Size 14 Is Not Fat Either (16 page)

Which did not bode well for my plan of bearing Cooper’s children, much less asking him if my dad could move in.

Sadly, Detective Canavan was not in the least bit interested in any of the information I was able to impart pertaining to Lindsay’s complicated love life. Or at least, if he was, he didn’t act like it. He sat at his desk with a bored expression on his face through my entire recitation, then, when I was done, all he said was,

“Ms. Wells, leave the Winer boy alone. Do you have any idea what his father could do to you?”

“Chop me up into little pieces and bury them in cement beneath the concrete foundation of one of the buildings he’s constructing?” I asked.

Detective Canavan rolled his eyes. “No. Sue you for harassment. That guy’s got more lawyers than Trump.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated.

“Was the Winer boy signed in the night Lindsay was killed?” the detective asked, though he clearly already knew the answer. He just wanted me to say it. “Not just by Lindsay, but by anyone else?

Anyone at all?”

“No,” I was forced to admit. “But like I was telling Cooper, there are tons of ways people can sneak into the building if they really want—”

“You think whoever killed that girl acted alone?” the detective wanted to know. “You think the murderer and his accomplices all snuck in past a guard who is paid to keep people from sneaking in?”

“Some of his accomplices could live in the building,” I pointed out. “That could be how they got the key….”

Detective Canavan gave me a sour look. Then he went on to inform me that he and his fellow investigators were already aware of Doug Winer’s relationship with the victim, and that I should—in fancy detective-speak—butt out, a sentiment that was echoed by a still-steaming Cooper on our way home.

I tried to explain to him about Magda and her request—that Lindsay’s character need not be assassinated during the investigation into her death—but this only resulted in Cooper’s pointing out that beautiful girls who love too much, as Lindsay appeared to have done, often meet unpleasant ends.

Which really only served to illustrate Magda’s point.

Cooper, however, was of the opinion that if the shoe fit, Lindsay was going to have to wear it. To which I replied, “Sure. If anyone could find her foot.”

Our parting, at the front door of Fischer Hall, was not what anyone would reasonably call amicable.

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Thus the need for steak before I introduced the topic of my father.

“I have to go home and walk my dog,” I say to my boss, making one last effort to get out of what I just know is going to be an evening filled with hilarity. Not.

“Fine,” Tom says. “But be back here by six. Hey, don’t give me that look. You were at the ‘Budget Office’”—He makes air quotes with his fingers—“for two hours this morning, and I didn’t say anything about it, did I?”

I make a face at him but don’t protest further, because he’s got a point. He could have busted me for my disappearing act earlier in the day, but he didn’t. Possibly he’s the coolest boss in the world. Except for the part where he wants to quit and go back to Texas, where girls apparently don’t get decapitated in their residence hall cafeteria.

Having to attend this mandatory dinner and game is putting a serious crimp in my groveling plans. But when I get home to let Lucy out, I see that Cooper’s not around, anyway. The message light on the machine is blinking, and when I pressPLAY , I realize why Coop might be avoiding home. I hear Jordan’s voice, saying irritably, “Don’t think you can just hang up on me like that, Cooper, and that it’s all over. Because it’s not. You have a real opportunity here to show the family that you can be a stand-up fellow. Don’t blow it.”

Wow.Stand-up fellow . No wonder Cooper hung up on him.

Poor Cooper. Having me around has put a real crimp in his resolve never to speak to his family again. I mean, considering that my living with him basically drives Jordan crazy. So instead of ignoring his black sheep brother, as he might have were I not around, Jordan instead focuses inordinate amounts of attention on trying to figure out what’s going on between us.

Which, sadly, is nothing.

But I don’t have a problem with Jordan thinking otherwise. The only problem, of course, is that it’s highly unlikely Cooper is ever going to fall in love with me if he’s constantly being harangued about me by his brother. That, and my annoying tendency nearly to get myself killed all the time, has to be extremely off-putting. Not to mention the fact that he’s seen me in sweats.

There are no other messages on the machine—not even, weirdly, from my dad, though he’d said he was going to call. A quick scan of New York One shows the meteorologist still talking about this blizzard we’re supposed to get—now it’s hovering somewhere over Pennsylvania. I lace on my Timberlands, fully expecting that I’ll just be taking them off later that night without having encountered a flake of snow. On the plus side, at least my feet will get gross and sweaty from wearing snow boots inside a hot, crowded gymnasium.

Back outside, I’m hurrying around the corner to Fischer Hall when I spy Reggie conducting a transaction with someone in a Subaru. I wait politely for him to finish, then smile as he approaches.

“Business is picking up,” I observe.

“Because this storm they predicted is holding off,” Reggie agrees. “If we’re lucky, it will pass us by completely.”

“From your lips to the weather god’s ears,” I say. Then, pushing aside my—only slightly—guilty
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conscience, since I knew I was about to do something both Cooper and Detective Canavan wouldn’t like (but really, if either of them would show just a modicum of respect for the deceased, I wouldn’t feel obligated. I mean, how come guys who have a lot of sex are considered players, while girls who have a lot of sex are considered sluts?), I continue, “Listen, Reggie. What do you know about a kid named Doug Winer?”

Reggie looks blank. “Never heard of him. Should I have?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He appears to be Big Man on Campus. He lives over at one of the fraternities.”

“Ah,” Reggie says knowingly. “A party kid.”

“Is that what they’re calling them these days?”

“That’s whatI call them,” Reggie says, looking mildly amused. “Anyway, I haven’t heard of him. But then, party kids and me? We travel in vastly different social circles.”

“Probably not as different as you might think,” I say, thinking about the marijuana haze hanging over the Tau Phi Epsilon pool table. “But will you ask around about him, anyway?”

“For you, Heather?” Reggie gives a courtly bow. “Anything. You think this boy has something to do with the young lady who lost her head?”

“Possibly,” I say carefully, conscious of Detective Canavan’s threat about the litigiousness of Doug’s father.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Reggie says. Then he knits his brow. “Where are you going? Back to work?

They’re making you keep very long hours this week.”

“Please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Don’t even get me started.”

“Well,” Reggie says, “if you need a little pick-me-up…”

I glare at him. “Reggie.”

“Never mind,” Reggie says, and drifts away.

Back at Fischer Hall, the excitement about the staff’s Dinner and B-Ball Game With the President is palpable. Not. In fact, entirely the opposite is true. Most of the staff are milling around the lobby looking disgruntled. The cafeteria staff—day shift—are being particularly vocal in their protest that, as this is a mandatory function, they should be receiving overtime pay for it. Gerald, their boss, is maintaining that they’re getting a free meal out of it, so they should just shut up. Understandably, his employees seem to feel that eating the food they helped prepare in the cafeteria they help maintain and which was, just the day before, the sight of a grisly murder is not as great a treat as he seems to feel it is.

It’s odd to see the maintenance staff out of uniform. I barely recognize Carl, the chief engineer, in his leather jacket and jeans (and multiple gold neck chains). Head housekeeper Julio and his nephew Manuel are almost unrecognizable in sports coats and ties. Apparently they went home to change before coming back.

And Pete, out of his security uniform, looks like any other father of five…harried, rumpled, and anxious
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about what the kids are up to back home. His cell phone is glued to his ear, and he’s saying, “No, you have to take them out of the can first. You can’t microwave SpaghettiOs still in the can. No, you can’t.

No, you—See? What did I tell you? Why don’t you listen to Daddy?”

“This,” I say, coming up to Magda, who is resplendent as usual in tight white jeans and a gold lamé sweater (the school colors), “sucks.”

But there are bright spots of color in each of Magda’s cheeks…and not the painted-on kind, either.

“I’m seeing so many more of my little movie stars, though,” she says excitedly, “than come in during the day!”

It’s true that the dinner hour is the most highly attended meal of the day at Fischer Hall. And it looks as if the president’s decision to set an example, by boldly taking a tray to the hot food line and choosing the turkey with gravy, has had an impact: the residents are trickling in, getting over their skittishness about eating in Death Dorm.

Or maybe they just want to see the president’s expression when he takes a bite of the caf’s (in) famous potatoes au gratin.

Tom sidles up to me, looking grim-faced. A second later, I notice why. Gillian Kilgore is following him, looking unnaturally perky.

“See, wasn’t this a good idea?” she asks, looking at everyone milling around the tray cart, trying to grab forks and knives. “This shows that you all have some real bonding in the workplace. Now the healing can begin.”

“Apparently nobody told her attendance is mandatory,” Tom whispers to me as he slips into line behind me.

“Are you kidding me?” I whisper back. “This had to have been all her idea. You think the president came up with this one on his own?”

Tom glances over his shoulder back at Dr. Kilgore. She’s at the salad bar, checking out her lettuce options (iceberg and…iceberg). “Evil,” Tom says, with a shudder.

We’re joined, a second later, by a panting Sarah. “Thanks for telling me,” she says sarcastically to Tom, as she slides her empty tray next to his.

“Sarah,” Tom says, “this is just for full-time staff, not students.”

“Oh, right,” Sarah says. “Because we’re second-class citizens? We don’t get to share in the therapeutic benefits of bonding together over shared pain? Was that Kilgore’s idea? Excluding the student workers?

God, that is so typical of a Freudian—”

“Shut up,” Tom says, “and eat.”

We find a table at what we consider a safe distance from the president’s and start to sit down, but President Allington catches us.

“Over here,” he says, waving to Tom. “Come sit over here by us, Scott.”

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“Tom,” Tom corrects him nervously. “It’s, um, Tom Snelling, sir.”

“Right, right,” the president says, and beside him, Dr. Jessup—who clearly felt it important to show support for Dr. Allington’s plan and was attending both the dinner and game with the Fischer Hall staff—points out, “Tom’s the director of Fischer Hall, Phillip.”

But it’s futile. President Allington isn’t listening.

“And you’re Mary, right?” he says to me.

“Heather,” I say, wishing there was a hole nearby I could crawl into. “Remember me? From that time in the penthouse, when you used to live here in Fischer Hall?”

His eyes glaze over. President Allington doesn’t like being reminded of that day, nor does his wife, who rarely, if ever, comes into the city from their summer home in the Hamptons anymore because of it.

“Right, right,” President Allington says, as Dr. Kilgore joins us with her tray, apparently not noticing she is being followed by an angry-faced Sarah. “Well, I think we all know each other—”

“Excuse us, President Allington?”

Five cheerleaders are lined up in front of our table, all staring at the president.

“Uh,” he says, looking anxiously at Dr. Kilgore, as if for assistance. Then, remembering he’s supposed to have a reputation for being accessible to the students, Dr. Allington attempts a smile and says, “Hello, girls. What can I do for you?”

Beside the president, Coach Andrews heaves a sigh and lays down his fork.

“Look, girls,” he says to them slowly, clearly continuing a conversation that had started elsewhere, “we already discussed this. And the answer is—”

“We aren’t talking to you,” Cheryl Haebig says, a slight flush rising on her cheeks. Still, she holds her ground. “We’re talking to President Allington.”

The president glances from the girls to the coach and back again.

“What’s this all about, Steve?” he wants to know.

“They want to retire Lindsay’s cheerleading sweater,” Coach Andrews says, beneath his breath.

“They want towhat ?” President Allington looks confused.

“Let me handle this,” Coach Andrews says. To the girls in front of the table, he says, “Ladies, I feel as bad as all of you do about Lindsay. Really, I do. But the thing is, I think a formal memorial service, with input from Lindsay’s family—”

“Her family’s all here tonight,” Megan McGarretty—Room 1410—informs him tersely. For such a tiny thing, she looks pretty intimidating, with her arms folded across the big letterP on her chest, and one hip jutting out like a warning. “And they don’t want a memorial service. They’re expecting somebody to say
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something tonight at the game.”

“Oh.” President Allington’s eyes widen. “I’m not sure that would be appropriate.”