And yet it seemed, I realized, as if Beau truly wanted to work things out. I felt a momentary easing of my anxiety, like the relief you feel when you run a hand you’ve just burned under a stream of cold water. Good for the moment but most of the time it doesn’t last.
I paid the check, took a deep breath, and headed for First Models. The agency turned out to be in a sleek ten-story building that also housed an ad agency and some other random businesses. When I boarded the elevator, an insanely tall platinum-blond girl, who had to be a model, followed me inside. She was carrying a huge silver tote bag and in her right hand an itty-bitty Chihuahua puppy. She cooed at it a couple of times, and in response the dog flicked his tongue at her lips. It made me think of what Whitney had said about Devon. She’d wanted a baby for the same reason she’d wanted a dog: for the unconditional love it guaranteed.
The blond disembarked with me on four, where the elevator opened directly onto a small reception area. A receptionist sat at a desk, leafing through a copy of W magazine. To the left of the desk was a conference room with the door open. A woman was snapping pictures with a small camera of a gangly, red-haired girl who looked like she’d come directly from the Port Authority after a twenty-four-hour bus ride from the Midwest.
The blond model nodded at the receptionist, walked toward the door at the far side of the room, and swung it open. Before she closed it, I caught a glimpse of the nerve center of the agency: a large, loftlike room with several separate sections of workstations, about twenty desks altogether. One entire wall was papered with headshots. There were a bunch of people working in there, but I didn’t see Christian.
“May I help you?” the receptionist asked. She ran her eyes down my five-foot-six frame with a look that seemed to say, “Wait, you don’t think you could be a model, do you?”
“I’m here to see Christian,” I told her. “My name’s Bailey Weggins.” I glanced off to the right then, as if I was done talking and there was no reason for her to inquire, “Is he expecting you?” It was a trick I’d learned from an old reporter I’d worked with: when you don’t want someone to ask a question, indicate by your body language that you’ve said everything necessary.
It worked.
“Just a minute,” she told me and punched in a number on her phone. She announced my presence to Christian and then listened, scrunching her mouth up. After a moment she said, “Okay,” and set the phone back in its cradle.
“He said that unfortunately he’s working out a campaign for one of his girls right now, and he can’t meet with you,” she said. “But he’s got your number, and he’ll give you a call later.”
“Actually, I can wait,” I said, walking toward a cowhide-covered bench. “I have plenty of time.”
As I took a seat, she flashed me a look that was part annoyance, part uncertainty, as if she’d just stepped in gum and wasn’t sure how to get it off her shoe.
“That’s not such a good idea,” she said finally. “It’s open call day. There’s gonna be lot of girls here.”
“I’ll stay out of the way, I promise,” I said.
This time I was granted a big sigh. She stood up from her desk and, after opening the door to the main room just wide enough for her to enter, slipped inside. While I hung in the reception area, the redhead was escorted to the elevator by the woman who’d taken her pictures. It appeared she hadn’t received much encouragement because as she waited for the elevator in her stained cropped jacket, her lower lip was trembling and she looked close to tears.
Two minutes later the receptionist reemerged from the nerve center with Christian right behind her. He was dressed in black jeans and a black, supertight V-neck sweater, which revealed a chest that seemed as smooth and polished as candle wax. He glanced at me and then toward the now-empty conference room.
“Why don’t we go in there,” he said curtly and led the way.
Once we were inside, I noticed another door to the big room, this one partly open, and I had the chance to take a better peek. The people inside, mostly model bookers I assumed, tapped at their computers or spoke quietly into their phone headsets. I’d been expecting a place that looked and sounded as crazy as an office of Wall Street bond traders, with bookers shouting out the orders they’d just taken—like “I’ve got Becca on the twenty-eighth for CoverGirl. Shooting in Cabo”—but it was far more subdued than that. Christian quickly closed the doors to both the reception area and the booking room and then strode back to the table.
“I can’t believe you just came barging into where I work,” he said, all pissy.
“I did try to make contact by phone,” I told him. “But I never heard back from you.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that some people may not want to be included in one of your gruesome Buzz magazine stories? We’re not all media whores, you know.”
“It’s really not a media thing I’m pursuing at the moment. I’m concerned about Devon’s death, and I’m looking for answers.”
“Oh, are you all up in arms because I told you she didn’t have an eating disorder? I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I didn’t know she was having trouble again. I mean, she looked a little thinner to me, but I thought she’d just been working too hard—doing the album.”
“No, that’s not where I’m going. I think someone was trying to make her situation worse.”
He stared at me for a moment with his deep brown eyes.
“Oh, I see,” he said after a moment, arching his back and tapping his long slim fingers on his chest. “This is the part where you try to accuse the modeling agency of pressuring her to keep her weight down. We’re such evil people, aren’t we? I’ve got news for you. Though women say they want to look at real women in ads, they’re total liars.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not where I’m going either. Devon’s situation was probably aggravated by certain factors. One of them was ipecac. I saw a bottle of it in her bathroom the night she died, but someone removed it before the police arrived. Do you know anything about that?”
“I certainly know what it is. We’ve had girls who used it. But I had no idea Devon was one of them.”
“What about diuretics?”
“Are you asking if I know what those are, sweetheart?”
“I want to know if she was taking them. Do you know if she ever had a prescription for one called Lasix?”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Did you ever see her crushing any kind of pills in her water bottle?”
“Good God, no. I can’t imagine Devon wanting anything to interfere with her precious water. She should have been entitled to stock in the company that produces Fiji water.”
“She was drinking a lot of bottled water last weekend and leaving half open bottles around. Did you ever see anyone go near one of them?”
His eyes widened.
“Oh, my. It sounds like you’re suggesting someone tampered with the water.”
“Possibly.”
“No. I never saw anyone else holding a water bottle. Other than Jane, of course. As Devon’s sherpa, she was always taking things to her master, including water bottles.” He paused and held a hand to his chest. “You don’t think Jane tampered with the water, do you?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Jane resented the hell out of Devon. Devon was everything Jane wasn’t. I kept telling Devon to get rid of that girl, but she felt lucky that Jane hadn’t quit like everyone else. She held the world record at about nine months.”