If Looks Could Kill by Kate White Read Free Book Online Page A

only with sketchy details, both hinting at an overdose. There were several
     clichÉd “Ms. Jones is deeply saddened” kinds of quotes supplied by a “spokesperson,” indication that the spin doctors had
     worked at full throttle after I left Cat’s. Both papers had a shot of the town house, and the
Daily News
featured Cat’s stock press photo, a sexy shot with her hair at its blondest and fullest and her lips as pouty as a plum.
     There was something hilarious about the incongruity of the stock shot with this story. The caption might as well have been
     “My nanny just died, but I’d love to get laid.”
    It appeared from perusing the papers that there hadn’t been any major developments in the story since I’d left Cat’s yesterday
     afternoon. If there had been, the press hadn’t been privy to them—and neither had I.
    I’d gotten home at about five the night before, after a long walk through the East Village. I felt edgy from all the coffee
     I’d drunk and suddenly in desperate need of company. But after fifteen minutes of calling, it was clear I wasn’t going to
     dredge up anyone on such short notice. Even my regular crisis manager, Landon, my seventy-year-old gay next-door neighbor,
     was MIA. Usually I have advance plans for Sunday nights, but I’d stupidly left this one open, hoping that K.C. would wake
     up Sunday morning and refuse to leave my side. As I sat holding my phone, I imagined him moored on Long Island Sound, boinking
     some girl on the deck of his sailboat as the sun began to sink.
    Since I couldn’t dredge up anyone to join me for dinner, I had to find another way to stop those vomit-crusted sea foam towels
     from snaking around my brain. I’d once asked a Dallas homicide detective how she managed to cope with the horrors she saw,
     and she’d told me she surrounded herself with “things of beauty.” I was dubious that that approach would do much to help me,
     but I gave it a stab anyway. I put on some Mozart and ate a salad with a glass of Cabernet. Then I took a lavenderscented
     bath, soaking for an hour, with the light on low and my head back against a folded towel.
    The longer I soaked, though, the worse I felt. First of all my emotions, which had gone into some kind of insta-freeze that
     morning, had finally thawed and I was overwhelmed by sadness over Heidi’s death. She had died so young, all alone in that
     apartment, with no one around to help her. My thoughts also kept coming back to Cat and Jeff. Was everything
okay
with them? I wondered. Sure, her job made plenty of demands, but for her to skip a weekend trip to their country home in
     Litchfield, Connecticut, in order to review plans for a film festival was a little like telling a guy you couldn’t go out
     on Saturday night because you had to defuzz your sweaters. Jeff had been comforting to her when he’d arrived, but as time
     wore on he’d seemed to grow more and more detached. Cat was certainly going to need Jeff now. If Heidi had died from a drug
     overdose, they would face some ugly press scrutiny.
    After my bath, I phoned Cat. I doubted the police would have shared much with her at this point, but I was anxious for any
     scrap of info I could get. Her machine picked up—she and Jeff were obviously screening calls. I tried reading for a while
     in my living room. As I’d told K.C., I’d ended up with the apartment two years ago, after the demise of my eighteen-month-old
     marriage. It was just a one-bedroom with a large walk-in closet that I had converted into an office, but it had the terrace
     and the great view of Village rooftops, and it was my sanctuary. People were always surprised that, considering New York real
     estate prices, my ex had let me keep it, but he’d had other things on his mind, namely getting out of town in the wake of
     his gambling debts.
    I tried Cat again at nine and one last time at ten-fifteen, but I continued to get the machine. I felt annoyed that she wasn’t
     returning