The Wrong Man: A Novel of Suspense Read Free Page B

whipped by outside the car, her cell phone rang.
    The screen flashed the name of the hotel, and she wondered if there’d been confusion over her bill.
    “Good morning,” a man said when she answered. For a moment she couldn’t place the deep voice.
    “Did you get off on time?” he asked. And then she realized: it was Matt Healy.
    “Yes, thanks,” she said, taken aback. “I’m in the car now.”
    “Look, Kit, I know I pleaded no entanglements last night. But I have to see you again, in New York.”
    She took a breath.
    “I’d like that, too,” she said.
    “I’ll be there on Thursday. Why don’t I cook you dinner? I’m not exactly Bobby Flay, but you won’t leave starving.”
    She didn’t care if he fixed her a fried eel sandwich.
    “Perfect.”
    “See you Thursday then,” he said after giving her his address. “seven-thirty.”
    Once they’d signed off, she realized she was smiling stupidly to no one in particular.
    It was nearly 4:30 by the time she reached home. She had a one-bedroom apartment in a five-story building on Elizabeth Street in Nolita, named because it was just north of Little Italy. She was crazy about the area, a hip but friendly neighborhood of narrow streets, low-rise buildings, and old churches, as well as trendy boutiques and cafés. Last year, when the studio apartment next door became available, she and Baby had decided to rent it as office space.
    She dropped her suitcase in the apartment and entered the office through the adjoining doorway that the super had given them permission to create. Baby was at her desk, staring quizzically at a pile of fabric swatches.
    “ There you are,” Baby exclaimed, touching one of her lovely hands to her chest. “Dara saw that your flight was late.”
    “Just by an hour,” Kit said. She’d been in too good a mood to let the delay bug her. “It’s great to see you, Baby.”
    “Same here. I take it you had nice weather. You’ve got some gorgeous highlights.”
    Baby was a blond fanatic. She dyed her gray hair a gorgeous champagne color and wore it like a prized crown.
    “I’ll tell you all about it, but first fill me in. Everything okay?”
    “Well, I’m up to my ass in ikat,” Baby said, nodding toward the fabric pile. “After this particular job I refuse to do another throw pillow in it for as long as I live.”
    Kit laughed. “What about West 87th Street? You said in your email there were some problems.”
    “Oh, the husband’s suddenly bullied his way into everything. He thinks blue is for sissies and that the slipper chairs inthe bedroom look like they were made for Tinkerbell. Says he’s a ‘Mission furniture kind of guy’ and thinks the place should have a huskier feel. The man actually said that. I once had a woman say she wanted a bedroom like a harlot’s, but in forty plus years I never heard anyone ask for husky .”
    “I thought the wife said she had free rein.”
    “Apparently she did until the bills started to roll in.”
    “You’ll work it out,” Kit said, smiling. “You always do.”
    Baby was brilliant at many things but one of her specialties was negotiating what she called ICDC: Intense Couple Decorating Conflict.
    “Where’s Dara?” Kit asked, referring to their assistant.
    “I had her run to the D&D building, and she’s going home from there.”
    “Don’t stay late on my account, Baby. We can do a real catch-up tomorrow, and I’ll go through paperwork tonight.”
    The next few days rushed by. Kit spent a good chunk of her time on site at a Greenwich Village apartment she was decorating, checking on the paint job the contractors were doing in the study. It ended up perfect, a gorgeous, gleaming shade of aubergine. When the clients, the Griggses, saw the final results on Thursday they were agog. Kit felt both thrilled and relieved. The wife, Layla, had turned out to be a fussbudget, and Kit had been micromanaging the project even more intensely than normal.
    But she knew there was another