Lethally Blond (10 page)

After plucking two eggs from my fridge, I scrambled them, made more coffee, and took my breakfast out to the terrace, along with a number two pencil and a black-and-white composition book. Whenever I’m working on a big reporting story, especially one with riddles and plenty of unanswered questions, I find it enormously helpful to jot down my musings in an old-fashioned composition book.

I spent the first few minutes creating a timeline of Tom’s story and then fleshing it out with details I’d uncovered—about what Tom had been up to as well as the various players in his life. Then I started jotting down questions, beginning with the big fat obvious ones: Who had killed Tom—and why? Was it someone from Andes? Beverly had said it had been years since Tom had spent much time in the town, so the chances of anyone up there holding a grudge seemed next to nil. What about a stranger, though—someone who had showed up at the house thinking it was empty, only to discover Tom painting the bathroom. Would a burglar set a body on fire? It seemed unlikely.

Though the murder had taken place in Andes, it seemed far more logical to focus on Tom’s circle of acquaintances in New York City—particularly people involved in the production of
Morgue.
There was the Nordic warrior and possibly abusive Alex Ottoson. Had Alex learned about Locket’s fling with Tom and sought vengeance? He’d been snappish toward Tom during a recent taping, so he might have suspected the truth. But he would have had to know that Tom was traveling to Andes on Saturday, and if even Chris hadn’t known, how would Alex have gotten wind of the plans?

And then there was the lusty-lipped Locket to consider. She’d been having a fling—or had
had
one—with a guy who was sleeping with someone else involved in the show. Certainly women
did
kill men in jealous rages, but how annoyed could Locket possibly have been over Tom’s relationship with Harper? After all, she had Alex guaranteeing her fame and fortune. That was called having your cake and eating it, too. Plus, if Locket had minded Harper, and had verbalized that fact to Tom, it would have opened the door for Tom minding Locket’s relationship with
Alex
. And there could be no way in the universe Locket would back out of
that
. She knew that without Alex’s help, all the collagen and Botox in the world probably wouldn’t catapult her into prime time.

Of course, she could be such a big diva that she wanted Tom to have the hots for her and her alone, despite her relationship with Alex. And that raised another point: What if Tom had fallen for Locket and had threatened to reveal his affair with her if she didn’t dump Alex? Oh dear—Locket wouldn’t have liked that at all.

Alex and Locket weren’t the only people of interest. I had no good reason to suspect Deke, but I didn’t like him. My encounter at the bar with him had seeped back into my consciousness, and the overwhelming sensation was of the nasty vibe he’d given off. And he hadn’t seemed at all keen on discussing Tom. I tried to dredge up other elements of my brief conversation with him. I had mentioned the trip to Atlantic City, and he’d volunteered that Tom had brought an actress along—very possibly Blythe. Harper had learned about it, Deke said, and hadn’t been happy. If I could reach Blythe, I might be able to discover more about that road trip.

Thinking of Harper nudged something else loose from my memory: what Amy had said about Harper returning to New York on Saturday, not Sunday. Of course, she was now supposedly in deep despair about Tom’s death, desperate for Chris’s shoulder to cry on, but that didn’t necessarily undermine her likelihood as a suspect. In my days as a newspaper reporter, I had covered a case in which the most grief-stricken person on the scene was the killer. She had murdered her boyfriend because he’d been cheating, but she was still desperately in love with him and overwhelmed with a sense of loss.

All four people on my list of possible suspects had been at the pub last night. Any one of them could have slipped the drug in my drink after I’d followed Harper into the bathroom, including Harper herself, who’d departed before me. It seemed that whoever had done it must also be the killer. But why target
me
? Harper knew I was snooping around about Tom. Deke had called me a little Miss Marple. It seemed likely that whoever was harassing me believed I was playing detective.

But unless I wanted to assume the role of sitting duck, I was going to have to continue to play a little Miss Marple. At four p.m. I would be meeting Mr. Barish, which might provide more insight into Tom and his life. And at the book party at Elaine’s, there would be more opportunity to study Locket. In the meantime, there were a few other things I could do.

The first was to try to piece together the missing hours of my life last night. At eleven I called the pub, figuring that they probably served lunch and there would be staff on the premises. I knew it wouldn’t be wise to go on the offensive, proclaiming that I had been drugged. As a beat reporter, I’d learned that restaurant and bar people have a tendency to clam up and close ranks when they think you’ve got a gripe. I would have to try a different tack.

“You know the bartender with the red hair who was on last night?” I said after a youngish-sounding girl answered the phone. “He wanted me to get him a phone number?” I lied. “Can I leave him a message?”

“You mean Rusty?” she asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“Red hair? Kind of big?”

“Yeah, that sounds like Rusty.”

“Would you mind taking down a message for him?”

I was pretty sure that she
would
mind.

“He’ll be in at one today. Do you just want to call him back then?”

“Sure.” But I wasn’t going to call him. It would be smarter to just show up, let him see what I looked like, and watch his face and body language as he spoke to me. I checked my watch and decided I would set out for there shortly.

Next, a call to Harper. Again, I was going to have to proceed carefully and not box her into a corner about her travel plans the weekend Tom had gone to Andes. After all, she hadn’t actually lied to me but had simply led me to believe she’d been in L.A. for the entire weekend. One strategy would be to cover that ground again with her, ask more specific questions, and see if she came right out and lied to me. If she did,
then
I would challenge her.

She answered her cell phone groggily, as if she were lying in twisted sheets, and I suddenly had this horrible image of Chris stretched out buck naked beside her. Had his grief counseling involved a long, sensuous shag, like what he’d offered me in my hour of need? Was that why he’d never called me last night and come back for me?

“Hi, Harper, it’s Bailey Weggins,” I said. My voice sounded unnaturally high, and I wondered if she could sense the rush of anxiety I’d just experienced. “How are you feeling today?”

“Just great,” she answered sarcastically. “Can you call me back later? I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m really trying to rest right now.”

“Okay,” I said. “In fact, would it be possible for us to get together at some point today?”

“What for?”

“I just wanted to talk about everything’s that happened.”

She sighed loudly. “I don’t really care to talk about it—it just makes it worse.”

“I understand. It’s just that there are some details about Tom that I wanted to share with you.” It was a cheap ploy, but I refused to allow her to dodge me. I could tell by the pause that it had worked.

“It will have to be tomorrow,” she said finally. “There’s a book party for Locket tonight and I’m coordinating it.”

“The one at Elaine’s.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I’m actually going,” I said. “A friend from work asked me to tag along.” I wasn’t going to give away that I’d hunted down an invite—from this point on it might be better not to reveal the extent of my snoopiness. “Why don’t I look for you there.”

“I’m not going to have any time to chitchat,” she said almost sullenly. “What exactly do you mean by ‘details about Tom’? You make it sound as if there were something bad going on with him.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that. Why don’t I let you get back to bed and I’ll see you later.”

Harper might not be receptive to chitchat at the party tonight, but I would try to pull her aside for a minute. Tonight would also be a chance to really see Locket and Alex in action. But how was I going to learn more about Deke? Chris might be able to assist me on that one. Just thinking about him caused a pang. I had no idea what I wanted from him or exactly how I felt about him after our randy romp, but I hated how shabbily he’d treated me last night. At some point I was going to have to get in touch because I was dependent on his help in the case, but I felt awkward about phoning him right at the moment.

I nearly lurched to the shower and let the hottest water possible cascade over me. It seemed to wash away some of that slimy feeling that still clung to me from last night. While I toweled off afterward, a long-shot idea popped in my head. Maybe Blythe had phoned home again. She could provide info about the trip to Atlantic City—if she had, as I suspected, been the one with Tom. I decided to call Terry. At the very least, it seemed I should inform her about Tom’s murder, which would give her extra incentive to have Blythe call me if she heard from her.

She answered the landline on the third ring, her voice sounding as irritated as when I’d talked to her in the vestibule. I started by breaking the news about Tom.

“Omigod,” she said. I had the feeling that the excitement was going to make her weekend. “Blythe is going to die when she hears this.”

“You haven’t heard from her since I talked to you, have you?”

“No. God, I can’t believe it. Do they know who did it?”

“Not that I’m aware of. But as you can see, it’s important to have Blythe call me. I need to talk to her.” I gave her my cell, home, and work numbers because I imagined the business card I’d handed her the other day had long since been tossed in the trash.

“If I hear from her, sure. What are they going to do about the show he’s in?”

“I don’t really know. Did Blythe ever mention going to Atlantic City with Tom?”

“Atlantic City? Yeah, she went with him—back in July, I think. She bought this little black dress that she thought would look like something a James Bond girl would wear at the craps tables in Monte Carlo, but when she came back she said that all the other women were in track suits with fanny packs.”

“There was another person on the trip, wasn’t there? A guy named Deke?”

“I don’t remember his name, but yeah, there was another guy. And he ruined the whole thing.”

I caught my breath.

“How?” I demanded.

“He borrowed a huge amount of money from Tom. And then he wouldn’t pay it back.”

CHAPTER 9

H
ow much money—do you know?” I asked her.

“Oh, it was a lot—like a couple thousand. They were at the blackjack table or the roulette table or whatever, and this guy—like I said, I don’t remember his name—asked for a loan. He said he was on a streak and didn’t want to lose it by having to go to an ATM. And then later he could only come up with, like, two hundred dollars. Tom and this guy had a big argument, and Tom and Blythe drove back early. The only reason I know about it is because Blythe was so pissed off that this guy ruined the weekend for her.”

“Did Tom ever get the money back?”

“How would I know? Do you think that’s the killer—the guy who borrowed the money?”

I told her I didn’t know, but as I hung up I knew damn well that I now had a possible motive for Deke. If he had never repaid the loan, Tom might have been pressuring him to do so, possibly even making threats about taking the matter to a higher-up on the show. I was going to have to find out more.

For now I concentrated on the best way to extract info about my whereabouts last night. Because I wanted to convince the bartender Rusty that I wasn’t a nutcase and troublemaker—and I would probably go directly from the pub to my meeting with Mr. Barish—I chose a blue-and-green Diane von Fürstenberg dress that I usually reserved for brunches at my mother’s that involved shrimp salad and flan. As I reached for a jacket in my closet, I realized that my jeans jacket had never made it home with me last night.

As soon as the cab let me off in front of the Half King, I felt the muscles in my stomach tighten. I couldn’t recall anything that had happened to me at the pub after around nine-thirty or ten, yet the sight of it made my tummy hurt.

Lunchtime was almost over, but there were still customers loafing at the tables outside, their elbows propped among empty bottles of Pinot Grigio and Saratoga water, their faces tilted to the sun. Once inside, I needed a minute for my eyes to adjust. There weren’t many diners inside the pub—just one or two in the front room and, from what I could see, a few at the tables in the back garden. I scanned the bar area. A girl was working back there, a quizzical expression on her face as she surveyed a tab. No Rusty in sight. But just as I was about to inquire at the bar, he came around the corner, hoisting a case of Guinness on his shoulder. I shot a smile in his direction, hoping to start off on the right foot.

“You’re Rusty, right?” I asked, stepping forward. He looked about ten years older in the half-light of day.

“Yup, what can I do for you?” he said, setting the case on the pockmarked wooden bar. It was not far from the spot where I’d sat the night before. As he looked up, I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. He knew he’d seen me before.

“I was here last night with a bunch of people from that new show
Morgue
,” I explained, figuring that mentioning the show would give me cred. “We were sitting in the other room, but then later I came out here with a few people and had a beer at the bar.”

“Okaaay?” he said, dragging out the word in mock expectation of some kind of punch line from me. He didn’t seem in the mood to gab.

“Something happened last night, and I could use your help. I promise it will only take a minute.”

“Hey, if there’s a problem, you really need to see the manager,” he said. “He’ll be in at three.”

“I’d prefer to talk to you. I promise it will only take a minute.”

A Hispanic busboy had emerged from the kitchen and began dragging a broom along the floor. Rusty glanced in his direction and back and then raised a large, freckled hand.

“So shoot.”

“Do you remember me?” I asked. “I was down at this end of the bar, drinking a draft beer.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Someone put a drug in my drink, and I just want to know if you noticed anyone around who could have done it.”

“Yeah, well, that really
is
something you should be talking to the manager about.”

“I don’t want to make any trouble. And there’s no way the police could do anything, anyway. I think the person who did it might be someone I know, and I figured if you had worthwhile information, I could at least be on my guard with that person.”

He sighed, flipped up a section of the bar that was on a hinge, and slid behind it. Effortlessly, he began sliding beer out of the case as if his arms were on pulleys and then dropped the bottles into a cooler under the bar.

“You were by yourself, right? But you talked to a couple of dudes at one point.”

“Right. Could one of them have done it, do you think?”

“Don’t know. It was pretty crazy here last night. What I do know is that you did seem kind of snockered all of a sudden.”

“Did I say anything to you? Did I talk to anyone else?”

“Nothing to me. There were a bunch of girls nearby, trolling for guys, but I never saw you interact with them. You did talk to that black chick—after you made a trip to the head. By the way, you’d left your purse on the bar.”

“But I talked to her over by the garden door,” I said, lifting my chin in that direction.

“The one I’m talking about came right up to you by the bar—like I said, after you staggered back from the bathroom. Your hair was all wet around the edges then, like you’d dunked your face in the sink.”

It must have been Amy. Perhaps something about my behavior had concerned her, and she had come up to see what was the matter. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up a memory,
anything
. I recalled the sensation of water splashed on my face, but it may have been due solely to Rusty the bartender planting the seed.

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“You split, I guess. The next time I looked, there was someone else sitting on your stool. And no, you didn’t leave a tip.”

“Do you have any clue what time it—?”

My cell phone rang at that moment, and when I flipped it open I saw to my surprise that it was Chris. I asked Rusty to excuse me so I could take the call. He shrugged a shoulder as if he could have cared less what I did.

“Hey,” I said, stepping away from the bar. Now that Chris had finally called, I wasn’t exactly sure how to play it.

“Everything okay?” he asked, concern in his voice. Odd question from a guy who had ditched me at a bar the night before.

“Actually, no,” I said. “Someone spiked my beer with a date-rape drug last night.”

“
What?
Are you okay? Did—did anything happen to you?”

“Nothing bad happened from what I can tell. But there are still a lot of loose ends I’m trying to piece together. I’m at the Half King right now trying to get answers.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“
Call
you? You were supposed to come back for me. And then I never even heard from you.”

“But you told me
not
to come back,” he exclaimed.

“
What?
When we talked right before you left, you said you’d be back in fifteen minutes.”

“But I got a text message from you when I was in the cab with Harper. It said you were splitting and not to come back. After dropping Harper off, I headed home.”

My body went warm and liquidy, as if I’d been deboned.

“Read it to me, will you?” I demanded. “I need to know exactly what it says.” I didn’t use the option on my BlackBerry that saved text messages so I was going to have to take Chris’s word for it.

“‘Decided to leave, need sleep. Call you tomorrow.’”

I had no recollection of having sent it, which of course meant nothing because I couldn’t remember anything past around nine-thirty or so. Yet I didn’t think I
had
sent it. First, it didn’t sound like me; and second, why would I have texted Chris instead of just calling him?

“I don’t think I sent it. Someone may have gone in my purse. They could have overheard me talking to you and then would have seen yours was the last number on my log.”

“God, I should have realized something was off. Who could have done it—some guy who was after you?”

I told him that I had to get back to my conversation with the bartender, but I would fill him in later.

“Tonight?” he asked.

“I’m going to Locket’s book party. I want to see if I can engage her in a conversation about something other than the absurdity of my name.”

“I wasn’t planning on going, but since you’re going to be there, I think I’ll drop by—if that’s okay with you. Maybe we could grab dinner after.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m really relieved. I didn’t understand why you hadn’t gotten in touch.”

“I never would have just left you there, Bailey. I feel terrible about what happened.”

After signing off, I sauntered back over to the bar, where Rusty was wiping his hands on his tight gray T-shirt. He looked pleased as punch that I had returned for another round of Q&A.

“Just one more question,” I reassured him. “Any idea what time I disappeared for good?”

“Nope, sorry. My best guess is that it was sometime around ten.”

Amy might know, I thought. More than likely she would be at Elaine’s tonight, and I’d be able to quiz her.

“Thanks for your help,” I said, guessing from Rusty’s expression that I’d used up his patience and it was time to leave.

“You know . . . ?” he said as I turned to go.

“What?” I asked, spinning around.

“Never mind.”

“No, please tell me.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just get a little sauced? Sometimes girls get crazy thinking they were slipped a roofie when the truth is they were just pounding back one too many.”

“Thanks for the insight,” I said sarcastically, and hurried outside.

For the next hour, I combed the streets of Chelsea, starting with 22nd Street. In daylight, the street couldn’t have been more charming. The block was lined with old brick buildings, and leafy plane trees ran along the outside of the sidewalk. Not far from Tenth Avenue, I was pretty certain I found the stoop I’d been sitting on the night before, but it could have just as easily been the one next door. A woman approached, pushing a stroller with a towheaded toddler, talking to him in a too loud, singsongy voice.

“That’s a
very
smart answer,” she said. “You are a
very
,
very
smart boy.” I wondered how she’d respond if I suddenly asked: “By any chance did you happen to see me puking my guts out around here sometime last night?”

Systematically I made my way down every block from 25th to 21st between Eighth and Tenth avenues, hoping to jog my memory. Nothing seemed familiar to me. And there was no forsaken jeans jacket lying in a heap somewhere—that would have been scarfed up hours ago. At one point, moving north, I came to the block that Beau Regan lived on. There was no way I was going down there. I was pretty sure I’d never been on that block last night. I felt if I had, I would just know.

Though the skies were now a dazzling shade of blue and the day was as warm as yesterday, I felt overwhelmed with a forlorn feeling. Someone at the bar had not only drugged me, but riffled through my purse, used my BlackBerry to send a text message.

Or
had
they? What if, as Rusty had suggested, I’d simply overimbibed? The draft beer mugs at the pub had been hefty in size, and since I usually drank bottle beer, I
had
consumed a bit more than usual. If I’d been drunk, it was entirely possible that I’d decided to blow Chris off, since his coddling of Harper had started to work my last nerve. Man, it felt as though someone were fucking with my mind. The only thing that kept me from wanting to bawl my eyes out was the fact that Chris hadn’t acted like a jerk after all.

At three-thirty, I threw in the towel. It was time to meet Robert Barish. After hiking through Chelsea, I had no energy for the train, so I hailed a cab and headed for East 43rd Street.

The building turned out to be on one of those short, cavernous blocks between Madison and Vanderbilt, just to the west of Grand Central Terminal. It was nearly deserted on the street and in the lobby, too. A security guard in white shirtsleeves sat in the crisp artificial coolness, staring desultorily at the
Daily News
. After motioning for me to sign the visitors log, he told me to take the elevator to the twelfth floor. The building looked like something out of a 1940s film noir—the marble lobby, the brass pointer above the elevator indicating the floors that were being passed. It was 1940s style on the twelfth floor, too, as if the area hadn’t been touched in over sixty years. I walked down the wide, empty corridor, half expecting Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe to step out from behind one of the office doors with a frosted window.

Suite 1236 turned out to be all the way down one corridor and then another. It was so quiet on the floor, it seemed as if no one could possibly be here, that Barish had forgotten our appointment, but after I knocked on the door, I could hear the dull sound of footsteps from deep within. A man dressed in gray slacks and a gleaming blue dress shirt swung open the door and introduced himself soberly as Robert Barish. He was about six feet one and formidable looking, but his face was doughy, and there was a gut hanging over his pants, as if he’d stuffed his shirt with a small ham. He looked like the kind of guy who might suddenly turn purple one day on the squash court and be pronounced DOA while he was still in the ambulance

“Hello, Bailey—may I call you that?”

“Of course.”

“I appreciate your coming to midtown,” he said, leading me through a small mauve-colored foyer. “I have a conference call with a client today, and I need to have all his paperwork in front of me.”

“Are you a lawyer?” I asked. We were now in an open area of about four or five nondescript workstations, making our way to a doorway at the end that opened onto a spacious office filled with blond furniture and photographs of Barish shaking hands with husky men I didn’t recognize.

“No, I’m a financial manager. I guide clients on everything from investments to estate planning.”

“Was Tom Fain a client?”

“His parents were—not Tom himself. But I’m the executor of the Fains’ will, so I had to spend some time with Tom for that reason. We weren’t in contact all that much recently, but he was a fine young man, and as you can imagine, I’m devastated by what happened. Why don’t you take a seat.”