So Pretty It Hurts (23 page)

“Come in, Bailey,” she said. She smiled, but it seemed about as real as her boobs, and there was something distant about her pale blue eyes. Am I an utter fool to be here? I wondered anxiously. But from far off in the apartment, the kitchen I guessed, I could hear the sound of people chatting and bustling about. The kitchen testers. There’s no way, I reminded myself, that she would try anything nasty with them on the premises.

“I’m sure you’re as busy as I am,” she added. “But I did feel I should share what I know with you.”

“I’m anxious to hear it,” I said.

She lifted her hands, flipping over the palms slightly, and turned her head a quarter to the side, as if she was just now considering how we should proceed.

“Well, why don’t you come on into the living room?” she said. As I followed her there, the chattering receded; the only sound in the living room was from wind whipping along the wraparound terrace. She gestured for me to take a seat on one of the plush, mint-colored sofas. I perched on the edge, and Whitney lowered herself gracefully into an armchair.

“How have you been, by the way?” she asked. “Cap and I went to the funeral, of course, on Saturday, and we’re still decompressing from that. Were you out there, covering it? I didn’t see you.”

No, I was getting my ass baked in a local barn, I almost said, just to catch her expression. But I needed to stick to my game plan: stay neutral and not provoke.

“No, some other reporters were assigned to cover the funeral,” I said.

She took a deep breath, raising her breasts up like an offering to the gods. “As I made clear before, I’m not in the habit of talking to the tabloid press,” she said. “Cap may represent famous people, but we’re very private ourselves. And I don’t like gossip. It’s evil. But I’ve been thinking about what you said—that Devon might have been murdered. And I don’t want to stand in the way of the truth.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” I said. “You indicated on the phone that this has something to do with Christian.”

She lowered her head and pursed her lips briefly.

“Yes, I’m afraid it does,” she said, looking back at me. “Since you and I spoke, I’ve asked myself again and again if anyone had a motive to kill Devon. And I’m afraid Christian had one.”

I waited, saying nothing. From far off I heard a muted burst of laughter in the kitchen.

“You may not have been aware of it,” Whitney continued, “but Devon completely ignored Christian last weekend. She didn’t say a
word
to the man.”

“But according to Scott, she was the one who’d invited him there.”

“Yes, that’s true. But, you see, she did that to toy with him. Devon had discovered something Christian had done, something unethical at the agency, and she wanted Cap to tell his boss, Barbara Dern. But before she made certain he was exposed, it seemed she wanted to see Christian twist a little in the wind. Perhaps she was even hoping to use it to her advantage, that he’d become so worried that he’d work even harder for her.”

“What had he done?”

“I’m not sure of the exact details—I’m getting this secondhand from Cap. But it has to do with clients from Asia that the agency does business with. The Asians, especially the Japanese, use a lot of Caucasian girls in their ads and magazines. Some models even move over there to kick-start their careers. It’s very much a cash business—the Japanese arrive here with suitcases of money and turn it over to the modeling agencies. Apparently Christian has been negotiating certain rates with Asian clients, collecting the cash, but then indicating lower amounts on the books. He keeps the difference for himself.”

She laid a hand on her chest and looked off, taking a breath.

“Forgive me,” she said. “This is so upsetting for me—and it makes my asthma want to rear its head.”

“How did Devon find out?”

“I’m not sure. She was always a snoop. She may have overheard something.”

“And what would happen to Christian if the agency learned the truth?”

“Oh, more than a slap on the wrist—that’s for sure. Barbara Dern takes no prisoners. She would have fired him, probably even had him arrested.”

“Is that why Cap seemed to be dragging his heels? He didn’t want to see Christian go to jail?”

“To be honest, he was thinking more of Devon. If Christian was arrested in the next few weeks and it came out that he was Devon’s booker, it might reflect poorly on her album. And of course now I feel sick that he waited. Because it may have given Christian the opportunity to kill Devon.”

“Possibly,” I said, mulling it over. Was this legit, I wondered, or all some kind of setup? “I suggest you tell Detective Collinson this right away. Initially he seemed doubtful that Devon had been murdered, but some details have emerged to change his thinking. I’m sure he’ll find what you told me interesting.”

“
Interesting
?” Whitney said, sounding miffed. “That’s all you have to say? Isn’t it a motive for murder?”

“Sure, it could be,” I said. “The police will look into it. But there are other details for them to consider as well.”

“Oh, really?” she said, snidely. “You’re not back to pointing the finger at me and Cap, are you?”

“I didn’t say that. Just loose ends to tie up.”

“Such as?”

“There’s actually one matter I’d like to ask you about. Something regarding Devon’s pregnancy.”

Whitney’s face froze. She lifted a hand upward and touched the corner of her mouth with one of her long slim fingers and then wiped at something that wasn’t there.

“And what would that be?” she asked after a beat.

“Were you aware that Devon had an abortion?”

Even from where I was sitting, I could see the subtle but shocking changes in her face. Her nostrils flared, the rims of her eyes reddened. It was like a rage grenade had gone off inside her, but she was doing her best to contain the explosion. Instinctively I strained to hear the kitchen sounds. With relief I realized I could still detect faint voices in the distance.

“Who in the world told you that?” she said between clenched teeth.

“Someone who would definitely know,” I replied. “I have to admit I was taken aback when I heard it. Here she’d gone to all that trouble to conceive, and then, poof, she decides to make it go away. Was it because of Tommy?”

Whitney snickered in disgust.

“But of course,” she said, her voice tight with anger. “She was besotted by that pathetic man from the moment she met him.”

“Did he say something to her about not wanting kids?” I asked.

“I assume so,” Whitney replied. “He’d hardly want a groupie showing up backstage wearing a damn Snugli. Or maybe Devon just thought it would get in the way of all the hot sex they were going to have. God, the mere thought of sex with him is enough to make me gag.”

“Did she tell you about the abortion?”

“What do
you
think?” Whitney snapped.

My mind was racing. I needed to get the answers right so she’d keep talking.

“I bet she didn’t,” I said after a moment. “Because you and Cap must have been there for her through the fertility treatments, right? Cap was always there for her. It would have troubled you to learn she’d just callously ended her pregnancy. And”—a thought suddenly snagged my brain—“you’re a conservative Christian, right, and against abortion? You would have been very upset for that reason, too.”

“Abortion is a
sin
,” Whitney said fiercely, nearly spitting out the words. “The worst of all sins. The victims are the most innocent creatures in the world. It wasn’t even
Devon’s
baby. Not any part of it.”

“Was the sperm from anyone she knew?” I asked, barely above a whisper. I was afraid of the testers overhearing us and of Whitney suddenly clamming up.

“Yes, an ex-boyfriend,” she said. “I think he only agreed to donate his sperm because was he was too stupid to know it would actually produce a baby.”

“But are you saying she used an egg donor, too?”

“Unfortunately Devon’s eggs weren’t nearly as pretty as her face. She was in the throes of early menopause.”

“And the egg donor? Was that someone she knew as well?”

Staring at me, Whitney took a breath that made a slight wheezing sound and let it out very slowly. The rims of her eyes were even redder now, as if blood might start spurting from them any second.

And then the truth hit me hard—
she
was the donor. In some odd way the thought had been slowly forming in my mind all morning. I felt fear begin to slosh inside me, like water in the hull of a boat.

“The baby was yours, wasn’t it?” I said. “Or at least the egg was.”

Whitney squeezed her mouth shut tight, as if she were fighting to keep the rage inside her. Then a wicked little smile snuck onto her face.

“You’ll never be able to prove it,” she said. “It was all handled very hush-hush.”

“But why?”

“
Why
?” she shrieked. “Because of Cap. He’d done everything for that selfish bitch. And he was always on call twenty-four/seven. It was almost over for her as a model, and as an actress she made Paris Hilton look like some Academy Award winner, but she’d run through tons of her money and she needed the work. So Cap launched her singing career. But despite all that, she was starting to make little noises of discontent. ‘Cap, you need to do more for me.’ ‘Cap, I’m not happy.’ When she said she wanted to get pregnant, it became
his
problem, of course.”

“She must have been freaked when she heard about her medical issue.”

“You got that right. It turned up when she first went in for artificial insemination. Silly me, I’d done a story on egg donors and actually encouraged the next step. But she didn’t want
anybody’s
eggs. She met a few donors and they made her think of her disgusting mother. So Cap begged me to do it. He knew I didn’t want children myself. And that way Devon would owe him.”

“How did you find out she hadn’t miscarried?”

“Oh, I was very clever,” Whitney said. “Almost as clever as Little Miss Bailey Weggins. I tricked one of the nurses at the OB’s office into telling me. They’d learned of the abortion when the doctor who’d performed it had requested some records. I’d had my suspicions, though, right from the beginning. Devon had a hard time looking me in the eye after the so-called miscarriage. And then, when she didn’t try to conceive again over the past year, I knew something was up.”

I flashed again on what Cap had told me. He’d said he’d relayed to Devon that Whitney had been in touch with the OB, and Devon shouldn’t have trouble conceiving again. But Devon had probably guessed that Whitney had been snooping and had learned about the abortion. That’s why she’d seemed so scared when I saw her.

“It must have been awful to learn the truth.”

“
Awful
?” Whitney said savagely. “If that’s what you call it when you find that someone has taken a four-month-old fetus—with
your
blood—and destroyed it like a piece of garbage.”

The wind tore across the terrace again. From where I sat I could see only the gray, smudged sky and the tips of a few high-rise apartment buildings. Thankfully, far off in the kitchen, the testers were still chatting and laughing.

“So you killed her,” I said. I knew it was true. I knew just from looking at those red-rimmed eyes. The modeling agency story might be legit, but she’d offered it up just to throw me off her trail—because nothing else had worked so far.

Whitney flashed another one of her wicked smiles.

“Again, you’ll never be able to prove it,” she said smugly. “There’s nothing linking anything to me.”

“Devon fed nicely into your hands with her anorexia, didn’t she?” I said. I knew I should get the hell out of the apartment, but I needed to know the truth.

“Yes,” she said. “It was almost like a gift from God. At first I thought it had started again because she was so damn worried about her career, but I honestly think her conscience might have finally been catching up with her. She’d murdered her child so she could have Tommy, and then Tommy kicked her to the curb.”

“Was her death this weekend just a coincidence? I mean, you couldn’t really predict when the Lasix would do its magic.”

“No, but I knew it might happen. You see, I’d already started the process at the spa. That’s the reason I’d invited her away. And though I couldn’t
bear
spending another weekend in that bitch’s company, it gave me a wonderful opportunity to load up the Lasix every time she set her water bottle down. When I saw her stagger off to her room, Saturday night, I knew the end was near.”

An answer started to form—to a question that had bugged me for days.

“Wait—did you call extension seven that night?”

“Oh, you’re smart, aren’t you, Bailey? You see, I started to worry it would seem odd that we hadn’t checked on her, but then I changed my mind and hung up. Sometimes, the less done the better.”

“Why did you take the ipecac from the bathroom, then? That could only arouse suspicions.”

“I had no idea you’d seen it. I’d learned about ipecac when I was doing my news story and told Devon about it at the spa, knowing she’d be tempted to try it. But I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t told that idiot Tory that I’d talked about it. If the cops found the bottle, they might eventually connect it back to me. You really made me angry with all your poking around. If you’d just minded your own business.”

“You snooped in my room, didn’t you? You checked out my computer.”

“You left me no choice, did you?”

“And as I started poking around even more, you came after me. You thought getting me suspended from
Buzz
might shut me down, but when that didn’t work, you tried to kill me. Who was the man in the gypsy cab?”

“None of your business,” Whitney said snidely. “And trust me, you’ll never find him.”

“How did you discover I was going to be downtown? Tommy told you, didn’t he?”

“No comment,” she said. “I can’t let you know
all
my secrets.”

“I bet you were talking to him about the funeral or something to do with Devon’s death, and he mentioned he’d be seeing me.”