If Looks Could Kill (13 page)

It was also time to tell him the story. I shared the whole terrible tale—from discovering Heidi’s body to the latest realization
that the truffles had been meant for Cat. His reaction was a mix of shock and total fascination, and of course I couldn’t
blame him.

“I hate to say it,” he said, “but Cat’s sort of brought it all on herself.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, stuffing another slice of baguette with double-crème Brie into my mouth.

“You live by the sword, you die by the sword. She’s used some people, stepped on others, and now she’s made someone very,
very mad.”

“I think you’re overstating it,” I said. “She’s been bitchy at times and not always superconsiderate, but I’ve never seen
her be
ruthless.”

“If you didn’t work with her, would you still be her friend?” he asked, pouring us each a cup of coffee from the pot he’d
set on the table.

“Sure,” I replied. “At least I think so. She’s smart and charming and funny—at least when she’s not dealing with a death in
her house.”

“Sometimes, though, it seems like she gets more out of the relationship than you do.”

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s all that lopsided,” I said defensively. “First of all, I’m flattered someone in her position relies
on me. Second, she’s been my mentor in a very loose sort of way—my setup at
Gloss
is great.” As I spoke, though, I felt a tiny twinge in my stomach, because there were times when I did worry that things
were slightly out of balance.

“Do you have
any
idea who might have wanted to kill her?” he asked, leaning forward, palms against his chest.

“No—but she wants me to try to figure it out.”

“What’s wrong with the police?”

“Nothing. But it’s Cat’s style to double team. I’ve seen her give the same assignment to two different writers. That guarantees
she gets what she wants.”

“Wouldn’t it just be smarter for you to stay out of it?” he said.

“But how can I? Someone tried to kill Cat, and they might easily try again. If there’s any possible way for me to help her,
I’ve got to do it. I know the players at
Gloss
, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll see something the cops don’t. Besides, you know this is the kind of story that makes my pulse
race. Plus, in so many of the cases I cover, I’m forced to work around the periphery. This time I get to be smack in the middle.
This may turn out to be the most exciting story I’ve ever been involved in.”

“It’s just that I worry about you,” he said, looking worried. “I could barely think straight when you went off to spend the
day in Ohio with the husband whose wife had disappeared.”

“Him?”
I laughed. “You know, in ninety percent of cases where the wife has disappeared, the husband’s guilty. He’s bashed her head
in with a chipping hammer and dumped her body in a lake. But I’m pretty sure that guy was innocent.”

“Well, just watch what you eat, okay?”

“I’ll just have to take all my meals here.”

It was close to midnight when I finally let myself back into my apartment. According to my answering machine, not one single
person had attempted to make contact this evening. Doing a quick calculation, I figured it was just about dawn in Italy, where
my mother was traipsing around, enjoying her retirement, and I fought off a momentary urge to call her. Why worry her needlessly?

I slipped into a pair of cotton jammies and headed out to the couch, where I pulled a chenille throw over me. Three glasses
of Cabernet had done nothing to quell my state of agitation or make me feel sleepy, but there was a chance the couch would
do the trick. Because my brain associated my bed with
not
sleeping, I occasionally had luck in other locations. That was the only worthwhile advice I’d gotten from the shrinks and
sleep specialists I’d seen. What they all loved to tell me was that my insomnia had to do with my divorce, that I had yet
to work through everything, and until I did I’d be doomed to toss and turn for hours and be jolted awake at three A.M. I had
a slightly different theory—though it also related to my marriage. My husband, the perfectly normal-seeming attorney, had
turned out to be a compulsive gambler and had run through most of our savings. I believed that sleeping often eluded me because
my unconscious wanted me to be vigilant, something I hadn’t been when my hard-earned dough was being used to cover his bad
bets on football games.

Just as my thoughts were breaking up into nonsense, the phone rang. It startled me and I knocked over a framed pho-tograph
on the end table as I fumbled for the phone and said hello.

“Bailey, were you sleeping?” It was a woman’s voice, but I couldn’t place it in my groggy state.

“Who’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry, it’s Leslie. Did I wake you?”

Well, this was a first, getting a call from Leslie at home, let alone at some ungodly hour. There was often a secret agenda
with Leslie, and I wondered what it might be this time. “No, I was just reading,” I lied.

“Sorry to call so late, but I know you’re a night owl. Cat told me the latest, and I thought we should chat. How does she
seem to you? When I spoke to her, I practically needed to talk her off the ledge.”

It figured that Cat would ultimately feel the need to confide in Leslie. How many other people had she blabbed to? Leslie
probably was calling just to make sure I knew she was squarely in the midst of things. God forbid I have an exclusive on something
to do with Cat.

“Yeah, she seems freaked, but that’s to be expected,” I said. “I hope she’s keeping this under wraps for now.” As I talked
I found the lamp switch in the dark and turned it on.

“Yes, of course. But you wouldn’t expect her not to tell
me?
And she’s got to call Harry on this, too. It’s a company matter. Her life’s in apparent danger, but so is everyone else’s
when you think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever did this killed someone other than who he or she had planned to. They’re careless or stupid, and that puts me and
you and everyone else in potential jeopardy.” Leave it to Leslie to immediately start thinking about the ramifications for
her.

“Do you have any ideas about who might be responsible?” I asked. “Anyone particularly upset with Cat these days?”

“There’s no one who jumps to the top of the list. But I’m still thinking. It’s got to be someone who knew her fairly well,
who was aware that if they showed up with a box of Godiva chocolates, she’d devour them as soon as she got the chance.”

“Do you remember seeing the box on the hall table?” I asked.

“Yes, I do. I’m not sure if it was there when I came in, but I saw it when I went to the powder room. I remember joking to
someone standing next to me that I didn’t know that I was supposed to bring a hostess gift.”

“What about later? Did you notice at some point that the box was missing?”

“No. It might have been there when I left or it might not have. I just don’t recall.”

“Does your husband recall seeing anything?”

“Pardon me?”

“Your husband. He was there that night.”

“I’ll have to ask him. He’s out tonight, and I haven’t even filled him in on the latest developments. You know this is going
to be a press nightmare, don’t you? Especially after the first person links it to Tucker Bobb’s death.”

“What?”
I’d started to zone out as she spoke about her husband, but this remark yanked me back with all the force of someone grabbing
me by my hair. Tucker Bobb, editor in chief of
Best House
, another one of what used to be called the Seven Sister magazines, had died last fall. “What are you talking about?”

“Tucker Bobb.”

“But what about him?” I asked. “I thought he had some kind of internal bleeding problem.”

“He died of kidney failure. But they thought it might have resulted from eating poison mushrooms. Did Cat not mention it to
you? She and I talked about it earlier tonight. She wondered if there was a connection.”

“How did Tucker Bobb happen to eat poison mushrooms?”

“It was a hobby of his—hunting for mushrooms—and they assumed he picked the wrong one to eat. I’m not sure of all the details.
I was on vacation then, in Spain. But that’s what I heard, and people are going to wonder.”

“Gosh, I’d never heard that,” I said.

“You have to wonder.” She sounded momentarily distracted. “Look,” she said, “I think my husband just got in. I’ve got to go.”
She hung up while I was still saying good-bye.

I lay back against the arm of the couch, amazed at what I’d heard. Could there really be a connection between the two deaths?
Could someone be trying to knock off the editors of women’s magazines?

The phone rang again and I assumed it was Leslie, calling back with some additional observation or question.

“Yeah,” I said.

Nothing from the other end, just breathing. I hung up and sprinted down to my office to check the caller ID box. A blocked
number, just like earlier. Once could have been a wrong number. Twice was something else. An old boyfriend or ex-husband,
perhaps, calling just to hear my voice? Or was someone doing it to rattle me?

Could it be the
killer
? People knew I was tight with Cat and if the killer had gotten wind of the fact that I was helping her, the calls might be
a way to keep tabs on me—or give me a scare.

If so, they’d more than succeeded.

I
WOKE AROUND
seven-thirty on Tuesday morning, my back achy from having slept on the couch, but at least I’d managed to make it through
the night without once waking up. After putting on the teakettle, I padded down to my office and pulled out a spanking new
black-and-white composition book. Whenever I take on an assignment for an article, the first thing I do is get out a composition
book and write the working title of the article at the top of the first page. As I begin researching and interviewing people
(I use a steno pad and tape recorder for that), I scribble in the composition book my initial observations, highlights from
interviews, angles worth pursuing, tidbits I’m not yet sure what to do with, and eventually a rough outline. It’s through
this process that I begin to get a sense of how the article should take shape. Though I write the actual story on the computer,
it takes longhand, with a number 2 pencil, to kick-start my thinking. And it’s while I’m scribbling in the composition book
that I sometimes begin to see something in a whole new way. I suppose if I had a specialty as a writer, that would be it.
I’m only an okay interviewer, always slightly anxious about putting my finger in the open wound of someone’s suffering, but
I’m good at seeing things overlooked by everyone else.

Though I wasn’t on an official writing assignment with Heidi’s death, I was going to handle things as if I were. I cracked
open the composition book and wrote at the top of the first page, “Death of a Nanny.” Not sure why I chose that—it’s just
the first thing that came to me. Then I went back to my bedroom, threw on some jeans and a T-shirt, and made myself coffee.
I took my cup back to my office and picked up my pencil. For the next forty-five minutes I jotted down everything I knew about
the Cat crisis so far, including the main questions I’d been toying with.

At around nine, I called Cat to determine where and when we would meet. She suggested we have lunch together at a little restaurant
on Madison Avenue. She sounded
very
edgy.

After I hung up I dug my Filofax out of my purse and called an acquaintance, Megan Fox, who was a deputy editor at
Best House
. We’d met on several occasions at the apartment of a mutual friend, and though we weren’t close, we liked each other and
I figured she’d be willing to cough up what she knew about her boss’s death. Ever since Leslie had dropped the bomb last night
about Tucker Bobb I’d been racking my brain for someone to pump, and she was the only one I could come up with. I got her
voice mail and left a message saying that I needed to talk to her.

I also used the morning to check out several Web sites devoted to mushrooms. When I’d first started reporting stories, I’d
had to spend big chunks of time at the library digging up info, but these days I could find almost everything I needed on
the Web. Except court records, which still involve dragging one’s butt to the courthouse and making nice to fat, sullen civil
servants who move at the speed of drying paint.

It turned out there’s a whole slew of poisonous mushrooms in the United States. You could get sick just from reading some
of the names: devil’s tongue, deadly conocybe, poison puffball, brain mushroom, and my personal favorite, sweat-causing clitocybe.

A little after eleven I shut off my computer and changed into black pants and a yellow cotton sweater. Before heading out
the door, I checked my office voice mail—yes, in the ridiculous hope that K.C. had phoned there, but no such luck. In my mind
I heard a line a friend of mine once said: “They don’t call and they don’t call—and then you begin to love them.”

Because I had plenty of time to get to the restaurant, I opted for the subway, jumping onto the Lex at Astor Place, just two
blocks from my apartment building. The restaurant turned out to be a block from Cat’s, on Madison at 90th. There’s something
almost European about that stretch of Madison Avenue: Most of the buildings are just four stories high, with shops and galleries
and restaurants on the ground floor, many of them sporting colorful awnings—yellow or blue or red-and-white stripes.

I sauntered into the restaurant exactly one minute early. It was a small place with a French/Middle Eastern theme. A waiter,
yammering on the phone, indicated with a wave of his hand that I could sit anywhere I wanted because the restaurant was nearly
empty.

After allowing me a few minutes to admire my surroundings, the waiter finally strolled over, handed me a menu, and asked what
I wanted to drink. I explained there’d be two of us and ordered an iced tea.

Cat was twenty minutes late. I spotted her first through the restaurant window, dashing across the corner of 90th and Madison.
Since she lived around the corner, it was only reasonable that she would have walked, but it was a shock nonetheless to see
her on foot—a gossip columnist had once pointed out that she was rarely more than ten feet away from a town car. As she pushed
open the door, the customers who had arrived while I’d waited all turned to stare. She was wearing a tobacco-colored sleeveless
dress, and in addition to a brown leather tote bag, she carried an itty-bitty Louis Vuitton purse, the size Barbie might use.
Her shoes were slingbacks in a brown-and-black leopard print, cut on the top to reveal huge amounts of toe cleavage. Two ladies-who-lunch
types at a nearby table checked out her bare legs—Cat wore hose only during the three coldest months of the year, and then
only if the temperature was subzero.