police officers so he could follow up with them—and a strong urging that he improve his lock situation immediately.

After he left I trudged down to my bedroom, tore off my clothes, and fell into the kind of deep sleep I hadn’t experienced
in years. I awoke groggy, with a headache, feeling as if I’d just gotten off a seventeen-hour flight across the Pacific.

A shower helped a little, as did two cups of coffee. I knew I needed food and decided to walk over to the small restaurant
where I’d eaten lunch with Jack Herlihy. Before I left I finally remembered to check my messages. A couple of calls from friends
and one from my brother Cam. A long-winded message from the Howdy Doody progeny I’d met Thursday night at the bar, who must
have wrestled my phone number from someone there. And interestingly: not a single hang-up. It was as if my phone stalker had
known I was going out of town this weekend.

As I left my apartment building, I glanced up and down 9th Street a few times. Nothing ominous: just people on their way shopping
or errand running or Rollerblading or dog walking or perhaps heading over to Washington Square Park to just loll around in
the sun. It was another gorgeous day, and people were dressed in capris and shorts. A few had even abandoned regulation Village
black for pastels.

At the restaurant, I ordered a Caesar salad and a glass of iced tea. When my order came, I nibbled on a few croutons, but
they had all the appeal of mulch. I still felt incredibly wigged out from the night before. Yet in the last hours, as I’d
thought more and more about what had happened, I’d begun to make sense of it. And I no longer believed that the attack on
me the previous night had anything to do, at least directly, with Cat’s situation.

That’s because as I’d combed my memory I’d realized that there was no way anyone who’d been at Cat’s party could have known
I would be at Landon’s house last night. Cat was the only one who knew I was going out to Pennsylvania, and though I’d given
her a contact number for me, I’d never said who I was staying with, so she couldn’t have inadvertently passed on the info
to the killer. And I was nearly positive I hadn’t been followed. I recalled glancing in my rearview mirror on those rural
stretches between I-78 and Landon’s house, just out of habit. There’d been times when not a single car had been behind me.

One person, however,
had
learned where I was staying: Darma. She’d asked and I’d given her Landon’s name and the town he lived in. He was listed,
so she could have easily found the street address. Prickly, agitated Darma. In her living room I had appeared to hit a nerve
with my questions about Tucker’s death. Maybe something fishy
had
gone on, maybe she really
had
snuck death caps into his food and wasn’t at all happy with the fact that I was poking my nose into things. That certainly
hadn’t been
her
in the kitchen, her curls stuffed inside a ski mask. But maybe it had been the
Lonesome Dove
dude, sent on a mission to scare me out of town.

There was something else. The prowler’s gloves. They’d been made of heavy cotton, maybe denim, the material that work gloves
are made of. The kind people use outdoors, in yards and barnyards. The kind the
Lonesome Dove
dude might easily wear. I didn’t have enough proof to go running to the police with it, but it made sense to me.

All very interesting and troubling. Something I needed to consider sharing with the police out there. But I couldn’t let myself
get distracted by it. I needed to focus on Cat’s case. For the time being I was going to assume that Bobb’s death and Heidi’s
weren’t
related, that no one had a vendetta against women’s magazines. That meant reconsidering who on the guest list, excluding
Dolores, had a reason to want Cat (and just Cat) out of the picture.

As I sat at the same restaurant where I’d gone with Jack Herlihy, my conversation with him about Heidi’s murder bubbled to
the surface of my mind. He’d said that when people planned a murder, they did it not because they had a hair up their butt
about some minor insult or infraction, but because they were in a frenzy of emotion—they felt jealous as hell or totally betrayed
or rabid with rage. And that, I realized, was what I had to keep in mind as I considered the partygoers. No pussyfooting around
with anyone who had minor grievances. I needed to concentrate on people who might be tasting their own bile because of something
Cat Jones had done to them.

I felt pretty comfortable knocking Leslie’s name off the list, at least for now. Though she might have been miffed at Cat
for allegedly flirting with her husband, that was ages ago, and she exhibited no sign of holding a grudge. I also mentally
crossed off Rachel. If she wanted Cat’s job, she’d know that eliminating Cat would never guarantee she’d get it.

Apparently, however, there were people who
might
be in a big enough frenzy to want to murder. Polly for one. I felt so seditious just thinking her name, but she had every
reason to be running over with rage. Cat, who owed Polly big-time, had thwarted her chance to finally be an editor in chief.
Jeff. Something was definitely amiss on the Cat and Jeff love landscape. Had Cat been unfaithful? I could still see the pink
flush on her neck when I asked about Kip. If she
had
been a bad girl, maybe Jeff suspected. Maybe it made his blood boil. Or perhaps there was some other reason he might want
her dead. The money? Cat not only made more than Jeff, but had come into some family money in the last couple of years. Kip.
Though it was hard for me to imagine Cat feeling the slightest attraction to Kip, a guy who not only worked for her, but seemed
to be suffering from near toxic levels of testosterone, there was definitely something going on—I could feel it. And an affair,
or even just a fling, could have generated strong feelings in Kip: jealousy, anger, regret.