I wish I could tell you the accommodations were better at this complex than at Jennifer’s, but they definitely weren’t. As a matter of fact, the two buildings could have easily been run by the same derelict management company.
The only major difference between the two complexes was that Heather’s seemed to have a unique odor to it that could only be described as a strange blend of dirty laundry and old pizza. Usually, it was my interview suspects who were desperate to get rid of me, but this time, I was the one who was clamoring for a quick, albeit fruitful conversation.
It took a few knocks, but Heather finally opened her door. She was an athletic, nineteen-year-old woman with long, curly red hair, an angular face, brown eyes, and dimples on both of her cheeks. She wore a blue V-neck shirt and a pair of beat-up jeans, and had an unfriendly look on her face.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Heather asked.
That certainly didn’t take long for things to get hostile. Clearly, she was not a fan of strangers showing up at her door. I didn’t blame her. Neither was I. Although, I tried not to snap at strangers, even if they were unwanted visitors.
Unfortunately, the stage seemed to be set for a rocky interview. If Heather already had that little interest in talking to me, imagine how she would react when she found out why I was truly there? Her confrontational greeting had rendered small talk obsolete, so I held my credentials up for her and explained why I was there.
“My name is Melanie Cooper. I’m a private investigator.”
Her face contorted in disbelief. “What do you want with me?”
“I have some questions for you,” I replied.
“About what?”
“You and Tyler Wright.”
She folded her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ugh. It was going to be that kind of interview, wasn’t it? Just what I didn’t need—another person thinking they could put one over on me.
As much as I hated repeating myself like a broken record, it looked like I was going to have to do it again. This was getting really grating.
“Don’t waste your time pretending that you aren’t a couple,” I said. “I just went through this nonsense with Tyler.”
“You talked to him about me?”
I nodded. “I did. Now, about you two—”
Heather got the most offended look in her eyes like I had invaded her privacy by going through her garbage when in fact I was just trying to ask a few simple questions. Not that I was having any luck convincing her of that.
She interrupted me. “I don’t see how our relationship is any of your business.”
I did, and if she ever let me finish my question, she would understand that. Once again, I tried to make my point. “Trust me, it’ll all make sense to you soon enough.”
She shot me a glare. “No, you don’t get it. I’m a private person. It would be really nice if you could respect that.”
I didn’t back down. “I’m afraid that I can’t do that.”
“You may be a private investigator, but that doesn’t mean that I have to talk to you.”
It wasn’t a surprise to me why she and Tyler were a couple. They had a lot in common, starting with their mutual disinterest in talking to me. Arguing with her wouldn’t do me any good. I had to find a different tactic to get her to talk to me.
I knew just the one. “No, you don’t have to. I just figured you might want to.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Why would I want to do that?”
“To clear up the suspicion surrounding you and Tyler.”
Heather scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing suspicious going on between Tyler and me.”
“You say that, but Jennifer only killed herself a couple of weeks ago. You and Tyler sure didn’t waste any time hooking up. It kind of makes me wonder if you and Tyler had actually started seeing each other again before Jennifer took her life, and that maybe she ended up catching you two together.”
She stared daggers into my eyes. “How dare you accuse me of such a thing?”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just wondering what the circumstances of you and Tyler getting back together were.”
Heather shut me down again. “That’s a very private matter.”
“As hard as it may be for you to believe, I don’t want to stand here hammering you with questions.”
“Then don’t,” she snapped.
“It’s just that when you give me evasive replies or don’t answer my questions at all, it’s hard not to go after you.”
Heather put her foot down. “This is America. I’m entitled to my privacy.”
“I’m not arguing with that. I’m just saying that you aren’t doing yourself any favors. I just want the truth. The moment I get that, I’ll be out of your way. So if you want me out of your hair, just answer my questions honestly.”
She stared me down and saw the dogged determination in my eyes.
Thankfully, instead of putting up more resistance, she finally lowered her defenses a little.
Although, not without letting out a big groan first. “Fine. What’s the question again?”
“When did you and Tyler really get back together?”
“About a week ago.”
“So after Jennifer’s death, then?”
“Yes.”
“Did he come to you or did you go to him?” I asked.
“We just ran into each other at the student center and got to talking. He was really broken up about Jennifer killing herself. I comforted him as much as I could. The more we talked, the more we started to reconnect. Suddenly, it felt like the old days. Before we knew it, a couple of hours had gone by. That night, he asked me out to dinner, and the rest is history.”
“Are you telling me the truth?” I asked.
“I answered your question. Now leave me alone.”
Not so fast. Did she really think I was going to stop just like that?
“I have a few more questions for you.”
I could tell that Heather wanted to slam the door in my face, but she reluctantly heard me out.
“Make it quick,” she replied.
“Before you ran into each other a week ago, when was the last time you had spoken to Tyler?”
Heather sighed as she searched her mind for an answer. Finally, one came to her. “I don’t know, over a year I guess.”
“So you didn’t ever talk to him when he was with Jennifer?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Was that because you had a contentious breakup?”
Heather refuted my point. “It wasn’t contentious at all.”
“Are you saying you had an amicable breakup?”
“We just were going our separate ways. You know how it is.”
I did know how it was. I also knew that there were far fewer amicable breakups than there seemed to be. Most breakups were nasty, whether couples wanted to admit it publicly or not. That wasn’t to say that Heather didn’t have one of the few amicable breakups in history, but I wasn’t about to give her the benefit of doubt.
“So you didn’t break up because Tyler wanted to hook up with Jennifer, then?”
“No.”
Her voice said no, but her body language said yes. Heather thought she had fooled me with that answer, but I knew she was lying. The question became, what else had she lied about? That would be difficult to figure out. Mostly because by that point, Heather couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“One more thing. Where were you the night Jennifer disappeared?”
“I was here studying.”
“Alone?”
“No. My roommate was here with me,” she said. Heather pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. “Speaking of, I’m supposed to meet up with her. You’ll have to excuse me.”
This was one of the rare times that I begrudged being a private investigator instead of joining the police force. If I had a badge
, I could have detained her. My gut instinct was telling me that she had told me a number of lies, and that I wanted to press her more.
Unfortunately, since I didn’t have the credentials to force her to keep talking to me, I had to let her go. That didn’t change the fact that she looked more suspicious to me than ever.
Chapter Thirteen
Heather wasn’t the only one who looked suspicious to me. According to Tyler, Jennifer’s neighbor, Vanessa Young, hadn’t been entirely truthful with me either. I decided to double back to Jennifer’s apartment complex to pay her old neighbor a second visit.
When Vanessa didn’t answer, I wondered if this would be a wasted trip. Then I heard the sound of music coming from the other side of her front door. It sounded like she had been truthful about at least one thing—the walls truly were as thin as she had told me they were. The music was also a dead giveaway that she was home. I just needed to find a way to get her to open up.
I pounded loudly on the door. Much to my relief, the second round of knocks was enough to get her to open up.
Vanessa gave me a quizzical look as she cracked her door open only slightly. “You again?”
If ever there was a time for a joke, it was then. “You’re not tired of seeing me, are you?”
Granted, it wasn’t a laugh-out-loud gut-buster, but I figured my joke would be enough to get a smile out of Vanessa. That couldn’t have been further from the case.
She didn’t loosen up in the least. “I’m just not sure why you are here.”
Perhaps I would fare better by pitting two suspicious people against each other. I knew just the icebreaker to go with.
“I spoke to Tyler.”
Vanessa took the bait. “Didn’t I tell you he was a bad guy?”
“I can’t deny that,” I replied.
A smile came to her face. “You’re welcome.”
Wow. She really had no idea what was coming.
“I didn’t come over here to say thank you,” I said.
Her forehead wrinkled. “Then why did you come here?”
“To get the truth from you.”
A confused look remained plastered on her face. “About what?”
“Tyler said something very interesting about you,” I replied.
Her eyes widened. “He brought me up?”
I nodded.
“Why?”
It was time to pull out the heavy artillery. “Vanessa, do you have a crush on Tyler?”
She scoffed and became dismissive. “He wishes that I had a crush on him.”
“Are you saying that you don’t?”
Vanessa replied to my question with one of her own. “Wait a minute. He really thinks that I have a crush on him?”
I made a second attempt to get her to answer my question. “Do you or don’t you?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “Don’t believe a word he says.”
This conversation was going nowhere fast. I was tired of being caught in the middle of a finger-pointing contest. Despite my best efforts to stop it, my frustration began to boil over. Before it did, an idea came to me that could turn things around.
“He will be really disappointed to hear that,” I replied.
Vanessa got a smarmy look on her face. “I’ll bet he will.”
“Although, not as disappointed as he will be to find out that you don’t like him as much as he likes you,” I said.
My comment stopped her cold.
“What?” she asked.
“Wait. You don’t know? Tyler has a thing for you,” I replied.
The entire complexion of her face began to change. She let herself get wrapped up in the idea that Tyler was mad about her.
I kept up the ruse. “You may not have a crush on him, but he has a big crush on you.”
Vanessa was so smitten that she nearly tripped over her own tongue. “He…he does?”
I nodded. “He told me himself.”
She began to swoon.
“Do you still believe that he isn’t to be trusted?” I asked.
In a complete about-face, Vanessa softened her stance. “I take it back. I was a little harsh on Tyler.” She was still in a state of disbelief over what I had said. “I can’t believe he really has a crush on me.”
I played devil’s advocate. “It doesn’t really matter, though. Like you said, he’s a bad guy.”
“Forget what I said earlier. This news you just told me changes everything,” Vanessa replied.
At that point, I couldn’t help but laugh. As expected, she did not react well to seeing me having a chuckle at her expense.
“What’s so funny?” Vanessa asked.
I had strung her on long enough to prove my point. It was time to pull the rug out from under her. “You walked right into my trap.”
She had no clue what I meant. “What are you talking about?”
“Tyler doesn’t have a crush on you,” I revealed.
Her jaw dropped.
Talk about an extreme reaction. And I wasn’t even done yet. “He is back together with Heather Bonner.”
Vanessa’s face erupted with anger. She unloaded on me. “Why did you lie to me and tell me he had a crush on me?”
“Because it was the only way I could get the truth. You pretended that you hated him. You told me he was a bad guy. But really, you were just upset that he didn’t feel the same way about you that you did about him. It must have been really hard for you to have to run into him in the halls here day after day knowing that he was dating your neighbor while you were all alone.”
Vanessa lashed out at me. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here, but stop it.”
I didn’t back down. “You wanted Tyler and Jennifer to break up. You wished that Jennifer was out of the picture, am I right? Jealousy is a terrible thing, but not as awful as the things that it makes people do.”
“I don’t like where you’re going with this. Stop making things up.”
“Am I just making things up, though? I caught you lying to me once. It makes me wonder what else you might have lied to me about.”
“I’m warning you. Stop right there.”
“Do you know that there’s a theory going around that Jennifer didn’t really kill herself? That she may have been pushed into that gorge?” I asked.
Vanessa shook her head vehemently. “I don’t know anything about that.”
I knew I had to keep the heat on her. She looked on the verge of cracking.
“Let me ask you this—where were you the night Jennifer disappeared?”
“I was here,” she replied.
There was an unmistakable crack in her voice as she replied.
I didn’t hesitate to turn up the heat on her. “Alone?”
Vanessa lowered her head.
I asked her again. “Alone?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Because if you were alone, there’s no one to corroborate your story.”
She pleaded with me. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You say that, but you can’t prove it,” I replied.
I had pushed her to her limit. Vanessa couldn’t take anymore. In a panic, she tried to shut me down. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
“Fine. I’ll do the talking,” I said.
She had heard enough. “No. We’re done here.”
Vanessa swung her door shut in a hurry. I tried to put my foot in front of the door to stop it from closing, but she was too quick for me. Suddenly, I was in the all-too-familiar position of having another door slammed in my face.
It was so frustrating. I couldn’t help but to feel that I had come so close to finally making some progress only to have nothing to show for it. Part of me wanted to knock on Vanessa’s door in an attempt to get her to open up again, but I knew it would do no good. She was finished with me. At the same time, it didn’t change the fact that for someone who so vocally proclaimed her innocence, Vanessa had managed to sound awfully suspicious in the process.
Cha
pter Fourteen
After finishing wall-to-wall interviews, I needed a break. Not just because I wanted to clear my head, but also because I had run out of leads. In the past, I had found that during these times of heavy frustration, a good meal went a long way.
The question became, was there any delicious offerings to be had in Oak Gorge? Sometimes dining out in a new town was a culinary adventure. My lips had tasted a fair share of surprising dishes—both good and bad. As Oak Gorge was irrefutably a college town, my hopes weren’t high.
I eventually settled on Bart’s Bagel Bar, which, judging by the line out front, was the most popular place in town. The price was certainly right. It was only five bucks for a toasted bagel sandwich. Much to my delight, my toasted chicken salad bagel sandwich was phenomenal. It was the best surprise I had come across all day. Although, considering that most of my day had been spent juggling bad news, that wasn’t really saying much.
While I ate, I skimmed Jennifer’s diary, but nothing shocking stood out to me. As I had noted before, the most curious thing about her entire diary was the fact that she had mysteriously stopped writing entries a month before her death. After all of the people I had questioned, I still didn’t have answers as to why.
I put the diary back in my purse and polished off the sandwich, which made my taste buds happy. My mind was not so easily swayed. While I mulled my next move, I talked to my boyfriend on the phone.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Same old,” Steven replied.
It was good to see that understatements were alive and well. I couldn’t help but marvel at my boyfriend’s nonchalance. He managed to speak about his job as if he stared at actuarial tables all day instead of risking his life solving crimes day in and day out. Having been with him over a year, I knew his patterns and how to read between the lines of his responses.
“That awesome, huh?” I joked.
“That’s not exactly the phrasing I would go with,” he replied.
“I’ll bet.”
“At least my shift is over.” He switched gears. “How are things going with you?”
“Not amazing,” I replied.
Meredith Potts Fourteen Book Cozy Mystery Set Page 6