Over Her Dead Body (38 page)

I glanced down at my legs. One knee was oozing blood. I touched my head where it had hit the wall. I could feel a large egg there and a smear of blood.

“How did you know to come?” I asked weakly.

“I dropped by the office tonight to talk to your boss—and follow up with you about our conversation. It took a while, but I got your office buddy—Ms. Pendergrass—to spill where you were. We’ve had plenty of concerns about Katya, and I didn’t like that you’d gone down here. Just as we were about to try to find you, the alarm went off.”

A minute or so later, Evil Cousin was led off and I was transferred to the small locker room. Tate disappeared somewhere, doing his job. I waited for about ten minutes with a uniformed police officer standing right by the door. I could hear lots of commotion echoing through the basement, which I figured had to do with the search for André. At one point, the voices and footsteps faded away completely, and I wondered if the hunt had taken them far, far back to the other side of the basement.

After about ten minutes, EMS workers arrived with a collapsible stretcher.

“You don’t have to put me on that,” I said. “I’m really okay. I’m just banged up a little. And there’s a doozy of a bruise on my head.”

“Well, let’s take a look at it, shall we?” said one of them, a chunky woman with her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She inspected my scalp and offered me one of those instant ice packs. She took my pulse and blood pressure and dressed the cut on my knee.

“Why don’t you let us bring you in for observation?” she asked. “You might have a head injury.”

“Thanks, but I feel okay, really. I just need some sleep—and maybe a margarita.”

“Make it a cup of tea, okay?”

Through her radio, she announced to a dispatcher or driver that she and her partner were leaving empty and then told me to call a doctor if I experienced any headaches.

It was another fifteen minutes before Tate returned, carrying my purse. He pulled up a chair at the table and sat across from me.

“You know for sure that Katya did it, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yes. André’s cousin volunteered plenty of information, including where Katya supposedly hid the paperweight that she used as a weapon. Without that, we might not have a case.”

“What about André?”

“He’s not so lucky,” he said. “He fled the building and ran in front of a car. He’s on his way to the ER. Now tell me what you were doing down here. You had no business pursuing this on your own.”

“Look, I apologize, but I wasn’t really trying to play police. As I said when I called you, I had this sense that Katya knew something. She seemed anxious, almost afraid. What I didn’t realize was that she was simply concerned that someone was going to learn the truth about what had happened. She suspected I might be on to her, and she asked me to come down here. I suggested that she go to the police, but she stressed that there was a good reason she couldn’t. My plan was to find out what she knew and report it to you. When I got down here, I said some things that made her think that I
did
know the truth and she admitted to committing the murder, and to killing Ryan. She obviously had André and her cousin around in case they decided I posed a threat.”

I recapped for Tate, to the best of my ability, every word Katya had said and my subsequent pursuit by André and his cousin.

“You’ll need to come down tomorrow and make a full statement,” Tate said.

One of the police officers was given the job of escorting me to find a taxi. I deliberated going back to sixteen, but I didn’t have the energy. The cop kept his hand cupped under my elbow as I limped along beside him, in part because of how bruised I was and partly because the heel had come partially unglued from one of my leopard slingbacks at one point. He hailed a cab for me and even opened the door.

“Where you headed?” he asked me, obviously planning to give the driver the address for me.

“I’m not sure yet. I need to think about it.”

Unexpectedly, I felt tears well in my eyes. I was overcome by a mixture of sadness and anger and guilt. I sank back into the leather seat and fished my cell phone out of my purse to phone Landon. Nobody home. Then I called Beau.

“Does your offer still hold?” I asked. “It’s Bailey, by the way.”

“Of course. Are you all right?”

“No. I mean, I’m all right now. But I was attacked tonight.”

“By who? Where?”

I told him in a few broad strokes what had happened and said I would provide all the details when I saw him.

“What’s the exact address again?”

He gave it to me and then asked how far away I was, explaining that he was out at the moment, but just ten minutes away. He would have no trouble beating me back to his place.

The taxi encountered one of those inexplicable pockets of traffic you can find in New York at any time, and I cursed out loud each time the driver would inch ahead two feet and then tap his brakes. All I wanted was to be out of the cab, someplace where I could flop onto a sofa or bed. Was I stupid to have called Beau? I knew I didn’t want to be alone, but it may have been best to wait for Landon to surface, or to give Jessie a call. Well, it was too late now.

There were so many thoughts colliding in my mind. I was furious at Katya—for killing Mona and Ryan, for tricking me, for luring me down to the basement so that André could shut me up for good. I was angry with Ryan, too. Tate had accused me of playing cop, but that’s what Ryan had done. He’d followed his hunch to his death—and put me in danger, too. If he hadn’t been so hell-bent on competing with me, he might have shared the information and I could have talked some sense into him.

And then there was the guilt that had drilled its way into my system. Just over a week ago, I had walked in on a crime scene and made a completely erroneous assumption—the way my brother, Cameron, had years ago with the red paint on the seesaw. It was another case of what Landon’s sister had called an optical confusion. The police, at least initially, had not seen things any more clearly than I had. As Katya had revealed, I’d given her the damn idea. I could still hear the words I’d used when I’d called 911: “Two women have been attacked.”

There was classical guitar music playing when Beau answered the door, meaning he’d probably been home for a few minutes. He was wearing blue jeans and a pink dress shirt, a different color from the one he’d had on earlier, and some back corner of my brain went to work analyzing what this selection of clothes meant. Had he been dressed up only minutes ago and then thrown on his jeans when he returned home? Where had he been? Who had he been with?

But the front and center part of my brain could deal only with the insanity of everything that had transpired tonight. Beau hugged me and then quickly pulled back to look at me.

“God, you’ve got a huge egg on the side of your head.”

I touched it gingerly. “I had an ice pack for it, but I lost it somewhere along the way.”

“Let me make another for you, then. Do you need to see a doctor?”

As I trailed him to the kitchen, limping from my bruised knee and broken slingback, I explained that an EMS worker had treated me. After Beau had fabricated an ice pack out of ice cubes and a bright red dish towel, we transferred to the living room, where I kicked off my shoes and began to pour out every detail of the night’s events. Beau offered me a glass of white wine, which I gulped greedily despite orders, and he sat near me on the couch. Every few sentences he would ask questions to help him clarify the story in his mind. And more than once he asked for reassurance that I was really feeling okay.

When I was finally finished with the story, he expelled a loud sigh.

“What do you think of Katya’s claim of self-defense?” he asked.

“Not much. I think Mona
did
hit her with the paperweight—Katya’s injuries support that. But maybe she shoved Mona harder than she says and
Mona
reacted in self-defense. At the very least, Katya could have just gotten out of the office and then sued Mona’s ass. But she obviously flew into a rage and walloped Mona.”

“What did she do with the paperweight, just drop it in her trash cart?”

“No, the cousin told the police where it was so she must have taken it with her, maybe in one of the pockets of her apron. She would have had to be careful at the hospital. But they generally give you some kind of plastic bag for your belongings, so she could have hidden it in there, inside her clothes.”

“It just all seems so ironic,” he said. “Mona apparently angered tons of people in the magazine world and the entertainment business—but it was the cleaning woman who killed her.”

“And I was so dumb not to have seen it.”

“You shouldn’t beat yourself up over it, Bailey. Like so many things, it’s only obvious in hindsight.”

“But it
should
have been obvious. One of the rules of police work is that you focus first on the last person to have seen a homicide victim alive. And just because she was the cleaning lady didn’t mean she couldn’t have had some issue with Mona. In the cab down here I remembered something Robby said when he was first encouraging me to go to work at
Buzz.
He said he’d once overheard Mona verbally bitch-slap the mailman. No one was really safe from her meanness.”

“But even the cops didn’t put two and two together,” Beau acknowledged.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said. “It was really like this bizarre optical illusion. Or what my friend calls an optical confusion. And it colored everything that happened
afterwards
. For instance, when Katya seemed so sullen and worried after the attack, I assumed she was afraid the killer was coming after her. But she was simply fearful of getting caught.”

“So how did this guy Ryan figure it all out?”

“He had an advantage. He saw Katya that night, more than once. Ryan knew from all the press coverage that Katya had been injured when she’d gone in to clean Mona’s office. But when he was answering my questions about Mona, it seems he suddenly remembered that he’d seen Katya in Mona’s office earlier in the evening. He wondered why she would have gone back there. Katya told me that she saw Mona return from the party and followed her back to that end of the floor. Ryan figured that out. Then he apparently called the cleaning company and found out that Mona had been making complaints about Katya.”

“And then he confronted Katya?”

“Yes. He called her and asked her to come to the floor before she started her shift. He may not have come right out and accused her, but he obviously implied as much or asked enough questions for her to realize that he was going to keep pursuing it. André had connections in the drug world that allowed him to quickly obtain the pure heroin. Sometime on Monday evening, when Ryan was out for a while, Katya managed to make the substitution with the heroin Ryan had in his desk. He came back and took it home. The police found a bag in his drawer, but that must have been an old one. It was reckless of him to store drugs at work but it seems he had a severe habit. I just wish I’d figured out what he was up to.”

“You can’t blame yourself. The guy was a fool to have baited someone he thought might be a killer.”

“I know. But I still feel awful that he’s dead.”

After I took a long sip of my wine, Beau pulled me over and laid my head in his lap. He stroked my hair softly and I lay there, quietly, attempting to focus on the smell of him—that exotic scent he wore—and not how big of a mess the night had been. After a little while I felt myself drifting off, and I just let go.

“Hey, why don’t we go to bed?” Beau said. I stirred awake, not certain of how long I’d been asleep.

“Have I stopped the blood flow to your thighs?” I muttered.

“No, but I can see you’re exhausted.”

It was clear when we crawled into bed that Beau had no expectations that we’d have sex, but I felt suddenly so needy for the release. Under the sheet I stroked his chest and let my hand find its way to between his legs. The sex was less intense than before—my body was almost too achy to move—but it was the release I craved.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of the shower shutting off, and Beau strolled out of the bathroom with a big white towel around his waist.

“You can sleep longer if you want,” he announced. “I’m in no rush this morning. I even have bagels here.”

I squinted at my watch. “No, I better get moving. I now have another huge story to write—and Nash is probably furious that I haven’t called yet.”

While I dressed, Beau fixed coffee and toasted the bagels. His kitchen had a counter and we sat on the stools to eat the breakfast. Though I knew this might not be the best time for the discussion I was about to have, I also knew I couldn’t leave without having it.

“Thanks for providing such great company last night. It would have been tough to be alone.”

“Glad you were able to reach me. I was sorry you hadn’t called earlier.”

“Speaking of earlier, I have a follow-up question from our breakfast yesterday.”

He cocked his eyebrow and eyed me expectantly.

“We talked about how awkward Wednesday night was, but I realize there’s something I need to know,” I said. “It’s not about putting any pressure on you, but I just have to know for my own sake. How serious is your relationship with that woman?”

He stretched his neck in discomfort. “Not serious,” he said. “The date that night was something we’d set up even before I took her to Dicker’s barbecue. She’d asked me to a club to see a friend of hers sing. When Dicker wanted to change the meeting with me to Wednesday, he just told me to bring her along. Frankly, I think he might have his eye on her.”

“And you wouldn’t care?” I asked. I felt like such a loser begging for details, but I had to know the truth.

“No,” he said, laughing. “In fact, I don’t have any plans to see her again.”

I smiled politely, trying not to look insanely giddy.

Beau picked up his coffee spoon and studied it. There was something on his mind. Suddenly I had a bad feeling.

“Look, Bailey,” he said quietly. “There
is
something—someone I’m sleeping with.”