Size 12 Is Not Fat (21 page)

Cooper shows his tickets to a guy by the door, and then we’re ushered inside and immediately assailed 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 Jor
dan 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 explain 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—

“Blondie!”

Someone taps my shoulder, and I turn in surprise, expecting to see one of the president’s aides, demanding to see my ticket…

…and find myself staring instead into his son’s laughing gray eyes.

“Hey,” Chris says, smilingly. “Remember me?”

I stare at him, so freaked out that I can’t utter a sound.

Christopher Allington. Christopher Allington had sought me out.
Chris Allington
is holding on to my upper arm and smiling down at me like we’re old friends bumping into one another at the bowling alley or whatever. He’s even offering me a glass of champagne!

Well, it would be rude to say no.

I take the flute from him mutely, my heart hammering hard in my ears. Christopher Allington. Christopher Alling
ton. Oh my God. How can you stand there and talk to me like it’s nothing? You tried to kill me today. Remember?

“I met you outside Fischer Hall last night,” Chris prompts, thinking I can’t place him. As if I’m likely to forget! “That
was
you, wasn’t it?”

I pretend to suddenly recover my memory.

“Oh,” I say, vaguely—though there’s nothing vague about the tingly awareness I feel all up and down my arm, where he still holds it. “Sure. How are you?”

He lets go of me. His grip hadn’t been unpleasant. Not at all.

But isn’t that weird? I mean,
shouldn’t
it have been? Seeing as how he’s a killer, and all?

Weird.

“I’m fine,” he says.

He
looks
fine. His tux is much better-fitting than his father’s. Instead of a bow tie, though, Chris wears a regular tie. Somehow, on him, it looks exactly right.

“Actually, I’m a lot better now that I spotted you,” he goes on. “I really hate these things. Don’t you?”

“Oh,” I say with a shrug. “I don’t know. It isn’t that bad. At least there’s alcohol.”

I down the champagne he’d offered me in a single swallow, despite Cooper’s warning about drinking on the job. After the shock Chris has given me, sneaking up on me like that, I feel like I sort of deserve it.

Chris, watching me, laughs.

“So, who’re are you here with?” he wants to know. “Those tickets aren’t cheap. Are you one of the student reps?”

I shrug again. Detective Canavan had said that in his experience, people who kill are excessively stupid, and I’m beginning to think that in Chris’s case, this might actually be true. The fact that I’m almost ten years older than your av
erage student government representative doesn’t seem to register on him…

…which is fine by me. I mean, seeing as how I’m trying to be all sneaky and undercover to get him to slip up and confess and stuff. Not that I have any idea how I’m going to do this, of course.

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 danc
ing 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 Braith
waite. 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!”