So Pretty It Hurts

the fifth floor and found myself in a huge lobby with at least four photo studios spilling off from it. There were leather-backed chairs and a small bar in the waiting area, with an old-fashioned popcorn maker on the counter and a cluster of guys in jeans and hoodies talking aimlessly. Several messengers moved around on the periphery, lugging stuffed black garment bags. All of sudden a huge dog—a mastiff, I thought—trotted by itself out of one of the studios and headed down a hallway.

“May I help you?” the receptionist asked. I noticed she had last week’s Buzz opened in front of her.

“Studio Two?”

“Are they expecting you?”

“Yes, I’m here to see Tory Hartwick.”

She pointed to a studio just across from me. Thankfully there was still music emanating from the open doorway, so the shoot obviously hadn’t ended yet.

As I crossed the pockmarked cement floor, my BlackBerry rang. Thinking it might be one of the other houseguests I’d left a message for, I dug it quickly out of my bag. Nash’s name showed on the screen. Something big must have happened.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

“Where are you?” he asked brusquely. Nash could be moody, but I’d never heard him speak to me in such an abrupt tone.

“Downtown, about to do an interview for the Devon Barr story. Why?”

“You need to come back here. Right now.”

“You sound pissed. Is anything the matter?”

“Yeah, something’s the matter. Your job is in serious jeopardy.”

Chapter 12

“What?” I said. My legs suddenly seemed to liquefy. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to get into it on the phone. How soon can you get here?”

“Uh, depending on traffic, a half hour to forty-five minutes,” I said.

“All right,” was his only response. No good-bye. Not even a “See you then.”

To my chagrin, my hand was trembling slightly as I slipped the BlackBerry back into my bag. I had stepped in doo-doo somehow, but I couldn’t imagine how. I’d been working hard on the Devon story, investigating every angle possible, so it was tough to figure what he might see as a shortcoming in my efforts. Had another magazine or Web site—like TMZ, which broke heaps of celebrity news every week—scooped us on some detail about Devon’s death? If that was the case, Nash might be annoyed or frazzled, but he wouldn’t have sounded like a cougar that hadn’t eaten in days.

I needed to get back to the Buzz offices and find out what was going on, but I also didn’t want to blow my chance to pump Tory. I’d told Nash I might be as long as forty-five minutes, but I was pretty sure I could make it uptown in thirty. I decided to use the next fifteen minutes to try to elicit what I could from Tory—though it was going to be hard as hell to concentrate.

With my stomach grinding, I walked through the open door of Studio Two, and found myself immediately in a small seating area. Ahead of me to my right was a partitioned-off area where the actual shoot was happening, with a backdrop of seamless paper that created the illusion of the space going on forever, like a piece of white sky. The photographer was snapping away at a girl, using phrases I’d thought they only tossed out in movie scenes about photo shoots—like “That’s perfect, hold it just there,” and “Okay, give me the smile again. Chin up.” Next to him an assistant watched the photos flash instantaneously on a computer screen.

To the left was an open makeup and dressing area, with a huge mirror lined with lights. Several people in black were standing near the window, talking. At the counter one model was having her hair wrapped in jumbo Velcro rollers, and another was rifling through a python-printed tote bag. It took me a second to realize it was Tory.

As I was deliberating about the best way to grab her attention, she glanced up and spotted me. I saw her shoulders sag in annoyance. She said a few words to the people by the window and then made her way over to me. She was wearing tight, tight black jeans, black boots that went above her knees, and a red turtleneck sweater that looked really striking with her cropped black hair. I figured those were her own clothes, not something for the shoot, because the other model on the set was in a sheer, flowy outfit that had next spring written all over it.

“This is really uncool, you know—you coming to my job,” Tory said after she’d walked over to me.

I was about to point out that she was the one who’d invited me but decided it was probably best not to aggravate her anymore.

“Are you done?” I asked. “Can we talk now?”

“I’m done for the day. But I don’t want to talk here.”

She moved past me, leading the way on her giraffe legs out of the studio, past the sounds of “That’s right, very nice,” and “Perfect, perfect.” As I followed her into the hallway I stole a glance at my watch. I had about twelve minutes now, and I was going to have to make the most of them. Just thinking about my time restrictions made Nash’s words echo in my head, hard as a car horn—“Your job is in serious jeopardy.” It took everything to shut them out.

“I suppose you’ve heard the news about Devon’s death,” I said as we positioned ourselves in a corner of the lobby.

“You mean, that she had some kind of heart problem.”

“Yes. She died of a heart attack.”

“That’s so freaky. My grandfather had a heart attack, but he was like eighty.”

“Actually, heart attacks aren’t all that uncommon in people who have eating disorders,” I said. “I know you told me last weekend that you weren’t aware of any problems with Devon regarding her eating, but the autopsy found differently. The bottom line is that she was anorexic.”

“Why are you so freaking interested?” Tory demanded. “You didn’t even know her.”

“You’re right. I didn’t know her. But there are some aspects of her death that confuse me. I want to find out exactly what happened to Devon.”

“But you said you did know,” Tory whined. “That she died of a heart attack.”

“True, but I’m curious about why her anorexia flared up again. From what I understand from Cap and Whitney”—invoking their names seemed like a good way to gain some cred with her—“Devon had suffered from anorexia years ago but had overcome it. Why do you think it cropped up again now—when she had so much going for her.”

“Maybe she was nervous about her album,” Tory said without much conviction. “Or about being without a guy. Devon didn’t like being on her own.”

“So had you noticed her eating issues?” I asked. “I appreciate you covering for Devon earlier out of respect for her privacy, but the truth is out now—so there’s no need to.”

“I didn’t know for sure,” she said. “I mean, I noticed she was skinnier. And then I heard her puking in the bathroom of a club one night a couple of weeks ago. I mean it didn’t even really sound like puking. It was more like this dry heaving—like after you’ve puked all night and don’t have anything left.”

Yummy, I thought.

“About two weeks ago, you say?” I asked.

“Maybe. Yeah, I guess.”

“Anything else going on then?”

“No. I mean, I guess, as you could see, she was probably more upset about being dumped by Tommy than