Big Boned

“You know where I bet you can be of use,” I say to Mr. Rosetti. “Wasser Hall.”

“Excuse me.” A middle-aged woman with a mom haircut has come up to the desk. She is wearing a dark green sweatshirt with a quilted-on picture of two rag dolls, one black, and one white, holding hands, on the front. “Could you tell me—”

“If you want to call up to a resident”—Felicia, the student worker behind the reception desk, doesn’t even look up from the copy of Cosmo she has snagged from someone’s mailbox—“use the phone on the wall. Dial zero for information to find out the number.”

“Wasser Hall,” Mr. Rosetti says. “That sounds good. Hey, kid.” He pokes Brian, who is calling someone on his cell phone. “Whatever your name is. Let’s go over to this Wasser Hall.”

“Just one minute, please,” Brian says, in an agitated ma

“No,” I say.

“I didn’t think so,” Brian says, with a smug look on his face. Evidently having been able to reach no one on his cell phone, he snaps it closed. “Is your boss in? Because I think we’d better speak to him.”

“Well,” I say. “That’s going to be hard.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?” Brain wants to know.

“Because he got shot in the head yesterday,” I reply.

Brian flinches. But Mr. Rosetti just nods.

“It happens,” he says, with a shrug.

“Heather.” Brian has visibly paled. “I am so, so sorry. I… I forgot. I… I knew this was Fischer Hall, but in all the confusion, I… ”

“Excuse me.” The woman with the mom haircut leans across the reception desk again. “I think there’s been a mistake.”

“No, there hasn’t,” Felicia finally looks up from her magazine to inform her. “Due to the college’s privacy policy, we are not allowed to give out any student information, even to parents. Or people who say they’re parents. Even if they show ID.”

“Brian, let’s leave this little lady alone,” Mr. Rosetti says. “She seems to have things well in hand.”

I smile at him sweetly. Really, he doesn’t seem that bad. Except for the hundreds of thousands I know he’s going to be charging the college for a job I can get done for mere pe

“I can’t apologize enough,” Brian is saying. “We’ll just go now… ”

“I really do think that would be best,” I say, still smiling sweetly.

The front desk phone rings. Felicia picks it up with a courteous “Fischer Hall, this is Felicia, how may I direct your call?”

“It was very nice to meet you, ma’am,” Mr. Rosetti says, with a courtly nod in my direction.

“Nice to meet you, too, sir,” I say to him. Really, he’s so nice. So old school. How could Cooper have thought the mob was responsible for Owen’s murder? I mean, maybe they did it. But even if they did, Mr. Rosetti couldn’t have been the shooter. For one thing, all that jewelry would have made him way too conspicuous. Someone surely would have remembered seeing him outside the building.

And for another, he’s just sonice.

Maybe it’s wrong of me to assume, just because he’s Italian American, and in the private security business, and wears a loud suit and a lot of jewelry, that he’s even in the Mafia in the first place. Maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just—

“Excuse me.” Mom Haircut is looking at me now. “Aren’t you Heather Wells?”

Great. Like I haven’t been through enough this morning.

“Yes,” I say, trying to maintain my pleasant smile. “I am. Can I help you with something?”

Please don’t ask for an autograph. It’s not worth anything anymore. You know how much an autograph from me gets on eBay these days, lady? A buck. If you’re lucky. I’m so washed up, I’ll be singing about sippy cups soon. If I’m lucky.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Mom Haircut goes on. “But I think you worked with my husband. Well, ex-husband, I should say. Owen Veatch?”

I blink at her. Oh my God. Rag Doll Sweatshirt Mom Haircut is the former Mrs. Veatch!

“Please hold.” Felicia puts down the phone and says, “Heather, sorry to interrupt, but Gavin McGoren is on the phone for you.”

“Tell Gavin I’ll call him back,” I say. I reach out and take Mrs. Veatch’s right hand. It’s rough and scratchy in mine, and I remember Owen mentioning once that his ex-wife was a potter, and “arty.” “Mrs. Veatch… I am so, so sorry about your husband. Ex-husband, I mean.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Veatch smiles in a sad way. “Please. Call me Pam. It hasn’t been Mrs. Veatch in quite some time. In fact, ever. That was always Owen’s mother to me.”

“Pam, then,” I say. “Sorry. My mistake. What can I do for you, Pam?”

“Heather,” Felicia says. “Gavin says you can’t call him back, because he’s not home right now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Of course I can call him back. Just take down the number where he is.”

“No,” Felicia says. “Because he says where he is, which is the Rock Ridge jail, he only gets one phone call.”

As I swing my head around to stare at her, the front door opens, and Tom comes in, looking as shocked as I feel.

“You’re never going to believe this,” he a

13

I’m pushin’ the stroller

Can’t you see?

Or is my baby

The one pushin’ me?

“Baby Time”

Written by Heather Wells

Tom has apologized a million times for the plow remark.

“Honest,” he keeps saying. “If I’d known she was his ex-wife… ”

“It’s okay.” I have more important things to worry about than Tom’s faux pas. Like the fact that Gavin is apparently in jail.

“What’s she even doing here?” Tom wants to know. “Why didn’t she have the cab from the airport drop her at Wasser Hall, like everyone else from Owen’s family? What, she didn’t get the memo?”

“There was some business of Owen’s she needed to follow up on,” I say. We’re sitting in my office—well, Tom in his old office (now the former site of a grisly murder… thank God the housekeeping staff didn’t go on strike until AFTER they’d cleaned up the crime scene), and I’ve just returned, panting, to my desk in the outer office—just like old times.

Except for the whole Tom-got-a-promotion-and-is-just-filling-in-while-the-Housing-Office-searches-for-a-replacement-for-his-replacement-who-happens-to-have-gotten-shot-in-the-head-yesterday thing.

I don’t tell him the rest of it—like just how much Mrs. Veatch—Pam, I mean—didn’t know about her ex’s new life in the city. Or how much it turned out we didn’t know about Dr. Veatch. Because it’s still weirding me out a little.

Instead, I sit down and start clacking at my keyboard, Googling Rock Ridge Police Department. Come on, come on… I know the town is small, but they have to have cops, right?

Bingo.

Pam had just assumed that since Owen worked in a residence hall, he naturally lived in it, too, since most residence hall director positions are live-in.

I’d explained to her that her ex had actually been much more than just a hall director—that as part of his compensation package for his position, ombudsman to the president’s office, he’d gotten a swank, rent-free apartment in a neighboring building in which many of the college’s administrators, including the president himself, lived.

“So is it far?” Pam had wanted to know.

I had blinked at her. There’d been a lot of ruckus at the desk just then, what with Brian and Mr. Rosetti just leaving, and Tom having dropped his bomb about Sebastian’s gun having been a match for the one that killed Owen, and Felicia still waving the phone with Gavin waiting to have me take his call, and all.