“Not that I’m aware of,” I said. I added, though, that Devon had appeared to be buzzed when she left for bed.
“Any theories then about what might have happened to Ms. Barr?”
“I thought of drugs, too, but I also wondered if she might have died as a result of complications from an eating disorder. She seemed very thin. And as you saw, there was the bottle of ipecac in the bathroom—the stuff used to induce vomiting.”
Slowly Collinson turned his gaze toward Ray, who blinked hard and then shook his head.
“There was nothing like that in the bathroom,” Ray said. “Nothing like that at all.”
Chapter 5
The first thought that flew through my mind—and it wasn’t a very nice one—was that maybe Detective Ray had blinked too long and missed it. Then I wondered if he might have mistaken the small bottle for some kind of beauty potion.
“I’m positive it was there,” I told the two men. “Do you want me to show you?”
“Yes, please,” Collinson said bluntly.
Back we went to the guest quarters. The sky was faint with color now, as if someone were shining a flashlight through a burlap sack. I could see that it was still snowing. How would we all make it out of here today? I wondered.
Collinson unlocked the door to Devon’s room with the keys Scott had obviously turned over to him and motioned for me to enter. After leading me past the bed, he asked me to examine the bathroom, and without touching anything, point to where the ipecac had been.
“Someone’s taken it,” I said, shocked. “Someone managed to get into the room and remove it.”
“Why do you think someone would do that?” Collinson asked evenly.
“I haven’t any idea,” I told him. “Maybe—I don’t know, maybe to protect Devon’s reputation? So it wouldn’t come out that she was bulimic.”
He ushered me back into the bedroom.
“The bathroom light was off when Detective Ray and I entered the room earlier. How then did you happen to see the bottle?”
My mind raced as I deliberated whether I should try to fudge my answer just to protect my butt—but I decided against it. I’d had my butt singed before from being less than forthcoming with cops.
“I looked in the bathroom when I found Devon’s body,” I said. “I thought it might be helpful to see if she’d taken any drugs.”
“Helpful to you as a reporter?” he asked.
See, I’d been smart not to underestimate him.
“Yes, partly,” I conceded. “But mainly I just wanted to know what was going on. At least we now know that someone with sticky fingers has been sneaking around.”
“All right, Miss Weggins, you can go back with the others,” Collinson said. “We will join you in a few minutes.”
When I reached the great room, everyone looked up but no one said anything. I poured yet another cup of coffee in the kitchen area and motioned with a look for Jessie to join me at the island. As she made her way over, Detective Ray appeared at the top of the stairs and asked Scott to return to the study. I figured the cops wanted to chat with him about how someone had managed to slip into Devon’s locked bedroom.
“You okay?” I whispered to Jessie when she reached me.
“Yeah, but this is so freaky,” she said anxiously. “Am I going to be interrogated?”
“There’s nothing to worry about. Just tell them what you know—and you and I will catch up later.”
“This whole weekend has turned into a nightmare,” she said. “The only good news is that Nash is going to kiss our asses for being at the scene. When are you going to call it in?”
“In just a bit. I want to keep my eye on what’s going on here for a while.”
As I sipped my coffee at the counter, I mulled over the missing ipecac. The person who had taken it would have needed a key, and Scott came immediately to mind—he had pocketed Sandy’s keys after using them. At one point while we’d been waiting, he and Sandy had donned coats and gone across to the cabin to check on Ralph and then returned separately. That would have offered him the chance to stop by Devon’s room. But why would it matter to him if the world learned she’d used something to make her puke after meals? He might have had a vested interest in protecting Devon’s reputation when she was alive, but now that she was dead, the fact that she’d been bulimic probably wouldn’t matter.
If it wasn’t Scott who had done it, then who else could have had access to the room? Somewhere on the premises there had to be another set of keys.
As soon as Scott returned from his second round of questioning, Detective Ray called Jane’s name and she trudged down the stairs. Scott walked over to the refrigerator, pulled out a carton of orange juice, and filled a glass.
“Can I talk to you privately?” I said after walking over to where he was standing.
“Okay,” he said without enthusiasm. With me following, he edged over to a corner of the room.
“I assume the police asked you how someone might have gained access to Devon’s locked bedroom,” I said, when we were out of earshot of the others.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Because when I found the body, I saw something in the room that isn’t there anymore—and I told them about it. It was a bottle of ipecac syrup.”
“Ipe—what?”
“Ipecac. It’s a liquid used to induce vomiting. Did you take it from her room?”
“I can’t believe you’re asking that. Of course not. I never went back in there.”
“But someone did. How do you think they got in?”
“Shit,” he said suddenly, and his eyes flashed with recognition. “I bet I know how they did it. I had Sandy’s keys in my pocket, but they kept jabbing into my leg, so I took them out and laid them on the counter by the stove. I picked them back up when the cops arrived because I was going to have to let them into Devon’s room. Someone must have swiped them for a while and then returned them to the counter.”
I looked off, thinking. Though people had hung in the great room until the police arrived, mostly everyone had slipped out at some point for a few minutes. Jane had returned to her room for the phone numbers of people that had to be on the initial contact list Cap was putting together—and later I had overheard Christian say he was going back to his room for his cell phone in case he needed it. Whitney had set down her knitting needles about an hour into our wait and said she was going to take a shower. Cap had walked her back and returned. Tommy had announced the need for a cigarette and disappeared outside. Richard had made a point of saying he was heading downstairs to the loo, and he’d been gone for a good ten minutes. From what I could recall, Tory was the only one who had stayed put, falling asleep for a stretch on one of the sofas. Any one of the others could have snuck the keys into their pocket and let themselves into Devon’s room.
“But look, maybe it’s not that big a deal,” Scott said. “Cap or Christian could have taken the ipecac just so the press would have less to trash Devon about.”
“Was Devon bulimic?”
“I’m only going to talk to you if you guarantee that we are totally off the record.”
“I told you we were. You have my word.”
“It’s pretty clear there was something fucked up about her eating this weekend.”
“Was that a problem for you—the fact that she might have an eating disorder?”
“Look, I’ve had artists who were heroin addicts or alleged rapists. I’m not in the business of passing judgment.”