Big Boned

19

Miraculously, I don’t fall to the floor. I don’t know how. But somehow, my knees support me, and I remain upright.

What is it about Cooper Cartwright that his merest touch is capable of turning my spine to Jell-O, and makes my knees weak? It’s just so… wrong. I mean, that he should be capable of doing that, whereas my own boyfriend—er, now ex-boyfriend—just… couldn’t.

Mark Halstead is smiling as he comes toward me, his stride unhurried, his face relaxed. Muffy is right. He is cuter than Jake Gyllenhaal. No wonder so many of the girls in Jamie’s youth choir didn’t mind it when he “accidentally” felt them up.

“It’s Heather, right?” he says, when he finally reaches me. He’s taken his robe off. Underneath, he’s wearing a navy blue sports coat and khakis. Khakis! At least they don’t have pleats in the front.

I check out his shoes, then quickly look away with a shudder.

Oh yes. Loafers. With tassels.

He looks like Tinker Bell. If Tinker Bell were dark-haired. And a lot hairier.

“Yeah,” I say. I have a sudden and nearly uncontrollable urge to rush at the cookie table and shove as many as possible into my mouth. They’re the good kind, too. Homemade (well, by the bakers over at the student center), not store bought. There are plenty of chocolate chips left. And even some brownies.

“Listen,” Mark says. “I know this probably isn’t the best place to bring this up, but I heard something kind of disturbing earlier today, and I can’t help thinking there must have been some kind of misunderstanding, and if it’s all right with you, I’d like to try to clear the air now, if I can, so we can just move on as soon as possible… ”

That’s it. I need a brownie. I turn and head for the nearest table.

“It’s not a misunderstanding,” I say, as I carefully choose a chocolate chip cookie—without nuts—that’s nearly as big as my head. “I received a complaint about you from a resident, and for her physical and emotional safety, until you’ve been cleared in a formal hearing by the board of trustees, I’ve made you persona non grata in my building.”

Reverend Mark’s dark eyebrows go up—way up—in surprise. “A formal—wait. You’re kidding me, right?”

I sink my teeth into the cookie. Delicious. That’s the thing about homemade cookies, as opposed to the stuff you buy in stores. They’re made with real butter, none of this hydrogenated stuff that, let’s be honest, you really don’t even know what it is.

“No,” I say. I don’t chew. I don’t have to. The cookie is melting in my mouth. “I’m really not.”

“How can you just categorically take this girl’s word over mine?” Reverend Mark demands.

“Because,” I say. “I like her.”

“Don’t I even get a chance to defend myself?”

“Sure,” I say. “At the formal hearing.”

“But I don’t even know what I’m being accused of,” Mark bleats. “It’s not fair!”

“Oh,” I say, swallowing. “I think you know. You already spoke with—and I’m using the term loosely. A less generous person might have said ‘threatened’—the victim, and tried to talk her out of writing a formal complaint once. It’s just lucky for you the person she was supposed to meet with in order to issue that complaint died suddenly.” I narrow my eyes as I gaze up at him. “Isn’t it?”

But Mark doesn’t take the bait. Instead he says, looking agitated, “You don’t understand. Jamie Price is a sweet girl, but she’s… confused. She misinterprets gestures of friendship as sexual in nature.”

I sincerely hope he doesn’t turn around and notice that Jamie is currently off in one corner of the room in a clench with her tongue down the throat of a certain fellow New York College junior.

“She’s actually disturbed,” Mark goes on. “I was going to recommend her for counseling.”

“Really,” I say. The cookie, which I’ve finished, is not sitting well. Maybe I need something else, to sort of settle my stomach. Only what? I notice that Tad and Muffy, over by the punch bowl, are still talking. So punch is out. I also notice that Cooper is keeping an eye on me, as he’d promised. He’s standing by the Mexican wedding cakes. Mmmm, Mexican wedding cakes. Tender, flaky, buttery morsels…

“This is all stuff,” I tell Reverend Mark, “that you can bring up at the hearing. Although you might want to consider looking into some counseling for yourself, too.”

“Counseling for myself?” Mark looks astonished. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Well,” I say. My gaze lands on the Mrs. Veatches, who are shaking hands with President Allington and his wife, who appear to be leaving. President Allington is keeping a hand on his wife’s arm… the only thing, as far as I can tell, that’s keeping her upright. “The birds,” Mrs. Allington keeps saying, meaning her pet cockatoos, whom she often references in moments when she’s imbibed a little too much. “The birds.”

“It’s my understanding,” I say to Reverend Mark, tearing my gaze away from Mrs. Allington’s highly amusing antics with an effort, “that this isn’t the first school where you’ve run into this kind of thing.”

Mark’s face changes. He goes from looking blandly handsome to darkly angry in a split second. The next thing I know, his hand is on my arm, his fingers wrapped around me in a grip that hurts. Well, in an annoying way, more than an actually painful kind of way.

“Ow,” I say, and look around for Cooper.

But something is happening over by the security desk. And that something is that someone no one is expecting to come to Owen Veatch’s memorial service—or, at least, the refreshment portion following it—has walked in.

And that someone is his suspected murderer, Sebastian Blumenthal.

To say that all hell breaks loose would be an understatement. The security guard, in the way of campus security guards everywhere (Pete excluded, of course), lets him in, of course, and Sebastian, with a square-jawed Sarah behind him, makes a beeline for Pam Don’t-Call-Me-Mrs. Veatch. I have no idea how he’d known she was the bereaved not-widow… maybe because she was standing beside the ancient mother-of-the-deceased in the receiving line.

In any case, every gaze in the place, including my own and Cooper’s, is drawn instantly to the developing little drama as Pam lurches instinctively away from Sebastian’s outstretched hand and heartfelt “Mrs. Veatch? I am so, so sorry for your loss—”

—just as Mark Halstead gives my arm a surprisingly hard yank and drags me toward a nearby side door to the natatorium.

I suppose my yelp of alarm might have alerted those nearest me that I was in trouble… if Pam’s shriek of outrage hadn’t drowned out everything else that was audible within a five-mile radius (I exaggerate, but seriously, that lady has a set of lungs on her).

I don’t get to stick around to see what happens next, because one minute I’m in the atrium with everyone else, and the next, I’m in the stairwell.

But I suspect fingernails were launched in the direction of Sebastian’s eyeballs.

Seriously, I don’t know what Sarah was thinking, letting him talk her into coming here. She had to have known what a bad idea it was. Sure, Sebastian might have wanted to pay his respects.

But couldn’t he have done it in some less public forum, when feelings might not have been running quite as high?

In any case, I don’t get to see how Mrs. Veatch One and Two react to Owen’s alleged killer showing up at his memorial service, beyond Mrs. Veatch Number Two’s shriek. That’s because Mark has me inside that stairwell and pressed up against the cinder-block wall in the blink of an eye, where he seems to be trying very hard to convince me that I ought to be keeping the information about his previous places of employment—and subsequent dismissals from them—to myself.

I can’t help being conscious of the fact that we are standing on the top of a very steep stairwell and that Mark is, for his profession, remarkably strong. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he could throw me down those stairs, snapping my neck, then claim I fell accidentally. Everyone would believe it. I am not known, after all, for my grace.

“Look,” Mark is saying, shaking me with the force of his grip. He has both hands on my upper arms now. His thumbs are actually cutting off my circulation. “It wasn’t my fault about those other girls! I’m a good-looking guy! Girls hit on me! Of course I say no, and when I do, they get mad, and report me! It’s not me… it’s them!”

“Mark,” I say, in the calmest voice I can muster. There’s just a slim metal railing separating us from the stairwell. The smell of chlorine is sharp in the air. It reminds me of all those times I tried to burn calories swimming laps. Yeah. Like that worked. I came home so ravenous, I once ate an entire loaf of Roman Meal. With nothing on it. “I don’t care about those other girls. It’s Owen I care about.”

“Owen?” Mark’s face twists with confusion. “Who the hell is OWEN?”

“Owen Veatch,” I remind him. “The man you just gave the eulogy for.”

“What does he have to do with any of this?” Mark wants to know. “Christ—he didn’t say I hit on him, too, did he? I may be a lot of things, but I’m not GAY.”

I laugh. I can’t help it.

“Right,” I say. “Good one.”

“I’m serious,” Mark says. “Heather, I know I have a problem. But I mean… a lot of girls, they like it. Especially the ones who may not be as good-looking as the others, you know what I mean? The homely ones… the chubby ones—it gives them a little boost of self-esteem. I don’t mean anything by it. I really don’t. It’s just to make them feel good.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

“My God,” I say. “You really are a piece of work. You know that, don’t you? You’re disgusting.”

“God gave me a gift, Heather,” Mark insists, his face just inches from mine. “These looks, this personality… I’m supposed to use it to bring joy to others. I’m supposed to use it to do His work—”

“And since when,” I demand, “has killing been the Lord’s work?”

“Killing?” Mark blinks down at me. “What are you talking about?”

“Right,” I say, very sarcastically. I’m stalling, of course. Eventually Cooper’s going to have to figure out which door Mark dragged me through, and come busting through it. Until then, I just have to keep him talking. Because if he’s busy talking, he won’t be busy doing other things. Such as killing me.

“Like you didn’t shoot Owen through his office window yesterday morning,” I say, “to keep him from ratting you out to your supervisor and the board of trustees.”

Mark blinks some more.

“What? What are you—”

“Come on, Mark,” I say. “Everyone knows you did it. Jamie knows. I know. The cops know. You might as well give yourself up. You can plant guns on innocent people all you want, but the truth is, you’re going to get caught eventually. It’s just a matter of time.”

Mark does something extraordinary then.

He bursts out laughing. Then he lets go of me.

“Is that what this is about?” he asks, walking to the opposite end of the stairwell, dragging a hand through his thick dark hair. “You think… My God. You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I assure you,” I say, keeping an eye on the door. Any second now, I’m sure, Cooper is going to burst through it. I’d make a run for it, but I’m certain Halstead will stop me before I get even one step toward it. Stop me, then toss me over the railing and to my death. “I’m serious as a heart attack.”

“How could I have killed your boss?” Mark demands. “They already caught the guy who did it!”

“You shot him,” I say, “and planted the gun on Sebastian.”

“Oh, right,” Mark says, very sarcastically… I mean, for a preacher. “And what time was your boss shot again?”

“Between eight and eight-thirty yesterday morning,” I say.

“Right,” Mark says. “You mean while I was holding daily morning prayer service, which I do every day between seven-thirty and eight-thirty, in front of no fewer than twenty to thirty students? Would you like to explain how I snuck out in front of all of them, shot your boss, snuck back, and continued prayer service without any of them noticing I was gone?”

I swallow. No wonder Detective Canavan had been in no hurry to rush out and arrest the reverend. It hadn’t been because he already had a suspect in custody.

It had been because Reverend Mark had a rock-solid alibi.

“Oh,” I say.

Dang. And I’d really wanted him to turn out to be the killer, too.

“You know,” Mark says in an irritated voice, “I am getting so tired of people assuming that, just because there’ve been a few religious leaders who’ve turned out to be less than honest,all men of the cloth must be inherently dishonest. Apparently we’re all either child molesters, adulterers, or cold-blooded killers.”

“Well,” I say. “I’m sorry. But you did just admit that you hit on homely and overweight girls to improve their self-esteem. That’s totally skeevy, especially considering you’re in a position of power over them, and they’re probably too intimidated to tell you to cut it out if they don’t like it.”

Mark makes a bleating noise of protest. “It’s not skeevy!” he says. “It’s actually very—”

But he doesn’t get a chance to explain to me what it’s actually very. Because at that moment, the stairwell door explodes open, and a dark-haired blur bursts through it.

“Heather,” Cooper demands, seeing me with my back still up against the cinder block. His eyes are wide with emotion. I can’t exactly pinpoint which one. But something tells me it might actually be… fear. At the very least, it’s anxiety. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I say, a little crankily. I still can’t believe I was wrong about Reverend Mark.

“I told you to stay where I could see you,” he snaps.

“Yeah,” I say. “Well, Reverend Hot Pants over here had other ideas.”

This is the wrong thing to say. Because the next thing I know, Cooper’s crossed the few feet that separates him from Mark Halstead in a single leap, seeming unaware of the look of panic that spreads across the reverend’s face as he does so. A second later, Cooper’s heaved himself, left shoulder first, into Halstead’s stomach.

Then the two of them go tumbling down the stairwell.