It's getting very hot in the kitchen of Martha Stewart. The New York Times reported during the weekend that Merrill Lynch on Friday suspended the domestic doyenne's socially connected stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, 38, who handled Stewart's sale of ImClone shares. That transaction has been under heavy scrutiny lately for possible -- and illegal -- insider trading by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. attorney general's office in Manhattan. Stewart's nearly 4,000 shares were reportedly sold on Dec. 27. The next day, the stock price began to plunge in the wake of the company's announcement that one of its highly touted cancer drugs had failed to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The attorney general's office refused to tell the Times whether Stewart, 60, was herself under a microscope. "We have inquiries about Martha Stewart, and our response is that we are continuing to investigate possible insider trading in the stock of ImClone." A spokeswoman for Stewart would not comment. Meanwhile, in a front-page Times article on Sunday, under the headline "Martha Stewart's To-Do List May Include Image Polishing," the paper suggests that this time even Martha loyalists may have a hard time defending their role model. "Her fans have long known, and do not mind, that Martha Stewart is a lot tougher than she looks," the story says. "But in the long run, this latest refraction of her image could prove more damaging to this reputation than complaints that she is an uber-perfectionist who turns chilly and imperious once the kitchen door closes. . . . Greed or the misuse of privileged information, if proven, was never part of the package."