Over Her Dead Body (26 page)

“I’m not sure what you mean, Bailey.”

“I know that Jed had talked to Mona once before, hadn’t he?” I felt slightly uncomfortable lying to her, but she was a cagey thing, and I didn’t know any other way to flush out the truth.

She turned to me again, her brow furrowed. “Who told you
that
?”

“I don’t recall. It’s in my notes somewhere.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know. This was the first call
I’d
been involved with.”

“Thanks for the help,” I said. “I’ll see you around.”

I couldn’t discern whether she’d been telling the truth or not. The furrowed brow had indicated that something was going on underneath those jumbo rollers on her head, but she might have simply been irked by the fact that there were details about the Jed situation that she wasn’t
privy
to. It looked as if the best way to find out if Kiki knew anything was to speak to Kiki herself—and so far I’d had zero luck pulling that off.

Back at my desk I waited for Jessie to get off from a phone call, then rolled my chair in her direction.

“I hate to be a nudge, but have you made any progress on the Kiki front?”

“I was just going to tell you. I spoke to my manager pal about an hour ago and he said he’d think about it, but that was his secretary saying that he couldn’t do it. He doesn’t want to piss Kiki off. Sorry about that.”

I touched my fingers to my forehead, thinking. “What’s the address for her agency?” I asked.

She flipped through her Rolodex, found the address, and jotted it down for me. By the time she handed it to me, I had my purse slung over my shoulder.

“Omigod, you’re making a cold call there, aren’t you? Nervy girl.”

My term for it was the cannonball approach. If you tried everything possible to finesse your way in and it didn’t work, you ran to the edge of the pool, jumped and grabbed your knees in your hands, and hoping that you didn’t drench anyone who really mattered. At this point, I didn’t feel I had a choice. Beyond my suspicions about Kiki, I still needed a quote from her for my article.

The office was on the East Side, in the 40s, on the fourth floor of a fairly small building by Manhattan standards. The reception area was small and modestly decorated, like one of those fake starter apartments in a decorating magazine. There were two slim pale green armchairs, a striped sofa, and some old framed movie posters on the wall, including one with Sean Connery that I’d never even heard of. In addition to working for individual celebrities, publicists often promoted movie launches.

A young, very hunky African American guy sat at the reception desk, thumbing through the
New York Post.
He looked up and smiled politely as I crossed the room to him. Do not be fooled, I told myself. The trappings of the office might seem innocuous, even inviting, but I knew from my short time at
Buzz
that celebrity publicists ate their young.

“May I help you?” the receptionist asked softly. He wore a silver nose stud that sparkled in the light.

“My name is Bailey Weggins. I’m here to see Kiki Bodden.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Actually, no,” I said. “But it’s important that I see her today. I need to speak to her about Mona Hodges.”

His eyes grew wide, as if I’d just announced that Tom and Nicole had decided to get back together. “Unfortunately, Ms. Bodden doesn’t see anyone without an appointment. I—”

“I think she’ll want to talk to me. Just tell her that I’m writing an article about Mona’s murder for
Buzz
magazine, and since I have to include Ms. Bodden in the article, I want to give her the chance to speak for herself.”

He raised his shoulders and exhaled, obviously considering the smartest course of action. “Okay, just a moment,” he said. “Why don’t you take a seat.”

While I retreated to the sofa, he picked up the phone and whispered into it. Just by the expression on his face, I assumed he was talking to Kiki’s assistant rather than the head babe herself, and sure enough, he’d barely hung up before a twenty-something blonde in flat-front pants and a button-down shirt strode into the reception room flashing plenty of haughty ’tude.

“What’s this all about?” she demanded. I repeated what I’d said to the receptionist.

“Are you telling me there’s something about
Kiki
in the story?” she asked indignantly.

“Yes, and I think she’ll probably want to comment on it.”

“Wait here,” she demanded, and strode off, her arms at full swing by her side. The receptionist eyed me with a mixture of trepidation and pity, as if I’d just been pulled over at customs and been told to unzip my bags.

Five minutes later the assistant returned, looking even less pleased than she had before. “Come with me,” she declared.

I followed her through a warren of nondescript offices. If it weren’t for the rows of movie posters staggered on the walls, I might have assumed I was in a real estate sales office.

Kiki was on the phone, or else pretending to be. She let me stand in the middle of the room for two minutes while she said, “Perfect,” eighteen or twenty times to the person on the other end. She was wearing a tight-fitting brown T-shirt and I could see the top part of a leopard-print skirt or pants. On her ears and arms and around her neck were what appeared to be the world’s largest supply of pavé diamonds. Being in closer proximity to her today than I had been last week, I could see that she was what Jessie called a “Photoshop blonde.” That’s a woman who from a distance looks twenty-five, but when you step nearer you see that she’s been kind of digitally corrected—there’s a ton of makeup over Botoxed and collagened skin. In fact, Kiki’s forehead looked smooth enough to ice-skate on.

“Please, have a seat,” she said after she’d finally hung up the phone. Her words were polite enough, but her voice was so cold that it almost hurt. “I wouldn’t normally let someone just barge in here, but I like to show respect to the members of the press—though unfortunately I don’t always get that in return.”

“I appreciate it. I know how busy you must be this week with Eva’s new CD.”

“You’re actually very lucky to have caught me. Eva’s still here doing press, and I’ve been out of the office more than I’ve been in. What is it that you want from me?”

“
Buzz
is running a story on Mona Hodges’s murder and I’ve been trying to reach you. I wanted to double-check some information with you.”

“My goodness,” she said. “Don’t tell me that
Buzz
has added fact-checkers. This must be a new development since Mona’s death.”

“I’m actually the reporter on the story. You had a conversation at the party with Mona that was witnessed by several people, all of whom said it looked fairly heated. Do you mind telling me what it was about?”

She laughed, though it was really a harsh little bark, the sound a Yorkie might make before it was about to sink its tiny teeth into the mailman’s pants leg.

“You want me to tell you about a private conversation I had that night? I can’t imagine why you think I’d be willing to share that.”

“I’m sure the police have asked you about it.”

“Yes, and I have an obligation to be forthcoming with them. But I don’t have the same obligation with you. And frankly, I don’t see what relevance it has.”

“You have a heated exchange with someone less than an hour before she’s murdered. That could seem pretty relevant to some people. I have to include the conversation in my article, and I thought you’d like the opportunity to put it in perspective, explain why it really
isn’t
relevant.”

“First of all, it wasn’t all that heated,” she said. “If you’d like to see heated, I’ll show you heated. And secondly, if I were going to kill Mona Hodges, I wouldn’t smash her head in. I’d choose something like rat poison so she’d be guaranteed a slow, agonizing death.”

She smiled when she said it, but the rest of her face remained frozen in place. She was keeping her cool with me, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have flown off the handle in Mona’s office.

“Were you upset with Mona about something the magazine was doing?” I asked.

“Look, if you must know for your story, I’ll tell you. I’d heard through the grapevine that
Buzz
was going to give a bad review to Eva’s CD. I’d never try to persuade someone to alter a review, but I wanted to register my opinion. I thought what they were doing was unfair, because frankly the album is brilliant.”

That was her story, and as they say, she was sticking with it. I decided to try another tack.

“Does the name Jed Crandall ring a bell with you?”

Bingo. Her brows lifted involuntarily and the lower rims of her eyes reddened. A nerve had just been pricked.

“He’s a stalkerazzo, isn’t he?” she said. “Scum of the earth?”

“That’s right. Do you know why he would have arranged to call Mona on the night of the party?”

I could tell just by the way she pulled a breath that she was about to lie to me.

“I haven’t a clue,” she said. “I make it a point to stay away from scum like that.”

“Are you making a generalization about paparazzi, or do you happen to know something uniquely deplorable about Jed Crandall?”

“They’re
all
pond scum, but yes, he’s particularly despicable from what I hear. It’s all about money for these guys. Stoop as low as you can go and then find the highest bidder. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.” As she said it, the preppie-looking assistant reappeared in the office, as if she’d been hovering outside waiting for a cue.

There was one more question and I had to ask it, though I knew I might get hurled from the office.

“I happened to be on the floor the night of the party, and I heard Eva’s husband ask you where you’d been. Do you mind telling me what you told the police when they inquired about your whereabouts that night?”

“There was never a single moment when I wasn’t doing my job. Now get out.”

The assistant stayed right on my heels as I left, as if I were being tossed from a club where they’d discovered I didn’t have a membership. It was a relief to finally be on the street again. I found a café a block away and bought a cappuccino, and though it was almost as muggy inside as out, I parked myself at a table still sprinkled with sugar. Something Kiki had said was gnawing at my brain, yet I couldn’t see the shape of it. I pulled my notebook out of my bag and jotted down my conversation with her to the best of my recollection. And then I had it. It was the part about guys like Jed Crandall always trying to find the highest bidder.

Let’s say that Nash was absolutely right—that until Crandall made the call to Mona, she’d had no inkling about the information he had. Theoretically, then, she wouldn’t have had time to relay to Kiki the ugly secret she now possessed and thus enrage Kiki with it. But what if Mona wasn’t the first “bidder” Jed had approached? He may have called other media outlets, and Kiki could have gotten wind of it. Perhaps—oh, and I liked this theory—he’d phoned Kiki herself and given her a chance to make an offer on Eva’s behalf. Kiki would have known that buying the information wouldn’t have kept it under wraps for long, so she may have refused. Jed might have divulged that Mona was next on his list. When Kiki approached Mona at the party, it may have been to tell her that she knew Jed was going to be calling her and that if she was smart, she wouldn’t hear him out. When Mona showed no interest in being cooperative, Kiki may have followed her back to her office. I desperately needed to arrange another conversation with Jed.

Before I closed my notebook, I thumbed through the pages again, thinking. In light of Nash’s revelation, there was one other name I needed to consider seriously as a suspect: Brandon’s. Just as Kiki would have a vested interest in protecting Eva’s reputation, so would he. I didn’t know who his publicist was, but it hardly mattered because there’d be no way she would set up a meeting for me with him. My only hope of coming into contact with him was to make an appearance at a location where I knew he’d be. I’d seen one photo of him in the
Post
this week—out with friends sans Eva one night. He’d probably been left to his own devices while she was fulfilling her diva duties with the press. I rummaged through my purse for my cell phone and called Leo.

“I’m coming back in a few minutes, but I wondered if you’d do me a favor. I’m trying to figure out where Eva Anderson is staying in New York and where that charming husband of hers is hanging out. Do you think some of your paparazzi contacts would know?”

“When do you need the info by?”

“Right away.”

“I’ll try. But I’m scrambling on last minute stuff Nash wants for this issue.”

After I hung up, I left a message for Jed. And I checked my voice mail at work. My heart was skipping like an idiot as I listened to a Swedish television producer ask for an exclusive with me, Landon inquire how I was doing, and some guy I’d met months ago say he had tickets for a Mets game and did I want to go. And then to my utter relief—and I felt so
dumb
being so relieved—there was Beau’s voice.

“It’s Beau Regan,” he said. “Call me on my cell, will you? You know, the one you thought I lost.” Then he gave the number.

The thought of seeing him again tonight, the thought of having sex like that again, made me momentarily light-headed. I hurriedly hit the digits.

“Hi there,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m barely able to walk. How about you?” he said with laughter in his voice.

“Ditto.”

“I look forward to being in your company again. But I need to plead for mercy. I realized when I got in here today that I’d set up dinner with a potential investor tonight, and I hate to blow him off. Can we do it tomorrow night instead?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, my heart sinking. “At least I think so. Let me call you back after I check my schedule.”

“Good. I’ll be shooting later, but just leave a message and I’ll call you back.”

I felt like hurling my cappuccino cup across the room. Was he blowing me off? I felt vaguely mortified and pissed at myself. Why in the world had I slept with him? I was now in slut limbo—just where I deserved to be. So much for Bailey’s easy breezy summer.