The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (10 page)

“You’re worth it,” he repeated.

Susan grabbed her purse and left to meet Brandy. The girl was ten minutes late for their meeting. Susan had ordered and almost consumed a six-inch tuna-salad sandwich and was drumming her fingers on the table, thinking
I could be home doing… doing what? More work on that damn manuscript? More cleaning?
More scaring myself to death?
She settled down to wait and filled the time with anticipation of dinner that night.

When Brandy arrived, she looked a mess. Her hair badly needed washing, and she had pulled it back and caught it with a ponytail holder from which stray clumps escaped. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and yet her cheeks had an unnatural bright pink tone. Susan noticed that unkempt as she was Brandy wore an unusual pair of earrings—silver dangles with just a bit of turquoise.

Brandy ordered a Coke and brought it to the table where Susan sat over the remnants of her sandwich.

“Sorry I’m late. I have a hard time getting myself together these days,” she said, but there was no real apology in her tone.

“Sure,” Susan said. “What can I do for you?”

“I hear you’ve been trying to find Eric Lindler.”

“Yes, I have. I’m determined to find out what happened to your roommate, mostly because people think I was involved.” She deliberately didn’t add,
and mostly because someone’s trying to kill me or at least scare me to death.

“No one thinks you were involved,” Brandy said, almost pleading with Susan to believe her. “But Eric won’t know either. Can’t you just leave the whole thing alone?”

“You’re the only one who doesn’t think I’m involved—and that goes from my department chair to the police officer who’s leading the investigation to Missy’s parents. I’ve got to defend myself. Besides, it can’t hurt if I find that boy, express my sympathy and talk to him.”

“Dr. Hogan, just stay away from Eric Lindler. Leave the whole thing to the authorities.”

Convenient for Brandy, Susan thought, that the authorities are sure Eric Lindler isn’t the murderer. If I let the authorities handle it, everyone will stay away from Eric Lindler, which is what this girl wants. She’s terrified of something. Susan realized now that it had been fear in Brandy’s voice the day after Missy’s disappearance, when she refused to call her roommate’s parents. That fear was even more pronounced today. Brandy wasn’t as much upset about Missy and desperate to find out what happened to her as she was scared for herself. Susan wanted to tell her that they had something in common—she was terrified too.

Instead, she said slowly, “Brandy, what are you afraid of? Finding out who killed Missy? Surely you would want to know that.”

The girl’s eyes roamed around the restaurant, looking everywhere but at Susan, and she shrugged. “I do. Of course I do. I guess I just have that ‘it could be me next’ feeling.”

“Well,” Susan said, “so do I.” She told a wide-eyed Brandy about the car trying to run her down in the parking lot but didn’t go on to the incidents of the Jeep with the flat tires or the dead kitten, though even now the that memory made her shudder.

Brandy saw the shudder. “You really are afraid, aren’t you?” she asked. When Susan nodded, the girl said, “I tell you, Dr. Hogan, we’ve got to just leave this all alone.”

“No,” Susan said firmly. “I can’t live my life scared. I’ve got to find out who’s behind this.” She thought a minute. “Has anyone threatened you? Why do you think you could be next?”

Brandy shrugged, and Susan pressed. “Is there something you and Missy had in common that I should know about?”

“We were roommates, best friends, we double-dated a lot, did lots of things together. But she was from Uvalde, and I’m from Oklahoma City. And she was pre-med. Me? I’m an English major because I love to read, not because I burn to teach English to a bunch of little kids.” Cynicism was evident in her voice. There was something flip or studied about the answer, as though Brandy had rehearsed it in her mind.

Trying to be casual, Susan said, “I’ll tell you one thing, Brandy. English majors never make the money doctors do.”

“I’ll never be poor,” Brandy said with determination.

Susan noticed that even in jeans and a T-shirt, the girl carried a Bottega Veneta hobo bag and wore expensive boots. She wondered curiously if Brandy’s family had money. Were they rich professionals who let hired help raise their daughter? Aloud, she said idly, “What about Missy? Did she want to be a doctor to make a lot of money?”

“Oh,” Brandy said hastily, “I don’t know that I’d say that exactly. But she had expensive tastes.”

Susan had found a kernel, the small beginning of a clue to the truth about Missy Jackson. “Expensive tastes?” she asked casually.

“Oh, you know, Ferragamo shoes. She liked to shop at Neiman’s.” She paused a minute. “Her mom is… well, she’s like a throwback to the fifties, someone who has had nothing in her life but taking care of her husband and daughter. Missy vowed she’d never be like her mother.”

“Missy’s parents,” Susan said slowly, “say she bought all her own clothes. How could she afford that?”

“She worked a lot,” Brandy said, and Susan noticed that the girl again avoided looking directly at her.

“Doing what?” There was a terse demand in Susan’s voice.

Brandy simply shrugged. “Don’t know. I gotta be going now.”

“Tell me about Eric Lindler.”

Susan’s tone was so commanding that Brandy, halfway out of the booth, sat back down. She shifted in her seat, tried to smooth her hair, turned to look out the window.

“Tell me about him, what kind of a person he is,” Susan insisted.

For once, Brandy looked her straight in the eye and said in a clear voice, “Dull.”

Startled, Susan sat back in the booth to contemplate that answer. And in the moment she did that, Brandy was up and headed for the door. “Stay away from him, Dr. Hogan,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t make it worse for me… or for you.”

Stunned, Susan watched the girl leave the fast-food shop. Then she sat in the booth a good five minutes, mulling over the strange conversation she’d just had and Brandy’s final parting shot that had raised Shelley’s ghost again. As if this whole murder case weren’t bad enough in itself, it was bringing Shelley back into sharp focus.

Chapter Six

When he picked her up for dinner that night Jake wore a navy blazer over a pale blue shirt, a red-and-tan tie, and tan slacks. He looked terrific. Susan thought she looked pretty terrific too in a velour drop-waist dress she had ordered from Eddie Bauer and clunky brown shoes that she’d bought on sale at DSW shoe warehouse. She could wear those ugly things as well as the young girls could, and they looked better with long skirts than mini-short things.

“Golly gee, Miss Susan, a dress!” Jake whistled through his teeth.

“Shut up or I’ll go put on jeans,” she said.

“I’ll be quiet all night, dumbstruck by your beauty,” he replied.

He drove the pickup truck that night, and when Susan asked why they weren’t taking the Jeep, he said, “Not university business.”

“Never know what will turn into university business,” she said with a laugh.

Jake liked back roads, but there wasn’t much choice. A two-lane highway took them to Granbury, but from then on they were on four-lane until he reached a point where he could skirt the suburban business district that put several stoplights in their way. Then it was IH 20 to Hulen and Forest Park to downtown. At least that route circled along the river and was a lot more scenic than the interstate. As he drove, Jake looked at her and asked, “Have a good day?”

Susan knew he was fishing to find out who she’d met for lunch. “Uh, well, sort of,” she said innocently. “The house is clean, and I worked on my Zane Grey thing a lot.” Well, it was only sort of a lie. She’d just left out the part she didn’t want to tell him.

“Is it going well?” His interest was polite, no more.

“Okay. I can’t seem to concentrate on it.”

“Well, you’ve had a lot of distractions, and with Aunt Jenny about to arrive, it’s no wonder.” Then, again, so casual it was obvious, he asked, “Who’d you meet for lunch?”

Susan tried to divert him. “Do you think it was another man? Do I detect jealousy here?”

“No, Susan, you don’t detect jealousy. You’re hearing suspicion. I think you’re meddling in things that you shouldn’t be.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”
Jake is going to push the issue and ruin the evening,
Susan thought. She stared out the window at the river, dark green but flowing swiftly, still swollen with fall rains. The trees in Trinity Park were beginning to lose their leaves and the grass still looked brown and burned from summer.

“Susan, look at me.” Jake voice was a command.

She turned her head slowly and looked at him. “Jake Phillips, we’re off to have a nice, relaxed evening—at your suggestion and, I might add, at your very generous invitation. Don’t ruin it by asking me about things I don’t want to tell you.”

“Caught in my own trap,” he said.

She turned back to the river and then decided that the evening was off to a rotten start, and it was partly her fault. “You’ll like Aunt Jenny,” she said, as though she were continuing a conversation instead of breaking a long silence. “She’s dithery and opinionated and as good-hearted as they come. And the chicken and dumplings will be delicious.”

“Good,” he said, picking up her tone and going with it. “I need mothering and good cooking.”

“You never want me to cook!” Susan said.

“That’s because Aunt Jenny apparently never taught you how. You’re the only grown woman I know whose idea of cooking is a Kraft macaroni dinner or who brags about the way you cook corn when all you do is open the can and add some butter and salt and pepper.”

“You ate it,” Susan said, laughing as her mood lightened. “And besides, I can make terrific beef Stroganoff.”

“Yeah, but just like you can’t live on love, you can’t live on Stroganoff. Once every few months is plenty for me, thanks.”

“Well,” Susan said, pretending to be petulant, “I could learn other things. What do you like?”

“I like to cook,” he said.

“You’re being contradictory. You want Aunt Jenny to mother you, but you don’t want me to cook for you—and then you accuse me of not doing it.”

He laughed aloud. “I think you twisted my words.”

He took the 7
^th
Street exit to downtown and turned south on Main toward The City Restaurant. The valet took their car, the hostess said, “Right this way, Mr. Phillips” as though she thought he owned Phillips Petroleum Company, and they were soon seated at a cozy and private table in a corner of the main dining room. Their waiter was a middle-aged man with gray hair who greeted them with a simple, “Good evening” as he spread their napkins in their laps. Susan thought he was a welcome relief from young men who said, “Hi, I’m Colin… or Jamie or Brandon or Christian
…
and I’m your server tonight.”

She ordered Pinot Grigio.

“Susan, we’re going to eat steak. Can’t you have a merlot or a Beaujolais?”

“No. I like white wine with steak.”

He ordered a Scotch, and they studied the menu.

“I want the same steak I had last time,” Susan said, “only I don’t know what it was.”

“New York strip. I think I’ll have the lobster. Can we share?” He reached across the table and took her hand.

“You’re trying to sweet talk me out of some of my steak,” she said, but she was grinning and she held on to the offered hand. She knew she’d order it rare and he wanted his well done.

They talked of everything over their drinks—the lingering effect of the Boston Marathon bombings, the periodic worry over North Korea’s unpredictable young dictator, the gun control issue (they differed on this one and didn’t usually discuss it, though Susan was quick to point out the last school shootings), and what Susan called the “war on women,” which made Jake mutter under his breath. What they didn’t talk about—and what hung heavily in the air between them—was the death of Missy Jackson.

The steak was even better than the last time they had eaten at The City Restaurant. Susan savored it and reluctantly cut off two small chunks to give Jake in exchange for a good-sized piece of his lobster.

“Don’t be too generous,” he said dryly. Then, predictably, he exclaimed, “It’s still raw.”

“You’re the one who wanted lobster,” she said, and then, suddenly, she dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter.

Startled, Jake followed her gaze to the bar. All he saw was a young woman and a young man, apparently enjoying a drink. The girl looked a little tense and seemed to avoid looking at the man, but it could have been an awkward blind date. The only other thing he noticed was that the young man had remarkable wavy red hair.

“Susan? What’s the matter?”

She continued to stare, as though frozen.

He reached across the table and put his hand gently on her arm. “Calling Susan. Please come back to our table. What is it?”

“That’s Brandy,” she whispered.

“Brandy,” he repeated dumbly. Then it dawned on him. “Missy Jackson’s roommate?”

“Yeah, and she’s made an amazing recovery since noon today. She looked awful when I met her—dirty hair, no makeup, circles under her eyes. Look at her now.”

“I knew that’s who you were meeting,” Jake said slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

“Because you would have made me promise not to see her,” Susan said promptly.

Jake sighed aloud.

“Now look at her,” Susan said, her voice almost a command.

Jake turned to look.

“No, don’t turn. Don’t be so obvious. They’ll see us.” Now Susan’s voice was a controlled whisper.

“I can’t look at her if I don’t turn,” he said.

“I’ll describe. She’s wearing a slinky black dress, her hair is curled around her face, her makeup is flawless. She looks like she’s thirty, not nineteen.”

“So she’s trying to get on with her life,” Jake said. “That doesn’t mean she isn’t upset about Missy. Besides, now that I know who you met for lunch, tell me what she wanted.”

“Wait a minute, Jake. That man she’s with—he’s the one!”

Jake threw his hands up in the air and gave up, at least for the time being, on his dinner. “What one?” he asked impatiently.