Over Her Dead Body (28 page)

“So do you think he’s screwing her?”

“Oh please. They’re probably doing it on his desk after everyone leaves. I can just hear her shouting out her Cock Nazi orders to him: ‘Not so hard, Nash. You’re driving my ass into the stapler.’”

What did that reflect about Nash’s lingering hands on me? I wondered. Was he just being his naturally flirty self with me? Or was he interested in additional office conquests? And what evil thoughts had wiggled their way through Hilary’s brain after she had seen me exiting the bar with Nash? I remembered the look of disdain on her face when Nash had congratulated me after the volleyball game. Was it
Hilary
who had barricaded me in the sauna—just for the pleasure of seeing me sweat, so to speak? At the time I’d considered that the sauna incident might be only a prank, but more recently I’d convinced myself it was someone warning me away from investigating Mona’s murder. Now I had to rethink things again.

We were almost at Jessie’s friend’s building, so I let the subject drop. The girl turned out to be a total dingbat, a skinny rich thing with hair bleached the color of sunlight and fake boobs so hard that they looked like they hurt. When she opened her mouth, she made Nicole Richie sound smart. While the chick was rifling through her Birkin bag, I shot Jessie a look of dismay and she offered an expression that said, “You wanted to get in, didn’t you?”

I’d certainly heard of Soho House, but I’d never had the chance to go before. It was a hip, exlusive private club on 14th and Ninth, at the very northern end of the meatpacking district. We checked in at a small reception desk on the ground floor and then took the elevator up to the lounge. It was really a series of glass-walled rooms, including a sleek bar decorated in black and gray, and lights with big red lampshades, and then smaller rooms with couches and tables. One had a billiards table.

Jessie’s friend tore away from us as soon as we walked in the door, and the two of us grabbed seats at the bar. We let our eyes roam, checking out the smaller adjoining rooms, but there was no sign of Brandon. I hoped I hadn’t dragged Jessie down there for nothing.

We were on our second round of drinks when Jessie’s amber eyes flickered.

“The eagle’s landed,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Over there on the couch.”

I turned my head discreetly. In one of the smaller rooms just beyond us, Brandon was flopping down on a couch. He was dressed in jeans and a shiny black shirt, surrounded by a posse of six or seven guys, none older than thirty, and one beefy enough to be a bodyguard. The good news was that they didn’t look as though they’d be leaving anytime soon. The bad news was that I couldn’t imagine how we were going to insinuate ourselves into the group.

“Looks pretty impenetrable,” I said, glancing back at Jessie.

“We may be in luck, though,” she told me. “See the guy in the red shirt? He plays one of the other FBI guys on the show. He’s a friend of a friend, and I think he might remember me.”

“Are you just going to walk over to him?”

“No, they won’t like that. But hopefully he’ll have to hit the head at some point, and I can grab him.”

For fifteen minutes we waited. One of the other guys in the posse stood up and headed past us. Jessie tugged at her tank top so more of her boobs were showing and flashed him a coy smile. But he simply checked out her chest and kept on moving.

“That’s the kind of guy who doesn’t stop for a B cup,” she said in disgust.

Finally we saw the red-shirt guy rise from his chair. He stretched, yawned, and then made his way toward the main room. His head swiveled back and forth, and it was pretty clear that he was looking for action.

“
Tom?”
Jessie called out when he was ten feet away from us. “It’s me, Jessie.”

“Hey, what’s happening?” he said, striding toward us and giving her a hug. He was about five ten, cute in a generic way, with one of those supershort haircuts that’s peaked in front and teeth that looked as if they had never met a whitening strip they didn’t like.

“Not much. This is a friend of mine, Bailey Weggins.”

“Hey,” he exclaimed again, pumping my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Congratulations on the show,” she said. “You’re absolutely
awesome
on it.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m the star or anything. But like my manager says, it’s a start. And the show’s a surprise hit, didya hear?”

“I’ve heard, yes.”

“Look, you wanna join us over there? I mean, I’m with Brandon, so you’ll have to be cool about it, but I think I can trust you not to ask for the dude’s autograph or anything.”

“We’d love to join you,” Jessie said. “And don’t worry. We’ll behave.”

Tom’s face darkened. “Hey, someone told me you went over to one of those rags a while ago. You’re not still there, are you?”

“No, no, I’m not with them anymore. I’m doing freelance PR work now, for a men’s fashion designer. So is Bailey.”

“Wow. Can you get me any shit?”

“Of course. You can come by the showroom.”

“Great. So, okay, why don’t you come over, then?”

I stood up, in awe of Jessie’s lying skills. I fibbed to get my way in the door for stories, but my style didn’t hold a candle to hers.

We followed Tom to the little enclave, where, unfortunately, there were now two blond babes seated in the mix. We were introduced around as fashion girls, and as Brandon took my hand to shake it, I was struck again by the disproportional size of his head. It reminded me of those rubber animal heads that you put on the eraser end of a pencil. He stared hard at me. I didn’t think he could possibly remember me from the other night because he’d never glanced in my direction. He was probably just naturally wary of strangers edging into his camp.

The guys asked a few perfunctory questions about our jobs, while the other two girls eyed us suspiciously. They were all glammed up in tight bustiers and three-hundred-dollar jeans. Before long the guys were dominating the conversation, swapping stories about shooting the show and the hijinks of all involved. We had to listen to one tale about how a cast mate had put a
SMALL PENIS ON BOARD
bumper sticker on the producer’s car and the fact that no amount of scraping could take the thing off. In addition to Tom, one of the other guys in the group apparently had a small role on the show; another turned out to be Brandon’s stunt double. The guy I’d thought might be a bodyguard never said much at all and tossed down Sprites, which seemed to confirm my hunch.

While most of the guys seemed happy as clams to be hanging with a
star,
Brandon himself looked bored and restless. He kept swiping his fingers through his thick, dark hair or scanning the room, and every minute or so he’d blow out his breath in a big blast. He was like a Doberman who’d been tethered to the garage with a seven-foot chain. Only when there was a burst of laughter would he be drawn momentarily back into the conversation.

I felt myself growing restless, too. I needed to talk to Brandon, but I couldn’t figure out any easy way to strike up a conversation. He was four bodies away from me, and he wasn’t exactly Mr. Inclusive. Suddenly, the guy to his left went off to shoot pool, leaving an empty space on the sofa, but before you could say “star fucker,” one of the two blondes secured his spot. She started jabbering away at Brandon, and though he eyed her as if she were a pet monkey husking peanuts on someone’s shoulder, she had at least managed to grab his attention.

I whispered to Jessie that I was going to hit the restroom. I didn’t really need to pee. I was just hoping that when I returned, I could sit in a different place, a spot closer to Brandon. That was going to be my only shot at talking to him.

As I stood up, two other people broke into our little circle: a woman in a dress so short that you could see her butt crack and a guy dressed in skintight white pants and shoes with the word
Dolce
on one and
Gabbana
on the other.

“Brandon,” the guy gushed, thrusting out his hand. “It’s Eddie. I did the makeup on that movie you shot in Toronto last year.
Saber Force
, remember?”

In the bathroom, I splashed cool water on my face and reapplied bronzer and gloss. I looked tired and I felt it. While I’d been trying to obtain a read on Eva’s husband, I’d also been brooding about the situation with Ryan. What if he had actually stumbled onto some major clue about the murder and was about to go to Nash with it? That would be rich, wouldn’t it?
Buzz
hires this hot crime writer named Bailey Weggins, and one of her first major assignments is reporting on the death of the editor in chief. Except the other person on staff, who generally files stories on stuff like the latest wedding of Nick Cage, scoops her.

More important, though, Ryan might be hoarding information that could help clear Robby. If that was true, he was not only keeping Robby in limbo, he was putting himself in danger.

Fueling my foul mood was the Beau situation. As it turned out, I wouldn’t have been able to have dinner with him tonight anyway. But it bugged me that he’d blown me off, even with an excuse that might have been legit. I knew I should call him. After all, I’d said I would. But I felt too annoyed to. If he really wanted to see me, he could damn well work a little harder.

I pushed open the door from the ladies’ room into the small hallway. Holding up the wall was Brandon’s beefy bodyguard. One second later, Brandon blasted out of the restroom, the door swinging wildly behind him.

He nodded to the bodyguard, some private signal that for all I knew meant, “Man, it felt good to whiz.” Then he trained his eyes on me.

“You look familiar,” he said bluntly. I was standing so close to him that I could see he had an underground mole on his chin that raised the skin like a welt.

“Oh yeah?” I said, a loud
Uh-oh
running through my mind. “We’ve never met before.”

“But I’ve seen you.”

“It might have been at the
Track
party for your wife last week. I was there, too.”

“Is that right?” he asked warily.

“Pretty amazing what happened, isn’t it? I mean the murder.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Score one for the good guys.”

So Brandon had liked Mona about as much as Kiki had.

With that he nodded again to the beefy guy and walked past me. I followed them with my eyes. To my surprise, they didn’t turn in the direction of the table but instead walked briskly through the room and out the front door of the lounge.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t score one for
me.
I’d finally snared a chance to talk to Brandon, but I’d learned nothing more than I had when I’d been sitting at the table, watching his boredom swell like a bruise.

As I maneuvered my way back through the chicly dressed crowd toward the table, I saw that neither Jessie nor Tom was there. I heard Jessie’s voice call my name, and I turned to see both her and Tom standing at the bar.

“So Brandon split,” I said. “I hope we weren’t too dull for him.”

“Nah, it wasn’t you,” Tom acknowledged. “It was that makeup guy who barged in. Brandon hates him.”

“I know why,” Jessie said. “I was one of three people who saw that movie, and it looked like Brandon was wearing false eyelashes in it.”

“Nah, that’s not it,” said Tom. “Gay dudes just creep him out. I like Brandon, but he’s sort of a redneck. He’s the kind of guy who calls gays pansies.”

And then something hit me with the force of a volleyball to the side of my head. As I’d considered Brandon as a suspect, I’d been focused on the idea of him trying to protect Eva’s career and thus indirectly his own. But what if his reaction had been even more visceral than that? What if he had only recently learned of Eva’s condition? Maybe she’d been forced to reveal it when she knew the information was about to surface. If Brandon hated gays, it meant that he was rigid and intolerant, and therefore discovering Eva’s situation—knowing that he’d been making love to someone with ambiguous sexuality—would have thrown him into a tailspin. He wouldn’t have wanted the world to know.

Of course, killing Mona wouldn’t have stopped the information from coming out, because Jed would have peddled it elsewhere. But killing Mona hadn’t been a rational act. It was the end point of a conversation that got out of hand.

With nothing to keep me at Soho House, I decided to split. Jessie announced she was going to wait around for her friend but encouraged me to go ahead. I grabbed a cab in front of the club. Riding uptown, I found two voice messages on my cell phone, which I’d never heard ring over the din in the lounge. The first call was from Nash, saying there was no need for me to come in. The second was from my good friend Jed Crandall, returning my call. It sounded as if he were in a bar packed with people.

I called Nash back immediately, just so he’d know I’d received the message and didn’t look as if I were shirking any responsibilities. Then I tried Jed. A song by what sounded like Creedence Clearwater Revival nearly drowned out his voice, making it clear he hadn’t moved far since he’d phoned me.

“Thanks for getting back to me,” I shouted.

“What’s going on? Your boss won’t return my calls.”

“Where are you, anyway? The Hudson?”

“No, I’m downtown. At the Cedar Tavern.” That was on University Place, three blocks from me.

“I’m actually headed that way. Why don’t I stop by and we can chat?”

“I’m with a whole bunch of people.”

“It won’t take long.”

He must have pulled the phone away from his ear, because for a few seconds all I heard was a pounding mix of music and people screaming to be heard.

“Okay,” he said, returning. “I’m at the bar. But you better be quick because I’m not staying much longer.”

I was there within five minutes. As promised, he was standing at the bar, wearing a grubby T-shirt and swigging a beer. The place was mobbed, and it was hard to tell who was with him and who was just packed in nearby.

“So what’s the deal?” he yelled, once again not even bothering to ask if I’d like a drink. “Does your boss want the info or not?”

“Well, I spoke to him on your behalf, but there’s a hitch.”