Текст книги "Size 12 Is Not Fat"

Автор книги: Meg Cabot

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

19

Shout out to my

Homegirls

Shout out to my

Friends

Shout out to the

Ones who love me

On those I can depend

Shout out to the

Girls out there

Who buy their own

Damned diamond rings

Shout out to you sisters

I’m with you to the end

“Shout Out”

Performed by Heather Wells

Composed by Dietz/Ryder

From the album Summer

Cartwright Records

The first person at the Sixth Precinct I tell my story to is a pretty but tired-looking woman at the front desk. She has her long black hair in a bun, which I assume is regulation hairstyle for policewomen.

I make a mental note not to major in criminal justice.

The woman directs us to a pudgy guy at a desk, to whom I repeat my story. Like the receptionist, he looks bored…

… until I get to the part about Jordan. Everybody perks up at the mention of Easy Street.

The pudgy guy has us wait a few minutes, and then we’re ushered into someone’s extremely tidy office. We sit across from a very neat desk for a minute or two before the owner of the office walks in, and I see that he is none other than cigar-chomping Detective Canavan.

“You!” I nearly shout at him.

“You!” he nearly shouts back. He’s holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee and—what else? – a doughnut. Krispy Kreme glazed, from the look of it. Lucky duck.

“To what do I owe the pleasure this time, Miss Wells?” he asks. “Wait, don’t tell me. This wouldn’t happen to be about somebody crowning a Backstreet Boy, would it?”

“Easy Street member,” I correct him. “And yes, it would.”

Detective Canavan sits down at his desk, removes the unlit cigar from his mouth, tears off a piece of his doughnut, and dunks it in his coffee. He then puts the coffee-soaked piece of doughnut in his mouth, chews, swallows, and says, “Pray enlighten me.”

I glance at Cooper, who had remained silent at my side through two recitations of my tale. Seeing that he isn’t going to be any help this time, either, I launch into it for a third time, wondering, not for the first time, what it is I find so attractive about Cooper anyway, since he can be so uncommunicative sometimes. Then I remember the whole being-so-hot-and-kind-and-generous-to-me-without-asking-anything-in-return thing, and I know why.

Detective Canavan clasps his hands behind his head as he listens, tipping his chair back as far as it will go. Either he has forgotten his Mitchum for Men or he is just a very profuse sweater, because he has large perspiration stains underneath his arms. Not that this seems to bother him.

“So,” Detective Canavan says, to the water-stained ceiling panels, when I’m through talking. “Now you think the president of New York College’s kid is a murderer.”

“Well,” I say, hesitantly. Because when he puts it that way, it sounds so… dumb. “Yes. I guess I do.”

“But you got no proof. Sure, this guy here’s got a condom. A condom we could probably prove is his. But which wouldn’t be admissible in court. But you got no proof any crime has actually been committed, with the exception of this planter over the side of the terrace, which could have been accidental—”

“But those planters have been up there for years,” I interrupt. “And none of them ever fell down until today—”

“Coroner’s report on both dead girls states cause of death was accidental.” Detective Canavan quits gazing at the ceiling and looks at me. “Listen, miss—is it still miss?”

Unaccountably, I feel myself blushing. Maybe because if it hadn’t been for Tania Trace, by now it would have been Mrs. Although I sort of doubt it would have remained that way for long.

“It’s Ms.,” I say firmly.

Detective Canavan nods. “My wife’s a Ms. now, too. Anyway, listen, Ms. Wells. Kids that age? They’re dopes. Accidents are the leading cause of death for people ages seventeen to twenty-five. Kids are trying to find themselves, taking stupid risks—”

“Not those girls,” I say, firmly.

“Maybe not. The point is, Ms. Wells, you got nothing on this guy. You don’t even have a definite murder to pin on him. If the Backstreet Boy dies, then maybe we’ll have something. Maybe. But the coroner could just as easily rule that one as accidental as well.”

“Well,” I say. I have to admit, I feel very let down. Detective Canavan hadn’t laughed outright in my face this time, I’ll admit, but he hadn’t taken a single note, either. I pick up my backpack.

“Sorry to have wasted your time. Again.” I get up, and Detective Canavan looks at me like I was nuts.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he demands. “Sit down. I’m not through with you yet.”

I sit back down, perplexed.

“What’s the point?” I ask Detective Canavan, with more asperity than is, perhaps, necessary. “You obviously think I’m some kind of nutcase. What do I need to stick around here for? I can get laughed at by my own friends”—I keep my gaze averted from Cooper’s face. “I don’t need to go to the police for that.”

Detective Canavan finishes the rest of his doughnut, then picks up his cigar. He looks at Cooper.

“She’s a fiery one,” he comments, nodding at me.

“Oh, she’s that,” Cooper agrees, gravely.

“Wait.” I glance from one man to the other, suspicion dawning. “You two know each other?”

Cooper shrugs. “I’ve seen him around the neighborhood,” he says, referring to Detective Canavan.

“Can’t swing a dead cat without running into this guy behind a parked car or mailbox, shooting film of some poor schmuck whose wife is leaving him,” says Detective Canavan, referring to Cooper.

“Great,” I say, feeling more inadequate than ever. “That’s just great. Well, I hope you two are enjoying your little laugh at my expense—”

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Detective Canavan demands. “Do you see so much as a smile upon my face? Your boyfriend over there, I don’t see him laughing, either.”

“I see absolutely nothing amusing about the situation,” Cooper says.

I look at him. He isn’t smiling. And he hasn’t, I noticed, objected to being called my boyfriend. I look back at Detective Canavan.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I point out loudly—to what purpose, I cannot imagine. But I’m sure my cheeks are crimson.

Detective Canavan nods at me as if I’d said something along the lines of The sky is blue.

“Now, Ms. Wells,” he says. “We do have a very high number of nutcases, as you call them, who come in here to report various crimes that may or may not actually have occurred. Some of these so-called nutcases are honest citizens who want to help the police to do their job. I would put you in this category. You have done your duty by relating your beliefs in this matter to me, and I, in due course, will investigate them.”

“Really?” I perk right up. “You really will? You’re gonna question Chris?”

“I will do so.” Detective Canavan sticks his cigar back in his mouth. “Discreetly. That is my job. It is not, however,your job. I strongly advise you, Ms. Wells, not to involve yourself any further in this matter.”

“Because you think Christopher Allington might try to kill me, too?” I ask, breathlessly.

“Because I think Christopher Allington might try to sue you for making false accusations, and he’d have a pretty good case, too.” Detective Canavan ignores my crestfallen expression. “What you’re suggesting, Ms. Wells, is that Christopher Allington is not only a serial killer, but a killer of such intelligence and skill that he not only leaves no evidence linking him to his crimes—save for an alleged condom—but leaves no trace that a crime has even been committed. I hate to disappoint you, but in my experience, killers aren’t that smart. They are, in fact, remarkably stupid people. That is why they have killed: They are so limited intellectually, they saw no other way out.”

Detective Canavan’s dark gray eyebrows furrow together in thought as he goes on. “And despite all the media hoopla around them, I have yet to meet an actual serial killer myself, and I have investigated over seven hundred homicides. So I suggest you keep a low profile as far as Christopher Allington is concerned, Ms. Wells. I’d hate for you to lose your job over something like this.”

I’m so disappointed that I don’t think there’s anything I can do to hide it. My shoulders slump, and my head sinks down between them as I murmur, “Thank you, Detective.”

Detective Canavan hands me his card, tells me to call him if I think of anything else that might be helpful to his investigation, and, after asking Cooper a question or two about some case or other he’s seen him snooping around the neighborhood over, sends us on our way.

Cooper hails us a cab, and maintains an air of extreme seriousness all the way back to the house. He seems to have taken my accusation—that he thinks of me as a teen pop star—to heart, and is doing everything in his power to prove it isn’t true. He even tells me, in the cab, that he considers Detective Canavan a good man and a fine investigator, and says if there’s something to get to the bottom of at Fischer Hall, Detective Canavan is the man to do it.

Which makes me feel better. A little.

Once back at the brownstone—I know I really ought to head back to the office, but seeing as how I’m home now anyway, I decide I’ll just give Lucy a quick walk—I pause briefly in front of the antique, gilt-framed mirror in the front hallway to reapply my lip gloss, while Cooper goes back to his office to replay his messages. I’ve already glanced around to make sure that there are no signs of the love tussle Jordan and I shared on the runner the night before.

Still, when Cooper comes out of his office a second later and asks, “What exactly is going on with you and Jordan?” I nearly have a heart attack.

“Wh-what do you mean?” I stammer.

“Well, what was he doing outside Fischer Hall today, anyway?”

“Oh,” I say, relaxing. “That. Nothing. Just talking.”

“I see.” Cooper leans against the door frame, his blue eyes brighter than normal. “So you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that blond he was photographed by the Post kissing on my doorstep?”

I almost swallow my tongue.

I can’t believe he’s seen it! Are thing sever going to go my way? Or had I used up all my luck already? You know, those ten years of good luck I once read that everybody gets—one magical decade where nothing goes wrong… or at least, nothing major.

Had my decade of luck already gone by? And if so, can I have a do-over? Because if someone had asked me, “Hey, Heather, do you want your decade of luck between ages fourteen and twenty-four or twenty-four and thirty-four?” I’d have chosen the latter. I really would have.

Because who wants the best years of their life to be the ones they spent in high school?

I guess my extreme consternation must show on my face, since a second later Cooper has straightened and is going, “What’s the matter?” in a voice that—almost—sounds like he actually cares.

Which just makes me want to start sobbing, right then and there.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “Really.”

It isn’t nothing, though. I mean, everyone else can deny it, but I know—I know – someone is trying to kill me. I had sex with my ex, who is engaged to someone with a way better career—and much smaller butt—than mine. And, worst of all, Cooper’s seen the photographic evidence of my indiscretion… or at least, of what led up to it.

“Something’s wrong,” Cooper says, coming to stand beside me in front of the mirror. “Don’t deny it. I’m a trained observer, remember? There’s this little line you get between your eyebrows when you’re upset—” He points at my reflection. “See it?”

God. He’s right. I have a little worry line between my eyebrows. My God, if I keep this up, I’ll have wrinkles by the time I’m thirty.

With an effort, I force my face to relax.

“It’s nothing,” I say, quickly, averting my gaze from my reflection. “Really. That thing with Jordan last night—it was just a good-bye kiss.”

Cooper looks at me. Skeptically.

“A good-bye kiss,” he says.

“Yeah. Because it’s, you know, really over between us. Jordan and me.” I clear my throat. “You know. Really,really over.”

Cooper nods, though he still looks dubious.

“Right,” he says. “Well, if you say—”

“We’re both ready to move on,” I interrupt, warming to my story, “at last. You know, we needed to have some closure, because the way things ended—with me storming out like that, and all—well, it wasn’t healthy. Things are good now between us. We both know it’s really… over.”

“So if things are really, really over between the two of you,” Cooper asks, “what was Jordan doing in front of Fischer Hall this morning when that planter fell on him?”

Dang! I forgot about that!

But it’s okay. I have the situation under control.

“Oh, that?” I say, with a breezy laugh. Yes! I even manage a breezy laugh. Maybe I, like Britney and Mandy, have a film career in my future. Maybe I should be a theater major, like Marnie. Maybe someday I’ll have an Oscar to put on the shelf next to my Nobel Prize. Wait. Is a Nobel Prize a statue or a medal? I can’t remember.

“Yeah,” I say. Still breezy. “He was just returning a, um, CD that I’d left at our place. You know, when I moved out.”

“A CD,” Cooper says.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “My, um,Tank Girl soundtrack. You can’t find it anymore. It’s very rare.”

“I see,” Cooper says. I try not to notice how, now that he’s taken off his leather jacket, his biceps—barely visible beneath the short sleeves of his plain gray T-shirt—are just as defined as his brother’s….

Only from actual work, not working out, I know. It’s not all sneaking around with a camera when you’re a PI. I imagine Cooper has to… you know. Lift things. And stuff. I wonder if maybe he ever gets sweaty doing it and has to take his shirt off completely, you know, because he’s so hot…

Whoa. I so need to go back to work.

But all this detective stuff has reminded me of something.

“Yeah,” I say. Now that the danger of tears has been averted, I’m feeling a little more daring. “In fact, now that Jordan and I have everything settled, I feel, you know, like celebrating.”

“Celebrating,” Cooper echoes tonelessly.

“Yeah. You know. I never go out anymore. So I thought, Hey, why not go to the, um, Pansy Ball tonight.”

“The Pansy Ball?” Cooper’s gaze doesn’t stray from my face. I hope he isn’t checking to see if I’m lying. I really do want to go to the Pansy Ball. Just not, you know, for the reasons I’m telling him.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s a ball to honor the trustees and people who’ve been given Pansys. You know, for service to the college. Rachel’s getting one.”

It isn’t my imagination. At the sound of my boss’s name, Cooper abruptly loses interest in the conversation. In fact, he walks over to the mail that has just slid through the drop slot—to Lucy’s intent interest—and, after wrestling it from her, starts sorting through it.

“Rachel, huh?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “The tickets are like two hundred bucks, though. To the ball. And God knows I can’t afford one. But I was thinking, your grandfather was an alumnus, right? So I bet you have access to some free ones. Tickets, I mean.”

“Probably,” Cooper says, giving Lucy, who is whining piteously, a J. Crew catalog to chew on.

“So could I, maybe, have one?” I ask. Subtle. That’s me. Miss Subtle.

“So you can spy on Christopher Allington?” Cooper doesn’t even look up from the mail. “Not a chance.”

My jaw drops.

“But—”

“Heather, didn’t you hear a word that detective said? He’s going to look into it. Subtly. In the meantime, stay out of it. At best, the only thing you’re going to get for your efforts is sued.”

“I swear I’m not gonna talk to him,” I insist, raising my right hand and making the Girl Scout’s honor symbol with three fingers. Except, of course, I never was a Girl Scout, so it doesn’t count. “I won’t go near him.”

“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” Cooper says, “but aren’t you convinced he tried to kill you today?”

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out,” I say. “C’mon, Cooper, what could possibly happen at the Pansy Ball, for God’s sake? He’s not going to try to do anything to me there, in front of everybody… ”

“No, he isn’t,” Cooper says. “Because I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

I blink. Wait. What did he just say?

“You—you want to go with me?”

“Only because if I don’t keep an eye on you, who knows what’ll fall on your head next time.” Cooper puts down the mail. His blue-eyed gaze bores into me like a pair of headlights. “And because I can see by the look in your eyes that you’re going to get your hands on a ticket somehow, even if it means seducing some unsuspecting rube in the geology department.”

I’m stunned. Cooper is taking me to the Pansy Ball! Cooper Cartwright is taking me out! It was almost like a…

Well, a date.

“Oh, Cooper!” I breathe. “Thank you so much! You don’t know how much this means to me—”

Cooper is already moving back toward his office, shaking his head. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but I have a pretty good idea that he isn’t, as I am, frantically trying to figure out what he’s going to wear.

Guys have it so easy.

20

Misconstrued

Everything I say to you is

Misconstrued

Why else do you do

The things you do?

Misconstrued

You think that I lie to you

Misconstrued

Truth is that it’s

Really you

That’s

Misconstrued

“Misconstrued”

Performed by Heather Wells

Composed by Dietz/Ryder

From the album Summer

Cartwright Records

I can’t get through the remainder of the workday fast enough.

Everyone asks after Jordan’s health, causing me to realize guiltily that I don’t even know how he’s doing, since I’ve been slightly distracted since leaving the hospital, what with meeting with detectives and getting asked out (sort of) by the man of my dreams, and having to figure out what I’m going to wear on our date to the Pansy Ball, and all.

So I call St. Vincent’s and after being transferred about a half-dozen times because of privacy concerns, Jordan being a big star and all, finally get someone who tells me, after I assure them I am not a member of the press and even sing a few bars of “Sugar Rush” to convince them that I’m really me, that Jordan is currently listed as being in good condition, and that doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

When I relay this news to Rachel, she goes, “Oh, good! I was so worried. It’s so lucky, Heather, that the planter hit him and not you. You might so easily have been injured yourself.”

Magda is less pleased with Jordan’s prognosis.

“Too bad,” she says baldly. “I was hoping he’d die.”

“Magda!” I cry, horrified.

“Look at my byootiful movie stars,” Magda says to a group of students who’ve shown up for an early dinner, waving their dining cards. Taking the cards and running them through the scanner, Magda says, to me, “Well, he deserves a whack on the head, after the way he treated you.”

Magda’s so lucky. To her, everything is black and white. America is great, no matter what anybody else might say, and members of boy bands who cheat on their girlfriends? Well, they deserve to have planters dropped on their heads. No questions asked.

Patty is relieved to hear from me when I call her. I guess when she’d crossed the park and seen all the blood on the sidewalk in front of Fischer Hall, she’d gotten really freaked out. She’d been convinced something had happened to me. She’d had to sit down in the cafeteria with her head between her knees for twenty minutes—and eat two DoveBars Magda pressed on her—before she finally felt well enough to flag down a cab and go home.

“Are you really sure about this college degree thing, Heather?” she asks now, worriedly. “Because I’m sure Frank could set up an appointment for you with people from his label—”

“That’d be nice,” I say. “Except, you know, I’m not sure how impressed Frank’s label would really be about the fact that most of my past performances took place in malls—”

“They wouldn’t care about that,” Patty cries. Which is really sweet of her, and all, but that’s exactly the kind of thing record labels do care about, I’ve discovered.

“Maybe we can get you a part in a musical, you know, like on Broadway,” Patty says. “Debbie Gibson’s doing it. Lot’s of stars are—”

“Operative word being star,” I point out. “Which I am not.”

“I just don’t think you should work in that dorm anymore, Heather,” Patty says worriedly. “It’s too dangerous. Girls dying. Flower pots falling down on people—”

“Oh, Patty,” I say, touched by her concern. “I’ll be all right.”

“I’m serious, Heather. Cooper and I discussed it, and we both feel—”

“You and Cooper discussed me?” I hope I don’t sound too eager. What had they talked about? I wonder. Had Cooper revealed to Patty that he has a deep and abiding love for me that he dares not show, since I’m his brother’s ex and sort of an employee of his?

But if he had, wouldn’t she have told me right away?

“Cooper and I just feel—and Frank agrees—that if—well, if it turns out this whole murder thing is true, you might be putting yourself in some kind of danger—”

This doesn’t sound to me like Cooper had said anything at all about harboring a deep and abiding love for me. No wonder Patty hadn’t called me right away to dish.

“Patty,” I say, “I’m fine. Really. I’ve got the best bodyguard in the world.” Then I tell her about the Pansy Ball, and Cooper’s escorting me there.

Patty doesn’t sound as excited about it as I expect her to, though. Oh, she says I can borrow her dress—the red Armani she’d worn to the Grammys when she’d been seven months’ pregnant with Indy, and which I hope will consequently fit me—and all, but she isn’t exactly shrieking, “Ooooh he asked you out!”

Because I guess he hasn’t, really. Maybe it isn’t areal date when the guy is just going out with you to make sure no one kills you.

God. When did Patty get so mature?

“Well, just promise me to be careful, okay, Heather?” Patty still sounds worried. “Cooper says he thinks the whole murder thing is kind of… unlikely. But I’m not so sure. And I don’t want you to be next.”

I do my best to reassure Patty that my safety is hardly in jeopardy—even though, of course, I’m pretty sure the exact opposite is true. Someone in Fischer Hall wants me dead.

Which means I am definitely on to something with my Elizabeth-Kellogg-and-Roberta-Pace-were-murdered theory.

It isn’t until I’ve hung up with Patty that I feel someone’s gaze on me. I look up and see that Sarah is sitting at her desk, stuffing Tootsie Rolls into little plastic bags as a surprise for each of the RAs, all of whom she feels need a pick-me-up after the rocky start their semester had gotten off to, given the dead girls and all.

Only I can’t help noticing that Sarah has stopped stuffing, and is instead staring at me owlishly through her thick glasses—she only wears her contacts on special occasions, such as check-in (potential to meet cute single dads) or poetry readings at St. Mark’s Church (potential to meet cute penniless poets).

“I didn’t mean to listen in on your conversation,” Sarah says, “but did I just hear you say you think someone’s trying to kill you?”

“Um,” I say. How can I put this so as not to cause her undue alarm? After all, I get to go home every night, but Sarah has to live here. How comfortable is she going to feel knowing there’s a dangerous psychopath stalking the floors of Fischer Hall?

Then again, Sarah lost her virginity on an Israeli kibbutz the summer of her freshman year—or so she’d told me—so it isn’t like she’s a potential victim.

So I shrug and say, “Yes.”

Then—because Rachel is upstairs in her apartment getting ready for the ball (she’d managed to find something to wear, but wouldn’t show it to us on account of “not wanting to ruin the surprise”)—I tell her my theory about Chris Allington and the deaths of Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace.

“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 café 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.