Over Her Dead Body (9 page)

“Upper left side, close to the front.”

“A frontal attack like that suggests a prior relationship and a sudden burst of anger,” said Lyle. “The fact that the paperweight from her office was used to kill her means that the attack probably wasn’t premeditated. Like I told you, all you’re getting is a guess from me, but I’d say that someone stopped by and had a confrontation with her—a confrontation that got overheated and then out of hand.”

“Though
could
it have been premeditated?” I asked. “Let’s say someone was nursing a real grudge against Mona. He found out that she’d be coming back and then waited in her office for her, paperweight at the ready.”

“I’d bet not. Two blows just don’t suggest a longtime grudge or festering rage. Remember that case you asked me about a year or so ago, the one where the sixteen-year-old boy stabbed the girl next door? There were like sixty or seventy stab wounds to the body. That case involved a lot of rage. He’d loved her for years, and when he finally confessed to her, she rebuffed him. He brooded on it for days. When you stab someone sixty times, you’re more or less saying, ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’ But two blows to the head is different. It’s more spontaneous. It’s as if you’re saying, ‘How
dare
you?’”

That’s exactly what must have been running through Robby’s mind yesterday, I thought. But I couldn’t let myself draw any conclusions—yet.

When I returned to my desk, I saw that Nash’s assistant had dropped off the guest list while I was away, and I asked Jessie if she had time to review it with me.

“You bet,” she said.

“I’m not taking you from anything?” I asked.

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

“One of the conference rooms is available. Why don’t we do it back there?

I folded the guest list and stuffed it in my purse so people wouldn’t wonder what secret document I was carrying. Nonetheless, curious pairs of eyes followed us as we walked one behind the other out of the pod. People were hyped up, desperate for info, and blowing your nose was enough to pique someone’s curiosity today.

We slipped into the small conference room and sat side by side at the table.

“Here, let me take a look,” Jessie said, reaching for the list before I had it halfway out of my bag. I liked Jessie, but there were two things I needed to keep in mind about her: One, I didn’t know yet if I could totally trust her; and two, she was a reporter for
Buzz,
as eager for dirt as anyone else on the staff. I needed to be cautious about how much I shared.

Something must have flickered on my face because she yanked her hand away without taking the folded sheaf of paper.

“Sorry to be so grabby,” she said. “I’m just worked up about this whole thing.”

“Understood,” I said. “I just have to be sure I keep all of this hush-hush. I don’t want anyone getting even a hint of the information I have.”

“Point taken.”

“First tell me more about the party last night. Give me the lay of the land.”

“Well, it was pretty mobbed by the time I left at around eight or so. The point was to celebrate Eva’s August cover of
Track
—and the release of her new CD. Their space is a little different from ours over there, and they’ve got this big open area they use for parties. People schmoozed, mingled, nothing too exciting. The
Track
people tend to look down at us, but they’re required to invite us since we’re in the same company.”

I unfolded the paper and flattened it with my hand. There was an orange Post-it note that read, “Nash, here’s a list of everyone who checked in at the table in the reception area. This is the list we put together for the NYPD.” It was signed “Max.” He was the editor of
Track.

I peeled off the Post-it and gazed down at the long line of names. There were over a hundred.

“I suppose you recognize plenty of these names, right?” I said to Jessie, passing the list to her.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of the usual suspects,” she said, letting her eyes fall down the page. “
Track
staff, record label people, music trade press. Eva, of course, and her husband. Her publicist, Kiki Bodden. Her hair and makeup people.”

I took the list back from her and glanced down at it. “You, Hilary, Mona, Nash, and Ryan. Are these the only people from
Buzz
you saw?” I was wondering if someone from
Buzz
who wasn’t invited had slipped in the back door, perhaps after a fateful confrontation with Mona.

“Uh-huh. That’s it—at least while I was there.”

“Question,” I said. “I can see why Hilary would go to the party—to pick up gossip. But why would Ryan go? And Nash? And Robby mentioned to me the other day that he’d been invited. Why would that be?”

I hoped I’d said it casually enough so she wouldn’t suspect I knew anything about Robby’s whereabouts last night.

“Well, Nash likes to schmooze and scope out the chicks, so that would explain his presence. Ryan’s always looking for leads, so he would have gone to check out the celebrities, mingle. Robby must have had his reasons. He probably got wind of some reality TV star who’d RSVP’d or maybe he just felt like he wanted some free drinks and finagled an invitation.”

She turned back to the list and ran her long tan finger down the ladder of names.

“Oh, okay, this might explain Robby’s invitation,” she said. “Kimberly Chance was there. I didn’t see her.”

“
Kimberly Chance!
” I exclaimed. “The same day she got arrested?”

“Well, you know how those stars are. After they fuck up in some major way, they like to get their image rebuilding started immediately. She’s on the same record label as Eva, so she probably ended up on the guest list that way. My guess is that Robby knew that she was going to be there, and since he covers reality TV, he asked for an invite. Mona was always hungry for stuff on Kimberly.”

“Your white underbelly theory.”

“Yeah. Actually, Kimberly would make an awfully nice suspect,” Jessie said.

I’d just been thinking the exact same thing.

“Because of all the nasty items?” I asked.

“Yes, but there’s more to it than that. One thing I didn’t mention to you yesterday morning—I mean, it didn’t seem relevant to the story you were doing on her arrest—is that the Fat Chance nickname ended up costing Kimberly a beauty contract.”

“Now
that’s
a reason to be pissed.”

“Don’t get me wrong. Kimberly was never going to be the face of Giorgio Armani or anything like that. It was for some small company, apparently, but it did mean more money and more time in the public eye. Once every DJ and comic and gossip columnist started using the Fat Chance name, too, the company withdrew the offer. At this point she’d be lucky to sign with Jenny Craig.”

“And you heard she blamed Mona for the loss?”

“Yup. A few weeks ago, Kimberly approached Mona at an event and called her the devil. I’m sure this is on the police radar by now. Enough people were aware of it.”

“You should say something to them, though, regardless.”

She cocked her head. “If you think I should, okay,” she said. “Speaking of suspects, what about
Robby
? I just heard that he came up here last night.”

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“It’s all over. Hey, you know what? I bet he used his party invite to get onto the floor.”

I shrugged, again trying to seem nonchalant, ignorant of any info or opinions in this area.

“Do you think Robby did it?” she asked.

“I can’t imagine that,” I said, shaking my head. But Jessie was smart enough to realize that I’d already considered the possibility.

“Tell me about Hilary,” I said, changing the subject. “I’m going to interview her at three and I’d like to get your take on her.”

Jessie rested her head on her hand, squinting with her caramel-colored eyes as she thought.

“I’ll be perfectly blunt. Hilary is a little bitch who’d run over her grandmother in a Hummer if she thought she’d learn some salacious tidbit about a star.”

“So why don’t you tell me how you
really
feel about her,” I said, smiling.

“Look, I have to give her credit. She’s gutsy as hell. Remember when Paris Hilton shot the homemade porn film? Well, Dennis—the guy who runs the L.A. office—told her to just
get
the story. So she flew to Hong Kong, where Paris was hiding out, but she couldn’t get within a mile of her hotel room. Then she heard that Paris was coming back, so Hilary called the office and said she absolutely had to have a first-class ticket back to New York so she’d have a shot at Paris. It cost eight fucking thousand dollars, but they gave it to her anyway and she managed to trick Paris into talking to her on the plane.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Oh, and get this. When Julia Roberts was on bed rest in the hospital—right before she had her twins—Hilary flew to L.A. and apparently tried to pass herself off as a candy striper.”

“So what makes her a bitch?”

“It’s the way she does it. It’s one thing to scoop the competition, but she’ll try to undermine people on
our
staff. The worst thing is she talked Mona into letting ‘Juice Bar’ start running anonymous items. You know, ‘Which TV actress is really a cocaine-snorting dominatrix?’ sort of thing. That means we all had to start playing that game, and it lands you in some pretty disgusting territory. That’s part of the reason I wanted out of that section.”

“Can I at least count on her to cooperate with me?”

“Since Nash has given you the assignment, she’ll probably behave. Unless she has some personal agenda we’re not aware of. Her number one priority is always Hilary.”

She snickered, then continued, “She’s this real southern debutante type and she may act snooty toward you—but I’ll tell you something that will keep you from letting it get to you.”

“What’s that?”

“I know a guy who hooked up with her, and he said she was this totally bossy bitch in the sack. She kept making comments to him like ‘Buddy, it’s going to take a little more effort than that.’ The poor guy told me it was like going to bed with the navigational system in a car. And then about a month later he ran into someone who went to college with her and found out that her nickname there was the Cock Nazi.”

“Gee, what a lovely image to carry around in one’s mind,” I said. “One last question. Mona’s husband. What’s the deal there, do you know?”

“I guess they got along. He’s a playwright, but the kind no one’s ever heard of. His plays are all spoofs of Shakespearean plays, apparently, and they’re produced in those little forty-seat black box theaters around New York. He was totally dependent on Mona.”

Worth investigating, of course. He could have easily slipped back to Mona’s office.

“Thanks for all your help. I think I’m going to stroll over to
Track.
I’ll catch up with you later.”

I’d been introduced to the editor of
Track
by Nash one day in the lobby as our paths had intersected. He was a short, slightly geeky guy with glasses who was only thirty-two and looked eleven. I assumed he was the kind of guy who’d never had a date in high school but had owned four thousand CDs.

I made my way back to the door I’d discovered earlier, and after opening it, I slipped along the maze of corridors. It
was
a different setup over there—with the open area where the party must have been, but no bullpen section of desks. Finally, I had to ask someone where Max’s office was. As I approached it, I spotted him standing outside at his assistant’s desk, looking as if he were proofreading or checking out something over her shoulder. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Excuse me, Max, I’m Bailey Weggins,” I said, interrupting. “Nash introduced us a couple of weeks ago.”

“Uh . . . right,” he said, slightly flustered by the ambush. “What’s up?”

I explained that I was covering the story of Mona’s death for
Buzz
and I wanted to review the party with him. He ushered me into his office.

“The police just left,” he said. “It’s been crazy here.”

“At our place, too. Can you tell me about the party? I hear Mona wasn’t here for very long.”

“That’s right. She shot in here halfway through—I’d say around seven-fifteen, maybe a little later—and probably didn’t stay longer than a half hour.” His voice was on the high side, and you could tell he made a conscious effort to speak in a lower range.

“Did you see anyone with her when she left?” I asked.

“I didn’t see her leave. Like I explained to the cops, I was busy doing diva duty with Eva. But Travis, one of our columnists, says he saw her head toward the back door close to seven forty-five. She was alone at the time.”

“Anything happen at the party that seemed significant?”

“Well, there was one incident, and I’m sure the cops are already checking this out. Eva’s publicist, this woman named Kiki Bodden, walked over to Mona when she was standing all by her lonesome and tore into her.”

“Really?” I exclaimed. This was big, something Jessie apparently hadn’t witnessed. I wondered if Kiki was the woman I’d seen trying to coax Brandon into staying last night. “Is Kiki fortyish with long curly blond hair?”

“Yup—and a real ball buster,” he said. “Mona apparently went a little green around the gills, and then Kiki headed off for the bar. That was the thing about Mona. I’ve always heard that she could dish it out but she wasn’t very good at taking it.”

“So what was the spat about?”

“I don’t have a clue. From what I’ve been able to determine, nobody was close enough to overhear the spat. But aren’t you barking up the wrong tree? I was told someone on your staff got fired yesterday and threatened Mona. He sounds like a pretty logical suspect.”

“Well, I have to look at every possibility. Kimberly Chance was at the party. Did you see much of her?”

“I spotted her once, early on, but that’s it. I don’t have much interest in someone who does covers of old Barry Manilow songs, so no, I never said more than hello to her. Didn’t she get arrested yesterday?”

“Yeah, for slugging a cop.”

He glanced at his watch without trying to disguise the fact.