So Pretty It Hurts (11 page)

After sighing audibly, Skyler promised to email me the link when she could.

I tried Cap’s office again, and this time I matched his assistant snip for snip. “I really need to speak with Mr. Darby,” I told her. “Tell him that critical information about Devon’s death has come into my possession.”

That, I thought, ought to inspire a response. And it did. Ten minutes later Cap returned the call.

“If you’re calling to tell me about how Devon died, I already know. I’ve been in touch with the police today.”

“No, it’s something else. Something very important—and very private.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“I’d prefer not to discuss it on the phone. Can you meet me in person?”

“Why so cloak-and-dagger? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain when I see you.”

“I’m meeting an associate for lunch on West Fifty-fifth Street. I’ll arrive early—at noon—and you can meet me there.” He gave me the name of the restaurant, not bothering with good-bye.

Worried about being late, I ended up at the restaurant ten minutes before Cap was slated to show. It was a small Italian place with mango-colored walls, just below street level. It was the kind of restaurant you saw in old movies about Manhattan. I wondered if he’d picked it for his lunch because he’d be under the radar with his guest compared to places like Michael’s and The Four Seasons.

Rather than sit at one of the tables, I slid onto a stool at the small bar and ordered a sparkling water. There weren’t any diners yet, and waiters moved silently about the room, needlessly adjusting fan-shaped mango-colored napkins and shrugging their shoulders at no one in particular.

Cap arrived just a few minutes later. He slipped off his camel-colored cashmere coat and turned it over to the coat-check girl. After spotting me at the bar, he made his way over.

“A pinot grigio,” he said to the bartender, lifting himself onto the stool next to me. He was wearing a perfectly fitted navy suit and crisp blue shirt, no tie. Though I’d been aware of his confident, powerful aura all weekend, the suit turned it up several notches.

“I appreciate you meeting me on such short notice,” I said. “And by the way, everything’s off the record.”

“I don’t have time for small talk, so please get right to the point,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “I don’t have a super good feeling about this past weekend. I’m wondering if someone who knew about Devon’s eating disorder found a way to push her over the edge.”

“You mean egged her
on
?” he said sharply. “Encouraged her to be even thinner?”

I cocked my head. “Maybe,” I said. I hadn’t considered that idea, but regardless, I decided not to spell out my own theory in detail; it would give too much away.

“Why would someone do something horrible like that?”

“Because they wanted Devon out of the picture.”

“And something tells me you’ve got a theory about who did the pushing.”

“Actually, I don’t have a
specific
person in mind. But I do have a specific concern—and it involves you.”

His strong jaw clenched visibly.

“I know your magazine specializes in the preposterous,” he said after a moment, “but you seemed too smart to engage in that sort of thing. I hope to God you’re not implying that I had anything to do with Devon’s death. Besides my personal feelings toward her, she was my most successful client.”

“People often lose sight of one advantage when something more important is at stake.”

“You’ve totally lost me. What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“You were having an affair with Devon, weren’t you?”

He pulled his whole body back in surprise and his full, soft mouth dropped open. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just for show.

“You can’t be
serious
,” he exclaimed. “What on earth gave you that ridiculous idea?”

“I saw the two of you together—out on the deck on Friday night.”

“
So
? She was my client. I often had to speak to her privately.”

“It didn’t sound like a business discussion.”

“Were you
spying
on us?” He took a distracted sip of his wine and shook his head in disgust.

“I headed out to the deck that first night, not knowing you were there, and I heard a few snippets. It sounded as if she was pressuring you to talk to Whitney.”

He scrunched up his face as if trying to recall something.

“You said, ‘I
will
tell her, but the timing has got to be right,’ ” I said, prodding him.

His eyes shot back toward me.

“I did agree to tell someone something, but it wasn’t Whitney we were talking about. It was Barbara Dern, the head of Devon’s modeling agency. There were a few issues with the agency, and Devon wanted me to approach her about them. I was worried about the timing of doing it immediately before the album came out. I thought it could blow up in her face.”

“Okay, but that’s not the only evidence I have. You were seen kissing Devon in the woods.”

“What? That’s
preposterous
.” That was the second time Cap had used the word. “Who’s telling you this garbage?” There was nearly smoke coming out of the guy’s ears, and a few waiters were shooting looks in our direction.

“One of the other guests saw you talking to Devon in the woods on Saturday. You leaned down and kissed her. Later I saw her crying nearby, and she told me she was frightened.”

“I admit I talked to Devon privately in the woods that Saturday. I went looking for her to follow up on our conversation from the night before. But I certainly didn’t kiss her. I can’t believe someone is telling you these lies. Are you actually suggesting that I was having an affair with Devon, and when things weren’t going right, I decided to kill her by exacerbating her eating disorder?”

“That’s one possibility. The other is that
Whitney
did it. She may have discovered the affair. Did you know that when she was a television reporter, she did a story on anorexia? That means she’s familiar with the physical and psychological aspects of an eating disorder.”

“She also did a story on Middle Eastern food, but that doesn’t make her a damn terrorist. You better not be planning to print these total distortions. In my job I know an awful lot about libel and slander, and you’d be stepping on dangerous ground.”

“I’m not planning on reporting any of this at the moment,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I had tried not to become flustered during the conversation, but it was tough, considering how agitated Cap was. “Like I said earlier, I had some concerns and I wanted to discuss them with you. If Devon was murdered, I want to know about it.”

“Who said I was kissing Devon in the woods? I want the name.”

“I was told in confidence.”

“You ought to know that you’re dealing with a complete and utter liar.”

“Were you privy to the fact that Devon was pregnant last year?”

His eyes registered awareness. But he jerked his head, a little surprised, it appeared, that
I
was privy to that fact.

“Yes, we knew. In fact, part of what I was doing in the woods was comforting Devon about that. She wanted a baby, and the miscarriage had been hard on her. But Whitney had talked to the doctor recently, and he was certain that there was every chance Devon could conceive again. I told Devon that. And don’t ask me who the father was. That’s private information.”

I didn’t say anything, just met his eyes and didn’t let go.

“Good God, you’re not thinking
I’m
the father, are you?” he said “If you start making ridiculous accusations in print about me, you’ll regret it.”

“You keep calling everything I saw preposterous, but it’s not hard to imagine you having an affair with Devon. Two attractive, successful people whose lives are entwined . . .”

He turned completely around and looked toward the door, obviously making sure his guest hadn’t arrived yet.

“There’s just one very important detail you’re
not
privy to,” he said, his voice tight with anger.

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“This is totally off the record?”

“
Yes
.”

“We couldn’t have been having an affair. I’m not capable of having sex with anyone.”

Chapter 11

C
ap’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.