So Pretty It Hurts

the police but also Homeland Security. Thank God Beau called me a few minutes later.”

I took him through the story quickly, knowing Beau would be arriving any minute.

“Who’s doing this to you?” Landon asked.

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I have a few ideas.”

“And you’re going to fill the upstate police in, right?”

“Yes. The detective in charge up there didn’t seem to buy my idea that Devon might have been murdered, but this may change his mind. The problem is that he doesn’t have any jurisdiction down here, and that’s going to limit what he does. Hopefully he can involve the state police.”

“Please don’t give me the usual Bailey Weggins punch line—that you’ll have to take matters into your own hands. It terrifies me when you say that.”

“I don’t really have a choice.”

“Oy.”

“But I’ll be careful. I made a mistake at the barn—I let down my guard. I just can’t do that again.”

After giving him another squeeze, I scampered back to my place. Jessie called just while I was letting myself in, and I reassured her, too. And then moments later the doorman was buzzing to tell me that Beau was on the way up. He arrived carrying not only a deep-dish pizza but also a bottle of wine. As soon as he set the stuff down, we hugged each other fiercely.

“I’m just so relieved you’re all right,” he said, pulling back enough to study my face. “In those two minutes between when I read your e-mail and talked to you on the phone, I felt totally frantic.”

“Thanks for being there for me tonight.”

“What do you need first? Pizza? Wine? A shoulder to cry on?”

“Everything at the same time,” I said.

I practically inhaled the pizza, though I also managed to fill in the blanks of the story for Beau. When I’d polished off three slices, I leaned back into one of the chairs at my dining table and took a slug of wine. Beau sat across from me, his back to the window. Behind him was my enchanting Manhattan view, at this hour just the dark outline of a dozen apartment buildings dabbed with lights and topped with old wooden water tanks. It always seemed wonderfully fake to me, like the backdrop for a Broadway show.

What a relief to be here, I thought—not just safe in my apartment, but with Beau.

“I’ve never seen you devour food that way,” Beau said, laughing. “There were a couple of times where I thought I might have to administer the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I think it’s because I’m so hyped up. Being trapped in that barn and then smelling the smoke and not knowing if I’d get out. I guess feeling lucky to be alive has made me ravenous. I want to consume everything in sight.”

“Should I take that as a promise or a warning?” Beau said, smiling.

I laughed. We had once again shoved our troubles aside because of Devon Barr, but that was okay.

Beau’s expression turned suddenly sober. He pushed his chair back and crossed one leg over the other.

“So the person who did this was surely one of the houseguests. And they were all out in Pennsylvania, right?”

“Yes, they were all there,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure that whoever locked me in the barn is also the one who put Sherrie up to calling Nash. It’s all part of a plan to shut me down.”

“And obviously the reason for their actions is that they’re afraid you could expose them.”

“Exactly. The person must be the one who put the Lasix in Devon’s water.”

“So who has your vote at the moment?”

“It’s someone pretty clever,” I said. “They found a desolate location, waited for me to arrive, and had the accelerant ready. The only person I’d automatically eliminate would be Tory—she doesn’t seem smart enough to know how fires even start.”

“But they weren’t all that clever, were they? You could have called 911 and been rescued fairly quickly. It was fortunate for them that you had no service.”

“No,” I said. “That’s what I thought initially, but on the drive back I realized it wasn’t at all a matter of them being lucky.”

Beau squinted his deep brown eyes at me.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I’m not tracking.”

“I’m pretty sure the person knew I didn’t have service in Pine Grove. They knew that even if I had my phone with me in the barn, it wouldn’t work.”

“So somehow they knew what carrier you used?”

“Yes. And I know who it is. Or rather who they are. Last weekend two of Scott’s houseguests used my BlackBerry. And I think one of them must be the killer.”

Chapter 21

“Who?” Beau exclaimed.

I stared into my wineglass for a moment, gathering my thoughts before speaking.

“Whitney, for one,” I said. “I loaned her my BlackBerry briefly after Devon died. I know she’s been to Pine Grove before—because she made a comment about the town being some sad little place. And that’s no surprise. Cap was Devon’s manager, and he’d probably driven out there at times and taken Whitney with him.”

“So do you think that Cap really was having an affair with Devon—and Whitney found out about it?”

I shook my head slowly back and forth.

“I just don’t have a good read on that right now,” I said. “Whitney is so adamant that there was nothing going on between Cap and Devon, and she and Cap seem fiercely devoted to each other these days. I’m wondering if something may have been going on earlier, and Whitney just discovered it. Maybe she also found out that Devon had been pregnant with Cap’s baby, which would make the news even harder to stomach.”

“So the whole thing about Cap being unable to have sex could just be bullshit?”

“Well, perhaps he can’t now but could last fall. And here’s a wacky detail to consider. According to Christian, Devon conceived through some kind of fertility treatments. I assumed when he told me that it was in vitro. But what if the fertility issues had involved Cap, not Devon? Devon may have wanted to conceive by him, and he agreed, but he has lupus, and that can affect a man’s ability to have an erection. So perhaps they arranged for Cap’s sperm to be extracted and artificially inseminated.”

“Sounds awfully far-fetched.”

“I know. But there’s something odd about Devon’s whole pregnancy, and I keep wondering if it fits into her murder somehow. One second she’s pregnant, and then all of a sudden the baby’s gone and she’s happily dating Tommy, like the whole thing was barely a blip in her life. Of course, maybe she considered losing the baby a lucky break because she’d just developed the hots for Tommy, and as he told me the other night, he doesn’t—”

I paused in shock. An incredible thought had just flung itself into my brain.

“He doesn’t what?” Beau asked.

“He doesn’t ‘do babies,’ ” I said quietly. “He basically loathes kids. Devon met Tommy in November of last year, when she was a few months pregnant, but probably capable of disguising it with the right outfit. What if she learned about Tommy’s aversion to rug rats—she probably fished for his thoughts on the subject because of her condition—and realized that, unlike Brad Pitt, he wasn’t going to have any interest in dating her when she had a screaming tot in tow. So—so she decided to do something about it.”

“What are you saying exactly?” Beau asked. “That she had an abortion?”