So Pretty It Hurts (10 page)

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.

Chapter 10

I
blurted out what I’d learned from Sandy, nearly tripping over my words.

Collinson didn’t comment right away, and I could almost hear his thoughts racing over the phone.

“So you’re suggesting
what
?” he said finally.

“That someone else, not Devon, put the diuretic into the water.”

“But just because she said the water tasted funny is no reason to think someone else added the diuretic. Ms. Barr was apparently a very demanding woman. She may have decided she disliked the taste before she even added anything to the bottle. And it all fits with the pattern. Taking a diuretic is not uncommon for someone with an eating disorder.”

“Did you
find
any Lasix among her things?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

If he
had
found it, I thought, he would have told me, because that bolstered his position.

“But don’t you think something odd is going on?” I asked. “What about the bottle of ipecac disappearing?”

“I’m not saying there was no Lasix among her possessions, but if someone got rid of the ipecac to protect Ms. Barr’s reputation, don’t you think they might have done the same with the Lasix?”

“Well . . .”

“And
ipecac
is hardly something someone could slip into her food or drinks. She would have had to take that voluntarily. We know she was taking that, so it makes sense she was also ingesting a diuretic.”

“It just seems odd to me—her complaining about the water. I hope you’ll look into it more.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. They sounded uppity, like I knew more than he did.

“I assure you that we will be examining every angle. Good day.”

I phoned an update into the
Buzz
Web site and told them to flesh it out with the official statement the police had released online. Then I scurried across the street, ducked into a coffee shop, and ordered a cappuccino. I needed more caffeine to help me think.

Though I’d known foul play was a possibility, the info from Collinson was still pretty stunning. I thought back to the weekend and the several occasions I’d seen Devon with a bottle of water. When she wasn’t taking a slug from one, she’d set it down nearby. It probably would have been possible for any of the houseguests to drop something into one of the water bottles without being noticed. And what a vicious cycle that would have created. The diuretic would have made Devon thirsty, leading her to drink more water, which would have meant more of the diuretic in her system and then more thirst. With each sip, she was adding greater pressure to her system—already taxed by her low weight and vomiting.

I didn’t buy Collinson’s theory that Devon had dissolved the Lasix in water because she didn’t like the taste of the pills. She drank bottled water all day, so why would she want to muck up the taste of
that
? Taking a pill would have amounted to only a brief unpleasantness. Besides, the girl had swallowed ipecac, and that surely tasted like hell.

If someone
had
added the diuretic, they did so knowing that Devon was struggling with an eating disorder and this would help push her over the edge. They may have even known that Devon was on ipecac. Is that why the ipecac had been removed? To decrease overall suspicion?

Two names popped into mind right away as possible suspects. The first was Cap. He was supposedly having an affair with Devon. And Devon might have been putting pressure on him to fess up to Whitney. Once again I replayed the words she’d spoken to him on the deck Friday night: “You
have
to tell her. You said you would, but you haven’t.” And though he’d promised he
would
“tell her,” when a man drags his heels, it’s generally a sign that he’s not fully committed to the plan at hand. Maybe all Cap had wanted was a fling with his supermodel client and he had never intended to ditch Whitney—and all those plates of pralines. Fearful of losing Whitney if she learned the truth, he’d decided to remove Devon from the picture.

Maybe he’d even convinced himself that he wasn’t actually murdering Devon. He was just hurrying along the inevitable.

Of course, the other possibility was that Whitney herself had done it. Perhaps she’d gotten wind of the affair and decided to eliminate her rival. That might explain Devon’s meltdown in the woods and her concern for her own safety. She could have sensed that Whitney was onto her and Cap, and truly feared for her life. I wondered if I should now tell Collinson what I’d learned about the affair.

After finishing my cappuccino, I hurried home and went immediately online, where I looked up Lasix. It was what was called a loop diuretic, which prevented the body from absorbing too much salt. It was used in the treatment of hypertension and congestive heart failure—and to prevent thoroughbred racehorses from bleeding through the nose during races. But there was a downside. By forcing all that salt out through the urine, it could lead to a depletion of potassium—and an electrolyte imbalance. One of the first symptoms of a potassium deficiency was dizziness—which would explain why Devon seemed tipsy that night. She hadn’t been drunk at the table. She’d been in danger.

The bottom line: giving Lasix to someone with anorexia—who was already low on potassium—was comparable to giving a person on the edge of a cliff a hard shove.

And it wouldn’t be all that difficult for someone to lay his or her hands on it. Maybe the killer suffered from high blood pressure or knew someone who did.

From my desk drawer I dug out a clean composition book and bent it open to the first page. I’m pretty much wedded to my laptop, but I find that while I’m working on a story, making notes and asking questions with a number-two pencil in a notebook kick-starts my brain nicely.

I jotted down the names of all the houseguests and considered them one by one. Besides Cap and Whitney, Tory grabbed my interest. After all, she’d morphed into a cross between a bitch and a banshee over the dirty flirting taking place between Devon and Tommy. There was also a chance she’d known what Devon was up to with the ipecac—that stuff was probably common knowledge in the world of modeling. But she’d appeared to be on good terms with Devon when the weekend
began
, so why would she have come armed with a diuretic? Unless she had it in her own stay-skinny arsenal.

There were other possibilities. Jane clearly hated Devon. And she knew she might have an eating disorder. I couldn’t dismiss Tommy either. Devon had toyed with him. He’d made that comment to me about her being a tease. Maybe she’d jerked him around one too many times.

As for the others present that weekend, none seemed to have any obvious motive for pushing Devon over the edge, but that didn’t mean that they lacked one. For the moment, though, I was going to concentrate on Cap and Whitney—because that’s where the most likely motives lay.

I thought suddenly of Devon’s pregnancy. She’d conceived a little over a year ago. I wondered if the supposed affair between Devon and Cap had been going on for at least that long—and if the baby was his. “You’ve got to tell her” might have actually referred to the pregnancy. Devon may have been urging Cap to come clean about their situation for months and had finally reached the point of being seriously pissed off with her lazy-butt lover.

After finding a number for Cap’s agency through 411, I called his office. The girl who answered exuded the kind of confidence you can only possess if you are twenty-two, wear designer shoes, and have never paid for a drink in your entire life. I gave my name and asked if Cap was free to speak to me.

“Mr. Darby isn’t available,” she said, suggesting with her tone of utter disinterest that as far as I was concerned, he would never
ever
be available.

“Just put me through to his voice mail then,” I said.

“He doesn’t use voice mail,” she replied. She said it with distaste and disbelief at my suggestion, as if I’d just urged her to check out the new winter shoe shipment at Payless.

“Then please tell him to call me,” I said. “It involves Devon Barr and is extremely important.” I’d added some haughtiness to my tone, thinking that might catch her interest.

Now it was time for a little background research on Cap and Whitney. An Internet search was hardly going to tell me if either of them had the potential to be a devious murderer, but certain details about their pasts might hint at character, temperament, and needs.

I started with Cap. I couldn’t find a whole lot, but his name turned up in a few places and I found one short profile of him in a trade magazine. He had practiced law for a few years and then worked his way into managing talent. His clients included some actors but mostly models. Devon, as Richard had suggested, seemed to be the biggest star he managed, and her death would certainly be a blow to his income. If he was the one who had murdered her, he would have known he’d be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

There wasn’t much about his personal life, but I learned that his marriage to Whitney was his second. He’d met her just over four years ago, two years after divorcing, and married her within a year. He had no children from either this marriage or the first.

When it came time to check out Whitney, I started with her own Web site. Scott had introduced her as Whitney Darby, but over the weekend I’d learned that professionally at least she used her maiden name—Lee. The bio on the site described Whitney Lee as a motivational speaker, cookbook author (though the book
Elegant Texas Food
wasn’t slated to be released until next fall), and a media star, which seemed a stretch considering she hadn’t had a regular job in TV since she left the Dallas/Fort Worth market. Her three-year stint at the television station—where she’d covered food and health and won two local Emmys—was described in the kind of glowing terms you’d reserve for someone like Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters.

Now it was time to dig for info that hadn’t been sugarcoated by Whitney herself. But there wasn’t a ton to be found. Not surprisingly, the station’s Web site had nothing on her anymore, and there were no recent profiles of her. What I did find were pictures. She and Cap apparently relished being seen at major social events, and she liked to dress up, showing off her jewels and, as Richard had suggested, that proud bosom of hers. She’d been shot a fair amount by society photographers like Patrick McMullan.

I found the number for her former TV station on their Web site, and after calling it, asked for the PR department. I told the person who answered that I was a writer doing a profile of Cap Darby and his lovely wife Whitney Lee and just wanted to verify a few facts. It was
sort
of true. And it wasn’t like I was going around impersonating Johnny Depp’s personal assistant just so I could snare a better table at a restaurant.

The woman who answered drew a complete blank at the mention of Whitney’s name.

“But that doesn’t mean anything,” she explained in a thick Texas accent. “I’ve only been here nine months. Let me connect you to my associate, Skyler McKenzie. She should know. She’s been here six or seven years.”

“Which magazine?” Skyler asked after I’d done my spiel again.

“
Gloss
,” I lied. It was actually a double lie because not only did I no longer work there but they’d never have done a piece on a hope-to-be-famous-if-my-book-ever-sells type like Whitney.

“Whitney was a reporter here for several years. If you want the exact dates, you’ll have to speak to our HR department instead.”

You
never
wanted to be banished to HR when you were writing a story. They were the Gobi Desert of information because, fearful of lawsuits, they refused to cough up a freaking thing.

“Oh, I have the dates, so that won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’d just love to include a few highlights of her career, and I thought your office would be best for that. I know she covered mostly food and health. Is that correct?”

I didn’t really give a rat’s ass about the highlights of Whitney’s career, but I wanted to work my way into a conversation about the woman, hoping to score a few juicy details. I heard the rhythmic clicking sound of Skyler’s nails on computer keys as she pulled up info, but I had sensed from her tone that she might have known Whitney personally.

“Yes, that’s right. Food, entertainment. And health stories during her last year.”

“Any examples? It would be great to have a few for my story.”

“Lots of restaurant openings. A segment on which area church served the best flapjacks at their Sunday breakfast. As for health, well, let’s see. There were stories on back pain . . . Botox injections—and a two-parter on allergies.”

She’d listed everything in a fairly deadpan tone, but there was a soupçon of sarcasm when she added the title of the allergy series:
The Mite That Roared
. I had the feeling Skyler hadn’t been a fan of Whitney’s.

“I know that Whitney won two Emmys. Can you tell me what those were for?”

“Those would be
local
Emmys, you realize?”

Eww, she really
hadn’t
liked Whitney, had she?

“Of course. But I’d still like to know what they were for.”

There was a pause as, I assumed, she was scrolling down her computer screen.

“One was for the series on allergies,” she said. “And the other? Umm, okay here it is. She did a two-part series on eating disorders.”

My jaw fell open in total surprise. I couldn’t even find words to respond.

“You know, like anorexia—and bulimia,” she said, as if I might be confused about what she was referring to.

“Yes, sorry. I was just considering what you said. Do you know if that was a topic of special interest to her?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know.” I heard papers rustle on her desk—she was growing itchy to end the call.

“Would you be able to send me a link to the eating disorder series?” I asked.

“That’s going to involve some effort,” she said.

“I’m sorry to put you to so much trouble, but it will help me add a nice splash of color to the story.” Jeez, I was sounding like Martha Stewart.