Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

• Название: Size 12 Is Not Fat
• Автор: Meg Cabot
• Жанр: Современные любовные романы

HEATHER WELLS ROCKS!

Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two—and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls… and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen—not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives—even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!

But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

---

Unless, of course, when you die you attain all the knowledge in the universe.

But what if you don’t? What if you just die?

Well, then I guess it won’t matter.

But what about those repairmen? They’d assured me elevator cables don’t just snap. Okay, maybe one of them snaps, but not all of them, all at once. Those cables hadn’t broken accidentally. Someone had deliberately booby-trapped them. Judging from the ball of flame that had erupted beneath my feet, I’m thinking bomb.

That’s right, bomb.

Someone’s trying to kill me.

Again.

Reflecting on who could possibly want to kill me takes my mind off my aching shoulder and throbbing hands—and even Cooper and the what-he-thinks-of-me thing—for a minute or so. Well, of course there’s Christopher Allington, who may or may not have already tried to shove a geranium planter on my head because I suspect him of murder. He’d better have a really good alibi for this one.

But how would Christopher Allington have known that I’d be on that elevator? I rarely ride the service elevator. In fact, the only time I ever ride it is when I’m chasing elevator surfers.

Could Gavin McGoren somehow be involved in the deaths of Beth Kellogg and Bobby Pace? This seems far-fetched, but what other explanation could there be? Julio can’t be the murderer. For all I know, he’s dead down there. Why would he want to kill himself and me?

Suddenly, the elevator closest to me returns, and this time, there’s somebody on the roof. But it isn’t Gavin McGoren. Blinking—the shaft is filled with smoke—I see through the mist that a grim-faced Cooper is coming to my rescue.

Which must mean he likes me. At least a little. I mean, if he’s willing to risk his own life to save mine…

“Heather,” Cooper says. He sounds as cool and authoritative as ever. “Don’t move, all right?”

“Like I’m going anywhere,” I say. Or that’s what I try I say. What I hear is actually a string of hysterical blubbering. But surely it isn’t coming from me.

“Listen to me, Heather,” Cooper says. He’s climbed onto the roof of Elevator 1, and is hanging on to one of its cables. His face, I can see through the smoke, is pale beneath his tan. Now why is that? I wonder. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Okay,” I say. Or I try to, anyway.

“I want you to swing over here. It’s okay, I’ll catch you.”

“Um,” I say. And make the mistake of looking down. “No.”

Well, that came out definitively enough.

“Don’t look down,” Cooper says. “Come on, Heather. You can do it. It’s just a few feet—”

“I’m not swinging anywhere,” I say, clinging more tightly to my cable. “I’m waiting right here until the NYFD arrives.”

“Heather,” Cooper says, and some of the old familiar impatience with me is back in his voice. “Push off from the wall and swing over here. Let go of the cable when I say so. I swear I will catch you.”

“Boy, you have really lost it.” I shake my head. My voice sounds funny. It’s kind of high-pitched. “No wonder your family cut you off without a cent.”

“Heather,” Cooper says. “The janitor told me that that cable you’re holding on to probably isn’t stable. It could break at any minute, like all the others—”

“Oh,” I say. Well, that’s different.

“Now do what I say.” Cooper has leaned out as far from his elevator car as he can, and still have something to hold on to. “Push off the wall with your foot and swing over here. I’ll catch you, don’t worry.”

From the top of the service shaft comes a groaning sound. I’m almost sure it didn’t come from me. More likely from the cable I’m holding on to.

Great.

Closing my eyes, I heave on the cable, forcing it to swing toward the wall on the far side of the shaft. I unwrap my foot from the dangling end and shove, as hard as I can, at the crumbling brick. Like a stone from a slingshot, I’m propelled in the direction of Cooper’s waiting arms…

… but not close enough for my liking.

Still, he shouts, “Let go! Heather, let go now!”

That’s it, I think. I’m dead. Maybe they’ll do a Behind the Music on me now …

I let go.

And know, for a second, how Elizabeth and Roberta must have felt—the sheer terror of careening through the air with no net or body of water below me to break my fall…

Only instead of plummeting to my death, as they had, I feel hard fingers close around both my wrists. My arms are practically yanked out of their sockets as the rest of my body slams against the side of the elevator cab. I have my eyes screwed shut, but I feel myself being lifted, slowly…

I don’t stop scrambling for a foothold until the seat of my jeans finally rest on something solid.

It’s only then that I open my eyes and see that Cooper has managed to pull me to safety. We’re both panting from mingled exertion and fear. Well, me from fear, anyway.

But we’re alive.I’m alive.

Above our heads comes the groaning sound again. Next thing I know, the cable I’d been holding on to—along with the pulley it had been connected to—rips loose from its supports and plummets down the shaft, to crash into the roof of the cab below.

When I’m able to lift my gaze from the wreckage at the bottom of the shaft, I see that I’m clinging to Cooper’s shirtfront, and that his arms are around me protectively. His face has gone the color of the smoke around us. There are streaks of blood and rust all over his shirt from where I’d grabbed at him with my cut hands.

“Oh,” I say, releasing the now crumpled and greasy cotton. “Sorry.”

Cooper’s arms drop away from me at once.

“No problem,” he says.

His voice, like my own, is steady enough. But there’s something in his blue eyes I’ve never seen before…

But before I have a chance to put my finger on just what, exactly, it is, a familiar voice from inside the cab we’re sitting on demands, “So is she okay or what?”

I look down through the open panel in the cab’s ceiling and see relief wash over Pete’s face.

“You had us shittin’ our pants back there, Heather,” he says. And indeed, his burly Brooklynese has a tremor in it. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say, and prove it by climbing shakily down from the roof of the cab virtually unaided. My shoulder twinges a painful warning at one point, but Pete’s steadying hand on one elbow, and Cooper’s careful grip on my belt, keep me from losing my balance. I find, once I’m safely inside the elevator car, that it’s difficult to stand without leaning against something since my knees are shaking pretty badly.

But I manage all right, by sagging against the wall.

“What about Julio?” I ask.

Cooper and Pete exchange looks.

“He’s alive,” Cooper says, but his jaw is strangely clenched.

“Least ways, he was a minute ago.” Pete yanks around the key he’d inserted in the override switch. “But as to whether he’ll still be alive by the time they get him out—”

I feel dizzy. “Get him out?”

“They’re gonna hafta to use cutters.”

I look to Cooper for a more detailed explanation, but he isn’t forthcoming with one.

Suddenly, I’m not so sure I want to know.

For the second time in two days, I end up in St. Vincent’s emergency room.

Only this time, I’m the patient.

I’m lying on a gurney, waiting to get my shoulder X-rayed. Cooper has gone in search of a tuna salad sandwich for me, since fear has made me famished.

While I wait, I gaze mournfully at my ragged fingers and palms, wrapped in gauze and smarting from numerous stitches. It will be weeks, an irritatingly young attending physician has informed me, before I have normal use of them again. Forget guitar playing. I can barely hold a pencil.

I’m glumly considering how I’m going to do my job properly when I have little or no use of my hands—undoubtedly Justine would have found a way—when Detective Canavan shows up, the unlit cigar still clenched between his teeth. I’m not sure it’s the same cigar. But it sure looks like it.

“Hey there, Ms. Wells,” he says, as casually as if we’d just bumped into one another at Macy’s or something. “Heard you had quite an eventful morning.”

“Oh,” I say. “You mean the part where somebody tried to kill me? Again?”

“That’d be the one,” Detective Canavan says, removing the cigar. “So. You sore at me?”

I am, a little. But then again, it hadn’t been his fault, really. I mean, that planter could have fallen over accidentally. And Elizabeth and Roberta really could have died while elevator surfing.

Except that it hadn’t. And they hadn’t, either.

“Can’t say as I blame you,” Detective Canavan says, before I have a chance to reply. “Now we got a Backstreet Boy with a busted head and a janitor in intensive care.”

“And two dead girls,” I remind him. “Don’t forget the two dead girls.”

Detective Canavan sits down on an orange plastic chair that’s bolted to the wall outside the X-ray lab.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “And two dead girls. Not to mention a certain administrative assistant who should, by rights, be dead as well.” He puts the cigar back in his mouth. “We think it was a pipe bomb.”

“What?” I yell.

“A pipe bomb. Not particularly sophisticated, but effective. In an enclosed space, like the brick elevator shaft, it did a lot more harm than it would have if it had been in a suitcase or a car or something.” Detective Canavan chews on the cigar. “Somebody seems to want you dead in a big way, honey.”

I stare at him, feeling cold again. Cooper had thrown his leather jacket over my shoulders as soon as we’d gotten down into the lobby, because I’d started shivering for some reason. And then when the paramedics had arrived, they’d added a blanket.

But I’d been freezing ever since seeing the wreckage that had once been the service elevator, crumpled at the bottom of that shaft. Firefighters had tried to pry the doors open with massive pliers—the jaws of life, they called them—but the twisted metal just shrieked in protest. Lying in that wreckage was Julio, who I later learned had suffered multiple broken bones, but was expected to survive. I had started shivering just looking at the mangled cab, and my hands have felt like ice ever since.

“A pipe bomb?” I echo. “How would somebody—”

“Slipped it on top of the elevator car. Easy to make, if you have the know-how. All you need is a steel pipe, threaded on both ends so you can cap it. Drill a couple holes in the side for twin fuses, slip a couple firecrackers through the holes, epoxy them in place, tack on some cigarettes, then fill the thing with gunpowder. Easy as pie.”

Easy as pie? That sounds worse than the SATs!

Noting my raised eyebrows, Canavan removes the cigar and says, “Excuse me. Easy as pie if you know how to do it. Anyway, somebody lit that thing a few minutes before you and—what’s his name?” He refers to his notebook. “Oh yeah, Mr. Guzman—went for the ride. Now, if you don’t mind my asking, what the hell were you doing on top of that thing?”

Confused, I think back. A pipe bomb, with twin cigarette fuses? I have no idea what such a thing would look like, but I certainly hadn’t noticed anything like it when I’d been up on the elevator car’s roof.

Then again, with all the gears and machinery up there, a small bomb would be easy to hide.

But a pipe bomb? A pipe bomb, in Fischer Hall?

Behind the double doors to the waiting room, a nurse is calling, “Sir, you can’t go in there! Sir, wait—”

Cooper bursts through the swinging doors, his arms full of paper bags. A pretty nurse trails after him, looking mad.

“Sir, you can’t be barging back here,” she insists. “I don’t want to have to call security—”

“It’s all right, nurse,” Detective Canavan says, flipping open his wallet and showing her his badge. “He’s with me.”

“I don’t care if he’s with the Royal Academy of Medicine,” the nurse snaps. “He can’t be barging back here.”

“Have a cannoli,” Cooper says, producing one from a bag. The nurse stares at him like he’s insane.

“No, really,” Cooper says. “Have one. On me.”

Disgusted, the nurse takes the cannoli, chomps off a large bite, then leaves, still chewing. Cooper shrugs, then eyes the detective with undisguised hostility.

“Well, if it isn’t the NYPD’s biggest dick,” he says.

“Cooper!” I’m surprised. “Detective Canavan was just telling me—”

“What, that it’s all in your head?” Cooper laughs bitterly, then stabs an index finger at the wide-eyed detective. “Well, let me tell you something, Canavan. There is no way all six cables to an elevator cab could snap at the same time unless someone deliberately—”

“Cooper!” I cry, but Detective Canavan is chuckling.

“Simmer down, Romeo,” he says, waving his cigar at us. “We already established that a second attempt was made on the life of your girlfriend here. Nobody’s sayin’ what happened with the elevator was an accident. Keep your shirt on. I’m on your side.”

Cooper blinks a few times, then looks at me. I expect him to say something like, “She’s not my girlfriend.” Only he doesn’t. Instead he says, “The tuna salad didn’t look fresh. I got you salami instead.”

“Wow,” I say. Cooper hands me a sandwich that has to be a foot long, at least. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Detective Canavan peers at the many bags Cooper has scattered about. “Got any chips in there?” he wants to know.

“Sorry.” Cooper unwraps my sandwich and begins breaking it up into bite-sized pieces, since I can’t hold anything real well. “Olive?”

Detective Canavan looks disappointed.

“No, thanks. So,” he says, as if there’d been no interruption. “Who told you to get on that elevator?”

I say, speaking with my mouth full because I’m too hungry to wait, “All I know is, I got a call from the reception desk that Gavin—he’s this kid that lives in the hall—was elevator surfing again, and so I went with Julio to try and chase the kid down.”

“Yeah? And when you got up there, what?”

I describe the explosion, which had occurred almost simultaneously with my realization that Gavin wasn’t up there after all.

“So,” Detective Canavan says. “Who told the kid at the desk to call you?”

“We all know who did this,” Cooper says. The barely suppressed fury is back in his voice. “Why are you just sitting there, Canavan, instead of arresting him?”

“Arresting who?” Canavan wants to know.

“Allington. He’s the killer. It’s obvious Heather’s got him running scared.”

“I’ll say,” Canavan shakes his head. “The kid left town last night. He’s parked himself out at his folks’ place in the Hamptons. No way he could have planted that bomb, not without some help. Kid’s three hours away by LIE. Somebody wants your girlfriend dead, all right. But it ain’t Chris Allington.”