by Meg Cabot
I know. Ew.
“Come, now, Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. To Detective Canavan he says, loudly enough for everyone in the caf to hear, apparently in an effort to impress President Allington, who wouldn’t know me from Adam—though his wife and I were once nearly murdered by the same person—“Heather here knows every single one of Fischer Hall’s seven hundred residents by name. Don’t you, Heather?”
“Well, generally speaking,” I say uncomfortably. “When they haven’t been set on simmer for a few hours.”
Did that sound flip? I guess it did. Dean Evans is gagging again. I didn’t mean to be flip. It’s just that…come on.
I hope the dean isn’t going to hold this against me. You know, admission-to-the-College-of-Arts-and-Sciences-wise.
“So who is she? The girl.” The detective seems unconscious of the fact that nearly everyone in the cafeteria is eavesdropping on our conversation. “A name would be nice.”
I feel my stomach roll a little, like it had back in the kitchen when Pete had lifted the lid and I’d found myself staring into those unseeing eyes.
I take a deep breath. The air in the cafeteria is pungent with ordinary breakfast smells…eggs and sausage and maple syrup. You can’t smell her.
At least, I don’t think so.
Still, I’m thankful that I haven’t had time this morning for my customary cream-cheese-and-bacon bagel breakfast. The café mocha has—so far—been more than enough. The parquet of the dining hall floor is swimming a little before my eyes.
I clear my throat. There. That feels a little better.
“Lindsay Combs,” I say. “She dates—dated—the Pansies’ point guard.” The Pansies is the (sad) name of the New York College Division III basketball team. They lost their real name, the Cougars, in a cheating scandal in the fifties, and have been stuck with being Pansies ever since—to the amusement of the teams they play, and their own everlasting chagrin.
Everyone in the room sucks in their breath. President Allington—dressed, as usual, in his interpretation of what one of his college’s students might wear (if it were 1955), a New York College letter jacket and gray cords—actually cries, “No!” Beside the president, Coach Andrews—as I’d known he would—goes pale.
“Oh, God,” he says. He’s a big guy—around my own age—with spiky dark hair and disarmingly blue eyes…what they call Black Irish. He’d be cute if he wasn’t so muscle-bound. Oh, and if he ever actually noticed I was alive.
Not that, if he did, anything would ever come of it, since my heart belongs to another.
“Not Lindsay,” he says, with a groan.
I feel for him. I really do. Cheryl Haebig isn’t the only one who liked Lindsay…we all did. Well, everyone except our office graduate student assistant, Sarah. Lindsay was an immensely popular girl, the captain of the New York College cheerleading squad, with waist-length honey-colored hair and grapefruit-sized breasts that Sarah maintained were the result of plastic surgery. While Lindsay’s excessive school spirit could be annoyingly perky (to me, anyway) at times, it was at least a pleasant change from the usual type of New York College students we saw in our office—spoiled, dissatisfied, and threatening to call their lawyer father if we didn’t get them a single or an extra-long bed.
“Jesus Christ.” Dr. Jessup hadn’t believed it when I’d called to say that he needed to get to Fischer Hall as soon as possible, due to the fact that one of our residents had lost her head…literally. Now he looks as though it’s finally sinking in. “Are you sure, Heather?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m sure. It’s Lindsay Combs. Head cheerleader.” I swallow again. “Sorry. No pun intended.”
Detective Canavan has removed a notepad from his belt, but he doesn’t write anything in it. Instead, he flips slowly through the pages, not looking up. “How could you tell?”
I’m trying hard not to remember those unseeing eyes looking up at me—only not. “Lindsay wore contact lenses. Tinted. Green.” Such an unnatural shade of green that Sarah, back in the office, always asked, whenever Lindsay left, “Who the hell does she think she’s fooling? That color does not occur in nature.”
“That’s all?” Detective Canavan asks. “Tinted contact lenses?”
“And the earrings. She’s got three on one side, two on the other. She came down to my office a lot,” I say, by way of explaining how I was so familiar with her piercings.
“Troublemaker?” Detective Canavan asks.
“No,” I say. Most students who end up in the office of the residence hall director are either there because they’re in trouble, or they’ve got a problem with their roommate. Or, as in Lindsay’s case, because they want the free birth control I keep in a jar on my desk instead of Hershey’s kisses (lower in calories). “Condoms.”
Detective Canavan raises his gray eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
“Lindsay stopped by a lot for free condoms,” I say. “She and her boyfriend were pretty hot and heavy.”
“Name?”
I realize, belatedly, that I’ve just managed to incriminate one of my residents. Coach Andrews realizes it, too.
“Aw, come on, Detective,” he says. “Mark isn’t capable of—”
“Mark what?” Detective Canavan demands.
Coach Andrews, I see, is looking panicky. Dr. Allington rushes in to his favorite employee’s rescue. Well, sort of.
“The Pansies do have a very important ball game tomorrow night,” the president begins worriedly, “against the Jersey College East Devils. We’re eight-and-oh, you know.”
To which Coach Andrews adds defensively, “And none of my boys had anything to do with what happened to Lindsay. I don’t want them dragged into it.”
Detective Canavan—not even sounding like he’s lying, which I know he is—says, “I sympathize with your dilemma, Coach. You, too, Dr. Allington. But the fact is, I have a job to do. Now—”
“I don’t think you understand, Detective,” Dr. Allington interrupts. “Tomorrow night’s game is being televised on New York One. Millions of dollars of commercial advertising is at stake here.”
I stare at the president, openmouthed in astonishment. I notice Dean Evans is doing the same thing. She meets my gaze, and it’s clear we’re both thinking: Whoa. He did not just say that.
You would think, considering we’re both on the same cognitive wavelength, she’d be a little more sympathetic about the remedial math thing. But I guess not.
“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Doctor.” Detective Canavan’s voice is hard, and loud enough to make Magda and her fellow cafeteria workers stop crying and lift up their heads. “Either your people give me the name of the girl’s boyfriend now, or you’ll be sending more girls home later this semester in body bags. Because I can guarantee, whatever sick bastard did this to Miss Combs, he will do it again, to someone else.”
Dr. Allington stares hard at the detective, who stares even harder back.
“Mark Shepelsky,” I say quickly. “Her boyfriend’s name is Mark Shepelsky. He’s in Room Two-twelve.”
Coach Andrews slumps across the tabletop, burying his head in his arms. Dr. Allington groans, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger as if stricken by a sudden sinus headache. Dr. Jessup just looks at the ceiling, while Dr. Flynn, the Housing Department’s on-staff psychologist, smiles sadly at me from the table where he sits with the other school administrators.
Detective Canavan looks a bit calmer as he flips his notepad back open and jots down the name.
“There,” he says. “That didn’t hurt, now, did it?”
“But,” I say. Detective Canavan sighs audibly at my But. I ignore him. “Lindsay’s boyfriend couldn’t have had anything to do with this.”
Detective Canavan turns his rock-hard stare on me. “And just how would you know that?”
“Well,” I say, “whoever killed her had to have access to a key to the cafeteria. Because he’d need
one to sneak in before the caf was open in order to hack up his girlfriend, clean the place up, and get out by the time the staff arrived. But how would Mark get hold of a key? I mean, if you think about it, Fischer Hall employees ought to really be your primary suspects—”
“Heather.” Detective Canavan’s already squinty eyes narrow even further. “Do not—I repeat, do not—be getting any ideas that you’re going to be launching your own personal investigation into this girl’s murder. This is the work of a sick and unbalanced mind, and it’d be in the best interest of everyone, yourself most particularly, if this time you left the investigating to the professionals. Believe me, we have things under control.”
I blink at him. Detective Canavan can be scary when he wants to be. I can tell that even the deans are scared. Coach Andrews looks terrified. And he’s about a foot taller than the detective, and about fifty pounds heavier…all of it muscle.
I long to point out to the detective that I would not have had to launch my own personal investigation into last semester’s murders if he had actually listened to me from the beginning that they were, in fact, murders.
But it’s pretty obvious he seems to get it this time around.
I should probably tell him that I have absolutely no desire at all to get involved with this particular criminal case. I mean, throwing girls down an elevator shaft is one thing. Chopping their heads off? So not something I want to involve myself in. My knees are still shaking from what I saw inside that pot. Detective Canavan so doesn’t need to worry about me doing any investigating this time. The professionals are welcome to this one.
“Are you listening to me, Wells?” the detective demands. “I said I do not want a repeat performance—”
“I got it,” I interrupt quickly. I’d elaborate—like how about no way do I want anything to do with headless cheerleaders—but decide it would be wiser simply to retreat.
“Can I go now?” I ask—I direct the question more at Dr. Jessup, since he is, in fact, my boss—well, Tom’s my direct boss, but since Tom’s busy trying to figure out if there are any cafeteria keys missing (a task he seems to relish, since it keeps him well away from what they found on the stove—and the fact that he’s been asked to look is also proof that Detective Canavan is right…the NYPD does have things under control), Stan’s the closest thing I’ve got nearby.
But Stan is staring at his boss, President Allington, who is trying to get Detective Canavan’s attention. Which is sort of a relief, since I’ve had all of Detective Canavan’s attention I can take for the moment. That dude can be scary.
“So what I hear you telling me, Detective…” Dr. Allington is saying, his careful phrasing illustrative of the training that had earned him his PhD. “What I hear you saying is that this unfortunate matter will most likely not be cleared up by lunch today? Because my office was planning on hosting a special function this afternoon to honor our hardworking student athletes, and it would be a shame to have to postpone it….”
The look the detective levels at the college president might have frozen lava. “Dr. Allington, we’re not talking about some kid barfing up his breakfast in the locker room after gym class.”
“I realize that, Detective,” Dr. Allington says. “However, I had hoped—”
“For Christ’s sake, Phil,” Dr. Jessup interrupts. He’s had enough. Finally. “Someone tried to fricassee a kid, and you wanna open up the salad bar?”
“All I’m saying,” Dr. Allington says, looking indignant, “is that, in my professional opinion, it would be best not to allow this incident to interfere with the residents’ normal routine. You’ll recall that a few years ago, when the school had that rash of suicides, it was the publicity about them that generated so many of the copycat attempts—”
Detective Canavan apparently can’t help raising an incredulous gray eyebrow at that one. “You think half a dozen coeds are gonna rush home and whack off their own heads?”
“What I’m trying to say,” Dr. Allington continues haughtily, “is that if the luncheon is canceled—not to mention tomorrow night’s game—the truth about what’s happened here is going to be impossible to keep from leaking. We’re not going to be able to keep something like this quiet for long. I’m not talking about the Post, either, or even 1010 WINS. I’m talking about the New York Times, maybe even CNN. If your people don’t find that girl’s body soon, Detective, we may even attract the networks. And that could be very damaging to the school’s reputation—”
“Corpseless head found in dorm cafeteria,” Carol Ann Evans, to everyone’s surprise, says. When we all turn our heads to blink at her, she adds, in a choked voice, “Tonight on Inside Edition.”
Detective Canavan shifts his weight and removes his foot from the chair seat.
“President Allington,” he says. “In about five minutes, my people are going to seal this entire wing off from the public. And by public, I am including your employees. We are launching a full-scale investigation into this crime. We ask that you cooperate.
“You can do so, firstly, by removing yourself and your employees from the immediate vicinity as soon as my men are through with them. Secondly, I’ll have to ask that this cafeteria remain closed until such time as I deem it safe to reopen. Unless I’m mistaken”—the detective’s tone implies that this is hardly likely—“you’ve had a student murdered on school grounds this morning, and her killer is still at large, possibly right here on campus. Possibly even here in this very room. If there’s anything that could be more damaging to your school’s reputation than that, I can’t think of it. I really don’t think postponing a luncheon—or a basketball game—is comparable, do you?”
I guess I can’t really blame Dean Evans for bursting into a fit of nervous giggles just then. The suggestion that there might be a killer on the New York College student life administrative staff is enough to send even the most staid individual into hysterical laughter. A more boring group of people could hardly be found anywhere on the planet. Gerald Eckhardt, with his surreptitious smoking and cross-shaped tie tack, wielding a meat cleaver? Coach Andrews, in his jogging pants and letter jacket, hacking a young girl to death? Dr. Flynn, all hundred and forty pounds of him, using a circular saw to dismember a cheerleader?
It just isn’t within the realm of the possible.
And yet.
And yet even Carol Ann Evans must have figured out by now that whoever killed Lindsay had complete access to the cafeteria. Only someone who works at Fischer Hall—or in the Student Life Department—would have access to the key.
Which means someone on the Housing staff could be a killer.
The sad part is, this doesn’t even surprise me.
Wow. I guess I really am a jaded New Yorker.
3
Just ’cause you got a great big bonus
Don’t start to think that you can own us.
Sure, we can’t afford high-priced entertainment
But in the condo of life, you’re still the basement.
“Investment Banker Guy”
Written by Heather Wells
“You have a bunch of messages,” Sarah, our office’s graduate student assistant—every residence hall is assigned a GA, who, in exchange for free room and board, helps run the administrative aspects of the hall office—informs me tersely as I come in. “The phones are ringing off the hook. Everyone wants to know why the caf is closed. I’ve been using the gas leak excuse, but I don’t know how long people are going to believe us, with all these cops traipsing in and out. Have they found the rest of her yet?”
“Shhh,” I say, looking around the office, in case there’s a resident lurking.
But the office (still festooned with garlands of fake evergreen, a menorah, and Kwanzaa gourds, thanks to my slightly manic and clearly overzealous holiday decorating) is empty, except for Tom, who is back in his office—separated from the outer office, in which I sit, by a metal grate—murmuring into the phone.
“Whatever,” Sarah says, rolling her ey
es. Sarah is getting a master’s in psychology, so she knows a lot about the human psyche and how it works. Or thinks she does, anyway. “Half the people in the building aren’t even awake yet. Or, if they are, they’ve hurried off to class. So do you think they’re going to cancel tomorrow night’s game? Not because of this blizzard we’re supposed to be getting, but because of…you know. Her?”
“Um,” I say, slipping behind my desk. It feels good to sit down. I hadn’t been aware of how badly my knees were shaking until now.
Well, it’s not every day you see a decapitated cheerleader’s head in a pot. Especially a cheerleader you knew. It’s no wonder I’m a little shaky. Plus, except for the café mocha, I still haven’t had breakfast.
Not that I feel like eating. Well, very much.
“I don’t know,” I say. “They want to question Mark.”
Sarah looks annoyed. “He didn’t do it,” she says scornfully. “He’s not smart enough. Unless he had help.”
It’s true. The admission standards for New York College are some of the highest in the country…except when it comes to athletes. Basically any semi-decent ballplayer who wants to come to New York College is accepted, since, as a Division III school, all the best athletes tend to go to colleges in Division I or II. Still, President Allington is determined to have his legacy at New York College be that he turned it into an actual contender in the world of college ball—his ultimate goal, it’s rumored, is to have the school’s Division I rating reinstated.
Though the likelihood of this happening—especially in light of today’s events—seems slim.
“I still can’t get over it,” Sarah is saying. “Where could her body be?”
“Where all bodies in New York City turn up,” I say, looking at my phone messages. “In the river somewhere. No one’ll find it till spring, when the temperature rises enough to cause the body to bob.”
