If Looks Could Kill by Kate White Read Free Book Online

standard for any
     morning at
Gloss
before ten, but I had assumed—wrongly—that on this particular day a few people might have surfaced early to hear more about
     the death on 91st Street. At the far end of the pit, Cat’s office, with its front wall of glass, was pitch dark.
    I hung a left and headed down the long main corridor toward my office. I nearly jumped when, passing the alcove with the copy
     machine, I discovered “Kip” Kippinger, the deputy editor, photocopying pages of a book. He was about my age, a former producer
     at
Good Morning America
who’d been lured to
Gloss
about a year ago to oversee the articles department. A magazine person by background, he’d made a temporary foray into TV,
     and though I think he’d produced mainly health segments on topics like irritable bowel syndrome, the way he talked you’d have
     thought he’d overseen the coverage in Kosovo. His arrival at
Gloss
had created a stir because he was one of the only straight guys on the premises (though with a wife and two kids in the suburbs),
     and he was considered superattractive: a redhead, with milky, freckled skin and blue, blue eyes. No one seemed to notice that
     his head, at least as far as I was concerned, was too small for his body. I found him arrogant and smug, and his editing reflected
     that (he’d once suggested in a sex piece he’d overseen that a way to compliment a guy in bed was to ask him: “Do you have
     a license to carry that?”). Fortunately, because of my tenure at
Gloss
, my articles were still overseen by Polly, the executive editor.
    “Morning,” I said.
    “Aren’t
we
in early,” he remarked, not at all pleasantly. It was the kind of passive-aggressive remark I never knew quite what to do
     with.
    “I could say the same to you.”
    “You hear the news?”
    “You mean about Cat’s nanny?”
    “Yeah, what’s up with that, do you know?” He had a scowl on his freckled face, as if he were afraid the death was about to
     cause a major wrinkle in his day.
    “It’s in the papers,” I said, cocking my head toward the two newspapers sticking out of my tote bag. “I was just about to
     sit down and read what was going on.” I scurried off down the corridor before he could say anything else. The last thing I
     felt like doing was taking Kip up to speed on what I knew.
    I rounded one more corner to my office. I was back in an area of the floor with a more traditional layout, where the fashion
     and beauty departments were situated and the senior text editors had their offices. My tiny space had once been a small reference
     library, but with
Gloss
’s reincarnation into a slick, hip women’s magazine focusing on what was happening
right this minute
, there wasn’t much need for tomes like the
Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature
, and the books had all been put in storage. The room was about eleven-by-seven, with a window that looked out onto an air
     shaft and a pie-wedge view of Broadway, but I loved the cocoon feeling of it, as well as how off the beaten track it was at
     the magazine. Besides, as a freelancer, I was lucky to have been given an office at all.
    I tossed my bags and leather jacket onto the straight-backed chair in the corner and popped the lid off my coffee. Settling
     down at my desk, I turned my attention first thing to the two New York tabloids I’d picked up at the newsstand.
    MYSTERY DEATH OF MEDIA STAR’S NANNY. That from the
Daily News
. It was in the banner section across the top. The
New York Post
, however, had turned over all of page one to Cat’s calamity, and they, of course, had the more outrageous headline: NANNY
     DEAD IN MEDIA BOSS BASEMENT.
    Below the headline was a shot of Cat dashing along a sidewalk, appearing totally frazzled. The picture, at least a year old,
     had obviously been selected from the photo archives so that it would appear as if the
Post
had caught up with her fleeing police headquarters.
    Inside each paper the story continued, but