'Til Death Do Us Part (44 page)

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to let anyone into the spa,” she said. “But they open at seven. I can leave a note under the door asking them to look for your watch as soon as they get in. Who was your therapist?”

“Piper.”

“Oh, I’m sure she saw it and put it up someplace. There’s no need to worry.”

“You’re probably right, but I can’t help it,” I told her. “The watch has incredible sentimental value to me. Who
can
let me in?”

“Well, Danielle could, but—”

“I don’t want to wake her. Is there someone else?”

She thought for a second, her blue eyes raised to the ceiling.

“Well, the manager had the day off. But I guess I could call Piper. She’s an assistant manager, and she’s got a key.”

“But then she’d have to drive alI the way back here.”

“No, she wouldn’t—she lives right here. There’s a building out back where some of the staff stay. I don’t think she’d mind coming over.”

Natalie—that’s what it said on her name tag—glanced at a phone sheet on her desk and placed the call. A machine obviously picked up after five or six rings because she left a message, detailing what had happened and asking Piper to call.

“She must have gone into town for dinner,” she said, setting the phone back down. “I doubt she’ll be gone long. There’s another assistant manager, Anna . . .”

She let her voice trail off without asking if I wanted to track her down obviously hoping I wasn’t going to push the issue even more.

“I can wait till Piper gets back,” I said.

Once back in my room, I alternated between reading my book and fretting. I had just glanced at the digital clock for about the four hundredth time—11:13—when the phone rang. It was Piper.

“Hi, Miss Weggins? Natalie said you left your watch in the treatment room.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s on the little stool in the corner. You didn’t see it?”

“No, but then I don’t recall looking over there.” She hesitated a second. “Why don’t I run over and check—I’m just behind the inn.”

There was something about her tone—resigned politeness—that told me she was doing it not out of any inborn generosity but because the inn encouraged staff to bend over backward for the guests.

“God, I hate to put you out, but I’d die if something happened to that watch. Should I meet you down there?”

“I’d be happy to drop it off in your room—but actually maybe it’s best for you to show me exactly where you think you left it.”

She said we should meet by the inn entrance to the spa. I’d kept my clothes on, so it took me less than two minutes to get down there. I had a five-minute wait, though, before Piper strode down the corridor from the front of the inn. It was funny how different she looked out of “uniform.” Instead of a beige T-shirt and baggy beige pants, she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve green jersey shirt, low cut with a ruffle. Her shoulder-length red hair, which had been tied back earlier, was spread around her shoulders like a brush fire.

She was courteous enough when she greeted me, but it seemed like that kind of phony politeness she’d displayed on the phone. She already had her keys out and unlocked the door, lifting the handle slightly as she pulled it forward, obviously familiar with the door’s quirkiness.

She flipped on a light in the reception area, and I followed her down one of the corridors. The scent of green tea still hung in the air, and something else, maybe jasmine. The only sound was our footsteps on the stone floor. It felt kind of creepy to be there alone, after hours.

I wouldn’t have been able to recall which room we’d been in, but she seemed to know. As we reached the open doorway, she froze suddenly, like a gazelle picking up the scent of something possibly predatory.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s a light on,” Piper said in a hushed tone, using her chin to point down the hall ahead of us. I glanced in that direction and saw a chink of light coming from beneath a doorway.

“Is someone here?” I asked, my voice as quiet as hers.

“No. It’s just funny. I swear I turned off the light and left the door open. Why don’t you look for your watch, and I’ll check.”

She flicked on the light for me, and as she walked off down the hall, I made a beeline for the stool. I mouthed a big “Thank you” to the gods when I spotted the Rolex lying there, all by its lonesome. As I slid it onto my wrist, I heard a scream.

With my heart thumping, I stumbled out into the hall. Piper was standing paralyzed in the doorway of the room down the corridor, half in the room, half out.

“What’s the matter?” I yelled.

She turned to me, with a look of absolute horror on her face, unable to form even a single word. I rushed down the hall, pushing past her into the room. It was also a massage room, though slightly larger than the other. The lights were dim, and at first nothing seemed amiss. Then I looked down.

Lying on the stone floor, absolutely still, was a body, or at least what I thought must be a body. Every inch of it was wrapped up in some kind of silver paper. I could see the outlines of the limbs and the torso and the head, and the outline, too, of the nose, protruding from the face. It looked like some kind of mummy. Like some horrible mummy from outer space.

Special eBook Feature: Even More Of Kate White!

If Looks Could Kill

CHAPTER 1

C
AT JONES WAS the kind of woman who not only got everything in the world that she wanted—in her case a fabulous job as editor in chief of one of the biggest women’s magazines, a gorgeous town house in Manhattan, and a hot-looking husband with a big career of his own—but 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 didn’t. I took no pleasure in her misery, as I’m 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 I’ve always been sucked in by stories that start with a corpse and lead to crushing heartache.

There’s 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 wouldn’t do anything to mess up the delicate ecosystem of the moment. It was our sixth date and only the second time we’d been to bed, and though dinner had been nice and last night’s sex had been even better than the first time, I had a pit in my stomach—the kind that develops when you find yourself gaga over a guy you’ve begun to sense is as skittish as an alpine goat. All it would take was the wrong remark from me—a suggestion, for instance, that we plan a weekend at a charming inn in the Berkshires—and he’d 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 woman’s voice came booming into the room from the small office directly across from my bedroom. No, I hadn’t.

“Bailey? . . . Bailey? . . . Please pick up if you’re there. It’s 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. “I’m here.”

“Oh, thank God,” Cat Jones said. “Look, something’s wrong here and I’m going insane. I need your help.”

“Okay, tell me,” I said calmly. If I wasn’t responding with a huge degree of concern, it was because I’d known Cat Jones for seven years and I’d seen her freak when the dry cleaners pressed the seams wrong in her pants.

“It’s my nanny—you know, Heidi.”

“This one quit, too?”

“Please don’t be funny. There’s something the matter. She won’t answer the door down in her apartment.”

“You’re sure she’s there?”

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

“Christ, it’s only eight o’clock, Cat,” I protested. “She’s probably dead asleep. Or she’s got a guy with her and she’s 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 she’d never just ignore me,” Cat said. Of course not. Few people would have the nerve to do that.

“Maybe she’s not even in there. Maybe she spent the night at somebody else’s place.”

“She said she was staying in last night. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Can’t you let yourself in? You’ve got a key, right?”

“I’m scared to go in alone. What if there’s something the matter in there?”

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

“He’s up in the country for the weekend with Tyler. I had something to do here,” she added almost defensively.

“And there’s 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, you’ve got to come up here,” she said finally.

“Now?”
I exclaimed. “Cat, it’s eight-eleven on a Sunday morning. Why not wait a bit longer? I bet she spent the night at some guy’s place and she’s trying to flag down a cab right now.”

“But what if that’s not the case? What if something happened to her in there?”

“What are you suggesting? That she’s passed out from a bender—or she’s hung herself from the door frame?”

“No. I don’t know. It just seems weird—and I’m 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. “It’s 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 didn’t seem to be much lust left in my dashing Lothario. He’d let his hand slip away and had rolled from the spoon position onto his back. I’d 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 she’d managed to do that from about eighty blocks to a man
I
was in bed with.

“Look, K.C., I’m really sorry,” I said, rolling over and facing him. He had lots of Irish blood in his veins, and it showed—dark 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 she’s in some kind of trouble. I’ve got to go up to her place and help her out.”

“Is that Cat, the one you work for at
Gloss
?”

“Yeah. The beautiful but easily bothered Cat Jones. You’re welcome to hang around here till I get back.”

What I wanted to add was, “And when I get back I’ll do things to your body that you’ve never even imagined before,” but at that moment I wasn’t feeling very nervy.