If Looks Could Kill (9 page)

“Point taken. Another thing. You said you wanted to meet with Heidi to talk about Tyler. Was something the matter?”

“Why do you ask that?” I saw her body tense slightly as she spoke.

“Well, it just sounds a little odd—you scheduling an appointment with her on her day off.”

“Okay, there
was
something the matter,” she said, running her hand through her hair. “Lately, Heidi hadn’t been totally into her job. Like
I said, she’d been distracted. I was worried that she might not be giving Tyler her full attention. I wanted to talk to her
about it. She gets up early, so there was no reason not to do it then. I didn’t want it hanging over my head the whole day.”

“But why on Sunday, her day off?”

“Honestly? Because Jeff wouldn’t be around. He says we’ve had too much nanny turnover, and he thinks I’m partly to blame—that
I’m overly critical. Since he had to be up in Connecticut and I had to be here, it seemed like a good time to do it.”

“I didn’t think you and Jeff spent weekends apart.” If asking about Heidi was awkward, drilling her about Jeff was a hundred
times worse. As she took in my comment, her face remained placid and her eyes held mine, but her butt shifted a millimeter
in the chair.

“We don’t usually. But this weekend I finally had a chance to do this film festival meeting and Jeff had to keep an appointment
with the landscape artist up in Litchfield. It was unavoidable. Why the third degree, Bailey?”

“I just wanted to make sense of everything.” Her explanations sounded reasonable enough, and I was relieved to be able to
halt the inquisition.

“So do you want to look through Heidi’s stuff or not?” she asked, sounding suddenly peevish.

“Sure, I’ll do it. Though you mentioned food earlier. I’m famished.”

“Carlotta’s got stuff set out in the kitchen. Do you need me to come down with you?”

“No, make calls, do what you have to do,” I told her. “I’ll get something to eat and then I’ll go down to the apartment. You’re
not expecting anyone, are you?”

“I’m making people come up to the house for a planning meeting—but that’s not for over an hour.”

As I walked out to the hall, I heard Tyler’s sweet, squeaky voice from the top floor. I glanced up and saw him sitting in
the doorway of his room, his pale blond hair falling forward as he scooted a toy truck back and forth. I turned back to Cat
and she answered my question before I had a chance to ask it.

“Carlotta’s cousin is taking care of him for now—while an agency tries to get me someone else.”

I went down to the kitchen and helped myself to a Caesar salad and a white bean dish that were sitting on the counter, both
in beautiful ceramic bowls, next to a plate of chocolate brownies, one of Cat’s biggest weaknesses. There was a pitcher of
iced tea, too, with a metal cylinder for ice in the middle to keep it cold. And pale yellow cloth napkins, perfectly pressed
and fanned out beside everything. When I’d been married I’d begun to fantasize about leading the good life like this, filling
my life with little luxuries. But since my divorce I’d let that go for now. I had a neat apartment and a good career, and
over the past two years I’d focused just on trying to feel sane again.

While I ate I checked my voice mail at work. The child psychologist I was supposed to meet on Thursday had called to confirm
his appointment. As I heard his voice for a second time, I realized that he might be younger than I’d first imagined, maybe
mid-thirties. The only other calls were from Leslie’s assistant, telling me that my expense reports were two months behind
schedule—in the same frantic tone someone would use to announce there’d been a breakout of the Ebola virus in the building—and
my friend Landon, who’d read the news about Heidi and was dying for details, unaware of the role I’d played. What wasn’t on
my voice mail was an “I read the
Post
and I hope you’re
okay
” message from my Saturday night date. Maybe he’d fallen overboard while attempting stand-up sex on the bow of his boat.

After a helping of food and a glass of iced tea, I managed to steel myself for a return trip to Heidi’s apartment. I grabbed
my steno pad from my purse in the hallway and headed downstairs.

The bookcase door was partially open, and as I slipped through into the hallway I discovered that the putrid smell from yesterday
had abated but not disappeared, like a headache that’s gone from sledgehammer strength to a dull, steady throb. There were
no lights on. I reached blindly into the bathroom, fumbled around for the switch, and flooded that room with light. It seemed
as good a place as any to start.

The room was tiny, with a shower stall rather than a tub. The pile of sea foam green towels that had haunted me last night
had been removed, obviously bagged by the police, and it was clear at a glance that the only spot likely to cough up anything
of interest would be the medicine chest. I’d searched my fair share in my day, and I knew that they could sometimes contain
nasty surprises—like when you discover a strip of Zovirax tablets and realize your date has herpes. Heidi’s was stuffed with
cosmetics and toiletries, all high-end stuff—Calvin Klein, Estée Lauder, Shiseido, Chanel—and I was surprised by the selection
until I realized that they were products Cat would have brought her from the
Gloss
beauty closet.

The other products were all within the realm of normal: a bottle of Aleve, an extra toothbrush, dental floss, mouthwash, echinacea.
No birth control, though, or anything else to suggest she’d been doing the dirty deed lately.

Right across from the bathroom was the Pullman kitchen: just a sink, refrigerator, half-size stove, a few cabinets, and a
foot of counter space. Opening the cupboards revealed that Heidi had not been a regular viewer of the Food Network. Other
than a box of granola and a few cans of lentil soup, her cupboards were bare. The fridge was just as pathetic. There was a
solitary container of peach yogurt, past its prime, a bag of carrots, a carton of grapefruit juice, and about five bottles
of salad dressing—Caesar, ranch, strawberry vinaigrette, French—all low-fat or no-fat. No wonder Heidi had pinched the box
of chocolates.

It was time now for the main room, and my heart took off at a gallop as I floundered around looking for a light. My hand finally
hit a switch on the wall that worked the floor lamp by the couch.

The space was even smaller than I’d realized in the dimness yesterday. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture: the convertible
couch, the trunk used for a coffee table, and a small armchair, all in the center of the room; a dresser and a pine wardrobe
along the wall to my right; a small TV on a stand and a waist-high bookcase on the left; and a small table and chair between
the windows in the front. Though the room was tastefully done—the walls were yellow and the fabric on the couch a pretty blue-and-yellow
check—it was obvious Cat had done it on the cheap. For a moment I just stood motionless in the middle of the room. A homicide
cop I’d profiled told me that the first thing he did when he walked into a crime scene, before he’d even looked at the body,
was to attempt to get a feeling for the room. I closed my eyes and tried to do that now. What I sensed was emptiness, confusion,
and fear—but I had no idea if it had to do with Heidi or my own reaction to everything that had occurred in the last twenty-four
hours.

There wasn’t much in the way of knickknacks or possessions lying around on the surfaces. The chocolates and water bottle,
which had been sitting on the trunk, had been removed. I lifted up the lid: Inside was a blanket and two bed pillows with
light blue cotton pillowcases.

The table by the window had been set up like a desk, and I moved over there. There was a phone, a round wicker pencil holder
stuffed with pens, a box of blue notecards, and a saucer filled with paper clips and stamps.

Saving the dresser and wardrobe for last, I took a look through the bookcase next. There were a few thrillers—by John Grisham,
Nicci French, and Sandra Brown—and an odd selection of new age stuff—a guide to creative visualization, two books on astrology,
and a book called
Celtic Symbols
, with a black spiral design on the front. Most of the shelf space had been used for storing magazines—
Cosmo
,
Vogue
, and
InStyle—
and she had them stacked in piles by name, like a little reference library. On the top of the bookcase was her radio/CD player
as well as a stack of CDs: Faith Hill, Destiny’s Child, ’NSync, and Madonna—all of which you might expect for her—and five
or six jazz CDs, which you wouldn’t. I recalled how the radio yesterday had been set to a jazz station and what Janice had
said about Heidi’s newfound interest in that kind of music. There were also two photos of Heidi in cheap brass frames. In
one she was posed on the dock of the Circle Line cruise—that’s a boat trip around the island of Manhattan—with another girl.
It was obvious from their clothes it was summertime, and her hair was only to her shoul-ders. Most likely the shot had been
taken just after her arrival in New York late last summer. In the other photo she stood in front of a thick cluster of trees—in
the countryside, perhaps, or maybe even in Central Park. The picture seemed more recent, taken perhaps within the last several
months: Her hair was longer and she wore jeans and an oversize yellow crewneck sweater, the kind of clothes you’d put on for
a late winter or early spring day. She seemed positively kittenish—leaning forward from the waist, tugging down on the bottom
edges of the sweater with both hands, biting her lower lip.

So far, I’d kept my feelings in check as I’d been pawing over Heidi’s things, but when I opened the pine wardrobe I felt a
rush of sadness. Maybe it was from seeing her clothes hung so neatly, ready and waiting to be worn again, or maybe it was
because she had so few of them. There was a red parka, a full-length black wool coat, a yellow windbreaker, several dresses—one
a sundress with a halter that hung clumsily on its hanger—four or five pairs of pants, and on the bottom a few pairs of shoes
and boots. Had she simply not wanted to come to New York laden down with loads of things, or was this all she had in the world?
On top of the dresser were a few stuffed bears and a tray of costume jewelry, mostly earrings. I spotted the pair Janice had
mentioned, and as I scooped them up I noticed that one was missing a pearl on the dangly part.

The selection in the dresser was just as paltry as the wardrobe. There were eight or nine T-shirts and tank tops, three sweaters,
a few halters, panties, thongs, bras (34C)—stuffed in haphazardly, probably because the police had looked through everything.
In the bottom drawer I found what appeared to be the jeans she’d worn by the lake the day her picture was snapped, but there
was no yellow sweater anywhere. Not surprising, since it had been far too big for her. Had it been borrowed from the photographer
she was looking at with such mischief in her eyes?

I reopened the top drawer and reached with my hand care-fully under the piles of clothes. Beneath the T-shirts I found a square
turquoise Tiffany box. Carefully I wiggled off the top. Inside were a pair of diamond stud earrings, about three-quarters
of a carat each, and a gold bangle bracelet inset with six diamonds. Yowzer. The earrings and bracelet together were probably
worth ten grand minimum. Heidi certainly hadn’t bought these herself. They were most likely from a guy with money to burn.
The question was: Were they gifts from a former lover or a new one—namely, the mystery man?

I went back through each drawer then, reaching underneath the clothes. Beneath the jeans I could feel another box, this one
bigger and longer. I tugged it out. It was a box of Trojan-ENZ “ultrathins.”

As I was tucking it back under the clothes, I heard a shuffling sound behind me. I spun around to find Carlotta standing behind
me.

“Jesus, Carlotta, I almost had a stroke,” I burst out.

“Sorry, sorry, Miss Bailey. But Miss Jones wants you upstairs right now. The detective, he called, and he’s coming over, right
now.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “How long ago did he call?”

“Just this minute.”

“Okay, I’ll be right up.”

I had a little time, I figured, so I took a moment to scribble down a few notes.

As I was about to flick off the light in the kitchenette, I stopped, remembering something a cop had once taught me. I snapped
open the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Lying on its side, all by its lonesome, a full bottle of Stoli, sealed.

Heidi supposedly didn’t drink, but someone who came calling apparently did. Who was it? Jeff, to my recollection, drank beer
and bourbon, like a good southern boy. Had this mystery man/vodka lover been around this past weekend? Had he been aware that
Heidi was getting sick? Or had he done something to make her that way?

A
S
I
REACHED
the top of the stairs, I discovered Cat in the living room, draining a glass of iced tea.

“What’s going on—why’s he coming?” I asked, breathless from having taken the stairs two at a time.

“Not sure,” she said, turning her attention to me. “He just called and announced that he needed to come by—he’s got other
questions he wants to ask me.”

“Maybe something turned up in the autopsy,” I said. “I should scram, don’t you think? He’s not going to love having me here.”

“Don’t go, Bailey,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be alone with him when he starts asking his questions. Besides, don’t you
want to see what he’s wearing? He’ll probably have on a pair of Haggar slacks or something nifty like that.”

“Do you think Jeff should be here, too? Or what about a lawyer? Have you got a lawyer in the loop on all this?”

“Yes, we talked to him yesterday, and he said that for now it was better to handle the police alone, unless they sounded at
all accusatory. Please just hang around, will you? I’m still having a tough time coping with all of this.”