Over Her Dead Body (32 page)

I liked the fact that his place wasn’t neat as a pin. A coffee mug was still sitting on a side table, and the
Times
lay strewn on a huge ottoman that looked as though it functioned as a coffee table. Ah, but his bed was made. At the end of a long white corridor, I could see a door opened to his bedroom and a glimpse of his bed with a smooth gray comforter.

“I can make espresso,” he said as he stepped into his kitchen and flicked on the light. “Or rather, I’ve got this expensive machine that can. A Christmas gift from my mother.”

“I might actually take some brandy,” I said, “if it’s still being offered.” I felt jittery, and I feared that if I had another espresso, I might start bouncing off the walls like a squash ball.

“Absolutely,” he said. He moved into the living room, pulled a bottle of brandy from a wooden cabinet, and splashed some into a couple of short glasses.

“Did you take these photographs?” I asked, moving closer to one that was of a simple teahouse with a woman alone at a table.

“Um-hmm. Almost all of them are from my time in Japan and Hong Kong.”

“Did you ever think of doing that—being a photographer?”

“For some people that’s a logical sequence. You start with still photography and then pick up a videocamera and so on. But not for me. I enjoy taking photographs, but I wanted to make movies from the moment I started going to them. I guess I prefer things in motion,” he said, laughing.

“Should I start break dancing right now?” I asked.

“Actually, I had something else in mind.”

He brought my glass to me. Other than that moment in the restaurant and then later, holding my hand as we’d made a dash for a cab, he hadn’t touched me yet; and now, before I could take a sip of the brandy, he leaned down and kissed me deeply. As I leaned into him, I could tell he already had an erection.

“Even better than I remembered,” he said as he finally pulled away.

I took a fast sip of brandy—like a hiker who’s just been rescued after two days in the woods—and then he took it out of my hands and set it onto the side table. He kissed me again, pulling down the straps of my dress so that he could kiss every inch of my neck and shoulders. I felt a rush of heat shoot through me and reach all the way to my toes.

I expected that he would suggest a walk down the corridor to the inviting-looking bed, but instead he unzipped my sundress halfway and let the top part fall to my waist. My breasts spilled out. Taking them into his hands, he kissed each one, running his tongue around my nipples.

When he pulled back briefly this time, I frantically yanked his shirt over his head. His chest was more tanned than I’d noticed in the dim light of my bedroom, and his skin was deliciously soft. I ran my hands over the wide expanse of his chest and then reached with my right hand to stroke him between his legs. He moved away slightly.

“I was a little greedy last time,” he said softly. “I’d like to take my time with you tonight.”

He reached behind me and unzipped my dress the rest of the way, so that it fell in a puddle at my feet. I had only this little yellow thong on, chosen after about an hour’s worth of deliberation. Now, I thought, we’re going to throw ourselves onto that bed down the hall. But instead he reached behind me and with his right hand swept the newspaper onto the floor and laid me down on the ottoman, face-side up. He slipped a finger under the band of my thong and tore it down my leg. And then he explored every inch of me with his mouth.

By the time we finally dragged ourselves to the bedroom, my legs felt so rubbery that I could barely move them.

I was awake before him in the morning, my internal alarm clock rousing me at seven, because I knew at some point I had to haul myself into
Buzz
. Beau must have sensed I was awake because all of a sudden he opened his eyes halfway and grinned.

“You okay?” he asked sleepily.

“I’ll know better when I try to stand up.”

“Do you have time for breakfast? I don’t have much here, but there’s a place around the corner where we could pick something up.”

He said he’d come back later to shower, so we were out the door within fifteen minutes, me in my crumpled sundress and unintentional bed head. He didn’t seem to mind, though. He led me to this charming little bakery/deli place where they served croissants and coffee in huge bowl-shaped cups. For a moment again, it felt as if I were somewhere far away with him.

As he was flagging down a cab for me, I felt the jitters return. I wanted to know for sure that I’d be with Beau again. Hell, I wanted to be with him again tonight. But he hadn’t yet said a word about the next time.

“Thanks for a great night,” he said as a taxi lurched to a stop. He leaned down and kissed me lightly on the mouth. Okay, I thought, relaxing just a little. He’s finally about to propose something.

“Thank
you.
And for that nice dinner, too.”

“I have my assignment, right?”

“Assignment?”

“With Dicker. I’m supposed to be Dr. Watson.”

“Oh right, of course.”

“I’ll call when I have info, okay?”

“Great,” I said.

But as the cab shot off, I didn’t feel so great. It was nice that he’d offered to help me in my research—I mean, wasn’t that a way to stay connected?—but at this moment all I wanted to know was when our next encounter would be. And he’d said absolutely nothing about it.

I’d turned off my cell phone before showing up at the restaurant last night, though I’d checked for messages a couple of times during the early evening just in case there was news. Now I saw that Jessie had called after Beau and I had arrived at his place.

“Call me whenever you can,” she said, her voice laden with alarm. “The shit really hit the fan tonight.” Her words jolted me, as if the taxi driver had suddenly slammed on his brakes.

It was only eight-thirty, but I called her cell anyway, too anxious to wait. Her voice sounded froggy, as if she were up but hadn’t yet spoken today.

“What’s going on?” I asked urgently. “It’s me, Bailey.”

“God, where do I start? Are you on the way to work?”

“Not at the moment. I was thinking of going in around ten. What’s going on, anyway?”

“Well, first of all, something weird is up with Ryan.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. I could only imagine what he’d done now.

“As you know, he never surfaced yesterday,” Jessie said. “I figured he’d taken the day off or was just out and about, searching for the story of the century. Well, at around seven I was hanging around, making a few calls, and that new deputy managing editor, the one with the lisp, comes over and starts quizzing me. It seems they finally put two and two together and realized that Ryan hadn’t put in for a vacation day and had never called in. They start trying his cell phone—that’s the only phone he has, apparently—but don’t reach him. Finally at around eight, they send someone down to his apartment on the Lower East Side to see if there’s any sign of him. And it turns out he doesn’t live there anymore.”

“He just up and left?”

“No, no. He apparently moved out weeks ago. I vaguely remember overhearing him saying something on the phone about changing apartments, but I never knew when or where. The problem is he hasn’t let anyone know what his new address is.”

“That sounds really odd,” I said. “When was the last time he was actually seen at work? He wasn’t there Monday night when we left for Soho House.”

“No, but he apparently came back. He was here late that night. Since then, there’s been absolutely no word on him.”

“Did anyone talk to the police?”

“Someone said that Nash was going to call one of the detectives on the Mona case because it would expedite matters. There were a few people huddled in his office just before I left, but when I wandered down they shooed me away. I’m planning to head in as soon as I get dressed.”

“I’ll get in there soon, too.”

“Before you do, though, there’s one other thing I need to tell you. You know how I’ve been snooping about the barbecue. Last night I was at the copier, waiting for this assistant from fashion to finish, and we start chatting about the Dicker party and she drops this huge bomb.”

She took a breath. “She mentions that just before she got on the bus, she saw Hilary come running across the lawn, drenched. Remember I said that she’d lost her ride—and I thought it was Nash she’d come with? But here’s the interesting part. When this girl used the expression
running across the lawn,
it struck me as odd, and I asked which direction Hilary was coming from, and she says—are you ready?—from the area down by the clubhouse.”

“Oh God,” I said, flooded with dread. In one sense, it was good to finally have a clue as to who had barricaded me in the sauna, but Hilary wasn’t going anywhere and this meant I would always have to keep my eye on her.

“Why would she have done that to you, do you think?” Jessie asked.

“I’ve got a theory, but why don’t we wait till we’re face-to-face. I’d rather not get into it on a cell phone.”

We signed off, promising to see each other in a short while. I realized how good it had been to have Jessie around during the last week; she’d not only given me insight and assistance on my story, but watched my back as well.

At home I hurried through a shower, dressed, and was on the subway toward
Buzz
forty-five minutes later.

You could tell in one glance that something was wrong. Through the glass wall of Nash’s office, I saw a small crowd gathered around his desk—the managing editor, one of the deputy editors, and a chick I didn’t recognize, but she was wearing one of those bland, tan summer suits people in HR often sport. Jessie may have been shooed away earlier, but I had every right to poke my head in.

After I set down my junk, I walked in that direction and caught Nash’s attention through the glass. His hands were at his waist, akimbo, and his legs were apart, in a kind of Captain Magazine stance, and he lifted a hand just long enough to shoot me the five-minute signal. So I wasn’t going to be invited into the inner sanctum right then, but it didn’t look as if I were going to be denied access indefinitely.

Beating a temporary retreat back to my desk, I saw Jessie standing at her desk with a mug, as if she’d just returned from the kitchenette.

“Has Ryan ever done anything like this before?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. He’s flaky, but he’s also really ambitious, and he never seemed irresponsible about his job.”

I had a weird feeling about him being missing today. Yet I also knew that Ryan had a real sense of entitlement. If he was chasing a story and thought he was close to the prize, he might not feel any need to check in.

“You’re probably anxious to get to work,” I told Jessie, “but have you got a minute to talk about this thing with Hilary? I need to know everything you do.”

“I told you everything I found out,” she admitted, lowering her voice even more. “Why do you think she did it? You said you had a theory.”

“I think it has to do with Nash.”

“
Nash?”

“It seems from what you say that there might be—or might have been—something going on between them. The other night I had a drink with Nash, just to talk business, and Hilary saw us coming out of the bar. Since then she’s made a snarky remark to me every chance she’s had. When Nash chose me for his volleyball team Saturday and we beat the crap out of
her
team, there was steam coming out of her nose. At the time, I didn’t know why she was taking it all so seriously, but now I think she may have been jealous. She may have decided to make me pay.”

Jessie shook her head, but in distaste, not disagreement. “It totally fits with the sneaky Hilary I know, the one who tried to find a college student who needed money so she’d spy on Mary-Kate Olsen. But what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I doubt if I confront her about it, she’d come clean. Maybe all I can do for now is proceed cautiously.”

For the next few minutes, I bided my time by returning e-mails. There was one first thing this morning from Nash, stating that a female stalker had been harassing several New York City-based male celebrities and he wanted me to follow up on it. I suspected that the woman might be suffering from eroticism, a psychological condition in which the person truly believes that someone she’s never met is in love with her.

While I made a preliminary call on the matter, I kept my eye on Nash’s office. At one point I saw him reach for the phone, say a few words, and then hang up. He spoke to the three women still in his office, and their expressions registered shock and dismay. It appeared he then dispatched them, because as I headed toward his office again, they were leaving, looking distraught.

“What’s happened?” I asked anxiously as I barged into Nash’s office.

“The police found Ryan in his new apartment,” Nash said. “He’s dead.”

I’d been worried that something was the matter, but the news still thundered through my skull.

“Was he murdered?” I blurted out. All I could think was that Ryan had found out who Mona’s killer was—and that the killer had turned on him.

“No,” Nash said, his voice flat. “He died of a heroin overdose.”

CHAPTER 18

I
t was one of those moments when the expression
my jaw hit the floor
didn’t seem like outrageous hyperbole. I actually had to force myself to close my mouth.

“So he was an addict?” I asked hoarsely.

“Apparently,” Nash said, sweeping back the top of his silver-tinged hair with his hand.

“Do you think anyone here had a clue?”

“I doubt it. That kind of news would have traveled fast. I’m wondering now if he might have made an attempt at rehab before he came here. He was vague about what he’d been up to during the past few years—said he’d been freelancing, but he didn’t have a hell of a lot of clips. But his edit test was great, and as you know, the turnover here is outrageous. We’d hire ex-cons if they could write cute heads and decks.”

I stood stock still in the middle of his office, letting my mind race.

“Nash, listen,” I said finally. “Do you think there’s any chance . . . Do you think someone could have killed Ryan? I mean, someone who knew that he was an addict and set it up to appear as if he had died from an overdose by injecting him with the drug?”

“But why . . . ? Are you saying you think this could be related to Mona’s death?”

“Yes. Was Ryan on to something? He apparently indicated as much to a friend of his—and you started to say something to me yesterday about him.”

He sighed and pulled his glasses off his nose, tossing them onto his desk. “Yes, he might have been on to something. But I have no idea what it was. Monday night, after he finished his profile of Mona, he said he had something that he thought might be big, and that he wanted to keep pursuing it. I said fine, go for it. I started to tell you, but then I realized that it was pointless to get you riled up if he was just blowing smoke up my ass so that he could stay on the story.”

“Try to recall verbatim what he said,” I pleaded.

“Christ, I can’t remember the exact words. It wasn’t anything very specific, that much I can tell you. It was just ‘I think I may have something good. You gotta let me have a light load this week so I can pursue it.’ And anyway, we’re making a big leap here, Bailey. As far as we know, he was just a junkie who OD’d.”

“I know, but—”

“We can discuss this further as we learn more facts. The cops are headed over here now, so I need to get a move on. Plus, I need to make an announcement to the staff.”

“Sure,” I said, moving slowly toward the door. “Just one last question. Where was Ryan’s new apartment?”

“Way out in Queens. I wonder if he moved because he was running through cash so quickly and couldn’t afford Manhattan anymore.”

I paused near Lee’s desk, trying to lasso my thoughts. If someone had murdered Ryan by giving him a fatal dose of heroin—and I knew it was too soon to jump to any conclusions—that person would have had to travel to Queens. It was hard to imagine Kiki, Brandon, or Dicker—or even Kimberly for that matter—hiking out to one of the outer boroughs, but of course they could have paid someone to do their dirty work, just as they could have recruited someone to try to scare me off. But how would any one of them have figured out where Ryan lived? As we’d discovered, he’d just moved, and there was no record at
Buzz
of his new address. Maybe he’d been followed home—after he stumbled too close to something he shouldn’t have.

As soon as I approached my desk, both Jessie and Leo rolled their chairs toward me, anxious for news.

“What’s going on?” Leo asked, his voice hushed.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Jessie proclaimed.

“Nash is about to make an announcement,” I told them. “It’s better that he tell you.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when people started to rise from their desks all around us. It was clear an e-mail had just come through. I checked my screen. All the e-mail said was that Nash would like everyone to gather toward the front of the office by the table. People made their way to the exact spot Nash and Dicker had spoken from the day after Mona died.

Nash gave everyone a chance to arrive before he walked somberly into our midst. It reminded me of some old movie, in which a group of aspiring thespians are putting on a play and the director comes in to make an announcement, like the funding came through or it didn’t come through or the show’s going to Broadway or whatever. Except what Nash had to say was that Ryan had died and his death appeared to be drug related. He never uttered the h-word, but I doubted that anyone was thinking, in between gasps, that Ryan had succumbed to reefer madness. People tried to ask questions, but Nash shook his head and said he had told us all he knew. He mentioned that the police would be arriving shortly and to please cooperate. At one point, I felt someone’s eyes on me and turned my head slightly to see Hilary staring coldly at me. As soon as my eyes caught hers, the edges of her mouth turned up ever so slightly in a smile. It gave me the willies.

Nash’s remarks ended up taking no more than two minutes, and then we all straggled back to our desks, phones ringing like crazy all around us. As I slid into my seat, Leo and Jessie both looked at me, Leo shaking his head in dismay.

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but frankly I’m afraid to come in here anymore. Working for Mona seems like a damn pig roast in comparison.”

“Had you ever seen any sign of a drug problem?” I asked the two of them.

“Not me,” Jessie said.

“I hadn’t
specifically,
” Leo whispered. “But now that this whole thing has happened, I do remember something weird. I was in the bathroom one day a few months ago trying to get pizza sauce off my shirt. I’d been standing at the sink for, like, five minutes and I realized suddenly that there was someone in one of the stalls, quiet as a mouse. I recognized Ryan’s shoes. At the time I figured he was just taking care of business, but there was something kind of creepy about how
quiet
he was.”

“You need to tell the police about it, okay?” I told him.

And it didn’t take long for them to materialize. Tate and McCarthy appeared on the floor a few minutes later, along with two people in crime scene unit jackets, and Nash led them over to Ryan’s workstation. They began by combing through papers on top of his desk and then tackled the drawers. People made feeble attempts to pretend to be working, but you could see them following the action, their heads popping up prairie-dog style from their cubes. I positioned my chair at an angle in an effort to glimpse what was transpiring behind me. The cops were working in a tight cluster, though, and I was at a disadvantage. At one point I heard one of the cops mutter, “Bingo.”

After ten minutes of exploring Ryan’s desk, Tate straightened up and surveyed the pod. Almost instantly his eyes fell on me. He sighed, cocked his head to the left indicating I should follow him, and then nudged his partner. Oh goody. It looked as though I were going to be having another chat with the two of them in the conference room.

Though some people had tried earlier to watch discreetly, every single person in the pod and the greater open area seemed to gawk as I walked with Tate and McCarthy toward the corridor that led to the conference room. I felt as conspicuous as Kimberly Chance the night she wore the outfit
Buzz
had dubbed “the Biker Barbie Look.”

“You sure end up near a lot of dead people,” McCarthy said as we stepped into the room. It sounded like nothing more than a wisecrack, so I made no attempt to answer it.

“Tell me anything you can about Ryan, will you, Miss Weggins,” Tate said. “Were you aware he was a drug user?” To my relief, there was nothing antagonistic about his tone, and I relaxed into the chair I’d taken.

“I had no idea whatsoever,” I said. As I spoke the words, I heard anguish in my voice and I realized that the reality of Ryan’s death was finally sinking in for me. “He kept to himself, though, and I don’t think people here knew him very well.”

“According to your boss, Ryan had seemed kind of high-strung lately. Would that be your observation?”

I was surprised that Nash had characterized it that way, because he preferred it when people were pumped, working on all eight cylinders, and I would have assumed he thought Ryan was just busting his tail over the last week.

“I didn’t really know him very well, but, yes, he did seem more agitated than usual,” I admitted. “One night in fact, he lashed out at me. He was working on a profile of Mona at the same time I was writing up the murder, and he claimed that I was interviewing people who were
his
sources. He’d never been particularly friendly to me, but this was the first time he was out-and-out hostile.”

“Was he out of line?”

“I’d have to say so. There was bound to have been a bit of overlap in the people we spoke to. But there’s something I need to tell you, in case Nash hasn’t had a chance yet. Ryan intimated to a few people that he had discovered a very important piece of information.”

“About?”

“The
murder.
He conveyed to Nash that he was on to something, and one of my co-workers overheard him tell a friend on the phone that he had something big.”

“Do you have any idea what it might have been?”

“No. Maybe when you look at his phone logs you’ll have a clue, but I don’t know what it could be. . . . Do you think he might have been
killed
—because of what he knew? I mean, could someone have gone to his apartment and given him a fatal injection?”

I hadn’t been able to contain myself from blurting out that question, though I didn’t for a second think Tate would answer me. To my surprise, he pursed his lips and stared pensively at me, his eyes enlarged slightly by the lenses of his glasses. It appeared he was deliberating whether or not to share something with me.

“We’re talking off the record, right?” he asked finally.

“Yes,” I said, almost afraid to breathe.

“When they found Ryan early this morning, they had to break down his door. The dead bolt was on. There was drug paraphernalia at the scene, and it appeared he’d recently shot up. There was no indication of anyone else having been there.”

“Wow, I . . .” A thought began to flicker in my brain, fuzzy as a dust bunny. Before it could fully form, Tate articulated it for me in the form of a question.

“Do you think that Ryan might have killed Ms. Hodges?” he asked.

“And then killed himself, you mean?” I asked. “I’ll admit I did wonder at times if Ryan’s hostility toward me might be because he was covering up his role in the murder. He was one of the last people to see Mona alive. But I never had a clue what his
motive
could be for killing her. He was one of Mona’s favorites. But what if Mona found out he was doing drugs? She might have threatened to fire him. Do you think he shot up here at work? Did you find drugs in his desk?”

Tate smiled wanly at me, and I knew then that he’d done all the divulging he was going to.

“Thank you for your help,” he said. “I assume you’ll be following this story for the magazine, so if you hear anything of significance, please get in touch with me.”

“Of course,” I said. As they left, McCarthy flashed me a skeptical look. Though Tate seemed to have developed a degree of respect for me, McCarthy clearly wasn’t on the same plane.

After they left I sat for a moment, half in shock.
Could
Ryan have been the killer after all? Is that why he’d acted so testy lately? On the night of the party had Mona divulged an awareness of his drug use, prompting him to react violently? Was he the one who trapped me in Dicker’s sauna because he thought I was getting way too nosy? Had he then taken his own life in remorse for what he’d done? But why had he bothered arranging all those interviews? What was the “something big,” he’d been talking about to people? I couldn’t help but think of that moment he’d seemed to have a brainstorm when we’d been discussing his departure for the party.

It just didn’t add up. Perhaps his death had only an indirect connection to Mona’s. Maybe he’d become too wired up about the story he was working on, which made him up his intake of heroin.

Though Ryan seemed to have few friends on staff, it was possible that someone might know something. Once the police were off the premises, I would interview the staff again. I’d also try to discover the names of any friends he had on the outside. Before leaving the conference room, I used the phone to place a call to my contact in the medical examiner’s office. It was too soon for an autopsy to have taken place, but there might be some initial findings of interest. I reached only her voice mail and left a message, asking her to get in touch as soon as possible.

As I walked back to my desk, I wondered if Nash had talked to Tate yet about the Eva angle and the possibility of Kiki and Brandon as suspects. If Ryan
hadn’t
killed Mona—and I had no real reason to believe he had—there was still a murderer at large. Surely Nash had said something by now.

Jessie mouthed, “Everything okay?” as I sat down. The cops had departed from Ryan’s desk. I nodded quickly to her and wheeled my chair toward Leo, so close, in fact, I could smell the patchouli he was wearing.

“Leo,” I whispered, “I need to ask you a question.”

“How fast do I think we all can find jobs someplace else?”

“Save that for later. When one of the cops said the word
bingo
a little while ago, could you tell what they were referring to? You’ve got a better angle than I do.”

“There was something stuffed in the back of Ryan’s drawer,” he whispered back. “I think it was an old plastic bag.”

A plastic bag. The word
bingo.
That probably meant it was a bag of smack or an empty bag with just traces of the drug. Leo had been right in his guess that Ryan had sometimes shot up at work. He’d apparently sometimes kept his stash in his desk drawer. That was a pretty reckless thing to do and meant that he was no casual user.

For the next couple of hours I bided my time, waiting for the police to make their rounds and quiz people. I asked Nash’s assistant to track down a copy of Ryan’s résumé for me so that I could pursue whether he had friends at any of the places he’d worked in the past. I also caught up with the deputy editor about the stalker article I was working on for this week. I did an Internet search on erotomania and made a few calls. There were in-person interviews I needed to conduct, but I could put those off until tomorrow.