“Were you close to her?”
“Of course I was close to her,” he said, flicking his hand back and forth over the collar of his tight beige crewneck. “I’ve been her booker since she was nineteen.”
“I thought she started even younger than that.”
“She did—she was with another agency the first couple of years, but I convinced her to come with us.”
“Is that common, to make a switch?”
“It can be. Contracts in this business are never iron-clad. I mean, Devon was grateful to her old place. One of their scouts had spotted her in a bus station when she was sixteen. But they never saw her full potential. I don’t believe in starting at the bottom and working your way up. I think you start at the top, and if it doesn’t work, you keep going down a level and find out where it settles. From the very beginning I sent Devon out to the top photographers. They loved her. By the end of the year she’d made over a million dollars.”
“When did Cap come into the picture?”
“A few years later. When you make that much money, you need someone like him. Especially if your momma’s a drunk and you’ve got a no-good stepdaddy.”
“Were Cap and Devon tight?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Was it a good working relationship?”
“He absolutely doted on her. She was his prize client.”
“Friday night, you were talking about how models are often screwed up about their eating. I take it Devon had an eating disorder of some kind.”
“No, that was over and done with. A lot of girls in their teens suffer from that.”
“But clearly Devon was experiencing a relapse lately.”
“Oh, please, I knew you were going to do this. You’re just looking for dirt. You won’t attribute it to me, but it will still end up in that rag.”
“I’m only interested in the truth. If she died due to an eating disorder, that’s going to come out anyway.”
“Like I told you, that wasn’t an issue anymore.”
“And she wasn’t scared or worried about anything this weekend?”
“Scared? I have no clue what you’re talking about. Devon wasn’t scared of anything.”
“Just one more question. Did you call extension seven during the night?”
“Extension seven? You mean to say I needed a shirt pressed or something? Hardly. What is this anyway? You’re starting to sound like Miss Marple.”
Suddenly the TV screen grabbed our attention. It flickered a few times, and then suddenly died. The room was now in total darkness.
Maybe, I thought, the freezing rain had knocked out the satellite dish. And then from a distance I heard Jessie yell, “Bailey, where are you?” and I glanced toward the hallway. There was no light coming from anywhere. The power had gone out. Great, just the hell what we needed.
Chapter 7
“Oh, brilliant,” Christian exclaimed. “Just fucking brilliant.”
“There are candles on the table upstairs,” I said. “I’ll go grab a couple. Why don’t you call Scott and see where he is.”
“Call him? How?”
“Here,” I said, tossing him my BlackBerry. “His cell is in the address book.” I’d programmed it in during my car ride with Jessie.
“Bailey?” Jessie called again from the great room. “Where are you?”
I yelled that I was coming and tried to maneuver my way out of the media room, though just before I reached the door I rammed my foot so hard into a piece of furniture, it felt as if I’d kicked a car. Finding and climbing the stairs was even trickier. The barn had become familiar to me over the past two days, but in the pitch-dark, I was clueless.
“Jess, you still near the couch?” I called out once I’d reached the top of the stairs.
“Yup. What made the freaking power go out? The snowstorm’s been over for hours.”
“It might be the ice,” I said, inching my way toward her voice. “It’s probably coated the power lines and made one of them snap. I’m gonna grab the two candlesticks on the dining table—can you start rooting around in the drawers and see if you can find one of those lighters Sandy was using last night?”
My eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and I could make out Jessie moving clumsily toward the island. I reached the table, snagged the two taper candles in antler holders, and then met Jessie by the island. She’d found the lighter, and we lit the two candles. With the tapers partially illuminating the room, we then located two chubby candles in hurricane lamps on a side table and lit those. I carried the antler holders downstairs.
“I couldn’t reach Scott,” Christian said, handing me back my phone.
“He should be here shortly,” I said. “Here.” I passed him a candle.
“This ought to be fun,” he said. “A night in a house with no lights and a dead body.”
I was tempted to add, Oh, and let’s not forget that the master key to all the bedrooms is missing.
There was an explosion of voices suddenly. The power outage had clearly sent people scrambling in this direction, hoping to find candles or flashlights. I stepped into the foyer to see Cap, Whitney, Richard, and Jane emerge from the door to the passageway. They were followed thirty seconds later by Tory and Tommy, looking disheveled. It was hard to tell if they’d been in the middle of makeup sex or a slap fest. Everyone demanded to know what was going on. Before I had a chance to even offer an opinion, the front door opened and Ralph and Scott burst into the foyer, toting large flashlights and stomping hard to knock the icy snow off their boots.
“Tell me it’s just a fuse,” Cap said.
“Unfortunately not,” Ralph said hoarsely. “The ice seems to have knocked out a power line. But we’ve got plenty of flashlights.”
“What about heat?” Whitney asked.
“Unfortunately not,” Scott said. “But the great room and guest bedrooms all have gas wood-burning stoves. Ralph will light them.”
“But how are we going to get out of here?” Tory wailed. “I’ve got a job tomorrow, and it pays four thousand dollars. They’re going to kill me if I don’t show.”
“We’re all in the same boat, Tory, so why don’t you just shut the hell up,” Tommy snapped. Ignoring them, Scott directed the beam of his flashlight toward the candle I was holding. “There are more of those upstairs. Why don’t we go up there?”
We all traipsed upstairs and huddled together in the center of the room. Using his torch to guide him, Scott opened a cabinet filled with votive lights, tapers, and pillar candles. By the time we were done lighting them all, the great room looked like something out of medieval times.
“Do you know what I think?” Scott asked the group. “I think we could all use a drink.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Richard added.
“Why am I not surprised?” Whitney said, all the southern charm missing from her tone.
“Whitney, please,” Cap pleaded. For the first time I realized just how truly frayed people’s nerves were.
“What?” she said mockingly, her nearly transparent blue eyes sparkling in the candlelight. “Am I just supposed to sit around and act all sweet when he gets liquored up, slurs his words, and won’t take his eyes off my breasts?”
“But Whitney, I assumed you liked it,” Richard said. “Otherwise why make such a point of showing them off?”
“Shut your stupid mouth,” Cap said, taking a step toward Richard with muscles tightened.
“You can stare at my tits if you want,” Jane said. “I won’t mind—and they’re even real.”