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

watching the blue-spotted dog roll in a puddle.
    “What happened to Barney?” I asked. “Do kids still like him?”
    “Barney is
sooo
over,” Janice said, giving her head a shake of disgust. “And I’m glad, too. He makes me sick.”
    “Did you and Heidi meet as nannies?”
    “Yeah, at Gymboree,” she said. “We were, like, the only two nannies who weren’t from the Islands.”
    “Gymboree’s a place for kids?”
    “Yeah, it’s like these classes where you hold the kid and help him go down a slide or you bounce him on a trampoline and sing
     that song, you know, ‘Three Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’?”
    “How did you hear that Heidi was dead?” I asked.
    “A friend called—she heard it on the news.” Tears began to roll down her face again, and she wiped them gingerly with the
     pads of each index finger, careful not to lance a cornea with her nails. “But I don’t get it. How do you get sick and die
     in a day?”
    “They don’t have any idea right now. It’s a complete mystery. They’ll do an autopsy and some tests. When was the last time
     you spoke to Heidi?”
    “On Saturday. I talked to her on the phone.”
    “About what time?”
    She thought for a moment, twirling one of her hair wings. “It was like one o’clock or so. I tried to talk her into going out
     with me that night, but she didn’t want to.”
    “She had other plans?”
    “No, she just said she didn’t want to go out. She never wanted to go out at night anymore. We used to go to this place on
     Third Avenue all the time—the Caboose. She loved it. Guys there thought she was awesome. But lately she’d become like this
     homebody.” She walked two fingers on nail tips toward the plate of cold fries and picked up one of them, holding it as if
     she were dangling a night crawler.
    “Did she give any indication she wasn’t feeling well?” I asked.
    “No, she just said she felt like staying in.”
    “Was she depressed, down in the dumps?”
    “No, I don’t think so. She said she just wanted to read—and listen to music.”
    “What kind of music?” I asked, remembering what she’d had playing in the apartment.
    “Jazz. She’d gotten a thing for jazz lately. Go figure.” She folded the cold French fry into her mouth.
    “When was the last time you saw Heidi in person?” I asked.
    “On Friday. Wait—I mean Thursday. We took T and G out and had a coffee together.”
    “T and G?”
    “Oh, that’s what we call Tyler and George for short.”
    “When the two of you used to go out at night together, did Heidi ever have too much to drink?”
    Janice snorted. “No—I mean, once in a billion years she’d have a glass of white wine, but she didn’t like to drink. Seltzer
     was her drink of choice.”
    “And what about drugs?”
    “Drugs?
Is someone saying she did drugs?”
    “No, no. It’s just I wondered—because she was sick. There’s a chance someone might suggest it.”
    “Heidi wouldn’t take any drugs,” Janice said, shaking her head. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but she thought that sort
     of thing was beneath her.”
    Little G had begun to fuss in his walker, maybe because the blue dog had vanished from the screen.
    “You want a bobbie, G?” Janice called to him. He gave a grunt of approval, and she got up and went to the refrigerator, grabbing
     a short bottle already filled with milk. As she walked toward him, both arms shot straight up to take it from her. I wondered
     if there was anything wrong with me because at such moments I wasn’t overwhelmed with baby lust.
    “He’s way too old for a bottle if you ask me,” said Janice, rolling her eyes as she sat down again. “But his mother lets him
     have them. She doesn’t know how to say no to him.”
    “Did you know Heidi’s boyfriend—Jody?”
    “God, that relationship was
sooo
over. But yeah, I’ve met him. He’s an annoying person.”
    “In what way?”
    “He made Heidi think he was much more important than he was.