by Meg Cabot
And at least Chris, unlike some people, seems to appreciate how I look in my borrowed dress. I see his gaze stray toward my cleavage several times. And not because my zipper is coming apart in the back and everything is hanging loose. I know because I check.
The band starts playing a slow tune. To my surprise, some couples actually wander out onto the library’s main floor and begin to dance… Chris’s mom and dad among them. I see President Allington lead his wife out onto the dance floor with a sweeping bow that has the trustees laughing and applauding.
It’s kind of sweet, actually.
At least until Mrs. Allington trips on her bell-bottoms and almost falls flat on her face. Fortunately President Allington whirls her around and makes it look like it was a fancy step he’d engineered on purpose.
Which is even sweeter. Maybe Chris isn’t as unlucky as I’d originally thought. In his parentage, I mean.
“Hey,” Chris says, surprising me yet again, this time by taking the champagne glass from my hand and setting it down on the tray of a passing waiter. “Wanna dance?”
My head whips around so fast to look at him, a long strand of my hair smacks me in the mouth and sticks to my lip gloss.
“What?” I ask, desperately trying to remove it. The hair, I mean. From my mouth.
“Do you wanna dance?” Chris asks. His grin is slightly mocking, to show me that he knows as well as I do that dancing at the New York College Pansy Ball is kind of… well, goobery. Still, he wants to let me know he’s game…
His grin is infectious. It’s the grin of the high school football captain, the handsomest boy in school, so sure of himself and his good looks that it never even occurs to him that some girl might say No way, Jose to his invitation. Probably because no girl ever has.
And I’m not about to be the first one.
And not just because I want to find out whether or not Chris is the one who killed Elizabeth and Roberta.
So I smile and say, “Sure,” and follow Chris out onto the dance floor.
I’m not the world’s greatest dancer, but it doesn’t matter, because Chris is good. He’s probably been to one of those prep schools where they teach all the guys the box step, or whatever. He’s so good, he can talk while he dances. I have to count inside my head. One-two-three. One-two-three. Step ball change… oh wait, that’s a different dance.
“So,” Chris says, conversationally, as he presses my body to his and swings me expertly around, hardly wincing when I accidentally stomp on his toes. “What’s your major?”
I’m trying to look—surreptitiously—for Cooper. I mean, he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on me, right?
But I don’t see him anywhere. I don’t see Marian, either, for that matter. Have I been ditched for an ex-girlfriend? After that fuss Cooper made about potentially risking my life in my pursuit of the killer of Fischer Hall, has he run out on me?
Well! Nice to know how much he cares!
Although, you know, seeing as how he’s letting me live in his house rent-free—well, virtually—I guess I haven’t got any right to complain. I mean, how many people in Manhattan have such easy access to a washer/dryer?
In answer to Chris’s question about my major, I say, “Um… I’m undeclared.”
Well, that much is true.
“Oh, really?” Chris looks genuinely interested. “That’s good. Keep your options open. I think too many people go into college with their mind already made up about what career they want to pursue when they graduate. They stick to the core curriculum for that major and don’t give themselves the opportunity to try new things. You know, find out what they’re really good at it. It could be something they never thought of. Like jewelry making.”
Wow. I didn’t know you could take jewelry making for college credit. You could actually wear your final. How practical.
“What are you leaning toward?” Chris asks.
I’m going to say pre-med, but changed my mind at the last second.
“Criminal justice,” I lie, to see how he reacts.
But he doesn’t run away to cower in fear, or anything. Instead, he says breezily, “Yeah, fascinating stuff, criminal justice. I’ve been thinking about heading into criminal law myself.”
I bet you have. Aloud I ask, putting on a playful tone, “So what was a great big law student like yourself doing hanging around an undergraduate residence hall?”
At least Chris has the grace to look embarrassed. “Well,” he says, in an aw shucks voice, “my parents do live there.”
“And so do a lot of attractive coeds,” I remind him. Remember? You’ve killed two of them?
He grins. “That, too,” he says. “I don’t know. The girls in my program aren’t exactly—”
Over Chris’s shoulder, I finally catch a glimpse of Cooper. He appears to be exchanging words with Professor Braithwaite. Really. They are having what looks like a heated conversation over by the raw bar. I see Cooper fling a glance at me.
So he hasn’t forgotten. He’s still keeping an eye on me.
Fighting with his ex, too, it appears.
But also keeping an eye on me.
Since I realize he doesn’t know what Chris looks like, he might not know I’m dancing with my lead suspect. So I point to Chris’s back, and mouth,This is Chris to him.
But this doesn’t work out quite the way I expect it to. Oh, Cooper gets the message, and all.
But so does Marian, who, seeing that she no longer has his full attention, follows the direction of Cooper’s gaze, and sees me.
Not knowing what else to do, I wave, lamely. Marian looks away from me coldly.
Whoa. Sorry.
“The girls in law school—”
I swivel my head around and realize that Chris is talking. To me.
“Well, let’s just say they consider sitting in a carrel in the law library studying till midnight every night a good time,” he says, with a wink.
What is he talking about?
Then I remember. Undergrad coeds versus law school students. Oh, right. The murder investigation.
“Ah,” I nod, knowingly. “Law school girls. Not like those fresh-from-the-farm first years in Fischer Hall, huh?”
He laughs outright.
“You’re pretty funny,” he says. “What year are you?”
I just shrug and try to look like it wasn’t, um, let’s see, seven or so years since my first legal drink.
“At least tell me your name,” he urges, in this low voice that I’m sure some former girlfriend had told him was sexy.
“You can just keep calling me Blondie,” I purr. “That way you’ll be able to keep me straight from all your other girlfriends.”
Chris lifts his eyebrows and grins. “What other girlfriends?”
“Oh, you,” I cry, giving him a little ladylike smack on the arm. “I’ve heard all about you. I was friends with Roberta, you know.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. The eyebrows have furrowed. “Who?”
God, he’s good. There isn’t a hint of guilt in his silver gray eyes.
“Roberta,” I repeat. I have to admit, my heart is pounding at my daring. I’m doing it. Detecting! I’m really doing it! “Roberta Pace.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
I seriously can’t believe this guy. “Bobby,” I say.
Suddenly, he laughs. “Bobby? You’re friends with Bobby?”
I didn’t miss both the strange emphasis on the you’re and the use of the present tense. I am, after all, a trained investigator. Well, at least, I do the data entry for one.
“I was friends with Roberta,” I say, and I’m not smiling or pretending to be less than twenty-one anymore. Because I can’t believe the guy can be so cold. Even for a killer. “Until she fell off the top of that elevator last week.”
Chris stops dancing. “Wait,” he says. “What?”
“You heard me,” I say. “Bobby Pace and Beth Kellogg. Both of them are dead, allegedly from elevator
surfing. And you slept with both of them right before they did it.”
I hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that. I’m pretty sure Cooper would have been more subtle. But I just… well, I got kind of mad, I guess. About him being so flippant about it. Roberta’s and Elizabeth’s deaths, I mean.
I guess a real investigator doesn’t get mad. I guess a real investigator keeps a level head.
I guess I’m not destined for that partnership in Cooper’s business after all.
Chris seems to have frozen, his feet rooted onto one black and one white tile.
But his grip on my waist doesn’t loosen. If anything, it tightens until suddenly, we’re standing hip to hip.
“What?” he asks, and his eyes are so wide that the blue-gray irises look like marbles floating in twin pools of milk. “What?” he asks, again. Even his lips have drained of color.
My face is only inches beneath his. I see the incredulity in his eyes, coupled with—and, shoddy investigator that I might have been, even I can see this—a slowly dawning horror.
That’s when it hits me:
He doesn’t know. Really. Chris had no idea—not right up until I’d told him just then—that the two dead girls in Fischer Hall were the ones with whom he’d, um, dallied just days before.
Is he really such a man-slut that he’d known only the first names—the nicknames—of the women he’d seduced?
It certainly looks that way.
The effect my announcement has on Chris is really pretty profound. His fingers dig convulsively into my waist, and he begins to shake his head back and forth, like Lucy after a good shampoo.
“No,” he says. “That’s not true. It can’t be.”
And suddenly I know that I’ve made a horrible mistake.
Don’t ask me how. I mean, it’s not like I have any experience in this kind of thing.
But I know anyway. Know it the way I know the fat content in a Milky Way bar.
Christopher Allington didn’t kill those girls.
Oh, he’d slept with them, all right. But he hadn’t killed them. That was done by someone else. Someone far, far more dangerous…
“Okay,” says a deep voice behind me. A heavy hand falls on my bare shoulder.
“Sorry, Heather,” Cooper says. “But we have to go now.”
Where’d he come from? I can’t go. Not now.
“Um,” I say. “Yeah, just a sec, okay?”
But Cooper doesn’t look too ready to wait. In fact, he looks like a man who’s getting ready to run for his life.
“We have to go,” he says, again. “Now.”
And he slips a hand around my arm, and pulls.
“Cooper,” I say, wriggling to get free. I can see that Chris is still in shock. It’s totally likely that if I stick around awhile longer, I’ll get something more out of him. Can’t Cooper see that I’m conducting a very important interview here?
“Why don’t you go get something to eat?” I suggest to Cooper. “I’ll meet you over at the buffet in a minute—”
“No,” Cooper says. “Let’s go. Now.”
I can understand why Cooper is so anxious to leave. Really, I can. After all, not everybody deals with their exes by, you know, sleeping with them on the foyer floor.
Still, I feel like I can’t leave yet. Not after I’ve made this total breakthrough. Chris is really upset—so upset that he doesn’t even seem to notice that there’s a private eye looming over his dance partner. He’s turned away, and is sort of stumbling off the dance floor, in the general direction of the elevators.
Where’s he going? Up to the twelfth floor, to his father’s office, to hit the real liquor—or just to use the phone? Or up to the roof, to jump off? I feel like I have to follow him, if only to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.
Except when I start to go after him, Cooper won’t let me.
“Cooper, I can’t go yet,” I say, struggling to free myself from his grip. “I got him to admit he knew them! Roberta and Elizabeth! And you know what? I don’t think he killed them. I don’t think he even knew they were dead!”
“That’s nice,” Cooper says. “Now let’s go. I told you I have an appointment. Well, I’m late for it as it is.”
“An appointment? An appointment?” I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “Cooper, don’t you understand? Chris said—”
“I heard you,” Cooper says. “Congratulations. Now let’s go. I said I’d bring you here. I didn’t say I could stay all night. I do have actual paying clients, you know.”
I realize it’s futile. Even if Cooper did change his mind and let me go, I don’t have any idea where Chris has disappeared to. And how smart would it have been, really, for me to follow him? I mean, considering what happened to the last couple of girls with whom he’d—how had I put it? Oh yeah, dallied. Hey, maybe I should be an English major. Yeah. A novelist, AND a doctor. AND a detective. AND a jewelry designer…
Cooper and I slip outside. I don’t even have a chance to say good-bye to anyone, or congratulate Rachel on her Pansy. I’ve never seen a guy so eager to get out of one place.
“Slow down,” I say, as Cooper hustles me to the curb. “I got heels on, you know.”
“Sorry,” Cooper says, and drops my arm. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistles for a cab that’s cruising along West Fourth.
“Where are we going?” I ask curiously, as the cab pulls to the corner with a squeal of its brakes.
“You’re going home,” Cooper says. He opens the rear passenger door and gestures for me to get inside, then gives the driver the address of his grandfather’s brownstone.
“Hey,” I say, leaning forward in the seat. “It’s just right across the block. I could’ve walked—”
“Not alone,” Cooper says. “And I have to head in the other direction.”
“Why?” I don’t miss the fact that Marian the Art Historian has just slipped out the library doors behind us.
But instead of walking over and joining Cooper on the curb, she shoots him an extremely unfriendly look, then hurries off on foot toward Broadway.
Cooper, whose back is to the library, doesn’t see the professor, or the dirty look.
“I’ve got to see a man,” is all Cooper will say to me, “about a dog. Here.” He shoves a five-dollar bill at me. “Don’t wait up.”
“What dog?” The cab starts to move. “Cooper, what dog? Are you getting another dog? What about Lucy? What’s wrong with Lucy?”
But we’re already gliding out into traffic. Cooper has turned and strode off towards West Third Street. Soon I can’t see him at all.
What had all that been about? I mean, really. I know Cooper’s clients are important to him, and stuff. And I know he thinks this whole thing with me and the deaths in my building is like a figment of my imagination, or whatever.
But still. He could at least have listened to me.
That’s when the cab driver, who appears to be Indian—like from India, not Native American—says, helpfully, “I believe that’s an expression.”
I look at his reflection in the rear view mirror. “What is?”
“See a man about a dog,” the cab driver says. “It’s an American expression. Like rolling stone gathers no moss. You know?”
I slump back into my seat. No, I didn’t know. I don’t know anything, apparently.
Well, I guess I knew that. I mean, isn’t that why I’m working at New York College? To get an education?
Well, I’m getting one, all right. And I haven’t even started classes yet.
22
You’re magic
Magic to me
I’m under your spell
Even my friends can tell
You’re magic
Magic to me
“Magic”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Magic
Cartwright Records
After Cooper and I—and Chris Allington—left the
Pansy Ball, Rachel Walcott was awarded a Pansy for exemplary service to the college.
She shows me the little flower-shaped pin the next morning, pride gleaming in her pretty brown eyes. She wears it on the lapel of her black linen suit jacket as if it were a medal of valor or something.
I guess maybe to her it kind of is. I mean, in a single semester, she’s had to deal with way more tragedy than most administrators have to face in their entire careers.
I’ve never won anything in my entire life. Well, okay, a recording contract, but that’s it. I know they don’t generally give out Grammys for songs like “Sugar Rush.” But hello, I never even won like a People’s Choice Award. Not even Teen People’s Choice.
And I was totally the Queen of Teen. At least, up until I stopped being one.
But I try not to let Rachel see my jealousy over her award. Not that I’m even that jealous. Just, you know.
I’d been the one who’d dragged all the boxes up from the basement. The boxes we’d packed up Roberta’s and Elizabeth’s things in. I’d been the one who’d packed them, too. And I’d been the one who’d dragged them to Mail Services, and had them shipped. I think I should get something for that. Not a Pansy, maybe, but like a Dandelion, maybe.
Oh well. When I’m able to prove that the girls’ deaths were the result of murder, and not accidental, and when I find out who their real killer is, maybe I’ll win like the key to the city, or something. Really! And the mayor’ll give it to me himself, and it will be broadcast on New York One, and Cooper will see it and realize that even though I’m not an art history professor or a size zero, I’m still totally smart and cute, and he’ll ask me out and we’ll get married and have Jack, Emily, and Charlotte Wells-Cartwright…
Well, a girl can dream, right?
And I am happy for Rachel. I congratulate her and sip my coffee as she describes what it had been like, winning this prestigious award in front of all her peers. She tells me how Dr. Jessup had hugged her and how President Allington had personally thanked her for services above and beyond the call of duty. She chatters excitedly about how she’s the first administrator in the history of New York College to receive seven separate nominations for the award, the most any one person has ever garnered—and she’d gotten them all in just her first four months of employment! She says how glad she is that she’d gone into higher education instead of business or law, like so many of her fellow Yale grads.