The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1)

by Judy Alter

  “Did you actually see it?” Jordan asked. “Every second person knows how to wire a car, so where the keys were doesn’t matter.”

  Susan looked at Jake and was grateful that he didn’t chime in with a comment about her habit of not locking her car.

  “What about Missy’s roommate? What kind of car does she drive?”

  Jordan stood up and began to pace around the family room. “I couldn’t find her today—not in her room, not in class. If she doesn’t turn up tomorrow, I’ll put out a missing persons bulletin.”

  Then he turned serious. “Dr. Hogan, you’ve got to tell me about this roommate of yours.”

  She saw Jake staring at her wordlessly.

  “What about her? We roomed together for two years. We were… oh shit, soul mates sounds corny, but we really clicked. We liked the same things, dated the same kind of guys, had a real picnic all through that part of college.” She hesitated. “Then she fell for a creep.”

  “A creep?” Jordan asked.

  “Yeah. He did drugs, and he started Shelley on them, and I lost her. Lost her like we’d never been friends. I wasn’t any Goody Two-Shoes, but I knew how wrong it was. Shelley’d just brush me off when I’d try to talk to her, and pretty soon we weren’t talking at all. We just sort of lived in the same space without being together. And I hated it, I really hated it. She was one of the few people I’d loved in my life or who’d ever loved me, and I lost her.

  “And then I came home one day, and there she was, curled up on the bathroom floor like a newborn baby. Clutching herself. I never knew if she died in pain, but I hoped not. They… they wouldn’t talk to me about it.”

  “There was an investigation, and you were questioned?” Jordan asked. It wasn’t a question on his part, and Susan knew he already knew all about it… except her version.

  “Yeah. I had to go to police headquarters and testify, and they grilled me about having given her the cocaine. I told them to go after the creep, but they were convinced they could at least charge me with possession or whatever. Maybe it was just how my head was right then. Finally they said it was an OD, and I was supposed to just wipe it out of my life like it never happened.”

  “Was Missy Jackson doing drugs?”

  Susan saw the connection he was making, and she flared in anger. “I have no idea! If she was, I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t do drugs back then, and I don’t have anything to do with them now.”

  “Most people…,” Jordan began tentatively, then seemed to gain speed, “go through life without ever being associated with a suspicious death. You now have been associated with two.”

  Susan reached her boiling point. “You want to add my mother, who committed suicide when I was four?” she roared.

  Jake came and took her in his arms. “Dirk,” he said, “I think you’ve got all you’re going to get here today. Would you just let yourself out the front door?”

  Jordan left without another word, and Jake stood holding a trembling Susan for a long time. Susan never ate her steak that night. She threw down two fingers of bourbon, straight, and fell into bed.

  Jake grilled himself a steak and enjoyed a good, if lonely, meal. Then he went in, gently undressed Susan, and finally crawled into bed next to her.

  Susan woke in the middle of the night, Jake’s arms protectively around her. “Jake?”

  When he didn’t respond, she yelled, “Jake!”

  “What is it?” He came sleepily to consciousness. “You hear something?”

  “Who reported Missy Jackson missing to your office?” Susan demanded.

  “What? You woke me up to ask that?”

  “It’s important,” she insisted. “The roommate wouldn’t talk about it, wouldn’t call the girl’s parents. So it wasn’t Brandy Perkins. Who was it?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t any idea. I’ll check the log in the morning. Can we go back to sleep now?”

  She was wide awake, and she knew she couldn’t go back to sleep. When Jake turned his back to her, she reached over him and began slowly to stroke him, starting at his chest and working her way down. Finally, he turned toward her. “Damn! Will you never let a man sleep?”

  Afterward, they both slept soundly.

  Chapter Four

  Missy Jackson’s parents came to the campus early in the morning for the memorial service to be held later in the day.

  Jake met with them before he took them downtown to talk with Dirk Jordan. “I… I hope you know how truly upset we all are here at the university,” he said as he ushered them into his office.

  Mrs. Jackson’s face was tear-stained, her eyes red and puffy. Her husband was sullen, angry, and bewildered.

  “If she had died in an automobile accident,” Mrs. Jackson sobbed, “we could accept it as God’s will. But this…” According to Jake’s later description, she was maybe forty-five, with once-pretty blondness that had now faded into a sort of nondescript paleness and probably forty more pounds than she should have carried at her height of five-foot-six. Jake thought she must have looked like Missy when she was a bride.

  “She was the perfect daughter,” Mr. Jackson said angrily, his tone at variance with his words, “the light of our lives.” He was tall and squarely built, with a belly that spoke of too much chicken-fried steak and, perhaps, too much beer. His hands were roughened by work—he owned and operated a gas station and mechanic shop in Uvalde. “We never put no pressure on her, but she did everything just right.” He looked directly at Jake, challenge in his eyes. “Why would anybody kill our little girl?”

  Jake wanted to squirm and forced himself to sit straight and still. “It was probably a random thing, Mr. Jackson. I can’t believe that anyone deliberately targeted your daughter”—it seemed too personal to call her Missy at that point—“for murder. She may simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He paused, feeling the need to say something more, something to comfort them. Speaking slowly, he said, “I’m sure she was the perfect daughter. She was an outstanding student here and very much admired by other students and the faculty. You should be very proud in the midst of your grief.”

  “God wouldn’t have taken Missy that way, just because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Mrs. Jackson said, totally ignoring Jake’s words of comfort. “This was part of the devil’s plan… and somebody is responsible.”

  Jake, at a loss for a reply to that kind of thinking, sat in silence.

  “You find out who it is,” Mrs. Jackson said, her voice rising in near-hysteria. “Beginning with that teacher whose car she was in. She must know! She tried to corrupt Missy with her feminist thinking.”

  Now Jake was appalled. He could see that neither reason nor sympathy were going to help with Mrs. Jackson. And her words made him think of the note thrown through his Jeep window, the note that said Susan had to stop corrupting young women. Surely the Jacksons had nothing to do with that. The puzzle of it all made his head ache.

  Mr. Jackson reached over and patted his wife’s hand softly. “Now, Mother…”

  “Don’t ever call me that again,” she said fiercely. “I’m not a mother any longer.”

  Jake decided it was time to take them to see Jordan. The police detective later reported to Jake that he’d gotten much the same response and no helpful information.

  “We don’t find out who killed that girl soon, there may be a lynch mob from Uvalde after your lady friend,” he told Jake.

  * * *

  At the memorial service, Susan, Jake, and Ellen sat near the back—Susan wanted to be able to view the participants and, besides, they were late arriving. The Jacksons sat in the front pew. Mrs. Jackson wore a black crepe dress and a small black hat with a veil that covered her face—obviously new purchases for the occasion. Her husband kept his head bowed while the minister commended unto God the unblemished soul of this their child, Melissa Ann Jackson. Next to them sat a young man Susan presumed was Eric Lindler. From where Susan sat he appeared to be good-looking bu
t with nothing to mark him from dozens of other handsome, brown-haired, brown-eyed young men on the campus. He kept his head down, apparently staring at his shoes, except that every once in a while he raised his eyes and looked at Mrs. Jackson. He didn’t seem to have the support of either his own family or friends.

  Susan suddenly noticed that Brandy Perkins sat on the other side of Mr. Jackson. So she’s reappeared. I bet Dirk Jordan is relieved, but I wonder where she was.

  The campus chapel was filled to overflowing. Tearful young girls clutched Kleenexes that they frequently had to use to blot their eyes, and young men in dark blue suits sat looking stoic. The faculty had almost all appeared, as though on command, even John Scott and Ernie Westin, who sat together. The president of the university spoke a few words about “this tragedy that has befallen all of us.” Craig Bishop, the university minister, conducted the service. The campus choir sang “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art.” Craig Bishop spoke in generalities about the comfort of God’s love in times of trial and grief, and Brandy Perkins gave a moving if tearful tribute to the girl who was, she said, “the best friend I’ll ever have in my life.” Susan had the feeling Brandy had not quite finished her prepared remarks when tears forced her off the stage. She too wore black, but hers was a miniskirt, tight at the hips and cut off well above the knees. Susan couldn’t see her feet but she bet she wore those big, clunky shoes that were so fashionable and looked so awful with tiny dresses.

  Afterward, students and faculty milled around outside the chapel. The mourners obviously couldn’t go back to the family’s home to gather, talk, and eat, as they would if they were in Uvalde, and no reception had been planned on campus. Nobody knew quite what to do. To walk away seemed callous; to stay, uncomfortable.

  Craig Bishop stood by the Jacksons, his hand resting lightly on Mrs. Jackson’s shoulder. Both parents seemed indecisive, confused, and Craig Bishop was apparently little help to them. Brandy Perkins and Eric Lindler, both of whom might have been expected to stay by their friend’s parents, had vanished.

  Susan, on impulse, decided she must speak to the Jacksons. She moved quickly, just dodging the restraining arm Jake put out when he realized her intention. She also moved too quickly to hear his groan. Susan had no idea she was about to do the very last thing she should have done, either for the Jacksons or for herself.

  “Mrs. Jackson? I’m Susan Hogan. I’m so terribly upset about what happened to your daughter, and I just want you to know that I’ll do everything I can to find out who did this awful thing.”

  Mrs. Jackson drew herself out of the foggy, uncertain state which enveloped her. “You’re the one whose car she was in!” she said in an accusatory tone.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Susan muttered, “I’m afraid it was mine.” She was just beginning to understand that she’d made a mistake, a huge mistake. Grief was unpredictable, and her credibility was not at all helped by her shiner or the bruises visible on her arm.

  “Then you know who killed my baby!” The woman’s voice rose until, to Susan, it screamed out to the crowd.

  Susan reached a tentative, placating hand toward the other woman. “No, ma’am, I have no idea.”

  “But it was your car! You’ve got to know!” Neither her husband’s rough pull on her arm nor Craig Bishop’s quiet “there, there,” had any effect on the distraught woman. By now, bystanders who had begun to wander away had turned to stare.

  “I’m sorry,” Susan said, “I don’t. But I will. I promise you, Mrs. Jackson, I will find out what happened to your daughter, who did this awful thing.”

  Even as she spoke, Susan felt Jake pulling her backward, so that her last words were spoken from too great a distance to be heard unless she shouted. Jake turned her around and without a word marched her away, but Susan took one quick look over her shoulder: Missy Jackson’s mother had collapsed into the arms of her husband and was sobbing uncontrollably, while Craig Bishop stood by uncomfortably, literally wringing his hands.

  “I’m walking you back to your office,” Jake said firmly, his hand on her shoulder guiding her.

  She stopped in protect. “You don’t have to. I know I did the wrong thing again, and I won’t go anywhere near the Jacksons.”

  “Hey,” he said, “you had good intentions.” This time he gave her shoulders an affectionate squeeze.

  “But you would have stopped me.”

  “Yeah, I would have.”

  “I wish you had,” she said fervently.

  “Well, that’s not why I’m walking you back. I haven’t had time to tell you, but I checked into who reported the girl missing. It was a man who refused to leave his name.”

  “A man?” Susan voice rose in curiosity.

  “Well, maybe a boy… the operator who took the call said he sounded young.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “He didn’t sound upset. He was sort of matter-of-fact about it. Sort of ‘just the facts, ma’am.’”

  “Do you have a recording of it?”

  “Susan, we’re not the FBI. No, we don’t record calls.” He was wishing she’d get off her detective kick and leave these things to him.

  “Damn,” she said. “You could use voice prints to match it.”

  “Susan, forget it! You’re not the detective. I am!”

  Susan’s next class was a disaster. It was a two-hour graduate seminar in which one student was supposed to lead a discussion of The Great Gatsby, but this day it degenerated into an awkward silence, with students casting sidelong glances at the instructor.

  “Have you read the book?” she finally demanded.

  Eight heads bobbed up and down. Yes, they had read the assignment.

  “Then why aren’t you talking to Elizabeth when she asks you questions?”

  “Because,” one bold soul ventured, “we’re distracted by what’s happened. By the fact that the girl’s body was in your car and someone tried to run you down last night.”

  Susan resisted the urge to ask how he knew about last night. The story of Missy Jackson’s body was in the city and campus newspapers and all over town, but last night…

  Instead, she snapped, “I’m distracted too. Class dismissed. By a week from today, I want from each of you a twenty-page paper on the importance of this particular novel in the Fitzgerald canon.”

  There was a universal groan, followed by the shuffling of chairs and sound of books being gathered. Alone in the seminar room, Susan put her head in her hands and willed herself not to weep. She couldn’t believe she had taken her anger out on graduate students. And now she’d have to read those damn papers. Wait until Scott hears she’d lost her cool in a seminar!

  Susan went by her office, gathered up papers for some studying that night, and roared off campus on the moped. Jake had offered to drive it, but she insisted, and now she felt her energy returning as she balanced the small machine and guided it toward her country home.

  She pulled up to the back of her driveway, unloaded books and papers from the side pockets, fished for her keys, and then headed for the sliding glass door. It never occurred to her to look down, and she nearly tripped on a shoebox in front of the door.

  “What the…?” She dumped her stuff on the deck table and reached for the box, all the time hearing Jake say, “Never open an unexpected package. Letter and package bombs have turned up in stranger places than Oak Grove.”

  Surely not, she thought. Maybe Aunt Jenny has sent me something. It didn’t occur to her that if the package had come from Aunt Jenny, there’d have been a postmark and a label. She tore off the lid, looked inside, and screamed. Hands to her face, she kept screaming… and staring inside the box. A kitten lay in a bed of white satin. It was gray, fluffy, small, and very dead. A note lay next to the pitiful creature.

  Gingerly, she picked up the note and started to unfold it. Then she remembered how careful Jordan had been with that note on the rock that went through Jake’s windshield. Almost too rattled to think, she unlocked her door, crossed
the kitchen to prowl under the sink for rubber gloves, and went back to the note. It held the same message as the last one: “Die, Susan Hogan, before you ruin any more lives.”

  “Susan, are you all right?” It was Mrs. Whitley, the elderly widow who lived next door to her and whose usual reaction to Susan’s shenanigans was to shake her head and make a noise that sounded like “Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Next door, where she lived, wasn’t really that close, but Mrs. Whitley made it seem like the distance between their houses was feet, not yards.

  Susan drew herself together. “I’m fine, thanks, Mrs. Whitley. It was a snake… a plain old garden snake, but it scared me for a minute.”

  Mrs. Whitley chuckled. “Many times I’ve been scared by those critters. Well, I’m glad you’re all right.” She turned back down the driveway, and Susan called after her, “Thanks for checking.”

  It was comforting to know that Mrs. Whitley was aware of what went on at her house. But Susan realized she was probably also aware of the nights that Jake didn’t go home till morning.

  Susan used her foot to shove the box away from the door and with a gloved hand she put the lid back on it. Then she went inside and poured herself a finger of bourbon. Jake’s going to start wondering why his bourbon disappears so fast, she thought wryly. Then she realized that her books and papers were still outside, and to get them, she’d have to walk by that damn box again. She took another sip of bourbon, strode deliberately out the door, eyes avoiding the box, retrieved her belongings, and retreated inside. Then she sat on the couch and had a good cry.

  * * *

  Susan waited in the growing dusk for Jake, who was later than usual. Any other night, she would have been hungry and hoping he’d bring takeout something, anything. Tonight, she had no appetite. The ringing of the phone startled her, and she almost didn’t answer. But then she picked it up and uttered a curt, “Susan Hogan.”

  “Susan? It’s Aunt Jenny. How are you, dear? You don’t sound well at all.” She listened to reassurances that Susan was fine and busy and then said, “I’m coming to see you. You need me right now.”