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his looks so disconcerting.
    At about two I finally decided I’d better beat it. I felt bad for Cat, because of the jam she was in, and I wanted to help
     her. I also wanted to be in on the action. But I was beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. Cat preferred what you might call
     a compartmentalization approach to her friendships. We all served specific needs, with no one person responsible for too much.
     Right now Cat was preoccupied with damage control, which wasn’t one of my specialties.
    It would have been helpful to have a chance to talk to Jeff before I left, but Leslie was currently monopolizing him. I figured
     I’d do better leaving now and calling or coming back later. I told Cat I was splitting and said to call me if she needed me.
     Picking at a pasta salad as one of the blond spin doctors yammered away next to her, she acknowledged my departure in a state
     of distraction.
    I found my sweater on the hall table, though I didn’t recall leaving it there. As I started to open the front door, Jeff stepped
     out into the hallway.
    “You okay?” he asked with just a trace of his Tennessee roots. “Cat told me how you found the body.”
    “I’m hanging in there. But what about you? This must be very sad for you.”
    It was hard to tell, though, exactly
what
he was feeling. He looked more agitated than anything else.
    “Of course,” he said quickly. “And this is going to be awful for Tyler. What do we tell him, for God’s sake?”
    As I started to ask him another question, one of the PR babes popped her head out into the hall.
    “I wouldn’t hold that door open if I were you,” she chided me.
    Jeff gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and I hurried away, down the steps. A TV news van was attempting to park out front,
     which would give me time to outdistance anyone climbing out of it, but a young guy on the sidewalk with a tape recorder and
     mike descended on me. I sprinted away, toward Park Avenue, where I flagged down a taxi.
    As soon as I’d collapsed into the backseat, I realized that my head ached, my back and legs ached, and my brain ached, too.
     There were so many unanswered questions about Heidi’s death. What had made her sick? Was she a drug user? Had she been alone
     last night? Why hadn’t she called anyone once she began to get violently ill? I also had questions for Cat, things that had
     been bugging me all morning. Why had she spent the weekend in the Hamptons while her husband was up at their country home?
     Why had she needed to see Heidi at the crack of dawn on Sunday? And what had made her so terribly certain that something bad
     had happened?
    I was anxious to hear the answers to those questions, but the thought of them scared me. Something told me that over the next
     few days, Cat’s life was going to become a big ugly mess.

CHAPTER 4
    T HE
GLOSS
MAGAZINE editorial offices occupy the entire tenth floor of a building on Broadway at 56th Street and center around a large open area,
     nicknamed “the pit,” which holds the cubes for the photo, art, and production departments as well as for some of the junior
     writers and editors. The space once consisted of traditional offices, but Cat had had it redesigned about six months after
     she’d taken over, remodeling it in the style of a classic newsroom. I don’t think she ever expected anyone to come running
     through yelling, “Stop the presses! Gwyneth Paltrow screamed for mercy during a Brazilian bikini wax!” She did it, she said,
     to create the perfect combination of noise, energy, envy, and sexual chemistry. From what I could tell, she’d more than succeeded.
    When I slunk into
Gloss
on Monday at around nine, with my blueberry scone and large container of coffee, the pit was practically deserted. The photo
     editor, wearing a black shirt with a ruffle down the front, was sitting at his desk leafing through
W
, and about eight cubes away one of the production guys was opening a window. A low level of attendance was