The two women walked back to the living room and Lake grabbed her purse and said goodbye. Her apartment was within walking distance but she didn’t have the psychic energy to get there on foot. She found a cab and climbed gratefully into the back. She wondered if Steve’s excuse had been legit. Or maybe he was trying to avoid her. Her snooping may have been reported to Levin, and in turn to Steve. For the past few days she’d felt she was up to her neck in water but still able to breathe; now she felt close to drowning. Her only hope had been to find evidence she could take to Archer, but she’d come up with nothing.
As Lake massaged her temples, she realized that her face was wet with sweat. She dug in her purse, searching for a tissue. Just beneath her patent-leather wallet she felt something unfamiliar—round and made of rough cloth. She pulled it from her purse. For a second she just stared, confounded. It was a small burlap pouch, about the size of a plum. The neck was closed with twine and the insides were filled with something twiglike that poked through the fabric in places. My God, she thought—is it marijuana? Had someone stuck it in her purse?
She noticed a tag attached to the twine, blank on the side looking up at her. Slowly she turned it over. On the back was a single word: Catnip.
19
SHE’D BOUGHT CATNIP once for Smokey ages ago—but she certainly hadn’t stuffed it in her purse. No, someone else had placed the bag there. It was obviously supposed to remind her of Smokey and what had been done to him. Was it a message? I was in your backyard. This time I got even closer to you.
A word shot like a bullet through her mind: Jack. She’d left her purse with him when she had to dash back up to the apartment because Jack had told her the wrong books on the phone. His whole visit may have been a ruse just so that he could slip the catnip in her purse. If that was true, it meant he’d also shaved Smokey.
Maybe Jack was trying to unhinge her, to make it appear that she was an unfit mother. But was Jack really capable of such sick behavior?
Another thought barged through her brain: If Jack was her stalker, then there was no reason to believe that Keaton’s killer was watching her after all. In fact, Keaton’s death might have no relation to the clinic at all. All the stuff she’d been doing to save herself—going through files, talking to patients—may have been pointless, and the real threat was the man she used to love.
But, she realized with a start, her purse had also been out of her sight at the clinic. She’d left it on the conference room table while she’d searched for the files. Anyone at the clinic could have dropped in the little sack of catnip. Which would mean that the killer did work at the clinic, knew of Lake’s involvement with Keaton, and was sending her another warning. But a warning to do what? she wondered. To shut up or else?
Lake searched in her purse for a tissue and wiped the perspiration from her face. There was something else to consider: She’d left her purse in the living room at Steve and Hilary’s when she’d gone to the kitchen to see Matthew, and Hilary had scurried off alone for a minute or two when Lake was in the playroom. What if Hilary had been having an affair with Keaton? Lake remembered how flirtatious Hilary had been with him at the restaurant. And then there was the fight in the car Steve had alluded to. Perhaps Hilary had gone to Keaton’s apartment later and discovered he’d been in bed with another woman that night. In a rage she’d killed him. Now Hilary suspected Lake was the other woman but wasn’t sure and was trying to flush her out.
And yet that idea seemed as farfetched as Jack hurting Smokey.
“Is this it?” a voice said.
Startled, Lake looked up to see that the cabdriver was speaking to her through the Plexiglas divider. She hadn’t even realized that they had stopped in front of her building.
After climbing out of the cab, she glanced furtively up and down the street. The block was empty except for a woman pushing a stroller. As soon as Lake was in her apartment, she dropped the