So Pretty It Hurts bwm-6

by Kate White

  The bales weren’t exactly light, but I could tell right away that moving them would be doable. I wedged the flashlight into some hay, so that it was pointed toward the back, and quickly chucked a few of the top bales out of the way. Before too long, I’d worked my way toward the back. I grabbed the flashlight again and ran it over the top of the wall. As I did, I heard something scurry off on tiny feet. Great. Nothing like a few rodents to up the terror factor.

  But there was no way out, from what I could see. My heart sank. How, I wondered frantically, could there not be a door in the back? If the barn had once been used for cows, there would have had to be an exit to the field. The word pigs suddenly flashed in my mind. There had been pigs, too, at the farm we’d visited with my father, a separate barn for them. As I pictured them in my mind—huge and pink with their funny snouts and woeful eyes—I remembered something. The pig door. It was the hatch they used to move the animals from the barn to the outdoor pen. Maybe this barn had one at the bottom of the back wall.

  I started to work again, heaving bales of hay from the back row out of the way. Underneath my jacket I could feel my body growing sweaty from exertion.

  And then, as I worked, I heard another sound. I froze. It wasn’t scurrying this time but someone moving outside in the dark, to my right, along the north edge of the barn again. Shit, I realized. The person was still out there. Was he planning to come inside now?

  The sound stopped, but I could sense where the person was—about halfway down. His body was like a force field I could feel. What was he doing? I wondered desperately. Then there was a noise again, the sound of a coat shifting, and then something thick and liquidy being splashed on the barn. Some of it, I could tell, spattered inside. Omigod, I thought, what was going on?

  A second later I knew. A wisp of smoke snaked into the barn, and my nostrils were filled with the pungent smell of wood burning. The freaking barn was on fire! The breath froze in my chest, and my eyes pricked with tears.

  I swung around and frantically hurled another bale out of the way, and then another. My hands were trembling now, but I kept going. Over the thunder of my heart, I heard barn wood begin to crackle. Please, please, I thought, don’t let this happen to me.

  Outside the back of the barn, an engine suddenly roared to life. A car. For a second I thought the driver was going to ram right though the back wall of the building, but a second later I realized the person was rounding the barn, heading back to the road.

  I glanced back to where the fire was. Flames were now licking the walls. They weren’t huge, but the smoke was another story. It was starting to fill the barn, like a fog rolling in from the sea. I turned back and desperately kept working, reaching down and grabbing bale after bale. Finally I’d managed to create a corridor along the back wall. I grabbed the flashlight and jumped down. I bounced the flashlight over the wall. And there it was. The pig door. About three feet by three feet, with a wooden bolt on one side. I nearly sobbed in gratitude. I knelt down on the cold floor of the barn and, after undoing the bolt, slid the door over.

  A blast of cold air hit me. I dove through the opening and scrambled up to my feet. I was shaking—in both fear and relief. I’d made it out, maybe with only seconds to spare before the smoke overwhelmed me. In the western sky, there were still smudges of light, enough to see that there was no one around. I raced to the front of the barn.

  The lower north side was now engulfed in flames. Smoke was circling upward, and big flames flicked along the old, dry wood, making loud crackling sounds. Instinctively I glanced up to the house on the hill. There were lights on inside, practically in every room, and I thought I could make out the shape of someone standing just outside the front door. I jumped in the car and drove it down the road twenty yards or so.

  I was shaking hard by then, and I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Should I go up to the house and make sure they’d called 911? But then, from far off, I heard the wail of a siren. I decided to sit in my car on the road and wait for help to arrive.

  Two minutes later, a fire truck came roaring up the country road. It pulled up in front of the barn, and five or six guys in big boots, helmets, and slickers sprang from inside it. By now the flames were shooting up the whole side of the barn. It took the firefighters a minute or two to unload the hose, and then they were shooting a hard stream of water at the barn. Even from inside my car I could hear the flames begin to hiss into submission. About ten minutes later, the flames were gone, and there were just curls of dark smoke ascending toward the night sky.

  I knew that the firefighters had more work to do, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. I opened the car door and propelled myself toward the fire truck.

  Before I’d made it just a few feet, the fireman nearest me caught my movement out of the corner of his eye and spun around. He put a hand up, motioning for me to stop. He was about thirty, hefty, with a big strong jaw.

  “You’re going to need to step back, ma’am,” he said. “We can’t have spectators getting this close.”

  “But I’m not really a spectator,” I said.

  “Do you own the barn?”

  “No, but I was in the barn when someone set the fire. They locked me in. They were trying to kill me.”

  His jaw fell in surprise. He turned around and called for one of the other guys to come over—an older man, who’d taken his helmet off and was wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. I figured he might be the dude in charge.

  I went through my story quickly with them, trying not to sound like a lunatic because I knew how far-fetched the whole damn thing sounded. They exchanged a couple of looks as I spoke, especially when I touched on the Devon Barr connection, but I couldn’t really read them. I got the feeling the young guy thought something funny was up, especially when I described escaping by the pig door, but the older man, the chief, seemed to buy what I was saying. Behind us the rest of the crew kept dealing with the fire. A few of them had gone in the barn and were looking around with big torches.

  When I’d finished my story, the chief stepped back to the fire engine, grabbed a clipboard from inside, and returned.

  “I want you to write down your name, address, and phone number, okay?” he said. “The arson investigator is going to want to talk to you. And then I need you to stop by the state trooper’s office and report this.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Are you sure you don’t need medical treatment?” he asked. “How much smoke did you inhale?”

  “Very little,” I said. “I got out before it filled the barn.”

  I said good-bye and trudged back to my car. I used the GPS to find the state trooper office, which turned out to be about fifteen minutes away. At least it was in the same direction as the highway toward New York, because I was completely frayed around the edges by now. When I stepped inside the squat cinder-block headquarters, there were a couple of troopers huddled by the front desk, and they glanced at me almost expectantly. I realized after a second that the fire chief had called ahead.

  A detective named Joe Olden took my statement. His face looked like it’d last cracked a smile in 1997. He seemed pretty curious initially, but the more details I offered—the weekend at Scott’s, the Lasix in the water, the gypsy cab experience—the more skeptical he appeared. It was like I’d started off reporting a minor traffic accident, but was now describing how I’d discovered alien spacecraft when I stepped out of the car to inspect the damage.

  Finally, I gave him Collinson’s info and begged him to call the man. Just as I was wrapping up, the fire marshal arrived and asked me a series of questions as well.

  Later, as I nearly staggered out to the parking lot, I called Collinson myself, reaching his voice mail. I told him I had important news and desperately needed to speak to him.

  It was an utter relief to be back in my car and headed for Manhattan, but even with the heater cranked up and Maria Callas arias playing, I couldn’t keep my body from trembling. It was partly from the exertion of h
urling all those bales of hay, but also from the sheer terror I still felt. I knew that if there hadn’t been a pig door in the barn, I probably would have died tonight.

  I hadn’t traveled far on the highway when my BlackBerry rang. I had service again. I realized that I had never deleted my SOS e-mails to Landon, Jessie, and Beau, and they’d all gone through. When I answered my phone, a frantic Beau was on the other end.

  “Are you okay?” he demanded anxiously. “Are you still in the barn?”

  “No, I’m out and I’m fine. But I was nearly killed.” I felt myself tearing, and I shook the drops away. I blurted out what had happened since I’d sent the message.

  “God, Bailey, I can’t believe this,” he said, his voice laced with worry. “Is there any chance this person could be following you?”

  “No, I bet they beat it out of Pine Grove once the fire started. . . .”

  “Do you want me to come meet you someplace?”

  “I’m okay. But—it would be great if you could be there when I get home. I’m still pretty shaken up.” Without warning, a sob caught in my throat. “It was just so scary when the smoke filled the barn.”

  “Why don’t you call me when you’re about twenty minutes away. I’ll just hop in a cab.”

  “You’ve got to do me one other favor. Will you get in touch with both Jessie and Landon and tell them I’m fine? I want to concentrate on the road.”

  As soon as I signed off, I checked the rearview mirror instinctively. I was positive I wasn’t being tailed. There’d been stretches on the trip so far when no one had been behind me. But that didn’t mean I was safe. Once the fire starter learned that his efforts had been thwarted, some other deadly plan would surely be hatched.

  I’d have to be as careful as I possibly could. My trouble in Pine Grove had sprung in part from not watching my back well enough. I’d thought I was being such a smarty-pants by arriving at the barn early, but my assailant had come even earlier, and must have been parked out in back the whole time. And lucky for them, my BlackBerry hadn’t worked.

  Suddenly my stomach flipped over. Had it just been luck? I wondered. Or had the killer known I had no service in that part of Pennsylvania? And then, one after another, my thoughts fell into place, like a key tripping a lock. Yes, the killer had known, I realized. I now had an idea who the fire starter might be. The problem was, there were two possibilities. I was going to have to figure out which one was the culprit.

  I made better time than I’d planned, driving eighty miles an hour in my desperation to put as much distance as possible between Pine Grove and my sorry ass. I dropped off the rental, and once I found a cab, I called Beau, telling him I was on my way to my apartment. I felt almost weak from hunger and asked him to pick up food, anything. Plus, having a few more minutes to myself would give me a chance to pop by Landon’s and reassure him.

  It turned out to be a good plan because Landon was nearly bug-eyed with worry when he opened his door.

  “I can’t tell you what a fright your e-mail gave me,” he said after we’d hugged. “I was about to call not only 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 com
ment 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.”