'Til Death Do Us Part (14 page)

“Alicia, help!” I screamed as I struck him in the chest with the candle. I felt the soft wool of his coat against my bare hand. He shoved me hard, so hard that I lost my balance and stumbled backward, falling onto my butt. I screamed again, louder this time. As I struggled to stand up, the figure turned and staggered through the darkness, out of the room. I heard the creak of the door opening, followed by the pounding sound of footsteps on the stairs.

I could finally see, because the front door had been left wide open and light was flooding in from the hall. I struggled to my feet, my heart still racing. Hurrying to the front of the apartment, I glanced cautiously out the door and down the stairs. No one was there, but two flights below I heard the heavy slam of the front door to the building.

From Alicia’s apartment I could hear hip-hop playing, and I pounded hard on her door.

“You done?” she asked after opening the door a crack.

“Yes, let me in,” I pleaded.

She closed the door for a split second to remove the chain and then opened it quickly.

“What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously as she let me into the apartment.

“Someone came in there after me,” I said. “A guy.”

“You’re kidding. Are you
okay
?”

“Yeah, just shaken. He knocked me down, but as soon as I screamed, he took off.”

“Did you see what he looked like? There’s a very creepy guy living on the fifth floor.”

“It was too dark to see his face. But I don’t think it was someone who lives here. I heard him run down the stairs and go out the front door.”

“Should we call the police?”

“Not a good idea. They wouldn’t be too happy to hear that I was trespassing like that. Look, I better split now. But do me a favor, will you? Can you just be sure I make it out of the building all right? Keep your door open a crack and I’ll call out to you when I reach the foyer.”

“Sure,” she said distractedly, her mind obviously trying to get a handle on things. “But what’s going on? Do you think this has something to do with Jamie’s death?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I took one step back toward the door and stopped. Something had just occurred to me.

“Alicia, when I buzzed you tonight, did you release the lock more than once?”

She pursed her lips, trying to remember. “Yes. I heard you buzz a second time and I figured you hadn’t gotten the door. Why?”

“I
did
get it the first time, but after I started up the stairs I heard it go off again, and then I think someone came in behind me. I just assumed it was someone visiting another tenant in the building. But now I’m thinking that person may have been following me.”

I could tell by the wigged-out expression on her face that the only thing she wanted to do at the moment was phone her boyfriend and demand that he get out of work early. But she did as she promised and kept the door ajar as I raced down the stairs. As soon as I was in the foyer, I called out to her. I heard a muffled “Good-bye” and the sound of her door slamming.

I stepped outside with my heart in my throat. The street was crowded with people, some obviously hurrying home from work and anxious to let their weekends unfurl, others coming in and out of shops or gazing into store windows. There didn’t appear to be any suspicious men lurking about. I hurried down the steps and up the street, staying close to the road. There was a cab on Houston with its off-duty light on. I ran toward it, flailing my arms.

“Which way?” the driver asked after he’d rolled down the window.

“The Village,” I said. “
Please.
Someone may be following me.”

He nodded for me to get in.

Back in my apartment I turned on the lights, gave a quick scan of the rooms, including the door to my terrace, and then flung myself onto the couch without even bothering to take off my coat. My heart was still beating hard.

Once I’d calmed down a hair, I mulled over who could have followed me into Jamie’s apartment tonight—and why. On the cab ride home it had occurred to me that some squatter might have been living in the apartment and returned home while I was snooping around in there. But the apartment had been empty of
anything
. Besides, my assailant’s coat had seemed, at least to the touch, expensive, possibly even cashmere.

I was pretty sure that what I’d suggested to Alicia was the real story: The person who attacked me must have followed me into the building by buzzing a few apartments and having Alicia respond, thinking it was me. Once he’d seen me go into Alicia’s apartment, he’d probably waited one flight below or above. Alicia and I had spoken in the hall before I went into Jamie’s, and he must have picked up the gist of what was going on. Once he knew I was in Jamie’s apartment, he found the door conveniently unlocked and came in after me.

The bigger question, of course, was
why
? There was the chance it was a total stranger, a predator, someone who had observed me getting out of the cab and walking the half block to the building. In fact, at the moment he shoved me down, the first thing that flashed through my mind was that he wanted to rape me. But the time between when I’d jumped out of the cab and rung Alicia’s bell was no more than three minutes, and it was hard to imagine that someone could have gotten a bead on me that quickly. No, that seemed as unlikely as the squatter theory.

I thought back to when I’d first headed downtown. I emerged from my apartment building and chatted with the doorman for a moment. Then I walked to the corner of Broadway and 9th and spent five minutes praying for an empty cab to drive by. Someone could have been waiting outside my building and then tailed me downtown. There’d been several other available taxis right behind the one I hailed. I only wished I’d gotten a better look at my attacker. It was so dark inside Jamie’s apartment and I’d been so discombobulated that I’d observed almost nothing—other than the fact that the figure had seemed big enough to be a man—and he had a nice coat.

There was one thing I was sure of. For the last few days I’d been looking under rocks, and finally a nasty thing had crawled out. My fears ever since Ashley’s death no longer seemed so foolish. Someone was after
me
now. But none of the clues added up. Was the man who attacked me someone who knew Peyton or Jamie, or was he simply hired muscle in some grand conspiracy against Peyton’s business? What, if anything, did it have to do with Peyton’s wedding? Had my attacker been trying to kill me off like the other bridesmaids or just scare me—or prevent me from seeing Jamie’s apartment? I had a ton of questions, and not a single answer was in sight.

I realized suddenly that I needed to call Maverick and warn her. I found her business card in my purse, which was lying alongside the couch. Using the phone on the end table, I reached her at the home number she’d scribbled on the bottom. I relayed the story of what had happened and urged her to be careful.

“This is like a nightmare,” she exclaimed. She sounded ready to cry.

“Were you able to reach Prudence?” I asked.

“No, not yet. I kept getting this annoying little recorded voice saying she wasn’t there. I finally called her husband’s work number and was told they were on a ski holiday in Switzerland. They’re due back on Sunday night.”

“Try her then, will you? I doubt anyone is planning to hop on Virgin Atlantic and go after her, but I still want to make sure she’s in the loop. In fact, give me the number, will you, just so I have it?”

She read it off to me and I scribbled it down. We signed off warning each other to take care.

Still in my coat, I looked at my watch. Almost nine. Jack would be arriving shortly. I forced myself up from the couch, threw my coat in the closet, and went to the kitchen in search of a beer.

I’d originally planned to pick up some decent takeout food on my way back from the East Village, figuring Jack probably wouldn’t have had a chance to eat and might want something. But I’d been so desperate to get home, I’d forgotten. My refrigerator held out little hope. The only thing approaching a meal was leftover pasta from my dinner with Landon: a hard, ugly ball of cold fettuccine that looked as appetizing as a human brain. I decided to order a deep-dish pizza and serve it with the leftover salad greens from last night. I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.

Jack called at ten, en route from LaGuardia. If traffic proved to be anything less than a nightmare, he’d be at my place before eleven, he said. I used the time to take a hot, sudsy bath, hoping it would take the edge off my nerves. But all it did was make me think of Jamie. It gave me the creeps to be lying there amid the lavender-scented suds.

As I was toweling off, I noticed that my face was drawn and that I had a tiny twitch thing happening above my right eye, as if a beetle had gotten under my skin and were wiggling around in there.
Gloss
was always running articles with titles like “Are You a Stress Mess?” Right now I could definitely answer in the affirmative.

Something had also gone haywire with my sex drive. Usually by Friday night I’m ravenous for Jack and the sex happens before anything else—sometimes on the living room floor, sometimes with half our clothes still on. But tonight my libido seemed to be missing in action. I had about as much interest in sex at the moment as I had in hand-washing my panty hose.

By the time Jack rang up, I was dressed in pink sweatpants and a T-shirt, and I greeted him at the door with all the energy and levity I could muster, which was next to none. He looked, as always, awesome. He’s about six two, slim, with sandy brown hair and a face that has a “whole is greater than the sum of the parts” quality to it—nice blue eyes, a full mouth, a straight nose, but no one drop-dead feature. Yet somehow they all come together to create something very handsome.

He was all buttoned up in a camel-hair coat and Burberry scarf, and he didn’t look at all like a guy who’d been trying to get to New York most of the night. But then Jack was one of those guys who never looked disheveled.

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought all my stuff here,” he said, setting down his overnight bag. “I figured if I took the time to drop it off at my place, it would be midnight before I got over here.”

“No problem,” I said, smiling and trying to sound normal.

“Hmm, pink,” Jack said, gazing at my outfit. “Not a color I usually see you in, but I like it.”

He stepped forward and embraced me, kissing me tenderly on the lips at first with that lovely soft mouth of his and then harder and more urgently. I kissed him back, but I knew that, Jack being Jack, he would pick up on the discombobulation I was experiencing.

“You still feeling pretty stressed over all of this?”

“Yeah. Plus there was a little incident tonight.”

“Tell me.”

I started the story with the two of us still standing there in my foyer. Jack listened attentively, though at one point he peeled off his coat and the sports jacket beneath and laid them over an antique chest that my mother had given me.

When I finished, Jack had plenty of questions. But before I began answering, I led him to the kitchen, where I poured us each a glass of red wine and nuked the pizza I’d had delivered. We took our food and wine to the dining table and resumed our discussion. He pushed me with his questions, trying to get me to recall details about the second buzzing of the intercom and whether I’d noticed anyone behind me on the street before I’d gone into the building.

“Maybe someone in the neighborhood just happened to see you and decided you were an easy target,” he hypothesized. “Then he followed you into the building.”

“I know, I thought of that, too. But I really wasn’t in the street long enough for some sexual predator to have spotted me and targeted me as his next victim. For the past four days I’ve been talking about bizarre coincidences, but I refuse to buy that tonight was a coincidence—that some unknown assailant just happened to show up when I entered Jamie’s building. No, someone was stalking me tonight, from the moment I left my apartment, and it’s obvious it has to do with the other three deaths. I think all three girls were murdered.”

“Are you going to call the Greenwich police about this?”

“No, I’m sure it wouldn’t do any good. It’s totally out of their jurisdiction, and they’d probably say it’s the kind of thing that happens all the time in New York. What I need is some evidence that shows that just one of the deaths was not an accident.”

“Like what?”

“That’s just it—on the surface there doesn’t seem to be
anything
suspicious about the cases. Apparently the police found no sign of forced entry in Jamie’s apartment, and it’s hard to imagine her taking a bath with someone there. Robin had a reputation as a food junkie, so it’s totally plausible that she might have gone off her diet. And Ashley—well, she’d gone over to the barn to check on the work being done, so it’s within the realm of possibility that she fell off a stepladder. Whoever is doing this is maddeningly clever. Though I guess I should be grateful that I finally know for sure that something sinister is going on—that I’m not dealing with some aberration of the laws of probability or the Peyton Cross Curse.”