The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Susan hated the thought of climbing those stairs and sitting in the library foyer in her torn and dirty clothes. “I’m all right here,” she said. “The car’s gone. I’ll tell you what. I’ll sit in that patio, by the fountain.”

  “Okay,” Melba said, with some doubt in her voice.

  Susan gathered her purse and her books and walked the half-block to the patio. A through street had been dead-ended, the area paved with old bricks, and wooden benches scattered around. Trees arched overhead, and the soft sound of the fountain was comforting. Susan didn’t even notice the traffic on Main, not yards from where she sat in her own private sanctuary.

  Pleasant as her surroundings were, her thoughts were far from serene. Somebody tried to kill me! That thought kept singing over and over in her mind. It made no sense. It was bad enough that someone had dumped a body in her car, but she’d been willing to believe that was coincidence. Now, it didn’t seem so. The two incidents were clearly connected. Was some student so angry at her that harassment was going way too far? Surely no one was that pissed off over an F. She remembered the boy who had plagiarized in his essay about Hawthorne. But surely he had no relation to Missy Jackson, and the threat on her life must be connected to the murder.

  “Susan!” Jake’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and she was almost grateful until she saw the look on his face. “I thought you promised not to be on campus alone after dark!” It was, by then, as dark as the evening was going to get.

  She was too angry and too scared to apologize. Instead, her voice flared indignantly, “I lost track of time in the library. And it wasn’t really dark when I left, just sort of… well, the end of dusk.”

  Jake threw her a withering glance. “Then you saw the car that tried to run you down.”

  Just then a campus patrol car pulled up, with Spencer Grady, the night patrolman, at the wheel. He started toward them, saw the exchange going on, and kept his distance. “You need me, chief?” he asked from several yards away.

  “Yeah, I need you to file a report,” Jake barked. “Susan will give you the details.”

  Susan repeated her story for both of them, identifying the car as small and dark but, no, she didn’t know the make, and, no, she couldn’t identify the driver, hadn’t even seen him clearly, wasn’t positive it was a male. She was too busy throwing herself out of the path of the car.

  “Got enough?” Jake asked Grady. “I want to get her home and see how badly she’s really hurt.”

  Even Susan blushed at that, and she wasn’t unaware of the grin on Grady’s face as he stood behind Jake. Clearly, Jake intended to take off her torn clothes to examine the damage to her person.

  “I think this is okay, sir. Want me to report it to the city?”

  Jake, usually easygoing and affable, regarded Grady as though he were an idiot. “Of course,” he said. “Susan, get in my truck.”

  “The moped…” she said, “it’s in my parking spot.”

  “And it’ll stay there until tomorrow,” he said. “You need help?”

  She gritted her teeth. She could feel her muscles tightening and knew soreness would be hers in the morning, but she wasn’t about to tell Jake Phillips. “No.”

  He followed her as she made her way slowly to the car. I should help her, he thought, but she’s so damn stubborn.

  They drove to her house in silence. Susan, staring out the window, was thinking over and over, Someone really tried to kill me. Once again Jake made Susan stay in the truck while he checked the house, then motioned for her to come in. When she was settled on the sofa, he brought her a glass of wine and said, “Take off your clothes.”

  “You’ve asked that in nicer tones,” she said, trying for lightness.

  “I’m not going to seduce you. I want to see how badly you’re hurt. You didn’t break anything or you’d know it, but some of the scrapes may be pretty deep.”

  Susan stood up and shed a now-ruined silk blouse and an equally destroyed pair of rayon pants. “Might as well throw these right in the trash,” she said. “What a day to decide not to wear jeans for once.”

  “Let me look first,” he said.

  Susan wanted to yell that it was her body and she wanted to look first, but she stood while he placed gentle fingers on her face, her arm, and her side and stared long at her leg, where the skin appeared to be scraped away in patches. “You’ll heal,” he finally said, “but we’ve got to clean all those places.”

  He went to his truck for a first-aid kit. Then he sat Susan on a bar stool and with incredible gentleness sponged away bits of dirt, dried blood, tiny bits of torn fabric. “This’ll sting,” he warned as he put antiseptic on the worst scrapes.

  “Sting is an understatement,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Go ahead and yell. Probably do you good.”

  “Neighbors might think you were attacking me and rush to my rescue,” she replied.

  Jake left her alone long enough to go buy salmon filets and salad makings. He grilled the salmon with soy sauce, tossed the salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and threw in some blue cheese. They ate at the table on the deck without talking, still wrapped in their own thoughts. Susan was in bed and asleep by nine-thirty.

  When she woke in the morning, Jake was sound asleep on the couch, still wearing his clothes from the day before. “Morning,” he muttered. “How are you?”

  “Stiff as an old lady,” she said. “I don’t have a muscle that doesn’t hurt. A shower will help.” She looked at him a minute. “You could have slept in the bed,” she said.

  “Didn’t want to disturb you. You needed the sleep.” He looked up at her, standing over him, and commented, “We should have put ice on your face right away. You’ve got a beaut of a bruise.”

  “Thanks.”

  He drove her to class and then went home to change. “Jordan will want to talk to you,” he warned as she pulled herself gingerly out of the truck.

  “Well,” she said tartly, “he can just come to me this time.”

  “I don’t think Scott would like that,” he said with a grin. “Maybe he’ll settle for a phone call.”

  “I doubt that,” she muttered. “Wait a minute.” She walked around the truck to the driver’s side, leaned in the open window, and kissed Jake Phillips on the mouth, hard. “Thank you,” she said.

  Jake grinned. “Anytime.”

  * * *

  Susan dropped her books in her office and went straight to the English department lounge for coffee. The lounge was strangely empty for that hour of the morning. None of her colleagues lingered over the day’s newspaper, and even Ernie Westin wasn’t there to carry on about tenure. Someone she didn’t know—a graduate student?—peered across the room at her over the top of a newspaper and quickly lowered his eyes when he saw her glance his way.

  Susan poured her coffee, left a quarter in the money jar, and took the coffee back upstairs to her office. Two minutes later, Ellen Peck appeared, carrying the morning’s city newspaper.

  She took one look at Susan and said, “You look like hell!”

  “Thanks. Someone tried to run me down in the library parking lot last night. I jumped into the paving.”

  “Ouch,” Ellen said. “You okay?”

  “Physically. I’m just sore and stiff. But, Ellen, I’m mad as hell at being accused of murder, and I’m scared.”

  “What’s Jake say?”

  “We didn’t really talk about it. He just keeps saying I have to be careful. I imagine that detective will have more to say.”

  “You see yesterday’s paper?” Ellen seated herself in the student chair opposite Susan’s desk. She was thirty-five and looked fifteen, with shoulder-length blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and an easy smile. Today she wore a print wraparound skirt and a matching T-shirt, neither of which did much to distinguish her from the coed population. Sometimes Ellen made Susan think of Shelley before… but then she batted that thought away. She had to put Shelley in the past and concentrate on Missy and the
present.

  Susan shook her head. “I’ve been avoiding the newspaper.”

  “You better read this,” Ellen said, handing her the Oak Grove News.

  “COED’S BODY FOUND IN ENGLISH PROF’S CAR,” the headline blared. Beneath it was a large picture of Missy Jackson and an article whose text wrapped around a smaller picture of Susan herself. “I think they used my passport photo,” she moaned.

  But she wasn’t really looking at her own photo. She studied Missy Jackson’s photo, which was in color, albeit slightly out of register. Missy’s blonde hair showed fine red and blue lines at the edge, and her eyes had a blurry quality that made them all the more poignant. Susan studied the face, trying to reconcile the fact that two days ago this girl had been alive, vibrant, a part of the campus, and now she lay in a funeral home somewhere in town.

  Missy Jackson had wide blue eyes, a smile which showed teeth obviously carefully straightened by orthodontic care. She wore her hair shoulder length, a little longer toward the face and curling under ever so slightly—a fashionable cut for a girl from Uvalde, Texas, the city identified in the cutline under the picture as her hometown. For what must have been a yearbook picture, she appeared to be wearing a cheerleader’s outfit.

  “She looks like you,” Susan said slowly, raising her eyes from the photo to look at Ellen.

  “Thanks,” Ellen said dryly.

  “Well, I mean, your hair is the same and you look about the same age…”

  “And she’s dead,” Ellen said flatly. “Read the article.”

  Susan read, her anxiety mounting with each line because the story echoed what she’d heard from Jordan and Scott: if the body was in her car, she must know something about the murder. Oh, it didn’t come out and say that but it dwelt too little on Missy’s background and too long on Susan’s. “This is not Dr. Hogan’s first brush with the law.” Susan could feel her stomach knot as she read further: “In 1987, Dr. Hogan’s college roommate was found dead in the apartment they shared. The death was later pronounced a suicide.” So much for putting Shelley in the past.

  She raised her eyes to Ellen. “Can they do that? Can they say that about Shelley? Who would have told them?”

  “I’m guessing at who Shelley is… or was,” Ellen said, “but whether they can or can’t, they just have. It’s a matter of public record. How they found out is another question, but law enforcement has an amazing network of databases. Wouldn’t have been hard.”

  Why did I ever think Shelley wouldn’t follow me everywhere? “Jordan must have found out about it. Damn!” Susan hurled the paper on the desk. “That was a long time ago, and I wasn’t involved, though at first I was under suspicion. I… I thought I’d put it way behind me.”

  “You want to talk about it?” Ellen asked gently.

  “No, not really. She took too much cocaine. That’s all there was to it.” She paused a moment. “Now I suppose that means I was a dopehead too.”

  “Not necessarily, but Scott will try to assume that,” Ellen said, her voice soft. “I’m sorry, Susan.”

  Susan smiled ruefully at her. “Thanks. So am I. Wonder what Jake will think if he reads this?”

  “That you haven’t been honest with him,” Ellen supplied helpfully.

  “Great,” Susan said. “He’s not alone. That police officer, Jordan, and Scott both think I’m not being honest about this coed’s body in my car. Why would I be dishonest? What do I have to hide?” She shifted her attention back to the newspaper. “A dead roommate, apparently. Jordan will be calling about it.”

  The story also said that the police had interviewed her at length about Missy Jackson’s death and announced that she was not at this point a suspect.

  “At this point!” she exploded. “That’s what they say about everyone they’re sure is guilty as sin! Ellen, I… do I need a lawyer?”

  Ellen shook her head. “I don’t think so. That might make you look really nervous. But ask Jake what he thinks.”

  Susan found it hard, to say the least, to concentrate on preparing for her classes that day. She went to lunch at the faculty center, an add-on to the old liberal arts building. The room was cheerful enough with windows on two sides and tables for four or eight. Since it was in Baker Hall, the science and math people didn’t use it much, probably eating at the fast-food joints on Main. But the liberal arts people tended to sit by departments at the larger tables. Susan went through the buffet line and then noticed several of her colleagues at one of the large table, so she joined them. One by one they melted away as she settled herself, some with a nod in her direction and “Got to go” and others without a word. Faculty from other departments stared openly. Depressed by the lack of support from her colleagues, she was about to take her lunch back to her office when Ellen appeared.

  “Sit right there,” she ordered.

  “Can’t. I feel like an exhibit at the zoo.”

  “If you leave, they’ll talk about you.”

  “They’ll do that anyway. Are you going to eat with me?”

  “Sure.” Ellen went to the buffet table and returned shortly with a plate piled high with salad makings.

  Susan looked ruefully at her own plate of lasagna, which now tasted like sawdust. “I’m not hungry,” she said, pushing the plate away.

  Ellen calmly poured low-cal ranch dressing on her salad. “Susan, you’ve got to act normal or people will really think you know something you don’t—or did something you didn’t.”

  “If you’d written that sentence in a paper, I’d have given you an F,” Susan said.

  Ellen smiled. “That’s more like it. Get your spirit back.”

  “How can I get my spirit back when someone’s trying to kill me?”

  Ellen shook her head, as though to make the very idea go away. “I can’t believe anyone would try to kill you. Surely, they were just trying to scare you.”

  Susan thought that Ellen couldn’t believe it because she didn’t want to. Denial is always safer.

  “Maybe you need to separate the murder from the fact that it was your car. We are all devastated about this girl’s death, and rightly so. But her death is one thing, and the part about her being in your car is something else. An accident. Nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why did that car take out after me? Besides, you’re the only one who thinks her being in my car has nothing to do with me,” Susan said bitterly. “And,” she went on, “I’m the only one who doesn’t think Missy Jackson was the perfect coed. I think, thought last semester, that she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be the perfect coed or a rebelling young feminist. And she didn’t know any middle ground.”

  * * *

  Lt. Jordan called in the early afternoon. “Ah, I understand you’ve had an accident.”

  Susan wanted to tell him to quit pussyfooting around and get to the point. “Right. I’m a little stiff and sore.”

  He did get right to the point. “I need to talk to you about that… and about your college roommate. But I don’t want to ask you to come downtown, feeling as you do. Phillips suggested it might cause trouble if I came to your office. He suggested your home tonight at five-thirty.”

  Rage threatened to explode in Susan. How could Jake invite this man into her home? But instead of anger, she replied with a surprised, “He did?”

  “Yes. Said he’d be there. I’ll only come with your permission, but I thought you might think it the best alternative to coming downtown.”

  “I guess so,” she said reluctantly. Probably it was the best plan. She’d be on home turf, and Jake would be with her. “Sure, that’s fine. I’ll see you there. Did he tell you where I live?”

  “It’s on file. 2115 Greenbriar Lane. Almost out in the country.”

  “Okay.” Susan hung up and sat staring at the phone for a long time, as though it were an enemy. She felt like Big Brother was watching her. He even knew where she lived. Well, of course he did.

  * * *

  Susan rode the moped home—in spite of Jak
e’s protests—and got there a little before five. Jake arrived just minutes later, with steaks for the grill, potatoes that he immediately put in to bake, and fresh green beans.

  Susan greeted him with a demanding question. “Why hasn’t there been anything in the paper about Eric Lindler?”

  “The boyfriend? They interviewed him today, and they’ve checked his car. Jordan says they found no trace evidence at all. Clean as a whistle. It’ll probably be in the paper tomorrow.”

  “What kind of a car?” she asked.

  “Big old clunker of a ’78 Ford.”

  “So it wasn’t his car that tried to run me down?”

  Jake shook his head. “No, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility, however slim, that he was driving that car. But, Susan, if Missy Jackson was the perfect coed, so is this kid. He’s studying to be a minister, for Pete’s sake, and his grades are excellent. He belongs to Brothers in Christ and a bunch of other church-related things, doesn’t seem to have a life apart from religion… and Missy.”

  Jake was cleaning green beans when Dirk Jordan arrived, a sight that made Jordan break into an unexpected grin.

  “He likes to cook,” Susan said defensively.

  “And she’s no good at it,” Jake added cheerfully. “Want a drink?”

  Jordan declined because his was a business call. He asked the predictable questions about Susan’s near-encounter with a car the night before, and she repeated what she had told Jake. Then she asked, “I hear it wasn’t Eric’s car. His is an old clunker.”

  “And clean of any evidence,” Jordan said. “In your car, however, they found fibers, blood, and wood slivers. The blood belonged to the girl, the slivers probably came from the baseball bat that killed her, and the fibers… some from her clothing were in the front seat of your car.”

  “The front seat?” she echoed.

  “Means she was in the front seat before she was in the trunk. We don’t know if she was alive or dead at that point. She may have been moved from the place she was killed.”

  Susan thought she might never drive the damn car again because she’d always see Missy Jackson sitting next to her. “Moved in my car? Impossible! It was in the parking lot all day, and I had the keys with me.”