“Heather, there’s no proof it was poison,” Cooper says. “The guy could have had a heart attack, for all you know.”
“Cooper.” I lower my voice, conscious of Sarah’s gaze on me and the fact that Detective Canavan is in Lisa’s office with another officer, interviewing Gavin and Brad. Her office is separated from the outer office—where my desk is located—by only a half wall and a metal grate. Muffy’s given us all strict instructions that if a single word of what’s happened gets out, we’re going to lose our jobs. Even though I know Cooper isn’t going to run to the Post with what I’m telling him, I don’t want to get caught gossiping. “A heart attack? Are you kidding me? Blood was gushing out of the guy’s nose like a fountain. Just seconds before he was eating cupcakes some fan dropped off at the building for Tania.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Cooper, they taught us at a staff meeting not long ago what symptoms to look for in human poison ingestion. Nosebleeds and nausea were two of them. Jared was suffering from both before he passed out. Warfarin, the active ingredient in older rat poisons, is both odorless and tasteless. I saw an episode of Freaky Eaters about a woman who loved eating it, only in small amounts. It was killing her too, just much more slowly.”
“Who the hell,” Cooper asks, “eats rat poison on purpose?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “There was one guy on there who ate his own car. ‘When a hobby becomes an obsession,’ ” I inform him, quoting from one of my other favorite shows, “ ‘it’s called an addiction. That’s when you need an intervention.’ ”
Cooper is silent for a moment. Then he says, “I’m canceling our cable subscription. You watch way, way too much television.”
“Said the man who carries a gun in a fanny pack. You’re hardly one to talk.”
“I do not—what are you—” he sputters. “Who told you that?”
“Whatever, Cooper,” I say, glancing at Sarah. She’s spun her desk chair to face the wall and is speaking in hushed, angry whispers into her phone. I assume she’s talking to Sebastian. After the near-death experience we’ve both witnessed, it makes sense that we’d reach out to loved ones. It also makes sense that we might lash out at them. Tensions are running high. “I know all about it, okay? I know why you were so hot and bothered about finding your cargo pants. I know you lied to me about owning a gun. And that’s fine, because guess what? I have secrets too.”
“What secrets?” Cooper demands. “And I didn’t lie to you exactly. I omitted telling you the truth about something I knew was only going to—”
“Excuse us.” Two figures appear in the doorway to the office. It’s Mrs. Upton and her daughter Cassidy. I have to restrain a groan. Really? Now?
“I have to go,” I say to Cooper. “I will speak to you at a later time about that subject of which we were discussing.” I hang up and smile at the Uptons with as much graciousness as I can muster. “Hello, ladies. Is there something I can do for you?”
“I certainly hope so,” Mrs. Upton says, steering her daughter by the shoulders into the office first, then plunking her onto the couch across from my desk. Cassidy’s expression is mulish, and when her mother releases her shoulders, she collapses onto the couch as if there isn’t a solid bone in her body.
Her mother settles herself into the chair next to my desk. I’m willing to overlook it this time, because I’m so terrified of Mrs. Upton, but I didn’t ask her to sit down.
“The young woman at the front desk told me you were the person to whom I should speak about this,” Mrs. Upton says with a gracious smile, evidently not remembering our encounter from earlier in the morning. Jamie, I know, is working the desk while Gavin and Brad are in with the police. “I’d like to see what I can do about having our room changed.”
I look from Cassidy to Mrs. Upton and back again. Cassidy’s expression is still mulish. Her elfin face is tilted at the ceiling, her lower lip jutting out, her long blond hair splayed out across the blue couch.
“I see,” I say. “May I ask what’s wrong with your current room?” Besides the fact that it used to be a creepy tribute to Prince Caspian. “Because I know that Cartwright Records went to a great deal of trouble to furnish it—”
“Oh, it’s not the furnishings,” Mrs. Upton says pleasantly. “They’re very nice. It’s just that Cassidy has never had to share a room before, and now she’s sharing one with not just one but two other girls, as well as me, and I’m afraid that isn’t going—”
“You’re in a separate room,” I point out. I know it’s rude to interrupt, but after the day I’ve had, I can’t help it.
“Yes,” Mrs. Upton says, her voice not quite as pleasant as before. “But the girls have to walk through mine in order to enter and exit the suite.”
“Right,” I say. “Because they’re fifteen years old, and you agreed to be their chaperone. New York College doesn’t allow residents under the age of eighteen—”
“Well, that’s plain silly,” Mrs. Upton says, beginning to swing her Louboutined foot. “My Cassidy is very mature for her age. She knows perfectly well how to handle herself—”
“What are those?” Cassidy asks, pointing at the condoms in the candy jar on my desk.
Mrs. Upton looks in the direction that Cassidy is pointing and turns a shade of pink that contrasts nicely with the many yellow gold necklaces she’s wearing.
“Put your finger down, Cass,” she says, glancing quickly away. “You know better than to point.”
“But what are they?” Cassidy asks. “I’ve never seen candy like that.” There’s a slyness to her perfect little smile that tells me she knows exactly what they are and is toying with us—she’s a teenager after all, surely she’s watched MTV—but her mother evidently doesn’t notice.
“That’s because they aren’t candy,” Mrs. Upton explains in disapproving tones. “They’re something that doesn’t have any place being in a candy jar on a lady’s desk.”
“Then why does this lady have them on hers?” Cassidy asks, cocking her head at me the way Owen cocks his head at the wall when he hears mice scratching inside.