Over Her Dead Body Read Online Free PDF Page B

turf, too.”
    There was a long pause.
    “No, I need him at the office today.”
    Before she hung up, she gave me a cell phone number for Kimberly that she had managed to get God knows where.
    I hadn’t planned on working on
Buzz
stuff today, so this was going to create havoc with my schedule. Not only would I have to spend a good chunk of my morning in court, but I needed to gather some background material on Kimberly so I could put her situation in perspective. Still in my underwear, I did a quick Web search. It was mostly stuff about her appearance on the
Star Maker
show. Though it would involve traveling in the wrong direction, I decided to stop by the office and comb through some back issues of the magazine. I knew that Kimberly had garnered lots of ink in
Buzz
since she’d won the contest, especially in “Juice Bar,” but I’d never bothered to read any of it.
    Other than Nash’s assistant, there wasn’t a soul in sight when I arrived. My guess was that plenty of people had probably been there closing the issue until the wee hours of the morning, and it was unlikely that anybody would surface before eleven. The eleven o’clock daily staff meeting was held at two on the day after closing.
    After helping myself to the coffee in the kitchenette, I made my way to the room where they stored the back issues and grabbed an armful. To my total surprise, Jessie was sitting at her desk when I returned to my workstation.
    “What the heck are you doing here at eight-fifteen?” I asked, smiling. Over the past few weeks, I had grown pretty fond of Jessie—and her flip sense of humor—and I hoped our burgeoning friendship would survive my tenure at
Buzz.
    “I have to get this damn Yoko Ono interview out of the way, even though it’ll be buried in the back of the magazine. Want to know something funny? She was wearing Stella McCartney sunglasses when I met her and didn’t have a clue. What about you? I thought you weren’t even coming in today.”
    I explained the wrench that Kimberly Chance had hurled into my plans.
    “Oh yeah, I heard about it on the radio this morning,” she said. “Are we sure the contest she won wasn’t
Slut Search
?”
    “How was the close last night?”
    “More bearable than some. The high point was when Mona sent that new assistant of hers, Amy, out for this kind of Jamba Juice called Endless Lime. The girl went to every Jamba Juice in Manhattan and arrived back three hours later—empty-handed! It turns out they only sell that kind in California.”
    “When did people clear out of here?”
    “Most people got out of here by twelve. The cover story was on freaky beauty rituals of the stars, so needless to say there was no breaking news that had to be incorporated.”
    “What freaky rituals
do
they like?”
    “Well, apparently Chris Judd gets butt facials.”
    “Eew, please—I’m still drinking my coffee.”
    I let Jessie return to work while I combed the issues looking for items on Kimberly. In the very beginning there had been a brief lovefest between her and the magazine, like a fling between conventioneers. She’d appeared on the cover after winning her honor, and there were a few glowing tidbits in the weeks immediately following, especially as her single went platinum. But before long she was making regular appearances on the “Fashion Follies” page, dressed in outfits that you might expect to see on waitresses at an international smorgasbord: There was the Swiss miss getup—a ruffled skirt and laced bodice that she wore with her hair in fat pigtails—as well as a disastrous turn in a muumuu that may have caused Paul Gauguin to turn in his grave. In a whole other vein was the dress she wore to the Grammys. It was huge and puffy, as if she were stockpiling something underneath. The caption read: “News Flash! We’ve Located the Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
    Kimberly’s sartorial indiscretions weren’t the only things that
Buzz
had chosen to spotlight. Over the past