by Meg Cabot
I stand a little ways from both the security and the reception desks, feeling myself begin to shake. I don’t know the name. I don’t ask to see the photo on the ID. I don’t want to know if I knew the face.
It’s right then that Rachel rounds the corner from the ladies’ room.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her gaze going from my face to Pete’s to President Allington’s.
It’s Tina, behind the desk, who speaks.
“Another one fell off the top of the elevator,” she says, in a small voice. “She’s dead.”
Rachel’s face drains of all its color beneath her carefully applied MAC foundation.
But when she speaks a few seconds later, there is no tremor in her voice. “I assume the authorities have been notified? Good. Do we have an ID? Oh, thank you, Pete. Tina, beep Maintenance, and have them turn off all the elevators. Heather, can you call Dr. Jessup’s office, and let them know what’s going on? President Allington, I am so sorry about this. Please, go back to your breakfast…”
Aware that I’m shaking and that my heart is beating a million times a minute, I slip back to my office to start making calls.
Only this time, instead of calling Dr. Jessup’s office first, I call Cooper.
“Cartwright Investigations,” he says, because I’ve called him on his office line, hoping he’d be there.
“It’s me,” I say. I keep my voice down, because Sarah is in Rachel’s office next door, calling each of the resident assistants on their cell phones and telling them what’s happened, then asking them to come back to their floors as soon as possible. “There’s been another one.”
“Another what?” Cooper asks. “And why are you whispering?”
“Another death by elevator,” I whisper.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Dead?”
I think about Pete’s face.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Jesus, Heather. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I say, for the third and final time. “Listen…could you come over?”
“Come over? What for?”
The firemen from Ladder #9 come striding past our office door just then, in their helmets and coats. One of them is carrying an axe. Obviously, no one told New York’s bravest what the nature of the emergency was when they called.
“Downstairs,” I say to them, pointing to the stairs to the basement. “Another, um, elevator incident.”
The captain looks surprised, but nods and leads what has suddenly turned into a very grim procession past the reception desk and down the stairs.
To Cooper, I whisper, “I want to get to the bottom of what is going on over here, and I could use the help of a professional investigator, Cooper.”
“Whoa,” Cooper says. “Slow down there, slugger. Are the police there? Aren’t they professional investigators?”
“The police are just going to say the same thing about this one that they did about the last one,” I say. “That she was elevator surfing, and slipped.”
“Because that’s probably what happened, Heather.”
“No,” I say. “No, not this time. Definitely not this time.”
“Why? Is this latest one preppie too?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But that’s not funny.”
“I didn’t mean it to be funny. I just—”
“She liked Ziggy, Coop.” My voice cracks a little, but I don’t care.
“She liked what?”
“Ziggy. That cartoon character.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Because it’s like the uncoolest cartoon character ever. No one who likes Ziggy is going to elevator surf, Coop. No one.”
“Heather—”
“And that’s not all,” I whisper, as Sarah’s voice drifts from Rachel’s office, self-importantly intoning, “We need you to come back to the building as soon as possible. There’s been another death. I am not at liberty to reveal the details just now, but it’s imperative that you—”
“Someone took the key,” I tell Cooper.
“What key?” he wants to know.
“The key that opens the elevator doors.” I am losing it. I know I am. I am practically crying. But I struggle to keep my voice from shaking. “No one signed it out, Coop. You’re supposed to sign it out. But they didn’t. Which means whoever has it doesn’t want anyone to know. Which means whoever has it can open the elevator doors anytime they want…even if there’s no car there.”
“Heather.” Cooper says, in a voice I can’t, even in my agitated state, help finding incredibly soothing. And sexy. “This is something you need to tell the police. Right away.”
“Okay,” I say, in a small voice. In Rachel’s office, Sarah is going, “I don’t care if it’s your grandmother’s birthday, Alex. There’s been a death in the building. Which is more important to you: your grandmother’s birthday, or your job?”
“Go tell the police exactly what you told me,” Cooper’s soothing, sexy voice is saying in my ear. “And then go get a big cup of coffee with lots of milk and sugar in it and drink it all while it’s still hot.”
This last part surprises me. “Why?” I say.
“Because I have found in my line of work that sweet milky drinks are good for shock when there is no whiskey available. Okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up, and then I call Dr. Jessup, and explain to his assistant—because she says Dr. Jessup is in a meeting—what’s happened. Upon hearing the news, his assistant, Jill, says, in an appropriately panicked voice, “Oh my God. I’ll let him know right away.”
I thank her and hang up. Then I stare at the phone.
Cooper is right. I need to tell the police about the key.
I tell Sarah I’ll be back in a minute, and leave the office. I walk out into the lobby—and find it a sea of confusion. Basketball players mingle with firemen. Administrators are on every available phone, including Pete’s and the one at the reception desk, doing damage control. Rachel is nodding her head as the fire chief tells her something.
I glance toward the front door of the building. The same police officer who’d been there the day Elizabeth died is standing there again, not letting any of the kids outside back into the building.
“You’ll get back in when I say you’ll get back in,” the cop is snarling at a skinhead with a lip ring who is going, “But I have to get to my room to get my project! If I don’t turn in my project by noon, I’ll get an F!”
“Excuse me,” I say to the cop. “Can you tell me who is in charge here?”
The cop glances at me, then jerks a thumb in Rachel’s direction.
“Near as I can tell, that one over there,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I mean, is there a detective, or—”
“Oh yeah.” The cop nods toward a tall, gray-haired man in a brown corduroy jacket and plaid tie who is leaning against the wall—and, though he probably doesn’t know it, getting glitter all down his back, since he’s brushing up against a poster urging students to attend an audition for Pippin that is heavy on the Elmer’s glued glitter. Except for an unlit cigar at the corner of his mouth that he appears to be chewing on, he is doing absolutely nothing at all.
“Detective Canavan,” the cop says.
“Thanks,” I say to the cop, who is telling another resident, “I don’t care if you’re bleeding out the eyes. You’re not getting back into this building until I say so.”
I approach the detective with my heart in my throat. I’ve never spoken to a detective before. Well, except for when I was pressing grand larceny charges against my mom.
“Detective Canavan?” I ask.
I realize at once that my first impression—that he is doing nothing—was totally wrong. Detective Canavan isn’t doing nothing at all. He is staring fixedly at my boss’s legs, which look quite shapely beneath her pencil skirt.
He rips his gaze from Rachel’s legs and looks at me instead. He has a br
istly gray mustache that actually looks quite good on him. Facial hair so rarely flatters.
“Yeah?” he says, in a smoke-roughened voice.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Heather Wells. I’m the assistant director here at Fischer Hall. And, um, I just want to tell someone—the elevator key is missing. It might not mean anything—keys go missing here all the time. But I just thought someone should know. Because it seems really weird to me, these girls dying from elevator surfing. Because, you know, girls just don’t. Elevator surf. In my experience.”
Detective Canavan, who has listened attentively to my whole speech, waits until my voice peters out before taking the cigar from his mouth and pointing it at me.
“‘Sugar Rush,’ right?” he says.
I am so surprised, my jaw becomes unhinged. I finally manage to stammer, “Um, yes.”
“Thought so.” The cigar goes back between his teeth. “My kid had a poster of you up on the door to her bedroom. Had to look at you in that damned miniskirt every time I went to tell her to turn down her damned stereo.”
Since there is absolutely no reply I can make to this statement, I remain silent.
“What the hell are you doing,” Detective Canavan asks, “working here?”
“It’s a long story,” I say, really hoping he’s not going to make me tell it.
He doesn’t.
“As my daughter would say,” Detective Canavan says, “back when she was your biggest fan, Whatever. Now what’s this about a missing key?”
I explain it to him again. I also mention, in passing, the part about Elizabeth being a preppie, and Roberta liking Ziggy, and how both of these facts made them highly unlikely candidates for elevator surfing. But mostly I dwell on the missing key.
“Lemme get this straight,” Detective Canavan says, when I’m done. “You don’t think these girls—who were both, if I understand it, freshmen, new to the city, and full of what my daughter, the French major, calls the joie de vivre—were going for joyrides on top of your building’s elevator cars at all. You think someone is going around, opening the elevator doors when there’s no car there, and pushing these girls down the shaft to their deaths. Have I got that right?”
Hearing it put like that, I realize how stupid my theory sounds. More than stupid. Idiotic, even.
Except…except Ziggy!
“Let’s just say you’re right,” Detective Canavan says. “How did whoever is doing this get the elevator key in the first place? You said you guys keep it in a lockbox behind—what is it? That desk there?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And who has access back there? Anybody?”
“No,” I say. “Just the student workers and building staff.”
“So you think some guy who works for you is going around, killing girls? Which guy, huh?” He points at Pete, standing behind the guard’s desk, speaking to one of the firemen. “That one there? Or what about that guy?” He points at Carl, who is still visibly pale, but is nevertheless describing what he’d seen at the bottom of the shaft to a uniformed police officer.
“Okay,” I say, starting to feel like I want to die. Because I realize how stupid I was being. In about five seconds, this guy had shot so many holes in my theory, it looked like a big chunk of Swiss cheese.
But still.
“Okay, so, maybe you’re right. But maybe—”
“Maybe you better show me where you keep this missing key,” Detective Canavan says, and straightens up. I am delighted, as I follow him toward the reception desk, to see that I was right: There is pink glitter all over his shoulders, as if he’s been fairy-dusted.
As we approach the reception desk, I see that Tina has disappeared. I throw a questioning look at Pete.
“Packages,” Pete interrupts his conversation with the fireman to say to me, meaning that Tina is escorting the mail carrier to the room down the hall where we lock arriving packages until the students can be notified to come down to the desk to claim them.
I nod. Rain or shine, sleet or snow, the mail must get through…even if there’s a girl lying dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft.
I slip behind the desk, ignoring the phones, which are ringing off the hook, and head straight for the key cabinet.
“This is where we keep the keys,” I explain to Detective Canavan, who has followed me through the door to the reception desk and now stands with me behind the counter. The key box is large and metal, mounted to the wall. Inside the box is hanging rack after hanging rack of keys. There are three hundred of them, one spare for every room in the building, plus assorted keys that are for staff use only. They all look basically the same, except for the key to the elevator doors, which is shaped a little like an Allen wrench, and not a typical key at all.
“So to get at them, you have to get back here,” Detective Canavan says. I don’t miss the fact that his gray eyebrows have raised at the sight of all the mail bags, slumped haphazardly on the floor at our feet. The desk is hardly what you’d call the most secure area in the building. “And to get back here, you have to pass the security desk, which is manned twenty-four hours a day.”
“Right,” I say. “The security guards know who is allowed behind the desk and who isn’t. They’re not going to let someone go back here unless they work here. And usually there’s a worker behind the counter, anyway, who wouldn’t let anybody have access to the keys unless he or she was staff. And even then, we make them sign them out. The keys, I mean. But no one signed the elevator key out. It’s just…gone.”
“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says. “You said that. Listen, I got some real crimes—including a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway—that I need to investigate. But please, show me where this elusive key, which could prove that the young lady in question didn’t die accidentally, normally hangs.”
I flip through the hanging racks, thinking that I’m going to kill Cooper. I mean, I can’t believe he talked me into doing this. This guy doesn’t believe me. It’s bad enough he’s seen that poster of me from Sugar Rush. If there’s anything that can undermine a person’s credibility, it’s a life-sized poster of her in a pastel tiger print mini screaming into a microphone at the Mall of America.
And okay, my conviction that girls don’t elevator surf—particularly preppie, Ziggy-loving girls—may not be what anyone could call rock-solid proof. But what about the missing key? What about THAT?
Except that, as I flip to the rack that normally holds the elevator door key, I see something that makes my blood run cold.
Because there, in the exact place it’s supposed to go—the exact place it wasn’t, just moments ago—is the elevator door key.
8
* * *
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
Wait and see me
You’ll wanna be me
When I get him
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
“That Boy”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records
* * *
He says he’ll be here in five minutes, but he’s in the lobby in less than three.
He’s never been inside the building before, and looks strangely out of place in it…maybe because he isn’t tattooed or pierced like everyone else who passes by the desk.
Or maybe it’s just because he’s so much better-looking than everybody else, standing there with his bed-rumpled hair (although I know he’s been up for hours—he runs in the morning) and his banged-up leather jacket and jeans.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me.
“Hey.” I try to smile, but it’s impossible, so I settle for saying, instead, “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem,” he says, glancing over to the TV lounge, just outside the cafeteria door, where Rachel, who’d been joined by an ashen-faced Dr. Je
ssup, along with a half-dozen panicked residence hall staffers, are milling around, looking tight-faced and upset.
“Where’d the cops go?” he asks.
“They left,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “There’s been a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway. There’s just that one left, guarding the elevator shaft until the coroner can get here to take her away. Since they decided her death was accidental, I guess they figured there was no reason to stay.”
I think this is a very diplomatic response, considering what I want to say about Detective Canavan and his cronies.
“But you think they’re wrong,” Cooper says. A statement, not a question.
“Someone took that key, Coop,” I say. “And put it back when no one was looking. I’m not making it up. I’m not insane.”
Although, the way my voice rises on the word insane, that claim may actually be debatable.
But Cooper’s not here to debate it.
“I know,” he says gently. “I believe you. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I know,” I say, regretting my outburst. “And thanks. Well. Let’s go.”
Cooper looks hesitant. “Wait. Go where?”
“Roberta’s room,” I say. I hold up the master key I’ve swiped from the key box. “I think we should check her room first.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But we have to start somewhere.”
Cooper looks at the key, then back at me.
“I want you to know,” Cooper says, “that I think this is a bad idea.”
“I know,” I say. Because I do.
“So why are we doing it?”
I am about five seconds from bursting into tears. I’ve felt this way since Jessica first burst into my office with the news about another death, and my humiliation in front of Detective Canavan hasn’t helped the matter any.
But I struggle to keep the hysteria from my voice.
“Because this is happening in my building. It’s happening to my girls. And I want to be sure it’s happening the way these cops and everyone are saying it’s happening, and that it’s not…you know. What I’m thinking.”