The Bride Wore Size 12 (16 page)

19

I
turn to stare at Sarah in disbelief. “These flowers are from
Prince Rashid
?”

“Or Shiraz.” Sarah rolls her eyes. “Whichever he’s calling himself this week.”

“But—” I stare at the arrangement. “They’re so . . .
nice
.”

“Well, his dad has billions of dollars,” Sarah reminds me with more than a hint of sarcasm in her tone. “I’m sure he can afford a decent florist.”

Of course she’s right.

“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I’m surprised by the gesture. It’s kind of mature. And what’s written in the card is so nice.”

Sarah snorts as she wipes ketchup from the side of her mouth with a napkin. “He probably didn’t even write it. I bet there’s a palace publicist or secretary who does all his press.”

I stare at the card. Except for the prince’s title and formal name, which is engraved, the rest is written in somewhat cramped block print, in black ink, by someone clearly better used to texting—or maybe the more manly art of falconry.

“How did you know they’re from Prince Rashid?” I ask Sarah.

“Because he’s been down here twice to check if you got them,” she says. “The florist only delivered them ten minutes ago. There’s a bouquet for Lisa too, but she’s been locked inside the office with the new RA candidate since before I got back from Disbursements, so she hasn’t seen it. I had them keep it up at the front desk since there’s no room in here for two gigantic vases of flowers. I think I’m getting an allergy attack from yours alone.”

I look down at the handwriting on the card. I want to believe that Rashid wrote the message himself, but it seems unlikely. Then again, it’s on Qalif royal letterhead, with the name Rashid signed with a flourish and everything. Forgetting that Sarah is sitting across from me, I do the unthinkable and lick the signature.

“Oh my God,” Sarah cries, watching me. “What are you doing?”

“Look.” I show her the card. “The ink is smeared.”

“So?” Sarah cries.

“So that’s how you can tell if someone really signed something themselves, or if it was typed, or printed with a stamp. If it smears, they signed it themselves with a pen. It’s an old music business trick to use a stamp to sign head shots because they make you sign so many of them. Or just reproduce the head shot with an autograph already printed on it, not personalized.” I look more closely at the card. “Someone really handwrote this.”

“Yes, of course someone did,” Sarah says, still sounding disgusted. “I already told you, his secretary or publicist.”

“Wouldn’t you hire someone with less crappy handwriting to be your secretary if you were going to have them pretend to be you?”

“What does it matter whether or not he wrote it?” Sarah demands. “It doesn’t change anything. Jasmine’s still dead, Rashid’s still a jerk, and Kaileigh’s mom is still stalking you. She was by here a million times while you and Lisa were out. Here are your messages.” She rises to slam a handful of slips of paper on my desk. “Where were you guys, anyway? I tried calling but neither of you would pick up.”

I sit down and begin to sort through the “While You Were Out” messages, careful to keep my tone neutral. It’s clear Sarah knows nothing of the fate that’s about to befall the RAs. “Lisa didn’t say?”

“I told you, she’s been locked in her office since before I got back from Disbursements.” Sarah lowers her voice to a whisper, nodding at Lisa’s closed door. “It says on her calendar that she has the interview with that new RA candidate right now.”

“Right,” I say to Sarah. “We had a meeting up in the president’s office about Jasmine.”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “What a waste of time
that
must have been.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was.”

I don’t dare tell her the truth about what happened during the meeting. When she finds out that all nine of our new RAs are being fired, she’s going to explode with righteous indignation. She’s young enough—and despite her gruff demeanor, tenderhearted enough—that she’ll side with the student workers, and probably even attempt to help them lodge a formal protest.

Nor do I dare call Detective Canavan, as I promised Cooper I would, since Sarah will eavesdrop on the conversation, and overhear that Jasmine’s cause of death wasn’t natural, something I’d prefer to keep secret as long as possible. I could slip out to call the detective on my cell, but I’m still feeling a little shaken by my run-in with Prince Rashid’s bodyguard. At least with my backside planted firmly in my office chair I know Hamad can’t sneak up behind me.

Instead, I bend over my messages. One of them is from Julio. He’s written only two words—
No trash
—but I understand exactly what he means. As I’d expected, Eva’s request for DNA analysis had come too late. All the trash from Rashid’s party has already been put out and picked up at the curb by DSNY, the Department of Sanitation, New York City. Julio and his crew are extremely thorough.

“Did Mrs. Harris say what she wanted?” I ask Sarah. There are three messages from the front desk saying that Kaileigh’s mother needs me to call her. Both the “Urgent” and “ASAP” boxes are checked.

A concerned mom is the last person I feel like speaking with at the moment. I hesitate to even pick up my office phone. I can see the red light flashing ominously. She’s probably left me voice messages as well.

“What else?” Sarah asks. “She’s upset her kid’s RA is dead, and she wants Kaileigh to have a room change.”

Sarah is making quick work of her cheeseburger, which looks—and smells—like a particularly good one. My stomach rumbles. It seems like it’s been a long time since the finger sandwiches in the president’s office.

“I told Mrs. Harris yesterday that only Kaileigh can fill out the paperwork to request a room change,” I say.

“Yeah, well, according to Mrs. Harris, Kaileigh’s roommate Ameera saw their RA’s dead body, and now Kaileigh is too emotionally caught up in her roommate’s trauma over that horrible experience to be asked to do something as mundane as fill out paperwork,” Sarah says.

“Are you serious?” I ask. “Does Kaileigh even want to move out? Or is her mother still trying to make her move out?”

“Who knows? Apparently, Mr. Harris is going to be contacting their attorney to get Kaileigh out of her housing contract because we’re so incompetent we allowed someone to die down the hall from Kaileigh’s room, so we can expect to be hearing from him soon.”

“Oh God,” I say, and lay my head on my desk. “I wish it had been me who died, and not Jasmine.”

“Well, that’s a psychologically unhealthy statement to make,” Sarah says primly. I can hear her licking ketchup off her fingers. “Especially from someone who’s about to get married. Isn’t this supposed to be the happiest time of your life?”

“That’s what people tell me,” I say.

My head still on my desk, I lift one of the many messages from the pile. It was taken by Gavin, from my mother.
Please call,
it says.
Urgent.

Oh God.

“Anyway,” Sarah goes on, “the Harrises aren’t wrong about Ameera. I saw her going in to see Dr. Flynn this morning. She was crying about as much as she was yesterday. It’s hard to believe such a skinny little body could hold that many tears. Maybe that’s why the prince sent her flowers too.”

I lift my head from the desk to stare at her. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean Prince Rashid sent Ameera flowers too. I saw them at the front desk when I had the florist drop Lisa’s off there.” Sarah looks a little uncomfortable. “I have to admit I was being a little nosy checking who they were for. I thought they might be for me because, after all, I’m the one who discovered the body. If anyone should get flowers, it should be me. But
no,
no one ever thinks to send the graduate assistant flowers, only the pretty girl and the hall director and her—”

“Why would Rashid send
Ameera
flowers?” I interrupt, asking the question of myself more than of Sarah.

“How should I know?” she replies. “I assumed he was only sending them to you and Lisa to suck up because he knows he’s been busted for throwing that party.”

“But it’s not like Lisa can discipline him,” I say. “The college would never let her, considering how much money his father’s donated. So he didn’t
have
to send us flowers. And he certainly didn’t have to send them to Ameera.”

“No,” Sarah admits reluctantly. “But Ameera’s gorgeous. And she’s sad. He’s probably hitting on her while she’s in an emotionally weakened state because he wants to get in her pants.”

I glare at her.

Sarah’s right, of course. It’s likely Rashid sent Lisa and me the flowers out of guilt because he—or one of his employees—is somehow responsible for Jasmine’s death, and Ameera the flowers because she’s hot.

Still, I can’t shake the memory of Rashid’s face the day before in our office when he’d heard Ameera was ill, how his dark eyebrows had knit with concern. That concern hadn’t seemed fake. He’d forgotten all about his glamorous lunch reservation at Nobu, even offering the use of his chauffeur-driven Escalade to transport her to the hospital.

Maybe I’m a romantic fool, but any boy willing to do that can’t be
all
bad . . . or thinking solely about getting into a girl’s pants.

“You don’t think there’s the slightest possibility,” I say to Sarah, “that he might have done it out of genuine decency—”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Really, Heather? After everything you’ve been through, you
still
think there are decent guys out there? And that
Prince
Rashid
might be one of them? Prince
Rashid
?”

“Well . . .” I say. “Okay, it was bad that he threw that party, but he isn’t from this country, and he was only trying to make friends—”

“Oh my God, you’re so naïve. But it’s not totally your fault. You didn’t really have a normal childhood—” Now Sarah has launched into her psychologist’s tone. “And you got the last decent guy. And Cooper’s a total exception to the rule.” She thoughtfully chews a french fry. “Well, Tom Snelling is decent too, but he’s gay, so he doesn’t count. There are definitely no decent
heterosexual
guys left.”

Even though I know it stems from her having been disappointed in love, I find Sarah’s jadedness a little annoying.

“What about Cory, Lisa’s husband?” I ask.

“He works in
investment banking
.” Sarah gives a mock shudder. “And anyway, we hardly ever see him. The jury is still out on him.”

“What about Gavin?”

Sarah throws me a sarcastic look.

“Okay, he still has some growing up to do,” I admit, “but under our tutelage—”

“Face it, Heather: guys are scum.”

It’s kind of ironic that as she says this, Kyle Cheeseman, one of the new RAs—the one with the Justin Bieber hair, who also wears jeans that droop so low below his waistline that I’m able to read the band on his underwear, especially since his shirt is completely unbuttoned, revealing his hairless chest and stone-hard abs—saunters off the elevator and into the office to check his staff mailbox (all the RAs are required to do so at least twice a day).

“Hey, sexy ladies,” Kyle says. “Wow, Heather, nice flowers.”

“I believe I’ve told you to stop calling us sexy ladies, Kyle,” Sarah snaps from her desk. “We’re your supervisors.”

“Whoa,” Kyle says. “Never mind. You aren’t sexy. You’re both mad pimpin’.”

Behind Kyle is Rajiv—who’d worked as an RA last year and also through the summer—and Howard Chen, looking considerably healthier than when I’d last seen him vomiting into the fourteenth-floor trash chute the day before.

“It’s physically impossible for us to be pimps,” Sarah says. “Pimps are men who control prostitutes, taking a large portion of their earnings in return for providing them with their clients. Do either Heather or I resemble men who procure clients for prostitutes to you?”

“No.” Howard Chen looks furious on behalf of both Sarah and me. “What is wrong with you, Kyle?” Howard is wearing a hoodie from Harvard, where his parents wish he’d gone. They’d had to settle for Howard’s safety school, New York College, instead.

“Shut up, Howard,” Kyle says. “Jesus Christ, I was only trying to pay them a compliment!”

“Kyle,” Rajiv says calmly. “Has anyone ever told you before that you’re an imbecile? Why is your shirt unbuttoned? Are you expecting to be mobbed by Beliebers later?”

Kyle pouts. He’s felt inside his staff mailbox, which I knew without a glance would be empty. The termination letters won’t be delivered until just before five o’clock so the president and his cronies can arrange to be long gone when the RAs receive them, and therefore not have to field their—or more likely, their parents’—complaints.