So Pretty It Hurts

Chapter 11

Cap’s comment flabbergasted me. The guy radiated virility. And he was married to a younger woman who seemed like she’d demand her fair share in the sack.

“Oh,” I said awkwardly. I mean, what was I supposed to do—ask him point blank what was up (or not up) with his package?

“You don’t believe me?” he asked.

“No, that’s not true. I’m just trying to process the information.”

“Wait here,” he said unexpectedly and slid off his stool. Oh, boy, I thought, he’s not going to drop trou and show me what’s the matter? But instead he strode toward the door of the still-empty restaurant and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He was calling someone. I hoped it wasn’t a libel lawyer.

While he spoke to the person on the other end, several red-nosed customers hurried in, looking happy to have escaped the cold. What in the world was he doing? I wondered. Cap’s guest would surely be here any second, and we wouldn’t have any more time to talk.

“All right,” he said after returning to the bar. “I made arrangements for you to speak to Whitney—right now.”

He grabbed a cocktail napkin from a stack toward the back edge of the bar and scrawled down his address with a chubby Montblanc pen.

“Whitney?”

“Yes, she’s waiting at our apartment—and she can explain everything.”

“Why are you going to so much trouble? One minute you’re threatening to sue my ass off, and the next minute you’re sending me up to your apartment.”

“Because I can’t allow you to go down this ridiculous road. Whitney will tell you what’s going on and why it would have been impossible for me and Devon to be having an affair.”

A few minutes later I was in an overheated cab, headed toward the West 60s. I couldn’t believe this latest turn of events—but I certainly wasn’t going to pass it up. The apartment turned out to be in a supermodern condo building near Lincoln Center, the kind with a huge, gleaming brass and marble lobby. My ears popped a little as the elevator hurled me toward the forty-third floor.

I didn’t really have time to envision what the apartment would look like, but if I had, I probably would have guessed it’d be a nice, pretty spacious two-bedroom, purchased in this kind of building because you get more for your money here than in a fancier address on Park or Fifth Avenue. I would have been wrong. As soon as Whitney opened the door, I could see enough from the gallery-style entranceway to know that I was in a jaw-dropping apartment that took up most of the floor. The air was fragrant with the smell of something sweet baking somewhere on the premises.

“Come into the living room,” Whitney said curtly and turned abruptly, suggesting I should follow. She was wearing brown tweed slacks, short-heeled leather boots, and a satiny off-white blouse with so much sheen I could almost see my pores in it. Her blond hair was pulled back with a brown suede headband. More Westchester County than Texas today.

The room she led me to was huge, large enough to include several seating areas, and was decorated in cream, ginger, and minty green tones. The walls were covered with faux Impressionist landscape paintings, and the coffee and end tables were loaded up with expensive-looking accessories—silver bowls, alabaster balls, and books about Tuscany and the Aegean Sea.

But none of that really mattered anyway because the best thing to gaze at was the view. There were floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the open living/dining area. It felt almost as if we were in the cockpit of a plane.

“I’m only doing this, you realize, because Cap asked me to,” Whitney said, taking a seat.

“Well, I’m very curious to hear what Cap wanted you to share with me,” I said. I took a seat, too, though as Whitney’s eyes followed my movements, I sensed she was worried I might stain the fabric.

“Cap is horrified about what you’re suggesting—that either one of us had anything to do with Devon’s death,” she said. “Admittedly, Devon could be difficult, but she’d been Cap’s client for many years, and he was very fond of her. And though I wouldn’t have called Devon and me—what’s the expression everyone uses today, bff’s?—we had a good rapport. In fact, we went to a spa together several weekends ago.”

“Nothing kills a good rapport like sexual jealousy, though?”

“Cap was not having an affair with Devon.”

“Because he had some kind of sexual problem?”

“First and foremost because we’re very much in love. But, besides the point, is the fact that he couldn’t physically anyway. It’s horribly embarrassing for us to have to talk to you about this but if we don’t, you’ll print ugly speculations in that dreadful magazine of yours.”

I could see her cheeks coloring up as she spoke. She pressed one of her hands to her chest.

“Are you okay?”

“I have asthma. And it can flare up when things become unpleasant.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I said. “But I’m really just interested in the truth, not idle speculation. I want to get to the bottom of things.”

She cast her eyes downward as the tip of her small pink tongue slipped out and touched her top lip. Finally she glanced back up at me.

“Cap has lupus. He’s been suffering from it for over a year. We are very hopeful that with God’s help and the best doctors in New York, his condition will improve. And right now all the signs are pointing to a full recovery.”

“I’m happy to hear that.”

“But until that recovery is complete, Cap can’t fully function as he once did—because of a combination of the disease and the medication. There’s no way Cap could have been having an affair with Devon. It’s not physically possible.”

I flashed on a phrase I’d once read in Gloss: emotional adultery. Or what you could call head sex. You form an intense bond with someone who isn’t your partner, and though it may not involve a physical relationship, you share your deepest feelings and secrets with that person and eventually hope to take it to the next level.

“Isn’t it possible for two people to be smitten with each other without necessarily consummating it?” I asked. “Some of the great love stories in history would fit into that category.”

She made a sound that was something between a laugh and a snicker.

“That wouldn’t be Cap,” she said. “He’s a very sexual man.”

“I appreciate your candor,” I told her. “Like I said, I’m just trying to figure out what really happened. Certain aspects of the weekend just seem disturbing to me.”

“What do you mean by disturbing?”

“Well, for one, someone ran around scratching our bedroom doors with a branding iron during the middle of the night.”

“I have no idea who played that awful prank,” Whitney said. “Maybe someone with a mean sense of humor—like Richard Parkin.”

“That’s not all that worries me. As I told Cap, I’m concerned about how Devon’s anorexia seemed to spiral downward so quickly.”

Whitney pinched her lips together for a moment before speaking.

“You asked about a possible eating disorder this weekend,” she said. “For obvious reasons I couldn’t be candid at the time. But now that it’s out in the open, there’s no need for me to beat around the bush. Devon’s anorexia had actually been rearing its head again for several months now, and Cap and I were doing our best to try to deal with it. The main reason I took her to the spa was to encourage her to eat. I thought if she knew the food was nutritional and low-fat, she’d be less resistant.”

“As a reporter, you did a story on anorexia, right?”

Her eyes widened slightly—in surprise, it seemed. Cap obviously hadn’t mentioned on the phone that I was aware of this.

“Actually, yes. And I knew from doing my story that many girls relapse. Cap and I were just hoping that we could nip it in the bud.”

“Why do you think it reared its head again?”

She sighed and leaned slightly back into a small herd of throw pillows behind her.

“They say stress triggers it,” she said, her clear blue eyes holding mine. “And Devon was stressed lately. She was . . . well, worried about what the future held for her.”

“What if I told you someone might have helped her anorexia along?”

“Helped it along?” Whitney said, irritably. “What are you talking about? How could someone help it along?”

“You did the story on the disease. You know as well as I do that certain things can exacerbate the problem.”

“The only thing exacerbating the problem was Devon herself. Like I told you, she was anxious about her career. She may have looked all nonchalant about things, but she wasn’t. With her modeling career winding down, she needed that album to be a success.”

“If she only had a few years left in her modeling career, why get pregnant?” I asked.

I saw her pull back ever so slightly, like Cap, clearly surprised I knew.

“Devon was impetuous,” Whitney said sharply. “She did what seemed right for her at the moment, without thinking about the consequences . . .”

Her voice trailed off, but I waited, hoping my silence would encourage her to continue. She looked away, gathering her thoughts, and then returned those nearly translucent eyes to me.

“And one day,” she added, “she decided a baby was what she wanted. To be honest, I think it had to do with her dog dying. She’d had this little Pomeranian for years, and she was crushed when it passed early last year. But rather than buy another dog, she developed a ferocious case of baby fever. She wanted a baby simply to have something love her unconditionally.”

“Do you think she would have tried again?”

She looked off again, as if thinking. “Possibly,” she replied.

“Of course, conceiving would have been tough with her eating disorder,” I said.

“I’d really prefer not to speculate,” Whitney said.

“What can you tell me about the other houseguests?” I said. “Do you think Devon had an issue with any of them?”

“Issues? They were her friends. That’s why she’d invited them.”

“But what about Christian? Cap said there were some problems with the modeling agency.”

“Nothing that couldn’t be addressed. You know what it seems like to me? That you’re tryin’ to get blood from a stone. Is that how you’ve made your mark as a so-called journalist?” She clenched her hands in her lap, and I could tell that the irritation she’d been mostly attempting to suppress was starting to shoot up to the surface. Time to cut my losses.

“No, like I said, I’m just hoping to learn the truth. Why don’t I say goodbye now? I appreciate how helpful you’ve been.”

She led me back through the apartment to the entrance gallery. She seemed distracted suddenly, rather than simply anxious for my departure. Was she jumping ahead mentally to the next thing she needed to whip up for her cookbook? Was she thinking about Cap and filling him in? I couldn’t tell what was tugging her attention away.

“Will there be a funeral for Devon?” I asked as we reached the door.

“Yes, on Saturday. It’s going to be very private—in that sad little town she grew up in out in Pennsylvania.”

“Did her mother plan it?”

“Yes. Sherrie supposedly sobered up just long enough to make a few decisions. Of course, there will be a big memorial service here sometime in the next couple of weeks. A chance for all her New York friends to honor her memory.”

“Speaking of her New York friends, do you have a number for Tory?” If Cap hadn’t been having an affair with Devon, I needed to focus on the other houseguests, and I had no direct way of reaching Tory.

“Why Tory?”

“I just want to follow up on a conversation I had with her this weekend.”

She sighed.

“Wait here. I do have a number for her, since she was pressuring Cap this weekend to represent her.”

She disappeared somewhere in the apartment. While she was gone, I glanced around, studying the place in a way I hadn’t been able to when we’d been talking. On the hall table were almost a dozen silver-framed photographs of Cap and Whitney—the two of them lounging on a boat deck, laughing at various black-tie events, sitting with a group of friends at a café.

There was no mistaking their connection. Buzz constantly analyzed celebrity body language, and though it occasionally seemed like a stretch, much of it made sense on a gut level. Anyone looking at those photos would attest to how tight Whitney and Cap’s bond seemed to be. They backed up Whitney’s insistence that Cap had been faithful to her. I was going to have to have another talk with Jane. She may have lied to me about Cap and Devon, and I needed to know why.

With Tory’s number in hand, I flagged a cab and headed for Buzz. I lay my head against the back seat and tried to wrestle my thoughts to the ground. If Cap and Whitney were telling the truth, it meant Cap hadn’t murdered Devon in a crime of passion and Whitney hadn’t done so out of sexual jealousy. But either one of them could have had another motive. Perhaps Cap had been embezzling money from Devon and was freaked he was about to be found out.

With Cap and Whitney off the hit list for now, though, there were others I needed to focus on. Tory, for one. It was interesting what Whitney had said about Tory wanting Cap as her manager. I wondered how much it bugged her that she hadn’t reached supermodel status the way Devon had. If she’d been the one who added the Lasix to Devon’s water, the reason actually may have been twofold: envy over Devon’s career and jealousy over Tommy’s renewed interest in her.

And speaking of Tommy, how much had Devon’s game-playing disturbed him? Maybe he’d made a move on Devon during the weekend, only to discover that Devon didn’t truly want him back—she’d just been playing with his head. That could make a man with a short fuse mad.

But once again I considered the wrinkle in the idea of Tommy as a killer, or Tory either. Whoever had put diuretic pills in Devon’s water must have devised the plan beforehand and brought Lasix with them. Unless, of course, they had it in their possession for medical reasons or had discovered it on the premises. I wondered if Ralph had high blood pressure.

There was also Jane to think about. If Jane had lied about Cap and Devon, then why? What was her reason for wanting to cast suspicion on Cap? Because she was the guilty one?

I also needed to explore Devon’s problem with her modeling agency. Did it involve Christian? Had Devon threatened to make trouble for him?

The Buzz office was quiet when I arrived. Jessie was out on a story, and Leo was staring at a screen full of shots of Suri Cruise.

“Anything going on here?” I asked.

“Not that I’m in the loop on. I’m too busy working on photos for a chart on Suri’s shoe obsession. From what I can tell so far, she has about seven thousand pairs.”

After dumping my bag and popping my head in Nash’s door to say I was around if he needed me, I checked my voice mail and found to my surprise that Richard Parkin had left a message. I hadn’t expected him to stay in touch. Of course, since he was going to write his own story for Vanity Fair, he was probably sniffing around to see what I knew.

As I punched in Richard’s phone number, a thought flitted across my mind. Richard looked like a poster boy for hypertension. Could he have a prescription for Lasix? He didn’t have a motive—at least that I knew of—but someone could have pinched it from his room. After all, there’d been no way for guests to lock their rooms when they left them.

“Thank you for calling back,” he said, all British charm and surprisingly sober sounding for this deep into the day. “I just wondered how you were surviving. I’ve been following your Web postings—nice job.”

“Thank you. It’s been a little crazy the last day or two.”

“Still aching?”

“Pardon me?”

“You took that very nasty spill.”

“All better,” I said, deciding to spare him a description of the yellow-and-purple mark that had now spread over most of the left cheek of my ass. “How are things on your end? Did you decide to tackle this story, too?”

He paused a beat.

“Actually, I may not do it after all,” he confessed.

“Really. How come?”

“I’ve got a pretty full plate right now. And frankly, as I poked around, I’ve found Devon’s life about as exciting as a boiled ham sandwich—without the honey mustard. Oh, she was a supermodel with a dirt-poor past and that’s got a Dickensian ring to it, but there’s nothing particularly fresh about her version.”

“I take it you’ve seen what the police released about her death.”

“Yes. Her ticker stopped ticking. Won’t the world be a sad place without her?”

Gee, he hadn’t been a fan, had he?

“What if someone really wasn’t so sad to see her gone?” I asked.

Another pause.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“What if her death wasn’t really accidental?”

“Have you dug up something you’re not telling me, Ms. Weggins?”

“No, just thinking out loud,” I said.

“Oh, come now, Bailey. I can tell you’ve got something. Aren’t you going to be nice and share, one journalist to another?”

“There just seemed to be a lot of tension this weekend. And I was shoved down the stairs. Stuff like that always arouses my curiosity.”

“I see. Well, let me know if you want to brainstorm. I’d be happy to assist.”

As soon as I hung up, I tried the number Whitney had given me for Tory. She answered, though I could barely hear her thanks to the pounding music in the background.

“It’s Bailey Weggins,” I said loudly. “I need to talk to you. I have some very important information I think you’d want to hear.”

“About what?” she shouted over the music.

“I’d prefer to tell you in person, and I know you’ll be interested. It’s about Devon.”

“I’m on a job right now. I can’t talk.”

“What time do you finish? I could meet you.”

Even with the music I heard her sigh.

“All right,” she said wearily. “You can meet me at six.” She quickly rattled off the name and address of the studio—it was in the Meatpacking District—and then cut off without a good-bye.

After leaving messages for Jane on her cell phone and Christian at First Models, I researched Devon Barr’s “sad” little hometown—which turned out to be Pine Grove, Pennsylvania—because more than likely Nash would want me to check out the scene at the funeral service on Saturday. And finally I reviewed tomorrow’s TV and radio plan with one of the PR people. In addition to the Today show, they’d secured a lot of other media. Mentally I tried to place the one wool suit I owned.

Just after five Jessie blew in, her cheeks red from the cold and her eyes wide with excitement.

“You’re not going to believe the info I have,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “We need to talk in private.”

I followed her to a conference room toward the back of the floor.

“What’s going on?” I asked as she quickly shut the door.

“Guess what our ornery friend Jane has been up to. She’s apparently planning to write a tell-all book on Devon and has been secretly peddling the proposal for weeks.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“From a contact I have in the book biz. I was trying to wangle some info from her on a whole different subject, and it came up because she’d read I was one of the infamous houseguests last weekend. Though her company saw the proposal, they passed on it.”

“But wouldn’t Jane have signed some kind of confidentiality agreement when she went to work for Devon?”

“You’d think. But this editor told me that because Devon had such trouble keeping assistants, in the end she didn’t make Jane sign one.”

“Did anyone end up buying the book?”

“The chick told me she’s not sure. She said she’d heard Jane was having a hard time placing it.”

“Because?”

“According to this girl, there wasn’t much there. I mean, Jane had only been with Devon for nine months, so it’s not as if there were a ton of secrets she had firsthand knowledge of. Plus, let’s face it—Devon was kind of a bore. She liked to bitch out her assistants and date skinny rockers, but hey, what else is new?”

I stared off, my mind racing.

“What?” Jessie asked. “You’ve got that Bailey-Weggins-has-a-dangerous-idea look on your face.”

“Maybe Devon’s life was kind of a bore when she was alive, but now that she’s dead, it’s a bit more interesting, right? A publisher might be suddenly eager for a book on Devon that they could rush to press.”

I quickly filled Jessie in on what I’d learned this morning from Detective Collinson and how it fit with what Sandy had shared about the funny taste of the water.

“Omigod,” Jessie muttered. “Are you saying that Jane killed Devon so that she’d have a better chance of selling her book?”

“It’s just a thought. A crazy one, but someone in that house had a motive. I’m almost sure of it.”

She started to lob more questions at me, but glancing at my watch, I saw that I needed to hightail it out of there for my meeting with Tory. I told her I’d catch up with her later.

“Just one more thing,” Jessie said. “Everything still good with Beau?”

I smiled. “Yeah, all good.”

Because of how cold it was outside, there was tons of snarky cab competition, and it took me fifteen minutes to flag one down. Then I was stuck in traffic. I used the time to check voicemail. I discovered that while I’d been with Jessie, Beau had left a message saying he’d be tied up for dinner until about ten but he’d love to see me afterward.

I made it downtown just in time. The photo studio turned out to be in an old brick building that had once probably contained small factories but had since been gutted to create large, loftlike spaces. I took the elevator to the fifth floor and found myself in a huge lobby with at least four photo studios spilling off from it. There were leather-backed chairs and a small bar in the waiting area, with an old-fashioned popcorn maker on the counter and a cluster of guys in jeans and hoodies talking aimlessly. Several messengers moved around on the periphery, lugging stuffed black garment bags. All of sudden a huge dog—a mastiff, I thought—trotted by itself out of one of the studios and headed down a hallway.

“May I help you?” the receptionist asked. I noticed she had last week’s Buzz opened in front of her.

“Studio Two?”

“Are they expecting you?”

“Yes, I’m here to see Tory Hartwick.”

She pointed to a studio just across from me. Thankfully there was still music emanating from the open doorway, so the shoot obviously hadn’t ended yet.

As I crossed the pockmarked cement floor, my BlackBerry rang. Thinking it might be one of the other houseguests I’d left a message for, I dug it quickly out of my bag. Nash’s name showed on the screen. Something big must have happened.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“Where are you?” he asked brusquely. Nash could be moody, but I’d never heard him speak to me in such an abrupt tone.

“Downtown, about to do an interview for the Devon Barr story. Why?”

“You need to come back here. Right now.”

“You sound pissed. Is anything the matter?”

“Yeah, something’s the matter. Your job is in serious jeopardy.”