I’m not the world’s greatest dancer, but it doesn’t matter, because Chris is good. He’s probably been to one of those prep schools where they teach all the guys the box step, or whatever. He’s so good, he can talk while he dances. I have to count inside my head. One-two-three. One-two-three. Step ball change… oh wait, that’s a different dance.
“So,” Chris says, conversationally, as he presses my body to his and swings me expertly around, hardly wincing when I accidentally stomp on his toes. “What’s your major?”
I’m trying to look—surreptitiously—for Cooper. I mean, he’s supposed to be keeping an eye on me, right?
But I don’t see him anywhere. I don’t see Marian, either, for that matter. Have I been ditched for an ex-girlfriend? After that fuss Cooper made about potentially risking my life in my pursuit of the killer of Fischer Hall, has he run out on me?
Well! Nice to know how much he cares!
Although, you know, seeing as how he’s letting me live in his house rent-free—well, virtually—I guess I haven’t got any right to complain. I mean, how many people in Manhattan have such easy access to a washer/dryer?
In answer to Chris’s question about my major, I say, “Um… I’m undeclared.”
Well, that much is true.
“Oh, really?” Chris looks genuinely interested. “That’s good. Keep your options open. I think too many people go into college with their mind already made up about what career they want to pursue when they graduate. They stick to the core curriculum for that major and don’t give themselves the opportunity to try new things. You know, find out what they’re really good at it. It could be something they never thought of. Like jewelry making.”
Wow. I didn’t know you could take jewelry making for college credit. You could actually wear your final. How practical.
“What are you leaning toward?” Chris asks.
I’m going to say pre-med, but changed my mind at the last second.
“Criminal justice,” I lie, to see how he reacts.
But he doesn’t run away to cower in fear, or anything. Instead, he says breezily, “Yeah, fascinating stuff, criminal justice. I’ve been thinking about heading into criminal law myself.”
I bet you have. Aloud I ask, putting on a playful tone, “So what was a great big law student like yourself doing hanging around an undergraduate residence hall?”
At least Chris has the grace to look embarrassed. “Well,” he says, in an aw shucks voice, “my parents do live there.”
“And so do a lot of attractive coeds,” I remind him. Remember? You’ve killed two of them?
He grins. “That, too,” he says. “I don’t know. The girls in my program aren’t exactly—”
Over Chris’s shoulder, I finally catch a glimpse of Cooper. He appears to be exchanging words with Professor Braithwaite. Really. They are having what looks like a heated conversation over by the raw bar. I see Cooper fling a glance at me.
So he hasn’t forgotten. He’s still keeping an eye on me.
Fighting with his ex, too, it appears.
But also keeping an eye on me.
Since I realize he doesn’t know what Chris looks like, he might not know I’m dancing with my lead suspect. So I point to Chris’s back, and mouth,This is Chris to him.
But this doesn’t work out quite the way I expect it to. Oh, Cooper gets the message, and all.
But so does Marian, who, seeing that she no longer has his full attention, follows the direction of Cooper’s gaze, and sees me.
Not knowing what else to do, I wave, lamely. Marian looks away from me coldly.
Whoa. Sorry.
“The girls in law school—”
I swivel my head around and realize that Chris is talking. To me.
“Well, let’s just say they consider sitting in a carrel in the law library studying till midnight every night a good time,” he says, with a wink.
What is he talking about?
Then I remember. Undergrad coeds versus law school students. Oh, right. The murder investigation.
“Ah,” I nod, knowingly. “Law school girls. Not like those fresh-from-the-farm first years in Fischer Hall, huh?”
He laughs outright.
“You’re pretty funny,” he says. “What year are you?”
I just shrug and try to look like it wasn’t, um, let’s see, seven or so years since my first legal drink.
“At least tell me your name,” he urges, in this low voice that I’m sure some former girlfriend had told him was sexy.
“You can just keep calling me Blondie,” I purr. “That way you’ll be able to keep me straight from all your other girlfriends.”
Chris lifts his eyebrows and grins. “What other girlfriends?”
“Oh, you,” I cry, giving him a little ladylike smack on the arm. “I’ve heard all about you. I was friends with Roberta, you know.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. The eyebrows have furrowed. “Who?”
God, he’s good. There isn’t a hint of guilt in his silver gray eyes.
“Roberta,” I repeat. I have to admit, my heart is pounding at my daring. I’m doing it. Detecting! I’m really doing it! “Roberta Pace.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
I seriously can’t believe this guy. “Bobby,” I say.
Suddenly, he laughs. “Bobby? You’re friends with Bobby?”
I didn’t miss both the strange emphasis on the you’re and the use of the present tense. I am, after all, a trained investigator. Well, at least, I do the data entry for one.
“I was friends with Roberta,” I say, and I’m not smiling or pretending to be less than twenty-one anymore. Because I can’t believe the guy can be so cold. Even for a killer. “Until she fell off the top of that elevator last week.”
Chris stops dancing. “Wait,” he says. “What?”
“You heard me,” I say. “Bobby Pace and Beth Kellogg. Both of them are dead, allegedly from elevator surfing. And you slept with both of them right before they did it.”
I hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that. I’m pretty sure Cooper would have been more subtle. But I just… well, I got kind of mad, I guess. About him being so flippant about it. Roberta’s and Elizabeth’s deaths, I mean.
I guess a real investigator doesn’t get mad. I guess a real investigator keeps a level head.
I guess I’m not destined for that partnership in Cooper’s business after all.
Chris seems to have frozen, his feet rooted onto one black and one white tile.
But his grip on my waist doesn’t loosen. If anything, it tightens until suddenly, we’re standing hip to hip.
“What?” he asks, and his eyes are so wide that the blue-gray irises look like marbles floating in twin pools of milk. “What?” he asks, again. Even his lips have drained of color.
My face is only inches beneath his. I see the incredulity in his eyes, coupled with—and, shoddy investigator that I might have been, even I can see this—a slowly dawning horror.
That’s when it hits me:
He doesn’t know. Really. Chris had no idea—not right up until I’d told him just then—that the two dead girls in Fischer Hall were the ones with whom he’d, um, dallied just days before.
Is he really such a man-slut that he’d known only the first names—the nicknames—of the women he’d seduced?
It certainly looks that way.
The effect my announcement has on Chris is really pretty profound. His fingers dig convulsively into my waist, and he begins to shake his head back and forth, like Lucy after a good shampoo.
“No,” he says. “That’s not true. It can’t be.”
And suddenly I know that I’ve made a horrible mistake.
Don’t ask me how. I mean, it’s not like I have any experience in this kind of thing.
But I know anyway. Know it the way I know the fat content in a Milky Way bar.
Christopher Allington didn’t kill those girls.
Oh, he’d slept with them, all right. But he hadn’t killed them. That was done by someone else. Someone far, far more dangerous…
“Okay,” says a deep voice behind me. A heavy hand falls on my bare shoulder.