Over Her Dead Body (16 page)

“Was he angry with her for some reason?”

“No, that’s just how men with little—little
minds
amuse themselves.”

As soon as I’d said good-bye to Mary Kay in the lobby and she’d headed for the elevator, I tried the number for Crandall. It was voice mail. I left a message saying simply that I was from
Buzz
and I wanted to talk to him.

In the taxi to the office, I had a chance to cogitate on why Mary Kay had seemed so evasive. Perhaps she
did
know what information Jed Crandall had in his possession but was afraid that if she passed it to me, I’d go blabbing it somewhere and there’d be no more exclusive. Or maybe she really didn’t know. After forty years as a gossipmonger, she might just exude caginess.

I also used the taxi time to check my voice mail. More calls from reporters, one call from a contact in NYPD saying he was on vacation and had nothing to share. No word on my meeting with Nash, no message yet from Mona’s husband, and no message either from Tom Dicker. I needed to talk to him to help establish my timeline.

As I strolled through the black marble lobby of the building, an idea occurred to me—that I might have better luck with Dicker’s assistant if I approached her face-to-face. Rather than take the elevator to sixteen, I pushed the button for eighteen, where the corporate offices were located and where Mona had gone before the party. Actually, I realized, maybe Dicker hadn’t even been there Tuesday night, which would explain why Mona’s visit to the floor had been so brief. Regardless, I needed to find out the details.

I’d never been on the corporate floor, and it took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected it to look like the
Buzz/Track
floor, but I’d thought it would feel like a media empire. It didn’t at all. Opening the glass doors to the reception area, I saw that everything was colored beige—from the walls, to the couches, to the wall-to-wall carpet under my feet—and it was so quiet that you could almost
hear
the hush. I might as well have been in the corporate headquarters for some company that made aluminum cans.

There was a tall blonde at the reception desk, someone so good-looking that it made you suspect she had passed a screen test for the job. I headed toward her. As I did, I noticed that there was a guy in the reception area, his back to me. He was talking on his cell phone while attempting to rifle through a briefcase that was balanced on his bended knee.

“Sure,” he said. “Just say the word.” He flipped the phone closed, stuck it in his jacket pocket, and hoisted the briefcase closer to his chest. Hearing my footsteps, he glanced behind him and our eyes met. Out of nowhere I felt a wallop, as if someone had just shoved me hard, and the weirdest thought flashed through my brain.

One day I’m going to marry that guy.

CHAPTER 9

“C
an I help you? . . . Miss, can I
help
you?”

The chick at the desk was speaking to me—and in this especially annoying tone, the kind salespeople in stores use when you’re pawing merchandise that they’re certain you can’t afford. I forced myself to turn around and face her.

“My name is Bailey Weggins,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Dicker’s assistant. I work at
Buzz
and it’s a matter of great importance.”

That seemed to grab her attention. Everyone on this floor was surely chattering about the murder at
Buzz
and eager for any crumbs of info they could find.

“Let me try her. What was the last name again?”

“Weggins,” I said. Would it seem odd, I wondered, if I added my phone number? Cell, work, and home. So that the guy behind me, the one who’d rendered me instantly and insanely lovestruck, could sear them on his brain if he so chose. I turned my head ever so slightly back in his direction to see what he was up to. He was still looking at me. He was in his thirties, I guessed, maybe just a little older than me—or maybe not. It was so hard to tell these days. He had dark, dark eyes, brown hair on the longish side, at least just long enough to tuck behind his ears, and he was tanned. Not been-caught-in-a-rust-storm tanned like Dicker, but the kind you ended up with when you’d spent the first half of your summer windsurfing every weekend or maybe just lying in the warm sand in a faded pair of board shorts.

Christ, I’d seen him for ten seconds and I already had him half-naked. I started to turn back toward the receptionist so I wouldn’t appear like a total goofball, and as I did the mystery guy offered me a cocky smile, the kind where only one side of the mouth pulls up. I tried to smile back, but nothing happened. My face seemed permanently frozen into the gawking expression someone might wear after witnessing an exploding manhole cover.

“She’s checking,” the receptionist announced. My attention had been so diverted by the guy behind me that I hadn’t even heard her make the call.

“Thank you,” I said. Fearful of looking even more like an imbecile if I just stood there agog in the middle of the reception area, I walked over to the couch on the other side and perched on the edge of it. I stole a glance across the room. The guy was now shifting through his briefcase again, a nice-looking soft leather one with a shoulder strap. I wondered who he was waiting to see. He certainly wasn’t the corporate type; he was wearing jeans below his black sports jacket.

Any minute now someone was going to come out and fetch him, and then that would be it. I racked my mind for some sort of strategy that would enable me to make a connection with him. The old standby “Aren’t you so-and-so?” would be pathetically obvious. So would “May I borrow your cell phone?” And though it wasn’t beneath me to saunter over to a guy like him and boldly ask for his digits, I certainly wasn’t going to do it in front of the snooty blond receptionist.

As I was trying desperately to formulate a plan, I heard a snap and glanced up to see that he had just secured the flap of his briefcase. Then, to my horror, he strode across the floor and opened one of the glass doors to the elevator bank. He offered me another sly smile and passed through the doorway.

Whatever appointment he’d had here today was
over,
not about to begin. God, I might never set eyes on him again. Should I run after him? Throw myself on the floor and snare the leg of his jeans with my teeth? Too late. I heard the muted
ding
announcing the arrival of the elevator and glanced up just in time to see the back of his jacket as he boarded. I felt as if I were being sucked into quicksand.

No need to panic, I told myself. I took four strides toward the reception desk.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said to her, throwing my pride to the wind. “I swear that guy who was just here roomed with my brother at college. Does his last name start with a D?”

She glanced down at a paper on her desk. “No, R,” she said, too dense to be suspicious. “Regan.”

“And the first name is . . . ?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I think that’s him, though. I think the name was Regan. Who was he here to see?”

“Why? That’s not really information I should be giving out.”

I was tempted to tell her that there was no damn law against it, that it wasn’t as if she were a psychiatrist and I was demanding to see her patient records.

“Oh, I was just wondering,” I said sweetly. “My brother’s been having a tough time lately, and I’d know he’d love to hear from him again. They kind of lost touch.”

“Well, if you must know,” she said, almost in a whisper, “he was here to see Mr. Dicker.”

As if the sound of his name were a cue, the phone rang right then and I could tell by the way the receptionist shot a glance at me while she was talking that it was Dicker’s office on the other end.

She set down the phone and pursed her lips. “That was Mr. Dicker’s assistant. She said she’s sorry, but Mr. Dicker is extremely busy and he doesn’t have any time available at the moment. She’ll see what she can do about squeezing you in later.”

“Thank you,” I said, annoyed by the brush-off. But I didn’t want to take it out on her. After all, she had at least told me the last name of the man who had left me in such a delicious tizzy.

I returned to the couch, picked up my purse and tote bag where I’d left them, and prepared to head down to sixteen. But lo and behold, just as I was about to swing open the glass door to the elevator bank, Tom Dicker charged out of the open door to the right of the reception desk. He was headed toward the elevator bank and moving at the speed of a cardiologist answering a code blue.

This was my opportunity to make a move. I opened the door and held it out, allowing Dicker to grab it. He offered a curt nod as it closed behind us.

“Mr. Dicker, I’m Bailey Weggins, a reporter at
Buzz,
” I said once we were standing by the bank of elevators.

“How ya doin’?” he said, face pinched as he stabbed at the Down button with his finger. He was like a massive ball of energy tightly packed in a suit, almost like a bag of freeze-dried coffee. You couldn’t help but have the feeling that if you tore a hole in his jacket sleeve, all that energy would burst out from the inside.

“Pretty good,” I said. “Actually, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I cover celebrity crime for the magazine, and Nash put me in charge of writing about Mona’s death. I was hoping to be able to speak to you.”

“I already spent an hour with that other guy—Ryan,” he said with another jab at the elevator button. “Isn’t that enough? I’m very busy, as you might imagine. I’m trying to keep a lot of balls on the field right now.”

“Right. Well, Ryan’s, doing the profile,” I told him, “but we also have to report on the murder. That’s what I’m doing. I’m trying to establish a timeline for Mona’s last hour. I hear she came up to see you shortly before she was attacked.”

He froze, all the jitteriness vaporized in a split second. It was disconcerting to see him totally still, staring at me with those too small blue eyes.

“I saw her that night, sure,” he stated. “What’s the big deal, anyway?”

“It’s not—I mean, it’s not a big deal,” I said falteringly. “Like I said, I’m just attempting to create a timeline, a sense of where she was and for how long. It seems like she was in your office for only a few minutes.” I could tell by his expression that I was irritating him, and that was not a good thing. I smiled weakly, a feeble stab at keeping things light.

“That’s right,” he said. “She just wanted to tell me what cover she’d gone with. I like to know these things up front, in case the subject calls my office threatening to sue me for a hundred million bucks. But I’d been out of town the day before when it shipped.”

“‘Freaky Beauty Rituals of the Stars.’”

“Huh?”

“The cover story this week. ‘Freaky Beauty Rituals of the Stars.’”

“Yeah, that’s right. Don’t ask me why, but people go nuts for that kind of shit. And it’s a winner, too. I got the retail scan numbers on it.”

“Just one most question, then. According to her assistant, Mona came up here just after seven. How long did she stay?”

“Just long enough to tell me what the cover was. Five or ten minutes, tops.”

The elevator announced its arrival with a
ding,
and Dicker was so anxious to board that he had to force himself to allow me to go first. I figured it wouldn’t be too smart to ask him the full name of the hottie who’d been in to see him. Instead I simply thanked him for his assistance.

“What did you say your name was?” he asked as the elevator door opened on sixteen, his face now looking even more consternated than usual.

“Bailey Weggins,” I answered. I felt as if I were giving it to a teacher who had just caught me writing graffiti on the walls of the school.

The reception area on sixteen was quiet today—just the receptionist on duty, no cops hanging about—but inside, things were really jumping. Before going to my desk, I headed straight for the art department. This was the day Harrison was due in, and I could see a mop of long blond hair sitting at the desk he supposedly occupied. As I approached, I saw that he was working on a layout for what appeared to be a page of “Fashion Follies.”

I introduced myself, explaining that I was writing the article on Mona. I asked if I could talk to him privately.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said, lifting his shoulders awkwardly. I led him down to the small conference room I’d been in before.

“Thanks,” I said as he looked at me expectantly. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m keeping my head down. This whole thing has been a real bummer, if you know what I mean.”

“I can understand. I hear you worked late the night of the murder, and I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

He sighed, lifting his shoulders nervously again. They nearly reached his ears this time.

“Man, I hate havin’ to talk about this stuff,” he said. “I already spent an hour with the police.”

“I promise not to take too long. Nash has requested that people share as much information as possible with me.” I hoped that invoking the name of the boss would help.

“My head is just messed up about this thing. I let that dude in here that night. And now it looks like he might have killed her.”

“You mean Robby Hart?”

“Yeah. But I had no idea he’d been fired. I’m just freelance, so I’m the last to hear anything.”

“I can relate to that since I’m freelance, too,” I said with a smile, trying to find some common ground. “What time did you leave—do you remember?”

“Like I told the police, it was just before eight. I had to meet somebody downtown at eight-thirty. You know how when it takes you thirty minutes to get someplace and you leave two minutes after you’re supposed to, you’re gonna be ten minutes late, but if you leave just two minutes
before,
then you’re on time?”

“Uh, yeah, I know what you mean,” I said, trying not to look skeptical. “So as you were leaving, Robby was coming in?”

“Yeah, I was just going out the door. He yelled for me to hold it and so I did. I mean, the guy’s a senior editor, so I didn’t think twice.”

“How did he seem to you?”

“Sweaty.”

“Sweaty?”

“He just looked sweaty, like he’d been hurrying around or on the subway. His head was kind of shiny.”

“Did he seem upset?”

He shook his head slowly. “Not upset, but tense. I thought he’d probably forgotten something.”

“So who was around when you left?”

“Nobody. By six-thirty there were only a few people here anyway, and then gradually they all split. To be honest, I was working on some personal stuff ’cause my computer at home crashed. When I left, there was nobody here—except Mona, of course.”

“You saw Mona?”

“Yup. She’d been here earlier but then left for a while. I guess she went over to that party and then came back. She came right down the corridor.” He pointed to the one that led to the back offices and eventually to the door to
Track.

“Was anyone with her, or did anyone come in after her?”

“Nope, she was all by her lonesome.”

“Was there anything at all that struck you as odd?”

“Well, she had that new haircut, the one that made her look like she was wearing a wig.”

“I don’t mean
that
way. I’m just wondering if you noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

“Nope. I didn’t even make eye contact with her,” he confided. “A guy who worked here before told me never to do that ’cause then she would notice you. But she talked to that guy Ryan, the one who sits over by you.”

“Ryan?”
I said, stunned. “But you said only Mona was here when you left.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Ryan left
earlier,
about ten minutes before me.”

I flashed back on my conversation with him. No, he hadn’t once mentioned he was here when Mona returned.

“Do you know what they talked about?”

“No, I couldn’t hear. She only spoke to him for a second and then he took off.”

“And you never saw anyone go into Mona’s office?”

“No, but she was on the phone when I left, that much I know.”

“You could hear her?”

“No, I could see her through the glass as I was standing up to go. She was sitting at her desk, talking on the phone.”

I thanked him for his help, and he beat it. Based on what he’d told me, it seemed likely that Mona had managed to have her conversation with the paparazzo before she died, though I would have to confirm that when I finally reached the guy. Once I knew how long the call had lasted, I would be able to almost pinpoint the time she’d been attacked. Harrison’s revelation about Ryan was odd. Amy hadn’t told me. Neither had Spanky, but then I’d been pressing him about the identity of the last person in art that night. Why hadn’t
Ryan
mentioned to me that he had seen Mona before he left for the party? Perhaps because Ryan wasn’t willing to help me with any aspect of my story. Or was something else going on? According to Harrison, Ryan was one of the last people to have spoken to Mona before she was attacked. Had he been angry at Mona for some reason?