Kate White - If Looks Could Kill

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2002 by Kate White

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.,

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

First eBook Edition: May 2003

ISBN: 978-0-7595-2797-3

To Hunter and Hayley. Thank you for all your wonderful support and encouragement.

So many people were helpful to me when I was writing this book but several gave especially generously of their time and I want to say a very big thank you to them: Paul Paganelli, M.D., Chief of Emergency Medicine, Milton Hospital, Milton, MA; Sandra Schneider, M.D., head of emergency medicine, University of Rochester Medical School; Chet Lerner, M.D.; Barbara Butcher, deputy director of investigations for the office of the chief medical examiner, New York City; Pete Panuccio, sergeant, NYPD; Roger Rokiki, chief inspector, Westchester County police; and magician Belinda Sinclair.

Id also like to thank my fabulous editor, Sara Ann Freed, for all her guidance, my terrific agent, Sandy Dijksktra, for not gagging when I said I wanted to write a mystery, and Miriam Friedman for all her amazing efforts.

C AT JONES WAS the kind of woman who not only got everything in the world that she wantedin her case a fabulous job as editor in chief of one of the biggest womens magazines, a gorgeous town house in Manhattan, and a hot-looking husband with a big career of his ownbut over the years also managed to get plenty of what other women wanted: like their fabulous jobs and their hot-looking husbands. It was hard not to hate her. So when her perfect world began to unravel, I might have been tempted to turn my face into my pillow at night and go, Hee hee hee. But I didnt. I took no pleasure in her misery, as Im sure plenty of other people did, and instead I jetted to her rescue. Why? Because she helped pay my bills, because she was my friend in a weird sort of way, and most of all because as a writer of true crime articles Ive always been sucked in by stories that start with a corpse and lead to crushing heartache.

Theres no way I could forget the moment when all the Sturm und Drang began. It was just after eight on a Sunday morning, a Sunday in early May. I was lying under the covers of my queen-size bed in a spoon position with thirty-four-year-old Kyle Conner McConaughy, investment banker and sailing fanatic, feeling him growing hard and hoping I wouldnt do anything to mess up the delicate ecosystem of the moment. It was our sixth date and only the second time wed been to bed, and though dinner had been nice and last nights sex had been even better than the first time, I had a pit in my stomachthe kind that develops when you find yourself gaga over a guy youve begun to sense is as skittish as an alpine goat. All it would take was the wrong remark from mea suggestion, for instance, that we plan a weekend at a charming inn in the Berkshiresand hed burn rubber on his way out the door.

The phone rang just as I felt his hand close around my right breast. I glanced instinctively at the clock. God, it was only 8:09. The machine would pick it up, regardless of what idiot had decided to call at this hour. It was too early for my mother, traipsing around Tuscany, and too late for old boyfriends, who did their drunk dialing at two A.M. from pay phones in bars below 14th Street. Maybe it was the super. It would be just like him to get in touch at this hour with some pathetic complaint, like my bike was leaning up against the wrong wall in the basement.

Do you need to get that? K.C. asked, his hand pausing in its pursuit.

The machine will, I said. Had I remembered, I wondered, to turn the volume all the way down? The fourth ring was cut off abruptly and a womans voice came booming into the room from the small office directly across from my bedroom. No, I hadnt.

Bailey?... Bailey?... Please pick up if youre there. Its Cat... I need your help.... Bailey, are you there?

I moaned.

I better grab this, I said, wriggling out from under the white comforter. I propped myself up on my elbow and reached for the phone on the bedside table.

Hi, I said, clearing my throat. Im here.

Oh, thank God, Cat Jones said. Look, somethings wrong here and Im going insane. I need your help.

Okay, tell me, I said calmly. If I wasnt responding with a huge degree of concern, it was because Id known Cat Jones for seven years and Id seen her freak when the dry cleaners pressed the seams wrong in her pants.

Its my nannyyou know, Heidi.

This one quit, too?

Please dont be funny. Theres something the matter. She wont answer the door down in her apartment.

Youre sure shes there?

Yes. I mean, I talked to her yesterday and she promised to be here this morning.

Christ, its only eight oclock, Cat, I protested. Shes probably dead asleep. Or shes got a guy with her and shes embarrassed to answer the door. K.C.s hand, which had been fondling my breast only seconds ago, had now lost much of its enthusiasm.

But shed never just ignore me, Cat said. Of course not. Few people would have the nerve to do that.

Maybe shes not even in there. Maybe she spent the night at somebody elses place.

She said she was staying in last night. Ive got a bad feeling about this.

Cant you let yourself in? Youve got a key, right?

Im scared to go in alone. What if theres something the matter in there?

Well, what about Jeff ? I asked, referring to her husband.

Hes up in the country for the weekend with Tyler. I had something to do here, she added almost defensively.

And theres no one closer? A neighbor?

No. No one I trust.

She paused then in that famous way of hers, which had started out as a trick to make people rush to fill the void and divulge their most sacred secrets to her, but which now had become a kind of unintentional mannerism, the way some people bite the side of their thumb as they think. I waited her out, listening to the sound of K.C.s breathing.

Bailey, youve got to come up here, she said finally.

Now? I exclaimed. Cat, its eight-eleven on a Sunday morning. Why not wait a bit longer? I bet she spent the night at some guys place and shes trying to flag down a cab right now.

But what if thats not the case? What if something happened to her in there?

What are you suggesting? That shes passed out from a benderor shes hung herself from the door frame?

No. I dont know. It just seems weirdand Im scared.

I could see now that this was bigger than a dry-cleaning snafu, that she had her knickers in a twist and was serious about wanting me there, uptown on 91st Street, now.

Okay, okay, I said. Its going to take me at least thirty minutes to get dressed and get up there.

Just hurry, all right? She hung up the phone without even saying good-bye.

By now there didnt seem to be much lust left in my dashing Lothario. Hed let his hand slip away and had rolled from the spoon position onto his back. Id once heard someone say that Cat Jones was so intimidating that she had made some of the men she went to bed with temporarily impotent, but even I, who had never underestimated her, was impressed that shed managed to do that from about eighty blocks to a man I was in bed with.

Look, K.C., Im really sorry, I said, rolling over and facing him. He had lots of Irish blood in his veins, and it showeddark brown, nearly black eyes, coarse dark brown hair, pale skin, front teeth that overlapped ever so slightly. This woman I work for has a live-in nanny and she thinks shes in some kind of trouble. Ive got to go up to her place and help her out.