Over Her Dead Body (23 page)

The space was only half-filled tonight, probably because it was so muggy out and anyone with half a brain was indoors. I scanned the area, looking for a very tall, slightly bald man in his late thirties—Jed’s description of himself. And finally I spotted him on one of the daybeds, his long legs sprawled in front of him. I imagined his height gave him a real advantage when he was leering over walls, hoping to snag shots of Jennifer Aniston sunbathing topless. He shook my hand with a large, sweaty paw and indicated I should take a seat.

“Do you travel back and forth between the coasts a lot?” I asked as he took a long slug from his beer.

“I’m mostly L.A. based,” he said, “but I have a bit of business here occasionally. To tell you the truth, I’m in Europe half the time these days.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said with a grin. “Beckham’s kind of a specialty of mine. I had one of the first shots of him with that tarty little assistant of his.”

“It must be fairly dangerous work,” I said. “With the way stars take swings at you and stuff these days.”

“Man, some of these dudes can get real nasty—they kick, they punch, they scratch your car with their keys. Especially when you use the flash. They just hate the fucking flash.”

“So why do it?”

“Hell, it’s exciting. One night, just after I got in the business, I was on a stakeout with an old Scottish photographer—a real legend in the business—and we were waiting for this hotheaded actor and his slutty date to come out of a restaurant. The Scottish bloke leans over to me with a shit-eating grin and says: ‘D’ya feel yer heart pumpin’?’ It
was
pumping—and I liked it. Besides, the money’s ridiculous. You can get a hundred grand for the first shot of some new couple if they’re big enough names.”

“So Mary Kay set up the phone interview with you and Mona?” I asked, easing into what really mattered.

“Yup, I had something I thought Mona would really like, and it was a little too sensitive to take to her West Coast bureau guy. Mary Kay arranged for me to talk to her. You know, don’t you, that I was probably the last person to talk to Mona—before the killer, that is?”

“Did you make the call at the time it was planned, at seven forty-five?”

“On the dot. We only talked for about five minutes. I told her what I had, and she said she’d get back to me.”

I’d just filled in another part of my timeline. That meant Mona had been bludgeoned somewhere between seven-fifty and eight twenty-eight, when I’d discovered her.

“So what were you offering Mona—pictures of some celeb misbehaving?”

He shook his head, beer hoisted midway to his long, thin mouth. “Nope. It was information.”

“Information? I thought you sold photographs.” Mary Kay and Jessie had told me about the new currency paparazzi dealt in, but I wanted to play dumb in order to see how Jed responded.

“Guys in my line of work sometimes come across information that’s pretty powerful,” he said cockily, as if he were a spy. “You’re going through a garbage can looking for invites and you find something else, something you weren’t expecting, mixed in with all the coffee grounds and other crap. Or you overhear something outside of a party. It’s all in a day’s work.”

I remained as still as possible, trying not to look too eager. “So you had some information worth sharing with Mona. Who was it about?”

“The lovely Eva Anderson,” he said. “And it was pretty damn explosive.”

CHAPTER 13

I
offered a sly smile, hoping he’d see me as a fellow conspirator.

“Do tell,” I said softly. “It sounds really juicy.”

He tossed his head back and laughed. “Now, you’re enough of a detective to know that I can’t tell you what I’ve got. As far as I know, you’d scamper off in those cute little red pedal pushers and tell someone before I could market the information.”

Obviously there was no point in explaining to a big know-it-all like Jed that they were
capris.

“Come on. I’m a crime reporter. I just want it for background.”

“No can do.”

“Then why’d you have me come all the way up here?” I asked.

“On the phone you said you were interested in knowing if I’d spoken to Mona that night. I thought I’d be a nice guy and tell you.

“And besides,” he added, smiling, “I thought you might actually be able to help
me
a little—in exchange for what I passed along to you.”

I felt an urge to wipe the stupid grin off his face with my purse, but instead I smiled sweetly. There was still a slim chance that if I played nice, I might extract more from him.

“Sure. I’d be glad to help if I can,” I said. “Tell me what I can do.”

“Mona was hot for this info,” he said, shifting his long, gangly body into a more comfortable position on the daybed. “She wanted proof, though, and I told her I’d show her when I got to New York this week. So now that she’s dead, I do the right thing and go to this guy Nash or Dash or whatever the fuck his name is. But he doesn’t seem to understand the real value of what I’ve got. I’m hoping you can put in a good word for me.”

I tried to imagine what could be so good that Crandall would deem it explosive. Eva cheating? Brandon cheating? These days almost nothing really blew up in a star’s face. If having a sex video of herself go public hadn’t torn an irreparable gash in Paris Hilton’s chance at stardom, I couldn’t imagine what could pose a threat to Eva Anderson’s career.

“When did you meet with Nash?” I asked. “He was at a party in the Hamptons all day yesterday.”

“Last night. He and Mary Kay met me right here where we’re sitting at about ten-thirty. Mary Kay was nice enough to set it up for me.”

“So Mary Kay knows what your information is?”

“She does now. I hadn’t let her in on it previously, but since I’m using her to try to broker a deal with this new guy, I figured I’d better share with her. And just so you know, I didn’t blab to the cops about this. They know Mona and I talked that night, but I told them it was about some photos. The last thing I want is for my info to turn up on
Access Hollywood,
thanks to the NYPD.”

“Haven’t you considered that the information you shared with Mona could be a motive for murder?”

“How so? Mona was killed right after I talked to her, so nobody ever knew she had it. Look, are you gonna help me or not?”

I smiled, submerging my exasperation. “Sure, like I said, I’ll try to help,” I told him. “It would make it easier if I knew the broad outlines of the information. I could really make a case for it then.”

He snorted. “Nice try, sweetheart. Hey, I’ll tell you what. If you convince this Dash guy to buy the info, I’ll let you in on it. I mean, we’d all be on the same team then anyway.”

It was clear that short of using a sledgehammer, I wasn’t going to extract anything more out of him. Unfortunately, he had just ordered his second beer, and since he might prove useful down the road, I didn’t feel I should bolt on him. So I spent the next ten minutes listening to him justify the use of the telephoto lens. He told me that stars really
needed
the paparazzi because they helped to create their images. Plus the public liked knowing that stars were real.

“When you see a star pushing a grocery cart with no makeup on or picking underwear out of her butt crack, it makes people feel better about themselves,” Jed told me. By the time I paid the check, I felt in need of a barf bag.

I was tempted to call Nash the minute I escaped the hotel and urge him to fill me in on his meeting with Jed. In fact, I felt annoyed that he hadn’t brought me up-to-date already; after all, he certainly knew I was trying to retrace Mona’s last steps, and her conversation with Jed was one of those steps. But in the end, I resisted the desire to phone him. I didn’t want to put him on the defensive again. Instead, I would find a way to raise the topic gingerly tomorrow.

I’ve never loved Sunday evenings, and this one had the potential to be a real loser. In addition to the normal blues that came free of charge with the night, I felt frustrated about the case—and also still fearful. My biggest problem was that I didn’t know what I should be watching my back
for.
Being attacked on a dark street was one thing—and I could take precautions about stuff like that in the future—but being locked in the sauna seemed so random. It meant that I wouldn’t be able to guess when and where I was vulnerable.

During the cab ride down Ninth Avenue, I decided to buoy my spirits by cooking myself something yummy for dinner. Three words suddenly burst into my mind, words that promised solace: spaghetti alle vongole. I’d been a maniac for it ever since I’d eaten a bowl at a little restaurant in Venice. I had the taxi drop me at a market on Sixth Avenue, where I picked up baby clams, pasta, garlic, fresh Parmesan, parsley, and a baguette. I hoofed the rest of the way home. Wondering if Landon might be back from Bucks County and want to join me, I rapped on his door before going into my apartment, but there was no reply.

Based on how overcast and muggy it had been all afternoon, I was surprised when I opened the door to my terrace to discover that the sky was beginning to clear and the air seemed suddenly fresh, cooler. I stuck in a Maria Callas CD and filled two pots with water. My meal was going to involve a frightening degree of carb overload, but just the thought of it began to make me giddy. When I was married, my husband and I ate most of our meals out in restaurants (I didn’t know it at the time, but being on the move created the illusion for him that he was a few steps ahead of his creditors). After the divorce, I finally taught myself how to cook. I’m not exactly a genius at it—in fact, during my learning phase I gave a dinner party in which I dried out the swordfish steaks so badly that the edges curled and you couldn’t imagine they’d ever been within a thousand miles of water. But over time, I’ve managed to master a dozen dishes or so.

As the water heated, I strolled out onto my terrace. Lights were beginning to wink on in all the buildings to the west, and I envisioned the occupants puttering about their apartments, preparing dinner like me, and perhaps imagining both the good and the bad that lay ahead in the week. On a terrace farther down the block, I spotted a cluster of people holding cocktail glasses and speaking animatedly, and I felt a fleeting desire not to be alone. Partly it was because of the episodes in Brighton Beach and Dicker’s sauna, but I knew it was also due to being a divorced chick alone on a Sunday night. One moment you are giddy as hell as you consider your brilliant way with a clam sauce, and the next minute you feel as if someone is pinching your heart between their fingers.

Staring off at the setting sun, its light seeping through a ribbon of clouds, I didn’t realize at first that inside my apartment a buzzer was going off. I scurried inside, thinking it was Landon at the door. But it turned out to be the intercom, with my doorman at the other end.

“Hey, Bob,” I said.

“You’ve got a visitor, Bailey.”

Because of everything that had happened, a warning sounded in my head. “Really?”

“It’s a Mr. Beau Regan.”

My heart nearly stopped. God, what in the world was he doing here?

“Umm . . . Okay, send him up, I guess.”

I glanced back at my apartment. It was
clean
because my twice-a-month cleaning lady had come late last week, but there was junk flung around on various surfaces—three days’ worth of
The New York Times,
a CVS bag with tampons and toothpaste, the hard copy of my story, the bra I’d torn off since my return from the Hudson Hotel. I hurried around the living room gathering it all up, then heaved it into my office as if I were unloading a dead body over the side of a ship. When the doorbell rang I was in the bathroom putting on lip gloss. It was called Flirty Pink, and I wondered if it would live up to its name.

“Hi,” Beau said as I opened the door, his deep brown eyes smiling mischievously. “I said I’d call, but I was in the neighborhood—on Broadway and Mercer—and I thought I’d just stop by instead. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Umm, actually you’re not. I just got back from doing an interview and was fixing myself some dinner. Do you want to come in?”

“Thanks.”

He wandered in, surveying my place. He was wearing black pants and a white linen shirt just wrinkled enough to confirm he’d been out somewhere for the afternoon. Maybe I should have been concerned about his tracking me down, but there was nothing creepy about the vibe he gave off.

“How did you know where I lived?” I asked.

“They’ve got this amazing new service these days—411 Info. They can tell you phone numbers, addresses, movie times . . .”

“Wow, I’ll have to check it out,” I said facetiously. “Can I get you a beer? Unfortunately, I just have girl beer—Amstel Light.”

“That’ll do,” he said. “Not expecting any boys?”

“Well, not tonight, anyway.”

Jeez, Bailey, I thought. Skip the attempt at being a mystery woman. It didn’t work with the so-called pedal pushers.

“What’s that amazing smell?” Beau called out as I fetched the beer from the fridge.

“Spaghetti alle vongole—you know, spaghetti with clam sauce. I felt a craving for it suddenly and—”

As I turned around, he was standing right there in the doorway of the kitchen, a foot away from me.

“So you cook?” he asked. Over the aroma of garlic, I noticed that he smelled of musk and something else exotic, and I also saw, for the first time, that he had a small jagged scar on the right side of his face, just above his soft full mouth.

“Uh, yeah, a little. I’m not going to give Marcella Hazan a run for her money, but I can manage to serve the pasta al dente. . . . Would you like to stay? For dinner, I mean?”

“God, I thought you’d never ask,” he said, grinning.

“You’re not a serial killer, are you?” I said. “I mean, the type of guy who meets a woman at a party, asks for her number, then comes to her apartment and strangles her with a pair of panty hose?”

“No. I’m just the type of guy who usually waits a few days to call for a date but didn’t feel like it this time. Besides, you don’t look like you own any panty hose.”

I laughed. “Okay then, I’ll give you a job,” I said, opening a drawer. “Put these napkins and placemats on the table out on the terrace.”

It felt sort of dumb to turn him into Mommy’s little helper, but I needed a minute to
think.
Had I done the right thing inviting him for dinner? Shouldn’t I be acting more coy? As I’d fantasized about Beau since Saturday, I’d imagine a phone call, a drink, plenty of time for me to proceed carefully and not do anything that would backfire. It all seemed to be moving too fast. Yet hadn’t Beau just admitted that he’d decided not to be coy? So why should I be that way?

And then there was the dinner. All I’d planned to consume myself that night was the pasta and bread, but that didn’t seem like enough for a man. I rooted through the drawer in my fridge, scoring a few mesclun leaves. They were slightly past their prime, but I thought I’d be able to defibrillate them with a tart vinaigrette. I also pulled out an amazing Bordeaux that I’d been saving, a gift from someone’s stockbroker boyfriend when they’d come for dinner. As I scrambled around my kitchen, my stomach felt as if it were riding a pogo stick.

“So what were you doing in this neighborhood?” I said as I set down the salad plates a few minutes later. I’d given Beau the job of opening the wine, and then instructed him to relax on the terrace while I’d finished things in the kitchen. He pulled out a chair for me at the table. “For that matter, where do you live?”

“My apartment’s over in Chelsea, and so is my studio. I love being able to walk to work in the morning, but unfortunately I’ve outgrown my studio and I can’t find the right one near me. I was checking out a place on Broadway.”

As he reached for the wine bottle and poured us each a glass, I stared at his right forearm. It was perfectly shaped, lightly covered with hair, and tanned from the sun. It was impossible not to wonder what it would be like to have those forearms around me. I felt my cheeks redden.

“What kinds of films do you do mostly?” I asked.

“It’s really a mixed bag,” he admitted. “I guess if there’s any common denominator, I would say I like the dynamics between people. I did one film on bond traders. They’re a greedy, obnoxious, unrepentant group, but they fascinated me. I shot another one about actors doing an off-off-Broadway play.”

“So what have you learned about human dynamics that the rest of us don’t know?”

“God, this wine is great. . . . I don’t think I’m any kind of expert on human dynamics. I just like to observe and shoot it—people trying to connect with one another or trying to pull the wool over each other’s eyes, or even betraying each other. Since you write about crime, you’ve got to be covering the same stuff, right?”

“Oh sure. It’s mind-boggling what people do. Though a lot of the people I end up covering are sociopaths or borderline personality types. They have no conscience, no sense of remorse, so you’re not really dealing with people who follow the normal rules of human interaction.”

“What made a nice girl like you decide to write about murder and mayhem?” he asked. He did that thing he’d done the other day—lifting one eyebrow but not the other.

“A few people have surmised that it’s because my father died when I was twelve and it endowed me with a fascination for the macabre, but I don’t think that’s it. Around that time someone started writing awful notes to me and leaving them in my locker at school. It scared me—not just because of the pure meanness of the notes, but because I hadn’t a clue who it was. I would walk down the halls every day wondering, Is it her or him or her or him? It made me feel I had no power. So I played detective, and I trapped her. I think she was just jealous of me, probably for some ridiculous reason like I got my period ahead of her. But I loved that sense of control that came with being able to learn the truth. And I guess that’s why I like writing about crime—trying to find the truth.”