Meg Cabot - Big Boned

“Uh, I wasn’t going to ask her out, dude,” Sebastian says. “I was going to ask her if she could come to our rally tomorrow night.”

I separate my fingers and peer out at him from between them. “What?”

“Come on,” Sebastian pleads, throwing himself onto his knees. “You’re Heather Wells. It would mean a lot if you’d show up, maybe lead us in a little round of ‘Kumbaya’—”

“No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”

“Heather,” Sebastian says. “Do you have any idea how much it would mean to the GSC if we had a celebrity of your stature come out in support of us?”

“Come out in support—” I echo weakly, dropping my hands. “Sebastian, I could lose my job for that!”

“No, you couldn’t,” Sebastian says. “Freedom of speech! They wouldn’t dare!”

“Seriously,” Sarah says with a grunt. “They’re fascists, but not that fascist… ”

“Watch them,” I say. “Come on. I totally support you guys, and everything. Have I said anything about the fact that you, Sebastian, are constantly hanging around this building, even though you are not, in fact, an undergraduate, and do not, in fact, even live here? But sing at your rally? In Washington Square Park? In front of the library, and the president’s office? You have to be kidding me.”

“Really, Sebastian,” Sarah says, in the kind of voice only a woman who adores a guy who is frustratingly oblivious to her feelings for him ever uses. “Sometimes you do go too far.”

He throws her an aggrieved look. “You’re the one who said to ask her!” he cries.

“Well, I didn’t mean now!” Sarah says. “She just found her boss slumped over dead, for crying out loud. And you want her to host some union rally?”

“Not host it!” Sebastian cries. “Just show up and do a number. Something inspiring. It doesn’t have to be 'Kumbaya'. 'Sugar Rush' would be great, too. And it can be unplugged. We aren’t choosy.”

“God,” Sarah says, shaking her head in disgust. “You are too much sometimes, Sebastian.”

“She keeps saying she’s fine!” Sebastian insists, getting up and throwing his hands in the air.

“Don’t do it, Heather,” Gavin says. “Not unless you feel up to it.”

“I’m not doing it,” I say. “Because I happen to like my job and don’t want to get fired this week.”

“They would never fire you,” Sebastian explains, in a matter-of-fact way. “For one thing, not to be tactless, but your boss just got killed. Who would run this place? And for another thing, if they tried to fire you, that would be a violation of your constitutional right to congregate and peacefully protest.”

“Dude,” Gavin says. “She so knows it was you who put that fake arm on the elevator.”

“Heather Wells.” The deep voice booms from the open doorway. I look up and see one of New York’s Finest standing there. “Detective Canavan would like a word.”

“Oh, thank God,” I cry, and fling myself out from behind the desk, and toward the door. You know things are bad at work when you’re actually relieved to be taken away to be interviewed by a homicide detective.

But when you work in Death Dorm, those kinds of things happen with alarming frequency.

Detective Canavan has had his hair cut since I’ve last seen him. It’s been buzzed into a severe crew cut, so tinged with gray it looks almost blue beneath the fluorescent light above my desk (I put in a desk lamp for rosy ambience, but the detective’s apparently chosen not to turn it on. I guess homicide detectives don’t care about rosy ambience). He’s scowling into the phone he’s clutching to one ear, glancing up at me as I walk in as disinterestedly as if I’m a rat that’s wandered out from behind some Dumpster.

“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says into the phone. “I know good and well what the city’s gonna say. They’re happy to shut down a street if someone wants to film an episode of Law & Order on it. But if the real NYPD wants to launch an investigation on an actual murder… ”

The door to Dr. Veatch’s office opens and a CSI type comes out, gnawing on a taco. I can see that he’s already paid a visit to the café before stopping by to photograph blood spatter.

“Hey, Heather,” he says, with a wink.

“Oh, hey,” I say. “The café’s opened for lunch already?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Special’s beef tacos. Oh, and turkey pot pie.”

“Mmmm,” I say longingly. The waffles seem to have been a long time ago.

“I know,” the forensics guy says, with a happy sigh. “I love it when we get called to Death Dorm.”

“That’s Death Residence Hall,” I correct him.

“You better not be dripping hot sauce on my crime scene again, Higgins,” Detective Canavan says crankily, as he slams down my phone.

Higgins rolls his eyes and disappears back into Owen’s office.

“So,” Detective Canavan says to me, as I sink into the blue vinyl chair opposite my desk, the one usually reserved for anorexics, basketball players, and other problem residents. “What the hell’s going on here, Wells? How come every time I turn my back, someone’s expired at your place of employment?”

“How should I know?” I demand, every bit as crankily. “I just work here.”

“Yeah,” Detective Canavan growls. “Tell me about it. Well, at least this time, whoever offed your boss did so from the street, not from inside the building, for a refreshing change. So where were you this morning, around eight o’clock?”

My jaw drops. “I’m a suspect? You’ve got to be kidding me!”

His expression doesn’t change. “You heard me. Where were you?”

“But after all we’ve been through together. You know me!” I cry. “You know I’d never—”

“I already heard about the paper, Wells,” Detective Canavan says shortly.

“The… the paper!” I am, to put it bluntly, flabbergasted. “Oh, come on! You think I’m going to shoot a guy in the head over a ream of paper?”

“No,” Detective Canavan says. “But I gotta ask.”

“And who even told you?” I demand hotly. “It was Sarah, wasn’t it? I’m going to kill her… ” I swallow, instantly regretting my choice of words, and give a nervous glance at the grate separating my office from the crime scene. I can hear subtle sounds of activity coming from behind it, the murmur of measurements being read off, as well as the steady crunching of tacos.

“Wells.” Detective Canavan, ever phlegmatic, looks bored. “Cut the dramatics. We all know where you were at eight o’clock this morning. This is just a formality. So please be the team player we all know you are and say—” He raises his voice to a falsetto that I realize, with an insult, is apparently meant to be an imitation of my own. “I was in bed around the corner hitting the snooze alarm, Detective Canavan… ” He holds his pen poised over his statement form, ready to scribble exactly that.

I begin to feel myself blush. Not because I don’t sound anything like that—I don’t think. But because—well, that wasn’t where I was this morning.

“Um,” I say. “Well… the thing is… That wasn’t where I was this morning. The thing is, um, this morning, I, um. I went running.”

Detective Canavan drops his pen. “You what?”

“Yeah.” I wonder if, considering how many members of the NYPD are currently swarming around the Washington Square Park area, looking for evidence in Dr. Veatch’s murder, I should ask them to keep an eye out for my uterus. You know, just in case they happen to find a stray one.

“You went running,” Detective Canavan says, in tones of incredulity.

“I’m not trying to lose weight, just get toned,” I say lamely.

Detective Canavan looks as if he’s not about to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. He has, after all, daughters of his own.

“Well, you must have walked in this direction on your way back to your place to change before work,” he says. “Did you see anything then? Anything—or anyone—out of the ordinary?”

I swallow again. “Uh. I didn’t change at my place. I changed at… a friend’s.”

Detective Canavan gives me a look. And I do mean a look. “What friend?”

“A… new friend?” I realize I sound like Jamie Price, raising my inflection to an interrogative. But I can’t help it. Detective Canavan’s scaring me a little. I’ve been involved in plenty of murders in Fischer Hall before.

But I’ve never been a suspect in any of them before.

Besides, his grilling me like this reminds me of my dad. If my dad had any interest whatsoever in my personal life. Which, it happens, he does not.

“What new friend?” he demands.

“God!” I cry. It’s a good thing I was born when I was, and hadn’t been a member of the French Resistance or anything. I’d have cracked under Nazi torture in two seconds. All they’d have to do was look at me and I’d have spilled every secret I knew. “I’m sleeping with my remedial math professor, okay? But you can’t tell anybody, or I could get him in big trouble. Is there any way you can not put his name down in your report? I’ll give it to you, of course, and you can talk to him, and everything, if you don’t believe me and want to check up on my story, and all. But if there’s any way you can keep his name out of this, it would be really, really great… .”

Detective Canavan stares at me for a second or two. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. But I can guess. Grade grubber, I think he’s thinking. Sleeping with the prof for an A…

It turns out I’m wrong though.

“What about Cooper?” he wants to know.

It’s my turn to stare.

“Cooper?” I blink a few times. “What about Cooper?”

“Well.” Detective Canavan looks as confused as I feel. “I thought he was your… you know. Main squeeze. The cat’s pajamas. Whatever you kids are calling it these days.”

I stare at him, completely horrified. “Main squeeze? Are you eighty?”

“I thought you were warm for his form,” Detective Canavan growls. “You said you were, that night those frat boys tried to make you into that human sacrifice… ”

“I believe those were the roofies speaking,” I remind him primly, hoping he doesn’t notice how much my blush has deepened. “If I recall correctly, I told you I loved you, too. Also the planters outside the building. And the paramedics. And the ER doc who pumped my stomach. As well as my IV stand.”

“Still,” the detective says, looking oddly nonplussed. For him. “I always thought you and Cooper—”

“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Well, you were wrong. I’m with Tad now. Please don’t make things hard on him by putting it in your report. He’s a nice guy, and I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize his getting tenure.” Except bone him repeatedly.

I don’t add this part out loud, of course.

“Uh,” Detective Canavan says. “Of course. So… you didn’t see—or hear—anything when you were in the park?”

“No,” I say. Inside Dr. Veatch’s office, someone has made a joke—about the Garfield calendar, perhaps? — and someone else is smothering a laugh.

“Well, what do you know about this Vetch guy?” Detective Canavan wants to know.

“It’s pronounced Veetch,” I correct him.

He blinks at me. “You’re kidding me.”

I smile ruefully. “No. I’m not. I know he was married once. He was getting divorced. That’s one of the reasons he took the job here. From Iowa, I think.”

“Illinois,” Detective Canavan corrects me.

“Right,” I say. “Illinois.” I fall silent.

He stares at me. “That’s it?”

I try to think. “Once,” I say, “he showed me a page from his Garfield calendar that he thought was funny. It was a cartoon where Garfield gave the dog—”

“Odie,” Detective Canavan supplies for me.

“Yeah. Odie. He gives Odie a lasagna. And the dog is all happy. But then Garfield leaves the lasagna out of reach of the dog’s leash. So he can’t get to it.”

“Sick bastard,” Detective Canavan says.

“Who? The cat? Or Dr. Veatch?”

“Both,” Detective Canavan says.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“Can you think of anybody who might have a grudge against him? Veatch, I mean.”

“A grudge? Enough of a grudge to shoot him in the head?” I reach up and run a finger through my gel-stiffened hair. “No. I don’t know anybody who hated Owen enough to kill him. Sure, there’re kids who may not be—have been—overly fond of him, but he’s the hall director. Well, interim hall director. And ombudsman to the president’s office. Nobody’s supposed to like him. But nobody hated him—not that much. Not that I know of.”