Plain Jane (15 page)

“Congratulations, Trixie! I am so proud of you, I could just bust. You don’t think I’m a quitter, do you?”

“You, a quitter? Never!”

“Do you think Mike will think I’m a quitter when I tell him my plans?”

“If he does, he’s not the man for you. Ah, here comes my partner. Time to saddle up and move out,” Trixie said, getting out of the car. Jane got out, too.

“Wowee! Look, Janie. Flash did it again! Good boy!” Trixie held up a plastic bag filled with tissue and foreign matter. “Two ten-dollar bills! This dog is a whiz at sniffing out money as well as dope. In the car, Officer Flash! We’re done for tonight.” Flash barked and jumped in. “This dog is the marvel in marvelous.” Olive stood patiently as she waited to be rewarded, too. “Two Oreo cookies coming up. Bob Henry told me he always gave Flash an Oreo when the shift was over. He also used to take him to Burger King on Thursday nights.”

“Treats are good. I give them to Olive all the time. She loves veggie burgers.” Jane bent down to pet Olive’s head. “It’s going to be light out soon. I’m glad you stopped by, Trix. I feel like the weight of the world suddenly left my shoulders. So then it’s okay about Betty Vance?”

“Send her over. What time are you going to Baton Rouge?” Trixie belted Flash into the backseat, closed the door, then went around to the driver’s side and climbed in behind the wheel.

“As soon as I shower and get ready. I’ll call Betty on my way.”

“Okay, then. See you. Have a good trip,” Trixie said. She switched on the flashing light, turned the key in the ignition, and peeled out across the open field toward her house.

With a smile on her face, Jane watched the flashing lights until the police cruiser was out of sight.

“Olive,” she said, looking down, “technically speaking, I just quit my job! I feel so light, I think I could fly if I tried. C’mon, let’s get some breakfast. Then we’re going to my alma mater to see what we can find out about my ex-patient. We might even go on to Slidell.”

“Woof.”

Jane parked the car in Visitor Parking. She sat quietly, Olive next to her, as she surveyed the campus spread out before her. “I used to live here, Olive. I spent four long years of my life studying and walking these grounds. I think I was happy right up until that awful night. I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t and just thought I was. Come on, girl, we’re going to walk that same route, then you’re going to wait for me while I go to the library.”

It was a quiet morning with few students strolling the grounds. Saturdays were for sleeping in after partying all night long. There were a few of the more serious students out and about, students like she’d once been. How young they looked. Had she ever been that young? Of course. Right now she felt vulnerable—so vulnerable she wanted to run back to the car and burrow into the backseat. Her guilt was threatening to choke off her air supply. She took great gulping breaths of air.

Somehow she managed to get herself to the Quad. There, before her, stood the four-story Troy H. Middleton Library. She stared at the bicycles chained to the crepe myrtles. Long ago she’d chained her own bicycle to some of the same crepe myrtles. She continued to stare at them as though seeing the setting for the first time, then turned and started down the path she’d walked that night with Connie Bryan. The only difference between then and now was the time of year. It had been warm that spring night and the azaleas and the sweet olives had been in full bloom. The bubble-gum scent of the sweet olives had been almost overwhelming. She longed to sit down on one of the benches, but there was no time. Maybe later she’d walk over to the parade ground and work her way back to the Quad and sit for a while. From time to time she looked upward to see if the lights were still there and intact. They were. She stopped and looked around to get her bearings. As far as the eye could see were the European red-tile roofs. Those very rooftops were one of the reasons she’d enrolled at LSU. Her ears perked when the clock in the magnificent bell tower chimed. It chimed every fifteen minutes. Jane looked at her watch. To the second.

Keep walking, Jane. Do what you told Betty Vance to do. Relive the experience,
she reminded herself.
No matter how painful, relive it. Maybe you’ll remember something.

The first thing she remembered was that she’d felt inadequate compared to Connie—pretty, popular Connie, the Homecoming Queen. She’d asked Jane if she was seeing anyone special.

“No, I’m not seeing anyone special or otherwise,”
Jane had replied.

“You just haven’t found the right guy yet. But you will in time. The moment you look into someone’s eyes and know that person is your destiny, it’s like no other feeling in the world. Todd and I are going to have such a wonderful life. We have our house all picked out, the furniture, even the kitchen dishes and place mats. We want four children and neither one of us cares if they’re boys or girls as long as they’re healthy. We even picked out names. I’m going to bake and decorate for the holidays. Todd and I both just love Christmas. We met during Christmas break our first year here at LSU. . . .”

“You’re very lucky, Connie. I wish you all the happiness in the world,”
Jane had told her.

Instinctively, Jane stopped at the exact spot where she and Connie had stopped that night. She felt momentary panic as her mind jumped forward.

“Hey!”
a voice shrilled in her head.

Jane sucked in her breath and turned to where she remembered the sound had come from. She could picture them standing there, five dark images right behind her and one standing back away from the group. All of them were tall and broad, like football players. Fear and anger knotted inside her.

“Well, lookee here, boys. We snagged us a real little beauty. The school beauty to be exact.”

Jane began to shake as the fearful images of what was coming built in her mind. She could hear Connie ask them what they wanted, then she saw three of the boys pull her away into the bushes.

“Come on, you guys, cut it out,”
she’d cried.
“This isn’t funny—”
She heard a thump and remembered she’d dropped her books.

“It’s not supposed to be funny, so shut up. We have plans for Little Miss Homecoming Queen, don’t we, guys?”

The memories were so real, Jane could feel one of the boy’s arms surround her, hold her so tight she couldn’t breathe. She remembered struggling, tugging and pushing at his arms, but he was too strong.

She flinched and took a step backwards as she relived the moment one of them punched her in the stomach. Her legs buckled beneath her, and she sat down on the ground. The dark silhouette of the sixth boy, the odd man out, loomed in front of her now as it did then. He was broader and taller than the others. She remembered his leaving, running, and her thinking that maybe he wasn’t one of them, that he was going for help.

Like scenes in a movie, the memories came at her, one on top of another. The three boys who had taken Connie into the bushes came back, slapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves. They’d raped the Homecoming Queen. Yea!

Tears filled Jane’s eyes just as they had that awful night. She could feel her anger build. She remembered rising and lunging at the boy closest to her, knocking him down.

“This goddamn beached whale needs a lesson,”
one of the others had said.
“Which one of you wants Miss Piggy? No takers?”

A scream rose in her throat, only to be stifled by a beefy hand. Bite him! her mind screamed. Bite him!

Jane took deep breaths, trying to calm herself.
A bite like that was bound to leave a bad scar,
she thought as she gathered Olive close to her. For long minutes she sat staring off into space, thinking, cataloging, and analyzing.

“Back to the car, Olive. I’m going into the library to see who was on the wrestling and football teams that year.” Jane opened the car door and got Olive settled with a chewy. “Don’t you dare open this car door! I won’t be long.”

It was noon when Jane returned to the car. Behind her, she heard the tram grind to a stop. She turned to relive another old memory. She’d taken the tram on a daily basis to get from one end of the huge campus to the other. Suddenly it seemed like a lifetime ago.

Olive yipped her pleasure at her mistress’s return.

Jane climbed into the car and grabbed the apple she’d snagged off the kitchen counter on her way out the door earlier in the morning.

“No. This is my apple, Olive. I gave you a chewy, remember?

“Shhh, I want to look at all this stuff I printed out.” Olive sat quietly, looking out the window. “Look at this, Olive, I don’t believe it. Brian Ramsey was a year behind me in school. He was a halfback on the football team. The rest of the first string graduated with me. I’ve got the profiles on the entire team, but I’m not going to read them until we get home. They were all solid-looking guys, but none of them were as
beefy
as Ramsey. I’ll bet none of them had hands like his either. I got all the players’ addresses from the alumni book—all the wrestling guys, the first- and second-string football team as well. They all live here in Louisiana. I have my work cut out for me, Olive, but I’m going to follow through. I still have
the bag.
I must have been meant to keep it. Thank God I never threw it away. One quick walk, and then we’re off to Slidell.”

Olive walked sedately alongside her mistress as Jane made her way to the Student Union and the parade grounds. She walked down the center, her eyes going right and left. There was David Boyd Hall, Charles E. Coates Hall, James W. Nicholson Hall. The fountain across from Thomas W. Atkinson Hall was the same, and still spouting water. How many times she’d sat on the benches, pondering the world. She continued walking, stopping every few feet so Olive could either sniff or squat. There was the red sign saying Disco Tim’s was still in business.

She walked toward the Quad to admire the magnificent tree in the middle. She probably had fifty pictures of the tree taken during her four years at LSU. She wondered where they were. Probably packed away in some box in the garage. “See that stuff growing around the tree, Olive? It’s called aspidistra, which means cast-iron plants. You can’t kill them. They live on forever and ever. I think we’ve seen enough. Time to leave.”

Mike Sorenson raced up the steps, fished out his key, and let himself into Jane’s house. The house was too quiet. Olive should have greeted him by now. “Jane! Where are you?” he singsonged. “I brought some fresh sugar donuts!” When there was no response he ran up to the second floor. He frowned at the neatly made bed. It was a little early in the morning for a made bed. Jane didn’t usually make the bed until she was ready to leave for work. He checked the towels in the bathroom. They were damp, the shower still wet.
Damn. She didn’t say anything about going out early this morning.

Mike headed for the kitchen on the first floor. From there he could check the back of the house to see if Jane’s car was gone. He saw the note propped up against the cookie jar the moment he entered the kitchen.

Mike,

Mike opened the bag of sugar donuts. His mind raced as he munched on the sweets. He could feel himself breaking into a cold sweat. Did those decisions have anything to do with him? Was Jane upset that he hadn’t called her last night the way he’d promised? He read the note a second time. It was much too formal, and she hadn’t signed it, Love, Jane. If he’d left her a note, he would have signed it, Love, Mike. He wouldn’t have started off the note with just her name. He would have written, Dear Jane. Why didn’t she write Dear Mike? Sweat dripped into his eyebrows. He swiped at it with the sleeve of his shirt.

At loose ends, he didn’t know what to do with himself. Should he go home? Should he wait there? If he wanted to, he could get out the tool kit that was in the garage and fix all the crooked things in the house. Or, he could turn on Jane’s computer and do some work. He snorted. What work? He was so on target with his profession there was nothing for him to do except wait for phone calls. Maybe he should call his parents. Maybe he should search out the ghost that supposedly inhabited this house. On the other hand, maybe he should just go home and go to bed and sleep all day. He finally opted for Jane’s home office and her computer.

He memorized the condition of Jane’s desk before he sat down. If he moved something, he would be able to put it back in its original position. People didn’t like to have their things moved. He himself was one of those people. He looked down at the pile of printouts. Today’s date. That had to mean Jane worked on the computer after midnight. The snoop disk was half in and half out of the tower. He didn’t feel guilty at all as he started to read through the files. When he finished, he leaned back on the swivel chair. On the surface, the files were nothing more than information on Brian Ramsey and Betty Vance. Obviously, Jane read something in the files that made her go to Baton Rouge. A prickle of fear dusted his arms. He stared down at the Betty Vance file. Who the hell was Betty Vance?

“I miss you, Jane Lewis,” Mike mumbled as he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

8

Trixie McGuire stared across the kitchen table at her husband, her fingers tight around the handle of her coffee mug. “I don’t like the looks of that young woman, Fred. I’m no shrink like Janie, but I’ve lived a long time and what I see worries me. She’s too far over the edge. I don’t need a textbook or a case file to tell me this woman is going to be trouble for our Janie. She’s not even Jane’s patient. Well, she is and she isn’t.” She picked up her mug and was about to take a sip when she had a thought. “I have a real bad feeling. Something is going to happen and everyone will lawyer up and the dark stuff will hit the fan. What do you think, honey?”

“I think we need to give her a chance, sweetie,” Fred said, extending his arm across the table and patting the back of her hand. “That glazed look in her eyes is from all the drugs she’s been taking. Six months on strong drugs will do that to you. Jane must see hope for her.” He drew his hand back and offered his wife a reassuring smile. “Look, on Janie’s recommendation, she got a dog and came here to the farm,” he said, pointing outside. “Look at her, sweetie. She’s really got a tight hold on that leash. Must be that the dog is new security for her.” His gaze returned to his wife. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Trix. What I’m worried about is our Janie, about what she said to you. In the blink of an eye, she’s willing to toss in the towel and throw her career away. She’s good at what she does. It would be a cryin’ shame for her to chuck the whole thing.”

Trixie sighed in resignation. “We have to trust Janie’s judgment. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. She won’t take chances with this girl. All that stuff you told me earlier—She’s just trying to ease her own guilt or what she perceives to be her guilt over her college friend. If she needs us, we’re here.

“Fred, we’re
old.
We’re both losing it. We sat on our respective asses so long writing books we don’t have a clue as to what’s going on in the world today. We have senior moments on an hourly basis. We goddamn well
dodder,
Fred. Thank God our minds are still sharp. We need to do something for Janie before our time runs out.”

As if in defiance, Fred snapped his flowered suspenders, then adjusted his glasses. “Stop being so morbid, Trixie. I plan on living forever. What we need to do is stay out of Janie’s business unless she asks for our help.”

“You mean mind my own business, don’t you? That isn’t going to happen, Fred, so get that thought right out of your mind. You’re pissing me off. You don’t want to piss me off, Fred.” When she slammed her coffee mug down on the table, coffee sloshed all over it. Her eyes sparked angrily.

Fred groaned. “C’mon, Trix. We both know you can’t stay mad at me longer than ten minutes. I just don’t want to see you get riled up so that you go off half-cocked and hit a brick wall.” Fred scooted his chair back. “I have to get to work. By the way, did we ever figure out if a dull ax or a sharp one would make more blood pour out of a wound?”

“Look in my book under
blood.
I think the dull ax will cause more bleeding. I can’t think about that now, Fred.”

“How about if you think about those three pills left in my Viagra bottle,” he said, a sly look on his face.

Trixie’s mouth spread into a smile. “You have
three?
” “Yep. Wear that thing with the sparklers on the shoulder.” He winked at her.

“Three! I thought we used them all. See, Fred, this is a senior moment. I must not have been wearing my glasses when I looked at the bottle.”

Fred snapped his suspenders a second time as he leered at his wife. “Did we ever decide what would happen if you took one and I took one?”

“Yes we did. One of us would be dead at the end of the night.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot.”

“One will do, Fred. Be sure to change the sheets. Put the pink-flowered ones on. It will be like making love in a field of pink roses.”

Fred didn’t need any additional prompting. He trundled out of the kitchen whistling, his fingers curled around his suspenders.

Trixie made a hissing sound as she waved him away. She walked out to the back porch, where Flash was sitting next to Betty Vance and Golda. “It’s pretty out here, isn’t it?”

“Yes it is. Who does your gardening? I’ve never seen so many pretty flowers at this time of year.”

“We have a gardener once a week. He takes care of everything. How did you sleep last night, honey, without those pills?”

“Not very well. That’s why I was taking sleeping pills and the Valium and that other drug I can’t pronounce. And before you ask, no, Dr. Thomas didn’t know I was taking the sleeping pills. Dr. Lewis said it will take a while for the drugs to work out of my system. I guess the truth is, I’m afraid to go to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll dream about it all over again.”

Trixie digested the information. “Dreams can’t hurt you, Betty. You have to let go. I don’t think you’ve done that. I don’t know, maybe you never will. There are people who thrive on things like this. You know, getting attention, making excuses for not getting on with a life that maybe wasn’t all that wonderful. I hope you aren’t one of those people,” Trixie said bluntly.

Betty looked askance at Trixie. “I’m not one of those people,” she spit out. “My life was as good as anyone else’s before I was attacked. I had a great job. I had money in the bank, my own car, furniture, an apartment. It’s real easy for Dr. Thomas and Dr. Lewis and even you, Ms. McGuire, to be tough and stern and say, c’mon, let’s get it together. Life goes on. Until you have a knife held at your throat and one man holding you down while another one rapes you, don’t pass judgment.”

Trixie nodded. She wasn’t the least bit offended. “That little speech took a lot of guts, Betty. You really told me off. That’s good,” she said, patting the top of her knee. “Jane was right about you. She thinks you have a tough inner core of strength to draw on. I guess the question is, why aren’t you doing that? You survived, so that means you are a survivor. You’re alive. I could quote you statistics on the ones that didn’t survive. From where I’m sitting, I think it’s better to be alive than dead. That’s just my opinion, Betty.”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s easier to wallow.”

“What’s going to happen to you when your friend gives up on you? Eventually he will, you know. Where will you go? What will you do?”

“I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that, that the sessions at the crisis center help. Dr. Lewis agreed to talk to me on a daily basis. I’m hoping good comes of it.”

“Me, too. But you can’t depend entirely on others. If you want to get through this, then
you
have to make an all-out effort.” Trixie leaned forward and petted Golda. “That’s a nice dog you got yourself there. Flash seems to like her, too.”

Betty put her arms around the big dog and hugged her. “She slept on my bed last night. I think she’s scared. Probably misses her owner.”

“Yeah, I know how that is. Flash missed his owner and his work so much that we almost lost him. But as you can see, he’s just fine now. Of course, we work hard at keeping him happy, but he gives us plenty of happiness in return.” Trixie stood up. “Is there anything I can do for you, Betty? How about some lunch?”

“That would be nice. I’ll sit in the sun for a little bit and maybe take Golda for a short walk if that’s okay. I see some storm clouds coming in. The weatherman said it was going to rain late this afternoon.”

“I think he could be right,” Trixie said, looking upward toward the scudding clouds to the east. “I’ll call you when lunch is ready. We need to fatten you up. You’re almost as scrawny as me.” Trixie was hoping for a smile at the very least, or maybe even laughter. Instead, Betty stared out at the garden as she continued to stroke Golda’s head.

Trixie’s shoulders slumped once she was in the kitchen.
The girl isn’t ever going to let it go. She’ll go through the motions, but that’s as much as she’ll do. Janie, girl, you have your work cut out for you where this one is concerned.

It was close to four o’clock when Jane turned the corner onto a tree-lined street with neat two-story houses set back from the sidewalk. Golf-course green lawns abounded. It was a pretty street. A nice street to grow up on. She wondered if Connie had roller-skated on the sidewalks and ridden her bike to and from school. She wished she knew. Did Connie have friends who lived on the same street or neighboring streets? She made a mental note to ask where the cemetery was. The least she could do was put some flowers on her grave.

From her car window, she scanned the house numbers on the mailboxes. When she found the one she was looking for, she drew a deep breath. Was she doing the right thing coming here? She hoped so. Right or wrong, she had to do it. It was something she should have done a long time ago.

A roll of thunder sounded overhead. Wind whistled through the trees as Jane made her way up the winding walkway flanked on both sides by well-manicured monkey grass. How many times had Connie tripped up this same walkway?

It was a pretty porch, the kind Mike had described to her. Green fiber mats, comfortable white rockers with colorful cushions and little tables with plants on them. She wondered if anyone ever sat there. It all looked new, hardly used. The fans overhead whirled but not from electricity. The wind was stronger, and the long porch was like a wind tunnel. She wondered if the potted plants and hanging ferns would be all right or if they would be blown down.

Jane swallowed as she pressed the doorbell. It chimed inside. Rain began to pour from the dark sky the second an older replica of Connie opened the door. She was a slender woman, petite actually, with blond hair cut in the latest style. She was a nurse if Jane remembered correctly. The father was a teacher. They were probably both retired now or soon to be retired.

“Mrs. Bryan?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Jane Lewis. I was a friend of Connie’s,” she said, offering the woman her business card.

“Please, come in. My husband is in his workshop. I’m sure he’d like to meet you. I’ll fetch him. It will be just a minute. I just made some coffee. Would you like some?”

“Yes, thank you. Coffee would be nice.”

Jane looked around the living room. Comfortable was her first thought. She squeezed her eyes shut as she tried to picture Connie lying on the floor, a book open in front of her as she listened to the television. She had probably played the piano on the far side of the room, where pictures of her from babyhood to college graced the top. A huge picture of her in a pale yellow prom gown hung over the mantel. Jane swallowed again. Her parents were probably in the workshop whispering and wondering what she was doing there after so many years.
Please, God, let this be the right thing I’m doing.

“Dr. Lewis, this is my husband Quentin. My name is Adele. Please sit down. I’ll get the coffee.”

“Please call me Jane.”

“All right, Jane,” Quentin Bryan said quietly.

He was short and squat, almost soccer-ball round and totally bald.
He doesn’t look friendly at all,
Jane thought. She debated running for the door.

“I don’t seem to recall meeting you, Jane. Or is it my bad memory?”

“No, we never met, sir.”

“What brings you to Slidell?”

“I drove down here from LSU this afternoon. I’ve wanted to come here so many times over the years, but I could never get up the courage. I have something to tell you. I should have told you years ago, but I promised your daughter I wouldn’t.”

A cold congested expression settled on his face. “Young woman, I think you better wait till my wife gets here before you say whatever it is you have to say.” There was such a chill in the man’s voice, Jane shivered inside her button-down sweater.

“I’m here now, Quentin. What is it you came here to tell us, Dr. Lewis?”

Jane cleared her throat. “Before I tell you, can you tell me why Connie took her own life?”

Tears welled in Adele Bryan’s eyes. “We don’t know. She took her life during the night. Quentin found her in the morning when she didn’t come down to breakfast. There was no reason that we could think of. She was getting married right after graduation, and she was so in love. Todd was so broken up he didn’t even go to his own graduation. He didn’t know the reason either. It was a shock to all of us.”

Jane took a deep breath. “I know why,” she said as calmly as she could. “That’s why I came here.” Jane licked at her dry lips. “The night before Connie’s and my last final, we walked home from the library together. Six boys came out of the bushes and frightened us. Three of them grabbed Connie and dragged her into the bushes and then raped her. I tried everything I could to help her, but they kept me from her.” In spite of their horror-stricken faces she continued. “Afterward, I begged her to go to the crisis center or to the police to file a report, but she refused. She made me promise not to tell anyone. For some reason she was positive Todd wouldn’t want her anymore and would break off their engagement. I kept her in my dorm room with me all night.”

Jane watched, her face miserable, as Connie’s father put his arm around his weeping wife’s shoulders.

“Connie wanted me to throw her clothes away. She didn’t want any reminders of what had happened. I put them in a paper bag, thinking she could use them as evidence if she changed her mind about filing a report. I still have the bag, and the DNA would still be as good today as it would have been back then. I would have brought it with me, but I didn’t know I was coming here until I got to LSU and made the decision.”

“This is preposterous!” Quentin Bryan exploded. “Why are you doing this to us? What possible reason can you have for coming here and stirring all this up again? I don’t want to hear this, and neither does my wife. If Connie had been raped, she would have told us. She was a good girl. She didn’t keep secrets. Damn it, she would have told us.”

Adele Bryan took her husband’s hands in hers. “Hush, Quentin,” she said, her voice stern. “I
do
want to hear this. I
need
to hear this.” She turned to Jane. “Connie wasn’t the same when she came back from college, Dr. Lewis. She spoke to us, and she smiled here and there, but all the life seemed to have gone out of her. She lost all interest in her wedding plans, and she said she wasn’t going to go to her graduation. She never gave us a reason. We didn’t know what to make of it, and neither did Todd. He did everything he could to get her out of what he called her funk. He thought maybe she didn’t do well on her finals. Quentin is wrong. She would never have told us something like that. Do . . . do you know the boys’ names?”