Over Her Dead Body (36 page)

I tried to read for a while, but it was useless. At midnight, I decided to force myself to fall asleep. I triple-locked my front door and checked that the terrace door was bolted. I also made sure that the windows were locked. There’d be no leaving them open as I’d done the night Beau stayed over.

It was stuffy but not real hot in my bedroom, so I ran the AC for just a couple of minutes, shut it off after I’d undressed, and then switched on the table fan on my dresser right before flopping into bed. Fortunately I was so fatigued, sleep soon overtook me. I played with a few thoughts in my head, but they quickly broke apart, the way a sheer, thin sheet of ice might if you held it in your hands. I was asleep within minutes.

When I woke up, I knew instantly it was because a sound had roused me—though I don’t know how I knew that. As I forced my eyes open, the only noise I could hear was the hum of the fan and the distant murmur of traffic far below. Perhaps the sound had infiltrated my dream somehow, nudging me awake by its incongruity to the story line. But what was it and where did it come from?

I lay motionless in bed, wide-eyed, listening. The time on my clock radio was two forty-five.

Just as I started to close my eyes again, having convinced myself that what I was contending with was probably the return of the insomnia elf, I heard another sound. It was dull and muffled and otherwise undistinguished. I shot up in bed. I was pretty sure the sound had come from outside, at the far end of my terrace, near the living room.

I quickly slid out of bed and turned off the fan. I froze in place and listened again. Far away someone honked a horn, but that was all.

Quietly, I made my way down the short hallway until I reached my living room—and then I froze again. All the lights were off, but the glow of the city faintly illuminated portions of the terrace and even the edges of my living room. I swung my eyes around the room. Nothing seemed amiss. The noise, I realized, might have been the sound of my patio furniture being rattled by the wind or a plastic bucket being blown over on the roof space adjacent to my terrace—on the opposite side from Landon’s terrace.

I walked across the room, practically on tiptoes. This is insane, I thought. Who am I trying to hide from? I peered out the glass door to my terrace. I could see the outlines of my patio table, my small grill, and my flowerpots loaded with red geraniums. Nothing’s the matter, I told myself. You’re just on pins and needles because of everything that’s happened.

I pressed into the glass door and turned my head so that I could see the small section of roof to the left. That appeared empty, too.

But then my eyes found their way to the door in the brick enclosure to the stairwell. It was gaping open, as if someone had just passed through it.

CHAPTER 20

I
jerked back from the glass, petrified. Was someone out there now? Or had they been out there and fled already? Or was the door simply agape from an earlier visit by one of the building maintenance staff?

I bolted across the living room and, using the intercom, called down to the front desk. Unfortunately, at this hour there was never a doorman on duty, just one of the porters. The groggy voice that answered belonged to Steve, I thought, who unfortunately had the IQ of a pigeon. I insisted that he send the super up immediately.

I switched on two of the lamps in my living room and waited, my eyes glued to the door and windows to my terrace. I was tempted to call Landon, but I hated to wake him if this was all a false alarm. After twenty minutes—and me calling downstairs twice more—the super, Barry, tapped at my door. He was wearing bagged-out clothes that had obviously been retrieved from the hamper only moments before, and his toupee was slightly askew, giving him the shortest forehead in Manhattan. I explained that I’d heard noises outside and had discovered the stairwell door open.

He looked across my living room toward the door to my terrace, then back at me. I think he may have felt anxious about going outside to investigate. Finally he sighed, withdrew a flashlight from his deep pants pocket, and crossed the room.

Before opening the door, he turned on the wall light outdoors, his hand reaching instinctively for the spot. His eyes shot around the terrace, and then finally he unbolted the door and stepped outside.

He didn’t go very far at first, just hung by the door, letting his flashlight sweep over the roof area to the left of my terrace. After a few seconds, I stepped out behind him. The stairwell door was just as it was when I’d looked out earlier—gaping open to a pitch-black stairway. Shouldn’t there be a light on? I wondered for the first time.

A simple, waist-high wrought-iron railing separated my terrace and the roof area. Barry crossed to it, lifted his left leg over, and then hoisted the rest of his body to the other side. The experience seemed to knock the wind out of him, which was no surprise considering his pot belly was so big that he might as well have been hiding a basketball under his shirt. After catching his breath, he proceeded cautiously toward the stairwell door, the beam from the flashlight bobbing nervously over the bricks. When he reached the door, he paused and trained the light inside. Hesitantly, he reached into the darkness and flicked on a light. There was nothing there except the gray walls of the stairwell.

After cocking his head and listening for a minute, he pulled the door closed and retraced his steps toward me, sweeping the flashlight once more around the roof. Then he huffed his way back over the railing and shook his head.

“The door must have blown open,” he said.

“Blown open?” I exclaimed. “Barry, there isn’t a big enough breeze tonight. And why is the light off in the stairwell?”

“I’m gonna check and see about that. One of the porters probably turned it off, or forgot to turn it on tonight. But there’s no way someone could have gotten up here. They would have had to go by one of the porters.”

I felt a tiny bit like the boy who cried wolf. There was no real evidence that a prowler had been on my terrace, and Barry was not going to make a mental leap and buy my suspicions. Because, after all, it would only reflect poorly on him. I had a hunch, however, that he would investigate the matter further. I’d seen
some
concern in his eyes, especially about the light being out.

After I’d shown him out, I made a cup of tea, and when that didn’t help, I poured a splash of brandy and sucked it down, though it was the cheap kind that stings as you swallow it. For the next few hours I lay on the couch, my eyes glued on the terrace door. At around six, as daylight seeped into my living room, I finally passed out from exhaustion.

At eight, the alarm went off in my bedroom and I woke with a start, my heart beginning to pound again. There was a momentary rush of relief when I realized that it was only my clock radio jarring me awake. But within seconds that relief evaporated as I realized that it might be ages before I felt safe in my home again. I should call Tate, I thought. I’d promised to let him know if anything threatening happened, but I couldn’t be sure that my nighttime terror had something to do with Mona’s murder. Maybe Barry was right and the door simply had blown open.

Dragging myself to the bathroom, I realized that my head was throbbing, a punishment for buying and drinking cheap brandy. I was just about to step into the shower when my phone rang. Great, I thought. Probably Jessie announcing another dead staffer.

But it was Beau’s voice I heard after I’d forced out a weak “Hello.”

“Rough night?” he asked, his voice friendly but slightly tentative.

I came very close to lobbing a sarcastic retort—a line like “Yeah, after I left you I had to interview Jason Bateman and he begged me to demonstrate the reverse cowgirl position for him.” Instead I muttered something about working late.

“Is this one of those days you go into
Buzz
?”

“It wasn’t going to be, but there’ve been some new developments, so I’m heading in—shortly.”

“I’m not all that far from you right now,” he said. “Would you have time for a cup of coffee?”

“Uh, I guess,” I said. My hesitancy was due to one thing: my sudden fear that he was about to blow me off. Maybe he belonged to that small breed of men whose good manners required that they spell out the bad news to you in person rather than simply never call you again in your lifetime.

“It won’t take long,” he said, sensing my hesitation. “I just wanted to see you after what happened last night.”

I suggested that we meet in half an hour in the coffee shop on the ground floor of my building. That left me time to shower, though not to wash my hair. I had planned to wear only jeans to work today, and I threw them on along with a white T-shirt in an attempt to be blasé. But after surveying myself in the mirror, and realizing that I looked like hell, I tore off the outfit and exchanged it in a frenzy for a slim beige pencil skirt, an off-the-shoulder black sweater that revealed a hint of cleavage, and a pair of leopard-print slingbacks that were more than mere “fuck me” shoes—they screamed, “fuck me hard!” There was no kidding myself. I wanted Beau Regan to eat his heart out.

Before heading down to the coffee shop, I unlocked the door to my terrace and slipped outside. In the early morning light, with the sounds of the city rising from below and my red geraniums grinning at the sun, it was hard to conjure up how scary the place had been the night before.

As Barry had done, I hoisted myself in my pencil skirt over the wrought-iron railing, then crossed to the stairwell door and opened it. The light was on now. The only object I saw in the stairwell was a mop, leaning against the wall on the landing just below. There wasn’t a lick of evidence that anyone had ever trespassed. After returning to my apartment, I bolted the door and once again double-checked the locks on the windows in both living room and bedroom. Despite the fact that I had no proof of a prowler, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Beau was in the coffee shop when I arrived, dressed today in a navy suit and crisp blue-and-white-striped shirt—but no tie—and already drinking a cup of coffee. If he’d shagged Miss Louis Vuitton, he obviously hadn’t sprung for breakfast. I supposed they could have eaten early, but she seemed like the type who never crawled out of bed before noon.

I put on an easy, carefree smile as Beau pulled out the other chair at the table, though inside my stomach felt like a salad spinner at full speed. Beau looked so sexy today. His skin had that gleaming smoothness from just being shaved. I couldn’t believe he liked being in the company of that bimbo.

“You look great,” he said. “Big interview today?”

“Oh, thanks,” I said breezily. “No, just a few appointments.”

“I appreciate you squeezing me in this morning,” he said after signaling for the waiter to bring me coffee. “I felt lousy about what happened last night. There was a moment when I actually thought you’d tagged along on purpose, knowing I was going to be there, but then I realized that there’d be no way you’d do that. After you left, Dicker explained that he’d more or less hijacked you.”

“Well, you’d mentioned you were going to see him this week, but when Dicker asked me to join him, I never guessed you’d be there.”

“I’m sorry if that was awkward for you. If it’s any consolation, I felt ridiculous.”

“No problem,” I said, as if he’d volunteered to go for a tub of buttered popcorn at the movies and had forgotten to bring napkins back with him.

Yet I had to admit, it
was
a problem for me. It wasn’t rational. As Landon pointed out, I had no legitimate reason to be annoyed. We were hardly going steady, and Beau hadn’t known I’d be there. But regardless, I didn’t like the idea of sharing him.

“You’re not pissed?”

“Look, I probably seemed discombobulated, but it was mostly because I was finally alone with Dicker and I was hoping I had at least a few minutes to talk to him.”

“Do you still think he might be the murderer? I never had the opportunity to ask him that question about Mona.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” I told him quickly about Ryan’s death and how he may have learned the truth.

“That’s horrible,” he exclaimed. “And now you’re trying to figure out what you missed?”

“Yeah. And I’m not coming up with a single thing. . . . Any ideas as a filmmaker? I mean about looking at a situation from a fresh angle?”

He thought, his fingers splayed against his full mouth. I noticed that his lips were even more chapped than they’d been the other night. Probably, I thought in disgust, from a night of endless sex with
her.

“This doesn’t really help, but one of the trickiest parts when you’re doing documentaries is the continuity,” Beau said. “You don’t shoot scenes in sequence, so when you stitch them together later, you need to make certain they flow the right way and everything makes sense. On big-budget films you have someone who does that for you. They make sure when you shoot a scene that the guy is still wearing a red shirt, the way he was when you worked on that scene four days before. And that the clock says the right time. But on low-budget films like mine, I have to watch out for that myself. Along with my editor. I have to constantly step back and pretend I’m a stranger watching the film for the first time.”

He smiled. “That’s probably not what you were hoping for,” he said.

“That’s not true,” I said. “Maybe I should try that—stepping back a bit. I certainly need to do
something.
” After deliberating for a second, I told him about the noises on my terrace last night.

“Christ, Bailey, that’s scary. Did you call the police?”

“No. Maybe I should have, but in the end all I was dealing with was an open door. What does that prove?”

“You don’t have real great security up there, right?” he asked. “Isn’t the door to your terrace just glass?”

“Hm-hmm. I’ve always felt pretty safe because it’s not easy for someone to get access to the roof. But now I’m wondering if someone did.”

He did that cocking-of-the-one-eyebrow trick. “Do you want to stay at my place tonight?”

I was sipping my coffee as he said it, and I almost choked. God, the guy really liked having his cake and eating it, too. As much as I wanted to take him up on his offer, I didn’t think I could do it. I’d already been too easy, too available, too transparent. It was time for heart hardball.

“I appreciate the offer, but let me see how it goes. I may be working late tonight.”

He smiled at me with sly amusement. I was playing with him because of the St. Regis incident and he knew it.

“I better get going,” I said after peeking at my watch. “Who knows who’s dead today on the sixteenth floor.”

The check was already on the table, and he threw down a few bills to cover it rather than pay the cashier. Out on the sidewalk, he put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze.

“Well, if you decide to tough it out alone tonight, at least call me, will you? I want to know what’s going on.”

“Sure,” I said. “Have a good day, okay?”

I offered him a fast peck on the cheek and took off, mincing toward the subway in my tight skirt. I could feel his eyes watching me, and I smiled to myself. Game, Weggins.

My smugness evaporated, though, as soon as I descended the subway steps. The oppressive heat in the station and the newspaper inserts grimly plastered along the stairs seemed to bring back all my anxiety. Someone was watching me, perhaps had even paid me a visit last night. Someone who was worried that I knew too much. And the last Scooby Doo on the case—Ryan—most likely had been murdered. I could throw in the towel as Landon suggested. I could run home, call Nash, and quit my job at
Buzz.
No one, given all that had happened, would blame me for it. Except myself. I would have to live with the knowledge that I’d come close to unmasking the killer and then had walked away, leaving others in danger, because I was afraid. The train pulled up and the doors opened. I hesitated on the platform for a second and then jumped on the train.

A few reporters were hanging outside the building when I arrived, including a nice guy from the
Daily News
whom I’d known for years. He tried to pump me for info, but I just shrugged helplessly and hurried past.

I filled my coffee mug in the kitchenette and dived into my work. The story on the stalker with erotomania wasn’t going to be long, but I needed more details. I made a bunch of calls and also arranged two in-person interviews for the next day. The mood at
Buzz
couldn’t have been more somber.

In between working on my
Buzz
assignments, I focused on Ryan. I phoned for the official updates from the police and the ME’s office, but they amounted to nothing more than what I knew already. Then I went to work trying to track down friends of his—I was particularly looking for the one he’d been speaking with when Jessie overheard him. Perhaps Ryan had hinted to the person what information he had in his possession. According to his résumé, he had worked at
People
at one point and also
Entertainment Weekly.
I phoned around to several people I knew at each magazine and also made cold calls, running through various phone extensions. I found a few people familiar with him but no one who had considered him a friend.