a number to call to follow up on her case. The cops let themselves out. Julian watched as the woman wandered into her bedroom and tried to fix her mattress, which had been tossed on the floor. She started crying harder, the sounds changing from sniffles to guttural sobs. She unbuttoned the back of her skirt to change out of her work clothes. While she was undressing, Gus tugged on Julian’s arm. “Give her some privacy.”
Disappointed at missing a free peep show, Julian followed Gus to the living room. The woman emerged from the bedroom a few minutes later, in a black sports bra and gym shorts. She straightened up a bit, returning knocked-over lamps and a spilled basket of magazines to their rightful positions, then opened a bottle of white wine with a shaking hand. Soon, she was lying on the floor of her apartment, a box of tissues and a now half-empty bottle of white wine next to her.
“She’s beautiful,” Julian said, moving closer to her. “But she’s a mess. What’s wrong with her? Why is she crying? Besides the break-in? What happened to her today? This can’t all be over a Yorkie and a television set. So what is it?”
“That’s for you to find out, my boy. And solve. Julian Shaw, meet Kate Darby.”
CHAPTER THREE
KATE DARBY LISTENED to Stevie Nicks’s plaintive wailing on “Beautiful Child” for the hundredth time. This had to be the worst night of her life. Only, she knew it wasn’t. There had been worse nights. Worse weeks. Worse years. But this ranked up there with one of the most colossal bad days ever.
“Okay, God…what do you have against me?” she said aloud. “It wasn’t bad enough to walk in on them in bed together? Lose the love of my life. And my best friend. In one day.” She rolled over on her belly and flopped her face against her forearm and started crying all over again. “Apartment robbed. Place trashed. But the dog, God? My little Honey? Christ…this is the worst night of my life.” Then Stevie finished her ode, and Kate pressed the button on her remote control, starting the song all over again. A hundred and one and counting.
You’ll meet someone better.
“Ha!” she said to herself, shaking her head at the voice she heard in her mind. “Meet someone better.” She looked at her coffee table, staring at a picture of her and David on the ski trip they took to Aspen over New Year’s. He was like that, the king of grand gestures. He’d put plane tickets in her Christmas stocking. He gave her a pair of diamond earrings for her twenty-seventh birthday in May, in a blue box from Tiffany’s, which he’d presented her while they took a horse-and-carriage ride through Central Park. For God’s sake, they’d talked about getting engaged for Christmas this year. Just like the cabbie telling her his love story, his surprise of roses, Kate thought she and David were writing their own love story.
Kate sat up and blew her nose—loudly—in a tissue, which she then crumpled and threw on the floor next to the twenty or so other tissues. Next to the spilled contents of a box of old photos the robbers had upended.
“It just hurts,” she whispered aloud. The whisper turned to a prayer. “God…it just hurts, and I don’t know if I can take any more. My father died—well, you know that, God. I miss him so badly sometimes it’s an actual pain in my heart. And now this. Not to mention my mother remarrying to that investment guy with the comb-over. God…this just sucks. It sucks. And I can’t take it anymore.”
She stood up and walked to the maple bookshelves next to the tall windows that opened onto the fire escape. She picked up a photo of her and Leslie in a silver frame.
Kate had never felt beautiful her entire life, except maybe when she was with her father. But who believes their father? Aren’t all fathers supposed to say their daughters are beautiful? In a size-two world, she was built just a little large, and in a city of little-black-dress sophistication, she was always just ordinary. At least, that was what she told herself. She wasn’t beautiful, she was pretty. She was girl-next-door. Sweet faced, more than sexy. Until she met David, who swept her off her feet. He finally made her feel as if she belonged on the pedestal he placed her on, as if she were stunning. Not just girl-next-door but drop-dead gorgeous.
Leslie, on the other hand, had always been the eye-catching one. Sure, she’d told Kate she was “gangly” and had braces in seventh grade, but come off it. Leslie had been perfect her whole life. Tall, thin, high cheekbones, Southern drawl, long blond hair and she didn’t even need to exercise to maintain her perfect figure. It was positively sickening. Those perfect breasts and rock-hard abs—that she’d seen only too clearly tonight in David’s bedroom.
“So you had to have the one man I loved,” Kate said to the picture. “You could have had your pick of any man in Manhattan. Heck, in the whole tristate area, but you set your sights on David.”
At the thought, Kate felt like she was going to throw up again. She took the picture and frame and tossed them in the trash. Then she sat down on her couch. The apartment was decorated in shades of green—her favorite color—with touches of Boho and eclectic flea-market finds she and her father used to hunt down.
“Well, damn it—now what? My life is ruined.” Like she could show up at her job and work side by side with Leslie. Their offices were next door to each other at Washington Square Publishers. Kate picked up the bottle of wine and took a huge swig.
Maybe you should consider becoming a lesbian.
Kate shook her head at the voice. “I must be cracking up. Like that would ever be an option.” And then—despite the fact that she’d found her boyfriend with her best friend, that her dog had disappeared, her apartment was broken into—despite it all, Kate laughed to herself.
I’m not kidding. Lesbians have more fun.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SHE’S CUTE WHEN SHE smiles,” Julian said to Gus. He leaned closer, as if inspecting a specimen under glass. “She has dimples.”
“Hmm?” Gus was looking at a file that had materialized out of nowhere. They were still standing in her messy apartment, though they had moved to the small galley kitchen—typical by Manhattan standards with an Easy-Bake-size oven and a refrigerator shorter than Julian’s shoulder.
“I said she’s cute. What are you looking at?”
“This?” Gus waved the file folder, and it disappeared. “Nothing. Case files.”
“Shouldn’t I look them over or something, if I’m going to be some sort of celestial social worker?”
“Afraid not. The Boss believes in intuition. In the power of connection.”
“What kind of New Age bullshit is that?”
“She’s afraid of self-fulfilling prophesies. They’re the worst prophecies of all, you know.”
“Slow down, Gus. You may be used to this Neither Here Nor There lingo, but it’s all new to me. I’m still getting used to being…away from my body.”
“Well, the Boss has been frequently misquoted by prophets. A lot of them, I have to tell you, were cuckoo.” Gus twirled a finger round and round by his temple.
“And of all the crazy prophets,” Gus continued, “self-fulfilling ones drive Her the craziest. If you read Kate’s case…Let’s suppose it said she was depressed.”
“I’d get her to pop a Prozac.”
