Big Boned

by Meg Cabot

  The picketers, marching dolefully around the giant rat, reply, “Fair wages.”

  “WHAT?” Sarah yells.

  “FAIR WAGES,” the picketers reply.

  “That’s more like it,” Sarah says. “And when do we want them?”

  “NOW,” the picketers reply.

  “Holy Christ,” Muffy says, looking at the picketers in a defeated way. I can’t help feeling a little sorry for her. The rat—which has painted-on drool dripping down from its bared, yellow fangs—does look really intimidating, as it sways gently in the soft spring breeze.

  “Hang in there,” I say, patting her softly on the shoulder.

  “This is because they arrested the kid,” she says, still staring at the rat. “Right?”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “But he had a gun,” she says. “I mean…of course he did it. He had a gun.”

  “I guess they don’t think so,” I say.

  “I’m gonna get fired,” Muffy says. “They hired me to keep this from happening. And now I’m gonna get fired. And I’ve only had this job three weeks. I paid twenty grand in broker’s fees for my place, too. I sold my wedding china for it. I’ll never see that money again.”

  I whistle, low and long. “Twenty grand. That must have been some wedding china.”

  “Limoges,” Muffy says. “Banded. Eight-piece settings for twenty. Including finger bowls.”

  “Man,” I say, appreciatively. Finger bowls. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a finger bowl before. And what does banded mean? I think, dimly, that this is stuff I better start learning about if Tad and I are going to…you know.

  This thought makes me feel a little nauseous. Maybe it’s just all that whipped cream on an empty stomach, though. Or the sight of that enormous rat.

  That’s when I notice something that makes me forget about my upset stomach.

  And that’s Magda, hurrying out of Fischer Hall in her pink smock, and inching her way across the street through the backed-up cabs and toward the picket line, carefully balancing a steaming mug of coffee in her hands…

  …which she presents to a picketer in a gray New York College security guard’s uniform, who stops marching, lowers his The Future of Academia Is ON THE LINE sign, and beams at her appreciatively…

  And whom I realize is none other that Pete.

  Who is not behind his desk like he is supposed to be.

  Instead, he is standing in the park. ON A PICKET LINE.

  “Oh my God,” I race up to him, completely forgetting Muffy, to shout. “Are you insane? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you inside? Who’s manning the security desk?”

  Pete looks down at me calmly from the mug of Fischer Hall’s finest he’s delicately blowing across.

  “Good morning to you, too, Heather,” he says. “And how are you today?”

  “I’m just peachy,” I yell. “Seriously. Who is manning your desk?”

  “No one.” Magda is looking at me with strangely arched brows. Then I realize her brows aren’t arched on purpose. They’re just newly waxed. “I’ve been keeping an eye on it. Someone from the president’s office has been sniffing around. He says they’ll be sending some people from a private security firm over. I don’t know if that’s the best idea, though, Heather. I mean, someone from a private security firm isn’t going to know about the attendants, you know, for the specially abled students in the handicapped accessible rooms? And how is someone from a private security firm going to know it’s not okay to let the kids sign in the delivery guys from Charlie Mom’s, or they’ll stick a menu under every single door in the entire building?”

  I groan, remembering my conversation with Cooper from the day before. He’d been totally right. We were going to get mob-run security and custodial replacement staffs. I just knew it.

  Then I blink at Magda. “Wait a minute—how come you aren’t striking?”

  “We’re with a different union,” Magda explains. “Food services, as opposed to hotel and automotive.”

  “Automotive?” I shake my head. “That makes no sense whatsoever. What’s an automotive union doing, letting academics into—”

  “You!”

  We all jump as Sarah’s voice—made ten times louder by the megaphone she’s speaking into—cuts into our conversation.

  “Are you here to socialize or make social change?” Sarah demands of Pete.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pete mutters. “I’m just having a cup of coffee with my friends—”

  “Get back on the line!” Sarah bellows.

  Pete hands his coffee mug back to Magda with a sigh. “I gotta go,” he says. Then he hefts his picket sign, and returns to his place in the circle around the giant rat.

  “This,” Magda says, as she watches protesters shuffle past, as animated as the undead in a zombie flick, “is not good.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say. “I better go watch the desk. Bring me a bagel?”

  “With the works?” Magda asks, the works being code for full-fat cream cheese and, I’m sorry to say, three strips of bacon.

  “Absolutely.”

  I’ve made myself at home at Pete’s desk (after removing what I can only assume is a very old and very stale doughnut and not, in fact, a door stop from his middle desk drawer…although I can’t help noticing the trash can into which I deposit it has not been emptied in some time, and realize Julio and his crack housekeeping staff aren’t around…a realization that, more than any other, depresses me), and instituted what I consider the beginning of Heather’s New World Order—All Residents Will Stop and Show ID Long Enough for Me to Examine the Photo Closely, since unlike Pete, I don’t know every resident by sight, a fact which appears to annoy them no end…but not as much as they’re going to be annoyed when I launch Throw Your Own Trash in the Dumpster Outside—when the “guy from the president’s office” Magda mentioned reappears. He’s a flunky I’ve never seen before in an expensive suit, and he’s accompanied by a much larger guy in a much less expensive, but much shinier suit.

  “Are you Heather?” the guy from the president’s office wants to know. When I say that I am, he proceeds to inform me that Mr. Rosetti—the man in the shiny suit, which happens to be coupled very charmingly with a lavender silk shirt and several very attractive gold chains which lay nestled among some wiry graying chest hairs, along with multiple gold rings, one on each of the man’s not unsausagelike fingers—is going to be supplying “security” for the building, and could I please inform him of any special security concerns of which I might be aware that are unique to Fischer Hall.

  At which point I kindly inform the man from the president’s office that Fischer Hall’s security needs are taken care of for the foreseeable future. But I thank him for his concern.

  The man—whose name, he has informed me, is Brian—looks confused.

  “How is that possible?” Brian asks. “The college security force is out on strike. I’m supposed to be overseeing getting replacements in all the buildings—”

  “Oh, I’ve already taken care of that here in Fischer Hall,” I say…just as a tall, spindly kid comes rushing into the building, tugging off his backpack, out of breath but only one minute late.

  “Sorry, Heather,” he pants. “I just got your text. I was in Bio. I’ll take the ten to two shift. Are you really paying ten bucks an hour? Can I have the six to ten shift tonight, too? And the ten to two tomorrow?”

  I nod as I rise gracefully from Pete’s chair.

  “The six to ten tonight’s already taken,” I say. “But the ten to two tomorrow’s all yours. If of course,” I add, “this whole thing isn’t settled by then.”

  “Sweet.” Jeremy slides into the seat I’ve vacated, then barks at a student who’s just entered the building, flashed his ID, then strolled by without waiting to be acknowledged, “Stop! Come back here! Let me see that photo!” The student, rolling his eyes, does what he’s told.

  Brian, on the other hand, looks more confused than ever. “Wait,” he says, as
I stroll to the reception desk to mark Jeremy’s name onto the schedule I’ve made up. “You’re having students run the security desk?”

  “Work-study students, yeah,” I explain. “It only costs the college a few cents for every dollar an hour we pay them. I imagine that’s a fraction of what you’re paying, um, Mr. Rosetti’s firm, and my student workers know the building and the residents. And I have something like ten thousand dollars left in my student worker budget for the year. That’s more than enough to see me through the strike. We’ve been pretty thrifty this year.”

  I don’t mention that this is partly due to my tendency to steal paper from other offices.

  “I, uh, don’t know about this,” Brian says, whipping a Treo from his suit pocket and banging away at it. “I need to check with my supervisor. None of the other buildings is doing this. It’s really not necessary. The president’s office has already budgeted for Mr. Rosetti’s firm to fill in for the course of the strike.”

  Mr. Rosetti spreads his bejeweled—and quite hairy—fingers and says, philosophically, “If the young lady does not need our services, the young lady does not need our services. Perhaps we can be of use elsewhere.”

  “You know where I bet you can be of use,” I say to Mr. Rosetti. “Wasser Hall.”

  “Excuse me.” A middle-aged woman with a mom haircut has come up to the desk. She is wearing a dark green sweatshirt with a quilted-on picture of two rag dolls, one black, and one white, holding hands, on the front. “Could you tell me—”

  “If you want to call up to a resident”—Felicia, the student worker behind the reception desk, doesn’t even look up from the copy of Cosmo she has snagged from someone’s mailbox—“use the phone on the wall. Dial zero for information to find out the number.”

  “Wasser Hall,” Mr. Rosetti says. “That sounds good. Hey, kid.” He pokes Brian, who is calling someone on his cell phone. “Whatever your name is. Let’s go over to this Wasser Hall.”

  “Just one minute, please,” Brian says, in an agitated manner. “I’d really like to get through to someone about this. Because I really don’t think this is an approved allocation of work-study student funds. Heather, did your boss approve this allocation of work-study student funds?”

  “No,” I say.

  “I didn’t think so,” Brian says, with a smug look on his face. Evidently having been able to reach no one on his cell phone, he snaps it closed. “Is your boss in? Because I think we’d better speak to him.”

  “Well,” I say. “That’s going to be hard.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?” Brain wants to know.

  “Because he got shot in the head yesterday,” I reply.

  Brian flinches. But Mr. Rosetti just nods.

  “It happens,” he says, with a shrug.

  “Heather.” Brian has visibly paled. “I am so, so sorry. I…I forgot. I…I knew this was Fischer Hall, but in all the confusion, I…”

  “Excuse me.” The woman with the mom haircut leans across the reception desk again. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

  “No, there hasn’t,” Felicia finally looks up from her magazine to inform her. “Due to the college’s privacy policy, we are not allowed to give out any student information, even to parents. Or people who say they’re parents. Even if they show ID.”

  “Brian, let’s leave this little lady alone,” Mr. Rosetti says. “She seems to have things well in hand.”

  I smile at him sweetly. Really, he doesn’t seem that bad. Except for the hundreds of thousands I know he’s going to be charging the college for a job I can get done for mere pennies…

  “I can’t apologize enough,” Brian is saying. “We’ll just go now…”

  “I really do think that would be best,” I say, still smiling sweetly.

  The front desk phone rings. Felicia picks it up with a courteous “Fischer Hall, this is Felicia, how may I direct your call?”

  “It was very nice to meet you, ma’am,” Mr. Rosetti says, with a courtly nod in my direction.

  “Nice to meet you, too, sir,” I say to him. Really, he’s so nice. So old school. How could Cooper have thought the mob was responsible for Owen’s murder? I mean, maybe they did it. But even if they did, Mr. Rosetti couldn’t have been the shooter. For one thing, all that jewelry would have made him way too conspicuous. Someone surely would have remembered seeing him outside the building.

  And for another, he’s just so nice.

  Maybe it’s wrong of me to assume, just because he’s Italian American, and in the private security business, and wears a loud suit and a lot of jewelry, that he’s even in the Mafia in the first place. Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just—

  “Excuse me.” Mom Haircut is looking at me now. “Aren’t you Heather Wells?”

  Great. Like I haven’t been through enough this morning.

  “Yes,” I say, trying to maintain my pleasant smile. “I am. Can I help you with something?”

  Please don’t ask for an autograph. It’s not worth anything anymore. You know how much an autograph from me gets on eBay these days, lady? A buck. If you’re lucky. I’m so washed up, I’ll be singing about sippy cups soon. If I’m lucky.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Mom Haircut goes on. “But I think you worked with my husband. Well, ex-husband, I should say. Owen Veatch?”

  I blink at her. Oh my God. Rag Doll Sweatshirt Mom Haircut is the former Mrs. Veatch!

  “Please hold.” Felicia puts down the phone and says, “Heather, sorry to interrupt, but Gavin McGoren is on the phone for you.”

  “Tell Gavin I’ll call him back,” I say. I reach out and take Mrs. Veatch’s right hand. It’s rough and scratchy in mine, and I remember Owen mentioning once that his ex-wife was a potter, and “arty.” “Mrs. Veatch…I am so, so sorry about your husband. Ex-husband, I mean.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Veatch smiles in a sad way. “Please. Call me Pam. It hasn’t been Mrs. Veatch in quite some time. In fact, ever. That was always Owen’s mother to me.”

  “Pam, then,” I say. “Sorry. My mistake. What can I do for you, Pam?”

  “Heather,” Felicia says. “Gavin says you can’t call him back, because he’s not home right now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Of course I can call him back. Just take down the number where he is.”

  “No,” Felicia says. “Because he says where he is, which is the Rock Ridge jail, he only gets one phone call.”

  As I swing my head around to stare at her, the front door opens, and Tom comes in, looking as shocked as I feel.

  “You’re never going to believe this,” he announces, to the lobby in general. “But that gun they found in that dude’s murse? It was a match for the one that plowed through Owen’s brain.”

  13

  * * *

  I’m pushin’ the stroller

  Can’t you see?

  Or is my baby

  The one pushin’ me?

  “Baby Time”

  Written by Heather Wells

  * * *

  Tom has apologized a million times for the plow remark.

  “Honest,” he keeps saying. “If I’d known she was his ex-wife…”

  “It’s okay.” I have more important things to worry about than Tom’s faux pas. Like the fact that Gavin is apparently in jail.

  “What’s she even doing here?” Tom wants to know. “Why didn’t she have the cab from the airport drop her at Wasser Hall, like everyone else from Owen’s family? What, she didn’t get the memo?”

  “There was some business of Owen’s she needed to follow up on,” I say. We’re sitting in my office—well, Tom in his old office (now the former site of a grisly murder…thank God the housekeeping staff didn’t go on strike until AFTER they’d cleaned up the crime scene), and I’ve just returned, panting, to my desk in the outer office—just like old times.

  Except for the whole Tom-got-a-promotion-and-is-just-filling-in-while-the-Housing-Office-searches-for-a-replacement-for-his-replacement-who-happ
ens-to-have-gotten-shot-in-the-head-yesterday thing.

  I don’t tell him the rest of it—like just how much Mrs. Veatch—Pam, I mean—didn’t know about her ex’s new life in the city. Or how much it turned out we didn’t know about Dr. Veatch. Because it’s still weirding me out a little.

  Instead, I sit down and start clacking at my keyboard, Googling Rock Ridge Police Department. Come on, come on…I know the town is small, but they have to have cops, right?

  Bingo.

  Pam had just assumed that since Owen worked in a residence hall, he naturally lived in it, too, since most residence hall director positions are live-in.

  I’d explained to her that her ex had actually been much more than just a hall director—that as part of his compensation package for his position, ombudsman to the president’s office, he’d gotten a swank, rent-free apartment in a neighboring building in which many of the college’s administrators, including the president himself, lived.

  “So is it far?” Pam had wanted to know.

  I had blinked at her. There’d been a lot of ruckus at the desk just then, what with Brian and Mr. Rosetti just leaving, and Tom having dropped his bomb about Sebastian’s gun having been a match for the one that killed Owen, and Felicia still waving the phone with Gavin waiting to have me take his call, and all.

  “Is what far?” I’d asked intelligently.

  “The building Owen lived in?” Pam had asked.

  “Uh,” I’d said. All I could think was Gavin’s in jail? In Rock Ridge? The chic, exclusive bedroom community of New York, which can’t have more than five thousand people in it? Does it even have a jail? Has the entire world gone insane?

  “Seriously,” Tom had chosen that moment to start in, for the first of what would prove to be the many apologies he would give over the course of the next half-hour. “I am so, so sorry, ma’am. I didn’t have the slightest idea—”

  “It’s all right,” she’d said, with the briefest of smiles at him. “How could you know?” To me, she’d asked, “Well? Is it?”

  “It’s a block away,” I’d replied.

  She’d looked relieved. “So I can walk to it? I’m sorry to be such a pain…it’s just I’ve walked so much today—”