by Judy Alter
“You think you’ve had a long day!” Susan exploded. “I feel, oh, I don’t know how I feel. Like I could cry one minute and bang my fist into a wall the next.”
“Come on. I’ll take you home. You got bourbon?”
“Yeah.” She thought maybe she needed two fingers of bourbon instead of wine.
Jake paid the bill, and they chatted with Margie for a minute. It made Susan itch to talk about inanities with all that was on her mind, and she could barely keep from tugging at Jake’s arm to get him out of there. But he was Jake, ever sociable, ever ready for a little casual conversation, as though nothing in the world was worrying him.
Susan was only halfway out the door that Jake held when she screamed—a long, high-pitched scream that mixed surprise and anger and fright. Behind her, Jake let out a passionate, “Goddamn!”
Jake’s university-owned Jeep had four flat tires and a broken windshield. “Go inside,” he said to her, his voice calm and controlling, “and call my office. Then call the police.”
Two cars of Jake’s patrolmen arrived just before the city police car. The police car had sirens blaring and lights flashing. Lt. Jordan was the first one out of the car.
“Who did this?” he demanded.
“You tell us,” Susan said, but Jake raised a hand for her to be quiet. In his other hand he held a large red rock with a note tied to it with brown twine.
“What’s that?” Jordan demanded.
“A rock with a note,” Jake said, repeating the obvious. “I haven’t read it yet.”
“Get me some evidence gloves,” Jordan barked over his shoulder at one of the other officers. As soon as his hands were protected, so they would neither destroy nor add fingerprints, he undid the twine and smoothed out the note. It was awkward because he could only use one hand, and Susan itched to reach out and help him. Jake would really slap her then. Finally, he read the note aloud:
“You’re next, Dr. Hogan. You cannot continue to corrupt young women’s minds.”
Jake grabbed Susan just as her knees buckled. “Steady,” he said. “It’s just a threat, not a loaded gun.”
“No,” she said weakly, “that probably comes next.”
“Probably a prank,” Jordan said. “News about that girl is all over town and the campus, and everyone knows you were involved”—he jerked his head toward Susan but didn’t do her the courtesy of calling her by name. “Probably some kid who’s gotten too many parking tickets saw this as a good way to get at you, Phillips.”
“By threatening my life?” Susan was incredulous at the logic—or lack of it—in the lieutenant’s reasoning.
“Everyone knows he, ah, cares about you,” Jordan said. “What would worry him more than a threat to you?”
“I have to get Susan home,” Jake said, feeling the tremor in her legs as she stood pressed next to him. “Grady, you guys take care of my Jeep and give me one of your cars. Jordan, if you need me I’ll be at Susan’s.”
“All night, I presume,” the lieutenant said.
Jake didn’t answer him.
They drove in silence, Susan wondering if she would ever stop shaking or if she had developed a permanent palsy. When they reached her house, she wanted to leave books and everything in the car and flee to the sanctuary of home, but Jake put a restraining arm on hers.
“Wait here.”
Home for Susan Hogan was a sixties ranch-style house on the outskirts of town. The front, she always thought, was bland and plain, a red brick low and long, distinguished only by its tin roof, landscaped with bushes and a curving walkway. But the driveway led to the back yard, where she had a large deck filled with flowering plants and herbs, both on the deck and on a wide railing around it. The backyard was landscaped to her taste—with curving beds and lots of southwestern, xeriscape plants—Mexican hat, coneflowers which would bloom in the spring, coreopsis, butterfly plant, all things that bloomed at various times and kept her yard a jungle of color much of the year. Behind them were the taller photinas, and to one side a carefully tended garden of antique roses. There was little lawn, but Susan still battled crab grass and pampered her St. Augustine. The deck was where Susan and Jake barbecued, sat sipping drinks, and generally lived from spring until late fall. A sliding glass patio door offered entry into the family room.
Jake made her wait in the locked car while he did a search. Then he motioned her in and went to the front door to scoop the contents out of the mailbox.
Inside, Susan breathed a deep sigh of relief at being in the place she considered a safe haven. The house had a typical ranch-style layout—living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, and three bedrooms branching off to one end. The floors were hardwood, albeit in need of refinishing, and the kitchen had been redone long enough ago that it needed updating again. But someone had turned the back of the house into a kind of common room, by opening the wall between the kitchen and the family room, creating a large open area divided only by a counter. From the kitchen, Susan could visit with whoever sat around her pedestal oak table or lounged on the couch. Not that she ever cooked much. But Jake often cooked, and she sat on the couch or at the counter and admired him as he put together one gourmet dinner after another.
Jake poured drinks for them—bourbon for him and white wine for her. “You don’t need bourbon,” he said, as though he was reading her mind.
As they sat on the deck, Jake asked Susan what she knew about Missy Jackson.
She shrugged. “Not much. She was in my women’s lit class last spring. She was fairly typical at the beginning of the semester. All the values that her mother probably had, like she wasn’t in touch with the modern world. I try to encourage students to break out of the old roles, and I did that with Missy. So one minute she was Miss Goody Two-Shoes and the next she was in rebellion.”
“Against what?”
Susan shrugged. “Society. The way women are treated. The way we’re expected to act.”
“And I supposed you encouraged her to be a feminist?” Jake’s voice had an ironic twist.
“I encouraged her to think for herself,” Susan said. “But she was sort of mixed up. There was something going on that I didn’t understand.”
Susan paused a minute. “Her roommate is taking the class now. Brandy Perkins. She’s the one who told me she couldn’t come to class because her roommate was missing and told me who it was. Frankly, I didn’t take it very seriously.”
After a long silence that Jake let drag on, Susan spoke again. “You think there’s a real threat to me, don’t you?”
“Let’s say I’m not willing to take the chance of not believing it,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense, but it could be real. Yeah, I’m going to act like I believe it.”
“Thanks,” she said. She asked the questions she would repeat over and over again in the coming days. “Why would anyone kill a coed? Especially a coed like this one? And why would they put her in my car? What does it mean about my corrupting young girls?”
Jake shook his head. “That part’s so crazy I can’t think about it. I’m afraid there’s a bigger story here. I think once we get to unraveling it, we’re going to be like a kitten with a ball of twine, always finding another loose end.”
“Aren’t you glad it’s not your responsibility? You’re the one who told me it’s out of your jurisdiction now.”
“Susan, if you’re involved—and particularly if you’re in danger—it’s always my jurisdiction. And”—he leaned closer to her—“I’m in love with you, which means I want to get it over with quickly and get your car back to you and our lives back to normal.”
Jake spent the night at her house, teasing her worries away with his magical hands, urging her to lose herself in lovemaking and forget about death. When at last she cried out in satisfaction, he covered her face with kisses and finally, still panting, asked, “Feel better?”
“Yeah,” she admitted.
She didn’t tell him the next morning that she was glad to have slept the night wrappe
d in his protective arms. Instead, grumbling when the alarm went off, she said, “If you’d gone home last night like you should have, we wouldn’t be getting up at the crack of dawn.”
Undaunted, he leaned over her, kissed her nose, and said, “Be grateful, or I’ll attack you again.” They made love quickly, fiercely, and found themselves fighting over the shower at six-thirty in the morning.
“I’ll have to drop you at school and go home for clean clothes,” Jake said, standing before her with a towel wrapped around his middle and water glistening on the curly hair on his chest.
“Good. I can stand to be there early and collect my thoughts.” She was blow-drying her hair, impatient with the time it took.
“We’ve got to figure out a car for you.”
“Ummm,” she agreed. “You can’t spend the night all the time.”
He snapped his fingers as though to say, “Damn,” and turned to find his clothes. Then, more seriously, he said, “I don’t want you here alone.”
Susan shuddered. She’d almost been able to forget that someone was apparently stalking her and held a big-time grudge.
In the end, she went home with Jake and borrowed his moped, one of the larger Honda models—an Aero, he’d told her in superior tones. He’d ridden it in high school and kept it in his garage ever since, taking it out often enough to keep it in running condition. He said he was sentimentally attached to it and couldn’t bear to sell it. Susan never told him that mopeds had seen their day and no one would buy it now.
“I’m not sure you’re safe on this,” he protested.
“Jake Phillips, I can ride this thing as well as you can!”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “It makes you a sitting target.”
She felt a sudden surge of bravado. “I can’t stop living my life because some nutcase puts a body in my car and writes me a scary note.” But it’s a temptation to hide in my house and never come out.
Jake shook his head. “I guess you can’t, but you can be careful. Besides, how do you think it will look for Assistant Professor Hogan to arrive on campus on a moped?”
“It suits my style.” She kissed him lightly and roared off, books packed in a side compartment, huge sunglasses protecting her eyes, and her short hair flying in all directions.
Jake shook his head as he watched.
Susan was watchful on the fifteen-minute ride between Jake’s house and the campus. What was it self-protection classes taught? Always be aware of your surroundings? She was—and particularly of cars around her. But nothing alarmed her, and she reached her office with a feeling of relief.
Susan was called to the English office before she even got her first cup of coffee from the lounge. Mildred called to say, “Dr. Scott wants to see you in his office right now.”
Susan knew John Worthington Scott, as he signed his name, when he was just another faculty member, teaching mostly sophomore world lit classes because there wasn’t that much interest in Renaissance literature. No wonder both he and his pal Ernie Westin resented her. Ernie’s love was Greek literature, and his classes often didn’t make their enrollment quota. There was even less interest in Greek literature than Renaissance. Yet students flocked to Susan’s American lit and women’s lit classes.
She entered the chair’s office. Like most offices in the older Baker Hall, it was small. Unlike most faculty offices, it was not filled with bookshelves so jammed in that books were piled every which way and papers were stacked high on the desk and even the floor. In John Scott’s office, everything was neat, every book aligned.
“Ah, Dr. Hogan,” Dr. Scott said, staring at his hands and not looking at her. “I heard about the, ah, unfortunate incident last night. How did you get to school this morning?” Dr. Scott sat behind the protection of his desk, drumming his fingers on the large blotter that covered the center part of his desk’s immaculately clean surface. Two even stacks of books, an old-fashioned penholder, and a telephone were aligned on the desk. Susan wondered if he ever did any work. No pictures revealed that he had a family, but she knew he had a wife and two daughters.
“I rode Jake Phillips’ moped,” Susan answered without hesitation. “You probably know that I don’t have my car.” Ernie Westin told him, she thought. It was just the kind of news Ernie couldn’t wait to share, because it would ingratiate him with Scott while running her further down.
“Yes, yes. Unfortunate.” Scott stared off into space. “We need to talk about that, Dr. Hogan. But first let me say I hope you will find more suitable means of transportation.”
Someone’s threatening me and the police think I’m a murderer, but you’re worried about appearances! She spoke more calmly than she had thought she could. “I can’t afford to rent a car, sir, and there’s no telling how long my car will be impounded. And then it has to be repaired.” She paused a moment and then said, “Dr. Frank in psychology drives a battered old Jeep. I can’t see that a moped is any worse.”
He acted as though he hadn’t heard her. “We must talk,” he said again.
“About what, sir?” Susan thought it was probably a good thing she’d worn rayon pants and her good loafers today instead of her usual jeans and running shoes.
“The unfortunate matter of your car… and that coed. It, ah, reflects poorly on your record.” He seemed to like the word “unfortunate” this morning.
Susan fought an urge to leap to her feet and scream at him that she’d had enough trouble in the last twenty-four hours without his adding to it and she knew he’d love to find a reason to fire her, but he wasn’t going to do it in this mess. Forcing herself to speak slowly, she said, “Are you referring to the tenure review, Dr. Scott?”
“Ah, well… yes.” His eyes were fixed slightly over her left shoulder as he deliberately avoided looking at her.
Here she was on solid ground. “Until it is proven—which it won’t be—that I had anything to do with putting that un… uh, poor girl’s body in the trunk of my car, I am an innocent victim. If you try to use that against me, Dr. Scott, I’ll make a large and legal fuss that will make you wish for early retirement.” Okay, she’d lost her cool at the end of it, but her point was well taken. She almost grinned when she realized that she’d started to use the word “unfortunate” herself, in reference to Missy Jackson, as though she were mimicking Dr. Scott.
“We just want to see this matter cleared up as quickly and quietly as possible,” Scott said nervously.
“Nobody wants that more than I do. The death of any young girl is a great tragedy, especially one of such promise and especially in these circumstances.” Susan felt like she was lecturing, but she plowed on. “It has nothing to do with my tenure review or with me.” Remembering the note on the rock thrown through Jake’s windshield, Susan fervently hoped that the last statement was true.
“We’ll see,” he said, rising and turning his back to her as he looked out the window. “I don’t believe in coincidences. There must be a reason that body was in your car.”
Ernie gave him that idea, too, Susan thought. He’s really out to get me, so he can get tenure without any complication. Maybe he’s out to get me out of just plain meanness. Nothing like academic competition. Ernie the worm!
Susan knew dismissal when it hit her over the head. She left his office without another word.
Chapter Three
Susan promised Jake she wouldn’t be on campus alone after dark, so she dutifully headed for the library about four o’clock. But she found some new research on Zane Grey and stayed longer than she intended. It was dusk when she walked into the parking lot and then remembered that the moped was in her faculty parking spot behind Baker Hall. Darn, a long walk! And she was tired and wanted a glass of wine. She wondered if Jake was looking for her. If so, he’d be mad—again! Trying to keep Jake Phillips happy was on her mind almost as much as solving Missy Jackson’s murder. In fact, she was surprised she’d put both things out of her mind so thoroughly in the library.
She cut throu
gh the library parking lot, headed toward the faculty lot, her thoughts on Jake. But when she heard a car gun its motor behind her, she froze for just an instant and then turned to look. She couldn’t tell what make or model the car was, except that it was small and dark and it could go like hell when gunned. And it was headed straight toward her.
With a yelp and a loud curse, Susan made a sideways leap between parked cars and landed in a heap. Her purse and book bag scattered behind her. She felt the car go by her and heard its engine next to her ear. Then it roared out of the parking lot, lights off. She lay perfectly still for a moment, afraid to move because the car might come back—and because she wasn’t sure she hadn’t broken every bone in her body. Then slowly, carefully, she began to move, feeling her arms and legs, trying to see how badly she was hurt. She was mostly okay. Her rayon pants were torn on the left side where she landed, and she thought she could feel a large scrape under the torn pant leg. Her silk blouse was torn on the left sleeve, and her arm stung. Her left shoulder hurt like hell, and her hands were scraped and raw. Even the left side of her face hurt, and she wondered if she’d sprout a good-sized bruise there. But she could stand and, after a few tentative steps, she found she could walk.
She gathered up her purse and books and fished for the cell phone. Then she called campus police.
“Security,” a bored voice said. It was Melba, the night dispatcher.
“This is Susan Hogan,” she said, trying hard to keep her voice calm and low yet recognizing that it skittered into the high tones of anxiety. “Someone just tried to run over me in the library parking lot.”
The voice became amazingly alert. “Are you hurt, Dr. Hogan?”
“No, I think I’m all right. Just bruised.”
“I’ll call Mr. Phillips right away.”
Why didn’t I call him myself? Now he’ll be mad about that too. He would have come and gotten me, and I could have just gone on home. But, she realized, then she’d have no documentation of the attack.
“You stay right there,” Melba said. “Well, maybe you should go back inside the library.”