If Looks Could Kill (35 page)

There was a part of me that also felt humiliated from having been dressed down in front of Leslie. It certainly explained
why Leslie had been so gracious to me. She’d known I was in the doghouse, and in her state of glee over this development,
she’d been able to throw me a bone.

Outside on the sidewalk, I discovered to my delight that it had begun to rain, a nice steady rain that obviously had no intention
of stopping anytime soon. A whole bunch of cabs sped up and down Central Park West, all with windshield wipers flicking and
their top lights off. There was no convenient subway for me to get home by. I glanced up at the street sign on the corner—74th
Street—and considered whom I knew within a two-block radius who might be willing to loan me an umbrella.

A friend of mine from Brown lived on 73rd and Columbus, but the last I knew he was still in Jakarta for his job. A girlfriend
from
Get
had a studio on 72nd, but she was almost always at her boyfriend’s in Tribeca. And then—surprise, surprise!—there was K.C.,
not exactly within the preferred radius, but close enough—81st Street. He’d thought nothing of calling me on the spur of the
moment; didn’t I have the right to do the same? Weren’t we ditching all the game playing? Besides, seeing his face would make
me less miserable. I stepped back into the lobby and punched his number on my cell. Chances were heavily in favor of his not
being home, anyway.

But he was. Caught off guard, I sputtered something about a fight with my boss and being caught in the rain and could I come
by and steal an umbrella. He hesitated for a minute and I thought, Oh God, he’s going to blow me off, but then he said yes,
come by, he had umbrellas and I could take my pick.

By the time I’d jogged the seven blocks in the rain to his apartment building, my hair was matted down and my clothes were
sticking to my skin, and when I glanced in the mirror in his lobby, I saw that I looked remarkably like a muskrat surfacing
on a pond. I tried to do some damage control, but it wasn’t very effective. It had been a mistake to call, and I realized
that the only possible way to begin to undo the damage was to simply take an umbrella and split.

He was wearing a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, over a pair of tartan boxer shorts. Bare feet. His dark hair
was slightly damp and slicked down, as if he’d combed it just after I’d called. Funny he’d taken the time for that but hadn’t
bothered to put on his pants. But then why be coy? He kissed me on the cheek and led me from the foyer (
past
the umbrella stand) to the living room, where paper and folders were strewn about on the brown leather couch, the coffee
table, and even on the floor.

“Oh, God, you’re in the middle of working—sorry,” I said.

“Actually, I’m done. We finished that deal today, and I’m just trying to organize stuff before I haul it back to the office.
You want a beer?”

“I shouldn’t. You’re busy.”

“Sit,” he said, clearing off the papers from the couch and plunking them down with the stacks on the coffee table. “I’ll be
right back.”

He walked off toward the kitchen and came back in less than a minute with two Coors and a towel, which I used to blot my hair
as he relaxed into the far end of the couch from me. He looked very sexy, with that damp hair and his eyes a little bit on
the sleepy side and the still perfectly pressed oxford shirt open halfway down his chest. My pulse should have been racing,
but I was feeling an odd disconnect. Maybe it was because my anger at Cat was acting like some kind of roadblock to other
sensations. Or because I was suddenly feeling slightly woozy despite the fact that during the course of the evening I’d never
finished a single drink I’d started. Or maybe it was because K.C. had chosen to sit five feet away from me.

“Did the deal work out in your favor?” I asked, setting the Coors bottle on the Mission-style end table next to me.

“Yeah, we made a killing, actually,” he said with a typically roguish laugh. “So what was this fight with your boss? Did you
tell her to stop calling you on Sunday mornings at the crack of dawn?”

“No, though I should have, shouldn’t I? Actually, she humiliated me in front of this woman we work with. Which doesn’t sound
so amazing considering her bitchiness has been registered as a lethal weapon, but it’s not something she’s generally pulled
with me. Of course, she’s under all this pressure right now—her job sucks and her marriage has been under strain and she’s
been under the impression for the last week that someone wants her dead, which I guess could make anyone bitchy. But it doesn’t
make it bother me any less. I sud-denly see how stupid it’s been for me to think that I’m immune to her annoyance or wrath.
It’s like raising a puma in captivity and believing it won’t ever maul you.”

Lengthwise, my ramblings had seemed to come in just short of the Gettysburg Address, and I decided to shut up then.

“It’s always dangerous with bosses,” he said. “You should never get too close to them, if you ask me.”

His eye contact faltered as he said it, and the words just hung there. Was it because beneath the words there was a story,
of him getting burned once at work? Or was he sending a message about his general MO in life (Don’t
ever
get too close)?

“Any advice?” I asked. “I’m not sure what to do next.” I was fumbling for where to go with the conversation.

“I assume you like your situation there.”

“Yes. It’s perfect for me.”

“Then I’d let it blow over.”

Typical guy advice, delivered cut-and-dried, without sentiment. I wondered if I should just
leave
. It seemed clunky and awkward with us, and I felt even more miserable than when I’d first walked in the door. As I struggled
in my mind for a way to extricate myself, he flashed a smile and leaned toward me on the couch.

“There is one other remedy, though, one I’d highly recommend.”

“Oh, yeah, and what would that be?” I asked, trying not to sound as though I had a lump in my throat.

He closed the gap on the couch, and then, holding my face in both hands, kissed me hard on the mouth, catching my lip with
his tooth. I felt a rush of desire, as if my libido had gone from zero to one hundred in four seconds, but also relief, because
I wasn’t leaving, because I was going to spend the night here, where it was warm and dry and safe. We had sex first on the
soft Turkish rug, fast and furious, and then again in the bedroom, a languorous hour’s worth. Everything about Cat and Heidi
fell away. It was around ten-thirty when we finally untangled ourselves to go to sleep, and within minutes I could hear K.C.’s
deep, rhythmic breathing next to me.

I’d slept so easily each time I’d spent the night with him, but this was early for me, and I could tell sleep wasn’t going
to happen anytime soon. My stomach was growling, too. The closest I’d come to any real dinner that night was staring at the
chicken carcass on Leslie’s counter. I need to scrounge up something to eat.

Tiptoeing into the kitchen in one of K.C.’s T-shirts, I inspected his refrigerator to see if things had improved since my
visit last Thursday night. There were a few reinforcements, including a half carton of eggs, so I scrambled two for myself,
careful not to make too much racket. I would have loved toast, but I had to settle for a handful of Carr’s water crackers.
I turned off the light and sat at the small counter beneath the window so I could eat, fourteen stories up, by the glow from
the city outside. My thoughts quickly found their way back to Heidi.

Was Cat right? Was I all wrong in my theory? There was, I realized, another possible explanation for the flower petal in the
Jiffy bag. It had been swimming through the reeds of my brain, cagey as a trout, for the last several hours. Let’s say Heidi
had spotted the chocolates and wanted to pilfer them without being seen. She could have grabbed a Jiffy bag from somewhere
in the house, maybe from Cat’s office on the third floor, taken it to the hallway, and then stuffed the candy inside. Or maybe
that wasn’t even a Godiva flower in the Jiffy bag. Because of how things had unfolded, I hadn’t had time to go by Godiva today,
but I would make time to do it tomorrow.

So I might be wrong, but I didn’t believe it. I kept coming back to what had bugged me all along about the truffles. Leaving
them in the hallway in order to poison Cat was taking too big a chance. Every part of me still believed that Heidi was the
one who was meant to die.

As for Crock Pot Patty, until I heard more details, I could only speculate wildly. The cookies, perhaps, were simply the foul-smelling
concoction of a friend or reader who didn’t know how to follow a recipe. Or maybe Patty’s assistant had fallen victim to the
power of suggestion: Editors were being poisoned left and right, and now someone was after her boss.

There was a far scarier explanation. The killer, so expert in the art of misdirection, had sent the cookies not because he
or she had anything against Patty, but to make certain that the “someone is killing the editors of women’s magazines” theory
continued to carry weight. And that no one, for a second, focused on Heidi.

It would have been nice to have hashed this all out with Cat tonight. Why was she in such a miserable snit? Why was she so
resistant to the idea of Heidi being the killer’s real target? It almost appeared, I suddenly thought, as if she were upset
because I was directing all the attention away from
her
, because she would no longer be the center of the universe if Heidi turned out to be the intended victim. Her anger at me
had been so out of whack, as if I’d crossed a line, dared to say something I shouldn’t have.

I felt the hairs on my arms stand at attention as the next thought took form in my mind. What if Cat’s anger had been provoked
not because I’d removed her from the center of attention, but because I’d placed Heidi there. What if, despite all her requests
for my help, Cat had never really wanted me to find my way to where I was now? Was there something she didn’t want me to know?

Could Cat have been the one who killed Heidi?

I
DISMISSED THE
idea of Cat as the killer almost as quickly as it had flashed in my mind. It just couldn’t be true. Cat had seemed genuinely
shaken the day of Heidi’s death, and beyond that, she had given me carte blanche to snoop around Heidi’s things, talk to the
people she knew. Besides, I didn’t have a shred of proof that Jeff and Heidi had ever done the dirty deed—which left Cat,
for now, without a motive. For the time being I was going to assume her bitchiness tonight was due either to an extreme case
of frazzled nerves or the threat of losing her role as star of the drama.

I set my plate in the sink, padded back to the bedroom, and crawled in beside K.C., who was dead to the world with his back
to me. I scooted over as close as I could get and put my arm around him, trying to feel warmer and safer, to concentrate on
nothing but the smell of his skin. It was tough going, though. Thoughts of Heidi and Cat and everything about the case shoved
their way around my brain. It was at least an hour before I managed to fall asleep.

I woke up cold, with the blankets snaked around my legs and my head pounding, probably from not having had a single injection
of caffeine the night before. K.C.’s side of the bed was empty, but from the bathroom I could hear the faint sound of shower
water running. It was just 6:22 and very, very gloomy outside. I climbed out of bed, retrieved my clothes from where they’d
been flung around the living room, and splashed some cold water on my face in the kitchen sink. The Mr. Coffee was already
full—four cups—which I took as a sign that I wasn’t going to be tossed out before breakfast.

K.C. was pleasant enough when he emerged from the bathroom, a brick red towel wrapped around his waist, but kind of distant
and in, he said, “a big fat hurry.” He’d always been a little cool in the A.M., so I opted not to read too much into his attitude.
While he dressed I popped into the bathroom. It was clear I wasn’t being allotted much time, so I made it quick. As I brushed
my teeth with his toothbrush, my eye caught the edge of something pink poking out from behind the shower curtain. I pulled
the wet nylon curtain quietly aside. Sitting on the edge of the tub was one of those pink Daisy razors, the kind for girls
only.

My stomach did a somersault. I hadn’t noticed it last night in the darkness. Had it been there on Thursday? I didn’t think
so. We had taken a shower together when we got back from the bar, because we both felt so grungy, and I surely would have
noticed it. Someone had been here between now and then, someone who felt familiar enough to bring her own razor. I was suddenly
queasy—and furious. At myself more than him. How dumb could I be?

Poker-faced, I went back to the kitchen, where K.C., dressed now in a navy suit and Hermès tie, was scarfing down a cup of
coffee. I poured a cup for myself and drank it sans milk because I’d seen none in the fridge. K.C. announced that he had a
car service waiting downstairs and that the driver could take me to the Village after dropping him in midtown.

I wanted to just hightail it out of there on my own, but I knew I’d never find a cab and I couldn’t face the thought of the
subway. Outside, it was no more than sixty degrees and raining, and I nearly froze in my T-shirt. In the car K.C. made one
comment about the weather and then turned most of his attention to the
Wall Street Journal
, which had been left for him in the lobby. His office was on Park Avenue in the 50s, and in the light, precrush traffic,
the trip took just over twenty minutes. As the car rolled up to his building he kissed me lightly on the lips.

“Gosh, you never did get that umbrella, did you?” he said with a cocky smile.

Before I could even conjure up a glib reply, he was out of the car and dodging raindrops.

By the time the driver left me at my apartment building, I was in the world’s suckiest mood and I couldn’t even tell which
thing was contributing the most to my misery: the spat with Cat, my worries about Heidi’s death, or that putrid pink razor.
Obviously they were all just slow cooking unpleasantly together in that Crock-Pot of my brain.