So Pretty It Hurts

Chapter 9

Despite the fact that I had seen the photos with my own eyes, the answer still caught me by surprise. For one, Devon hadn’t seemed at all like the motherly type; plus, and more importantly, she clearly hadn’t had a baby. Just a few months after these photos were taken, she was photographed in various spots with Tommy, her tummy flat as a board.

“How do you know for sure?” I asked. “As you pointed out, she wasn’t a blabber.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly get a note from her doctor,” Thornwell said, “but for starters she confided to someone in her inner circle last year that she wanted a baby and she wasn’t going to wait around for the right man to make it happen.”

“That’s not proof that she actually went ahead.”

“There was a report, which we couldn’t confirm, that she’d been seen leaving a fertility clinic. Right after that, she reportedly canceled several big modeling assignments. But here’s the real proof: no drinking or smoking. Devon never stepped out in the evening without enjoying five or six chardonnays and a pack of Marlboro Lights. Suddenly she gives up booze and stops smoking, except for the occasional drag on someone else’s cigarette.”

“If you were so sure, why didn’t you run an item?”

“It was pretty clear she’d had a miscarriage.”

I did a quick calculation. A miscarriage must have occurred between November and February, when the shots of Tommy and Devon hobnobbing together began to surface.

“So when does a little human tragedy get in the way of a Buzz exclusive?” I asked.

“We’re not monsters, you know, Bailey,” he said. “Want to hear what really annoys me? People fuck up their lives, we report it, and yet for some reason, we’re the ones that end up being despised.”

“So in this case you decided to be real nice and keep the info all to yourselves.”

“It was—if you can believe this—actually Mona who decided we shouldn’t run it. Someone told me Mona once had a miscarriage herself and didn’t want to go there. I think she thought it would jinx her somehow.”

“Any idea who the father was?”

“Nope. And my guess is that Devon didn’t either.”

“Are you saying she had a one-night stand?”

“Possibly. She wasn’t dating anyone that we know of at the time. But I’m thinking more along the lines of artificial insemination. All the best girls are doing it these days. And would explain why she was seen at a clinic.”

“Any idea why she’d want a baby? She didn’t seem like the type.” I was still having a hard time wrapping my arms around the idea of Devon raising a kid.

“Haven’t a clue,” Thornwell said. “Maybe someone told her it was the new fashion accessory. You know—hotter than a Birkin bag.”

“But—”

“Bailey, I’ve already been far too generous,” he said, scooting his chair closer to the desk. “And plus I have work to do. Someone very, very big is about to get the boot from her scumbag boyfriend.”

I wandered back to my cubicle, through the cacophony of closing day at Buzz, mulling over Thornwell’s revelation. It was a surprising tidbit to have learned—but in the scheme of things, what did it really mean? The pregnancy had occurred months ago. It hadn’t been successful. And it didn’t appear as if Devon had been all that grief-stricken. Based on her smoking and drinking at Scott’s, it also seemed clear that she’d had no immediate plans for restarting her baby-making efforts.

Of course, the experience may have stressed her out and even eventually contributed to the relapse of her eating disorder. But if someone had murdered Devon, it was hard to imagine that her pregnancy had played a role.

Plopping down at my desk, I saw that the message light on my phone was on; it turned out to be the eating disorder expert I’d left a message for earlier. I quickly called her back, praying not to end up with her voice mail again. Luckily an assistant picked up and put me right through to her.

“Isn’t Buzz one of those celebrity magazines?” she said coolly. “How could I possibly help you?”

“I’m doing a story on the model Devon Barr—who died early Sunday morning. There hasn’t been an autopsy yet, but she’d lost weight lately and she appeared to be avoiding food. There’s even evidence that she may have been taking syrup of ipecac.”

“Oh, dear, how tragic. I’d heard she died, but that the cause was still under investigation.”

“I know you wouldn’t be able to make a diagnosis from a description, but does the fact that she was avoiding food and using ipecac suggest she was suffering from an eating disorder?”

“You’re right—it would be unprofessional of me to diagnose someone like that. But speaking generally, those are indications of an eating disorder.”

“Bulimia?”

“No, anorexia nervosa,” she said.

“I always thought it was bulimics who vomited.”

“You said she was avoiding food. Individuals with bulimia will eat a huge amount of food and then throw up to keep from gaining weight. Anorexics, on the other hand, starve themselves by eating very little. But because they are morbidly fearful of gaining weight, they may also exercise compulsively, take laxatives or diet pills, or purge. Ipecac is an emetic. It stimulates the central nervous system and the stomach, causing the person to vomit.”

“If Devon Barr did have an eating disorder, she could have died from it, correct?”

“Again, speaking generally, you most certainly can die from an eating disorder. Anorexia has one of the highest mortality rates of any psychotic condition—a significant number of people eventually die from it.”

“From heart failure?”

“That’s one possibility. People who are anorexic frequently have a disturbed electrolyte imbalance—they’re not ingesting enough potassium, for instance—and that can lead to arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. Heart failure is even more likely in those who use drugs to stimulate vomiting or bowel movements. I can’t believe they still sell ipecac. It’s certainly not recommended anymore by pediatricians for poisoning emergencies.”

“This is kind of a crazy question. Is there a particular reason why someone would try one method over another to reduce their weight—vomiting versus laxatives, for instance, or diuretics?”

She didn’t answer right away, and until I heard her clear her throat quietly, I wondered if she was still on the line.

“You can’t use this in your article, all right? It will only give people ideas. But someone can actually become addicted to throwing up their food. Dopamine is secreted in the brain when you vomit, which creates a feeling of euphoria. A girl tries it once, and then can’t stop.”

Wow. That hadn’t turned up in any of the articles I’d read online.

“Suddenly there are two demons at work,” she continued. “There’s not only the need to lose weight but also the desire to repeat the rush vomiting creates.”

“You’ve been very generous with your time,” I said. “Just one more question. If someone suffered from an eating disorder years ago but had appeared to recover, why might it suddenly be triggered again?”

“There’s a high recidivism rate with anorexia. Stress can trigger it again. Or feelings of low self-esteem.”

I wondered what had been going on in Devon’s life that could have helped restart her eating disorder. Heartache over her breakup with Tommy? Trouble with Cap? Disappointment about not getting pregnant again? I flashed again on the scene of Devon crying by the woods. Had something been scaring her for a while?

After signing off, I phoned Beau, explained that I’d be burning the midnight oil and would call him tomorrow. Then I put the pedal to the metal. I checked with art once more on the final layout, reviewed a bunch of Web sites to make sure there were no updates on Devon, and finally pounded out my article.

Once I’d forwarded the piece to the deputy editor, I stretched my legs and then read the e-mail from the PR department, explaining what they had in store for me on Thursday. I would be doing the Today show and a ton of other media.

Nash asked for a couple of tweaks with the story, and I didn’t end up leaving the office until 2:00 a.m. Though Jessie could have bailed earlier, she hung around, partly out of solidarity. When we were finally out in the nearly deserted street, standing in front of the town car she was taking home courtesy of Buzz, we hugged each other tightly. Further south, the lights of Times Square still gyrated.

At that hour of the morning the drive from midtown to the Village took practically no time. After heaving my duffel bag into the living room, I yanked off my boots and jeans and crawled into bed with my sweater still on.

I woke around nine the next morning, with my head aching slightly and my wrist still sore from my tumble. Gingerly I swung my legs out of bed and pulled on pajama bottoms. As I waited for coffee to brew, I plopped down in my home office—a former walk-in closet—and checked out a few Web sites just to make certain I wasn’t out of the loop on anything. The press had scrounged around everywhere for quotes on Devon—there was even a comment from the waxer who’d allegedly done her monthly Brazilian—but they’d turned up nothing of real interest.

I was now really in a waiting game. The autopsy had either been performed last night or was scheduled for this morning. And though a full toxicology screen would take days, even weeks, the police would surely issue some kind of preliminary report by the end of the day. Unless the results were totally ambiguous, I might at last know whether Devon had died from natural causes—or if she’d been the victim of foul play.

With coffee mug in hand, I located my phone to call Beau. I was yearning for a real conversation with him—and for the chance to see him. Since we’d started dating exclusively a few months ago, the most we’d ever been apart was three days, so this had been a real stretch. Though I’d only spoken to him for a couple of minutes yesterday, I’d sensed, as I’d indicated to Jessie, that our Sedona tiff was behind us. And that was a total relief. Earlier in the fall, I’d had to make a big romantic choice—between Beau and an actor named Chris Wickersham—and I’d never for a second regretted my decision. I felt enchanted by Beau—by his passion and creativity and slight air of mystery. But I was getting in deep, and I needed to be sure he was really committed.

“So you’re up,” he said, sounding really happy to hear my voice. “I was dying to call you but didn’t want to wake you.”

“I’m a little frayed around the edges, but the adrenaline rush is helping.”

“I checked out your Web story. Pretty incredible.”

“Maybe even more incredible is some of the stuff I didn’t put up there. I can’t wait to fill you in.”

“How about doing it at dinner tonight? I was thinking since you’d had such a rough weekend, I’d pamper you and cook dinner.”

“That sounds fantastic,” I said. “Unless something huge related to the case breaks, I should be able to leave Buzz at a decent time tonight.”

“Great. Just give me a heads-up when you know for sure.”

I felt like letting out a big sigh when I disconnected. Everything seemed back to normal.

I’d expected that my day would be busy, but in some ways it just sputtered along. I showered and then knocked on the door of my sixty-something next-door neighbor Landon, hoping to catch up, but there was no answer. Throughout the morning I made several calls to Detective Collinson’s office but didn’t reach him until noon, at which point he told me the autopsy wasn’t being performed until the afternoon and there would be no statement until tomorrow. Midafternoon, I dropped by the office, but discovered the typical anticlimactic day-after-closing scene. It was like walking into a party at midnight and finding nothing but empty plastic cups, wet potato chips plastered to the table, and a few people passed out on the couch.

I called Beau shortly afterward and let him know that there was no reason I couldn’t be at his place by seven.

“Great. You could probably stand to go to bed early tonight.”

“Yes, I could,” I said, laughing. I felt my cheeks begin to burn, just thinking about slipping between the sheets with him. I hit the gym on the way home from Buzz, showered again at home, and later grabbed a cab to head over to Chelsea.

Even though we’d only been apart a week or so, when Beau opened the door to his apartment, it felt as if it’d been much longer. His face was slightly tanned from the Arizona sun, and his hair, which he had been wearing longer now, seemed to have grown an inch in the time he was gone. I felt the jolt of surprise I’d experienced when I first saw him in September after he’d been in Turkey for weeks and weeks.

“Hey there,” he said in greeting. He gave me a long, sexy kiss and then wrapped one arm around me in a protective gesture. “You look pretty amazing for someone who has been snowbound with a dead body.”

Beau looked awfully good himself. He was wearing tight jeans, loafers, and a blue-and-white checked shirt, with the top two buttons undone. He smelled good too—that dusky, exotic scent that he always wore.

“I’m still a little shell-shocked, but just being back in Manhattan has helped.”

“Well, come in and let me pamper you. You can sit by the fire with a glass of wine while I finish dinner.”

“Fire?” I said.

I looked past him into the living room, and my eyes widened in surprise. There was indeed a fire burning in the fireplace. I’d been in Beau’s apartment a few dozen times through the fall, but it had never occurred to me that the fireplace worked. Up until my last visit, there’d been a large straw basket in there.

“You didn’t think I’d let you sit here on a cold winter night without a fire, did you?”

The glass of wine was already poured, and I did as instructed—sat on the sleek black sofa, sipping the French red. My eyes roamed the walls, to the photographs Beau had taken in far-off places like Istanbul and Hanoi, but they kept straying back to the freaking fire. A small knot started to form in my stomach. I guess in the back of my mind I’d assumed that like so many fireplaces in the city, it could no longer burn wood, though in truth I hadn’t ever really thought about it. Was it a symbol of something at the core of our relationship? That despite the fact that we’d dated exclusively for two and a half months, I didn’t really know Beau? Stop it, Bailey, I wanted to scream. You’re starting in again.

Dinner was lamb chops, roasted potatoes, and asparagus, served on the round table he used as a desk in a room off the living room. He’d set it with cloth napkins and candles. I am being pampered, I thought—seriously pampered. As we ate, I relayed all the gory details about the weekend. I also shared the gossipy tidbits—such as Cap’s reported lip lock with Devon—though I left out the part about Scott wanting three-way action with Jessie and me. Beau listened intently, leaning back in his chair at points, and sometimes shaking his head in disbelief.

“Wow, that—that sounds like a damn movie,” he said.

I had this momentary feeling that he’d been about to say, “Wow—that will teach you to go off to a house party for the weekend without me” and changed his mind, vowing like me to just leave the snippiness behind us.

“I know—lots of tension,” I said. “I won’t know until the police report, though, whether all that tension somehow led to Devon’s death.”

“And this person who knocked you down the stairs. If you had to make a guess, who do you think it was?”

“I don’t have a clue. The only sense I have is that it was a man—because there was a really heavy odor of sweat. Of course, anyone would be sweating after racing around the halls, but still the smell was so pronounced—”

“I’ve read a few pieces by Richard Parkin. He sounds like a pompous ass. Could he have been your sweat hog?”

“Maybe. Based on the amount of alcohol he’d had during the course of the day, it’s hard to picture him playing Zorro, but who knows? He certainly managed to keep up during a hike we took in the woods one morning.”

“Have you got any residual aches? I mean, maybe you should even see a doctor.”

“I think I’m okay—just a few minor bruises. And this fantastic dinner has totally taken my mind off it.”

He cleared the plates and returned a few minutes later with two full coffee mugs. But rather than sit back down himself, he came up behind me and laid his hands on either side of my neck.

“Would a head rub make it better or worse?” he asked from behind me. Though I couldn’t see him, I sensed him raising just one eyebrow in that intriguing way of his.

“Umm, better, I think,” I said, smiling.

He started with my neck and then moved up to my scalp, his slender but strong hands rubbing gently at first and then more firmly when it was clear I could handle it. Just having those hands on me again, and thinking of all the things they would certainly do later, made my breathing grow more shallow. I also felt a flush begin to creep up my chest.

The massage lasted a good ten minutes. I alternated between languidly relishing how nice it was to have my low-grade headache begin to subside and enjoying the wave of lust that was beginning to wash over me.

“Better?” Beau asked finally.

“Sooo much better.”

His fingers dropped from my head to my shoulders and then he slowly slid them down my chest, slipping them under my top and my bra until he had cupped both my breasts. His palms felt cold against my skin but exhilarating. I let out a moan as he began to knead my breasts, sometimes gently pinching my nipples between his fingers.

“Now that’s definitely taking the pain away,” I whispered.

With one stroke he grasped the bottom edge of my top in his hands and tugged it over my head. He reached down behind me, unhooked my bra, and pulled that over my head as well. Leaning forward, he kissed the side of my neck.

“Why don’t we go out into the living room?” he asked. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of ever seeing you naked by firelight, have I?”

He laid two more logs on the fire, flicked off the lights in the living room, and brought a blanket from the bedroom to lay on the floor. I unbuttoned his shirt, slid it off, and let it drop to the floor. When I started to reach for his jeans zipper, he pulled me toward him and began to kiss me, slipping his tongue in my mouth.

“I was almost useless at work today,” he said, pulling back. His skin glowed in the firelight. “I just kept thinking about all the things I wanted to do to you.”

He kissed me again, fiercely this time. I felt nearly ravenous for him. I reached for his zipper again, but he pushed my hand away and laid me on the blanket. Crouching, he tugged off my jeans and my thong, and then stepped out of his own jeans and underwear. The only sounds in the room were the crackle of the logs and our ragged breaths. I felt in an altered state as he began to kiss his way down my body and then parted my legs with his hands.

Sex had been good with us from the start, and it hadn’t yet lost its newness. At one point Beau dragged three throw pillows from the sofa and stacked them under my butt. It felt intoxicating to be so oddly elevated and free as he plunged deeply into me.

I slept straight through the night, completely exhausted. We woke at about eight and headed over to a little café in his neighborhood for a quick breakfast of coffee and croissants. Beau had a full day of editing ahead, followed by a business dinner, and he wanted to get an early start. Figuring Collinson wasn’t going to call me with the news, I wanted to begin hounding him as early as possible. It was just below freezing out, and Beau and I felt a shock of electricity as we kissed good-bye in front of the café.

“Keep me posted, okay?” Beau said.

“Absolutely.”

Though the walk home from Beau’s place to mine would take a half hour, I decided to go for it, snaking east and south through Chelsea and the western part of Greenwich Village. As I crossed Fifth Avenue, I checked my watch. Ten of nine. I dug for my BlackBerry and tried Collinson. To my surprise he not only answered but also sounded vaguely receptive to my call.

“We’re releasing a statement in just a short while,” he said. “But there’s no reason I can’t tell you now. Devon Barr died of heart failure.”

So my initial instinct had been right after all.

“Was it connected to an eating disorder?”

“It appears to be. There’s evidence she was purging. And her body weight was lower than normal.”

“What did she weigh exactly?”

“I don’t think there’s any reason you need to know the exact figure. But it seems she was suffering from an electrolyte imbalance.”

“I assume the autopsy also showed evidence of a pregnancy,” I stated calmly.

“Why do you ask that?” he said, clearly surprised.

“I hear she lost a baby last winter. I have a couple of sources.”

He took a moment to respond.

“I’m not really at liberty to say.”

But I knew from his hesitation that I’d been right.

“If that’s all, I need to be going,” he said.

“Just a couple more questions, please. You’ve been so helpful, and I really appreciate it. Do you have any idea yet who scratched all the doors—and why?”

“No, our investigation into that is ongoing.”

I wondered how ongoing it could be with all the players back in Manhattan.

“What about the missing ipecac? Do you think someone removed it in order to cover up the fact Devon was taking it?”

“That might be the case. There were traces of ipecac in her system, so yes, it appears she had it in her possession.”

Appears? Was the guy ever going to accept the fact that I had actually seen the bottle?

As I started to form another question, I heard Collinson clear his throat. Something else was on his mind.

“Ipecac wasn’t the only thing she’d been ingesting,” he said. “She’d been taking a diuretic, too.”

“You found traces in her system of that, too?”

“Yes, a drug called Lasix—the generic name is furosemide. And, off the record, we found traces of it in the water bottle on her nightstand.”

“Is it something you mix with water?” I asked.

“No, it’s in pill form. But she obviously crushed it and mixed it with the water.”

“I wonder why she would have done that.”

“Maybe she didn’t like taking pills. Or didn’t like the taste.”

“But it would still taste funny in the wa—”

And then suddenly I heard Sandy’s words echoing in my mind: Devon had told her that the bottled water had tasted funny. Even when they’d bought her a different brand.

The realization nearly made my eyes bug out. Maybe someone other than Devon had put the diuretic in her water.