Quick Study (Murder 101) - Softcover

One
“I don’t know who you are, but I love you!”
The voice was deep, rough, and heavily in.ected with the ac­cent of one of the outer boroughs, and it belonged to the guy sitting in back of me at Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Rangers, my favorite professional hockey team. And the comment, which had been directed at me, was all the more interesting because I was sitting beside my best friend, Max, who had slipped her one- hundred- pound frame into a slinky size- two black cocktail dress, her cleavage prominently and proudly displayed for all to see. She’s tiny but she’s got a great rack. It’s a veritable “rack of ages.” Nobody, and I mean no­body, had ever noticed me when Max was around. And we had twenty years of friendship to draw on proving this point.
I was not in a cocktail dress, having opted instead to wear my new Mark Messier jersey (he was number eleven and the sole reason for the Rangers’ Stanley Cup win in 1994, thank you very much), a pair of jeans that I had purchased in the last millennium, and sneakers that had seen their fair share of painting projects. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail, I had a smear of ketchup on my cheek and now, after jumping up to take umbrage at a call, a glass of beer soaking my chest. I don’t even like beer, but when in Rome . . . you know the rest. But apparently, when I yelled, “Shit, ref, you’re killing us! That’s a bullshit call!” after a bogus hooking penalty, I had for­ever pledged my troth to Bruno Spaghetti, as Max had dubbed him when we arrived, seat 4, row D, section 402.
He ran his hands through his spiky black hair and grabbed me in an embrace, his silver hoop earring brushing my cheek. Max, who had been standing for the better part of the last period and who thus had incurred the wrath of everyone behind  her— many of whom had missed said bogus penalty because their only view was the back of her  well- coiffed  head—fell back into her seat, her cocktail dress riding up on her  yoga- toned thighs. But Bruno didn’t notice; he only had eyes for me. See, we  were sitting way up high in Rangerland, a place that used to be called “the blue seats,” in which only the  hardest- core hockey fans sat. Now they’re teal, which  doesn’t lend them the same menacing air. A gorgeous woman in a slinky black dress with spectacular boobs had nothing on a  .ve- foot- ten college professor with a pot belly and beer breath who loved hockey and who could curse with the best of them.
It was my birthday and my boyfriend had given me the jersey and the tickets.  Crawford—Bobby to the rest of the world—is a detective in the New York City Police Department and was working overtime that night, hence my birthday date was Max. Crawford had stopped by school on his lunch break to wish me a happy birthday, appearing in my of.ce doorway at around one; I was preparing for my next class, a two  o’clock literature seminar, and was delighted to be distracted from the critical essay on Finnegan’s Wake that was putting me to sleep. I’m a Joyce scholar, but even I recognize that obscure is not the same thing as exciting, and that makes my relationship with the subject of my doctoral dissertation tenuous at best. I love a challenge, though, and had spent the better part of my aca­demic career trying to .gure out if Joyce was laughing with us or at us. I was slowly coming to the conclusion that it was the latter.
I could tell that Crawford was excited by the items in the gift bag he was holding behind his back. He leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek; although he is a seasoned detective and an  all- around good guy, he gets really nervous around the nuns I work with at St. Thomas University, my employer. Whenever he visits me at school, he looks like he’s on his way to detention, even though I’m sure he never did anything more scandalous than pass a note in class. He took the bag from be­hind his back and set it on my desk, settling himself into one of the chairs across from me, a  self- satis.ed smile on his hand­some, Irish face.
I love the guy, but there’s one thing that bugs me: every time he gives me an item of clothing, it’s always  extra- large. I’m extra- tall but not  extra- fat, so this concerns me. Is this how he sees me? Or does he think women should wear tentlike clothing? I still  haven’t .gured it out. I held his gift aloft and spread my arms wide to examine it, full width: a Messier jersey. Despite the size, I couldn’t have asked for a better present.
“Crawford, I love it!” I said and came from around the desk. I kicked my of.ce door closed so I could give him a proper thank- you, sitting on his lap and putting my arms around his neck. “Now the best present you could give me would be your undivided attention to night,” I said hopefully, although I guessed this wouldn’t be the case.
He shook his head sadly. “I  can’t. I pulled an extra shift so I could go to Meaghan’s basketball playoff Monday night.” Meaghan is one of his twin daughters; she was banking on a bas­ketball scholarship to get her through college. I had come to real­ize that basketball was like a religion in that family; what teenage girl would count former New York Knick Bill Bradley among her crushes if it  wasn’t? He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Here. These are for you, too.”
The tickets were the icing on the cake, but I was extremely disappointed that another Friday night would go by and I wouldn’t see him. A little slap and tickle in my of.ce just  wasn’t cutting it anymore. The relationship, and Crawford himself, were everything I wanted but not in the amount that I had hoped for. I tried to be the good and understanding girlfriend, but I felt like Crawford’s wife was the NYPD and I was the jeal­ous mistress. And, in fact, for a very short while, I had been kind of a real mistress: unbeknownst to me, Crawford had been married when I .rst met him. But that’s all in the past; she’s almost married to husband number two and Crawford and I are still going strong, so things  couldn’t have worked out better for all concerned.
I had two choices for  alterna- dates: my best friend, Max, or my other best friend, Father Kevin McManus. I called Mc-Manus .rst, but he had a Lenten reconciliation service to per­form and penance to dispense, so he was out. He reminded me that I had a couple of sins to confess  myself—premarital sex being the worst and most  oft- committed of the  lot—but I hung up before he could recount all of them in detail. I went to Plan B and invited Max. She arrived at the Garden right before the puck dropped, breathless and a little tipsy from a cocktail party that she had attended for a new show that her cable network was launching. She tottered toward me in  four- inch heels and the aforementioned cocktail dress and I immediately got a sinking feeling. Max is not what you would call a responsible drinker. She holds her liquor less effectively than a dinghy with a hole in its bottom, which has resulted in more than one  late- night, four- hour phone call to discuss the merits of kitten heels versus stilettos. I thought we might be in trouble. Once I got a whiff of her champagne- tinged breath, I was fairly con.dent.
Bruno Spaghetti noticed me the minute we arrived and com­mented on my Messier jersey. He was wearing a Steve Larmer jersey, a testament to his hockey knowledge and devotion. No Johnny- come- lately Jaromír Jágr jersey for him; he...