The Bride Wore Size 12 (Heather Wells 5)

Rumors are flying that the faculty and staff of New York College are set to approve a vote of no confidence in Phillip Allington, the school’s sixteenth president. If such a vote occurs, it will be another embarrassing setback for a man who’s already had a great many in a very short period of time.

“His emphasis on athletics, along with raises and perks for a few top employees, is more appropriate for a state university than a private college,” one staff member is quoted as saying.

Staff and faculty have also criticized Allington’s managerial style, claiming he is motivated by a desire to get the school basketball team’s Division I status reinstated (it was revoked after a decades-old cheating scandal), and not by academic goals.

“Why else would he be accepting money from a known misogynistic, homophobic, anti-Semite like the leader of Qalif, General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Sultan Faisal?” asked the staff member.

Phone calls to the president’s office asking for a response to this question were still unanswered by press time.

New York College Express,

your daily student news blog

Maybe she loaned it to someone,” Patty says.

“Yes, Patty,” I reply, taking a sip from my glass of white wine. “Because young girls often loan their cell phones to other people.”

“Wait.” Patty, one of my oldest and dearest friends, frowns. “Are you being sarcastic?”

“Of course she is.” Cooper lowers his wineglass. “That’s why they’re called personal mobile devices. Unless Jasmine lost it—which seems like it would be an odd coincidence—someone took it. The question is, who? And why?”

We’re gathered around a well-used wooden table in the middle of Cooper’s—and soon to be mine—back deck, enjoying the remnants of a late supper Cooper has prepared (lemon-and-herb chicken, roasted new potatoes, and a Boston lettuce salad tossed in a mustard vinaigrette). Our friends Patty and Frank brought the wine, and gelato for dessert.

Even though the surprise dinner party is supposed to get my mind off the grim day I’d had at work, it’s hard to think of anything else, especially since no one seems to be able to talk about anything else.

Or maybe because the brownstone (left to Cooper by his eccentric grandfather Arthur Cartwright) is just a block or two from Fischer Hall. I can actually see the back of the building from the wrought-iron chair in which I’m sitting.

I’m trying not to look up. I’m trying to enjoy the company of my friends, allowing the wine and conversation to wash away the unpleasantness of the day, basking in the glow of the flickering flames of the citronella candles, the twinkling of the party globe string lights Cooper’s hung across the deck’s arbor.

But I can’t help it. I look up.

“We all know what happened to her phone,” Patty’s husband, Frank, is saying. He drops his voice to a mock-dramatic tone. “The murderer took it. Because the victim took a photo of him as he was choking the life from her, recording her own death, and he had to get rid of the evidence.”

“Okay,” I say. “First, never do that voice again. You’re scaring your child.” I point at Frank and Patty’s son, Indiana, sitting on the deck floor, noisily bashing one of his metal Tonka trucks into another. “And second, there’s no evidence she was murdered. Eva, the MLI, thinks it was probably asthma.”

Patty snorts. “That kid isn’t scared of anything. And who dies of asthma?”

“Nine people a day,” I say knowingly, taking another sip of my white wine and trying not to notice that I can see Lisa Wu’s husband, Cory—identifiable to me by the white blob of his shirt and thin stripe of his tie—moving rapidly from their kitchen through their living room to their bedroom, way up in their apartment on Fischer Hall’s sixteenth floor. He’s probably bringing Lisa tea to settle her stomach. “It’s one of this country’s most common and costly diseases.”

Patty stares at me. “Whoa. And to think, I knew you when you didn’t even have your GED. Look at you now, all ‘one of this country’s most common and costly diseases.’ ”

“I’m taking Critical Thinking this semester,” I inform her. “It’s a four-credit course required by everyone going for their bachelor’s degree at the New York College School of Continuing Education.”

“I would think New York College would just give you the damn degree already,” Patty says, “considering you’ve caught like ten murderers on their campus since you started working for them.”

“Ten’s an exaggeration,” I say modestly, dropping my gaze from Lisa’s apartment. There’s Gavin at his desk in his window a few floors below. I can tell by the blue glow that he’s at his computer, probably working on his screenplay. This latest one is about zombies. “And I had a little help.”

I smile sweetly at Cooper, but he doesn’t notice since he’s busy frowning down at Indy, who is now attempting to ram one of his trucks into my dog Lucy’s paws. Lucy, looking frightened, gets up and moves to the safety provided by the wrought-iron legs of Cooper’s chair. Neither Frank nor Patty notices their son’s behavior.

Frank and Patty’s little boy, Indiana, can be pretty sweet when he wants to be, but he’s at that age when he can also be a handful. Like now, as the doorbell rings shrilly. Indy jumps up, shrieking “I’ll get it!” and tears into the house.

“Frank,” Patty says calmly. She’s too far advanced in her second pregnancy to leap after her first child, although even when not pregnant, Patty has never been much of a leaper. A dancer by profession—which is how we met, when she performed backup for me onstage during my Sugar Rush tour—she’s graceful, but has always been more sinuous than energetic. “Get him before he destroys something.”

“I’ll do it,” Cooper says, carefully scooting back his chair so as not to injure Lucy. “I have to see who it is anyway.”

“My child.” Frank lays his napkin on the table with a sigh and follows Cooper. “My responsibility.” Though I know the truth, that Frank is fascinated by Cooper’s career, and is really following him to see if he can learn some new trick of the private detection trade.

I don’t ask anything stupid like Who could that be at this hour? because I’m used to Cooper having late-night visitors, most of whom are what Cooper describes as work “colleagues.” They all have nicknames like “Sammy the Schnozz” or “Virgin Hal.” I’ve stopped asking what these names mean (in the case of the Sammy the Schnozz, it’s obvious. His nose is extremely large and has been broken and badly reset many times. In the case of Virgin Hal, I’m not sure I want to know).