by Meg Cabot
“Have you told any of this to Rachel?” Sarah asks me, when I’m done.
“No,” I say. “Rachel has enough to worry about, don’t you think?” Besides—I don’t mention this part to Sarah—if it turns out I’m wrong, it won’t look so good at my six months’ employment review…you know, my suspecting the son of the president of the college of a double homicide.
“Good,” Sarah says. “Don’t. Because has it occurred to you that this whole thing—you know, with your thinking that Elizabeth and Roberta were murdered—might be a manifestation of your own insecurities over having been betrayed and abandoned by your mother?”
I just blink at her. “What?”
“Well,” Sarah says, pushing up her glasses. “Your mother stole all your money and fled the country with your manager. That had to have been the most traumatic event in your life. I mean, you lost everything—all your savings, as well as the people on whom you thought you could most depend, your father having been absent most of your life to begin with due to his long-term incarceration for passing bad checks. And yet whenever anyone brings it up, you dismiss the whole thing as if it were nothing.”
“No, I don’t,” I say. Because I don’t. Or at least, I don’t think I do.
“Yes, you do,” Sarah says. “You even still speak to your mother. I heard you on the phone with her the other day. You were chatting with her about what to get your dad for his birthday. In jail. The woman who stole all your money and fled to Argentina!”
“Well,” I say, a little defensively. “She’s still my mother, no matter what she’s done.”
I’m never sure how to explain about my mom. Yes, when the going got tough—when I let Cartwright Records know I was only interested in singing my own lyrics, and Jordan’s dad, in response, unceremoniously dropped me from the label—not that my sales had been going gangbusters anymore anyway—my mom got going.
But that’s just how she is. I was mad at her for a while, of course.
But being mad at my mom is kind of like being mad because it’s raining out. She can’t help what she does, any more than clouds can.
But I suppose Sarah, if she heard that, would just say I’m in denial, or worse.
“Isn’t it possible that you’re displacing the hostility you feel about what your mother did to you onto poor Chris Allington?” Sarah wants to know.
“Excuse me,” I say. I’m getting kind of tired of repeating myself. “But that planter didn’t just fall out of the sky, you know. Well, okay, it did, but not by itself.”
“And could it be that you miss the attention you used to receive from your fans so much that you’ve latched on to any excuse to make yourself feel important by inventing this big important mystery for you to solve, where none actually exists?”
I remember, with a pang, what Cooper had said outside the service elevator. Hadn’t it been something along these same lines? About me wanting to relive the thrill of my glory days back at the Mall of America?
But wanting to find out who’s responsible for killing people in your place of work is totally different from singing in front of thousands of busy shoppers.
I mean, isn’t it?
“Um” is what I say in response to Sarah’s accusation. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
All I can think is, Sarah’s lucky she met Yael when she did. The kibbutz guy, I mean. Otherwise, she’s just the kind of girl Chris would go for next.
Well, except for that habit she has of psychoanalyzing people all the time. I could see how that might get annoying.
I haven’t been to a dressy party in ages, so when I finally get off work that night, I have a lot of preparations to make. First I have to go to Patty’s to get the dress—which fits, thank God, but barely.
Then I have to give myself a pedicure and manicure, since there isn’t time to have my nails done by professionals. Then I have to wash and condition my hair, shave my legs (and under my arms, since Patty’s dress is strapless), and, then, just to be on the safe side, I shave my bikini line as well, because, even though it’s highly unlikely I’m going to get lucky twice in two days, you never know. Then I have to apply a facial mask, and moisturize all over. Then I have to shape my eyebrows, dry and style my hair, apply makeup, and layer fragrance.
Then, noticing that the heels of my red pumps have obviously met with an unfortunate accident involving a subway grate, I have to go over them with a red Magic Marker.
And of course, through all of that, I have to pause occasionally to snack on Double-Stuff Oreos so that I won’t get light-headed from not having had anything to eat since this afternoon, when Magda smuggled that Reuben from the caf for me.
By the time Cooper taps on my apartment door, I’m just struggling to zip up Patty’s dress and wondering why it had fit two hours ago in her loft but doesn’t fit now—
“Just a second,” I yell, trying to figure out what on earth I’m going to wear if I can’t get Patty’s dress to close properly….
Finally the zipper moves, though, and I grab my wrap and bag and clatter down the stairs, thinking it’s a shame there’s no one who can open the door for me and say, “She’ll be down in a minute,” so I can make a sweeping entrance, like Rory Gilmore or whoever. As it is, I have to knee Lucy out of the way just so I can get to the door.
I regret to say I don’t register Cooper’s reaction to my appearance—if he even had one, which I kind of doubt—because I’m so completely taken aback by his. Cooper does own a tuxedo, it turns out…a very nice one, in fact.
And he looks more than a little sexy in it.
What is it about men in tuxedos? Why do they always look so good in them? Maybe it’s the emphasis on the width of the chest and shoulders. Maybe it’s the startling contrast of crisp white shirt front and elegant black lapel.
Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a guy in a tux who didn’t look great. But Cooper is the exception. He doesn’t look great.
He looks fantastic.
I’m so busy admiring him that I nearly forget I’m attending this event to catch a killer. For a second—just one—I really do delude myself into thinking Cooper and I are on a date. Especially when he says, “You look great.”
Reality returns, though, when he looks at his watch and says distractedly, “Let’s go, all right? I’ve got to meet someone later, so if we’re going to do this, we need to get a move on.”
I feel a pang of disappointment. Meet someone? Who? Who does he have to meet? A client? A snitch?
Or a girlfriend?
“Heather?” Cooper raises his eyebrows. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say, faintly.
“Good,” Cooper says, taking me by the elbow. “Let’s go.”
I follow him down the stairs and out the door, telling myself that I’m being an idiot. Again. So what if he has to meet someone later? What do I care? This isn’t a date. It isn’t. At least, not with him. If I have any kind of date at all tonight, it’s a date with the killer of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.
I repeat this to myself all the way through the park, past the Washington Square monument, and even as we cross the street to the library, where the event is being held and which has been transformed, by strategic placement of red carpets and colored lights and banners, into a ballroom for the occasion.
We have to dodge a few stretch limos and a bunch of uniformed campus security guards (Pete had been asked to pull a double for the occasion, but he’d said no, since his daughter Nancy had a science fair that night), all of whom wear white gloves and have whistles in their mouths, just to approach the massive, clay-colored building. There are velvet ropes to keep out the riffraff…only there doesn’t seem to be either riff or raff expressing much interest in crashing the party, just some graduate students standing there, clutching their backpacks, looking angry that the party is preventing them from getting to their study carrels.
Cooper shows his tickets to a guy by the door, and then we’re ushered inside and immediately assail
ed by waiters wanting to ply us with drinks and crab-stuffed mushroom caps. Which are actually quite tasty. The Oreos turn out not to be sitting very well beneath my control top panties, anyway.
Cooper snags two glasses for us—not of champagne, but of sparkling water.
“Never drink on the job,” he advises me.
I think about Nora Charles, and the five martinis she’d downed in The Thin Man, trying to keep up with Nick. Imagine how many murders he might have solved if he’d followed Cooper’s advice, and stayed sober!
“Here’s to homicide,” Cooper says, tapping the side of my glass with his. His blue eyes glint at me—almost taking my breath away, as always, with their brilliance.
“Cheers,” I reply, and sip, glancing around the wide room for faces I recognize.
There’s an orchestra playing a jazzed up version of “Moon River” over by the reference section. Banquet tables have been set up in front of the elevators, from which jumbo shrimp are disappearing at an alarming rate. People are milling around, looking unnaturally amused by each other’s conversation. I see Dr. Flynn speaking rapidly to the dean of undergraduates, a woman whose eyes are glazed over with either boredom or drink—it’s hard to tell which.
I spot a cluster of housing administrators bunched under a gold New York College banner, like a family of refugees at Ellis Island, huddled under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. College administrators, I’ve noticed, don’t seem to be hugely respected by either the student body or the academic population. For the most part, the building directors at New York College seem to be viewed as little more than camp counselors, and Dr. Jessup and his team of coordinators and associate directors aren’t given much more respect than that. Which is unfair, because they—well, okay, we—work super hard—way harder than a lot of those professors, who breeze in to teach a one-hour class once a week, then spend the rest of their time backstabbing their colleagues in literary reviews.
While Cooper is being sucked into conversation with a trustee—an old Cartwright family friend—I study my supervisors over the rim of my glass. Dr. Jessup is looking uncomfortable in his tux. Standing beside him is a woman I take to be his statuesque wife, since she appears to be exchanging pleasantries with a woman who could only be Dr. Flynn’s better half. Both women look lean and lovely in sparkly sheath dresses.
But neither one of them looks as good as Rachel. Rachel stands beside Dr. Jessup, her eyes sparkling as brightly as champagne winking in the glass she holds. She looks resplendent in form-fitting silk. The midnight blue of her gown contrasts startlingly with her porcelain skin, which in turn seems to glow against the darkness of her hair, piled on top of her head with jeweled pins.
For someone who’d declared she’d had “nothing to wear” to the ball, Rachel had done really well for herself.
So well, in fact, that I can’t help feeling sort of self-conscious about the way I’m kind of spilling out of Patty’s dress. And not in a good way, either.
It takes me a while to locate the college’s illustrious leader, but I finally spot him over by one of the library check-out kiosks. President Allington has ditched the tank top for once, which might be part of the reason it takes me so long to find him. He’s actually wearing a tuxedo, and looks surprisingly distinguished in it.
Too bad I can’t say the same for poor Mrs. Allington, in her black velour, bell-bottomed pantsuit. Its wide sleeves fall back every time she lifts a glass to her mouth…which I must say she’s doing with alarming alacrity.
But where, I wonder, is the Allingtons’ progeny, the suave Chris/Todd/Mark? I don’t see him anywhere, though I’d been positive he’d show up, being a cute guy in his twenties, and all. What cute guy in his twenties can resist an event like this one? I mean, come on. Free beer?
Cooper is talking about lipstick cameras or something with an older gentleman who called me “miss” and said he liked my dress (in so sincere a tone that I looked down to make sure the zipper is still holding) when suddenly a very slender, very attractive woman dressed all in black walks up and says Cooper’s name in a very surprised voice.
“Cooper?” The woman, who manages to look glamorous and professorial at the same time, takes his arm in an unmistakably territorial manner—as if in the past, she’s touched him in other, more intimate places, and has every right to grab his arm—and says, “What are you doing here? It seems like it’s been months since I last heard from you. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
I can’t say Cooper looks panic-stricken, exactly.
But he does look a little like a guy who is wishing very hard that he were somewhere else.
“Marian,” he says, placing a hand on her back and leaning down to kiss her. On the cheek. “Nice to see you.” Then he makes introductions, first to the old guy, then to me. “Heather, this is Professor Marian Braithwaite. Marian teaches art history. Marian, this is Heather Wells. She works here at New York College as well.”
Marian reaches out and shakes my hand. Her fingers flutter like a tiny bird trapped between my own gargantuan mitts. In spite of this, I’m willing to bet she works out regularly at the college gym. Also that she’s a showerer, and not a bather. She just has the look.
“Really?” Marian says, brightly, smiling her perfect Isabella Rossellini smile. “What do you teach?”
“Um,” I say, wishing someone would shove a potted geranium on my head and spare me from having to reply. Sadly, no one does. “Nothing, actually. I’m the assistant director of one of the undergraduate dormitories. I mean, residence halls.”
“Oh.” Marian’s perfect smile never wavers, but I can tell by the way she keeps looking at Cooper that all she wants to do is drag him away and rip all his clothes off, preferably with her teeth, and not stand around chatting with the assistant director of an undergraduate residence hall. I can’t say I really blame her, either. “How nice. So, Cooper, have you been out of town? You haven’t returned a single one of my calls….”
I don’t get to hear the rest of what Marian is saying because suddenly my own arm is seized. Only when I turn to see who is doing the seizing, instead of an ex—which would, of course, have been impossible, mine being in the hospital—I find Rachel.
“Hello, Heather,” she cries. Twin spots of unnaturally bright color light her cheeks, and I realize that Rachel has been hitting the champagne. Hard. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight. How are you? And Jordan? I’ve been so worried about him. How is he?”
I realize, with a guilty start, that I hadn’t thought of Jordan all night. Not since I’d opened my door and laid eyes on Cooper, as a matter of fact. I stammer, “Um, he’s all right. Good condition, in fact. Expected to make a full recovery.”
“What a semester we’ve had, huh?” Rachel elbows me chummily. “You and I definitely need a few weeks’ vacation after all we’ve been through. I can’t believe it. Two deaths in two weeks!” She glances around, worried someone might have heard her, and lowers her voice. “I can’t believe it.”
I grin at her. Rachel is definitely drunk. Most likely, she hadn’t had anything to eat, and the champagne has gone right to her head. Most of the hors d’oeuvres they’re passing around, stuffed mushroom caps and shrimp in puffed pastries, don’t look as if they’re all that low carb, so Rachel’s probably been eschewing them.
Still, it’s nice to see Rachel happy for a change—although it’s surprising that something like this, which seems kind of stodgy and boring to me, is all it takes to bring out the party girl in her. But then, I didn’t go to Yale, so maybe that’s why.
“Neither can I,” I agree with her. “You look really nice, by the way. That dress suits you.”
“Thanks so much!” Rachel sparkles. “I had to pay full price, but I think it was worth it.” Then her gaze falls on Cooper, and her eyes light up even more. “Heather,” she whispers, excitedly. “You’re here with Cooper? Are you and he—”
I glance over my shoulder at my “date,” who is still apparently trying to explai
n to the professor where he’s been for the past few months (which, as far as I knew, is right on Waverly Place. I kind of wonder if maybe Cooper has been trying to give Marian the old heave-ho. Why else hadn’t he called her? Although why any guy would dump a catch like her, I can’t imagine. She’s successful, intelligent, gorgeous, thin, a showerer…geez, I’d date her).
“Um,” I say, feeling my cheeks warm up a little at the thought of Cooper and me being, you know. Together. “No. He just had a spare ticket, so I tagged along. We’re just friends.”
And destined to remain no more than that. Apparently.
“Like you and Jordan,” Rachel says.
“Yeah,” I say, managing a smile—though I don’t know how. “Like me and Jordan.”
It isn’t her fault. I mean, she doesn’t know she’s just rubbing salt in the wound.
“Well, I better get going,” she says. “I promised Stan I’d snag one of those crab cakes for him….”
“Oh,” I say. “Sure. Bye.”
Rachel glides away on her very own cloud nine. I wonder if the rumor Pete heard, about Rachel getting a big fat promotion, was true. I wouldn’t be surprised. Nobody else on campus had had to feel for two different pulses in as many weeks. What could the college do to show its appreciation, other than promote her? A Pansy Award isn’t enough. After all, Magda said Justine had been nominated for a Pansy once because she’d let a student borrow her phone book.
“Hey, blondie!”
I ignore the voice from behind me, and stare at Cooper instead. He’s still talking to Marian Braithwaite, who’s looking up at him adoringly and laughing every now and then at whatever it is he’s saying. How do they know each other? Maybe Marian had hired him. Maybe she’d suspected her professor husband was cheating on her, and she’d hired Cooper, and he’d proved that she had nothing to worry about, and that’s why she’s so glad to see him, and keeps reaching out to touch his arm—