Big Boned

11

Detective Canavan is less than impressed by the sign-in sheets we present him with forty-five minutes later—possibly because he’s tired after a long day of work, and just wants to go home (welcome to the club).

But also because, as he points out, they don’t exactly represent an iron-clad alibi, since anyone can sneak past a college security guard, shoot an interim residence hall director in the head, then sneak back.

I inform him that his lack of faith in New York College’s crackerjack security force is jarring, a remark to which he responds not at all… except to mention the small matter of the handgun they found in Sebastian’s murse.

“Handgun?” Sarah scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous. Sebastian doesn’t own a gun. He’s a pacifist. He believes violence is never the answer. It doesn’t solve anything.”

Detective Canavan snorts at this.

“A pacifist who carries around an unlicensed thirty-eight.”

Since this also happens to be the same caliber bullet that mowed through Owen Veatch’s skull at the time for which Sebastian has no credible alibi, he’s the murder’s number one—and only—suspect. A ballistics test will tell the police if the gun is, in fact, the same one used to dispatch my boss. The sign-in sheets, if anything, only serve to solidify the case against Sebastian, since it gives the NYPD their first solid proof that Sebastian was actually on the premises at the time of the murder.

Um. Oops?

Sarah, when we walk out of the precinct and onto West Tenth Street, has been rendered visibly pale by all of this.

“Look,” I say to her, fearing she’s going to hyperventilate again, and furtively scanning the sidewalks for abandoned paper bags I can force her to breathe into. “It’s going to be all right. I’m sure he’s gotten in touch with his parents by now. They’ll get him a good lawyer. He’ll get arraigned, they’ll post bail, and he’ll be out by tomorrow morning.”

Cooper makes a noise when I say this, but I shoot him a warning look, and he closes his mouth.

“I know,” Sarah says quietly.

“And he’ll be all right overnight in the detention center,” I insist. “Detective Canavan will make sure he gets his inhaler. And his Allegra-D.”

“I know,” Sarah says. Again, quietly. Too quietly.

I glance at Cooper over the top of Sarah’s head. He raises his eyebrows. We both sense it: Something’s wrong. Sarah should be in hysterics. Why is she so calm?

We wait at the corner for an empty cab to come by and take us back to Washington Square. It’s a gorgeous spring evening, and there are a lot of people out and about, couples—both of the hetero and homo variety, some pushing strollers, some not—and singles, some walking dogs, some not, all stylishly attired (it’s the West Village, after all), enjoying the warm weather and twilight sky, strolling by the quaint outdoor cafés with their brightly colored awnings, the expensive home decor shops, the fragrantly scented cupcake bakeries, the specialty condom stores…

Sarah doesn’t seem to notice any of this. She keeps her gaze straight ahead, a faraway look in her eye. When Cooper successfully hails a cab and it pulls up in front of us, but she still doesn’t move, I reach out and pinch her, Muffy Fowler style.

Not hard, or anything. Just enough to get a reaction.

“Ow!” Sarah exclaims, jumping and rubbing her arm. She turns an accusatory gaze up at me. “What’d you do that for?”

“What’s the matter with you?” I demand. “You just found out the love of your life’s a big fat phony. Why aren’t you hyperventilating? Or at least crying?”

“What are you talking about?” Sarah’s eyebrows, badly in need of plucking, are constricted. “Sebastian’s not the love of my life. And he’s NOT a phony.”

“A pacifist who carries a thirty-eight?” Cooper, holding open the door to the backseat of the taxi, looks skeptical. “You don’t find that a bit hypocritical?”

“God, don’t you see?” Sarah lets out a bitter laugh as she climbs into car. “It’s so obvious. Someone planted that gun on him.”

I glance at Cooper as I slide onto the backseat beside her, but he shrugs, obviously as clueless as I am. “Sarah, what are you talking about?”

“It’s clearly a conspiracy,” Sarah explains, as if the two of us are simpletons not to have seen it. “A setup by the president’s office. I don’t know how they did it, but you can be sure they’re behind it. Sebastian would never carry a gun. Someone must have slipped it into his bag.”

“Washington Square West and Waverly,” Cooper says to the cabdriver, as he joins me on the backseat. To Sarah, he says, “I gotta hand it to you, kid. That’s a new one. A conspiracy by the New York College president’s office. Very creative.”

“Laugh all you want,” Sarah says. She turns her face resolutely toward the window. “But they’re going to be sorry come morning.Very sorry.”

I stare at her profile. It’s getting darker out, and harder to see. I can’t tell whether or not she’s kidding.

But then again, she’s Sarah. Sarah’s never been much of a kidder.

“What do you mean, they’re going to be sorry?” I ask her. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Sarah says innocently. “Don’t worry about it.”

I glance at Cooper. He’s trying not to smile. Although I don’t see anything particularly funny about the situation.

Sarah turns down my invitation to come over for dinner as we pull up in front of Fischer Hall. She says she has a lot of work to do—whatever that means. Cooper remarks when she’s gone that it’s just as well—he’s had as much twenty-something drama as he can take for one day.

“But what could she mean, we’re going to be sorry?” I wonder, as we make our way up the stoop to his front door. “What could she be up to?”

“I don’t know.” Cooper fumbles with his keys. “But it seems to me if she gets out of hand you have a good bargaining tool with the fact that she was letting that kid live illegally in your building. Just threaten to rat her out.”

“Oh, Coop,” I say. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he wants to know. “You’re too soft on them, Heather. What was that whole thing earlier, with my car? Did you really think there was a chance in hell I was going to let them borrow it?”

“No,” I say. “But you’re one to talk. What was that other whole thing in your office earlier, where you were swearing at Sarah, and telling her to get the fuck out? Like you were really going to throw her out. You wouldn’t throw a cockroach out of there.Obviously.”

“Heather, you might not have noticed, but she was completely lying to us.” Cooper manages to get the front door unlocked, then pushes it open. “Do you think we’d have ever gotten the truth out of her if I’d coddled her the way you do?”

My cell phone rings. I pull it out, see that it’s Tad calling, and immediately send the call to voice mail.

Unfortunately, Cooper is standing close enough that he sees who it was. And where I sent the call.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asks, one dark eyebrow quirked.

“No,” I say stiffly. “I just don’t feel like talking to him at the moment.” I follow him inside, throwing my purse and keys onto the same console table in the hallway where he’s thrown his wallet and keys. “The point is, you didn’t have to be that mean to her… ”

Cooper turns to look down at me. “Yes, actually, Heather, I did. Sometimes, if you want to get to the truth, you have to push people. It may not be pretty, but it works.”

“Well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree,” I say. “Because I think you can be nice to people and get the same results.”

“Yeah,” Cooper says, with a snort. “In four years.”

“Sarah’s conscience would have gotten the better of her sooner or later,” I say. “Way sooner than four years. Try four minutes. Which is exactly what happened. And oh my God, what is that smell?”

Cooper inhales.

“That,” he says, in the tone of a man who is well pleased with a discovery, “is the succulent odor of your dad’s braised short ribs.”

“My God.” I am in shock. “That smells delicious.”

“Yeah, well, better enjoy it while you can, ’cause this is the last time we’re gonna get to experience it.”

“Shut up,” I say. “He’s only moving uptown. He’s not dying.”

“You’re the one who couldn’t stand having him around,” Cooper points out, as he hurries toward the back of the house, which is where the insanely good smell is coming from. “I was perfectly content to let him live here forever.”

“Come on.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing as I trot along behind him. “Forever?All that yoga and those aromatherapy candles didn’t bother you? What about the flute playing?”

“When I got to come home to dinners like this? Perfectly forgivable.”

“There you are,” Dad calls from the kitchen. He can hear us as we come down the hallway—but not, I know from experience, what we’re saying. His hearing’s not what it once was, and the walls of Cooper’s brownstone are thick. You can’t beat that nineteenth-century construction. “Stop bickering, you two, and hurry up. Dinner’s ready. You’re late!”

We rush toward the absurdly large (for Manhattan, anyway) skylit kitchen, to find the butcher block table already set, the candles already lit, and the wine already poured. Dad is standing at the counter tossing a salad, wearing a blue and white apron over a button-down shirt, olive green cords, and a pair of Crocs. He brightens when he sees us, as does Lucy, who thumps her tail against the floor in the contented manner of a dog who has already had her evening walk.

“Hello,” Dad says. “So glad you could make it.”

“Sorry we’re late,” I begin. “We had to take Sarah to the police station. It turns out she… ”

My voice trails off. Because it turns out we’re not alone with Dad and Lucy in the kitchen. There’s someone sitting at the table with a plate of food already in front of him, although he’s politely refrained from digging in yet. The same can’t be said, however, of his wineglass.

“Heather!” Cooper’s brother, Jordan, slurs, drunkenly raising a glass of wine in our direction. “Cooper! Did you hear the news? I’m gonna be a daddy!”

“I really didn’t have any other choice but to let him in,” Dad explains, much later after dinner, when Cooper has left to drive his brother back to his penthouse on the Upper East Side. “He was very insistent that he see you. And he was, as you could probably tell, in a very celebratory mood.”

Jordan’s mood, if you ask me, was more suicidal. But then, that’s what happens when you find out your wife’s pregnant, and you’re not a hundred percent certain you’re ready for fatherhood.

But that was something Jordan had asked me to keep between the two of us, when he’d trapped me in the hall on my way back from the bathroom during dinner.

“I never should have let you go,” Jordan informed me mournfully as he sandwiched me between his body and the wall.

Since we have this conversation approximately every three to four months, I knew the script and have my part down fairly pat. All I had to say was “Jordan. We’ve been through this. You and I never worked. You’re much better off with Tania. You know she loves you.”

This time, however, he veered from his accustomed dialogue by saying, “That’s just it. I don’t think she does. I know this is going to sound crazy, Heather, but I think… I think she just married me because of who I am. Of who my father is… the owner of Cartwright Records. This baby thing… I just don’t know… What if it’s just so she can score better alimony later on?”

I’ll admit, I was shocked.

On the other hand, it was Jordan. And he was drunk. And liquor and Jordan don’t mix.

“Of course that’s not why she wants to have a baby,” I said soothingly. “Tania loves you.”

The truth, of course, is that I have no way of knowing this. But I wasn’t going to stand there and tell him otherwise.

“But a baby,” Jordan said. “How can I be a dad? I don’t know anything about babies. I don’t know anything about anything… ”

This was a shockingly self-aware statement… especially for Jordan. It exhibited an amazing amount of growth and maturity on his part. At least I thought so.

“Just the fact that you realize that, Jordan,” I told him, “shows that you’re more ready for fatherhood now than you’ve ever been. And seriously… as long as you remember that—that you don’t know anything about anything—I think you’re going to be a terrific dad.”

“Really?” Jordan brightened, as if my opinion on this subject actually mattered to him. “Do you mean that, Heather?”

“I really do,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Now what do you say we get back to dinner?”

It was shortly after this that Cooper convinced his brother that he’d done enough celebrating for one night, and ought to let Cooper take him home. Jordan finally acquiesced—on the condition that Cooper let him play his new demo in the car on the way uptown, a condition Cooper agreed to with a visible shudder of distaste—and I convinced Dad to sit and enjoy one of his herbal teas while I did the dinner dishes.

“It’s been quite a day for you,” Dad observes, as I scrub at the caked-on goop that lines the pot he made the short ribs in. “You must be exhausted. Didn’t you go running this morning?”

“If you could call it that,” I grunt. Seriously, the short ribs had been delicious, but did he have to use every single pot in the house to make them?

“Tad must have been very proud of you. That’s quite a feat for you—running. He called the house again, you know, a little while before you came back. I’d have invited him to dinner, but I know he doesn’t eat meat, and I didn’t have another protein prepared… ”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll call him back later.”

“Things are getting pretty serious with him, huh?”

I think about Tad’s odd behavior earlier this morning. Was it only this morning? It seems so long ago.

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so. I mean… ” He’s going to ask me to marry him. “I don’t know.”

“It’s nice,” Dad says, a little vaguely, “that you have someone. I still worry about you sometimes, Heather. You’ve never been like other girls, you know.”

“Huh?” I’ve found a particularly stubborn piece of baked-on gunk, and am working at it with my thumbnail. I wonder if a scouring pad will scratch Cooper’s enamel cookware, purchased for him by a professional chef girlfriend whose name has long since been lost to history.

“I’m just saying,” Dad goes on. “You’ve always been more like me than like your mother. Not one for the status quo. Never much of a nine-to-fiver. That’s why I’m surprised you seem so devoted to this job of yours.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m devoted to it.” I give up and grab the scouring pad. Maybe if I’m careful, I won’t scratch the enamel. “I mean, I like it… ”

“But your true love is singing,” Dad says. “And songwriting. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t know.” The scouring pad isn’t working, either. “I like that, too.”

“What would you say if I told you I knew of an opportunity where you could do both again? Write and perform your own songs? For money. Good money, too. How would you feel about that?”

Success! The gunk has come off! But there is so much gunk to follow.

“I don’t know,” I say. “What are you even talking about? You know, Patty’s husband, Frank, is always trying to get me to go on the road with his band, and I gotta tell you, it’s not exactly my kind of thing anymore… ”

“No, no,” Dad says, leaning forward in his seat. Behind him, I can see the lights of Fischer Hall gleaming in the kitchen windows. The kids are home from dinner, studying or getting ready to go out. It doesn’t matter to them that it’s a weeknight… or that their interim hall director was murdered this morning. Not when there’s beer flowing somewhere. “This is a real opportunity Larry and I would like to offer you. We know how you feel about the record business—once burned and twice shy and all of that. But this is nothing like that. This is something totally different. You’ve heard of the Wiggles, haven’t you?”

I pause in my gunk assault. “That British children’s program? Yeah, Patty’s kid loves them.”

“They’re an Australian children’s band, actually,” Dad corrects me. “But this would be something along similar lines, yes. Larry and I plan to produce and market a line of children’s music videos and DVDs. The production costs versus the amount of money you can take in is actually quite literally staggering. Which is where you would come in. We’d like you to be the star—the hostess and singer/songwriter—for these videos. You’ve always had a strong appeal to children, even when you were a teenager… something about your voice, your manner… maybe it’s all that blond hair—I don’t know. You would be the lead in a cast of characters, all of whom would be animated… you’d be the only human, as a matter of fact. Each episode you would address a different issue… using the potty, going to day care, being afraid of going down the drain in the bathtub, that kind of thing. We’ve crunched the numbers, and feel that we can give the competition—Dora the Explorer, the Wiggles,Blue’s Clues — a run for its money. We’re thinking of calling it Heather’s World. What do you think?”

I have stopped scrubbing. Now I’m standing at the sink, staring at him. I feel as if my brain is a DVR that somebody has just set on Pause.

“What?” I say, intelligently.

“I know you have your heart set on going back to school, honey,” Dad says, leaning forward in his chair. “And you can absolutely still do that. That’s the magic about this. There’s no touring, no promoting… at least, not right away. We just want to get the songs written, get the videos recorded, then get them out on the market and see how they do. I have a feeling—and Larry agrees—that they’re going to take off in a big way. Then we can work with your schedule to arrange for any kind of publicity we might like to do. You’ll notice I said we. It’s totally up to you how much or how little you’d like to do. I’m not your mother, Heather. Under no circumstances would I want you to do anything more than you’re comfortable with… ”

I can’t seem to wrap my mind around what he’s saying.

“You mean… give up working at Fischer Hall?”

“Well,” Dad says slowly. “I’m afraid that would be necessary, yes. But, Heather, you would be generously compensated for your work on this project, with a sizable advance that would be—well, a hundred times what you’re making yearly at Fischer Hall… as well as royalties. And I believe Larry would not be averse to letting you in on a percentage of the gross as well—”

“Yeah, but… ” I blink at him. “I don’t know. I mean… give up my job? It’s a good job. With benefits. I get tuition remission and everything. And an excellent health insurance package.”

“Heather.” Dad is starting to sound a little impatient. “The Wiggles gross an estimated fifty million dollars a year. I think with fifty million dollars a year, you could afford the health insurance package of your choice.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But you don’t even know if these video thingies are going to take off. Kids might hate them. They might end up being really cheesy or something. End up just sitting in the bargain bin at Sam Goody.”

“That’s the risk we’re all taking here,” Dad says.

“But… ” I stare at him. “I don’t write songs for kids. I write songs for grown-ups… like me.”

“Right,” Dad says. “But writing songs for children can’t be that different from writing songs for disaffected young women like yourself.”

I blink again. “Disaffected?”

“Instead of complaining about the size of your jeans,” Dad goes on, “complain about why you have to use a sippy cup. Or why you can’t have big-girl pants. Just give it a try. I think you’ll be a natural. The truth is, Heather, I’m going out on a limb for you. Larry wants to approach Mandy Moore. I told him to hold off a bit. I told him I was sure you could come up with something that’d knock our socks off.”

“Dad.” I shake my head. “I don’t want to write—or sing—about sippy cups.”

“Heather,” Dad says. “I don’t think you understand. This is an extraordinary opportunity for all of us. But mainly for you. It’s a chance for you to get out of that hellhole you’re working in—a place where just today, Heather, your boss was shot in the head, just a room away from where you sit. And also a chance for you to—let’s be honest with one another, Heather—get a place of your own, so you don’t have to live here with Cooper, which can’t be the healthiest arrangement for you.”

I turn quickly back toward the dishes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?” Dad asks gently. “Why haven’t you returned Tad’s calls yet, Heather? Is it really because you’ve been too busy? Or is it because deep down, you know you’re in love with someone else?”

I nearly drop the wineglass I’m scrubbing.

“Ouch, Dad,” I grumble. “Way to hurt a girl.”

“Well.” He gets up from table and comes over to lay a hand upon my shoulder. “That’s just it. I don’t want to see you hurt. I want to help you. Lord knows you’ve helped me these past few months. I want to return the favor. Won’t you let me?”

I can’t look into his face. I know if I do I’ll say yes. And I don’t want to say yes. I don’t think.

Or maybe part of me does. The same part of me that’s ready to say yes to Tad, too, when he decides the time is finally right, and he pops the question.

Instead, I look into the sudsy brown water in the sink.

Then I sigh.

“Let me think about it, Dad, okay?”

I don’t see Dad smile, because of course I’m not looking at him. But I sense the smile anyway.

“Sure thing, honey,” he says. “Just don’t think about it too long. Opportunities like this don’t last forever. Well… you know that from last time.”

Do I ever.