Kelman’s admission reframed the cat-and-mouse play the woman seemed so fond of. Maybe Sasha was part of the insider trading scheme and Kelman had asked her to keep tabs on Kit from a separate vantage point, trying to determine if she had a secret agenda. Sasha could have even tipped Kelman off that Kit was coming by her apartment. That was the day he’d followed her.
Of course, Sasha could have decided to keep tabs on Kit all by her lonesome. Perhaps Kelman had admitted to forging a bit of a relationship with Kit for the sake of scoring information—skipping any mention of naked bodies and all-night sex—and Sasha may have worried that there was more going on. There’d been all those weird suggestions from Sasha that she knew Healy better than she did, even the question in the ladies’ room at Ithaka about whether she’d dated Healy. That could have been her way of reassuring herself that a certain decorator had no designs on her man.
But all the wondering in the world, she knew, wasn’t ever going to provide any answers. What she needed to do instead was take action, and that meant finally going to the cops. She had promised Kelman she would wait for him to make the first move but in light of her discovery—and all it implied about him—the time for that kind of cooperation had passed. She needed to protect herself, maybe even from him. For all she knew, Kelman might never have even intended to divulge anything to the authorities.
She rolled over on her back and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. It was pale blue in color, probably Benjamin Moore’s Robin Egg, and a slightly different shade than the rest of the room. Baby subscribed to the idea that people slept best in spaces painted in muted hues of blue or green. Kit loved the bedroom but she loved her own more. The sooner she spoke to the cops, the better her chances of finding her way home again.
As she was swinging her legs off the bed, Baby passed the open door to the guest room and poked her head in.
“Did you talk to him?” she asked.
“Yeah, and it’s true. The creep actually admitted it.”
“I’m sorry, Kit. What will you do now?”
“I’ll call the lawyer first thing in the morning. Then schedule an appointment with Detective Burke. He looks like the kind of guy who uses waterboarding for anything beyond a routine interview, but I assume he’s the one I’ll have to deal with.”
First thing in the morning she made contact with the lawyer, Nat Naylor. He sounded young to her, like someone who might still play beer pong on the weekends, but if Baby’s lawyer had recommended him, she assumed he was qualified. After she’d explained to him that she had serious concerns about her safety, he agreed to meet with her at Baby’s that day.
She tried to work after she hung up from the call, but her concentration was shot. To make matters worse, there was a worrisome email from her client Barry Kaplan: “I’ve been thinking since our phone call, and though I understand that you’re busy, I really need to get moving on this project. If you’re too jammed up to handle the job, it might make sense for me to find another designer.”
Oh lovely, she thought in despair. At the rate things were moving, she’d have no clients at all by the end of the month. She replied, saying that she could understand his frustration but she would definitely have ideas to present to him in person early next week and requested that he send her available time slots. She opened her iPad and poured through photos of previous jobs she had done, hoping one of them might spark a concept. At this point she wasn’t opposed to brazenly ripping off an idea she’d executed for someone else. But nothing seemed right for Barry.
Nat Naylor arrived at three, dressed in a pinstripe suit and carrying a black briefcase. He was thirty-two or thirty-three, she guessed, and though his bright blond hair hinted at endless summers, his six-foot-four frame and serious demeanor undercut the sun-bleached locks and made him read smart and lawyerlike.
He gave only a cursory glance around the apartment, obviously impervious to the full impact of Baby’s jaw-dropping style, and positioned himself on one of the leather sofas. He asked if he could use her first name and urged her to do the same with