by Meg Cabot
“People started stopping by with this stuff last night, and it’s been coming ever since,” Jamie says. “I’m not sure why. Tania’s not the one who died. But I think they figured out that the cupcakes were for her and that someone wanted to hurt her. Some of them have been crying so much they could hardly talk. We didn’t really know what to do with it all, so Gavin started locking everything into the package room. We’re going to run out of space in a little while, though.”
My eyes inexplicably fill with tears, looking at all the teddy bears holding signs that say, GOD BLESS YOU! and the handmade cards—some of them in Spanish—that say, WE WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU. Tania may have her problems, but there’s something about her with which people really seem to connect. I can’t help thinking that if people knew the truth about the hardships she’s had to overcome—the real hardships, the ones she’s too ashamed to speak of and has struggled so long to hide—they’d love her even more.
“Thanks, Jamie,” I say, closing the door and handing the key back to her. “I’ll talk to the network and see if they can send someone down to collect it all. Keep accepting whatever people bring—unless it’s food, of course. Tell people you’re not allowed to accept any food. And if a creepy-looking middle-aged man comes by—”
She looks at me blankly. “A middle-aged man? What exactly does ‘creepy-looking’ mean? Because some of the girls’ dads have been by, and they’re a little creepy-looking—”
I realize I’ve jumped the gun a little. Cooper had left a message for Detective Canavan the night before, asking him to call us back as soon as he could, even though I’d argued that this would betray Tania’s trust.
“She told me to tell no one,” I’d said to him. “And I’ve already told you, and now you’re going to tell the police—”
“The man is a murderer, Heather,” Cooper said. “Tania’s going to need to stop worrying so much about the public relations angle of this thing and get real. It’s all going to come out, one way or another.”
“It isn’t the bad PR she’s worried about,” I’d said. “It’s that he’s going to hurt her baby.”
“Well, his chances of doing that are going to be a lot slimmer once he’s locked up in Rikers,” Cooper said.
It was hard to argue with that line of reasoning. When Detective Canavan called back early this morning, I was the one who picked up the phone. He’d listened to everything I’d had to say about Tania’s former husband—I didn’t sugarcoat it—interrupting only to say the occasional swear word. When I’d finished, he’d said, in his most sarcastic tone, “Well, this is great, Wells. This is just fantastic. We got a homicidal maniac on the loose, and you tell me I have to keep it to myself because of your ex-boyfriend’s new wife’s feelings? I got news for you. This ain’t a Lifetime special, and I ain’t John Stamos.”
I refrained from mentioning that it was hardly likely that Lifetime would cast someone as young as John Stamos to play him. Possibly Tom Selleck.
“We’re only keeping you in the loop as a courtesy,” I said, “because you’re a friend.”
Cooper winced when I said this. At the time I hadn’t realized why . . . until the detective blew up.
“I’m not your friend!” he shouted into the phone. “I’m an officer of the law! You just told me a witness—your good friend Tania Trace—lied under questioning, not once but twice. As a citizen of this city, she had a duty to reveal what she knew.”
“She’s scared,” I said. “She went to the police before for help, and they didn’t offer her any. Isn’t there a statute or something for that? Like the burning bed defense?” I’d actually seen a movie about this on Lifetime.
“Burning bed, my ass,” Detective Canavan growled. “I wish she’d burn this guy in his bed. That’d save me a whole lot of paperwork. You know what I was doing all night? Questioning hippie vegetarian cupcake bakers, trying to figure out if anyone at that Pattycakes place might remember having sold a dozen gluten-free jimmy jobs with vanilla soy gummy whatevers to anyone who mentioned Tania Trace, or if any of them put the poison in the cakes personally. But guess what? Lab results actually came back in a timely fashion for a change, and it turns out those things weren’t vegan or vegetarian or whatever the hell they were supposed to be at all. They didn’t even come from Pattycakes. Guy only used a Pattycakes box. He made the damned cupcakes himself out of a mix, which, if you ask me, is how the hell you’re supposed to make a cake in the first place. Quite the artist he was too, with the icing. Bought the little violets, though. He didn’t make those.”
“This is good to know,” Cooper said, looking excited. “It means Gary Hall is definitely staying someplace in the city, a place with a full kitchen, so that narrows down the number of hotels it could be. He could even have a lease, which we could trace—”
“Goddammit, Cartwright,” Detective Canavan yelled. “Take me off speakerphone! You know how much I hate that.”
Cooper picked up the phone, and the two men started talking. That’s when I decided it was time to go to work, so I could do what I’m about to go into my office to do now.
“You know what,” I say to Jamie. “I’ll type up a Persona Non Grata—”
“Wait,” Jamie says. “A PNG? So they know who did it? They figured it out? Because Gavin still feels really bad he couldn’t describe the guy all that well—”
“We’re not completely sure,” I say carefully. “But we think we have a lead. And tell Gavin not to worry. The guy’s not really all that memorable.”
Unless, of course, you happen to have married him. Then you may not only remember him, you may never be able to get rid of him.
Jamie heaves a shudder. “I bet I’d remember him,” she says.
I’m hoping that, with my efforts, Jamie never has a chance to test her theory.
Chapter 20
I look down at my handiwork after I’ve pulled it from the office printer. Is it too much, I wonder? Gary hasn’t, after all, been convicted of murder. Maybe I should have written “suspected of assault with a deadly weapon and murder.”
On the other hand, we’re down to forty campers. Gary Hall’s managed to kill one crew member and rid us of ten campers in a twenty-four-hour period.
Screw it, I decide. I’m hanging this memo at the front desk, and the security desk as well. The photo—blown up from the one printed off the website of Tania’s high school—isn’t very clear, but it’s all I’ve got. I’ll make enough copies to distribute one to each of the RAs, the desk attendants, and the mail forwarders, and even to the basketball team. No reason everyone shouldn’t be put on alert.
Maybe not the campers, though. Don’t want to start a panic.
Except in the people who need it. Time to place a wake-up call. I sit down at my desk and take out my cell phone.
“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the phone sounds only half awake.
“Hi, Jordan,” I say more cheerfully than I actually feel. “May I please speak to Tania?”
“Tania?” I can picture Jordan in his enormous circular bed—why circular? He’d never been able to offer an adequate explanation—with its gray silk sheets. “She’s asleep. Heather, is that you? Why are you calling here so early? It’s like . . .”—there’s a pause as he looks for a clock—“ . . . ten.”
“I know,” I say. “And I’m sorry. But Tania and I made plans to have a girls’ day out, and I just wanted to let her know that—”
“Heather?” Tania picks up on the other line. She sounds wide awake, but I’m certain Jordan wasn’t lying. She’s always reminded me a little of a cat, so I’m not surprised she’s capable of becoming wide awake at a split second’s notice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I was calling about that plan we made to go shopping today at that new store in SoHo, Gary Hall—”
“You guys are going shopping?” Jordan says, his voice doubly amplified because he hasn’t hung up the phone on his side of the bed and is also lying beside Tania, who is
on the extension a few feet away from him. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“Jordan,” Tania says. “Hang up the phone.”
“But I want to go to Gary Hall. It sounds cool.”
“Jordan,” Tania says again, her tone deadly. “Hang up the phone.”
There’s a click, and then Tania says, her voice a little breathless, as if she’s been moving rapidly—probably to shut herself into their master bathroom—“What do you want, Heather?”
“I just thought you’d want to know,” I say, “that ten of your campers moved out last night. Ten girls lost the opportunity to become empowered through music, like it says on the Tania Trace Rock Camp brochure, all because you’re too frightened of Gary to stand up to him.”
“I did stand up to him,” Tania hisses. There’s an echo-y quality to her voice. She’s definitely in a bathroom. “And it got someone killed. It’s all they were talking about on the news last night after we got home. And there was a message from Jordan’s dad saying that they might have to cancel filming. So I can understand why all the parents are upset. Maybe it’s best that we—”
“Tania,” I say. “Did you know that I walked into Fischer Hall this morning to find it filled with flowers and cards and balloons from your fans? So many of them, we don’t even have the space to put them all. And they aren’t from Gary. They’re from your real fans. The fans who love you and want nothing from you but for you to go on performing and helping them forget their own problems with your beautiful voice.”
God, I think to myself. I’m good at this. Maybe I should change my major and become a publicist instead of an international crime-solver . . .
“Yeah?” Tania says, sounding tired. “Well, for me to do that I have to figure out a way to handle my own problems. Listen, Heather, I’ve decided. I’m just going to send him the money. I’m going to pay him what he wants and maybe he’ll stop. Maybe he’ll finally go away.”
“No, Tania,” I say to her. “That’s the worst thing you could do. Before he was asking for ten thousand a month. Now it’s twenty. What amount is going to be enough? A hundred thousand? Two hundred? When is he going to stop?”
“That’s fine,” Tania says, sounding like she’s about to cry. “Two hundred thousand is fine. Two million. What do I care? I have the money. I have nothing but money. What I don’t have is peace of mind that when I walk out my door he’s not going to be there with a gun, trying to shoot me—”
“Why would he try to shoot you, Tania?” I ask her. “You’re his only source of income.”
“He tried to poison me, didn’t he?” she asks.
“Tania, he knew you were never going to eat those cupcakes. Come on. You’re a professional. Have you ever once eaten a gift of food a fan has left you at a concert or venue? He knows you. He’s probably the one who warned you against doing that.”
Tania sniffles. “Which means he did it on purpose to hurt someone else. And that’s even worse.”
“Of course it is,” I say. “It’s why you were right to stop paying him all along. It’s why you’ve got to keep doing what you said in the song . . . stand up to him, make it on your own. You’ve got to be an example to these girls, because I’m telling you, Tania, they need you. You’ve got to show them that by expressing themselves creatively through singing, songwriting, and performing, they can be whoever they want to be . . . not someone who takes off her clothes on top of a pool table for beer, not someone who can be bought and sold, not some sexual object for a man’s desire, but a strong, tough businesswoman and artist.”
Tania sniffles again. “That’s a really great speech, Heather,” she says. “But he almost killed Bear. And he did kill poor Jared. I’m not going to risk him killing one of those girls, or Jordan, or the baby, or Cooper, or you. And that’s what he’ll be mad enough to do if I don’t—”
“Good,” I say. “Let’s make him that mad.”
There’s an astonished pause before Tania says, “What?”
“You heard me,” I say. “Let’s make him mad. Good and mad. Let’s kick his ass for a change.”
“I already told you, that’s exactly what the police said not to do when I—”
“Tania,” I say. “When you talked to the police before, was Bear around?”
“No,” she admits tearfully.
“What about Cooper? Was Cooper around?”
“No,” she says. “But—”
“Was I around? How about Jordan? Or his dad? Or Jessica or Nicole? Were any of the people who love you and are around you now, around you back then?”
“No. But—”
“No. Things are different now. We’re going to help you, but you have to let us. I think you want to. That’s why you asked for the rock camp to be moved out of the Catskills and into my building. Am I right about that?”
I hear her voice break.
“Ye-e-es,” she says uncertainly. “But I only did it because you’ve caught so many bad people, and I thought if there was anyone who could catch Gary, it would be you. But I was wrong. I didn’t think anyone else was going to get hurt—”
“I know,” I say. I’ve never thought of myself as someone who catches “bad people,” even though I’ve done it before. It’s strange to hear that this is how I’m perceived by a stunningly gorgeous—if completely messed-up—rock diva. “But if we’re going to fix this thing, you have to be honest with me. You’ve got to trust me and you’ve got to help. Okay? Do you think you can do that?”
She sniffles some more, but finally says, “All right. I’ll try. Help how?”
“You say Gary’s been e-mailing you. Can you forward me copies of his e-mails to you?”
“What are you going to do with them?” Tania asks sus-piciously.
“Tania,” I say in a warning tone. “Just do it.” I give her my e-mail address.
“Okay. Is that all?” Tania asks, sounding as if she feels a little sick to her stomach.
“That’s it for now,” I say. “Just remember. You are a role model to all these girls. You cannot hide, and you cannot give in to Gary’s demands.” Then I add, as an afterthought, remembering Detective Canavan’s comment about Lifetime movies, “But don’t do anything dumb either, like go meet him alone on some dark street corner.”
“Why would I do that?” Tania asks. “I hate him. Heather, did you tell him?”
Confused, I ask, “Tell who what?”
“Cooper,” Tania says. “You did, didn’t you?”
I hear a key being slid into the office door’s lock. Rather than propping it open, as I always do on weekdays, I’d closed it behind me.
“Uh, Tania,” I say, “I gotta go. Someone is coming.”
“You told him,” Tania says in a resigned voice. “It’s all right. I knew you would. So long as he doesn’t tell Jordan, I don’t mind.”
“I think you should tell Jordan,” I say. “He’s going to find out anyway. And I promise, he’ll understand. Bye for now.” I hang up just as Lisa comes in, her dog Tricky at her side.
“Oh,” she says, looking surprised but not displeased to see me at my desk. “Hi! What are you doing here?”
“Yesterday was such a disaster,” I say, indicating the key cards and service requests on my desk. “I thought I’d come in and try to catch up.”
Lisa rolls her eyes. “Oh my God,” she says. “I know. Me too. Did you hear about the ten checkouts? And the girls from 1621, with the basketball players?”
“Yes,” I say, picking up the incident report and reading from it. “I also heard that you’re a dirty whore who needs to take a shower in order not to be so dirty.”
“Well,” Lisa says, laughing, “what I heard is that you’re a stuck-up bitch.”
We both begin laughing. Once we start it’s hard to stop. It’s probably because we’re a little giddy from all the stress. But it feels good.
“Oh God,” I say after we’ve calmed down a little. “Has anyone heard from Stephanie?”
“I haven’t,” Lis
a says. “She didn’t look so good when she left the hospital yesterday.”
“Well,” I say, “I can’t imagine why she would. I’m guessing she’s going to be out of commission for a few days.”
“Which leaves us with a dorm full of adolescent girls with nothing to do,” Lisa says, “and a male Division III college basketball team that we physically cannot watch all the time. This is a recipe for disaster. Did you ever get an itinerary for the camp activities?”
“No,” I say. “Did you?”
“Why would Stephanie share it with me?” Lisa leans back against the couch onto which she’s sunk. “I’m just a lowly dorm administrator.”
“Residence hall,” I correct her somberly.
“Right,” she says and looks thoughtful. “We better think up some activities for these girls, and fast. Outside the building, so they don’t happen to run into Magnus and his crew while they’re painting the lower floors. How about one of those Sex and the City tours? Everybody would like that, even the moms.”
“That’s good,” I say. “But how about first we take all the flowers and stuffed animals that people have been dropping off for Tania and deliver them to the Children’s Hospital of New York? Jared told me before he died that that’s what Tania likes for people to do with the gifts her fans bring her. And we could make sure that the cards get sent to his family.”
Lisa’s eyes look as if they’ve suddenly filled with tears. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, I think that would be a great programming activity for all the girls. But it would be especially meaningful for the girls in 1621, who don’t seem to have their priorities very straight.”
“Exactly,” I say. “You know what else would be fun to do with them? Take them to famous rock-and-roll landmarks in New York City.”
Lisa claps her hands. “Like that place where John Lennon got shot. Or the hotel where that Sid guy murdered Nancy!”
“Or,” I say calmly, “places not associated with murder, to get their minds off what happened here. Maybe a more positive, female-centric tour.”