by Meg Cabot
Frank, looking back at me from the front passenger seat, says, “Cooper give you his jacket?”
I look down at the leather coat still wrapped around my shoulders. It smells of Cooper, like leather and soap. I never want to take it off, not ever again. But I know I’m going to have to, when we get home.
“No,” I say. “I mean, just to borrow.”
“Oh,” Frank say. “Because, you know, you’ve got your blood all over it.”
“Frank,” Patty says. “Shut up.”
“It’s all right,” Cooper says, as he studies the many weirdos out his window who make up the street life of the West Village.
It’s all right! My heart swells. Cooper had said it’s all right that I got my blood all over his leather jacket! Probably because, you know, we’ll be dating after this, and he’s just going to give the coat to me anyway. And I’ll have it—and Cooper—always, to keep me warm.
But then Cooper adds, “I know of a dry cleaner who’s good at getting bloodstains out.”
You know, it just isn’t my day.
25
* * *
Hello
Do I have the right number?
Hello
Yes, I’m looking for my lover
Hello
Can you get him
On the line for me?
Hello
I know he used to live there
Hello
I know he used to care
Hello
Please get my lover on the line
For me
“Hello”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Jones/Ryder
From the album Magic
Cartwright Records
* * *
Patty drops us off at the brownstone, even though Frank insists it isn’t safe there, what with somebody wanting to kill me and all.
All I want to do is take a bath and crawl into my own bed and sleep for a thousand years. I don’t want to have a big long discussion about whether whoever is trying to kill me knows where I live. Frank wants me to go stay with him and Patty.
Until Cooper points out that that might put Indy at risk.
At first I’m kind of shocked, you know, that Cooper would say something so horrible. It’s only when I see how swiftly Frank says that he thinks it would be better if I just stay at Cooper’s, after all, what with Cooper being a trained crime fighter, that I realize what Cooper was up to. He knows I just want to go home. He knows I don’t want to stay in Frank and Patty’s guest room.
And because he’s Cooper, and he’s always doing nice things for me—giving me a free apartment when I have nowhere else to go, and no money for rent anyway; taking me to a party he doesn’t really want to go to, since he might run into a former flame, with whom things had ended badly; risking his own life to save mine; that kind of thing—he’d done his best to get me what he knew I wanted.
Except, of course, the one thing I want more than anything.
But apparently that, for reasons I’ll probably never know—and am pretty sure I don’t want to, anyway—he’s not prepared to give me.
Which is totally fine. I mean, I understand. I’ll just open my OWN doctor’s office/detective agency/jewelry shop, without his help.
Of course, having the kids on my own might be harder, but I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.
Fortunately, I have an unlisted number, so there aren’t any reporters lurking on my front stoop when we pull up. Just the usual drug dealers.
Lucy is wild with joy to see me—though I have to ask Cooper to walk her for the time being, since there’s no way I can hold a leash with my torn-up hands. Once the two of them are gone, I slip upstairs to my apartment, where I peel off my grimy clothes and slide, at long last, into the tub.
Although it turns out that bathing with stitches in your hands is no joke. I have to get out of the tub and go into the kitchen, pull out some rubber gloves, and put those on before I can wash my hair, because the doctor warned me that if I got the stitches wet, my hands might fall off, or something.
Once I get all the elevator grime and blood off me, let the bath refill, and I just lay there, soaking my sore shoulder for a while, wondering what I’m going to do now.
I mean, things aren’t exactly looking good. Someone is trying to kill me…probably the same someone who’d already killed two people, at least. The only common denominator between the dead girls appears to be the president of the college’s son.
But, at least according to the police, it’s unlikely that Chris Allington was the one who’d tried to blow me up, because he’d been out of town at the time.
Which means that someone besides Chris is trying to kill me. And maybe that someone, and not Chris, killed the two girls.
But who? And why? Why would someone have killed Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace in the first place? What could they have possibly done to deserve to die? I mean, besides move into Fischer Hall. Oh, and date—albeit briefly—Chris Allington.
Is that it? Is that what had caused their deaths? The fact that they’d dated Chris? Had Magda been right? Not about the girls having killed themselves because, after waiting so long to have sex, they’d found out it really isn’t the earth-shattering thing they’d been led to believe. But about the girls dying because of the sex—not at their own hand, but the hand of someone who didn’t approve of what they’d just done.
Someone like Mrs. Allington, maybe? What was it that Chris’s mother had said to me, just before the elevator incident? Something about “you girls.”
“You girls are forever bothering him,” she’d said. Or something like that.
You girls. There’d been something deeply antagonistic in Mrs. Allington’s manner, an emotion far stronger than simple annoyance over my waking her up. Is Mrs. Allington one of those jealous mothers, who thinks no other woman is good enough for her precious son? Did Mrs. Allington kill Elizabeth and Roberta? And did she then try to kill me when I got too close to discovering her secret?
Oh my God! That’s it! Mrs. Allington is the killer! Mrs. Allington! I’m brilliant! Perhaps the most brilliant detective mind since Sherlock Holmes! Wait. Is he even real? Or fictional? He’s fictional, right?
Well, okay, then. I am the most brilliant detective mind since…since…Eliot Ness! He’s real, right?
“Heather?”
I start, sloshing hot water and soap suds over the side of the tub.
But it’s just Cooper.
“Just checking you’re okay,” he says, through the closed door. “You need anything?”
Um, yes. You. In here with me, naked. Now.
“No, I’m fine,” I call. Should I tell him that I’d figured out who’d done this to me? Or wait until I’m out of the tub?
“Well, when you’re through, I thought I’d order something to eat. Indian okay with you?”
Hmmmm. Vegetable samosas.
“Fine,” I call.
“Okay, well, come out soon. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Something he needs to talk to me about? Like what? Like his true feelings for me? I’ve always thought of you as one of the—He never had finished telling me what he’s always thought of me as.
Is he going to tell me now? Am I sure I want to know?
Two minutes later I slide into my usual seat at my kitchen table, bundled in my terry-cloth robe, with a towel wrapped around my wet hair. Oh, I want to know. I want to know all right.
Across the table from me, Cooper says, “That was fast.”
Then he opens up his laptop.
Wait a minute. His laptop? What kind of guy uses audiovisual aids to tell a girl what he thinks of her?
“How much do you know,” Cooper asks, “about Christopher Allington?”
“Christopher Allington?” My voice cracks. Maybe because it was hoarse from all the screaming I’d done earlier in the day. Or maybe because I’m in shock over the fact that what Cooper wants to talk to me about isn’t hi
s true feelings for me, but his suspicions about Chris. Hello. Annoying.
“But it couldn’t have been Chris,” I say, to get Cooper off that subject, and back onto, you know, me. “Detective Canavan said he—”
“When I investigate a case,” Cooper interrupts calmly, “I investigate it from all angles. Right now, Christopher appears to be the common link between all the victims. What I’m asking is, what do you know about him?”
“Well,” I say. Maybe Vulcan mind control would work again. WHAT HAVE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT ME? “Not much.”
“Do you know where he went for undergrad?”
“No,” I say. WHAT HAVE YOU ALWAYS THOUGHT ABOUT ME? Then, glancing at his face, I ask, “Why? Do you know where Chris went as an undergrad?”
“Yes,” Cooper says. “Earlcrest.”
“Earl what?” I ask. Vulcan mind control does not appear to be working! Instead of telling me what he’s always thought about me, he’s blathering about Chris Allington. Who cares about Chris? What about how you feel about ME?
“Earlcrest College,” Cooper says. “Chris went there for undergrad.”
“What are you talking about, Cooper?” I wish the Indian food would hurry up and come. My stomach is growling. “And how do you even know where Chris went?”
Cooper shrugs his broad shoulders. “SIS.” he says.
“S.O.S?” I echo, confused.
“No, SIS. Student Information System.” When I continue to look blank, he sighs. “Ah, yes. How could I forget? You’re computer illiterate.”
“I am not! I surf the Net all the time. I do all your bills—”
“But your office is still antiquated. SIS hasn’t been extended to the dormitory director’s offices yet.”
“Residence hall,” I correct him, automatically.
“Residence hall,” he says. Cooper is a flurry of activity. He’s striking keys on the computer way faster than I can change chords on my guitar. “Here, look. I’m accessing SIS now to show you what I mean about Christopher Allington. Okay.” Cooper turns the screen to face me. “Allington, Christopher Phillip. Take a look.”
I peer at the tiny monitor. Christopher Allington’s entire academic record is there, along with a lot of other personal information, like his LSAT scores and his course schedule and stuff. Chris, it turns out, has been through a lot of prep schools. He’d been thrown out of one in Switzerland for cheating, and another one in Connecticut, reason for expulsion unspecified. But he had still managed to get into the University of Chicago, which I’ve heard is quite selective. I wonder what strings his dad had pulled to help him out there.
But Chris’s sojourn in the Windy City didn’t last long. He’d dropped out after only a single semester. Then he’d seemed to take some time off…a good four years, as a matter of fact.
Then suddenly he’d shown up at Earlcrest College, from which he’d graduated last year somewhat older than the rest of his class, but with a B.A., just the same.
“Earlcrest College,” I say. “That’s where his dad used to be president. Before he got hired at New York College.”
“Ah, nepotism,” Cooper says, with a grin. “As alive and well in the halls of academia as ever.”
“Okay,” I say, still confused. “So he got kicked out of a few places as a kid, and could only get into a college his dad’s president of. What does that prove? Not that he’s a psychopathic murderer.” I can’t believe I’m the one arguing for Chris’s innocence now. Is his mom really that much more appealing as a murderer? “And how did you access his file, anyway? Isn’t it supposed to be private?”
“I have my ways,” Cooper says, turning the computer screen back in his own direction.
“Oh my God.” Is there no end to this man’s fabulousness? “You hacked into the student system!”
“You were always curious about what I do all day,” he says with a shrug. “Now you know. Part of it, anyway.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “You’re a computer nerd!” This changes everything. Now we’re going to have to open a doctor’s office slash detective agency slash jewelry shop slash computer hacking service. Oh, wait, what about my songs?
Cooper ignores me. “I think there’s got to be something here,” he says, tapping the laptop. “Something we’re missing. The only connection between the girls seems to be Allington. He’s the only one we know about, but, given what I see here, there must be something else. I mean, besides the fact that both girls were virgins with residence hall records before Chris got his hands on them…”
Mrs. Allington. It’s on the tip of my tongue to say What about Mrs. Allington? I mean, she had the motive. She obviously had—what was it that Sarah would call it? An Oedipus complex? Only the opposite, because she had it for her son, not her dad…
Well, okay, Mrs. Allington has that thing where she thinks her son is hot, and she resents the girls who pursue him. Resents them enough to kill them, though? And could Mrs. Allington really have made that bomb? The one on top of the elevator? I mean, if you could just go out and buy a bomb at Saks, I totally think Mrs. Allington would.
But you can’t. You have to make a bomb. And to make a bomb, you have to be sober. I’m pretty sure, anyway.
And Mrs. Allington has never once been sober—that I could tell—since she’d moved in to Fischer Hall.
I sigh and glance out the window. I can see the lights on in the president’s penthouse. What are the Allingtons doing up there? I wonder. It’s close to seven o’clock. Probably watching the news.
Or, perhaps, plotting to kill more innocent virgins?
The front door buzzer goes off, making me jump.
“That’s dinner,” Cooper says, and gets up. “I’ll be right back.”
He goes downstairs to get the Indian food. I keep on looking out the window while I wait for him to get back. Below the penthouse, lights appear in windows on other floors of Fischer Hall as the residents got home from class or dinner or their workouts or rehearsals. I wonder if any of the tiny figures I can see in any of the windows is Amber, the little redhead from Idaho. Is she sitting in her room, waiting for a call from Chris? Does she know he’s hiding out in the Hamptons? Poor little Amber. I wonder what she did to get in trouble with Rachel this morning.
That’s when it hits me.
My lips part, but for a minute, no sound comes out from between them. Amber. I had forgotten all about Amber, and her meeting with Rachel this morning. What had Rachel needed to see Amber about? Amber herself hadn’t known why she’d been scheduled for a mandatory meeting with the dorm director. What had Amber done?
Amber hadn’t done anything. Anything except talk to Chris Allington.
That’s all Amber had done.
And Rachel knew it, because she’d seen me with the two of them in front of the building after the lip-synch contest.
Just like she’d seen Roberta and Chris at the dance. And Elizabeth and Chris—where? Where had she seen them together? At orientation, maybe? A movie night?
Except that it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d told Julio to get me because Gavin was elevator surfing again.
Like it didn’t matter that it was Rachel who’d snuck onto the penthouse roof and tried to push that planter onto my head.
Like it didn’t matter that when the second girl died, Rachel hadn’t been in the cafeteria, like she was supposed to have been. No, I’d met her coming from the ladies’ room…around the corner from the stairs she’d been hurrying down, after pushing Roberta Pace to her death.
And the reason the elevator key had been missing, and then reappeared in such a short space of time that day? Rachel had had it. Rachel, the one person in Fischer Hall no desk attendant would ask to sign out a key, or even question the presence of behind the desk. Because she’s the hall director.
And the girls who’d died—they hadn’t died because they had files in Rachel’s office.
They had files in Rachel’s office because she’d singled th
em out to die.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Cooper says, returning to my apartment holding a big plastic I NY bag. “They messed up and gave us chicken and shrimp dansak…” His voice trails off. “Heather?” Cooper is peering at me strangely, his blue eyes concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Earlcrest,” I manage to grunt.
Cooper puts the bag on the kitchen table and stares down at me.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought you said. What about it?”
“Where is it?”
Cooper bends over to refer to his computer screen. “Uh, I don’t—oh, Indiana. Richmond, Indiana.”
I shake my head, so hard the towel slips from it, and my damp hair falls down over my shoulders. No. NO WAY.
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “Oh my God.”
Cooper is staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. And you know what? I think I have. Lost my mind, I mean. Because how could I not have seen it before now, even though it had been staring me right in the face….
“Rachel worked there,” I manage to rasp. “Rachel worked at a dorm in Richmond, Indiana, before she moved here.”
Cooper, who’d been pulling white paper containers from the I NY bag, pauses. “What are you talking about?”
“Richmond, Indiana,” I repeat. My heart is thumping so hard that I can see the lapel of my terry-cloth robe leaping over my breast with every beat. “The last place Rachel worked was in Richmond, Indiana…”
Comprehension dawns across Cooper’s face.
“Rachel worked at Earlcrest? You think…you think Rachel’s the one who killed those girls?” He shakes his head. “Why? You think she was that desperate to win a Pansy Award?”
“No.” No way is Rachel going around pushing people down the elevator shafts of Fischer Hall in order to get herself a Pansy, or even a promotion.
Because it isn’t a promotion Rachel is after.
It’s a man.
