Over Her Dead Body (29 page)

“Oh yeah?” he asked, pausing midway in the air with his Bud bottle. “And what would that be?”

“We’re not the first people you’ve offered the info to, are we?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, clearly pissed.

“You talked to other people.”

“No way. I haven’t offered this to any other publication.”

“I didn’t mean another publication. You told Kiki about it, didn’t you?” It was a long shot, but I figured there was no harm in running with it and seeing how far I got. The worst that could happen was that he’d deny it. But he didn’t.

“Yeah, I told her,” he admitted. “But so what?”

CHAPTER 16

E
ven though this was the information I’d been looking for, hearing it still left me stunned.

“So
what
?” I asked. “You made it sound as if you were offering an exclusive, but in truth you’ve staged a bidding war.”

“That’s not true,” he scoffed. “I figured it was only fair to give Kiki the right of first refusal. I don’t know
why.
That chick is the biggest bitch in the universe. But she wasn’t interested in it anyway, so I went to Mona.”

What I desperately wanted to ask was whether or not he’d tipped Kiki off to the fact that he would be taking the information to Mona next, but I was afraid if I did, Jed would put two and two together. He’d realize that I didn’t give a rat’s ass about a bidding war, that I was instead trying to figure out if Kiki had had a reason to be enraged with Mona. And he’d waste no time trying to make a buck off
that.

“Okay, I’m going to take your word for that,” I said quickly, trying not to allow him any time to think. “I’ll go back to Nash with what you told me and maybe he’ll give you a call.”

“He’s got two more days,” Jed said. “Then I’m going elsewhere.”

It was after midnight when I left the bar, and though University Place was still bustling with people, my block on 9th looked deserted, and my building was all the way down at the other end. I told myself to just walk quickly and keep my eyes peeled, but I froze on the sidewalk, unable to budge. After everything that had happened over the past few days, I just didn’t feel comfortable trouncing down there alone in the dark. Instead I walked down to 8th, an always busy street, and then north to my building.

There was a note under my door from Landon, asking if I wanted to have a drink tonight, so I wrote him a note back, suggesting coffee in the morning, and slipped it under his door. Feeling ragged, I poured myself a glass of milk and curled up on the couch. I’d come home tonight with one key piece of information and a couple of hunches. The information: Kiki had known there was potentially damaging information about Eva on the open market. The hunches: The argument between Mona and Kiki at the party might very well have involved that information. Kiki may have learned or guessed that Jed was running to Mona with it and tried to pressure Mona into turning down Jed’s offer. When Mona didn’t acquiesce, Kiki (perhaps even at Eva’s insistence) may have followed Mona to her office and tried to bully her—and the bullying turned deadly. Other hunch: It was possible that Brandon only recently learned of Eva’s secret, and he would have been desperate to prevent it from surfacing in the press.
He
may have followed Mona to her office, attacked her, and then left the party with the excuse that he was bored. He’d accused Kiki of being missing in action for part of the party, but I recalled that she’d also questioned
his
whereabouts.

So besides Kimberly, there were now two other party guests with excellent motives to have followed Mona to her office.

But a question dogged me. Did any of this relate to the “something big” that Ryan had whispered about to a friend? It was hard for me to figure out how he could have ended up with this. And if this
wasn’t
the something big, what was?

As I sat in the half darkness mulling all of this over, my phone rang, making me jump.

“So is this part of the Bailey Weggins summer plan?” Beau asked in amusement. “Have her way with a man and then disappear?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’m sitting through one of the most boring dinners in my life, listening to this investor explain why he thinks
The Shawshank Redemption
is the greatest film of all time, and I just keep hoping you’ll call and tell me you can have dinner tomorrow. But nothing.”

“I’m sorry. I was going to call you. I ended up working later than I thought tonight, and then I went out to track down a lead. I actually just got home.”

“How’s your story?”

“It turned out okay, I think. I wrote it in the first person, and that’s sort of weird. I used to work with this great old guy at the
Times Union
in Albany, and he always said that the worst thing a reporter could do with a story—after making it up, of course—was to put himself in it. I’m afraid after the issue comes out that this guy is going to get in his old burgundy Impala, drive down the New York State Thruway, and take me over his knee.”

“You better not put ideas like that in my mind. I’ll have a hard time falling asleep.”

“If you could see this guy, the image would give you nightmares. So other than having to listen to a tribute to
The Shawshank Redemption
, how did the dinner go? Did you come away with any money?”

“I think so. This guy is so loaded he’s just looking for places to park his dough. Of course, I plan to blow his mind with a huge return on his investment.”

“Then it’s a good thing you went through with the dinner.”

“In one sense, yes. So what about tomorrow night?”

I hesitated for a second. Should I hold back just a little? Make him wait until, let’s say, Thursday or Saturday so that I’d seem less accessible? But
why
? I’d told myself I wanted a fling, and this was what a fling was all about: fast, fun, no machinations, no overthinking. And I could use another break from pondering Mona’s murder and agonizing about who might be stalking me.

“Sure, tomorrow night is fine.”

“Great. Seven-thirty okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Would you like me to pick you up?”

“No, just leave word about the restaurant and I’ll meet you there. I may have a few things to take care of.”

That’s cute, Bailey. Try throwing in a little mystery
now,
after you’ve managed to come across as the easiest, most transparent girl in New York City.

Once I climbed into bed, I let my mind drift back to last night with Beau. After he’d blown me off for dinner, I’d forced myself not to go there, but now that he’d redeemed himself, I luxuriated in the memory of our delicious encounter and fantasized what the next one would be like.

In the morning, there was another note from Landon under my door, suggesting breakfast on his terrace whenever I so desired since he wasn’t working today. I hadn’t dragged myself out of bed until eight-thirty, and when I rapped on his door, I felt ready to mainline caffeine.

“Wow, it smells unbelievable in here,” I said as I inhaled an intoxicating blend of French toast and fresh oranges.

“I know how much you need your nourishment when you’re tracking down killers. Why don’t you head out to the terrace and I’ll be right along. There’s fresh-squeezed orange juice already out there.”

The
Times
had predicted it would hit ninety today, but the morning was surprisingly comfortable. I sat at the table and watched a steady stream of silver jets flying over the city and twinkling in a clear blue sky. A few minutes later, Landon emerged with a tray heaped with breakfast food.

“I thought I heard you come in last night,” he said. “It was pretty late, no?”

“Yeah, I was out following leads in bars all over Manhattan. By the time I finished, I was practically crawling on all fours in fatigue.”

“So what’s happening? Every day there’s a different tantalizing headline in the
Post
about the murder, but then they don’t seem to
know
anything.”

“As far as I can tell, the police don’t have a suspect yet. They apparently still have Robby in mind for it, but fortunately they haven’t done anything about it yet.”

“And what about you? Any ideas?”

“Until this weekend I assumed I was tracking a lot of the same stuff they were, though of course at least a day or two behind them. But I may have stumbled onto something they’re not aware of.”

I shared what I’d learned about Eva, as well as the fact that Nash had requested that I remain mum about it.

“My God, what a revelation,” he exclaimed. “Maybe that explains why
I
find her so attractive. So what are you going to do? You don’t want to piss off your boss, do you?”

“No, but I’ve got a moral dilemma on my hands. I promised Nash that I’d keep the information under my hat when it appeared Kiki probably hadn’t known about it. But she
did
know, and even if Jed didn’t tell her he was going to Mona with the information, I’m sure she figured he would get to Mona soon enough. The night of the party she may have tested the waters with Mona and somehow learned that Mona was going to be speaking to Jed. She could have slipped out of the party, found Mona’s office, and confronted her about it. Mona would have just finished her call with Jed, and if she’d been in the dark before, she wasn’t any longer. When Mona refused to assure Kiki that she wasn’t going to run the item, Kiki flew into a frenzy and smashed Mona over the head.”

“Your money’s on Kiki, then?”

“Not necessarily, because there are still some other possibilities.”

“Of course. Why am I not surprised?”

“I think Eva’s husband is another viable suspect. Now that I’ve met him, I can see that he’s the kind of guy who would have been totally humiliated if this information saw the light of day. He could have gotten wind of what was going on through Kiki and gone down to Mona’s office himself.”

“What about Eva? She had the
most
to lose.”

“She was never out of sight, apparently.”

“Well, at least it means you’re not working with some psychopath at
Buzz.
There has to be small comfort in that.”

“Unfortunately, I
may
be working with a psycho.” In between bites of French toast, I told him about what had transpired in Dicker’s clubhouse.

“Well then, doesn’t that imply the killer is someone you work with and not this Kookie woman or Brandon?”

“So far I haven’t found anyone on staff with a motive. As much as people disliked Mona, no one seems to have had reason to be in a rage that night—except Robby, and I’m not buying that one. I’m thinking that the sauna incident may have been a sick prank. There’s another writer at
Buzz
named Ryan who’s pursuing some big lead on Mona’s murder and may have wanted to scare me off the story. And there’s another chick who may be involved with Nash and seems to think I’m competition. I keep wondering if it was either of them.”

“How dreadful. Is there anything you can do?”

“Just be careful. And of course, I have to keep in mind that it might
not
have been a prank. Who’s to say that Kiki or Brandon—or Kimberly, for that matter—didn’t hire someone to try to scare me?”

“My head is spinning just trying to keep track of it all.”

“I know. And the biggest problem is that I’m stuck in terms of what to do next.”

Landon returned to the apartment to fetch more coffee, and I stood up and walked to the railing. I had time for half a mug more, and then I needed to fly.

“I’ve been thinking about that story you told me about your brother, Cameron,” Landon said as he returned.

“You mean the girls in the red coats?”

“Yes. I actually had something similar happen to me yesterday, though it’s not nearly as enchanting a story. I was walking across the street from a supermarket. Suddenly I noticed an altercation out front. There were two boys, both Hispanic, and a very handsome older-looking woman, about seventy. She was carrying a plastic shopping bag and the boys were yanking on it. I realized that they were attempting to mug her.”

“In broad daylight?”

“It was about seven o’clock. Now I knew better than to attempt a citizen’s arrest, but I yelled out, ‘Stop! Get away from her!’ And then the most amazing thing happened. The boys turned and they were both wearing these big green aprons. And they called out to me that she had shoplifted from their store and they were trying to get the things back.”

“Wow, just what your aunt said. An optical confusion.”

“I know. And I felt so guilty for having immediately assumed the boys were hooligans.”

I gulped the last of my coffee, gave Landon a hug, and tore out of there. I realized as I let myself back into my apartment that I hadn’t shared anything with him about Beau. And there was a simple reason for that. So far, it had been nothing more than a one-night stand. Hell, as far as I knew, he might call and try to get out of
this
dinner, too. There was no reason to expend energy describing him at this stage of the game.

My section of the pod was empty when I arrived, though there were other people in the general vicinity. People seemed sluggish from the close, almost moody, as if the revved-up pace of shipping the issue yesterday had distracted them from the funk they were in following the murder, and now they were knee-deep in it again.

As I’d sat on the subway rocketing north, I’d considered how I was going to handle my dilemma with Nash today. I’d toyed with a couple of different options, but I knew there was only one way to proceed. I had to tell Nash what I’d learned about Kiki and urge him to go to the police with the information. I certainly didn’t want to imply, “Or I will”: My job was important to me, even more so now that the person in charge wasn’t a she-devil. I just hoped Nash would realize that he now had no choice but to speak up.

Since Nash wasn’t in yet, I used the time to clean up the mess on my desk and race through e-mail, which I was way behind on. One of the deputy editors had sent me a note saying that a female soap star I had never heard of had just learned that her husband was a bigamist and was keeping a wife and child in Virginia, and maybe there was something in it for us. Under the Mona formula, an A-level celebrity committing a B-level crime was worth covering, as was a B-level celeb committing an A-level crime. But a C-level celeb with an infraction that was only a B would never have seen the light of day. I wondered if the formula would change under Nash.

He sauntered in actually just as this question was flashing across my mind. There was none of that hurricane-making-landfall feeling to his arrival that there always had been with Mona. He nodded at people, complimented somebody on a caption from yesterday, and greeted his assistant, Lee, with a smile. He looked confident, even cocky, thrilled to death with his new job. Cat had said he lacked vision as an editor, but he clearly didn’t subscribe to that theory.