Over Her Dead Body (35 page)

“Jesus,” he said, practically spitting the word. “Does Nash know about this?” Again, it was hard to assess his response. He seemed completely agitated about the news, but it could have been because he was just learning that his carefully planned accident wasn’t coming across as an accident.

“Uh, not yet. I haven’t had a chance to tell him. I really just learned all this moments ago.”

“This is a major problem, presswise,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re gonna have to excuse me while I call our PR person.”

Her assistant must have been the one who picked up, because he told the person on the other end to “find Linda and find her fast.” While Dicker waited, he took several swigs of his drink and swiveled his chair so that he could scan the room. Behind me, I could hear the two geezers gabbing. They were talking about the old Pan Am Clipper Club and how much they missed it.

“Track her down, then, and have her find me,” Dicker said finally. “I need to talk to her—
now.
” As he shut his phone, I saw his eye catch something of interest out in the room and he nodded in recognition. The person he was meeting had clearly arrived. Instinctively, I turned my head.

To my complete shock and dismay, Beau Regan was strolling toward us. And by his side was the stick chick who’d been with him at Dicker’s party.

Okay, I didn’t dry heave, but I came really, really close. My brain flashed back on Beau telling me that he planned to see Dicker again during the week, but when Dicker threw out his invitation, it never crossed my mind that he was meeting Beau tonight. And what was
she
doing with him? How could he stand to be in her company after he’d been with me?

My only consolation was that Beau looked as horrified as I did.

“Let me see now,” Dicker said. “It’s Weggins, right? Binky Weggins?”

“Bailey,” I said, barely remembering myself.

“This is Beau Regan—and Jade, right?”

“That’s right,” she said. Of course, no guy would have a hard time remembering
that
—especially when connected with a girl who looked like she did. Up close, I could see that her eyes were actually jade colored. She was wearing a white suit with a pink bustier underneath, and she had one of those white Louis Vuitton bags with the colored letters, the kind that cost more than my Jeep. As she shook my hand, she let her eyes run up and down my outfit—my khaki-colored shirt and black pants. I had the feeling she didn’t think it was very special.

“Hello, Bailey,” Beau said soberly. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“You two know each other?” Dicker asked at the same moment that Jade jerked her head in Beau’s direction. She hadn’t recognized me up until this moment, but maybe now she was recalling him chatting with me at the barbecue.

“More or less. I’m surprised to see you here, too,” I said, addressing Beau. It had suddenly dawned on me that Beau might have thought I knew Dicker was meeting with him tonight and had found a way to tag along.

“We had a little business to discuss,” Dicker told him.

“And if that’s all, I’ll be on my way,” I said, looking straight at Dicker.

“Yeah, but I want you to call me if you hear anything else.” He tugged a silver pen out of the inside pocket of his jacket and scrawled a number on the cocktail napkin that had been under his drink. The napkin was damp and the numbers blurred around the edges as soon as he wrote them down. “That’s my cell number. Call me anytime—day or night.”

“Sure,” I said, sliding off my leather bar stool. “Have a nice night.” That comment would have to work for the group, since I certainly wasn’t going to bother with individual farewells. As I walked past the table of lady shoppers, they too eyed my outfit with disapproval, as if I looked dressed to begin a shift at Hooters. I hadn’t felt like this much of a loser since my freshman year in high school.

I nearly flew through the lobby, anxious to be anywhere but within a mile radius of Beau Regan and the St. Regis Hotel. I saw Dicker’s car outside, the driver paging through a
New York Post
with the window down, but I’d never confirmed with Dicker that I could take the car, and it seemed best to just skip that idea. I spent ten futile minutes looking for a cab and then trudged to 53rd and Fifth Avenue to pick up the E train.

There were so many different emotions churning around inside me that it was hard to know which to light on. I was furious with Beau for how humiliated he’d made me feel in the bar. And I couldn’t stop obsessing about how he could be with another woman within the same twenty-four hours that he’d been fucking my brains out. In fact, how could he be with such a snooty chick to begin with? He’d been dismissive of her the other day at Dicker’s. Had he just been bullshitting me? Of course he must be sleeping with her. As I’d discovered, the guy made his move before the first date even got off the ground.

Then there was Dicker. If only I’d been granted a few extra minutes alone with him, I might have been able to develop more of a sense of what was going on with him. He seemed fairly freaked about the Ryan news, but I hadn’t been able to tell why.

Rather than let myself into my apartment, I banged several times on Landon’s door. I was about to give up when I heard him plodding through his foyer. When he opened the door I saw that he was shirtless, wearing what appeared to be bathing trunks.

“Going for a dip?” I asked.

“No, I was enjoying the late afternoon sun on the terrace and I must have dozed off. I’m so glad you knocked. I was probably snoring so loudly they could hear it on Fifth Avenue.”

“Can I ask your advice?”

“Of course. Is everything okay?”

“Not really, no. In fact, everything is going to hell.”

“Well, well, come in. Sit. Just let me take off my trunks. There’s no reason in the world you should have to look at these legs.”

While he disappeared into his bedroom, I fidgeted in one of his pale gray armchairs. I couldn’t sit still. I felt, in fact, as if I were ready to jump out of my skin.

“Okay, now talk to me,” Landon said, returning in a pair of khaki pants and a blue cotton boatneck sweater.

I started by spilling the news of Ryan’s death.

“Good God,” he exclaimed. “If things keep moving at this pace, they’ll have to change the name of the magazine from
Buzz
to
Buzz Kill
. I refuse to allow you to work there one more second.”

“I don’t think I’m in any imminent danger at the moment. Because I don’t
know
anything. You see, Ryan must not only have learned who the killer is—which makes me feel like a total loser, by the way—but the killer clearly figured out that he knew. Ryan may have even
confronted
the killer. As long as I’m in the dark, I’m okay. But it also means that if I want to stay safe, I can’t pursue my story.”

“Why don’t you just switch gears for a few weeks? Won’t they let you write gossipy stuff—like ‘Is Barbra Streisand’s Marriage on the Rocks?’”

“Most of our readers are twenty-four and could care less about Barbra Streisand.”

“Seriously, Bailey, you’re not going to keep working on this, are you?”

“Even if I wanted to, I’m nearly stalled. I’ve spoken to most of the people on staff, and I honestly don’t know what else to do. My only hope is that I hear from Katya or manage to locate friends of Ryan’s. But if you
must
know, I do feel extremely anxious about this, and I promise not to do anything stupid.”

“How about joining me for dinner? I’m eating with a friend at a restaurant on Jane Street. He could help me talk some sense into you.”

“I’d love to, but I don’t know if I have the psychic energy. I’ll find something at home.”

“This is really getting to you?”

“It’s not just that.” I told him all about Beau and about what had happened tonight at the St. Regis.

“Okay, which role do you want me to play? Bailey’s friend or devil’s advocate?”

“Devil’s advocate, of course,” I said.

“Let this guy off the hook, then. He had no idea that you would be there, so therefore he did nothing wrong.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded, “but it doesn’t make it sting any less. It reminds me of the night last year when I spotted that investment banker I was seeing—you know, K.C.—going into a restaurant with another woman. But you know what’s really stuck in my craw? The fact that it was
her
—Miss Louis Vuitton. She looks like some shallow, vain fashionista who’s had a credit card since she was in the fifth grade. I bet that the only thought that’s passed through her brain this week is whether she’s overdue for an eyebrow wax.”

“So you’d be less indignant if he were dating Madeleine Albright?”

“Absolutely. It’s a matter of respect.”

“So what you’re saying is that you don’t mind him dating other people, it’s just his choice.”

“Right . . . well, I guess. I don’t know, exactly.”

“Bailey, I’ve got very bad news for you. I think you may be smitten with this guy.”

“Smitten is too strong a word.”

“Then what word
would
you use?”

“I just really like the guy.”

“And that’s not what you were hoping for this summer,” he pointed out. “You wanted a fling.”

“Those two things aren’t diametrically opposed. I wanted a fling with someone fun and smart and sexy—and so it stands to reason that I would
like
him. I guess you’re right, though. What I’m feeling is that, no, I
don’t
want to share him with another chick, even if it’s Madeleine Albright. He’s fling enough for me, and it’s insulting that I’m not fling enough for him.”

“But you don’t know all the circumstances about tonight,” Landon said, rising from his chair. I could tell he was searching for a polite way to hurry me along so he wouldn’t be late for his dinner. “Maybe there’s a reason he had to bring her. What I’m trying to say is give the guy at least one more chance.”

“If he gives
me
another chance,” I said. “I have this very bad feeling he thinks I knew he’d be there tonight—and that I came along on purpose. . . . Well, I guess I have to wait and see how it all plays out. As you always say, there are lots of fish in the sea. I just have to find one without a fanny pack.”

I had tried to end on an upbeat, chipper note, so that I didn’t cast a pall over Landon’s evening or leave him with the sense that being my friend was always going to entail seeing me through an endless series of dating debacles and helping me pick through the shards afterward. But to be honest, I felt like shit when I let myself back into my apartment—and vaguely fearful, too, because now I was finally alone.

And it didn’t get any better when I discovered that Beau had called my home phone at around four in the afternoon. There was no word about his thighs being scorched, but he did say he’d enjoyed our evening and would love to get together Friday night if I was in town. He asked that I give him a call. I wasn’t sure why he’d called me here at home rather than my cell, but at least now I knew that he’d wanted to see me again.

But did that really change anything? I was still bugged by the fact that he had been out with that vapid-looking fashionista. I wanted to call him back, but I immediately thought better of it. I needed more time to figure out the best way to try to salvage the situation. Right now, less seemed like more.

Since I’d been in too much of a funk to stop at the deli, I was forced to make a dish I resort to when my cupboards are nearly bare: “pasta with practically no ingredients.” It’s just fusilli mixed with sautéed garlic, oil, Parmesan cheese, and a little bit of dried chili pepper. Hardly fine dining, especially if you have to resort to the Parmesan you buy in the green cardboard shaker, but if you consume it with a couple of glasses of red wine, which I did, you can convince yourself that it’s perfectly sublime.

While I ate, I forced Beau from my mind and read through every single note in my composition book and all the interviews I’d taken in several reporters’ notebooks. There were no epiphanies. As far as the case went, I was stuck, totally stuck. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t be able to gain any more access to Kiki, Brandon, or Kimberly. Tomorrow I’d continue to try to track down some of Ryan’s friends and mosey into Nash’s office for a “casual” talk. But my only real hope was that Katya would change her mind and tell me what secret she was harboring.

I realized with a start that I had never filled Nash in on what I’d learned from the medical investigator. I’d steered clear of him ever since Hilary’s revelation—or lie. But I’d told Dicker. I knew I’d better inform Nash. Knowing he’d probably left work—it was after ten—I called his office number and left the news for him on his voice mail.

I’d barely set the phone down when it rang. Be Beau, I thought. Be Beau begging for mercy. But it was Jessie. As soon as I heard her voice, I knew something was up.

“Tell me,” I said.

“New development. After I talked to you and you said Hilary didn’t register any guilt, I went back to the person who’d seen her sopping wet near the clubhouse. I asked for more specifics—you know, ‘Could she have been leaving the clubhouse?’ and that sort of thing. The answer was very weird.”

“What?”

“She said that no, Hilary did
not
come out of the clubhouse. But the waiter did.”

“The waiter? Which waiter?”

“She couldn’t remember much about him. Just that he was tall, kind of skinny. And that she saw him coming out of the clubhouse just around the time the rain started. Oh, and he had a shaved head. Does that mean anything to you?”

My breath quickened and my mind raced. Tall and skinny fit the description of the guy who had followed me in Brighton Beach. I thought back on the waitstaff at the barbecue. I’d seen a tall, skinny bald waiter in the kitchen.

“Maybe,” I said. “I mean, I remember someone like that at the party. But I don’t know him. Someone may have paid him to come after me.”

I thanked her for her help and signed off. My stomach was churning. Ever since last Friday, I’d factored in the idea that the killer may have paid someone to stalk me, but now there was evidence that it might be true. It seemed to make everything even scarier. Someone was after me, but I didn’t know who he was or whom he was working for. Tomorrow I’d try to learn what I could from the catering company. But I realized that there was a problem with that tactic. I’d have to ask Nash or Dicker’s office for the number, and if either one was involved, he might discern I was on to him.