by Meg Cabot
For setting me free
I said thank you now
So please stop Facebooking me
“Thank You”
Written by Heather Wells
A few hours later, Cooper rolls away from me to lie panting on his back in my bed, beneath the watchful—yet to my mind, comforting—gazes of the dolls of many nations.
“Feel better?” I ask him. After getting home from the bar, I offered to give him some deep tissue massage therapy. I felt it was the least I could do to help him get over his stressful day.
“I’ve never had a massage quite like that,” he says.
“I don’t have any professional training in the art of massage,” I admit.
“I don’t mind,” he says. “But I’m a little worried about what they must be thinking of us.” He nods at the dolls.
Miss Mexico is the fanciest, in her hot-pink flamenco dress and elaborate pointy hair comb. Miss Ireland is the one for whom I feel worst. She’s made of cloth, and her legs, beneath her red skirt covered in green four-leaf clovers, are made out of black pipe cleaners. My mom apparently grabbed the first doll she saw on her way to the plane. I always treat Miss Ireland with extra care, fearful Miss Mexico’s fanciness might have given her a complex over the years.
“Oh,” I say, “they’re extremely nonjudgmental.”
“That’s good,” he says and rolls over to reach for the water glass on the nightstand next to his side of the bed—after a workout like the one I’ve given him, hydrating is both necessary and advisable—only to find Owen, the orange tabby cat, perched there, watching him.
“Jesus Christ,” he says, startled, as Owen blinks at him. “We might as well get cameras in here and put on our own reality show.”
“I told you we could go to your place,” I say, holding out my index finger so Owen will move from the nightstand to the bed. An outstretched index finger is, as any cat person knows, irresistible to most cats, as they cannot help but move toward one to rub their face against it. Owen is no exception, and Cooper is able to reach the water glass as Owen leaps from the nightstand to the bed. “Then we wouldn’t have an audience.”
“No,” Cooper says after swallowing down half the contents of the glass. “I like your place better.”
He doesn’t need to explain. His place—one floor of the brownstone below mine—is bigger, but it’s also been Cooperized, with curtains that don’t close all the way (particularly in the bedroom), books and papers piled on nearly every surface, and at least five pairs of shoes left in the middle of the floor in every room because, as he explains, “that way I know I can find them.” I personally don’t understand why anyone needs to have seven bottles of nearly empty conditioner in the shower, and clearly Cooper doesn’t either since he spends nearly all his time on my floor, leaving it only to use his admittedly fantastic kitchen, his office, and his bedroom to change clothes. Even the animals prefer my place, except when we’re in the kitchen downstairs. My floor only has a kitchenette.
One thing for which I’ve been campaigning is a housekeeper, especially since Magda has a cousin who runs a cleaning service. Although Cooper is horrified at the idea—he grew up on the Cartwright compound, split between Westchester and a huge penthouse apartment in Manhattan, with a full-time staff of nannies, maids, cooks, and chauffeurs, and so as an adult is determined to do his own dishes and laundry—it’s a battle I’m equally determined to win. There’s no reason two busy working people—one of whom is also in school—shouldn’t pool their money to pay a third person who is in the business of cleaning homes to come to theirs to do so. It’s practically unpatriotic, as a matter of fact, for them not to do so, especially in this economy. We’re depriving someone of badly needed work.
I’ve almost got Cooper believing in this argument.
“So,” I say to him, now that we’re both feeling more relaxed and the cat has made a neat little ball of himself between us. Lucy, in her own doggie bed on the floor, is snoring softly. “I know you didn’t want to talk about it in front of Tom and Steven. But don’t you think in this particular case client-detective privilege should extend to me?”
Except for telling us that he’d taken the assignment his father had offered, Cooper had refused to elaborate further on what had happened in the offices of Cartwright Records Television. At the bar, he’d just ordered another beer, then wolfed down a plate of fish and chips, fried oysters, and half the contents of the basket of mozzarella sticks I’d ordered for the table. (Though mozzarella sticks are basically my favorite thing, I didn’t object too much. I had a pizza Margherita with which to console myself.)
“In this particular case, the client is going to be my sister-in-law,” I go on, “and working in my building. So I really think I should be let in on what’s going on.”
“Why do you think I took the case?” Cooper asks, lifting an arm so I can snuggle closer.
I’m perplexed. “Your dad offered you a million dollars?” I offer hopefully. With that kind of money, we could get weekly housekeeping, and also all the brownstone’s walls painted, get new window treatments, the windows cleaned—they need it badly—and re-do all the bathrooms, not to mention maybe put in a hot tub in the backyard.
“Not quite that much,” he says with a chuckle. “Although I did give my father a quote that’s triple my normal rate, and he didn’t even blink an eye. If I’m going to have to be spending all my time with Tania, I’m going to need to be amply compensated for it.”
“Yes,” I say, running a finger along his arm, all the way down to the complicated watch I’ve never seen him remove. “How much time exactly are you going to have to be spending with Tania?”
“Every minute she’s at Fischer Hall,” he says. “Once they’ve got her tucked into her Maybach and headed back up to Park Avenue, I’m off duty. That’s the deal I made with my dad. I’m only interested in protecting Tania during the hours her presence might be putting your life in jeopardy—though I didn’t tell him so, of course. They’ll have to find alternative security the rest of the time.”
“Wait.” I lift my head from his shoulder and stare into his face. “What? How is Tania’s presence putting my life in jeopardy? Or anyone’s? I thought that bullet that hit her bodyguard was random—”
His smile is grim. “If everyone still believes that shot was random, why the sudden move to film the show at New York College? Do you have any idea how much it must be costing CRT to move location from that resort, which they had to have paid millions to secure?”
Now I’m sitting up, holding my—admittedly way too expensive, but I did get them significantly marked down at T.J.Maxx—dark purple Calvin Klein sheets to my chest. Cooper’s chest is protected by a fine mat of dark hair. I’m not that wild about hairless chests—Jordan used to wax his in order to appear nonthreatening to his fans, primarily tween girls.
“They’re furnishing all the rooms,” I say, “and paying to have the cafeteria restaffed and set up over the next couple of days. That can’t be cheap.”
“Granted, the college is probably letting them have the space for nothing,” Cooper says. “The promotion for the school alone will be worth it—”
“If the show casts the school in a positive light,” I murmur, thinking about the horrible things Stephanie Brewer suggested, about how we could let the girls sneak out, chaper-oneless, into the city to create “drama.”
“It does make one wonder,” Cooper says. He shrugs, seemingly done with the subject, and reaches for the remote. “Oh well. What sadly morbid glimpses into the lives of the less fortunate have you got recorded for us tonight?”
He might be done with the subject, but I most definitely am not.
“Hold on,” I say. I can’t help remembering that look I’d seen on Jordan’s face in the Allingtons’ penthouse. There’d been something he’d wanted to say, something he might have been too frightened to say. “What’s Tania so afraid of? Did you ask? Has she had any actual threats?”
He sighs and
lowers the remote. “My dad swears up and down that she hasn’t and that she’s fine . . . maybe a little shaken up from what happened in front of Christopher’s club. Because we handled the crisis she had while she was at Fischer Hall last week so competently—”
I can’t help snorting. “Stephanie Brewer fed me almost the exact same line,” I say.
“Well,” Cooper says, “it could be true, you know. With her longtime bodyguard—Bear’s worked for her for two years—down for now, Tania might truly want people around her who she thinks she can trust, especially when she’s in such a delicate state.”
“Delicate state? The girl is having a baby. People have been having babies for thousands of years, often in the middle of fields with no painkillers, while running from woolly mammoths.”
Cooper raises an eyebrow at me. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Of course I’m all right.”
I realize I need to cool it a little. Tania may have stolen one Cartwright brother away from me, and now, by getting herself pregnant by him, is using that “delicate state” as an excuse to hire a second Cartwright brother to “protect” her—or at least her father-in-law is.
But that doesn’t mean she’s going to steal Cooper away from me, first, because Cooper is in love with me, and second, because she’s married now and having a child. And third, because if she lays so much as a finger on Cooper, I will break it off. Unlike when I found her messing around with Jordan, I will actually fight for Cooper, as the love I have for Cooper is a dazzling supernova, whereas the love I had for Jordan was a wet sparkler no one could light on a soggy Fourth of July.
“Pass me that water glass, will you?” I say to Cooper. I figure I could probably use some hydration too. Cooper is no slouch in the therapeutic massage department either, and Patty has a theory that 50 percent of life’s ills can be solved simply by stopping and drinking a glass of water.
“Look,” I say after I’ve downed the remains of the glass’s contents. Better. “You do realize it’s actually kind of unlikely that at Tania’s level of fame she wouldn’t have any stalkers. How many Facebook fans did Stephanie say she has, like twenty million or something? I’m sorry, but even back in my day, before social networking was at its current height and at my much, much lower level of success, I had a few wackos who wanted me to be their teen bride.”
Cooper raises both eyebrows. “I thought I got that restraining order against me lifted. How’d you find out about it?”
I’m in no mood to joke. “I know if this has occurred to me, it’s occurred to you. Why is everyone so adamant that there isn’t anyone in the world who’d want to hurt Tania? It’s obvious CRT takes her security seriously.”
Cooper looks uncomfortable. “As I’m sure you remember from your days onstage, fans can express as much admiration as they want—even propose marriage—but it’s not considered stalking or even a threat until they say something that suggests violent intent. I talked to Bear and to my father, and as far as either of them knows, Tania’s received no threats of a violent nature. All her fans are of the overly ardent kind.”
“No one at Cartwright Records would be likely to admit it if she had been getting serious threats,” I say, “because if she had and New York College got wind of it, they wouldn’t let her come film her show on campus. They wouldn’t want to risk the possible lawsuits if any students were endangered . . .” My voice trails off, and I look at him, wide-eyed. “Unless,” I say, “they decided to let them film in a building that’s empty for the summer. A building that Christopher Allington tipped them off has a reputation that couldn’t possibly get any worse, regardless of what happens.”
Cooper looks at me steadily with those calm gray-blue eyes of his. “That’s one theory,” he says, in a voice that is suspiciously neutral, “I suppose.”
“My God.” My heart feels as if it’s turned to gelato in my chest. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you took the job. You don’t think that was a random shooting at all. That’s why you went and talked to Bear. You think there is a serious threat, and CRT is hiding it, but going ahead with filming anyway, because they’re in too deep financially to get out of it now. Cartwright Records isn’t doing very well, is it?”
“I already told you,” Cooper says, taking the empty water glass from my suddenly limp fingers and setting it back on the nightstand. “That isn’t why I took the job. The fact that they moved the filming of Jordan Loves Tania to your place of work means that, whatever is going on with my brother’s wife, I have an obligation to make sure my own bride-to-be remains in one piece. And that’s what I plan on doing. You do have something of a reputation, Heather, for attracting people with homicidal tendencies.”
His tone is light, but I’ve known him long enough to tell he’s deadly serious.
“What about Tania?” I ask him. “Why would anyone want to kill her?” Besides myself, I can’t think of anyone who’d hate Tania Trace enough to murder her. Even I don’t hate her that much—at least not anymore—and I have more reason than anyone.
“We don’t know for certain that someone does,” he reminds me.
“Your dad doesn’t approve of what you do for a living, and yet he went to all the trouble of setting up a fake meeting so he could hire you—”
“Because Tania specifically asked for me, remember? Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough whether or not it’s true.”
My heart freezes up again, remembering what happened to Tania’s last bodyguard. “Oh God, Cooper,” I say. “Promise me you won’t do anything brave. Don’t throw yourself in the path of any bullets for her. I realize she’s carrying your unborn niece, but—”
He looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I’m a detective, Heather,” he says, “not Secret Service. I meant I’ll find out soon enough when I begin using my investigative skills. I’m going to ask Tania if there’s someone who might have reason to want her dead.”
“Oh,” I say, biting my lip. “Of course. Do you think she’ll tell you?”
“Tania’s never struck me as the sharpest knife in the drawer,” he says, “but my dad said that she basically demanded that the show be transferred to your building or she’d quit, which tells me something about her.”
I snort. “Yeah,” I say, thinking of the cafeteria’s dismal appearance, “that she secretly enjoys slumming it.”
“No,” Cooper says, reaching out to stroke a strand of my hair. “It tells me that, despite the fact that she married my brother, she’s got the good sense to know when she’s found someone she can trust.”
I shake my head, refusing to believe it. “You mean me? Oh no, you’ve got it all wrong. It must have been you. You’re the one she asked to be her bodyguard. She and I have barely exchanged two words since—”
“I don’t think Tania has a lot of people in her life she feels close to. Did you see the way she was kissing that dog?”
I nod, remembering the image with a pang. I’m not surprised Cooper noticed it as well.
“I guess a part of me felt a little sorry for her,” I confess. “And I’ve never actually thought she was dumb. People like to think pretty girls who run around in short skirts carrying tiny dogs can’t be intelligent, but unless they’ve inherited their money, they usually don’t get to where they are on looks alone. Tania’s incredibly talented. She’s got the same octave range as an opera singer, for instance.”
“Excuse me?”
I frown at him. “How could you grow up in the Cartwright Records household and not know what that means?”
“You know I purposefully blocked out all music-related discussions growing up. I had to, or I’d have ended up prancing around on stage in a pair of leather pants like Jordan.”
I smile at him. “Simply put, the span from the lowest to the highest notes Tania’s voice can produce without straining is about three octaves—that’s really rare. All that stuff about Mariah Carey and Céline Dion hitting five octaves is crap. I mean, they can hit t
he notes, but not without straining. They have about the same range as Tania. Even though the songs Tania chooses to sing aren’t the best, she’s got a really great voice. I don’t know how she has the lung capacity to do it with that tiny body, especially since she was never classically trained, but she has a vocal range that’s practically operatic, way broader than mine ever was, even when I was taking regular voice lessons and at the top of my form. Not many people realize this, but to hit the notes that she can, as consistently as she does, in a live performance, night after night, she actually has to be really, really talented and really, really dedicated to her craft.”
Cooper reaches out and pulls me down against him, disturbing Owen, who gives us a dirty look and stalks to the far end of the bed where he won’t be jostled.
“I don’t know,” Cooper says as my hair tumbles across his chest. “I heard you belting out something this morning in the bathroom and you sounded really, really talented to me.”
“That was ABBA,” I say with a sniff. “Everyone sounds good singing ABBA, especially in the bathroom. Why do you think they’re so popular?”
He lifts the sheet to peer beneath it. “You look at the top of your form to me,” he says. “As a licensed investigator, I suppose I better check to make sure.”
Before I could stop him, he did. Though truthfully, I didn’t try that hard.
Chapter 11
Check-in day for Tania Trace Rock Camp doesn’t start like one during which you might expect to witness a homicide, even if you work in a place referred to by many as Death Dorm. Besides, I’d been so busy during the few days preceding it, I completely forgot there might be someone—besides me—who wanted Tania dead.
This proves to be a fatal mistake.
But I don’t know this when I step outside into the backyard to check the temperature after waking up. Instead, I find that it’s one of those rare perfect summer days when people can lie out and work on their tans without sweating (which is why my tan is mostly the result of tinted moisturizer—I hate sweating). There isn’t a cloud in the sky, and the humidity is low. When I go back inside, I find I’m able to blow my hair out straight, and it stays that way for once.
