So Pretty It Hurts

Richard immediately, just as he’d predicted. He had his back to me, but I knew it was him. I’d stared at that shaggy head of hair for two hours on a trek through the woods.

The wind was up again, overriding the sound of my booted footsteps, but Richard turned suddenly, as if I’d just opened the door to a quiet room he was standing in.

“Is this place one of your secret pleasures?” I asked, approaching him.

He was wearing an extra-long gray overcoat with a tattered Burberry scarf that had either come from the first batch the company had ever made or been run over years ago by a lorry on the streets of London. His face was already red from the cold, and his eyes were watering.

“Actually, yes,” he said over the wind. “I come here all the time. You know how we Brits love a good shrub or a cluster of foxgloves.”

“Not many foxgloves at this time of year.”

“No, but after a day at my desk, I find a walk around the grounds gets my blood pumping. But enough about me. You said you had something to talk about.”

“Yes, a few details have emerged as I’ve been researching Devon’s story, and there’s one I’d like to discuss with you. I know you’re not pursuing the story yourself, but—”

“Excuse me for mixing negatives, but I never said for sure that I wasn’t pursuing it,” Richard said. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still keeping a toe in the water. In fact, I’m thinking of going to the funeral tomorrow.”

That was interesting. What was he up to now? I wondered.

“Okay, fair enough,” I said.

“Aren’t you going too?” he asked, beginning to stroll. I moved along with him.

“I’m not doing a profile of Devon. I’m interested in how she died. Attending her funeral isn’t going to advance my story at all.”

“Oh, come, come, Bailey. Don’t be a tease. You’ve probably got your little roadster all fired up.”

“Since you’re going, why don’t I just call you later for the details?”

“Happy to oblige.”

Casually I glanced around the area just to see how many people were still around. The elderly couple was still strolling, gloved hand in gloved hand, but one of the dog walkers was now beating a retreat, trying to urge a resistant poodle up the steps.

“I thought the funeral was private,” I said. “Just for family and close friends.”

“I won’t be in the church. I’ll be outside, as an observer with all the hoi polloi.”

“Of course. You didn’t really know Devon, did you? You told me you’d never met her before last weekend.”

Even through his long, heavy coat, I could see his body tense.

“That’s right,” he said stiffly. “As I mentioned before, Scott was hoping for an article. I had no idea if I could sell it—or even wanted to—but I was hardly going to pass up a weekend with a man whose wine cellar is as legendary as Scott Cohen’s.”

We rounded the end of a section of the conservatory and moved into the next, this one with small pocket gardens. A man with a bulldog was walking the perimeter. Please don’t leave, I silently pleaded. I was ready to go for broke, and I didn’t want to be alone in the dark with Richard when I did it.

“Really?” I said, letting the disingenuousness seep through. “You see, I thought maybe you had known Devon—from your London days.”

“My London days?” he asked, turning and looking hard at me. He sensed I was up to something—and he didn’t like it.

“I thought you might have crossed paths with Devon in London. She used to live there. I figured she knew your sister.”

He stopped, his body completely rigid now.

“My, my, aren’t you the dogged little researcher,” he said meanly. “I hope they’re paying you the big bucks at Buzz.”

“This isn’t about money,” I said. “I want to know the truth.”

“The truth?” he said. “About what exactly?”

“About Devon’s death. I think she was murdered.”

I let my eyes wander, as if I was processing a thought, but it was really to survey my surroundings. The dog walker was tugging the bulldog, anxious to leave. I would soon be alone in the gardens with Richard Parkin.

“Well, if you’re so damn interested, I’ll share one piece of the truth with you—off the record,” he said fiercely. “My sister is the one who was murdered. And Devon Barr killed her.”

Chapter 18

I shivered—from both the cold and the words I’d just heard.

“Murdered?” I asked. “But how? I was told Fiona died from anorexia.”

“To understand how Devon murdered my sister, you first have to understand their relationship,” he said. “Devon befriended Fiona—in part, I believe, because she knew Fiona could never come close to her in terms of success. Devon derived her strength from having more of something than anyone in her immediate universe. It was almost like a game for her, watching her own star rise while Fiona’s simply stalled.”

“Did they become estranged for some reason?”

“No, no. The games simply intensified. Devon enticed my sister into a partnership of starvation.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“They became anorexia buddies, enabling and empowering each other not to eat. Fiona died of malnutrition, and Devon survived. Proof once again that Devon always came out on top.”

For a moment I felt too stunned to talk. I had never heard of such a thing.

“Why did none of this ever come out in the press? Was there a cover-up?”

“No cover-up,” he said. “The official story that my mother perpetuated was that Fiona died from dehydration, following a long illness. My mother and stepfather were horrified and ashamed about what had happened and wanted it all kept hush-hush. The press didn’t bother looking into it—Fiona wasn’t on anyone’s radar, really. And though there was some buzz about Devon’s weight then, there wasn’t any link to Fiona. My sister just wasn’t famous enough.”

“Fascinatingly,” he added, his voice tight with bitterness, “Devon began to recover from her anorexia shortly after Fiona’s death.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “How old was Fiona when she died?”

“Nineteen. My mother was never the same after that.”

It sounded as if Richard Parkin had never been quite the same either. So had he spent the last fourteen years biding his time, waiting for the chance to pay Devon Barr back? It was the English, after all, who had coined the phrase, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

“So what was the real reason you went to Scott’s?” I asked quietly.

“Morbid curiosity,” he said. “As soon as Scott mentioned that he was having Devon up for the weekend, I started angling for an invitation, claiming I might be open to doing a profile of her. Once I’d procured it, my better judgment nearly convinced me to back out, but in the end I couldn’t resist. I’d not laid eyes on Devon since weeks before my sister’s death—she never came to the funeral, never got in touch. Oh, I’ve been forced to look at her bloody face a hundred million times like the rest of us, but our paths never crossed. I wondered what she would be like, wondered if she would even put two and two together when she saw me.”

“Fiona had a different last name than you, of course.”

“Yes, and I was just a reporter when she died—well known in certain circles but hardly in the ones Devon