“And the egg donor? Was that someone she knew as well?”
Staring at me, Whitney took a breath that made a slight wheezing sound and let it out very slowly. The rims of her eyes were even redder now, as if blood might start spurting from them any second.
And then the truth hit me hard—she was the donor. In some odd way the thought had been slowly forming in my mind all morning. I felt fear begin to slosh inside me, like water in the hull of a boat.
“The baby was yours, wasn’t it?” I said. “Or at least the egg was.”
Whitney squeezed her mouth shut tight, as if she were fighting to keep the rage inside her. Then a wicked little smile snuck onto her face.
“You’ll never be able to prove it,” she said. “It was all handled very hush-hush.”
“But why?”
“Why?” she shrieked. “Because of Cap. He’d done everything for that selfish bitch. And he was always on call twenty-four/seven. It was almost over for her as a model, and as an actress she made Paris Hilton look like some Academy Award winner, but she’d run through tons of her money and she needed the work. So Cap launched her singing career. But despite all that, she was starting to make little noises of discontent. ‘Cap, you need to do more for me.’ ‘Cap, I’m not happy.’ When she said she wanted to get pregnant, it became his problem, of course.”
“She must have been freaked when she heard about her medical issue.”
“You got that right. It turned up when she first went in for artificial insemination. Silly me, I’d done a story on egg donors and actually encouraged the next step. But she didn’t want anybody’s eggs. She met a few donors and they made her think of her disgusting mother. So Cap begged me to do it. He knew I didn’t want children myself. And that way Devon would owe him.”
“How did you find out she hadn’t miscarried?”
“Oh, I was very clever,” Whitney said. “Almost as clever as Little Miss Bailey Weggins. I tricked one of the nurses at the OB’s office into telling me. They’d learned of the abortion when the doctor who’d performed it had requested some records. I’d had my suspicions, though, right from the beginning. Devon had a hard time looking me in the eye after the so-called miscarriage. And then, when she didn’t try to conceive again over the past year, I knew something was up.”
I flashed again on what Cap had told me. He’d said he’d relayed to Devon that Whitney had been in touch with the OB, and Devon shouldn’t have trouble conceiving again. But Devon had probably guessed that Whitney had been snooping and had learned about the abortion. That’s why she’d seemed so scared when I saw her.
“It must have been awful to learn the truth.”
“Awful?” Whitney said savagely. “If that’s what you call it when you find that someone has taken a four-month-old fetus—with your blood—and destroyed it like a piece of garbage.”
The wind tore across the terrace again. From where I sat I could see only the gray, smudged sky and the tips of a few high-rise apartment buildings. Thankfully, far off in the kitchen, the testers were still chatting and laughing.
“So you killed her,” I said. I knew it was true. I knew just from looking at those red-rimmed eyes. The modeling agency story might be legit, but she’d offered it up just to throw me off her trail—because nothing else had worked so far.
Whitney flashed another one of her wicked smiles.
“Again, you’ll never be able to prove it,” she said smugly. “There’s nothing linking anything to me.”
“Devon fed nicely into your hands with her anorexia, didn’t she?” I said. I knew I should get the hell out of the apartment, but I needed to know the truth.
“Yes,” she said. “It was almost like a gift from God. At first I thought it had started again because she was so damn worried about her career, but I honestly think her conscience might have finally been catching up with her. She’d murdered her child so she could have Tommy, and then Tommy kicked her to the curb.”
“Was her death this weekend just a coincidence? I mean, you couldn’t really predict when the Lasix would do its magic.”
“No, but I knew it might happen. You see, I’d already started the process at the spa. That’s the reason I’d invited her away. And though I couldn’t bear spending another weekend in that bitch’s company, it gave me a wonderful opportunity to load up the Lasix every time she set her water bottle down. When I saw her stagger off to her room, Saturday night, I knew the end was near.”
An answer started to form—to a question that had bugged me for days.
“Wait—did you call extension seven that night?”
“Oh, you’re smart, aren’t you, Bailey? You see, I started to worry it would seem odd that we hadn’t checked on her, but then I changed my mind and hung up. Sometimes, the less done the better.”
“Why did you take the ipecac from the bathroom, then? That could only arouse suspicions.”
“I had no idea you’d seen it. I’d learned about ipecac when I was doing my news story and told Devon about it at the spa, knowing she’d be tempted to try it. But I couldn’t be sure she hadn’t told that idiot Tory that I’d talked about it. If the cops found the bottle, they might eventually connect it back to me. You really made me angry with all your poking around. If you’d just minded your own business.”
“You snooped in my room, didn’t you? You checked out my computer.”
“You left me no choice, did you?”
“And as I started poking around even more, you came after me. You thought getting me suspended from Buzz might shut me down, but when that didn’t work, you tried to kill me. Who was the man in the gypsy cab?”
“None of your business,” Whitney said snidely. “And trust me, you’ll never find him.”
“How did you discover I was going to be downtown? Tommy told you, didn’t he?”
“No comment,” she said. “I can’t let you know all my secrets.”
“I bet you were talking to him about the funeral or something to do with Devon’s death, and he mentioned he’d be seeing me.”
“There’s no proof of that or anything else.”
“The police will call the doctor. They’ll find out you knew about the abortion.”
“That hardly proves I killed Devon,” she said.
“They’ll talk to Sherrie, they’ll find out you told her to call my boss. And when they see you were trying to shut me up, they’ll start trying to link you to the fire.”
“Oh, please, Bailey, don’t you get it?” She’d raised her voice again, the rage simmering just below the surface. Wasn’t she worried about the testers hearing, I wondered. “Sherrie’s on a six-month bender. No one’s going to get anything out of her about me, and those local yokels in Pennsylvania aren’t ever going to have a confab with the local-yokel cops in upstate New York. As far as the world is concerned, Devon Barr basically starved herself to death. And if anyone manages to feel bad about that, they can buy the fucking album.”
She was probably right. Collinson seemed smart enough, but how would he tie it all together? Was Whitney going to get away with murder? I knew I had to do something.
“Maybe the cops won’t figure out it was murder,” I said. “But I bet if I tell Cap, he’ll put the pieces together and realize I’m telling the truth.”
She shot up from her chair then, making me jump in surprise. “Don’t you dare bring Cap into this!”
I rose slowly from my own chair.
“Why not?” I said. “Because you know he’d leave you in a second if he found out? He might even be willing to try to point the cops to evidence.”