Back in my room, I called Nash’s cell. Though he was used to being phoned at all hours—particularly with celeb DWIs—he answered groggily.
“Give yourself a minute to wake up,” I told him. “Because I’ve got big news.”
“Christ, that is big,” he said after I’d taken him through everything. “How soon can you get me something?”
“I have my laptop with me, and it shouldn’t take me more than thirty minutes to write something up and e-mail you. Then I’ll file reports as things progress.”
“Where are you exactly, anyway?”
“About two hours north of the city. The one fly in the ointment is that it’s been snowing like crazy. On the one hand it’s a good thing because I want to talk to people here—and they’re stranded. But eventually Jessie and I need to find our way back to Manhattan. It’s a little bit like The Shining up here.”
He told me that he’d be pulling staff into the office to dig background for the story and begin producing the obligatory sidebars on the life and times of Devon Barr.
“See if you can find anything about her having an eating disorder,” I said. “I think it could have played a role in her death.”
I needed to start writing stat, but there was one thing I had to take care of first: let Cap know I was now filing the story. Plenty of reporters I knew at Buzz would just go ahead and deal later with any flak that resulted from all the people who’d been bruised in the process. But I never liked to play things that way. It’s not that I’m such a goody-two-shoes, but in the long run people treat you better if you’ve been fair with them. I would need Cap as I pursued this story, and I wanted to alert him to the fact that within the next hour the Buzz Web site would be announcing the death of Devon Barr.
There turned out to be no need to go all the way back to the other barn. As I came down the stairs into the first-floor foyer, Cap was just emerging from the passageway.
“How are you doing?” I said. “This must be really devastating for you.”
“Yes,” he answered grimly. “It is.”
“Do you have a few minutes? I’d like to talk to you.”
“Actually I don’t. I need to retrieve some papers from my room.”
“How about later then?”
“I don’t really think it would be very smart of me to talk to you.”
“I’ll be straight with you,” I said. “I do have to file this story. It’ll be live on the Web site before long, and it will most likely be the cover story of the magazine on Thursday. So wouldn’t it be better for you to have control over the information that gets out there? Plus, I promise you, I won’t sandbag you in any way. I’ll keep you abreast of what I’m doing.”
He shook his head in despair.
“Let me think about it,” he said and moved off.
If Devon had been his lover, this had to be eating him up. Yet there was something else to consider. If the autopsy indicated foul play and he had been her lover, that would make him a prime suspect. I wondered if I should have told the police about the conversation I’d overheard between the two of them—Devon demanding that he would “have to tell her”—but I didn’t like the idea of making trouble for him unnecessarily. If the death was ruled a homicide, I could always inform the cops later.
I reentered my room and headed for the small antique desk near the window. Stretching my arms out, I plopped down at the desk. My laptop was already set up there, since I’d planned to do a little research for upcoming articles. I started to open a file, and then I realized something was out of whack. My laptop wasn’t in the same spot it had been in earlier. I like to rest my arms directly in front of it, so I generally leave about four or five inches between the computer and the edge of the desk But now my laptop was right up to the very edge of the desk—as if someone had pulled it closer.
I caught a breath and instinctively looked behind me. There was no one there, of course, but I knew that someone had been in my room. And it wasn’t necessarily the person who had taken Scott’s keys. Jessie and I hadn’t been given keys, so my room had never been locked. Anyone could have gained entrance.
I jumped up from the desk and made a quick sweep of the room. Nothing was missing, and nothing else seemed disturbed. What could the person have wanted? And why check out my computer? To see what I was writing or whether I’d e-mailed Buzz?
I couldn’t afford to dwell on it at the moment. I needed to write and file my story. I dashed out something fast, hitting all the high points. Devon Barr had died during the night at the weekend home of music mogul Scott Cohen. Cause of death still undetermined. The police were on the premises interviewing the houseguests. I listed who they were. I reread it twice and then e-mailed it to Nash and the deputy editor I generally reported to.
After I sent my story, I went on the Internet and did a quick search about eating disorders. I was surprised to see that they were fatal in up to 20 percent of cases. Most frequently in those cases the lack of vital nutrients caused heart arrhythmia, which led to a heart attack and death.
There was plenty more to read, but I wanted to return to the great room to see what was going on. I splashed cold water on my face just to revive myself, and then left my room. Just as I started toward the stairs, Jessie came bounding up them.
“I know I’m supposed to be standing guard, but I wanted to check in. Did you talk to Nash?”
“Yes, and I filed a story. You’ve had your interview with the cops?”
“Yup—and it was so freaky. I had to fight the urge to confess that I cheated once on an AP history test.”
“What did they ask you?”
“Did I observe anything unusual with Devon this weekend? Did I hear anything during the night? And were people using drugs this weekend? I answered no, no, and no. I can’t believe how pale the head cop is. I wonder if anyone’s checked his platelet count lately.”
“What’s going on with all our guests at the moment?”
“Richard is drinking secret Bloody Marys—I caught him pouring a shot of vodka into his tomato juice. And after Tommy was done with his interview, he threatened to leave with Tory until someone convinced him that he’d never get four feet down the road in his Jag.”
“I’m going back over there now, so if you need a break, go for it,” I said.
“Thanks, I may take a short catnap and then I’ll be back to help eavesdrop. You mentioned that something weird was going on. What did you mean?”
I told her about the missing ipecac and my suspicions about someone being in my room. As I’d anticipated, the last bit of news rattled her.
“Crap—there’s a dead body across the hall from me, and someone’s sneaking into people’s bedrooms. You know those horror movies where you want to shout, ‘Get out of the house!’ at the screen? I’m starting to sense that somewhere, someone is shouting that at us.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You can lock your door when you’re in your room, and the cops have the keys now.”
“And how long are we supposed to stick around here for?”
“Since I’m covering this, it’ll be good to hang here for a while at least. And even if we wanted to leave, we might not be able to. For right now at least, the weather has us trapped.”
As I began to descend the stairs, I heard a commotion on the floor below. I scurried down. A team of two men and two women—with water dripping in rivulets off their jackets—had just trudged into the foyer behind Detective Collinson. I figured they were either from the coroner’s office or members of the crime scene unit or a combination of both. Each one of them eyed me curiously, and then proceeded up the stairs. I stood at the bottom of the stairs listening for a moment. Once they entered Devon’s room, I couldn’t hear what they were saying.