Over Her Dead Body (25 page)

“I’m going to snoop around and see what I come up with,” she announced just above a whisper. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“Thanks. Is Nash in yet?”

“Hm-hmm. Hilary was in there earlier. She looked frazzled. Maybe Lindsay Lohan called her up and screamed at her for suggesting she was a slut.”

I hurried down to Nash’s office. Lee wasn’t out front, but I could see Nash inside working at his computer. I poked my head in.

“Got a sec?” I asked when he looked up over his reading glasses.

“Sure. Any new developments?”

“Nothing significant,” I said, stepping into his office. I’d toyed with sharing the sauna incident with Nash but didn’t want to until I knew more. “I’m going to send you my latest draft in a minute. We may get caught with our pants down between tonight and when we come out on Thursday, but I hedged in the piece as best I could.”

“We’ll just have to take our chances like we do with everything else.”

“There’s just one loose end that I was hoping you could help me on.”

He’d been playing with a yellow pencil as he spoke, tapping the eraser end and then flipping it over and tapping the point. He let the pencil drop and looked up at me. “Shoot.”

“I talked to Jed Crandall last night. As I guess you know, he spoke with Mona on the phone right before she was murdered. He informed me he met with you Saturday night—and that he told you what the call was about.”

Nash pursed his lips, and I could tell he was deliberating about how much to reveal to me. After a second, he lifted his chin and pointed in the direction of the door. “Shut it, will you?”

I moved slowly toward the door and closed it. Lee was back at her desk, and she smiled absentmindedly at me.

“Look, Bailey,” Nash said when I turned around, “I wasn’t going to drag you into any of this, but I should have realized you’d find your way there. I’m going to be candid with you, but you can’t share this with anyone, okay? And there’s no way it’s going in the story?”

“Okay,” I said. I stood perfectly still, waiting.

“This guy Jed is a real lowlife, and he had some information that he was trying to sell to Mona.”

“It was about Eva Anderson, right?”

“Yes. And you’re not going to believe it. According to him, Eva Anderson was born a hermaphrodite.”

CHAPTER 14

“
Wait,” I said. “A
hermaphrodite
? You mean when . . .”

“Yes, when someone is born with the genitalia of both sexes,” Nash said, pulling off his glasses and tossing them onto his desk. “A vagina
and
a penis.”

“But what about her husband? He doesn’t look like the type who would go for that kind of kinky. Handcuffs maybe, a threesome definitely, but a
penis
? No way.”

Nash shook his head hard. “No, no,” he said. “She’s not a hermaphrodite
anymore
—technically. I looked up stuff on it after I met with Crandall, and apparently they would have removed the penis after she was born and possibly done some surgery. They may have also given her female hormones. She would have developed like a woman from that point on.”

“But how did Jed find this out?”

“These guys come across all kinds of crap when they’re working. You know what he told me? He’s an expert in what he calls ‘garbology’—going through people’s trash. But that’s not how he discovered this piece of info. He claims someone passed it along to him.”

“Do you think what he has is legit?”

“I don’t know. He isn’t going to show me his so-called proof until I make a verbal agreement to buy it. I do know this, though. There’s been a rumor around for a while about some female movie star being a hermaphrodite. I never would have guessed Eva.”

“Was Mona really interested in buying the information?”

“Crandall says she was, but of course you’re dealing with a major bullshit artist. I’d say there was a chance she was considering it. As you’ve probably noticed, she was making ‘Juice Bar’ nastier these days. The competition is getting fiercer every minute. Mona believed that if we added some real tabloid stuff, it would goose our sales. And by keeping it quarantined in ‘Juice Bar,’ it would prevent the overall magazine from seeming too bitchy.”

“But would she have really run an item saying that Eva Anderson was once half man?”

“Probably not. My guess is that she would have done it blind, but not so blind that people couldn’t put two and two together. I’m sure she believed that as long as she had proof, Eva couldn’t sue.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Stall the guy for a while. I know the pressure Mona was under, and I’m under it now myself. But if it’s at all possible, I want to avoid getting too down and dirty with the magazine. I don’t want to run blind items—and I certainly don’t want to
pay
for items. Believe it or not, I used to write the word
journalist
in the spot on a form where it asks for your occupation. And besides, Dicker hates the tabloid stuff. He thinks we finally have a shot at getting advertising in the magazine, but it’s not going to happen if we turn into a rag.”

“But you’re going to tell the police about this, right? It’s a motive for murder.”

“Come on, Bailey. You’re not suggesting Eva Anderson offed Mona, are you?” he said.

“No, Eva was apparently always surrounded by an entourage. But as you know, Kiki chewed out Mona that night. Maybe it had to do with this hermaphrodite information. Later, when she saw Mona leave the party, Kiki may have followed her and attempted to talk some sense into her.”

Again, the hard shake of his head. “I really don’t think so. Because Kiki didn’t
know
what Mona knew. Mona never made it back to the party after the phone call.”

“But why was Kiki so angry that night?”

“It might have been anything. That woman gets her panties in a twist if you run an item saying a client hadn’t been asked to the prom back in high school.”

I could tell by his expression that he was reading the skepticism in my face.

“Look, Bailey,” he said, “if I thought this had anything to do with the murder, I would go to the police, trust me. But it can’t possibly. Mona’s skirmish with Kiki was
before
her phone conversation with Jed. And to be perfectly blunt, I don’t want to tell the cops about this because if it comes out that we’re in—or were once in—the business of buying and using that kind of information, it won’t be good for us. Dicker would be seriously pissed.”

I was tempted to argue, but I bit my tongue. Nash was a breeze to talk to, and I could be easily lured into thinking I could share my mind with him without worry. But he was my boss after all, one with more than his share of testosterone and known for sudden mood shifts. I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be smart not to challenge him. That said, I wasn’t going to just let the matter drop. The information he’d shared with me might be of consequence, and I intended to snoop around and find out what I could.

“I hear you,” I said, trying to sound as though I really meant it. “It seems like it’s best to sit tight for the time being.”

“Good girl,” he proclaimed, smiling.

“Do you still want me to keep pursuing the story—for next week’s issue?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “People are going to be interested in how all this plays out. We should plan on follow-ups for as long as it takes the case to unfold.”

As I left Nash’s office, every pair of eyes around checked me out. People were speculating about why the door had been closed: What did I know that they didn’t?

As promised, once I was back at my desk I forwarded the latest version of my story to Nash. Then I went online and dug up what I could about hermaphrodites.

Cases of true hermaphrodites were extremely rare, I learned, and it was more than likely that Eva Anderson had been born an intersexual, an umbrella term used to describe people with ambiguous sexuality. An intersexual might have the chromosomal makeup of one sex but the anatomy of another—or both, for that matter. Though in cases of both, neither sex was fully developed. The penis, for instance, might be nothing more than a stump. In the past doctors operated within days, refashioning the genitalia to fit one sex. More often than not, doctors chose to make the baby a girl, because it was easier to create a vagina than a penis. Hormone injections would often be part of the treatment, especially in cases where the chromosomal makeup didn’t indicate clearly what sex the person was. Unfortunately, down the road the person might manifest all the personality attributes of the other sex because doctors had made the wrong choice. There was thinking these days that parents should wait until the child was older to take any action.

The one thing that doctors couldn’t create was reproductive organs. If Crandall’s revelation was true, it would explain why Eva was considering adoption.

I summoned an image of Eva in my mind: the long, lean body, flat stomach, broad shoulders, and of course, the huge boobs, rumored to be surgically enhanced. Despite how sexy Eva was, there
was
something slightly masculine about her.

If it was true that Eva was a hermaphrodite, what impact would disclosure have on her career? Today it seemed that an A-list celebrity’s reputation could rebound from just about anything—addiction, bisexual flings, a shoplifting conviction, public feuding, a hit-and-run car crash, an amateur porn flick. But I wasn’t so sure that a brilliant bounce-back could occur with
this
particular news. On the surface no one could possibly hold it against Eva, but it might harm her anyway, might tarnish that dazzling, multimillion-dollar girl-next-door image. Because it would mean that she wasn’t really the girl next door. She was the girl/boy next door.

Which quickly brought me back to Kiki. If she had learned that this information was on the black market, she would have been desperate to stop it from seeing daylight. Even a blind item could possibly damage Eva. What if Mona had a hint of what information Jed was peddling
before
that phone call? Maybe she’d even talked to him once before. And maybe Mona had someone call Kiki for her reaction, just to test the waters. My idea was a bit of a stretch, but it would explain why Kiki was so fired up that night. And if Kiki
had
known about the information that was coming into Mona’s possession, she would have had good reason to tear into her.

I didn’t want to lose track of other people on my suspect list—Kimberly, for instance, Ryan, and even Carl, whose alibi I had yet to validate. I phoned my contact in NYPD, the one who’d met me for coffee last week, and asked for any verification on Carl’s story that he’d spent most of the party with an old friend and Kimberly’s tale about hooking up with a guy. He called back fifteen minutes later, stating that Carl did seem to be in the clear, but he could not confirm Kimberly’s version of events.

So she was still on the list. Kiki, however, was looming even larger at the moment. She, after all, had skirmished with Mona. Of course, if she
had
killed Mona, how did that relate to what had happened to me in Brighton Beach and in Dicker’s sauna? Were those random events after all, unrelated to the murder? Or could Kiki have paid someone to try to scare me off?

I picked up the phone and called Donna Lapp, one of the company lawyers who vetted my articles and much of the other material that
Buzz
churned out. She was an expert on libel and slander and guided us so we wouldn’t wind up getting sued.

“Got a sec?” I asked when she answered her phone.

“I’m all yours,” she said in that no-nonsense way of hers. In the weeks I’d been at
Buzz,
I’d thought more than once how much I’d hate being cross-examined by her in a courtroom.

“How much danger is there in running blind items? You know, where—”

“I know exactly what you mean. I hate them. And I think they’re
real
dangerous.”

“How so?” I asked.

“In the first place, the sources always seem to be so shifty—a-friend-of-a-friend-saw-the-person-backstage kind of thing. And if the subject is recognizable and the information is untrue, the person could bring a cause of action for defamation, just as he could if we named him.”

“But what if it
is
true?”

“You still could be looking at an invasion of privacy claim. As you well know, celebs forfeit some of their privacy protection because they’re public figures, but if the information that’s published isn’t at all newsworthy or a matter of public concern, there could be grounds for a suit.”

“But if the information was damaging enough, the celebrity might decide not to sue so they wouldn’t have to drag it out in the open, right?”

“Possibly. But my view is why should we chance it? There’s too much to lose.”

“Can I assume then that you haven’t been very happy about all the blind items we’ve been running lately?” I was fishing, hoping that if Mona had advance word on what Jed was trafficking in, she might have consulted with Donna.

“No, I’m
not
pleased. I warned Mona several times about them.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stir. “Oh really?” I said. “Did—did Mona speak to you about any item in particular?”

“No, it was actually I who called her,” Donna admitted. “I told her I’d noticed the increase and that she needed to be careful. She didn’t mention anything in particular to me. In fact, she seemed annoyed by my call. Look, I’ve got a conference call I need to take. Is there anything else?”

After I hung up, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling, trying to distract myself from a conversation Leo was having with an editor about butt flab. I hadn’t a shred of evidence that the spat between Mona and Kiki related to Jed’s “scoop,” but the whole thing seemed so coincidental—Jed peddling the info this week and Kiki blowing a gasket. I hadn’t learned anything from Donna, but I knew someone who
might
shed some light on the matter. I took a hike back to the office used by the West Coast staff. Earlier I’d caught a glimpse of Mary Kay in the hallway, and I was pretty sure she must be back there.

She
was
there, and her appearance nearly knocked my socks off. She was decked out in another Chanel suit, this one in lavender and yellow, but she had about a dozen silo-size red Velcro rollers in her hair and her entire face was covered with white makeup, as if she were about to perform in Kabuki theater.

“I was hoping I could speak to you for a second,” I said after rapping on the door frame and making her jump.

“All right,” she said begrudgingly. “But you’ll have to excuse my appearance. I’m doing an
ET
segment in a little while.”

She had set up one of those light-up magnifying mirrors on the desk, along with a big pink bag of beauty goodies, and as I took a seat she dabbed a makeup sponge into a compact and began applying pressed foundation the color of mannequin legs onto her face. The white stuff, I guessed, must have been some kind of primer, a spackle for the face.

“Nash filled me in on the conversation the two of you had with Jed last night,” I told her.

She halted her dabbing for a millisecond as she digested the news, and I could sense she was surprised at Nash’s decision to spill the beans to me.

“I take it, then, you’re capable of guarding a state secret, Bailey?”

“Yes, Mary Kay, I am.”

“Good. Because Nash and I feel very strongly that this information must be kept under wraps for the time being.”

“Well, you can count on me. Quite a revelation, though, huh? Have you ever heard one like that before?”

“Not like that, no. But many other things. You know, dear, at the end of the day, stars are just people. They don’t escape life’s travails or fate’s fickleness. One of the great actresses of our time was born covered with body hair as thick as fur. I’m sure there are many heartbreaking things even I am not privy to.”

“Were you aware of what information Jed had for sale?”

She snapped her head in my direction. “As I told you at breakfast, no. I simply arranged the contact.”

“That wasn’t the first time Mona had spoken to him, though, was it?”

She dropped the sponge into a little plastic bag and picked up a powder puff, slipping her hand snuggly through the silver ribbon on the back. She appeared to be preoccupied with her toilette, but I sensed that she was weighing what I’d just said and considering how to answer me.