Over Her Dead Body (17 page)

As I walked along the aisle toward my desk, I craned my neck to see if I could spot Nash in his office. I wanted to forewarn him about my encounter with Dicker in case the man said something to him. But he was on the phone, his back to the glass wall. As I passed by, Lee signaled for me to come over.

“Nash would like to reschedule your meeting—for tonight,” she said. “Same place, at six-thirty. He’ll be coming from the outside.”

“Perfect,” I said. I needed the meeting not only to learn what Nash knew about the party, but also to discuss my piece. But I felt uneasy now. What if Nash was on the phone with Dicker right this minute and was being told, “Bring me the head of Bailey Weggins on a silver platter”?

Jessie was pounding away at her computer as I reached the pod, and she spun around in her chair to face me. She looked really cute today, dressed in black pants and a pale pink kerchief top.

“So there you are,” she said. “I thought we were going to have to send out the highway patrol. What have you been up to?”

“Just scurrying around trying to do this story.”

“Any developments?”

“I’ve managed to fill in a few holes. But it’s slow going.”

It would have been nice to share more with Jessie, to confide in someone close to the action, but I had to remain circumspect, keep my own counsel.

I checked my e-mail and voice mail. I was still receiving calls from various reporters and TV producers. To my relief, there was also a message from Mona’s husband, Carl. In somber tones, he announced that he could see me on Sunday at three and gave me the address for his and Mona’s apartment. That was one person off my list, but I still had to reach Kiki and Kimberly.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jessie said as she caught me staring into space, wondering how I was going to connect with people who didn’t want to connect with me. “You’re going tomorrow, right?” she asked.

“God, is that tomorrow?” I said. I knew she was referring to the barbecue at Dicker’s. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be something I was dying to do—in fact, as far as I knew I might be banned from it after my encounter with Dicker today—but at this point it would be an important opportunity for me. I would be able to check out my colleagues with their defenses down, perhaps even pick up information.

“I’ve got a car,” I told her. “Why don’t you meet me in my lobby at eight tomorrow?”

“I thought you’d never ask. I can’t bear the thought of being on the same bus with the Cock Nazi.”

“Let me ask
you
for a favor now. I’m having a hard time getting either Kimberly Chance or Kiki Bodden to return my calls. I’ve got Kimberly’s cell phone number, and I figure if I call it enough, she’s likely to pick up. But with Kiki, I just end up being put off by her receptionist. Can you think of a way for me to finagle a meeting with her?”

“Kiki Bodden?” she said, straightening her back in that way of hers. “Why would you need to see her?”

“She bit Mona’s head off at the party, and I’m trying to weave that into the story.”

“
Really?
Well, that’s going to be tough since Kiki refuses to have much to do with anyone working for
Buzz.
I have an idea, though. Publicists often get their clients through celebrity managers, and therefore they’re usually pretty eager to please them. There’s one manager who owes me a big favor. I could try asking him to pull a few strings.”

“Great, I’d really appreciate it. What’s Kiki like, anyway?”

“She’s sort of sad, if you ask me. She’s about forty-five, but she runs around in minis and tries to act all hip. And she’s a total swag whore.”

“A what?”

“Swag whore. Swag is all the free stuff that stars receive—you know, the goody bags at award ceremonies and stuff like that. Kiki loads her trunk with whatever she can get her mitts on.”

“Hilary told me she protects her clients like a harpy eagle.”

“I can’t believe I’m agreeing with something Hilary said, but yes, that’s totally true.”

“What if someone was going to print information that her client might not like? What would she do?”

“What so many of them do—scream and yell and threaten to blackball you and your magazine. It’s like no one has ever told them that they might be able to accomplish more by trying to negotiate. Sometimes I think it’s just so they can call the client and say that they screamed and yelled.”

Kiki had indeed yelled at Mona, at the party. Was Eva the client she’d been in such a boil over? And had she taken the matter further? I considered how it might have happened. Perhaps Mona had dismissed Kiki and refused to address her concerns. Kiki saw Mona leave the party and then slipped away after her. After all, Brandon had even muttered something about Kiki being missing in action during the evening. Kiki then tried to return to the contentious topic, hoping for closure, but Mona refused to hear her out. Furious, Kiki struck her—and then again. But if that was what happened, how did I explain the man in Little Odessa? Was he just a predator after all? Or perhaps someone working with Kiki? Just thinking of the incident again—of those moments of terror under the car—made my stomach knot.

Chasing the memory out of my mind, I settled down to work. I took out my reporter’s notebook and jotted down what both Dicker and Harris had told me. Then I pulled my composition book out of my bag and thumbed through to the timeline I’d created, making a note that Mona’s visit with Dicker had supposedly lasted five or ten minutes “tops.” Something about Dicker’s story bugged me. I picked up my notebook and thumbed back through until I found the notes from my interview with Amy. According to her, Mona had said, “Wish me luck,” before she’d headed up to Dicker’s office. That was a phrase you used when you thought you might be in hot water or when you were about to say something that might put you there. Yet according to Dicker, Mona had stopped by only to tell him about a fairly benign cover story. Why hadn’t Dicker seemed familiar with the subject matter? And why hadn’t Mona taken a print of the cover with her to show him?

I slipped out of my desk and walked back to the office Mona’s assistant Amy was holed up in. She was staring glumly at a piece of a paper, almost as if she hadn’t moved since the last time I’d seen her.

“Are you going to move back to your old desk?” I asked, stepping into the room.

“Maybe when Betty gets back next week. It’s too creepy to be down there all by myself. Besides, I don’t even know if I’ll have a job.”

“I’m sure things will work out for you. Look, Amy, I need to ask you one more question about the other night. When Mona went up to see Mr. Dicker, do you think it could have been to tell him what the cover story was that week?”

“She didn’t have the cover with her.”

“But maybe she was simply going to tell him what the subject matter was.”

“Then she would have just called him. Trust me, she found any excuse possible not to have to be face-to-face with that guy.”

So did this mean that Dicker had out-and-out lied to me?

“Do you have
any
idea why she went up there?” I asked. “What might she have needed luck for?”

“Huh?”

“You told me the other day that she’d said, ‘Wish me luck.’”

“Oh right. She probably had to tell him something he wasn’t going to be happy about. Like we were over budget again. That always made him blow a gasket.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said. It sounded as if I really might have caught Dicker in a lie. Why would he want to misrepresent the reason for his meeting with Mona? I wondered if he had lied to the police as well. I turned to go and then stopped in my tracks.

“Just one more thing. The other day when we spoke, you mentioned that Spanky and Harrison were still here when you left. Was Ryan here?”

She lifted her eyes upward and to the left. “I didn’t tell you that?” she asked.

“No, you didn’t. Was he here?”

“Yes, he was here, too, when I was leaving. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it. I guess because Harrison and Spanky sit closer to me, I was just more conscious of them.”

I thanked her and returned to my desk. I still had some holes to plug—I needed quotes from Kiki and Kimberly, and it was essential that I speak to the paparazzo—but I finally had to start writing the story. Hopefully I would be able to obtain all the info I needed before Monday night.

Over the next hours, I crafted a rough first draft of my piece. I tried both a straight-on reporting approach and a first-person account (leaving out certain details about the body and scene, as promised), and though it was distressing to relive the night of the murder, I felt the first-person tack worked better. When I was done, I routed it electronically to Nash. I hoped he’d be able to take a look at it before our meeting.

I thumbed back through my notebook to the page where I’d jotted down Dicker’s comments. If Mona’s meeting with him hadn’t been about the cover, what
was
its purpose? And why had it lasted only five or ten minutes?

A thought wiggled its way into my brain. Cat Jones had her ear close to the ground on everything related to the magazine business. She might very well know if there had been more than the usual degree of tension between Mona and Dicker. Hopefully, she was still feeling guilty enough about giving me the boot that she would find time to see me before the weekend was over.

I called her number, and naturally her assistant picked up. I explained that I was hoping to grab a few minutes with Cat today or possibly on Sunday, since I had the Dicker barbecue tomorrow. I explained that it could easily be done over the phone if that was best for Cat.

“Cat’s in a meeting right now. But hold on for a second. I think she’d probably want me to interrupt.”

Good. Feeling even guiltier than I’d imagined.

I was on hold for about two minutes. As I waited, I pictured life at
Gloss
—the familiar faces of staffers that I’d taken for granted and now missed; the sullen models who crowded the reception area on go-see days; the nutty fashion department, dressing the mannequin they’d dubbed Fat Ass in their big office across the hall from mine. I had been gone only six weeks, yet in some ways it seemed like an eternity.

“You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“How about meeting for drinks tonight? At Cat’s place. Around eight?”

“Sure,” I said, surprised. Now that’s what I’d call industrial-strength guilt. Timing-wise, I’d be cutting things close because of my meeting with Nash, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to pick Cat’s brain about Dicker.

Thinking of Dicker led me back to the mystery man in his reception area. Over eight hours had passed since then, and I could still remember the charge I’d felt at the sight of him. Next, I did something so silly that I actually felt embarrassed for myself. Using my cell because my landline number would show up on caller ID, I dialed Dicker’s extension.

“Hi, I’m calling on behalf of Seymour Regan,” I said to his assistant when she picked up. I was a hundred percent certain that his name was not Seymour, but I wanted a name that would jump out as
wrong.
“He had an appointment with Mr. Dicker earlier today, and he may have left his cell phone there.”

“You mean
Beau
Regan?” she asked, confused.

“Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m new here.”

“Let me check,” she said without much enthusiasm.

She took so long, I started to worry that she was checking out the story with Beau Regan on another line. But she finally returned and reported coolly that no cell phone had been found but she would keep an eye out for it.

Beau Regan. I had his full name, at least.

I leaned back into my chair. One of the junior editors who occupied the far end of the pod walked by my workstation at that moment and nodded at me. She’d seemed a little in awe of me since I’d started, and she probably thought I’d just hung up from a call with the director of the FBI. Wouldn’t she be impressed if she knew what I’d really been up to?

I glanced at my watch. I had about thirty minutes before I had to split for my confab with Nash. Just as I was considering the best way to use my remaining time in the office, I heard a commotion up by the big conference table. A woman was standing there—someone who from a distance, at least, wasn’t recognizable to me—talking to one of the editorial assistants. The assistant pointed her finger toward our end of the floor and the woman swiveled her head, surveying the length of the room. She then started to move in this direction.

I would have returned to my work, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman’s outfit. She was dressed in pants the color of a Granny Smith apple, and they hung dangerously low on her extra-wide thighs. She’d paired them with a sleeveless hot-pink top with a cowl collar, the kind that dipped in the middle, exposing a yard of cleavage. On her head was a newsboy cap in the same shade of green as the pants. She’d tucked all her hair under the cap, so it wasn’t until she was within ten feet of me that I realized to my utter shock that it was Kimberly Chance.

My first thought was that she was coming to see Nash. And then, about the time I heard Leo mutter, “Uh-oh,” I realized that she was actually barreling right toward me.

“Are you Bailey Weggins?” she asked harshly as she lurched to a stop next to my desk. The only thing I’d managed to do in the time since I’d realized she was gunning for me was sit up straighter in my chair.

“Yes. Hi, Kimberly,” I said, discombobulated. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

I saw a look of recognition flash in her eyes.

“You were outside the courtroom the other day, weren’t you?” she demanded. There was the hint of a twang in her voice, but it was almost edged out by her anger. “Who the fuck gave you my cell phone number?”

Except for the ringing of phones, the office had gone utterly still, and people seemed frozen in place.

“Look, why don’t we go somewhere and talk,” I said, rising from my chair. “There’s a place down the hall where we’d have more privacy.” With her stilettos, she had about four inches on me—to say nothing of the seventy pounds.

She cocked her head in a mocking way. “I don’t think so. Now tell me: Who gave you my fucking cell phone number?”