Big Boned

4

Detective Canavan has had his hair cut since I’ve last seen him. It’s been buzzed into a severe crew cut, so tinged with gray it looks almost blue beneath the fluorescent light above my desk (I put in a desk lamp for rosy ambience, but the detective’s apparently chosen not to turn it on. I guess homicide detectives don’t care about rosy ambience). He’s scowling into the phone he’s clutching to one ear, glancing up at me as I walk in as disinterestedly as if I’m a rat that’s wandered out from behind some Dumpster.

“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says into the phone. “I know good and well what the city’s gonna say. They’re happy to shut down a street if someone wants to film an episode of Law & Order on it. But if the real NYPD wants to launch an investigation on an actual murder… ”

The door to Dr. Veatch’s office opens and a CSI type comes out, gnawing on a taco. I can see that he’s already paid a visit to the café before stopping by to photograph blood spatter.

“Hey, Heather,” he says, with a wink.

“Oh, hey,” I say. “The café’s opened for lunch already?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Special’s beef tacos. Oh, and turkey pot pie.”

“Mmmm,” I say longingly. The waffles seem to have been a long time ago.

“I know,” the forensics guy says, with a happy sigh. “I love it when we get called to Death Dorm.”

“That’s Death Residence Hall,” I correct him.

“You better not be dripping hot sauce on my crime scene again, Higgins,” Detective Canavan says crankily, as he slams down my phone.

Higgins rolls his eyes and disappears back into Owen’s office.

“So,” Detective Canavan says to me, as I sink into the blue vinyl chair opposite my desk, the one usually reserved for anorexics, basketball players, and other problem residents. “What the hell’s going on here, Wells? How come every time I turn my back, someone’s expired at your place of employment?”

“How should I know?” I demand, every bit as crankily. “I just work here.”

“Yeah,” Detective Canavan growls. “Tell me about it. Well, at least this time, whoever offed your boss did so from the street, not from inside the building, for a refreshing change. So where were you this morning, around eight o’clock?”

My jaw drops. “I’m a suspect? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

His expression doesn’t change. “You heard me. Where were you?”

“But after all we’ve been through together. You know me!” I cry. “You know I’d never—”

“I already heard about the paper, Wells,” Detective Canavan says shortly.

“The… the paper!” I am, to put it bluntly, flabbergasted. “Oh, come on! You think I’m going to shoot a guy in the head over a ream of paper?”

“No,” Detective Canavan says. “But I gotta ask.”

“And who even told you?” I demand hotly. “It was Sarah, wasn’t it? I’m going to kill her… ” I swallow, instantly regretting my choice of words, and give a nervous glance at the grate separating my office from the crime scene. I can hear subtle sounds of activity coming from behind it, the murmur of measurements being read off, as well as the steady crunching of tacos.

“Wells.” Detective Canavan, ever phlegmatic, looks bored. “Cut the dramatics. We all know where you were at eight o’clock this morning. This is just a formality. So please be the team player we all know you are and say—” He raises his voice to a falsetto that I realize, with an insult, is apparently meant to be an imitation of my own. “I was in bed around the corner hitting the snooze alarm, Detective Canavan… ” He holds his pen poised over his statement form, ready to scribble exactly that.

I begin to feel myself blush. Not because I don’t sound anything like that—I don’t think. But because—well, that wasn’t where I was this morning.

“Um,” I say. “Well… the thing is… That wasn’t where I was this morning. The thing is, um, this morning, I, um. I went running.”

Detective Canavan drops his pen. “You what?”

“Yeah.” I wonder if, considering how many members of the NYPD are currently swarming around the Washington Square Park area, looking for evidence in Dr. Veatch’s murder, I should ask them to keep an eye out for my uterus. You know, just in case they happen to find a stray one.

“You went running,” Detective Canavan says, in tones of incredulity.

“I’m not trying to lose weight, just get toned,” I say lamely.

Detective Canavan looks as if he’s not about to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. He has, after all, daughters of his own.

“Well, you must have walked in this direction on your way back to your place to change before work,” he says. “Did you see anything then? Anything—or anyone—out of the ordinary?”

I swallow again. “Uh. I didn’t change at my place. I changed at… a friend’s.”

Detective Canavan gives me a look. And I do mean a look. “What friend?”

“A… new friend?” I realize I sound like Jamie Price, raising my inflection to an interrogative. But I can’t help it. Detective Canavan’s scaring me a little. I’ve been involved in plenty of murders in Fischer Hall before.

But I’ve never been a suspect in any of them before.

Besides, his grilling me like this reminds me of my dad. If my dad had any interest whatsoever in my personal life. Which, it happens, he does not.

“What new friend?” he demands.

“God!” I cry. It’s a good thing I was born when I was, and hadn’t been a member of the French Resistance or anything. I’d have cracked under Nazi torture in two seconds. All they’d have to do was look at me and I’d have spilled every secret I knew. “I’m sleeping with my remedial math professor, okay? But you can’t tell anybody, or I could get him in big trouble. Is there any way you can not put his name down in your report? I’ll give it to you, of course, and you can talk to him, and everything, if you don’t believe me and want to check up on my story, and all. But if there’s any way you can keep his name out of this, it would be really, really great… .”

Detective Canavan stares at me for a second or two. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. But I can guess. Grade grubber, I think he’s thinking. Sleeping with the prof for an A…

It turns out I’m wrong though.

“What about Cooper?” he wants to know.

It’s my turn to stare.

“Cooper?” I blink a few times. “What about Cooper?”

“Well.” Detective Canavan looks as confused as I feel. “I thought he was your… you know. Main squeeze. The cat’s pajamas. Whatever you kids are calling it these days.”

I stare at him, completely horrified. “Main squeeze? Are you eighty?”

“I thought you were warm for his form,” Detective Canavan growls. “You said you were, that night those frat boys tried to make you into that human sacrifice… ”

“I believe those were the roofies speaking,” I remind him primly, hoping he doesn’t notice how much my blush has deepened. “If I recall correctly, I told you I loved you, too. Also the planters outside the building. And the paramedics. And the ER doc who pumped my stomach. As well as my IV stand.”

“Still,” the detective says, looking oddly nonplussed. For him. “I always thought you and Cooper—”

“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Well, you were wrong. I’m with Tad now. Please don’t make things hard on him by putting it in your report. He’s a nice guy, and I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize his getting tenure.” Except bone him repeatedly.

I don’t add this part out loud, of course.

“Uh,” Detective Canavan says. “Of course. So… you didn’t see—or hear—anything when you were in the park?”

“No,” I say. Inside Dr. Veatch’s office, someone has made a joke—about the Garfield calendar, perhaps? — and someone else is smothering a laugh.

“Well, what do you know about this Vetch guy?” Detective Canavan wants to know.

“It’s pronounced Veetch,” I correct him.

He blinks at me. “You’re kidding me.”

I smile ruefully. “No. I’m not. I know he was married once. He was getting divorced. That’s one of the reasons he took the job here. From Iowa, I think.”

“Illinois,” Detective Canavan corrects me.

“Right,” I say. “Illinois.” I fall silent.

He stares at me. “That’s it?”

I try to think. “Once,” I say, “he showed me a page from his Garfield calendar that he thought was funny. It was a cartoon where Garfield gave the dog—”

“Odie,” Detective Canavan supplies for me.

“Yeah. Odie. He gives Odie a lasagna. And the dog is all happy. But then Garfield leaves the lasagna out of reach of the dog’s leash. So he can’t get to it.”

“Sick bastard,” Detective Canavan says.

“Who? The cat? Or Dr. Veatch?”

“Both,” Detective Canavan says.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“Can you think of anybody who might have a grudge against him? Veatch, I mean.”

“A grudge? Enough of a grudge to shoot him in the head?” I reach up and run a finger through my gel-stiffened hair. “No. I don’t know anybody who hated Owen enough to kill him. Sure, there’re kids who may not be—have been—overly fond of him, but he’s the hall director. Well, interim hall director. And ombudsman to the president’s office. Nobody’s supposed to like him. But nobody hated him—not that much. Not that I know of.”

Detective Canavan flips through his notebook. “Veatch had anybody fired in the past couple months?”

“Fired?” I laugh. “This is New York College. No one gets fired. They get transferred.”

“This divorce he was going through. Acrimonious?”

“How should I know?”

Detective Canavan narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t you try to pretend like you don’t sit under that grate up there and listen to every conversation that goes on inside that office, young lady. You know good and well whether or not his divorce was acrimonious. Now tell me.”

I sigh. “There was some back-and-forth over the wedding china. That’s it. Seriously. That’s all I heard.”

Detective Canavan looks disappointed.

“What about this graduate student strike thing? Is it serious?”

“It is to them,” I say, thinking of Sarah. “And it is to the president’s office. If those guys really do go on strike, the rest of the unions affiliated with the college will be obligated to strike with them. And then there’ll be an unholy mess… right in time for graduation, too.”

“And Veatch was arbitrating?”

“He was head of the arbitration. But come on,” I say, shaking my head. “Isn’t it more likely he was hit by a stray bullet from a random drug shooting in the park? I mean, you know. You have undercover guys out there—”

“Which is exactly why I know that bullet didn’t hit your boss at random,” Detective Canavan says woodenly. “My people were out in force, covering—”

“If you saythe usual suspects, I’m going to squeal with delight,” I warn him.

He gives me a stern look. “Your boss is dead, Wells. Someone walked up to his office window and deliberately shot him assassination style, if not point-blank, then as close as. Someone who knew him, and someone who wanted him dead. It’s my job to figure out who did it. If you’re too busy with this new boyfriend of yours to quote help the investigation unquote this time, that’s music to my ears, to tell you the truth. The last thing I need is to have to worry about plucking your bony ass out of another near-death situation. Now just jot Romeo’s name down here so I can confirm your story with him later, and you can go.”

I blink at him, feeling suddenly misty-eyed.

“You really think my ass is bony?” I ask. “Detective Canavan, that’s—seriously—the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Wells,” he says tiredly. “Get out.”

Of course I have nowhere to go, since he’s taken over my desk. I can’t go back to the storage room. I honestly don’t think I can stomach any more power-to-the-people preaching from Sarah. The scent of tacos wafting from the grate has gotten pretty overwhelming. Sure, it’s only a little after eleven.

But hey. I ran today. Would it be so wrong to have a little snack?

Magda is sitting at the cash register, perfecting her two-inch robin’s egg blue (in honor of spring) nails with a sequined file that says PRINCESS on one side of it, and looking bored. She brightens when she sees me.

“Heather,” she cries. The cafeteria is mostly empty so early in the day. The only people in it are residents who didn’t wake up in time for breakfast taking advantage of the all-day bagels, and all the members of the NYPD Magda has waved in for free, who’ve headed straight for the taco bar. “Is it true? Someone shot that”—she says a bad word in Spanish—“in the head?”

“Geez, Magda,” I say. “He wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh yes, he was,” Magda assures me. “One time he told me if he caught me giving you free DoveBars, he was going to write me up. I didn’t tell you, you know, because I didn’t want you to get upset. But he did. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Shhhh.” I look around. Over at a nearby table, some of Detective Canavan’s colleagues are enjoying taco salads with sides of sour cream and guacamole. “Magda, don’t go around saying that too loudly, okay? I think we’re pretty much all guilty until proven innocent with this one.”

“So what else is new?” Magda asks, rolling her elaborately made-up eyes. Then those eyes start to twinkle as she asks, “So things are getting cozy with Mr. Math, eh? I saw you two this morning in here, feeding each other bites of whipped cream… ”

I can’t help scowling. “Things were cozy. Cozy enough that… ” I let my voice trail off. So much had happened since that extremely odd interlude in the shower this morning that I’m not even exactly sure whether or not it really took place.

But it had. Hadn’t it?

Magda raises her drawn-on eyebrows. “Yes?”

“He wanted to know if I could take a chunk of time off from work this summer,” I say. “Then he said he has something he wants to ask me. When the timing is right.”

Magda’s mouth drops open. Then she squeals. Then she hops off her stool and runs around the cashier’s desk in her four-inch heels and throws her arms around me. Since she’s about a foot short than I am, this means she is basically hugging my waist with her enormously high hair tickling my nose.

“Heather!” she cries. “I’m so happy for you! You’re going to be such a beautiful bride!”

“I don’t know,” I say, uncomfortably conscious of the curious stares turning in our direction. “I mean, I can’t imagine that’s the question he really wants to ask me. Can you? We’ve only been going out a few months—”

“But when it’s right, it’s right,” Magda says, letting go of my waist to grab my arms instead, and give me a little shake. “Mr. Math is no dummy. Not like Cooper.”

That name again. I feel my cheeks heating up, as they seem to always do these days, whenever my landlord’s name is mentioned.

“So what are you going to say?” Magda wants to know. “You are going to say yes, right? Heather, you cannot wait for the rest of your life for Cooper to come around. Some men never do. Like Pete. You know, I once had my eye on him—”

I am poleaxed.

“You like Pete?” I stare at her, as dumbstruck as if she’d just admitted she’s a Scientologist with an invitation to join Tom and Katie on the spaceship when it shows up. “Our Pete? Sitting out there at the guard’s desk Pete? Widowed father of four Pete? Insatiable appetite for panadas Pete?”

“Very funny,” Magda says, giving me a sour look. “Yes, our Pete. But that was a long time ago, back when his wife first died, and I felt sorry for him, and all of that. Not that it made any difference. He still has no idea I’m alive. Though how any man could not notice this ”—she waves the robin’s egg blue nails up and down her compact frame, which, though currently covered in her pink uniform smock, is obviously smoking hot, from the matching blue toenails peeping out from the hot pink plastic stilettos, to the bleached blond bob that frames her face—“I don’t know.”

“He’s still transfixed with grief?” I suggest. Although it’s more likely that Pete, like me, doesn’t have the slightest inkling that Magda has ever looked upon him as anything other than an amusing dining companion.

“Probably,” Magda says, with a shrug of her curvy shoulders. Then, because a resident with an advanced state of bed head has come stumbling into the cafeteria, his meal card extended, she hurries back to her stool, takes the card, swipes it, and with a “Look at my little movie star! Have a nice brunch, honey,” hands it back to the student, then says to me, “Now. Where were we?”

“Wait a minute.” I still cannot believe what I’ve just heard. “You liked Pete. Like… like liked liked him. And he never caught on?”

Magda shrugs. “Maybe if I had strapped panadas to my chest I’d have had more luck.”

“Magda.” I am still in shock. “Did you ever… I don’t know. Think about asking him out?”

“Oh, I asked him out,” Magda says. “Plenty of times.”

“Wait. Where? Where did you guys go?”

“To ball games,” Magda says, indignantly. “And to the bar—”

“To the Stoned Crow?” I cry. “Magda! Going out for drinks after work doesn’t count as a date. And going to college basketball games—especially with a basketball fanatic like you—doesn’t count, either. You probably spent the entire time screaming at the refs. No wonder he didn’t get the message. I mean, did you ever tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“That you like him.”

Magda says something in Spanish and makes the sign of the cross. Then she says, “Why would I do that?”

“Because that might be the only way a guy like Pete is ever going to realize that you like him as more than a friend, and, you know”—I shrug—“take it to the next level. Did you ever think of that?”

Magda holds out her hand, palm toward me. “Please. It’s done, all right? I don’t want to talk about it. It didn’t happen. I moved on. Let’s get back to you.”

I glare at her some more. Right. She’s moved on. Like my cellulite has moved on.

“Well, fine. Since you asked. So, Tad’s got this question he wants to ask me. And… meanwhile, Detective Canavan asks where I was this morning at Dr. Veatch’s time of death, which was apparently the exact time Tad was… well, telling me he had this question to ask me. So I had to give Detective Canavan Tad’s name, and who knows what he’s going to do with it. Tad could get into big trouble if it gets out that he’s sleeping with a student.”

Magda lets out a big enough sigh of disgust that those aforementioned bleached blond bangs fly up into the air. “Please,” she says. “You’re not exactly a tender little freshman. No offense.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what I am.”

“But you’re old!” Magda exclaims.

I glare at her. “Thanks.”

“You know what I mean. You’re both what-is-it-called. Consenting adults. No one will care. Well, no one but that Dr. Veatch. And now he’s dead. So that’s that.”

“Will you try not to sound so gleeful when you say that?” I warn her.

“So what are you going to say?” Magda wants to know.

“About what?”

“When he asks you to marry him?” she shouts, loudly enough to cause the bed-headed student as well as members of the NYPD to look over.

“Magda,” I say. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s what he’s going to ask. You know? I mean, it seems kind of soon—”

“You should say yes,” Magda says, firmly. “It will make Cooper crazy. And then he’ll come around. Mark my words. I know about these things.”

I say acidly, “If you know so much about these things, how come you and Pete never ended up together?”

She shrugs. “Maybe it’s for the best. Why do I want to be saddled with kids at my age? I still got my whole life ahead of me.”

“Magda,” I say. “No offense. But you’re forty.”

“Thirty-nine and a half,” she reminds me. “Oh, shit.”

I look where she’s looking. And echo her curse word inside my head.

Because President Allington, along with his entourage, has finally shown up.