So Pretty It Hurts (7 page)

“I
hate
you,” she screamed with a hard, fast shake of her head. In the minute she’d been standing outside, her hair had become coated with sleet, turning it into a shiny black helmet. I decided it was about time to extricate myself from this lover’s skirmish, and besides, my feet were now soaked.

Before I could move, Tory turned and stormed back into the barn. Tommy watched the door slam and then moved closer to me, his body dripping wet.

“Why don’t we finish this later,” he said, though I wasn’t sure what exactly we were supposed to finish.

Rather than trail behind them into the foyer and possibly end up in the midst of round two, I descended the short set of wooden steps on the side of the deck and made my way toward the small barn. I pulled the hood of my poncho tighter, since the sleet was practically coming down in sheets now. As I looked up I saw Scott emerge from the direction of the outbuildings. He didn’t look like a happy camper.

“Anything up?” I called out.

“More problems with the damn road. I’ve got a guy out there now, and Ralph is feeling better, so he’s gonna help. The problem is, it’s starting to freeze again. We’ve got a layer of ice forming.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Nope. Sandy’s putting out lunch now. It should be ready any minute.”

He hurried off, and I fought my way through the sleet, headed back to my room. Detective Ray was holding guard outside Devon’s door, sitting on the old straight-backed chair I’d seen at the desk in her room. The door was closed, and I assumed the crime scene personnel had departed.

“How’s the work going?”

“It’s going,” was all he said.

“Is Detective Collinson still here?”

“He’s returned to town with the coroner.”

Before entering my room, I tapped on Jessie’s door. She had creases on her left cheek that indicated she’d just finished napping.

“Where the heck have
you
been?” she asked. “You look like you’ve been out reporting on a hurricane.”

“I was just checking out the scene outside.” I relayed the bad news that Scott had told me about the road—and told her there was a chance that we might be spending another night on the property.

“Oh, great—though at least that keeps us at the center of the story. I’m on my way back to resume eavesdropping.”

I told her that I’d be up shortly, but as she started to leave I reached out and touched her arm.

“One more thing, Jess,” I said. I told her about the missing set of keys.

“That’s rich,” she said ruefully. “It’s getting more like a horror movie every second.”

Back in my room I checked the Internet to see how the word was spreading about Devon’s death. CNN and
People
were running several quotes from Cap, which implied he’d been in touch with them directly. CNN and the
New York Post
also had some very general quotes from Collinson, who said the cause of death had not yet been determined and was under investigation. And TMZ had a mix of quotes from fashionista types paying tribute, and gossipmongers speculating about the cause of death. One theory was a drug overdose.

As I stood up, I felt suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue. I’d had only a couple of hours of sleep the night before and it was now catching up with me. I fell on the bed, telling myself I would grab just a short catnap.

When I woke, my head was throbbing and my mouth was gritty. Staggering toward the bathroom, I checked my watch and was surprised to see the time. 1:14. I’d been asleep for over an hour. I needed to hustle back to the great room and see what was going on.

I opened my door and peeked down the hall. Detective Ray was no longer standing guard, but I saw that Devon’s door had been padlocked.

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I passed through the passageway. In the gloomy afternoon light the trees glistened, their snow-covered branches now coated in a top layer of ice. Though it was absolutely enchanting out, it meant none of us was probably going anywhere anytime soon.

Jessie and Laura were the only ones around. Laura was clearing away dishes on the counter, and Jessie had her feet up on one of the sofas, reading a book.

“How are you holding up, Laura?” I asked, coming up to her.

“Okay, I guess.” She didn’t make eye contact with me.

“After we realized Devon was dead and you went to get Scott, you never went back into Devon’s room, did you?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” she said. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Someone went back into Devon’s room, and I’m anxious to know who it was.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

“Okay, fine. Any more thoughts about who the second person to call extension seven was?

“What?” she asked defensively.

“You told me you got a second call on extension seven—at about two thirty.”

“If I’d known who it was, I would have told you then.”

My, my, she seemed awfully testy.

I picked a sandwich off a platter before Laura whisked it away, and then joined Jessie on the couch.

“Where the hell is everybody?” I whispered. “Are they all holed up in their rooms?”

“Whitney and Cap were up here earlier. They each had a glass of wine and a sandwich and barely said two words. He looks weird, all pinched and stuff. The second detective—the one who was guarding the door—came by for coffee and then left, saying they hope to be back later to pick up the body. Oh, and Scott was up here for a bit. I couldn’t even look at him.”

“Any word on the road?”

“Not good. It seems like we’re all going to be bunking down here again tonight. By the way, at what point does a body begin to stink?”

“By tonight it’s going to smell pretty ripe.”

“Oh, fabulous.”

“I still need to talk to Christian and Tory. I guess I’ll wait around here for a while, and then I might have to start banging on a few doors.”

“Laura mentioned that Sandy was going to be serving an early dinner—at around six. So people should start to surface then.”

For the next few hours, Jessie and I hung in the great room, drinking coffee from an insulated carafe that Jessie had brought over to the coffee table. At around five, with darkness descended, we suddenly heard a burst of noise from the level below, as if three or four people were talking at once. It took me a minute to realize that it was the television in the media room. I went downstairs to check out who was there.

Christian was alone in the darkened room, staring at CNN on the screen.

“You okay?” I asked.

“About as well as can be expected,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“I assume you’ve spoken to people at the modeling agency, right?”

“Of course. Everybody’s in shock—total shock. But I don’t know if I should be talking to
you
. You’ll just feed it all to
Buzz
.”

I gave him the off-the-record line I’d offered everyone else.

“Well, I don’t have much to talk about anyway,” he said, finally looking at me.

“This must be a blow to the agency.”

“Absolutely. Devon was one of our top girls.”

“Were you close to her?”

“Of course I was close to her,” he said, flicking his hand back and forth over the collar of his tight beige crewneck. “I’ve been her booker since she was nineteen.”

“I thought she started even younger than that.”

“She did—she was with another agency the first couple of years, but I convinced her to come with us.”

“Is that common, to make a switch?”

“It can be. Contracts in this business are never iron-clad. I mean, Devon was grateful to her old place. One of their scouts had spotted her in a bus station when she was sixteen. But they never saw her full potential. I don’t believe in starting at the bottom and working your way up. I think you start at the top, and if it doesn’t work, you keep going down a level and find out where it settles. From the very beginning I sent Devon out to the top photographers. They loved her. By the end of the year she’d made over a million dollars.”

“When did Cap come into the picture?”

“A few years later. When you make that much money, you need someone like him. Especially if your momma’s a drunk and you’ve got a no-good stepdaddy.”

“Were Cap and Devon tight?”

“What do you mean by
that
?”

“Was it a good working relationship?”

“He absolutely doted on her. She was his prize client.”

“Friday night, you were talking about how models are often screwed up about their eating. I take it Devon had an eating disorder of some kind.”

“No, that was over and done with. A lot of girls in their teens suffer from that.”

“But clearly Devon was experiencing a relapse lately.”

“Oh, please, I knew you were going to do this. You’re just looking for dirt. You won’t attribute it to me, but it will still end up in that rag.”

“I’m only interested in the truth. If she died due to an eating disorder, that’s going to come out anyway.”

“Like I told you, that wasn’t an issue anymore.”

“And she wasn’t scared or worried about anything this weekend?”

“
Scared
? I have no clue what you’re talking about. Devon wasn’t scared of anything.”

“Just one more question. Did you call extension seven during the night?”

“Extension seven? You mean to say I needed a
shirt
pressed or something? Hardly. What is this anyway? You’re starting to sound like Miss Marple.”

Suddenly the TV screen grabbed our attention. It flickered a few times, and then suddenly died. The room was now in total darkness.

Maybe, I thought, the freezing rain had knocked out the satellite dish. And then from a distance I heard Jessie yell, “Bailey, where are you?” and I glanced toward the hallway. There was no light coming from anywhere. The power had gone out. Great, just the hell what we needed.

Chapter 7

“O
h, brilliant,” Christian exclaimed. “Just fucking brilliant.”

“There are candles on the table upstairs,” I said. “I’ll go grab a couple. Why don’t you call Scott and see where he is.”

“Call him?
How
?”

“Here,” I said, tossing him my BlackBerry. “His cell is in the address book.” I’d programmed it in during my car ride with Jessie.

“
Bailey
?” Jessie called again from the great room. “Where are you?”

I yelled that I was coming and tried to maneuver my way out of the media room, though just before I reached the door I rammed my foot so hard into a piece of furniture, it felt as if I’d kicked a car. Finding and climbing the stairs was even trickier. The barn had become familiar to me over the past two days, but in the pitch-dark, I was clueless.

“Jess, you still near the couch?” I called out once I’d reached the top of the stairs.

“Yup. What made the freaking power go out? The snowstorm’s been over for hours.”

“It might be the ice,” I said, inching my way toward her voice. “It’s probably coated the power lines and made one of them snap. I’m gonna grab the two candlesticks on the dining table—can you start rooting around in the drawers and see if you can find one of those lighters Sandy was using last night?”

My eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and I could make out Jessie moving clumsily toward the island. I reached the table, snagged the two taper candles in antler holders, and then met Jessie by the island. She’d found the lighter, and we lit the two candles. With the tapers partially illuminating the room, we then located two chubby candles in hurricane lamps on a side table and lit those. I carried the antler holders downstairs.

“I couldn’t reach Scott,” Christian said, handing me back my phone.

“He should be here shortly,” I said. “Here.” I passed him a candle.

“This ought to be fun,” he said. “A night in a house with no lights and a dead body.”

I was tempted to add,
Oh, and let’s not forget that the master key to all the bedrooms is missing.

There was an explosion of voices suddenly. The power outage had clearly sent people scrambling in this direction, hoping to find candles or flashlights. I stepped into the foyer to see Cap, Whitney, Richard, and Jane emerge from the door to the passageway. They were followed thirty seconds later by Tory and Tommy, looking disheveled. It was hard to tell if they’d been in the middle of makeup sex or a slap fest. Everyone demanded to know what was going on. Before I had a chance to even offer an opinion, the front door opened and Ralph and Scott burst into the foyer, toting large flashlights and stomping hard to knock the icy snow off their boots.

“Tell me it’s just a fuse,” Cap said.

“Unfortunately not,” Ralph said hoarsely. “The ice seems to have knocked out a power line. But we’ve got plenty of flashlights.”

“What about heat?” Whitney asked.

“Unfortunately not,” Scott said. “But the great room and guest bedrooms all have gas wood-burning stoves. Ralph will light them.”

“But how are we going to get out of here?” Tory wailed. “I’ve got a job tomorrow, and it pays four thousand dollars. They’re going to kill me if I don’t show.”

“We’re all in the same boat, Tory, so why don’t you just shut the hell up,” Tommy snapped. Ignoring them, Scott directed the beam of his flashlight toward the candle I was holding. “There are more of those upstairs. Why don’t we go up there?”

We all traipsed upstairs and huddled together in the center of the room. Using his torch to guide him, Scott opened a cabinet filled with votive lights, tapers, and pillar candles. By the time we were done lighting them all, the great room looked like something out of medieval times.

“Do you know what I think?” Scott asked the group. “I think we could all use a drink.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Richard added.

“Why am I not surprised?” Whitney said, all the southern charm missing from her tone.

“Whitney, please,” Cap pleaded. For the first time I realized just how truly frayed people’s nerves were.

“
What
?” she said mockingly, her nearly transparent blue eyes sparkling in the candlelight. “Am I just supposed to sit around and act all sweet when he gets liquored up, slurs his words, and won’t take his eyes off my breasts?”

“But Whitney, I assumed you liked it,” Richard said. “Otherwise why make such a point of showing them off?”

“Shut your stupid mouth,” Cap said, taking a step toward Richard with muscles tightened.

“You can stare at
my
tits if you want,” Jane said. “I won’t mind—and they’re even real.”

“Everyone, please cool it,” Scott declared firmly. “The road isn’t passable unless you’ve got a four-wheel drive, and the weather isn’t fit to drive in anyway. That means we’ve got to spend the night here together whether we like it or not.”

That was funny—whether we
like
it or not. I wondered who he thought belonged in the former group.

“Besides,” he added, “I’m sure Devon wouldn’t want us at each other’s throats. Let’s all be civil, okay?”

His suggestion lacked passion, but it did the trick at least. Cap’s muscles relaxed and Richard slunk off into the shadows. Scott asked who would like wine, and after several people raised their hands in the dim light, he opened two bottles and began pouring glasses. We accepted our drinks and then gathered in various clusters on the couches and armchairs. No one said much of anything, though we had to listen to Tory wail on her cell phone to someone at her agency about the need to cancel her shoot tomorrow. I emailed Nash with an update.

At one point Jessie wandered over to the island, and I followed a minute later.

“Remember I said I felt like I was in a horror movie?” she said. “Well, I was kidding then. But I’m not now. I’m starting to feel spooked. What if Devon’s death wasn’t natural? What if someone’s cut the power? What if we’re all in danger?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” I told her. “I have no idea how Devon died, but I do know that we had exactly the kind of storm that knocks down power lines. I really don’t think there’s anything fishy going on with the lights.”

I was doing my best to sound calm—and I really
didn’t
think the power outage was intentional—but the situation was definitely creepy. Tomorrow morning couldn’t come soon enough.

The somber mood of the room lifted a tiny bit when Sandy and Laura arrived and laid out the remains from the antipasto lunch we’d had the day before. Sandy apologized for the leftovers (without actually sounding sorry), and explained that she hadn’t expected to serve dinner to everyone.

People pulled closer around the coffee table and began to make idle small talk—everyone except Tory. She had taken her plate over to the dining table and sat sulking in the dark shadows at the far end of the room. At the risk of having a drink tossed in my face for supposedly flirting with her man on the deck earlier, I headed over there and pulled out a chair next to her.

“I hope you don’t think I was actually making a play for Tommy earlier,” I said quietly. “That’s not my style.”

“I’m not blaming you for anything,” she said. “I just want to get
out
of here. This is like some freaking catalogue shoot that never, ever ends.”

“This can’t have been an easy weekend for you. That whole thing Devon pulled Saturday night—her coming on to Tommy in front of everyone.”

She shrugged a shoulder. “It wasn’t nice, but I don’t want to say anything bad about her. I hear it’s bad luck to say something nasty about a dead person.”

Gosh, where did this girl get her information?

“I hear Devon actually introduced you to Tommy,” I said.

“Yup.”

“That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? A lot of girls wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing their ex-boyfriend with a friend.”

“She said she didn’t care. I mean, she was kind of upset when they broke up, but she said she got over it.”

“What kind of time was she having this weekend? Whenever I saw her, she seemed to be a bit on edge.”

“I dunno. I didn’t actually talk to her all that much. Plus, it was hard sometimes to know what she was really thinking. She liked to keep things to herself.”

“Did you notice how thin she was—and how little she ate?”

“That’s our
job
—to be thin.”

“But there’s thin and there’s thin. Do you think she was suffering from an eating disorder?”

Tory shook her head back and forth, lifting the shiny black layers of her hair.

“People always say stuff like that about models,” she said after a moment. “I think most of the time they’re just jealous.”

“Did you happen to see a bottle of ipecac syrup in her bathroom? That’s something people use to induce vomiting.”

“I never went in Devon’s room the entire weekend. I was too busy in mine—if you know what I mean.”

She stood up, leaving her plate on the table, clearly done with the conversation.

For the next hour or so we all just sat around, bunched fairly close together as if we were on a lifeboat in the Atlantic. The lack of electricity meant no music and no coffee machine, though Sandy put out stuff for tea because the stove ran on gas. The two wood-burning stoves in the great room provided
some
heat, but the room could hardly have been described as toasty warm.

After a while Scott suggested poker, but only he, Tommy, and Richard played. Whitney pulled her yarn and knitting needles out of a bag and started clicking again. The rest of us leafed through books and magazines by candlelight and picked at the remains of our dinner. We ran through several bottles of wine, about 50 percent of which was consumed by Richard.

At around nine thirty, Ralph showed up with an update. The power was out all over the area, and it would probably be out through part of the next day. According to the most recent weather report, the temperature would rise again in the morning, and he was pretty sure he could have the road in shape sometime before noon. He and Sandy had rounded up more flashlights, and he distributed one to each of us and then deposited several on top of the big island.

“We’ve got plenty of candles, too,” he said gruffly, “but we’d appreciate it if you rely mostly on the flashlights. The last thing we need right now is a fire.”

I wasn’t looking forward to heading back to my room, but after Ralph left, people started to drift away, the beams from their flashlights bobbing spookily as they descended the stairs. There seemed to be no point in hanging around. Jessie barely made eye contact with Scott when we said good night and then practically attached herself to my hip. I took a glass of wine with me.

“If it weren’t for Mr. Kinky Pants, I would have stayed over there for hours,” Jessie whispered as we reached our rooms. “I dread the idea of being back in my room alone.”

I smiled woefully, in total sympathy with how she was feeling.

“I really don’t believe anyone will try to get into our rooms tonight,” I said, “but just to be on the safe side, why don’t you pull a chair or table in front of your door? Or if you really want, you can bunk down with me.”

“You don’t know how close I am to saying yes to your offer. But if Scott found out tomorrow that we’d shared a room, he’d end up walking around with a boner until we left.”

I smiled. “Just knock on my door if you get scared, okay?”

Once in my room, I took my own advice and dragged an end table over the floor and lodged it against the door. The gas fueled wood-burning stove had been lit and was giving off decent heat. Despite Ralph’s warning, I lit the scented candle from the bathroom, placed it on the table by the armchair, and then collapsed, my legs tucked underneath me and BlackBerry in hand. I tried Beau again, with the little bit of power I still had in my phone. Never expecting a power outage, I hadn’t bothered to charge it earlier. Once again, I reached only Beau’s voice mail.

“Hey,” I said. “Not sure when your plane is due. Call me, will you? Some crazy stuff has happened up here, and I would love to talk to you.”

I started to press disconnect but instead gave him a brief description of Devon’s death and how we’d been held hostage by the storm.

The flames from the candle and the wood-burning stove created phantomlike shadows that danced on the walls. I sipped my wine, trying to sort through everything that was jostling around in my brain. I was so immersed in my thoughts that I almost didn’t hear the sound of someone knocking on my bedroom door. Jessie, I thought. She had obviously decided not to tough it out.

Holding the candle, I crossed the room and pulled the table away from the door. I opened it just a hair. Surprise, surprise. Jane was standing there, flashlight in hand. Her mass of dark hair was pinned to the top of her head and she was wearing a pink sweatshirt.

“Did I wake you?” she asked without sounding as if she cared.

“Nope.”

“Mind if I come in? I want to talk to you.”

“Sure,” I said as she followed me into the room with a curious glance toward the table I’d used as a barricade.

“I’m sorry if I was rude earlier,” she said. “This hasn’t been a breeze for me, as you might imagine.”

“Devon’s death—or working for her?”

“Both.”

She’d lowered the flashlight, and was illuminated only by the light of the candle. Her dark brown eyes were hollows in her large face.

“So what’s on your mind?” I asked.

“I Googled you during the day, and I was pretty surprised by what I saw.”

“How so?”

“You’re a really respected crime reporter, aren’t you? You don’t write all that crap about who’s screwing who or who gave the paparazzi a beaver shot while getting out of the car.”

“No, I don’t write that stuff,” I said. What was she up to? I wondered. An ornery bear like Jane didn’t start acting all nicey-nice without a damn good reason.

“You think Devon’s death is going to be a big story?” she asked. “I mean, will it be all over the news for days and days?”

“That’s going to depend a lot on what the autopsy reveals,” I said. “If it turns out that Devon died from complications from an eating disorder, it will make the cover of all the tabloids this week and then there’ll be some follow-up the next week about which rock stars showed at her funeral. And I assume the morning shows will all do segments on bulimia and anorexia. But then it will probably quiet down—except for maybe one long piece by someone like Richard in
Vanity Fair
. Why—are you worried about how the media circus will impact you?”