Big Boned

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.

“Is what far?” I’d asked intelligently.

“The building Owen lived in?” Pam had asked.

“Uh,” I’d said. All I could think was Gavin’s in jail? In Rock Ridge? The chic, exclusive bedroom community of New York, which can’t have more than five thousand people in it? Does it even have a jail? Has the entire world gone insane?

“Seriously,” Tom had chosen that moment to start in, for the first of what would prove to be the many apologies he would give over the course of the next half-hour. “I am so, so sorry, ma’am. I didn’t have the slightest idea—”

“It’s all right,” she’d said, with the briefest of smiles at him. “How could you know?” To me, she’d asked, “Well? Is it?”

“It’s a block away,” I’d replied.

She’d looked relieved. “So I can walk to it? I’m sorry to be such a pain… it’s just I’ve walked so much today—”

“Oh.” She wanted to see his apartment?Why? “It’s just down the block… ”

“I wonder if you can help me, then, Heather… ” For the first time, I noticed Pam was carting a wheelie suitcase behind her, and had one of those quilted overnight bags in a red and white floral pattern slung over one shoulder. “Surely you would know.” Her wide, friendly face—not pretty, exactly, and completely makeup free, but certainly pleasant-looking—was creased with concern. “Since you worked with Owen… Has anyone been giving Garfield his pills?”

“Uh… ” I’d exchanged puzzled looks with Tom. “Who, ma’am?”

“Garfield.” Dr. Veatch’s ex had looked at us like we were morons. “Owen’s cat.”

Owen had a cat? Owen owned—had made himself responsible for — another life? Granted of the four-legged variety—but still. It was true, of course, that Owen had been fond of the cartoon Garfield, to a degree none of the rest of us could understand.

But that he’d kept a cat, in his apartment?Owen, the driest, least warm person I had ever met, had owned a PET?

I’d had no idea.

It changed my perception of Owen. I’ll admit it. It sounds stupid, but it’s true: It made me like him more.

Well, okay: It made me like him, at all.

I guess my surprise must have shown on my face, since Pam, looking horrified, had cried, “You mean the poor thing hasn’t had any food or water since yesterday? He’s got thyroid disease! He needs a pill daily!”

I’d walked her to Dr. Veatch’s apartment myself while Tom scooted back to our office to hold down the fort. Then I’d waited with her for the building super, gone with her to the apartment, helped her with the key (the locks in these old buildings can be tricky), and waited tensely while she’d called, “Garfield! Garfield? Here, puss, puss.”

The cat had been fine, of course. A big, menacing orange thing, just like its namesake, it had needed only a can (well, okay, two) of food, some water, and a tiny white pill—kept in a prescription bottle Pam seemed to have no trouble finding, in a decorative blue and white sugar bowl that matched all the other china in the hutch in Owen’s dining room cabinet—before it was good as new, purring and contented in Pam’s lap.

Not knowing what else to do, I’d left her there. The cat seemed to know her, and, well, whatever, it wasn’t like Dr. Veatch needed the place anymore. Obviously the president’s office would reassign the apartment to someone in good time. But Pam clearly loved the cat, and somebody needed to take care of it. So it seemed logical to leave her there with it.

And it wasn’t like Simon Hague was going to let her bring it into Wasser Hall. I knew Simon and his pet unfriendly policies (I myself have been known to turn a blind eye to the occasional kitten or iguana, so long as all room and suite-mates were amenable to the situation, and I didn’t get a call from a parent complaining later on). I wouldn’t have put it past Simon to have refused Pam entrance into his building if she’d been carting Garfield along with her, pet of recently murdered former staff member or no.

No, Pam and Owen’s cat were fine as—and where—they were.

Though I figured a well-placed call to Detective Canavan, just to make sure his detectives were finished going through Owen’s personal things, wouldn’t hurt.

By the time I got back to Fischer Hall, left the message with Detective Canavan, and remembered Gavin, he’d hung up.

But it isn’t, I find, when I finally get through to the Rock Ridge Police Department, like there’s more than one prisoner at the jail there. Or more than one police officer I have to get through in order to speak to the chief, either. Henry T. O’Malley, the chief of police himself, in fact, answers on the first ring.

“Is this the Heather Wells?” he wants to know. “The same one my kid made me listen to over and over about ten years ago, until I thought I would go mental and shoot myself under the chin with my own weapon?”

I ignore the question and instead ask one of my own. “May I inquire as to why you are holding Gavin McGoren in your town’s jail, sir?”

“‘Every time I see you, I get a Sugar Rush,’” he sings. Not badly, for a nonprofessional. “‘You’re like candy. You give me a Sugar Rush.’”

“Whatever he did,” I say, “I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He just gets a little overexcited sometimes. He’s only twenty-one.”

“Trespassing on private property,” Chief O’Malley reads aloud from what I assume is Gavin’s arrest report. “Breaking and entering… although between you and me, that one’ll probably be dropped. It’s not breaking if someone opens the window for you, and it’s not entering if you’re invited, whatever the girl’s father wants to believe. Oh, and public urination. He’s going to have a hard time getting out of that one. Unzipped right in front of me—”