The Bride Wore Size 12

by Meg Cabot

  I take myself and my handbag up to the front desk, where I’m unsurprised to find Gavin working on his screenplay instead of the mail forwarding, though he at least hastily closes his laptop and swings his slippered feet down from the desk when he sees me.

  “I just needed to finish this one scene where the zombies eat my protagonist’s parents’ brains,” he says. “I got a sudden burst of inspiration. Please don’t yell at me for not doing the mail forwarding. I’m an artist, I’m fragile.”

  “I don’t care about the mail forwarding right now. I need to talk to you.”

  I open the door to the desk area and slip through it, placing my bag on a stack of New York Times whose owners have yet to come to the desk to ask for them.

  “This looks serious,” Gavin says, spinning around on his elevated reception chair. “Please, lovely lady, have a seat. Let’s discourse. What’s troubling you?”

  He gestures toward the shelf next to the backs of the mailboxes. I sit down on it, cross my legs, and say, “Remember the night of the prince’s party, the one you said you were working during?”

  “Jamie and I split the shift,” he says, nodding while he strokes the few dark wisps of the goatee he’s apparently trying to grow. “But yes, I recall it. Why?”

  “Who was the RA on duty that night?”

  Gavin leans forward to retrieve the duty log. I require the desk attendants to record every communication of note that takes place during their shifts. Only through organization have I kept Fischer Hall from descending into madness.

  “That would have been”—Gavin runs his finger down the log entries for that night—“Howard Chen. Oh, yeah, right, remember? He was still on duty the next morning, when you made me call him to go up to Jasmine’s room with Sarah. He did not like that too much.”

  “So I recall your saying. You also said something about him not liking it too much when you called him for a couple of lockouts.”

  Gavin nods. “Yeah. Because he was so hungover. He bitched me out. He wanted me to give the keys to the residents anyway, even though they didn’t have ID, because he didn’t want to get out of bed.” His eyebrows gather. “Wait a minute, am I in some kind of trouble? Because I didn’t give those residents their keys. I made Howard get the hell out of bed and get down here for the floor masters to let those residents in. He’s a lying little punk if he’s saying otherwise—”

  “No, Gavin, you aren’t in trouble,” I assure him. “I’m only double-checking something. Can I see the sign-out log for the floor masters, please?”

  He shrugs and says, “Sure,” putting away the duty binder and then walking over to the key cabinet.

  Extra copies of keys to every resident’s room are kept in a large metal cabinet behind the desk, as well as master keys that fit into the lock of every room on each floor. While residents who have misplaced their room keys are allowed (three times per semester without charge, with a show of their student ID) to check out spares, only RAs are permitted to use the floor masters to escort a resident who’s forgotten his or her keys and ID.

  To be escorted to one’s room by a sleepy RA on duty (who’s had to stumble all the way down to the front desk in the middle of the night to get the master key to your floor simply because you’ve lost your ID) is a serious embarrassment, and tends to happen only when students are extremely drunk or in some other way distressed, which is why we don’t allow the front desk attendants to simply hand them a spare key. We require an RA to speak with them, to make sure they don’t require medical care, and of course make sure they really are residents by forcing them to recite their student ID codes from memory. Additionally, the lockout is recorded on the student’s registration card. If such infractions become a habit, the lock to the door of the student’s room is changed as a safety precaution, and the student is billed for it.

  Lockouts and lock changes seem to make up a good 25 percent of my job some days.

  I run my finger down the floor master checkout log for the night of the party after which Jasmine died. Sure enough, there’s a note in Jamie’s handwriting that the master key to the fourteenth floor had been checked out at 2:45 a.m.

  That’s going to be me someday, Ameera had wept. Someone’s going to sneak into my room and do that to me in my sleep one night.

  The initials of the person who’d checked out the fourteenth floor master key are HC.

  I feel the same chill sweep over me that I’d felt in Lisa’s office.

  No, I tell myself. It’s not possible. Jasmine and Howard were friends. They went to that party together. I saw them myself in the fifteenth-floor hallway on the video monitor. They were laughing, having fun.

  Then I remember Howard’s desperation in the office, the tears in his eyes as he asked how his parents were going to pay for both him and his brother to go to college at the same time.

  Was it possible the murder of Jasmine Albright had nothing whatsoever to do with Prince Rashid and his secret bride, and instead had to do with a boy, distraught over losing a lucrative student employment contract—as Howard must surely have known he would, if word got out that he’d been at an alcohol-fueled rager while serving as the RA on duty?

  Was that the photo that Jasmine had snapped on her phone, and threatened to Tweet? Howard Chen, drunk while on duty?

  But that’s ridiculous. No one would kill for such a reason. Except . . . people had killed over much less.

  Who benefits?

  Howard.

  Eva would never have detected the tooth marks on the back of Jasmine’s lips if I hadn’t found out about the party and asked her to take a second look.

  Detective Canavan had said whoever had nearly succeeded in strangling Cameron had known what he was doing, and knew something about human anatomy.

  Howard’s major is premed.

  “Gavin,” I say in a tight voice. I so want it to not be true. “How many residents have checked into the fourteenth floor so far?”

  Gavin pulls out my check-in binder and flips to the fourteenth floor. “Not that many. It’s mostly upperclassmen, so we probably won’t get the rest until this weekend. So far it’s only the girls in fourteen-twelve. And Jasmine, of course, but she’s—”

  “Never mind that,” I say. “Check the registration cards of the girls in fourteen-twelve. See if any of them had a lockout the night of the party.”

  “All of them?” Gavin asks dubiously. Looking up one registration card is a pain in the ass. Four is beyond tedium.

  “All of them,” I say.

  “Okay.”

  He sighs, and gets to work. Nothing at the desk is computerized, a result of New York College’s outdated conviction that if it supplied the residence hall public areas with computers, the student workers would immediately steal them and/or spend their shifts looking at pornography, when in fact what I know from experience they’d most likely do is spend their shifts writing screenplays.

  It can’t be Howard, I tell myself as I wait, idly flipping through a copy of Cosmo I find at the top of the mail forwarding pile. Howard spent the entire time after the discovery of Jasmine’s body vomiting down the trash chute. What cold-blooded murderer does that?

  One who regrets his actions, but can’t go back and change them.

  How had Howard known I’d been at the student center, talking to Cameron Ripley?

  Oh God. That’s right. Howard had run into me and Lisa as we were returning from the meeting with President Allington. He’d been trailing along behind the campus tour Jasmine Tsai was giving her residents. Howard could easily have left the tour and followed me to the student center—I’d never have noticed, I was on the phone with Cooper—then walked into Cameron’s office after I left, and—

  Well, we know what followed. At that time Howard didn’t know all the RAs who’d gone to the party were getting fired. He’d thought he still had a job to save.

  Cooper was right. I was lucky to have escaped Cameron’s office with my life.

  My cell phone rings. I reach—v
ery carefully—into my bag to retrieve it. It’s Cooper.

  “Hi, honey,” I say in as normal a tone as I can muster considering I’ve just realized how close I came to being killed by a deeply disturbed homicidal maniac in my own place of work—and not even the one I thought was a homicidal maniac, a different one altogether. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m good,” he says. His voice sounds sexily sleep-roughened. “But I’d be better if you were here, in bed with me, so we could play nurse and patient some more. That’s a very good game.”

  “I know, I enjoyed it too. Sorry I had to go, but my shift at the hospital was over. I’ll be back in a little while to check on you and give you your next injection.”

  I notice Gavin giving me an odd look from over the tops of the registration card boxes, so I get up and walk toward the front desk window for more privacy.

  “I believe I’m the one who gave you the injection,” Cooper says with a happy growl.

  “You certainly did.”

  I notice out the window, which faces Washington Square Park, that Howard Chen, Joshua Dungarden, and several of the other ex-RAs are returning to the building from wherever it is they’ve been. Howard in particular does not look happy. He’s lagging a little behind the others, staring at his own feet. Apparently, their attempts to get their jobs back from either the president or Joshua Dungarden’s father’s friend who works in the law school have not gone well.

  “Cooper,” I say as the RAs stop to talk to the residents protesting on their behalf in front of Fischer Hall. “I have to finish up something here at work. I’ll talk to you as soon as I’m done, okay?”

  “You sound weird,” Cooper says. “Is everything all right?”

  “It will be,” I say. “I think. In a little while. I’ll call you back.” I hang up.

  “What was that about?” Gavin asks curiously.

  “None of your business,” I say. “What have you found out?”

  “Only that none of the girls in fourteen-twelve has had any lockouts whatsoever.”

  “What?” I leave the window to go to the desk to see for myself, but he’s right. The back of each girl’s registration card, where lockouts are listed, is clean.

  There’s only one reason Howard Chen could have checked out the master key to the fourteenth floor at a quarter to three in the morning the night Jasmine Albright died.

  And that was to kill her.

  33

  Fischer Hall Cafeteria Worker Shocked

  Fischer Hall cafeteria cashier Madga Diego (voted “Most Popular Employee” on the New York College campus) has stated that she is “shocked” that New York College housing and residence life staff (as well as the president’s office) has chosen to terminate the employment contracts of over half the RA staff of Fischer Hall, giving them less than a week to find alternative housing before classes begin and leaving the residents of nine floors of one of the most popular dorms on campus without effective leadership or guidance as they enter the fall semester.

  “Poor little movie stars,” Ms. Diego told

  this reporter. “I am shocked. I will no longer

  see their little faces here in my dining hall. Honey, take a napkin with that, you are spilling it on the floor.”

  The RAs were fired for allegedly attending a party at which alcohol was allegedly served, something every college student around this globe has done at one time or another, usually without ill consequence.

  The Express will continue covering this

  news story until some kind of comment is given by some member of this administration.

  New York College Express,

  your daily student news blog

  Evidence. That’s what I need. Canavan will laugh at me if I go to him with what I have so far.

  Simply finding Howard’s fingerprints in Jasmine’s room won’t convict him, because they were friends, and she probably invited him into her room a number of times before the night of her murder. If his fingerprints are in the Express offices, though . . .

  Wait, he’ll probably say he volunteered there, or something. That won’t convict him either, though the security tape from outside the offices of the Express just after Cameron’s attempted murder probably could, providing the footage is clear enough to see Howard’s face.

  And what are the chances it is? No one’s arrested him so far. He probably had his hoodie pulled over his head.

  I need more.

  “Gavin,” I say. “I need you to do something for me. It’s really important, but it also might be a little dangerous, and technically also a little bit illegal.”

  Gavin rises from the reception chair, planting both Goofy slippers firmly on the floor. “I’m in.”

  “I haven’t even told you what it is yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Gavin says. “I’ve told you before, I’m your servant until the day I die. Or the day you die. Which will probably come before I die since you’re so much older than I am, but on that day I shall weep copiously until I have tears to weep no more.”

  I want to roll my eyes at his theatrics, but they’re kind of cute and happen to suit my purposes at the moment.

  “Okay,” I say. “I want you to use my master key to let yourself into Howard Chen’s room—it’s okay, he’s outside right now—then stand there and listen for a ring tone. If you hear it, grab the phone, come back downstairs, and give it to me. Do you think you can handle that?”

  Gavin yawns. “Child’s play.”

  “Good.” I unhook the building’s master key—there are only four copies; mine, Lisa’s, Carl’s, and Julio’s—from my key chain and hand it to him. “Hurry. Room fifteen-fourteen. If there’s no ring tone in five minutes, come back down, unless I call you sooner on your own smartphone. That will mean that Howard’s on his way up, and you need to get the hell out of there. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Gavin is already running for the elevator. Meanwhile, I’ve taken my emergency phone list from my pocket. Jasmine Albright’s number is the first one listed on it, since her last name came first on this semester’s crew of RAs.

  Funny how she’d sneered at my emergency phone list, I think, and now it just might help catch her murderer.

  I figure I’ll give Gavin a minute to catch the elevator, then key into Howard’s room before I dial. Howard is still outside with the other fired RAs, talking to the protesting freshmen. This is going to work. It’s going to work fine.

  Of course, it’s likely Howard’s destroyed Jasmine’s phone. What kind of fool would keep such an incriminating piece of evidence?

  Then again, Howard hasn’t shown many signs of intelligence so far. Funny how med students—and even doctors—can be so bright about some things and so dumb about others.

  “Excuse me.” An impossibly young-looking girl approaches the desk, speaking in a voice so low it’s practically a whisper.

  “Yes?” I say to her.

  “I heard a rumor you guys give away”—her voice drops even lower, so low I have to lean forward to hear her—“free toilet paper here. Is that true?”

  “The rumors are true,” I say, and hand her two rolls from the shelf beneath the phone. “Enjoy.”

  The girl’s face brightens as if I’ve handed her rolls of twenty-dollar bills. “Oh, thank you,” she cries, and rushes off.

  Considering how much her family is paying in tuition, you wouldn’t think free toilet paper would make her so delighted. But I’m glad to have brightened someone’s day.

  I’m sure Gavin couldn’t have gotten to Howard’s room yet, but I pick up the desk phone and dial Jasmine’s number anyway. It rings four times before her voice mail picks up.

  “Hey, you’ve reached Jazz.” She sounds confident and happy. Obviously she couldn’t have known at the time she was recording this message what kind of fate was awaiting her. “You know what to do.”

  Beep.

  I hang up and dial again. Please, I pray as I do so. Please let Gavin pick up. I know there’s no such thing as
closure. But please help us find the person who did this to Jasmine, so we can keep him from ever doing it to anyone else again.

  “Hey,” Pete calls, from across the lobby at the security desk. “What are you doing over there, Heather?”

  “Oh, filling in for Gavin for a few minutes while he gets something to eat,” I say, dialing again.

  Pete looks around the empty lobby. “I didn’t see him go into the caf.”

  “No,” I say casually. “He went up to his room. He has some special cereal he likes.”

  What am I doing? I ask myself as Jasmine’s phone rings in my ear. I’m even lying to my closest friends and coworkers now. I’ve gone insane.

  This probably has to do with what happened yesterday, the thing with Cooper and my mother and Ricardo. That’s what Lisa would say anyway, if she were here. That I should go see a therapist, because I have issues. Mommy issues. It always goes back to our mothers. Isn’t that what shrinks are always supposed to say?

  “Who are you on the phone with?” Pete wants to know.

  “Oh, no one,” I say, hanging up. “Wrong number.”

  A second later, I pick up and dial one last time. Come on, Gavin, I pray. Great. Now I’m praying to Gavin. Pick up. Pick up. Pick—

  “Hells, woman.” Gavin’s voice fills my ear. “You didn’t tell me this was Jasmine’s phone! Am I speaking into a dead girl’s phone? It’s pink and has unicorn stickers all over it. I hope ironically. Anyway, it says ‘Jazz’ on it in purple sparkles.”

  I close my eyes. Thank you, God.

  “Gavin,” I say, opening my eyes again. “Where was it?”

  “Under his damn pillow,” Gavin says. He sounds manic with excitement. “This guy is a freak. Who keeps a dead girl’s phone under his damn pillow? I am so putting this into my screenplay. Hell, I am starting a new screenplay just so I can put this in it. You should see this shit. This guy is Hannibal Lecter the Second. How did he pass the test to become an RA? I’d make a better RA than this guy. Who hired him?”