So Pretty It Hurts (6 page)

I hurried back to my room, squinting in the passageway from the emerging daylight. To my surprise the snow had turned to a steady rain that streaked and fogged the windows. Hopefully it was warming up, and some of the snow on the road would melt away.

Back in my room, I called Nash’s cell. Though he was used to being phoned at all hours—particularly with celeb DWIs—he answered groggily.

“Give yourself a minute to wake up,” I told him. “Because I’ve got big news.”

“Christ, that
is
big,” he said after I’d taken him through everything. “How soon can you get me something?”

“I have my laptop with me, and it shouldn’t take me more than thirty minutes to write something up and e-mail you. Then I’ll file reports as things progress.”

“Where are you exactly, anyway?”

“About two hours north of the city. The one fly in the ointment is that it’s been snowing like crazy. On the one hand it’s a good thing because I want to talk to people here—and they’re stranded. But eventually Jessie and I need to find our way back to Manhattan. It’s a little bit like
The Shining
up here.”

He told me that he’d be pulling staff into the office to dig background for the story and begin producing the obligatory sidebars on the life and times of Devon Barr.

“See if you can find anything about her having an eating disorder,” I said. “I think it could have played a role in her death.”

I needed to start writing stat, but there was one thing I had to take care of first: let Cap know I was now filing the story. Plenty of reporters I knew at
Buzz
would just go ahead and deal later with any flak that resulted from all the people who’d been bruised in the process. But I never liked to play things that way. It’s not that I’m such a goody-two-shoes, but in the long run people treat you better if you’ve been fair with them. I would need Cap as I pursued this story, and I wanted to alert him to the fact that within the next hour the
Buzz
Web site would be announcing the death of Devon Barr.

There turned out to be no need to go all the way back to the other barn. As I came down the stairs into the first-floor foyer, Cap was just emerging from the passageway.

“How are you doing?” I said. “This must be really devastating for you.”

“Yes,” he answered grimly. “It is.”

“Do you have a few minutes? I’d like to talk to you.”

“Actually I don’t. I need to retrieve some papers from my room.”

“How about later then?”

“I don’t really think it would be very smart of me to talk to you.”

“I’ll be straight with you,” I said. “I
do
have to file this story. It’ll be live on the Web site before long, and it will most likely be the cover story of the magazine on Thursday. So wouldn’t it be better for you to have control over the information that gets out there? Plus, I promise you, I won’t sandbag you in any way. I’ll keep you abreast of what I’m doing.”

He shook his head in despair.

“Let me think about it,” he said and moved off.

If Devon had been his lover, this had to be eating him up. Yet there was something else to consider. If the autopsy indicated foul play and he
had
been her lover, that would make him a prime suspect. I wondered if I should have told the police about the conversation I’d overheard between the two of them—Devon demanding that he would “have to tell her”—but I didn’t like the idea of making trouble for him unnecessarily. If the death was ruled a homicide, I could always inform the cops later.

I reentered my room and headed for the small antique desk near the window. Stretching my arms out, I plopped down at the desk. My laptop was already set up there, since I’d planned to do a little research for upcoming articles. I started to open a file, and then I realized something was out of whack. My laptop wasn’t in the same spot it had been in earlier. I like to rest my arms directly in front of it, so I generally leave about four or five inches between the computer and the edge of the desk But now my laptop was right up to the very edge of the desk—as if someone had pulled it closer.

I caught a breath and instinctively looked behind me. There was no one there, of course, but I knew that someone had been in my room. And it wasn’t necessarily the person who had taken Scott’s keys. Jessie and I hadn’t been given keys, so my room had never been locked. Anyone could have gained entrance.

I jumped up from the desk and made a quick sweep of the room. Nothing was missing, and nothing else seemed disturbed. What could the person have wanted? And why check out my computer? To see what I was writing or whether I’d e-mailed
Buzz
?

I couldn’t afford to dwell on it at the moment. I needed to write and file my story. I dashed out something fast, hitting all the high points. Devon Barr had died during the night at the weekend home of music mogul Scott Cohen. Cause of death still undetermined. The police were on the premises interviewing the houseguests. I listed who they were. I reread it twice and then e-mailed it to Nash and the deputy editor I generally reported to.

After I sent my story, I went on the Internet and did a quick search about eating disorders. I was surprised to see that they were fatal in up to 20 percent of cases. Most frequently in those cases the lack of vital nutrients caused heart arrhythmia, which led to a heart attack and death.

There was plenty more to read, but I wanted to return to the great room to see what was going on. I splashed cold water on my face just to revive myself, and then left my room. Just as I started toward the stairs, Jessie came bounding up them.

“I know I’m supposed to be standing guard, but I wanted to check in. Did you talk to Nash?”

“Yes, and I filed a story. You’ve had your interview with the cops?”

“Yup—and it was so freaky. I had to fight the urge to confess that I cheated once on an AP history test.”

“What did they ask you?”

“Did I observe anything unusual with Devon this weekend? Did I hear anything during the night? And were people using drugs this weekend? I answered no, no, and no. I can’t believe how
pale
the head cop is. I wonder if anyone’s checked his platelet count lately.”

“What’s going on with all our guests at the moment?”

“Richard is drinking secret Bloody Marys—I caught him pouring a shot of vodka into his tomato juice. And after Tommy was done with his interview, he threatened to leave with Tory until someone convinced him that he’d never get four feet down the road in his Jag.”

“I’m going back over there now, so if you need a break, go for it,” I said.

“Thanks, I may take a short catnap and then I’ll be back to help eavesdrop. You mentioned that something weird was going on. What did you mean?”

I told her about the missing ipecac and my suspicions about someone being in my room. As I’d anticipated, the last bit of news rattled her.

“Crap—there’s a dead body across the hall from me, and someone’s sneaking into people’s bedrooms. You know those horror movies where you want to shout, ‘Get out of the house!’ at the screen? I’m starting to sense that
somewhere
, someone is shouting that at us.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You can lock your door when you’re in your room, and the cops have the keys now.”

“And how long are we supposed to stick around here for?”

“Since I’m covering this, it’ll be good to hang here for a while at least. And even if we wanted to leave, we might not be able to. For right now at least, the weather has us trapped.”

As I began to descend the stairs, I heard a commotion on the floor below. I scurried down. A team of two men and two women—with water dripping in rivulets off their jackets—had just trudged into the foyer behind Detective Collinson. I figured they were either from the coroner’s office or members of the crime scene unit or a combination of both. Each one of them eyed me curiously, and then proceeded up the stairs. I stood at the bottom of the stairs listening for a moment. Once they entered Devon’s room, I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

I returned to the great room, which turned out to be empty now. The group had obviously splintered after the police interviews, with people returning to their rooms. Unless I went knocking on doors, I wasn’t going to be able to talk to anyone.

When I reentered the small barn, I found Scott and Sandy standing just outside the door of a small walk-in storage area in the foyer. The door of the closet was made of barn wood, and it was flush to the wall, so I hadn’t even known it was there before. The expressions on their faces suggested that something wasn’t right.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“There’s a set of keys missing,” Scott announced. “The backup set to all the guest bedrooms.”

“You’re sure?” I asked Sandy.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I saw them there last night when I was getting supplies. And there was no reason for me to touch them. I’ve got my own set.”

“I’d assumed whoever went back into Devon’s room used the set on the counter,” Scott said. “But this is obviously how it was done.”

I’d noticed the night before that there were no bolts on the inside of the bedroom doors, just buttons on the knobs. It also meant that whoever had the keys could gain access to our rooms when we were sleeping and the doors were locked.

Chapter 6

“Y
ou need to tell the police about this,” I told Scott. “Something’s not kosher here.”

He sighed. “All right, I’ll tell Collinson when we meet again.” He headed off, with Sandy in tow. When I reached the top of the stairs a minute later, I saw that Devon’s door was partially open and I could hear people moving around in there.

Back in my bedroom I checked out the
Buzz
Web site. My story was up. I also saw that the statement Scott and Cap had been working on had been released and incorporated.

I filed a brief update for
Buzz
, saying that Devon’s body was being examined and police were going over her room—other than that, there wasn’t much to say. I’d no sooner hit Send than one of the deputy editors called me on my cell to discuss coverage. She sounded more ornery than usual, probably from having been called into the office on Sunday.

“Why haven’t you included quotes from any of the houseguests?” she demanded.

“I’m keeping it all off the record up here,” I told her.

“
What
?” she barked.

“No one would give me a direct quote anyway,” I said patiently. “And if I don’t keep things off the record, people will stonewall me. This way I’m getting lots of info for background.”

“But you—”

“I have to go,” I said, cutting her off. For a woman whose greatest professional success up until now had been being called a whore by Snooki, she had a lot of nerve complaining about how I put a story together.

I checked my watch. I was dying to talk to Beau, and now would be a decent time to call him. I tried his cell, but there was no answer. I realized that he might be headed to the airport or already on the plane.

I kicked off my boots, collapsed into the armchair by the window, and propped my feet up on the ottoman. I needed a few moments to clear my head and just think. Devon’s death, regardless of the cause, was unsettling, but that wasn’t all that was bothering me. Like I’d told Jessie, there was something weird going on. Whoever had taken the keys and then pinched the ipecac from Devon’s bathroom had decided that the truth shouldn’t come out.
Why
?

And then there was the mystery call to extension seven. That continued to bug me.

After a while of trying to chill, I tugged my boots back on and made my way to the great room. There were certain people I was hoping to extract info from, and I figured the group might start to congregate again in anticipation of lunch. In the passageway I saw that the rain had morphed into a light drizzle. It was foggy out, almost steamy, obviously from the effect of the rain hitting the cold snow. I wondered what luck, if any, Scott was having locating a plowman. Or if the police were assisting in this mission.

The only person there turned out to be Richard. He was on the couch reading his iPad, a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses perched midway down his nose. He’d clearly just showered because his hair was still damp around the edges, slicked back on both sides, and he smelled of talc. On the table in front of him was a large glass of tomato juice with a celery stalk sticking out of the top. Still into the Bloodies, it appeared.

“You certainly don’t disappoint, Ms. Weggins,” he announced cockily when he saw me.

“In what regard?” I asked, pouring a cup of coffee.

“Your story is already up on the
Buzz
Web site. You’ve beaten everyone to the punch.”

“Cap and Scott knew it was being filed. I was straight with them.”

“I’m sure you were. It’s amazing, isn’t it, though? You so often seem to be around when a dead body turns up.”

“I guess I’m just a lucky girl,” I said.

“Whatever the reason, I’d be a little careful if I were you.”

“And why is that?” I asked, taking a seat in an armchair across from him. His provocative banter on the walk yesterday had been fun, but today it seemed slicked with meanness. I wondered if it reflected the number of Bloody Marys he’d consumed so far today.

“The police are always suspicious of too many coincidences,” he said. “Coincidences, you see, have a nasty habit of calling
attention
to something.”

“Ahh, good point,” I said. “Do you think I might be a psychopathic killer and not even know it?”

“Or just a ruthless opportunist,” he said, faking a smile.

I didn’t like his tone one bit, but I wasn’t going to get all pissy about it. I needed to be on his good side so he’d talk to me.

“Why not file a story yourself? Don’t you have a blog on the
Huffington Post
or someplace like that?”

“I’ve decided to go the more traditional route on this one. I’ll probably do a more in-depth story for
Vanity Fair
.”

“I look forward to reading it. How was your interview with the police, by the way?”

“Mercifully brief,” he said. “There was really nothing for me to contribute. I did get the feeling, though, that the police are considering foul play. You saw the body—what do
you
think?”

“There was no sign of that, from what I could see. Off the record, I’m thinking that her death might be connected to an eating disorder. She wouldn’t be the first model who died from one.”

He stared at me for a moment, not saying anything.

“Well, let’s face it,” he said finally. “The only thing she ever did with her food was rearrange it on her plate. It was like watching someone play three-card monte. One minute the green beans are here, and the next minute they’re over there.”

So Richard had observed that, too. “It might have caught up with her this weekend,” I said.

“Well, she never seemed ill, if that’s what you mean. Bored, yes—unless Tommy was around to lock eyes with—and a tad tipsy last night.”

That was possibly the best example in history of the pot calling the kettle black.

“Do you think there was anything going on between Devon and him?” I asked. “Or was it just for show?” I suddenly remembered something Richard had said at breakfast the day before. “I mean, you mentioned yesterday that you’d heard people scurrying around in the hallway during the night. Maybe they reconnected.”

“Haven’t a clue, since I never opened my door. She did seem to come and go a lot, always disappearing. She may have just been sneaking off for a ciggie all those times. You know how models love to smoke.”

“Do they? I wouldn’t know.”

He shrugged his shoulders irritatedly, as if my cluelessness annoyed him. “You just have to look at the paparazzi shots. Kate Moss is always waving a cigarette.”

He checked his watch suddenly, an obvious gesture of wanting to be done with our conversation. He stuck his reading glasses in the V of his sweater, flipped over the cover of his iPad, and rose to leave. Had I done something to make him so eager to exit?

“You’ll excuse me, won’t you, Bailey? I’ve got to go cancel my dinner plans for tonight.”

“Do you have an update on the road?”

“Our lovely hostess Sandy informs me that a plow is headed this way. But I’d been planning to be back in the city by five, and there’s no way that’s going to happen.”

“One question before you go. Did you, by any chance, call extension seven last night? Just before two thirty?” I was tipping my hand, but I needed to know if he was the caller.

He paused midmovement. By the expression in his red-rimmed eyes, I could tell that the question greatly intrigued him.

“Ahhh, is this an important clue you’re giving me a hint to?”

“Not really a clue of any kind. As you may have heard, Devon called that girl Laura for water during the night. About an hour and a half later the phone rang again, but no one was there. Devon was dead by then.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

What next, I wondered? I needed more answers, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. People were obviously in their rooms, catching up on sleep or praying for the plow to arrive.

When I reached the foyer downstairs, planning to return to my room yet again, I noticed that several rain ponchos had been hung on a row of pegs on the wall. Having viewed the weather only from windows over the past twelve hours, I decided to grab a poncho and head out to the deck.

It looked surreal outside, like a scene from a movie about a planet in a distant galaxy. Fog rose from the ground in patches all through the woods, as if there were smoldering brush fires. It had stopped raining, and the temperature seemed to have dropped again.

I took three steps out onto the deck and jerked in surprise when I spotted Tommy in the far right corner, the same spot where Cap and Devon had stood late Friday night. He was jacketless, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and a cell phone to his ear. It couldn’t have been a private call because he didn’t bother to lower his voice when he spotted me.

“Fuck it, man,” I heard him say. “I’m not going to do that. So just fuck it.”

The person on the other end must have offered a plea on his or her behalf, because Tommy listened for a bit, his face pinched.

“Like I said, fuck it,” he said finally. “I’ll talk to you later.”

He flicked the cigarette over the rail of the deck and dropped the phone into the pocket of the oversize white shirt he wore above jeans so tight the only thing left to the imagination was genital skin tone.

“Hi,” I said, walking toward him. “You want a poncho? There’s a bunch of them inside.”

“Why would I want a poncho? It stopped raining.”

Okaaay.

“How you doing?” I said, trying again. “This must be pretty upsetting.”

“Ya think?”

I wasn’t sure what to try next. He seemed to be making it clear he didn’t want to talk to me. But then he leaned back against the wet wooden rail of the deck and looked at me intently, as if we were two people who had things to say to each other.

“Devon was my lady for six freakin’ months, you know,” he said. “We weren’t an item anymore, but we were—I don’t know, connected still on some cosmic level.”

“Why did you break up?”

He shrugged. “I got a little distracted on my summer tour, if you know what I mean. That didn’t sit well with her at all. I couldn’t stand the nagging, so I took a powder.”

“And now you’re with Tory?”

“Yeah. For now. My IQ is shrinking just being with that bitch.”

“Any guesses about how Devon died?”

“Nope. She was as fit as a horse as far as I knew.”

That was a stretch, considering she had probably weighed about ninety-five pounds sopping wet.

“I mean, she smoked, she drank,” he added, “but she didn’t do hard drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Was she anorexic or bulimic?”

“A lot of these model chicks are all fucked up about their eating. I brought out a can of Reddiwip once with Tory, just for a little fun, and she practically went insane. I think she thought the calories were gonna be absorbed through her nipples.”

“But what about Devon?” I asked, trying not to let a picture form in my mind of Tory and Tommy in the sack with a bunch of sex props. “Was it more than just counting calories?”

“She never did anything on my watch. But from what I hear, it’d been a problem when she first started out. She was younger then—and she had a shitload of pressure on her. Everybody wanted her—she was the biggest model in the world.”

“Do you know any reason Devon would have been scared this weekend?”

“
Scared
? What are you talking about?” He stepped closer, and in the harsh light I saw how deep the grooves ran in his skin and the pockmarks from adolescent acne. He had the kind of looks only groupies and models seemed to love.

“I caught her crying in the woods around midday yesterday,” I explained. “She told me she was frightened—but she didn’t say why.”

He shrugged, wrestled a butane lighter and pack of Salems out of his jeans pocket, and fired up another cigarette.

“In case you didn’t notice, Devon was a bit of a mind fucker,” he said, after shooting a razor-thin stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “Maybe she was just playing with you.”

“It didn’t seem that—”

“I can’t help you, then. Like I said, there was still this connection between us, but it’s not like we talked anymore.”

“I had the feeling this weekend that she might want to restart the relationship—she seemed to be flirting with you.”

He snorted, as if I had no clue what I was talking about.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “Devon was a master mind fucker. She liked playing with me, just like she liked playing with everyone else. Why’re you so interested, anyway? Tory said you’re a reporter for one of those tabloid magazines. Shouldn’t you be trying to track down some story about a woman giving birth to wolves?”

“I work for a different type of rag than that.”

“You good at what you do? You
look
like you’d be good at what you do.” He ran his eyes up and down my body, letting them rest on my poncho. If I wasn’t careful, he was going to suggest we hunt down a squeeze bottle of Hershey’s syrup and spend the afternoon together.

I was thinking it might be just the right moment to take my leave, especially since it had begun to rain again—or make that sleet. Icy slivers of rain were suddenly bearing down on us, stinging my face. As I started to say good-bye, I heard a door nearby bang open. When I turned around, Tory was standing there, wearing only a pale yellow top and black leather leggings. She looked about as friendly as a fer-de-lance.

“You’re standing out here, talking to
her
?” she screeched.

“I’m having a fucking cigarette,” he snapped.

“But you said you were coming back in five minutes.”

“Why don’t you just chill, Tory.”

“I need you to be with me right now,” she said, her teeth chattering from the cold. “I’m going out of my mind in this place.”

“You’re gonna need Botox if you keep scrunching your face up that way. Why don’t you go back to the room, and I’ll be there in a minute.”

“So you can be with
her
? You wanna fuck her like you wanted to fuck Devon?”

“How could I want anyone else when you’re so freakin’ brilliant in the sack?”