Size 14 Is Not Fat Either Read online

  “You’re going to be all right,” I tell Manuel. He’s looking up at me with half-lidded eyes. The blood around him is gelatinous and almost black as it seeps into my jeans. I stuff my sweater more deeply into the biggest hole I can find, keeping my fingers pressed over it. “Manuel, you’re going to be fine. Just hang on, okay? Help will be here in a minute.”

  “H-Heather,” Manuel rasps. Blood bubbles up out of his mouth. I know this is not a good sign.

  “You’re going to be fine,” I say, trying to sound like I believe it. “You hear me, Manuel? You’re going to be just fine.”

  “Heather,” Manuel says. His voice is nothing more than a wheeze. “It was me. I gave it to her.”

  Pressing hard against the wound—blood has soaked through my sweater and is gathering under my fingernails—I say, “Don’t talk, Manuel. Help is on its way.”

  “She asked me for it,” Manuel says. He’s obviously delirious with blood loss and pain. “She asked me for it, and I gave it to her. I knew I shouldn’t’ve, but she was crying. I couldn’t say no. She was…she was so…”

  “Would you shut up, Manuel?” I say, alarmed by the amount of blood coming out from between his lips. “Please? Please don’t talk.”

  “She was crying,” Manuel keeps saying, over and over again. Where is Cooper? “How could I say no to her when she was crying? I didn’t know, though. I didn’t know what they were going to do to her.”

  “Manuel,” I say, hoping he can’t hear that my voice is shaking. “You have to stop talking. You’re losing too much blood….”

  “But they knew,” he goes on, clearly off in his own world. A world of pain. “They knew where she got it—”

  At that moment, Cooper turns the corner, Pete and Tom right behind him. Pete, seeing me, pulls out his security walkie-talkie, and begins squawking into it about how they’ve found me, and to get a stretcher down to the squash courts ASAP.

  Cooper falls to his knees beside me and, miraculously, reveals a first-aid kit he’s snagged from somewhere.

  “Ambulance is on the way,” he says, while Manuel, beneath my blood-soaked fingers, rambles feebly on.

  “I gave it to her, don’t you see, Heather? It was me. And they knew it was me.”

  “Who did this to him?” Cooper demands, pulling a huge roll of Ace bandages from the first-aid kit. “Did you get a look at him?

  “They all had basketballs on their heads,” I say.

  “What?”

  “They had basketballs on their heads.” I grab the roll of bandages from him, pull away my sweater, and ram the roll of bandages into the biggest wound. “Half a basketball, over their faces, with little eye holes cut out—”

  “My God.” Tom, looking pale, blinks down at us. “Is that…is that Manuel?”

  “Yes,” I say, as Cooper leans forward and pulls down one of Manuel’s eyelids.

  “He’s going into shock,” Cooper says, pretty calmly, in my opinion. “You know him?”

  “He works at Fischer Hall. His name is Manuel.” Julio, I know, is going to flip out when he sees this. I pray that he doesn’t come looking for his nephew.

  “They did this as a warning,” Manuel says. “A warning to me not to tell that I gave it to her.”

  “Gave what to who, Manuel?” Cooper asks him, even as I’m shushing him, telling him to save his breath.

  “The key,” Manuel says. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave her my key.”

  “Who?” Cooper wants to know.

  “Cooper,” I say. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe he’s interrogating a dying man.

  But he ignores me.

  “Manuel, who’d you give your key to?”

  “Lindsay,” Manuel says. Manuel shakes his head. “I gave Lindsay my key. She was crying…she said she’d left something in the cafeteria, something she needed to get. At night, after it was closed—”

  His eyelids drift shut.

  Cooper says, “Damn.”

  But then the EMTs are there, shoving us both out of the way. And I’m actually relieved, thinking everything is going to be okay.

  Which just goes to show how much I know.

  Which is nothing.

  15

  I told a white lie

  There’s no sense denying.

  To tell you the truth

  I wasn’t even trying.

  “Little White Lie”

  Written by Heather Wells

  You know what happens when someone nearly gets murdered during a Division III college basketball game that is being televised live on New York One?

  Everyone keeps right on playing.

  That’s right.

  Oh, they posted cops at all the exits, and after the game—which the Pansies lost, twenty-four to forty. They just never came back after the second half. And not even because they heard about what happened to Manuel. Because no one told them. No, basically, the Pansies just suck—the cops made everybody stop on their way out and show them their hands and feet and the insides of their bags, so they could check for blood and weapons.

  Not that they told anyone that’s what they were checking for, of course.

  But they didn’t find anything incriminating. They couldn’t even hold the people with half-basketball masks for questioning, because roughly every male in the audience had a half-basketball mask.

  And it was pretty obvious—to me, anyway—that the guys who’d stabbed Manuel were long gone. I mean, I highly doubt they stuck around to watch the rest of the game. They probably got out before the cops even arrived.

  So they didn’t even witness the Pansies’ humiliating defeat.

  Neither did I, actually. Because no sooner was Manuel loaded into an ambulance with his heartsick uncle at his side and carted away—the paramedics said he had lost a lot of blood and had some internal injuries, but that nothing vital had been punctured, so he’d probably be okay—than I was whisked off to the Sixth Precinct to look at mug shots with Detective Canavan, even though I EXPLAINED to him I hadn’t seen their faces, due to the masks.

  “What about their clothes?” he wants to know.

  “I told you,” I say, for the thirtieth time at least. “They were wearing regular, everyday clothes. Jeans. Flannel shirts. Nothing special.”

  “And you didn’t hear them say anything to the victim?”

  It’s kind of irritating to me that Detective Canavan keeps referring to Manuel as “the victim” when he knows perfectly well that he has a name, and what that name is.

  But maybe, like Sarah’s gallows humor, saying “the victim” is a way of distancing himself from the horror of acts of such violence.

  I wouldn’t mind distancing myself from it, either. Every time I close my eyes, I see the blood. It wasn’t red like blood on TV. It was dark brown. The same color the knees of my jeans are now.

  “They didn’t say anything,” I say. “They were just stabbing him.”

  “What was he doing there?” Detective Canavan wants to know. “By the soda machines?”

  “How should I know?” I ask with a shrug. “Maybe he was thirsty. The line at the concession stand was really long.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I told you. I had to go to the bathroom, and the line at the other ladies’ room was too long.”

  When Detective Canavan arrived at the sports complex—because of course we called him, to tell him what Manuel had said, about giving a key to Lindsay—I had suggested that he stop the game and question every single person present—particularly Coach Andrews, whom I now had reason to believe was more deeply involved than previously thought.

  But President Allington—who unfortunately had to be informed of what was going on, given how many cops were lurking in the building—balked, saying that New York One would be on the story in a red-hot minute, and that the college had had enough bad publicity for one week. The last thing the school needed was reporters going around asking questions about a crime that, for all we knew, might in no way
be connected to Lindsay—despite what I told everyone Manuel had said.

  Then President Allington went on to assure us that, bad publicity aside, New York One would also be within their rights to sue if the game were stopped, claiming they stood to lose a million dollars in advertising if the game didn’t continue.

  I honestly never suspected those Bowflex commercials brought in so much revenue, but apparently Division III college basketball is considered must-see TV by those folks most likely to be interested in purchasing exercise equipment for the home.

  “One thing I want to be sure everyone understands,” President Allington also said to Detective Canavan, unfortunately (for him) within my earshot, though he was speaking softly so that no lurking reporters might overhear, “is that New York College is in no way responsible for either the death of that girl or the injuries sustained by Mr. Juarez this evening. And if he did give her a key with which she might have accessed the cafeteria, we are in no way responsible for that, either. Legally, that’s still trespassing.”

  Which caused Detective Canavan to remark, “So what you’re saying, Mr. Allington, is that if Lindsay used Manuel’s key to gain access to the cafeteria, she damn well deserved to get her head chopped off?”

  President Allington looked understandably flustered by this statement, and one of his flunkies stepped in to say, “That is not what the president meant at all. What he meant was, the college cannot be held responsible for the fact that someone in our employ gave his keys to a student who later got herself killed on college property….”

  Detective Canavan didn’t stick around to hear more. And, to my everlasting relief, he took me away with him.

  Or at least it was a relief at first. Because it meant I could put off having to talk to Cooper about my dad for that much longer.

  Unfortunately, it meant I had to talk to Detective Canavan instead.

  “And that’s it? That’s all you can remember? Jeans, flannel shirts, basketballs on their heads. What about their shoes? Were they wearing tennis shoes? Loafers?”

  “Sneakers,” I say, remembering the squeaking on the floor.

  “Well.” He blinks at me. It’s late, and he’s probably been at the precinct all day. The number of Styrofoam cups littering the floor by his desk indicates how he’s managed to sustain his energy level for so long. “That narrows it down.”

  “I’m sorry. What do you want me to say? They were—”

  “Wearing basketballs on their heads. Yes. You mentioned that.”

  “Are we done here?” I want to know.

  “We’re done,” Detective Canavan says. “Except for the usual warning.”

  “Warning?”

  “Not to involve yourself in the investigation into Lindsay Combs’s murder.”

  “Right,” I say. I can be just as sarcastic as he can. “Because I so stumbled across poor Manuel getting stabbed by her killers on purpose.”

  “We don’t know the attack on Mr. Juarez and Lindsay’s murder are connected,” Detective Canavan points out. Seeing my raised eyebrows, he adds, “Yet.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “Can I go?”

  He nods, and I’m out of there like a shot. I’m tired. All I want to do is go home. And change my pants, which are stiff with Manuel’s blood.

  I go out into the lobby of the Sixth Precinct, expecting to see Cooper there, sitting in the same seat he always takes when he’s waiting for me to come out of one of my many visits with Detective Canavan (today is a new record, twice in less than twelve hours).

  But the seat is empty. In fact, the lobby is empty.

  That’s when I notice it’s snowing really hard outside. I mean, really hard. I can barely make out the shape of the Range Rover parked in front of the station. But when I go outside and peer through the driver’s-side window, I recognize Patty’s husband Frank. He starts when I tap on the window, and puts it down.

  “Heather!” Patty leans over from the passenger seat. “There you are! Sorry, we didn’t see you, we’re listening to a book on tape. One about parenting that the new nanny recommended.”

  “The nanny who terrifies you?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s the one. God, you should have seen her face when we told her we were coming here. She nearly…Well, never mind. Get in, you must be freezing!”

  I hop into the backseat. The interior is warm and smells faintly of Indian food. That’s because Frank and Patty had been enjoying some samosas as they waited for me.

  “How’d you know where I was?” I ask, as they pass me one, loaded with tamarind sauce. Yum.

  “Cooper called,” Frank explains. “Said he had to run and could we pick you up. Off on one of his cases, I guess. What’s he working on, anyway?”

  “How should I know?” I ask, with my mouth full. “Like he’s going to tell me.”

  “Did you really see someone get stabbed?” Patty asks, turning around in her seat. “Weren’t you scared? What is that all over your jeans?”

  “I didn’t have time to be scared,” I say, chewing. “And that’s blood.”

  “Oh, God!” Patty turns quickly around to face the windshield again. “Heather!”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I can just get new ones.” Although, with my luck, I’ll have gone up a size, thanks to all the holiday cheer in which I imbibed.

  Size 14 is still average for an American woman. Still, you don’t want to have to buy all new jeans to accommodate your new size. That can be hard on the wallet. What you want to do instead is maybe reduce intake on the bodega fried chicken. Maybe.

  Although it depends on how you look in the new jeans.

  “It’s really coming down hard,” Frank observes, as he pulls out of his primo parking space. In ordinary circumstances, that space would be instantly taken by some waiting vehicle. But it’s a blizzard, and no one is out on the streets. The flakes are falling thick and fast, already coating the street and sidewalks with an inch of fluffy white stuff. “I can’t imagine Cooper’s going to be able to do any real detecting in this weather.”

  Frank is just slightly obsessed with the fact that Cooper is a private detective. Most people fantasize about being rock stars. Well, it turns out rock stars fantasize about being private detectives. Or, in my case, being a nonvanity size 8 and still able to eat anything I want again.

  Although I’m not actually a rock star. Anymore.

  “Heather, I hope you’re being careful this time,” Patty frets, from the front seat. “I mean, about this dead girl. You aren’t getting involved in the investigation, are you? Not like last time?”

  “Oh, heck, no,” I say. Patty doesn’t need to know about my trip to the Tau Phi House. She has enough to worry about, being a former model and rocker’s wife, not to mention the mother of a toddler who, at last reportage, ate an entire H & H everything bagel—almost as big as his own head—in one sitting.

  The nanny hadn’t been too happy about that one.

  “Good,” Patty says. “Because they don’t pay you enough to get yourself nearly killed, like last time.”

  When Frank pulls up in front of Cooper’s house, I see that a few of the lights are on…which surprises me, since it means Cooper must be home.

  But before I can get out of the car, Frank says, “Oh, Heather, about the gig at Joe’s—”

  I freeze with my hand on the door handle. I can’t believe—what with all the blood and everything—I’d forgotten about Frank’s invitation to jam with him and his band.

  “Oh,” I say, frantically trying to think up an excuse. “Yeah. About that. Can I get back to you? ’Cause I’m really tired right now, and can’t really think straight—”

  “Nothing to think about,” Frank says cheerfully. “It’s just gonna be me and the guys and a hundred and sixty or so of our friends and family. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Frank,” Patty says, apparently having caught a glimpse of my face. “Maybe now’s not the best time to ask about that.”

  “Come on, Heather,” Frank says, ig
noring his wife. “You’re never gonna get over your stage fright if you don’t get back up there. Why not do it among friends?”

  Stage fright? Is that my problem? Funny, I thought it was just fear of having people boo and throw things at me. Or, worse…snicker, the way Jordan and Cooper’s dad did, when I played them my own songs that fateful day in the Cartwright Records offices….

  “I’ll think about it,” I say to Frank. “Thanks for the ride. See ya.”

  I plunge from the car before either Patty or her husband can say anything, then run to the front door, ducking my head against the onslaught of flakes.

  Phew. Talk about narrow escapes.

  Inside, Lucy meets me in the foyer, excited to see me, but not in an I gotta go out right this minute kind of way. Someone’s already let her out.

  “Hello?” I call, shedding my coat and scarf.

  No one answers. But I smell something unusual. It takes me a minute to place the scent. Then I realize why: it’s a candle. Cooper and I are not candle people—Cooper because, well, he’s a guy, and me because I’ve seen them cause so many fires in Fischer Hall that I’m paranoid I, too, will forget and leave one burning unattended.

  So why is someone burning a candle in the house?

  The smell is coming from upstairs…not the living room or kitchen, and not Cooper’s office. It’s coming from upstairs, where Cooper sleeps.

  Then it hits me. Cooper must be home, and entertaining.

  In his room.

  With candles.

  Which can only mean one thing: He’s got a date.

  Of course. That’s why he couldn’t wait for me down at the precinct, and had to call Frank and Patty! He’s got a date.

  I pause at the bottom of the stairs, trying to sort out why this realization has made me suddenly so upset. I mean, it’s not like Cooper KNOWS about the enormous crush I have on him. Why SHOULDN’T he see other people? Just because he HASN’T seen anyone (that I know of…he certainly hasn’t brought anybody back to the house) since I moved in doesn’t mean he SHOULDN’T or CAN’T. Now that I think of it, we never really did discuss the issue of overnight guests. It’s just not something that ever came up.