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.

“Sorry, Heather,” Cooper says. “But we have to go now.”

Where’d he come from? I can’t go. Not now.

“Um,” I say. “Yeah, just a sec, okay?”

But Cooper doesn’t look too ready to wait. In fact, he looks like a man who’s getting ready to run for his life.

“We have to go,” he says, again. “Now.”

And he slips a hand around my arm, and pulls.

“Cooper,” I say, wriggling to get free. I can see that Chris is still in shock. It’s totally likely that if I stick around awhile longer, I’ll get something more out of him. Can’t Cooper see that I’m conducting a very important interview here?

“Why don’t you go get something to eat?” I suggest to Cooper. “I’ll meet you over at the buffet in a minute—”

“No,” Cooper says. “Let’s go. Now.”

I can understand why Cooper is so anxious to leave. Really, I can. After all, not everybody deals with their exes by, you know, sleeping with them on the foyer floor.

Still, I feel like I can’t leave yet. Not after I’ve made this total breakthrough. Chris is really upset—so upset that he doesn’t even seem to notice that there’s a private eye looming over his dance partner. He’s turned away, and is sort of stumbling off the dance floor, in the general direction of the elevators.

Where’s he going? Up to the twelfth floor, to his father’s office, to hit the real liquor—or just to use the phone? Or up to the roof, to jump off? I feel like I have to follow him, if only to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.

Except when I start to go after him, Cooper won’t let me.

“Cooper, I can’t go yet,” I say, struggling to free myself from his grip. “I got him to admit he knew them! Roberta and Elizabeth! And you know what? I don’t think he killed them. I don’t think he even knew they were dead!”

“That’s nice,” Cooper says. “Now let’s go. I told you I have an appointment. Well, I’m late for it as it is.”

“An appointment? An appointment?” I can hardly believe what I’m hearing. “Cooper, don’t you understand? Chris said—”

“I heard you,” Cooper says. “Congratulations. Now let’s go. I said I’d bring you here. I didn’t say I could stay all night. I do have actual paying clients, you know.”

I realize it’s futile. Even if Cooper did change his mind and let me go, I don’t have any idea where Chris has disappeared to. And how smart would it have been, really, for me to follow him? I mean, considering what happened to the last couple of girls with whom he’d—how had I put it? Oh yeah, dallied. Hey, maybe I should be an English major. Yeah. A novelist, AND a doctor. AND a detective. AND a jewelry designer…

Cooper and I slip outside. I don’t even have a chance to say good-bye to anyone, or congratulate Rachel on her Pansy. I’ve never seen a guy so eager to get out of one place.

“Slow down,” I say, as Cooper hustles me to the curb. “I got heels on, you know.”

“Sorry,” Cooper says, and drops my arm. Then he put his fingers to his mouth and whistles for a cab that’s cruising along West Fourth.

“Where are we going?” I ask curiously, as the cab pulls to the corner with a squeal of its brakes.

“You’re going home,” Cooper says. He opens the rear passenger door and gestures for me to get inside, then gives the driver the address of his grandfather’s brownstone.

“Hey,” I say, leaning forward in the seat. “It’s just right across the block. I could’ve walked—”