So Pretty It Hurts

staring at a screen full of shots of Suri Cruise.

“Anything going on here?” I asked.

“Not that I’m in the loop on. I’m too busy working on photos for a chart on Suri’s shoe obsession. From what I can tell so far, she has about seven thousand pairs.”

After dumping my bag and popping my head in Nash’s door to say I was around if he needed me, I checked my voice mail and found to my surprise that Richard Parkin had left a message. I hadn’t expected him to stay in touch. Of course, since he was going to write his own story for Vanity Fair, he was probably sniffing around to see what I knew.

As I punched in Richard’s phone number, a thought flitted across my mind. Richard looked like a poster boy for hypertension. Could he have a prescription for Lasix? He didn’t have a motive—at least that I knew of—but someone could have pinched it from his room. After all, there’d been no way for guests to lock their rooms when they left them.

“Thank you for calling back,” he said, all British charm and surprisingly sober sounding for this deep into the day. “I just wondered how you were surviving. I’ve been following your Web postings—nice job.”

“Thank you. It’s been a little crazy the last day or two.”

“Still aching?”

“Pardon me?”

“You took that very nasty spill.”

“All better,” I said, deciding to spare him a description of the yellow-and-purple mark that had now spread over most of the left cheek of my ass. “How are things on your end? Did you decide to tackle this story, too?”

He paused a beat.

“Actually, I may not do it after all,” he confessed.

“Really. How come?”

“I’ve got a pretty full plate right now. And frankly, as I poked around, I’ve found Devon’s life about as exciting as a boiled ham sandwich—without the honey mustard. Oh, she was a supermodel with a dirt-poor past and that’s got a Dickensian ring to it, but there’s nothing particularly fresh about her version.”

“I take it you’ve seen what the police released about her death.”

“Yes. Her ticker stopped ticking. Won’t the world be a sad place without her?”

Gee, he hadn’t been a fan, had he?

“What if someone really wasn’t so sad to see her gone?” I asked.

Another pause.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“What if her death wasn’t really accidental?”

“Have you dug up something you’re not telling me, Ms. Weggins?”

“No, just thinking out loud,” I said.

“Oh, come now, Bailey. I can tell you’ve got something. Aren’t you going to be nice and share, one journalist to another?”

“There just seemed to be a lot of tension this weekend. And I was shoved down the stairs. Stuff like that always arouses my curiosity.”

“I see. Well, let me know if you want to brainstorm. I’d be happy to assist.”

As soon as I hung up, I tried the number Whitney had given me for Tory. She answered, though I could barely hear her thanks to the pounding music in the background.

“It’s Bailey Weggins,” I said loudly. “I need to talk to you. I have some very important information I think you’d want to hear.”

“About what?” she shouted over the music.

“I’d prefer to tell you in person, and I know you’ll be interested. It’s about Devon.”

“I’m on a job right now. I can’t talk.”

“What time do you finish? I could meet you.”

Even with the music I heard her sigh.

“All right,” she said wearily. “You can meet me at six.” She quickly rattled off the name and address of the studio—it was in the Meatpacking District—and then cut off without a good-bye.

After leaving messages for Jane on her cell phone and Christian at First Models, I researched Devon Barr’s “sad” little hometown—which turned out to be Pine Grove, Pennsylvania—because more than likely Nash would want me to check out the scene at the funeral service on Saturday. And finally I reviewed tomorrow’s TV and radio plan with one of the PR people. In addition to the Today show, they’d secured a lot of other media. Mentally I tried to place the one wool suit I owned.

Just after five Jessie blew in, her cheeks red from the cold and her eyes wide with excitement.

“You’re not going to believe the info I have,” she whispered, grabbing my arm. “We need to talk in private.”

I followed her to a conference room toward the back of the floor.

“What’s going on?” I asked as she quickly shut the door.

“Guess what our ornery friend Jane has been up to. She’s apparently planning to write a tell-all book on Devon and has been secretly peddling the proposal for weeks.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“From a contact I have in the book biz. I was trying to wangle some info from her on a whole different subject, and it came up because she’d read I was one of the infamous houseguests last weekend. Though her company saw the proposal, they passed on it.”

“But wouldn’t Jane have signed some kind of confidentiality agreement when she went to work for Devon?”

“You’d think. But this editor told me that because Devon had such trouble keeping assistants, in the end she didn’t make Jane sign one.”

“Did anyone end up buying the book?”

“The chick told me she’s not sure. She said she’d heard Jane was having a hard time placing it.”

“Because?”

“According to this girl, there wasn’t much there. I mean, Jane had only been with Devon for nine months, so it’s not as if there were a ton of secrets she had firsthand knowledge of. Plus, let’s face it—Devon was kind of a bore. She liked to bitch out her assistants and date skinny rockers, but hey, what else is new?”

I stared off, my mind racing.

“What?” Jessie asked. “You’ve got that Bailey-Weggins-has-a-dangerous-idea look on your face.”

“Maybe Devon’s life was kind of a bore when she was alive, but now that she’s dead, it’s a bit more interesting, right? A publisher might be suddenly eager for a book on Devon that they could rush to press.”

I quickly filled Jessie in on what I’d learned this morning from Detective Collinson and how it fit with what Sandy had shared about the funny taste of the water.

“Omigod,” Jessie muttered. “Are you saying that Jane killed Devon so that she’d have a better chance of selling her book?”

“It’s just a thought. A crazy one, but someone in that house had a motive. I’m almost sure of it.”

She started to lob more questions at me, but glancing at my watch, I saw that I needed to hightail it out of there for my meeting with Tory. I told her I’d catch up with her later.

“Just one more thing,” Jessie said. “Everything still good with Beau?”

I smiled. “Yeah, all good.”

Because of how cold it was outside, there was tons of snarky cab competition, and it took me fifteen minutes to flag one down. Then I was stuck in traffic. I used the time to check voicemail. I discovered that while I’d been with Jessie, Beau had left a message saying he’d be tied up for dinner until about ten but he’d love to see me afterward.

I made it downtown just in time. The photo studio turned out to be in an old brick building that had once probably contained small factories but had since been gutted to create large, loftlike spaces. I took the elevator to