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  “Magda,” I say uncomfortably. How would a grief counselor respond, I wonder, if one of his patients demanded that he solve the brutal slaying of the individual the patient was grieving over? “I think you’ve been watching a few too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. ”

  Apparently this was not the proper way to respond, since Magda just clutches my hand harder and says, “Will you just think on it, Heather? Just think on it for a while?”

  Magda had once told me that, in her youth, she had been a beauty queen, runner-up for Miss Dominican Republic two years in a row. It isn’t actually that hard to believe now, as she gazes up at me with all the intensity of a pair of headlights set on high. Beneath all that makeup, the drawn-on eyebrows, and the six-inch-high hair, there’s a dainty loveliness that the entire contents of the Duane Reade cosmetics aisle couldn’t hide.

  I sigh. I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty face. I mean, that’s how I ended up saddled with Lucy, for God’s sake.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say, and am relieved when Magda loosens her grip on my hand. “But I’m not promising anything. I mean, Magda… I don’t want to get my head chopped off, either.”

  “Thank you, Heather,” Magda says, her smile beatific despite the fact that her lipstick is smeared. “Thank you. I’m sure Lindsay’s spirit will rest easier knowing that Heather Wells is looking out for her.”

  I give Magda a final pat on the shoulder and with a little smile she gets up to go, wandering down the hallway to the dining office, where the staff hangs their coats. I look after her, feeling… well, a little strange.

  Maybe that’s because all I’ve had to eat today is a smoked mozzarella sandwich—with roasted peppers and sun-dried tomatoes, which are sort of vegetables, I guess—and a grande café mocha.

  Then again, maybe it’s because I’ve made her feel so much better, and I don’t even know how. Or, actually, because I do know how. I just can’t believe it. Does she honestly think I’m going to launch my own private investigation into Lindsay’s death? If so, she’s been inhaling way too much nail-gel dust.

  I mean, what am I supposed to do, go around looking for a guy with a cleaver and a girl’s body in a fresh grave in his backyard? Yeah, right. And get my head chopped off, too. The whole thing is ridiculous. Detective Canavan isn’t stupid. He’ll find the killer soon enough. How can anyone hide a headless corpse? It’s going to have to turn up sometime.

  And when it does, I just hope I’m somewhere far, far away.

  6

  You think you and me are like glue

  You’re stuck on me, I’m stuck on you

  Only you don’t know me, not one bit

  If you think that I’m that whipped.

  “Whipped”

  Written by Heather Wells

  It still isn’t snowing by the time I leave work, but it is pitch-black outside, even though it’s just a little past five o’clock. The news crews are still parked along Washington Square Park, across the street from Fischer Hall—in fact, there are more of them than ever, including vans from all the major networks, and even CNN… just as President Allington had predicted.

  The presence of the news vans isn’t doing much to deter the drug trafficking in the park, though. In fact, I run into Reggie as I turn the corner to Cooper’s brownstone. Although at first he hisses, “Sens, sens,” to me, when he recognizes me, his expression turns grave.

  “Heather,” he says. “I am very sorry to hear about the tragedy in your building.”

  “Thank you, Reggie.” I blink at him. In the pink glow from the street lamp, he looks surprisingly harmless, though I’ve heard from Cooper that Reggie carries in an ankle holster a.22 that he has, upon occasion, been called upon to use. “Um… you wouldn’t happen to have heard anything about why the girl was killed? Or by whom? Would you?”

  Reggie’s grin is broad. “Heather,” he says, sounding delighted, “are you asking me what the word on the street is?”

  “Um,” I say. Because put that way, it sounds so terrifically dorky. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about it,” Reggie says, and I can tell by the way his smile has faded—but, more to the point, the way he maintains steady eye contact with me—that he’s telling the truth. “But if I do, you will be the first to hear about it.”

  “Thanks, Reggie,” I say, and start back down the street… only to pause when I hear Reggie call my name.

  “I hope you are not thinking about getting involved in whatever this young lady was messing with, Heather,” he says to me. He’s not smiling at all now. “Because you can bet she was messing with something… and that is what got her killed. I would not like to see that happen to a nice lady like yourself.”

  “Thanks, Reggie,” I say. Which is not what I want to say. What I want to say is,I wish people would have a little faith in me. I’m not that stupid. But I know everyone is only trying to be nice. So instead I say, “Don’t worry, I’m leaving the investigating to the professionals this time. Anything you tell me that you hear, I’m taking straight to them.”

  “That’s good,” Reggie says. And then, seeing a group of typical West Village dot commers, he hastens away from me, murmuring, “Smoke, smoke. Sens, sens,” at them.

  I smile after him. It’s always nice to see someone so dedicated to his calling.

  When I finally finish undoing all the locks to the front door of Cooper’s brownstone, I can barely get it open because of all the mail that’s piled up beneath the slot. Turning on the lights—Cooper must still be away on his little stakeout—I scoop up the enormous pile, grumbling at all the coupon packs and AOL trial disks. I’m asking myself why we don’t ever get any real mail—just bills and savings offers—when Lucy comes careening down the stairs, having heard me come in. In her jaws is a Victoria’s Secret catalog that she’s apparently spent the afternoon savaging into a droolly mess.

  Lucy is truly a remarkable animal, given this special ability she has of singling out the sole catalog most likely to make me feel inadequate, and destroying it before I ever even get a chance to open it.

  It’s as I’m trying to wrestle it away from Lucy—to keep her from leaving chunks of Heidi Klum’s torso all over the place—that the hallway phone rings, and I pick it up without even checking the caller ID.

  “Hello?” I say distractedly. There is dog spit all over my fingers.

  “Heather?” The voice of my ex-fiancé—sounding worried—fills my ear. “Heather, it’s me. God, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day. There’s something… there’s something I really need to talk to you about—”

  “What is it, Jordan?” I ask impatiently. “I’m kind of busy.” I don’t say what I’m busy doing. He doesn’t need to know I’m busy trying to get my dog to stop eating a lingerie catalog. Let him think I’m busy being made love to by his brother.

  Ha. I wish.

  “It’s just,” Jordan says, “Tania told me the other day that you RSVP’d no to the wedding.”

  “That’s right,” I say. I’m starting to piece together what all this might be about. “I have plans on Saturday.”

  “Heather.” Jordan sounds wounded.

  “Seriously, I do,” I insist. “I have to work. It’s check-in day for the transfer students.”

  This isn’t a complete lie. Check-in day for the transfer students is on a Saturday. It’s just that it was last Saturday, not this coming Saturday. Still, Jordan will never know that.

  “Heather,” he says, “my wedding is at five o’clock. Are you telling me you will still be working at five o’clock?”

  Damn!

  “Heather, I don’t understand why you don’t want to come to my wedding,” he goes on. “I mean, I know things were rocky between us for a while—”

  “Jordan, I walked in on you getting head from the bride-to-be,” I remind him. “Which, at the time, I mistakenly thought I was. So I think my indignation was pretty understandable.”

  “I re
alize that,” Jordan says. “And that’s why I thought you might feel… awkward about coming. To the wedding, I mean. That’s why I’m calling, Heather. I want to make sure you know how important you are to me, and how important your coming to the wedding is to me, and to Tania, too. She still feels terrible about what happened, and we’d really like to show you how truly—”

  “Jordan.” By this time, I’ve made it into the kitchen with the cordless phone clutched in one hand, Lucy trailing behind me with her tongue lolling excitedly. After throwing away the damp Victoria’s Secret catalog, I flip on the light and reach for the handle to the fridge. “I’m not going to your wedding.”

  “See,” Jordan says, sounding frustrated, “I knew that’s what you were going to say. That’s why I called. Heather, don’t be this way. I really thought we’d managed to put all that behind us. My wedding is a very important event in my life, Heather, and it’s important to me that the people I care about are there with me when it happens.All the people I care about.”

  “Jordan.” There, behind the milk (I went grocery shopping yesterday, when I heard about the impending blizzard, so the milk carton is full and actually well before the expiration date, for once), it sits: a white cardboard box of leftover bodega fried chicken. In other words, a box of heaven. “I’m not going to your wedding.”

  “Is it because I’m not inviting Cooper?” Jordan wants to know. “Because if it is—if it means that much to you—I’ll invite him, too. Heck, you can bring him as your escort. I don’t understand what it is you see in him, but I mean, the two of you are living together. If you really want to bring him—”

  “I’m not bringing your brother to your wedding, Jordan,” I say. I’ve removed the white cardboard box from the fridge, along with a hunk of goat’s milk gouda from Murray’s Cheese Shop, a hard red apple, and the milk. I’m holding the phone to my face with my shoulder, and have to kick the fridge door to get it to close. Lucy is not helping by sticking to my side like glue. She loves bodega fried chicken (peeled from the bone) as much as the next person. “Because I’m not going to your wedding. And quit acting like you want me there because you care, Jordan. I know perfectly well your publicist suggested I come, to make it look like I’ve forgiven you for cheating on me, and that we’re pals again.”

  “That’s not—” Jordan sounds affronted. “Heather, how can you imply such a thing? That is totally ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” I plonk everything I’ve gathered from the fridge onto the butcher-block kitchen table, then grab a plate and a glass and sit down. “Didn’t your solo album tank? And wasn’t it partially because your boy-next-door image got slightly tarnished by all the headlines when it got out that you’d been cheating on me, the Mall Princess, with your dad’s latest discovery?”

  “Heather,” Jordan cuts me off tersely. “No offense, but the American public’s memory is not quite that sharp. By the time you and I split, you hadn’t had an album out in years. It’s true you were once beloved by a certain segment of the population, but that segment has long since moved on—”

  “Yeah,” I say, stung in spite of myself. “They’ve moved on to wanting nothing to do with either of us. Good thing you’re attaching yourself to Tania’s shiny star. Just don’t ask me to watch you do it.”

  “Heather.” Now Jordan sounds long-suffering. “Why do you have to be this way? I thought you’d forgiven me for what happened with Tania. It certainly seemed as if you’d forgiven me that night in Cooper’s hallway—”

  I feel myself blanch. I can’t believe he has the nerve to bring that up.

  “Jordan.” My lips feel numb. “I thought we agreed we were never going to speak about that night again.” Never speak of it, and never, ever allow it to happen again.

  “Of course,” Jordan says soothingly. “But you can’t ask me to act like it didn’t happen. I know you still have feelings for me, Heather, just like I still have feelings for you. That’s why I really want you there—”

  “I’m hanging up now, Jordan.”

  “No, Heather, wait. That thing I saw on the news just now, about some girl’s head. Was that your dorm? What the hell kind of place do you work in, anyway? Some kind of death dorm?”

  “’Bye, Jordan,” I say, and press OFF.

  I put down the phone and reach for the chicken. Lucy takes up position at my side, alert for any food that might not make it from my plate to my lips, and instead fall haphazardly onto my lap or the floor. We work as a team that way.

  I know there are some people out there who prefer their fried chicken hot. But they’ve probably never had the fried chicken from the bodega around the corner from Cooper’s brownstone—or, as Cooper and I call it, bodega fried chicken. Bodega fried chicken isn’t just for everyday consumption. It’s definitely comfort food on a different scale than your ordinary fried chicken, your KFC or Chicken Mc-Nuggets. I’d bought a nine-piece the day before, knowing today would be hellish, on account of it being the first day of the new semester.

  I just hadn’t anticipated it would be this hellish. I might have to eat all nine pieces myself. Cooper was just going to have to suffer. A little salt, and…

  Oh. Oh, yes. No mouth orgasm, but close enough.

  I’m plowing through my second bodega fried chicken leg—Lucy starting to whimper because I haven’t dropped anything yet—when the phone rings again. This time—after I’ve wiped my hands on a paper towel—I check the caller ID before answering. I’m relieved to see that it’s my best friend, Patty. I answer on the second ring.

  “I’m eating bodega fried chicken,” I tell her.

  “Well, I certainly would if I were you, too”—Patty’s voice, as always, is as warm and comforting as cashmere—“considering the day you’ve had.”

  “You saw the news?” I ask.

  “Girl, I’ve seen the new sand the newspapers from this morning. And you will not believe who called me a little while ago.”

  “Oh, my God, he called you, too?” I’m stunned.

  “What do you mean, me, too? He called you?”

  “To make sure I was coming. Even though I RSVP’d no.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Then he even said I could bring Cooper as my date.”

  “Holy Christ.” That’s what I love about Patty. She knows all the appropriate responses. “His publicist must have put him up to it.”

  “Or Tania’s,” I say, finishing off the chicken leg and reaching into the box for a thigh. I know I should probably eat the apple instead. But I’m sorry, an apple just isn’t going to cut it. Not after the day I’ve had. “It would make her look like less of a skank if I showed up. Like I don’t blame her for breaking Jordan and me up.”

  “Which you don’t.”

  “Well, we were destined for Splitsville, USA, anyway. Tania just hastened our arrival. Still, I’m not going. How gross would that be? It’s all well and good to invite the ex, to show there’s no hard feelings and all. But the ex isn’t supposed to actually go.”

  “I don’t know,” Patty says. “It’s the in thing to go now. According to the Styles section in the Times.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “I haven’t been stylish since the nineties. Why should I start now? You’re not going, are you?”

  “Are you insane? Of course not. But, Heather, can we please talk about what happened in your dorm today? I mean, residence hall. Did you know that poor girl?”

  “Yeah,” I say, picking a stringy chicken piece from between my teeth. Fortunately we’re not on video phone. “Sort of. She was nice.”

  “God! Who would do such a thing? And why?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. I break off a chunk of thigh meat for Lucy, after making sure it contains no cartilage or bone, and give it to her. She inhales it, then looks at me sadly, like,Where’d it go? “That’s for the police to figure out.”

  “Wait.” Patty sounds incredulous. “What did you just say?”

  “You heard me. I’m not getting involved in this one.”
>
  “Good for you!” Patty takes the phone from her mouth and says to someone in the background, “It’s all right. She isn’t getting involved in this one.”

  “Say hi to Frank for me,” I say.

  “She says hi,” Patty says to her husband.

  “How’s the new nanny working out?” I ask, since the two of them have just hired a real British nanny—a middle-aged one, because Patty swore what happened to Sienna Miller was never going to happen to her.

  “Oh,” Patty says. “Nanny is fine. We’re both terrified of her, but Indy seems to adore her. Oh, Frank says to tell you that he’s very proud of you. Leaving the murder investigation to the police… this shows real growth on your part.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Magda doesn’t agree, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She thinks the cops are going to blame the victim. Which is probably true. I mean, even Reggie said something about what happened to Lindsay looking as if it might be retribution for something she did.”

  “Reggie… the drug dealer on your street corner?” Patty asks, in an incredulous voice.

  “Yeah. He’s going to ask around. You know, find out the word on the street for me.”

  “Heather,” Patty says, “I’m sorry, I’m confused. But when you say things like that, it makes it sound like you really do plan on getting involved in the investigation.”

  “Well,” I say, “I’m not.”

  There is a masculine mumble in the background. Then Patty says to Frank, “Fine, I’ll ask her. But you know what she’s going to say.”

  “Ask me what?” I want to know.

  “Frank has a gig at Joe’s Pub next week,” Patty says, in a tense voice. “He wants to know if you’d like to join him.”

  “Of course I’ll come,” I say, surprised she feels like she has to ask. “I love that place.”

  “Um, not come to the performance,” Patty says, still sounding tense. “He wants to know if you’ll join him on stage.”