Cartwright Records
After Cooper and I—and Chris Allington—left the Pansy Ball, Rachel Walcott was awarded a Pansy for exemplary service to the college.
She shows me the little flower-shaped pin the next morning, pride gleaming in her pretty brown eyes. She wears it on the lapel of her black linen suit jacket as if it were a medal of valor or something.
I guess maybe to her it kind of is. I mean, in a single semester, she’s had to deal with way more tragedy than most administrators have to face in their entire careers.
I’ve never won anything in my entire life. Well, okay, a recording contract, but that’s it. I know they don’t generally give out Grammys for songs like “Sugar Rush.” But hello, I never even won like a People’s Choice Award. Not even Teen People’s Choice.
And I was totally the Queen of Teen. At least, up until I stopped being one.
But I try not to let Rachel see my jealousy over her award. Not that I’m even that jealous. Just, you know.
I’d been the one who’d dragged all the boxes up from the basement. The boxes we’d packed up Roberta’s and Elizabeth’s things in. I’d been the one who’d packed them, too. And I’d been the one who’d dragged them to Mail Services, and had them shipped. I think I should get something for that. Not a Pansy, maybe, but like a Dandelion, maybe.
Oh well. When I’m able to prove that the girls’ deaths were the result of murder, and not accidental, and when I find out who their real killer is, maybe I’ll win like the key to the city, or something. Really! And the mayor’ll give it to me himself, and it will be broadcast on New York One, and Cooper will see it and realize that even though I’m not an art history professor or a size zero, I’m still totally smart and cute, and he’ll ask me out and we’ll get married and have Jack, Emily, and Charlotte Wells-Cartwright…
Well, a girl can dream, right?
And I am happy for Rachel. I congratulate her and sip my coffee as she describes what it had been like, winning this prestigious award in front of all her peers. She tells me how Dr. Jessup had hugged her and how President Allington had personally thanked her for services above and beyond the call of duty. She chatters excitedly about how she’s the first administrator in the history of New York College to receive seven separate nominations for the award, the most any one person has ever garnered—and she’d gotten them all in just her first four months of employment! She says how glad she is that she’d gone into higher education instead of business or law, like so many of her fellow Yale grads.
“Doesn’t it feel good,” she asks me, “to know you’re making such a difference in people’s lives, Heather?”
“Um,” I say. “Sure.”
Although I’m pretty sure the people whose lives I’m making the biggest difference in—the student workers —just wish Justine would come back.
While Rachel winds down from her Pansy-induced high, I get on the phone and take care of a few things that I feel I’ve been neglecting.
First I call Amber in her room. When her sleepy voice croaks, “Yeah?” into the phone, I gently put the receiver back into the cradle. Okay, Amber’s still alive. Check.
Then I call St. Vincent’s to see how Jordan is doing. He is, I learn, doing better, but they still want to hold him for observation for another night. I don’t really want to, but I figure I should speak to him—you know, seeing as how it’s my fault he got hurt in the first place.
But when the switchboard puts my call through to his room, a woman answers. Tania. I can’t deal with fiancées early in the morning, so I hang up. I feel guilty about it though, and order a half-dozen get well balloons from a local florist, instructing them to be delivered to St. Vincent’s with the highly personal message,Get Well Soon, Jordan. From Heather. Likely they will get lost in all of the other gifts his fans are no doubt sending him—an overnight candlelight vigil also took place outside St. Vincent’s ambulance bay, apparently—but at least I can say I tried.
Thinking about Jordan and his cracked skull reminds me of Christopher Allington. A real detective would, of course, follow up on the conversation we’d had the night before.
So I decide to take another crack at him. I tell Rachel I’m going to the bathroom. But really I go to the elevator and take it up to the twentieth floor.
No one’s supposed to go up to the twentieth floor but the Allingtons and their guests, which is why the carpet in the hallway outside the penthouse is really one big motion detector that goes off whenever somebody steps on it, including the Allingtons. This alarm causes a camera to be switched on, which then conveys an image of the interloper on a viewing screen at the guard’s desk in the lobby.
But since the guard on duty that day is Pete, I’m not too worried about being busted. We’ve caught any number of freshmen on the twentieth floor, most of whom have been sent there by conniving upper classmen in search of the “Fischer Hall pool.” The elusive Fischer Hall pool did once exist, but in the basement, not the penthouse, and it’s a favorite senior prank to send unsuspecting first-years to the twentieth floor in search of it, knowing they’ll trigger the motion detectors and get busted for being outside the president’s apartment.
I step boldly onto the nondescript carpeting and lift a finger to poke at the doorbell to the Allingtons’ apartment. I can hear a strange whistling sound beyond the door, and realize that this must be Mrs. Allington’s birds, the cockatoos about whom she worries so incessantly when she’s had too much to drink. When I press on the doorbell, the whistling turns into maniacal shrieking, and for a minute, I panic. Really. I forget all about being a detective slash novelist slash physician slash jewelry designer, and want to run back to the elevator…
But before I have a chance to ding and ditch, the door swings open, and Mrs. Allington, bleary-eyed and dressed in a green velour caftan, blinks at me.
“Yes?” she demands, in a remarkably unfriendly manner, considering the fact that just two weeks or so ago, I’d held her hand while she barfed into one of the lobby planters. Behind her, I catch a glimpse of a six-foot-tall wicker cage, within which two large white birds scream at me.
“Uh, hi,” I say brightly. “Is Christopher here?”
Mrs. Allington’s puffy eyelids widen a little, then go back to normal. “What?”
“Chris,” I repeat. “Your son, Christopher. Is he here?”
Mrs. Allington looks truly pissed off. At first I think it’s because I’ve woken her up, but it turns out that’s only part of it.
No, what I’ve really done is outrage Mrs. Allington’s sense of propriety.
I know! Who even knew she had one? But it turns out she does.
She says, enunciating as carefully as if I were a foreigner, “No, Chris is not here, Justine. And if you had been raised properly, you’d know that it is considered highly inappropriate for young women to pursue boys so avidly.”
Then she slams the door very hard, causing her birds to shriek even more loudly in surprise.
I stand staring at the closed door for a minute or so. I have to admit, my feelings are kind of hurt. I mean, I’d thought Mrs. Allington and I were close.
And yet she’s still calling me Justine.
I probably should have just gone away. But, you know. I still needed to know where Chris was.
So I reach out and ring the bell again. The birds’ screaming rises to fever-pitch, and when Mrs. Allington pulls open the door this time, she looks not only pissed off, but practically homicidal.
“What?” she demands.
“Sorry,” I say, as politely as I can. “I really don’t mean to bother you. But could you just tell me where I might find Chris?”
Mrs. Allington has a lot of loose skin on her face. A lift here and there might have done the trick, but she really isn’t the nip-and-tuck type. She’s more the never-move-your-mouth-when-you-speak old money New England type. Kind of like Mrs. Cartwright. Only scarier.
Anyway, some of that loose skin beneath her chin trembles a little as she glares at me.
Finally she says, “Can’t you girls just leave him alone? You’re always chasing after him, causing him trouble. Can’t you just go after some other boy? Aren’t there plenty in this dorm?”
