Meg Cabot: Big Boned

“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.”

Detective Canavan flips through his notebook. “Veatch had anybody fired in the past couple months?”

“Fired?” I laugh. “This is New York College. No one gets fired. They get transferred.”

“This divorce he was going through. Acrimonious?”

“How should I know?”

Detective Canavan narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t you try to pretend like you don’t sit under that grate up there and listen to every conversation that goes on inside that office, young lady. You know good and well whether or not his divorce was acrimonious. Now tell me.”

I sigh. “There was some back-and-forth over the wedding china. That’s it. Seriously. That’s all I heard.”

Detective Canavan looks disappointed.

“What about this graduate student strike thing? Is it serious?”

“It is to them,” I say, thinking of Sarah. “And it is to the president’s office. If those guys really do go on strike, the rest of the unions affiliated with the college will be obligated to strike with them. And then there’ll be an unholy mess… right in time for graduation, too.”

“And Veatch was arbitrating?”

“He was head of the arbitration. But come on,” I say, shaking my head. “Isn’t it more likely he was hit by a stray bullet from a random drug shooting in the park? I mean, you know. You have undercover guys out there—”

“Which is exactly why I know that bullet didn’t hit your boss at random,” Detective Canavan says woodenly. “My people were out in force, covering—”

“If you saythe usual suspects, I’m going to squeal with delight,” I warn him.

He gives me a stern look. “Your boss is dead, Wells. Someone walked up to his office window and deliberately shot him assassination style, if not point-blank, then as close as. Someone who knew him, and someone who wanted him dead. It’s my job to figure out who did it. If you’re too busy with this new boyfriend of yours to quote help the investigation unquote this time, that’s music to my ears, to tell you the truth. The last thing I need is to have to worry about plucking your bony ass out of another near-death situation. Now just jot Romeo’s name down here so I can confirm your story with him later, and you can go.”

I blink at him, feeling suddenly misty-eyed.

“You really think my ass is bony?” I ask. “Detective Canavan, that’s—seriously—the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Wells,” he says tiredly. “Get out.”

Of course I have nowhere to go, since he’s taken over my desk. I can’t go back to the storage room. I honestly don’t think I can stomach any more power-to-the-people preaching from Sarah. The scent of tacos wafting from the grate has gotten pretty overwhelming. Sure, it’s only a little after eleven.

But hey. I ran today. Would it be so wrong to have a little snack?

Magda is sitting at the cash register, perfecting her two-inch robin’s egg blue (in honor of spring) nails with a sequined file that says PRINCESS on one side of it, and looking bored. She brightens when she sees me.

“Heather,” she cries. The cafeteria is mostly empty so early in the day. The only people in it are residents who didn’t wake up in time for breakfast taking advantage of the all-day bagels, and all the members of the NYPD Magda has waved in for free, who’ve headed straight for the taco bar. “Is it true? Someone shot that”—she says a bad word in Spanish—“in the head?”

“Geez, Magda,” I say. “He wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh yes, he was,” Magda assures me. “One time he told me if he caught me giving you free DoveBars, he was going to write me up. I didn’t tell you, you know, because I didn’t want you to get upset. But he did. I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Shhhh.” I look around. Over at a nearby table, some of Detective Canavan’s colleagues are enjoying taco salads with sides of sour cream and guacamole. “Magda, don’t go around saying that too loudly, okay? I think we’re pretty much all guilty until proven innocent with this one.”

“So what else is new?” Magda asks, rolling her elaborately made-up eyes. Then those eyes start to twinkle as she asks, “So things are getting cozy with Mr. Math, eh? I saw you two this morning in here, feeding each other bites of whipped cream… ”

I can’t help scowling. “Things were cozy. Cozy enough that… ” I let my voice trail off. So much had happened since that extremely odd interlude in the shower this morning that I’m not even exactly sure whether or not it really took place.

But it had. Hadn’t it?

Magda raises her drawn-on eyebrows. “Yes?”

“He wanted to know if I could take a chunk of time off from work this summer,” I say. “Then he said he has something he wants to ask me. When the timing is right.”

Magda’s mouth drops open. Then she squeals. Then she hops off her stool and runs around the cashier’s desk in her four-inch heels and throws her arms around me. Since she’s about a foot short than I am, this means she is basically hugging my waist with her enormously high hair tickling my nose.

“Heather!” she cries. “I’m so happy for you! You’re going to be such a beautiful bride!”

“I don’t know,” I say, uncomfortably conscious of the curious stares turning in our direction. “I mean, I can’t imagine that’s the question he really wants to ask me. Can you? We’ve only been going out a few months—”

“But when it’s right, it’s right,” Magda says, letting go of my waist to grab my arms instead, and give me a little shake. “Mr. Math is no dummy. Not like Cooper.”

That name again. I feel my cheeks heating up, as they seem to always do these days, whenever my landlord’s name is mentioned.

“So what are you going to say?” Magda wants to know. “You are going to say yes, right? Heather, you cannot wait for the rest of your life for Cooper to come around. Some men never do. Like Pete. You know, I once had my eye on him—”

I am poleaxed.

“You like Pete?” I stare at her, as dumbstruck as if she’d just admitted she’s a Scientologist with an invitation to join Tom and Katie on the spaceship when it shows up. “Our Pete? Sitting out there at the guard’s desk Pete? Widowed father of four Pete? Insatiable appetite for panadas Pete?”

“Very funny,” Magda says, giving me a sour look. “Yes, our Pete. But that was a long time ago, back when his wife first died, and I felt sorry for him, and all of that. Not that it made any difference. He still has no idea I’m alive. Though how any man could not notice this ”—she waves the robin’s egg blue nails up and down her compact frame, which, though currently covered in her pink uniform smock, is obviously smoking hot, from the matching blue toenails peeping out from the hot pink plastic stilettos, to the bleached blond bob that frames her face—“I don’t know.”