So Pretty It Hurts bwm-6

by Kate White

  “That sounds fantastic,” I said. “Unless something huge related to the case breaks, I should be able to leave Buzz at a decent time tonight.”

  “Great. Just give me a heads-up when you know for sure.”

  I felt like letting out a big sigh when I disconnected. Everything seemed back to normal.

  I’d expected that my day would be busy, but in some ways it just sputtered along. I showered and then knocked on the door of my sixty-something next-door neighbor Landon, hoping to catch up, but there was no answer. Throughout the morning I made several calls to Detective Collinson’s office but didn’t reach him until noon, at which point he told me the autopsy wasn’t being performed until the afternoon and there would be no statement until tomorrow. Midafternoon, I dropped by the office, but discovered the typical anticlimactic day-after-closing scene. It was like walking into a party at midnight and finding nothing but empty plastic cups, wet potato chips plastered to the table, and a few people passed out on the couch.

  I called Beau shortly afterward and let him know that there was no reason I couldn’t be at his place by seven.

  “Great. You could probably stand to go to bed early tonight.”

  “Yes, I could,” I said, laughing. I felt my cheeks begin to burn, just thinking about slipping between the sheets with him. I hit the gym on the way home from Buzz, showered again at home, and later grabbed a cab to head over to Chelsea.

  Even though we’d only been apart a week or so, when Beau opened the door to his apartment, it felt as if it’d been much longer. His face was slightly tanned from the Arizona sun, and his hair, which he had been wearing longer now, seemed to have grown an inch in the time he was gone. I felt the jolt of surprise I’d experienced when I first saw him in September after he’d been in Turkey for weeks and weeks.

  “Hey there,” he said in greeting. He gave me a long, sexy kiss and then wrapped one arm around me in a protective gesture. “You look pretty amazing for someone who has been snowbound with a dead body.”

  Beau looked awfully good himself. He was wearing tight jeans, loafers, and a blue-and-white checked shirt, with the top two buttons undone. He smelled good too—that dusky, exotic scent that he always wore.

  “I’m still a little shell-shocked, but just being back in Manhattan has helped.”

  “Well, come in and let me pamper you. You can sit by the fire with a glass of wine while I finish dinner.”

  “Fire?” I said.

  I looked past him into the living room, and my eyes widened in surprise. There was indeed a fire burning in the fireplace. I’d been in Beau’s apartment a few dozen times through the fall, but it had never occurred to me that the fireplace worked. Up until my last visit, there’d been a large straw basket in there.

  “You didn’t think I’d let you sit here on a cold winter night without a fire, did you?”

  The glass of wine was already poured, and I did as instructed—sat on the sleek black sofa, sipping the French red. My eyes roamed the walls, to the photographs Beau had taken in far-off places like Istanbul and Hanoi, but they kept straying back to the freaking fire. A small knot started to form in my stomach. I guess in the back of my mind I’d assumed that like so many fireplaces in the city, it could no longer burn wood, though in truth I hadn’t ever really thought about it. Was it a symbol of something at the core of our relationship? That despite the fact that we’d dated exclusively for two and a half months, I didn’t really know Beau? Stop it, Bailey, I wanted to scream. You’re starting in again.

  Dinner was lamb chops, roasted potatoes, and asparagus, served on the round table he used as a desk in a room off the living room. He’d set it with cloth napkins and candles. I am being pampered, I thought—seriously pampered. As we ate, I relayed all the gory details about the weekend. I also shared the gossipy tidbits—such as Cap’s reported lip lock with Devon—though I left out the part about Scott wanting three-way action with Jessie and me. Beau listened intently, leaning back in his chair at points, and sometimes shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Wow, that—that sounds like a damn movie,” he said.

  I had this momentary feeling that he’d been about to say, “Wow—that will teach you to go off to a house party for the weekend without me” and changed his mind, vowing like me to just leave the snippiness behind us.

  “I know—lots of tension,” I said. “I won’t know until the police report, though, whether all that tension somehow led to Devon’s death.”

  “And this person who knocked you down the stairs. If you had to make a guess, who do you think it was?”

  “I don’t have a clue. The only sense I have is that it was a man—because there was a really heavy odor of sweat. Of course, anyone would be sweating after racing around the halls, but still the smell was so pronounced—”

  “I’ve read a few pieces by Richard Parkin. He sounds like a pompous ass. Could he have been your sweat hog?”

  “Maybe. Based on the amount of alcohol he’d had during the course of the day, it’s hard to picture him playing Zorro, but who knows? He certainly managed to keep up during a hike we took in the woods one morning.”

  “Have you got any residual aches? I mean, maybe you should even see a doctor.”

  “I think I’m okay—just a few minor bruises. And this fantastic dinner has totally taken my mind off it.”

  He cleared the plates and returned a few minutes later with two full coffee mugs. But rather than sit back down himself, he came up behind me and laid his hands on either side of my neck.

  “Would a head rub make it better or worse?” he asked from behind me. Though I couldn’t see him, I sensed him raising just one eyebrow in that intriguing way of his.

  “Umm, better, I think,” I said, smiling.

  He started with my neck and then moved up to my scalp, his slender but strong hands rubbing gently at first and then more firmly when it was clear I could handle it. Just having those hands on me again, and thinking of all the things they would certainly do later, made my breathing grow more shallow. I also felt a flush begin to creep up my chest.

  The massage lasted a good ten minutes. I alternated between languidly relishing how nice it was to have my low-grade headache begin to subside and enjoying the wave of lust that was beginning to wash over me.

  “Better?” Beau asked finally.

  “Sooo much better.”

  His fingers dropped from my head to my shoulders and then he slowly slid them down my chest, slipping them under my top and my bra until he had cupped both my breasts. His palms felt cold against my skin but exhilarating. I let out a moan as he began to knead my breasts, sometimes gently pinching my nipples between his fingers.

  “Now that’s definitely taking the pain away,” I whispered.

  With one stroke he grasped the bottom edge of my top in his hands and tugged it over my head. He reached down behind me, unhooked my bra, and pulled that over my head as well. Leaning forward, he kissed the side of my neck.

  “Why don’t we go out into the living room?” he asked. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of ever seeing you naked by firelight, have I?”

  He laid two more logs on the fire, flicked off the lights in the living room, and brought a blanket from the bedroom to lay on the floor. I unbuttoned his shirt, slid it off, and let it drop to the floor. When I started to reach for his jeans zipper, he pulled me toward him and began to kiss me, slipping his tongue in my mouth.

  “I was almost useless at work today,” he said, pulling back. His skin glowed in the firelight. “I just kept thinking about all the things I wanted to do to you.”

  He kissed me again, fiercely this time. I felt nearly ravenous for him. I reached for his zipper again, but he pushed my hand away and laid me on the blanket. Crouching, he tugged off my jeans and my thong, and then stepped out of his own jeans and underwear. The only sounds in the room were the crackle of the logs and our ragged breaths. I felt in an altered state as he began to kiss his way down my body and then part
ed my legs with his hands.

  Sex had been good with us from the start, and it hadn’t yet lost its newness. At one point Beau dragged three throw pillows from the sofa and stacked them under my butt. It felt intoxicating to be so oddly elevated and free as he plunged deeply into me.

  I slept straight through the night, completely exhausted. We woke at about eight and headed over to a little café in his neighborhood for a quick breakfast of coffee and croissants. Beau had a full day of editing ahead, followed by a business dinner, and he wanted to get an early start. Figuring Collinson wasn’t going to call me with the news, I wanted to begin hounding him as early as possible. It was just below freezing out, and Beau and I felt a shock of electricity as we kissed good-bye in front of the café.

  “Keep me posted, okay?” Beau said.

  “Absolutely.”

  Though the walk home from Beau’s place to mine would take a half hour, I decided to go for it, snaking east and south through Chelsea and the western part of Greenwich Village. As I crossed Fifth Avenue, I checked my watch. Ten of nine. I dug for my BlackBerry and tried Collinson. To my surprise he not only answered but also sounded vaguely receptive to my call.

  “We’re releasing a statement in just a short while,” he said. “But there’s no reason I can’t tell you now. Devon Barr died of heart failure.”

  So my initial instinct had been right after all.

  “Was it connected to an eating disorder?”

  “It appears to be. There’s evidence she was purging. And her body weight was lower than normal.”

  “What did she weigh exactly?”

  “I don’t think there’s any reason you need to know the exact figure. But it seems she was suffering from an electrolyte imbalance.”

  “I assume the autopsy also showed evidence of a pregnancy,” I stated calmly.

  “Why do you ask that?” he said, clearly surprised.

  “I hear she lost a baby last winter. I have a couple of sources.”

  He took a moment to respond.

  “I’m not really at liberty to say.”

  But I knew from his hesitation that I’d been right.

  “If that’s all, I need to be going,” he said.

  “Just a couple more questions, please. You’ve been so helpful, and I really appreciate it. Do you have any idea yet who scratched all the doors—and why?”

  “No, our investigation into that is ongoing.”

  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 c
ourse, 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.

  I jotted down the names of all the houseguests and considered them one by one. Besides Cap and Whitney, Tory grabbed my interest. After all, she’d morphed into a cross between a bitch and a banshee over the dirty flirting taking place between Devon and Tommy. There was also a chance she’d known what Devon was up to with the ipecac—that stuff was probably common knowledge in the world of modeling. But she’d appeared to be on good terms with Devon when the weekend began, so why would she have come armed with a diuretic? Unless she had it in her own stay-skinny arsenal.