The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (3 page)

Dirk Jordan came in shortly and greeted her warmly enough. “Dr. Hogan, thanks for coming in. I’m truly sorry about what’s happened.”

“So am I,” Susan said, as she took his outstretched hand.
Thanks for coming? As if she’d had a choice.
She looked into eyes that were cold and distant. Then she studied him a minute. He was maybe ten years older and an inch or two taller than Jake. His nose didn’t turn sideways in his face, but she noticed that he held his left hand in an awkward position by his side.

“Coffee?” he asked, but Susan declined. She realized that she hadn’t had lunch, and she didn’t think it was smart to put caffeine into an empty stomach. Her hands still felt shaky.

“I’ll pass too,” he said, motioning for her to sit. He took a seat across the table from her. He meant to look casual, but she could see that the muscles in his neck were corded with tension. The hair on the back of Susan’s neck prickled.

He wasted no more time on pleasantries. “We’ve identified the body as Missy Jackson, a senior. You knew her, I believe. How well?”

Startled, Susan almost jumped. “Not well at all. She was a student of mine last year. I didn’t know her outside class.”

“And what was your classroom relationship like?”

Susan pondered that for a moment. “The same as it is with most of my students. I tried to encourage her to be an independent thinker. Sometimes she was… ah… very independent and other times she seemed very traditional.”

“Her reputation is, I believe, above reproach.” Somehow his tone made it seem that he was questioning her evaluation of the dead girl.

“I didn’t know her reputation or accomplishments when she was in my class.”

“I don’t understand why her body was in your car,” he said, his eyes challenging her.

“Neither do I.” Susan’s voice flared in anger.

“The medical examiner tells me as a preliminary finding that the girl was killed Monday night. Where were you?”

“In the library, until it closed at ten.”

“Anyone see you? Anyone that knows you?”

“Of course. The librarians know me.”

“That can be checked.” He tried another tack. “Do you know Eric Lindler?”

“Who?”

“The dead girl’s boyfriend.”

She shook her head in the negative. “But I wish I knew why he chose my car to put her body in,” she said.

“We have no proof that it was Eric Lindler. We haven’t interviewed him yet.”

She wanted to scream, “Don’t you think he should be first on your list, ahead of me?”

“Whoever it was,” Jordan said slowly, “wanted the body found. That’s why it was in your car. Otherwise, anyone with half a brain would have dumped the body way out in the country someplace.”

“Then that should rule me out,” she replied quickly. “If I wanted a body found, I wouldn’t be so dumb as to put it in my own car.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, dismissing her protest. “If you don’t know why your car was chosen, have you considered it was because of your relationship with Jake Phillips?” His cold eyes stared, watching her every reaction.

What else does this man know? “Why would that matter?”

“If…” He paused to let that word sink it. “If you didn’t put the body in your car, perhaps someone else knew you would get instant attention from the campus police because of your relationship with Phillips.”

“I don’t believe the campus police treat me any differently than anyone else at the school,” she said firmly.

The questioning went on, always coming back to the question of why the body was in her car. Finally, Jordan said, “Dr. Hogan, your story has too many holes in it for my comfort. One more thing: have you ever been involved in a criminal investigation before?”

Susan shook her head in the negative, but visions of Shelley lying curled in a ball blurred in front of her until she raised a hand as though to wipe the image away.

“That can be checked. We’ll have to impound your car indefinitely. Here’s my card, in case you remember anything else. Please assure me that you won’t leave Oak Grove. I have no authority to order you to stay here, but it would look suspicious if you left,” Jordan said.

Stunned, Susan managed to mutter, “Yes, sir.” She wanted to scream.

Jake was waiting to take her home, and she fell into his arms gratefully. “He didn’t believe me,” she told him once in the car. “He thinks I know something I’m not telling.” She thought a minute and then asked, “What’s wrong with his left hand?”

“Shot,” Jake said. “Way I hear it was the bullet severed some nerves. Jordan won’t talk about it, but they say it’s made him a tougher cop. It’s probably also why he’s in a small town and not on a big city force.”

“Well, he thinks that somebody probably crashed into my car to pop the trunk open and then pounded it shut once they put… ah, her… inside.”

“I’m not a detective,” Jake said dryly, “but they could have just opened the trunk from inside your car. I know it wasn’t locked, never is. So why would they crash into it?”

“Nothing else makes sense,” she said, “so why should that?”

Jake turned into the town square. “You hungry?”

“Ravenous.” She’d have thought all that had happened would have killed any appetite she had, but she realized she hadn’t eaten anything since an early-morning bowl of cereal.

They went to Subie’s Café on the square. It had the usual plastic-covered chairs with chrome and vinyl tables covered with oilcloth—what her mother used to refer to proudly as her “dinette set” when Susan was young. The salt and pepper sat next to a container of sugar and sweetener, with the ever-present bottle of ketchup that always made Susan wonder why restaurants didn’t feel the need to refrigerate ketchup like she did at home.

What Susan loved about Subie’s was the collection of old pictures, maps, and memorabilia that hung on its walls—pictures of Gary Cooper and John Wayne, an ornate and aged sombrero, a 1950s map of Oak Grove. Overhead, an old porch swing was suspended from the ceiling and next to it was a tumbleweed. She always imagined they were all dusty, sifting bits of dirt onto her food, but it never bothered her.

Neither Jake nor Susan looked at the menu. He would have chicken-fried steak, and she would have a hamburger with fries.

The waitress came over, pad in hand. “The usual?” she asked.

“Thanks, Margie,” Jake said.

She turned toward the kitchen, then stopped and faced Jake, hands on her hips. “Is it true about them finding a body in a car on campus?” Indignation was written all over her face.

“I’m afraid it is,” Jake said, and Susan held her breath for fear that it would come out whose car it was.

“I tell you, Mr. Phillips,” Marge said, her voice rising shrilly, “them college students, they’re gonna ruin this town. Look at the way they hang out in them bars up on the edge of town of a Saturday night. Used to be a body was safe in her own bed, but now… I don’t know.”

“I don’t think it’s a sign of a crime spree,” Jake said, fighting to keep a smile from his face and avoiding looking at Susan. “We’ll find out, I’m sure, that it was someone who knew this poor girl.”

“What kind of a friend would do that?” She finally went away, shaking her head in despair.

“Not going to be easy for the university,” Jake said. “The communications office is going to have a real PR job on its hands.”

“So am I,” Susan said, “when word gets around it was my car.”

Jake reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “I’m as sorry as I can be, Susan, you got mixed up in this. I’ll do everything I can to get you out of it, but…” He shrugged, and Susan felt a sense of inevitability about everything that had happened and a helplessness about whatever would happen next.

The chicken-fried steak was fork tender—wasn’t it always? Susan thought—and the hamburger thick and the good kind of greasy. Every time they ate at the café, they vowed never again because they were so stuffed and satisfied when they finished eating. But they ate there once a week or more. Sometimes, Susan tried to tell Jake about how her Aunt Jenny could cook chicken-fried steak that was as good as what he had just eaten, but he always said, “Don’t fool me, Susan. No one in your family could cook, or they’d have taught you.”

“My Aunt Jenny can,” she said defensively.

Jake pushed his plate away from him. “You ready?” he asked. “It’s been a long day.”

“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.”