So Pretty It Hurts

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.