“You’vepartied with them?”
“Yeah,” Gavin says. “You know. I think Steve’s a loser, but the guy’s got connections. That is one bridge I’m not burning, even if he did totally fuck up our project. But, you know, when I get my own production company going, I’ll need investors. And drug money is better than no money. I don’t have to ask where it came from. Plus, some great-looking chicks show up at those Tau Phi parties. There’s one tonight….” His voice trails off, and he looks at me warily. “I mean, women. Not chicks. Women.”
“There’s a party at the Tau Phi House tonight?” I ask.
“Um,” Gavin says. “Yes?”
And suddenly I know where I need to be tonight.
“Can you get me in?”
Gavin looks confused. “What?”
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“Into the party. To meet Steve Winer.”
Gavin’s perpetually sleepy brown eyes actually widen. “Youwanna score some coke? Oh, man! And I always thought you were straight! All those anti-drug ads you did when you were a star—”
“I don’t want anycoke ,” I say.
“’Cause coke’s no good for you. Reefer’s the way to go. I can get you some excellent reefer, mellow you right out. ’Cause you can be a real tight-ass sometimes, you know that, Heather? I always noticed that about you.”
“I don’t want any reefer,” I say, through gritted teeth. “What I want is to ask Steve Winer a few questions about Lindsay Combs. Because I think Steve might know something about it.”
Gavin’s eyelids droop back down to their normal width. “Oh. Well, shouldn’t the police be doing that?”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” I give a bitter laugh. “But the police don’t really seem to care, as far as I can make out. So. What do you say? Do you think you can score me an introduction?”
“Sure,” Gavin says. “I can do that. I mean, if you want me to. I can take you with me tonight to the party.”
“Really?” I lean forward on Sarah’s desk. “You would really do that?”
“Uh,” Gavin says, looking as if he doubts my sanity, “yeah. I mean, it’s no big deal.”
“Wow.” I stare at him. I can’t tell if he’s trying to get into my good graces to pull some kind of scam, or if he sincerely wants to help. “That’d be…great. I’ve never been to a frat party before. What time will it start? What should I wear?” I try not to think about theFAT CHICKS GO HOME sign. Will it still be there? What if they won’t let me in because they think I’m too fat? God, how embarrassing.
I mean, for them.
“You’ve never been to a frat party before?” Now Gavin looks shocked. “Jesus, even when you were in college?”
I decide to let that one slide. “Slutty, right? I should dress slutty?”
Gavin isn’t making eye contact anymore. “Yeah, slutty usually works out good. Things don’t usually start going until eleven. Should I pick you up then?”
“Eleven?” I practically scream, then remember Dr. Kilgore, who, I can tell from the murmuring behind the grate, is meeting with someone in Tom’s office, and lower my voice. “Eleven?” By eleven o’clock, I’ve usually got out my guitar, for a few pre-bedtime rounds of whatever song I’m currently working on.
Then it’s lights out. “That’s so late!”
Now Gavin looks back at me, grinning. “Gonna have to set the alarm, huh, Grandma?”
“No,” I say, frowning. Who’s he calling Grandma? “I mean, if that’s the earliest—”
“It is.”
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“Well, fine. And no, you can’t come pick me up. I’ll meet you outside Waverly Hall at eleven.”
Gavin smiles. “What’s the matter? You afraid of your boyfriend seeing us?”
“I told you,” I say. “He’s not my—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gavin says. “He’s not your boyfriend. Next thing you’re gonna be saying, this isn’t a date.”
I stare at him. “It isn’t. I thought you understood that. It’s an exploratory mission, to get to the bottom of Lindsay Combs’s murder. It isn’t a date at all. Although I really appreciate your—”
“Jesus!” Gavin explodes. “I was just messing with you! Why you gotta be like that?”
I blink at him. “Like what?”
“All professional and shit.”
“You said a minute ago Iwasn’t very professional,” I point out.
“That’s just it,” he says. “You run all hot and cold. What’s up with that?”
He says all this just before Tom walks in, beaming.
“What’s up with what?” Tom wants to know, sliding into the seat behind my desk. I can tell from his expression that his phone call with Steve Andrews had gone well.
What does this mean? Did I have the wrong Steve, after all?
But why would Kimberly lie to me?
“This thing,” Gavin says, waving the disciplinary letter in Tom’s face. “Man, look, I know I screwed up.
But do we really have to go through all this? I don’t need no alcohol education, I already got it in the St.
Vinnie’s ER, man.”
“Well, Gavin,” Tom says, leaning back in my chair. “You are a lucky man, then. Because, due to the fact that I currently have no access to my office—and happen to be in an excellent mood—you are off the hook from alcohol counseling this week.”
Gavin looks shocked. “Wait…Iam ?
“Forthis week. Iwill reschedule. For now…fly,” Tom says, waving his hand toward the outer door. “Be free.”
“Holy shit,” Gavin says happily. Then he turns and points at me. “I’ll see you later, sweetcheeks.”
And he runs out.
Tom looks at me. “Sweetcheeks?”
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“Don’t ask,” I say. “Really. So, I take it you and Steve—”
“Seven o’clock tonight,” Tom says, grinning ear to ear. “Dinner at Po.”
“Romantic,” I say.
“I hope so,” Tom gushes.
So do I…for his sake. Because if it turns out I am wrong, and Steven Andrews isn’t gay, that means there is actually something to what Kimberly told me in the ladies’ room last night.
Until I know for sure, though, I’m concentrating on the only other lead I have…Manuel’s mysterious
“Steve,” which all too coincidentally turns out to be the name of Doug Winer’s brother. If he knows something about Lindsay’s death, I’ll be able to tell…at least I hope so.
If I don’t get thrown out for being a fat chick, first.
20
Like Michael and his Jesus Juice
Like OJ and his glove
We just fit together
My true dysfunctional love.
“We Fit”
Written by Heather Wells
Never having been to a frat party before, it’s sort of hard to figure out what to wear to one. I understand sluttitude is in order. But to what degree? Plus, it’s cold outside. So do I really want to venture out in pantyhose and a mini? Is a mini even appropriate on a woman of my age, not to mention one with as many thigh dimples as I seem to have developed recently?
And it’s not like I even have anybody I can ask. I can’t call Patty, because then she’ll remember I never gave Frank an answer about the gig at Joe’s, and Magda’s no help at all. When I call and ask her if I should wear a mini, she just says, “Of course.” And when I ask if I should wear a sweater with it, she explodes, “Sweater? Of course not! Don’t you have anything mesh? What about leopard print?”
I settle for a black mini that fits a little snug, but with a diaphanous (though not mesh) top from Betsey Johnson, you can’t see the little bulge my belly makes as it hangs over the skirt’s waistband in spite of my control-top pantyhose. I throw on a pair of skinny black knee boots (which will be instantly trashed by the salt from the snowplows) and go to work on my hair. I want to look very different from the way I’d looked the last time I’d been at the Tau Phi House, so I opt for an updo, sexily mussed…since it will end up that way when I pull off my hat, anyway.
A few spritzes of Beyoncé’s latest—hey, I know it’s wrong to wear a rival pop star’s signature scent, but unlike Tania’s (or Britney’s), Beyoncé’s actually smells good…like fruit cocktail, yum—and I’m ready to go.
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I just don’t anticipate running into Jordan Cartwright on my way out.
Seriously. Why me? I mean, I sneak all the way downstairs—making it safely past the other two men in my life without either of them suspecting a thing, Dad in his room tootling his flute, and Cooper in his room doing whatever it is he does in there after dark, which God only knows what that is, but I think it must involve headphones because I don’t see how he could stand doing whatever it is while listening to whatever it is Dad is playing—and out the front door, only to encounter a freakishly bundled-up Sasquatch-like figure trying to figure out how to climb the stoop with cross-country skis on.
“Heather?” Sasquatch squints up at me in the light spilling from the door I’ve just opened. “Oh, thank God it’s you.”
Even though his voice is muffled because of all the scarves he’s wrapped around his neck and face, I recognize it.
“Jordan.” I hasten to close and lock the front door behind me, then make my way carefully down the steps—not an easy feat in three-inch spiked heels, given the ice. “What are you doing here? Are those…
skis?”
“You wouldn’t return my calls.” Jordan lowers the scarves so I can see his mouth, then raises the ski goggles that were hiding his eyes. “I really need to talk to you. And Dad’s got the limo, and none of the car services can get over the bridges, and there were no cabs. So I had to ski down Fifth Avenue to get here.”
I stare at him. “Jordan,” I say, “you could have taken the subway.”
His eyes widen in the light streaming down from the street lamp overhead. “Thesubway ? This time of night? Heather, there aremuggers .”
I shake my head. It’s finally stopped snowing, but it’s still bitterly cold. My legs are already frozen, with just a thin layer of nylon to protect them.
“Jordan,” I say impatiently, “what do you want?”
“I…I’m getting married day after tomorrow,” Jordan says.
“Yes,” I say. “You are. I hope you didn’t come all the way down here to remind me about it and to beg me to come to your wedding. Because I’m still not going.”
“No,” Jordan says. It’s hard to tell in the streetlight, but he looks a little peaked. “Heather. I’m getting married day after tomorrow.”
“I know,” I say. Then, all at once, I realize what he’s doing there.
Also that he’s drunk.
“Oh, no.” I show him the flat of my gloved palm. “No. You are not doing this to me now. I don’t have time for this, Jordan. I have to meet someone.”
“Who?” Jordan’s eyes look moist. “You do look kinda…dressed up. Heather…do you have a boyfriend?”
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“God!” I can’t believe this. Fortunately my voice doesn’t carry very far along the street. The two feet of snow blanketing the tops of all the parked cars—not to mention the clouds, hanging so low that they’re reflecting the light of the city with a pinkish hue—muffle it. “Jordan, if you changed your mind about marrying her, tellher , not me. I don’t care what you do. We broke up, remember?You broke up withme
, as a matter of fact. Forher .”
“People make mistakes,” Jordan murmurs.
“No, Jordan,” I say. “Our breaking up wasn’t a mistake. We needed to break up. We wereright to break up. We don’t belong together.”
“But I still love you,” Jordan insists.
“Of course you do,” I say. “The same way I love you. Like a sibling. That’s why wehad to break up, Jordan. Because siblings aren’t supposed to—you know. It’s gross.”
“It wasn’t gross that night we did it up there,” he says, nodding toward Cooper’s front door.
“Oh, right,” I say sarcastically. “That’s why you ran so fast when we were done. Because it wasn’t gross.”
“It wasn’t,” Jordan insists. “Well…maybe it was weird. A little.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Jordan, you only want to be with me because I’m familiar. It’s easy. We were together so long…we grew up together, practically. But that’s not a good reason for two people to stay together.
There has to be passion. And we don’t have that. Whereas I think you and Tania do.”
“Yeah.” Jordan looks bitter. “She’s chock-full of passion, all right. I can barely keep up.”
This is so not what you want to hear about your ex’s new girlfriend. Even if you DO think of him as a brother. Mostly.
“Well, ski on back uptown,” I say, “and take an aspirin and go to bed. You’ll feel better about things in the morning, I promise.”
“Where are you going?” Jordan asks mournfully.
“I have to go to a party,” I say, opening my purse to make sure I’ve brought my lipstick and my new can of pepper spray. Check, and check.
“What do you mean,have to?” Jordan wants to know, skiing beside me as I carefully pick my way along the sidewalk. “What’s it for, work or something?”
“Something like that,” I say.
“Oh.” Jordan skis with me until we reach the corner, where a traffic light blinks forlornly along a trafficless street. Not even Reggie is out in weather like this. The wind from the park whips around us, making me reconsider this entire venture, and wish I were in my tub with the latest Nora Roberts instead of out on this empty street corner with my ex.
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“Well,” he says finally. “Okay, then. ’Bye.”
“’Bye, Jordan,” I say, relieved that he’s finally going away.
As he skis slowly off toward Fifth Avenue, I start across the park, bitterly regretting my decision not to wear jeans. True, I wouldn’t look as alluring. But I’d be a heck of a lot warmer.
Getting across the park is murder. I no longer admire the beauty of the new-fallen snow. The paths are plowed, but not well, and new snow has covered them. My boots aren’t waterproof, being designed primarily for indoor use, preferably in front of a roaring fire on a bearskin rug. At least, that’s what the girl in the catalog was doing in the picture. I knew I should have ventured over to the gazillion shoe stores on Eighth Street instead of ordering them online. But it’s so much safer to order online. There’s no Krispy Kreme sign blinkingHOT NOW on my computer.