“Hi, Lisa. Hi, Heather,” Howard Chen and Christopher Mintz call sheepishly.
“Hi, you guys,” I call back, and give them a thumbs-up. “Looking good! Way to show your school spirit.”
Neither boy waves back. I can hardly blame them.
“Oh God,” Lisa says, when they’re out of earshot. “They heard me. They totally heard me. Now the whole dorm knows I might be pregnant.”
“No,” I say. “They didn’t hear you.” They probably did. “Anyway, what do you mean, you can’t remember when you had your last period?”
“I don’t know.” Lisa turns to stride quickly toward Fischer Hall, looming before us on the west side of the park like the elegant—if slightly battered—brick lady that she is. “The truth is, it’s been so busy, what with my wedding and then starting this job and moving in, then everything we went through when they were filming that reality show in the building, then RA training and check-in. I’ve barely had a minute to myself. I must have had it in June. I’m almost sure I had it in July—”
“Lisa,” I say, having to jog a little to keep up with her rapid steps. “It’s almost September.”
“Oh my God.” She looks like someone punched her in the stomach. “Oh my God. How could this happen to me? I’m the hall director. I’m supposed to be a role model. How could I let this happen?”
“You don’t know that anything’s happened yet,” I say. Except that quite a lot has happened. A member of her staff is dead, and most of the rest of them are about to be fired. I don’t feel I need to belabor this point, however. “You’re probably only late because of the stress of check-in. But it’s better to know, right? Why don’t you go to the drugstore right now, get an early pregnancy test, then go up to your apartment and take it before you go back to work?”
I turn her bodily so that instead of facing Fischer Hall, she’s facing the dog run, behind which (a block away, on Bleecker Street) the nearest pharmacy is located.
“If you want me to go with you,” I say, noticing that her knees have locked and she’s not budging, “I will.”
“What?” Lisa asks in surprise. She’s begun to move again, thankfully in the direction of the drugstore. “No. I’m an adult, I can go to the pharmacy by myself, thank you. Besides, I thought you said you had an errand to run.”
“I do, a quick one. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Lisa says. She’s trudging as if her feet are encased in cement blocks. “See you then.”
I turn around and head for a horrifically designed building once described as a “miracle of modern architecture,” but which really is just a spiky tower of windows and black metal triangles, called the Gottlieb Student Center. As I stride toward it, I pull out my cell phone and return one of the many messages Cooper has left.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s me.”
“Jesus,” he says. “I thought you died. Where have you been?”
“Having finger sandwiches with the president of New York College and his millionaire cronies,” I say. “One of them birdied the sixth hole at Maidstone last weekend.”
“I put a guy in a headlock in a bar in Jersey City last weekend,” Cooper says. “Where’s my finger sandwich?”
“I’ll have a finger sandwich for you when I get home, big boy,” I say, lowering my voice to a sexy growl.
Cooper sounds surprised, but delightedly so. “Whoa. Is that a promise?”
“Uh . . .” I was actually joking. I’m not even sure what a finger sandwich is, in sexual terms. Is it a thing? I realize it must be and I’ve promised to do something in bed with my husband-to-be I have no idea how to do. I’m going to have to Google it. This is what I get for getting carried away on the phone with my fiancé during working hours. “Definitely. Anyway, what’s up?”
“Oh, not a whole lot,” he says. “Nicole’s only called me seven times begging me to forgive her. Your mother’s left three messages back at the house for you, your dad’s left one, and Perry the wedding planner refuses to call back to reschedule our lunch from yesterday. I think she’s trying to teach us a lesson for canceling on her. She’s incredibly important and sought after, you know.”
“Damn,” I say, forgetting about the finger sandwich. “We need to go over those seating charts, especially in light of the fact that your sister’s invited an additional—how many people? Do you even know?”
“Nicole says no more than twenty, but I’m guessing she’s afraid to fess up to the real number.”
My smartphone chirps. I look down at the screen and see that Eva from the OCME is trying to get through to me.
“Cooper, let me call you back,” I say. “I’ve got the medical examiner’s office on the line.”
“Don’t forget your promise,” he says in a sexy voice before hanging up.
Maybe his voice wasn’t purposely sexy, I think to myself as I press to accept Eva’s call. It sort of always sounds that way.
“Eva, hi,” I say, crossing the street along with a crowd of excited freshmen, a few parents, and some orientation leaders in blue-and-gold “Welcome to NYC!” T-shirts. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Heather.” Eva sounds a bit friendlier than she had before, though no less harassed. She’s still all business. “So I wanted to give you a heads-up. Your dead girl must be somebody pretty important—or connected to somebody pretty important. They just completed the autopsy.”
“No way. I thought you said—”
“That we’re completely backed up? Yeah, we are. We got bodies in here that have been waiting for autopsy since the weekend before last. But the chief got a call. A few calls, actually.”
“I take it they weren’t only from the victim’s parents.”
“No way,” Eva says with a snort. “State Department.”
It’s my turn to snort. “How funny. Special Agent Lancaster just got through telling me the bureau’s only job is to provide for the safety of those they are protecting.”
“Oh?” Eva’s voice turns casual. “You’ve seen Special Agent Lancaster today? How is he?”