The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (18 page)

Just then, Aunt Jenny emerged from her room where she’d been making the bed. Susan had forgotten about her aunt.

“What’s going on here?” Aunt Jenny demanded, her voice rising into the near-hysteria range. “Get out of my icebox!”

O’Donnell looked at Susan. “Can you take her with you, please, ma’am?”

Aunt Jenny planted herself between the deputy and the refrigerator. “I am not going anywhere. What are you people doing?”

Susan hobbled toward her aunt, realizing too late that she’d forgotten to warn the older woman about the search warrant. “They’re searching the house. They have a warrant.”

“Why ever would they want to do that?” Aunt Jenny demanded.

“They’re looking for the baseball bat that killed Missy Jackson,” Susan said as patiently as she could.

O’Donnell threw Susan an alarmed look. Suspects were not supposed to have such specific knowledge about what the police were looking for.

“Well, my goodness, why would it be here? That Lindler boy has it.” Aunt Jenny picked up the kitchen towel and began to wipe at her perspiring forehead, even as O’Donnell turned to stare at her in disbelief.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but how do you know this person… Lindler… has the baseball bat?” The words were barely out of his mouth when O’Donnell was cursing himself for giving away official knowledge.

Aunt Jenny fixed him with a stare. “I just know,” she said.

“Ma’am, if you have knowledge you’re not sharing with the police…” His tone was not threatening, but still a threat hung in the air.

Susan gave him what she hoped was a withering look. “She means she knows by intuition. It’s what her heart tells her.”

“Oh.” The man was humbled but not so much that he didn’t turn to Aunt Jenny and say, “Now, ma’am, if you’d just go with these ladies…”

She clutched the kitchen counter, as though they’d have to drag her from it. “I am not leaving this house while you people are invading my niece’s privacy. We may sue. I have a friend who’s a judge.”

Susan said a silent prayer of thanks that Jake was not here for this scene. And she bet that Judge John Jackson would have been more than a little disturbed if he knew his influence was being dragged—well, almost—into things.

The second officer, who apparently took orders from O’Donnell, looked to him for instructions and direction. Just then Lieutenant Jordan strode into the house.

“What seems to be the problem here?” he asked briskly.

“Well, sir…” O’Donnell was reluctant to admit he was having difficulty making three women, one of them elderly, obey his orders. “They… this one”—he jerked his head toward Aunt Jenny—“refuses to leave the house.”

Jordan shrugged his shoulders and said, “Okay, let them stay.”

“I need to sit down,” Aunt Jenny announced. Her face was so red—with indignation, Susan supposed—that even Jordan was alarmed. He helped her to the couch and pulled up the footstool for her.

“You just sit there and relax, ma’am. We’ll be out of here as soon as we can.”

“I still want that cup of coffee,” Ellen announced with determination.

“Me, too,” Susan said. “You fix it.”

And so the three of them sat in the living area—the two younger women sipping hot coffee and the older one fanning herself with a copy of the journal of the Modern Language Association she’d picked up off the coffee table. The officers were silent, not talking much to each other and certainly not banging and slamming drawers and doors as Susan had imagined. Still, it seemed they were in the house forever.

Suddenly Jordan strode into the room. “Dr. Hogan?” His voice was businesslike.

When Susan turned to look at him, she saw that he was holding a baseball bat. “Where’d you get that?” she asked, her voice rising into a squeak.

“Back of your closet. It’s got blood on it… and some paint that looks like it came from your car.”

“That’s absolutely impossible,” Susan said. “I do not own a baseball bat, never had one, and there was not one in the back of my closet.”

“Susan,” Ellen asked, “when was the last time you looked in the back of your closet?”

“Well…” Susan chewed on her answer. Sometimes things piled up in the far corners of the closet, and she didn’t get to them for weeks at a time. “I don’t know… not since the murder, I guess.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Susan wondered if she’d incriminated herself somehow. What she meant was that someone could have hidden that bat at any time since Missy Jackson’s death, and she’ have never known it.

“Dr. Hogan, you’ll have to come down to headquarters with me.” Jordan’s voice was crisp and authoritarian, and Susan thought she detected just a bit of smug satisfaction in it. “You’re entitled to representation, if you want,” he added, his tone implying she shouldn’t want it.

“Representation?” Susan muttered. “I guess I better call Jake.”

“No!” Aunt Jenny interrupted dramatically. “Don’t use your one phone call on Jake. I’ll call
Judge
John Jackson.”

Susan looked at her in amazement. “You can’t do that. And besides, I want Jake to be there.”

Just as Aunt Jenny said smugly, “John said to call him anytime you need help.”

Jordan looked at Aunt Jenny. With obvious dismay, he asked, “Judge John Jackson?”

“That’s right,” Aunt Jenny said vigorously. “The judge!”

Jordan groaned inwardly. Judge John Jackson was a known stickler for hard facts. Circumstantial evidence never got anywhere in his court. And he could be obstinate, drawing out an argument, challenging the police on every little detail. If he’d said it once, he’d said a thousand times that it was his job to protect the little people.
Susan Hogan,
Dirk Jordan thought,
is not one of the little people. She’s an educated, sophisticated woman and for some reason she’s killed a young girl. I have to find out why, and that old coot Jackson is going to get in my way.
“Why don’t you invite them both,” he said to Susan. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a big party.”

As Susan was led out of the house, she asked Jordan, “Aren’t you going to handcuff me?” Her tone revealed both fright and anger.

Jordan ignored her, but O’Donnell answered, with a note of apology in his voice. “Please, Dr. Hogan,” he said, “don’t make this any more difficult for us than it is.”

Jordan looked at O’Donnell and, in true detective-novel style, said, “Cuff her, if that’s what she wants.”

“Sir, she’s on crutches!” was O’Donnell’s plaintive reply.

Susan ignored Jordan and hobbled behind Officer O’Donnell to his car. She rode to police headquarters in the squad car with the two officers, while Jordan followed.

Thank heaven they’re not blaring sirens and flashing lights!
Susan thought. Ellen and Aunt Jenny were behind in Ellen’s car, and Jake met them at the station. By then Susan was feeling lightheaded from shock.

“Susan, don’t say a thing,” Jake cautioned. “I’ll call a lawyer.”

The worry on his face almost consumed her, and she reached for his hand. “Aunt Jenny has called Judge Jackson. He said he’d be here as soon as he could.”

Jordan came out of a doorway down the hall where he’d briefly disappeared, saw Jake and ignored him, saying to Susan, “Right this way, please, Dr. Hogan.”

“She’s got counsel on the way here,” Jake said quickly, stepping in front of Susan as though to shield her. “She won’t talk until he’s here.”

Jordan gave Jake a disgusted look. He’d been hoping this would be an open-and-shut, over-with-quickly situation. It was obviously getting more complicated by the minute.
 

Just as Jordan had dreaded, Judge John Jackson got in his way big time. “You can’t hold my client until you have clear evidence that is the bat used in the murder… and even then it’s circumstantial. There are any number of ways it could have gotten into her house.”

“Such as?” Jordan asked.

“Someone planted it there. Seems obvious to me.”

“You mind if I ask your client a few questions?” Jordan asked, fixing the elderly judge with a look of distaste.

Jackson shrugged, and Jordan turned to Susan. “Have you ever played baseball?”

“Nope. Too clumsy,” she said. Immediately she thought of Jake and his warning not to be flip. Nerves were making her silly. “No,” she said more evenly. “I’m not very athletic. Never was. You can ask my aunt.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Jordan said dryly. “If you aren’t athletic, why did you have a baseball bat in your closet?”

“I didn’t!” Susan’s voice rose in anger. “I never saw that bat before, and I sure never put it in my closet. Someone’s trying to frame me!”

“Frame you?” Jordan’s voice rose with interest. “And why would someone try to frame you?”

Just as Susan said, “Beats me,” Jackson held up his hand. “Jordan, you know you can’t ask my client questions for which she can’t possibly have an answer.” His tone was patronizingly familiar, and that irritated the investigative officer even more.

Susan’s thoughts tangled in confusion. If Brandy Perkins had told the young man with red hair that Susan was nosing into Missy’s murder, then he was probably the one who was trying to scare and frame her—maybe if he could get her convicted of murder, he wouldn’t have to kill her. That thought made her giddy for a brief second. The young man didn’t know where she lived, but how hard could it be for him to find out? He could have left the kitten and killed the plants, but when could he have put the bat there? With Aunt Jenny visiting, her house was almost never empty. An eerie question popped into her mind:
If he put it there the night of the murder, before I got home, then he did pick my car deliberately. Why?
The thought scared her, but not badly enough that she wanted to tell Jordan about the redheaded stranger. She agreed with Jake: if Jordan knew about that, he’d bulldoze over the entire situation and they’d never get to the truth. And it wouldn’t keep Jordan from accusing her of murder.

“Dr. Hogan,” Jordan said evenly, “let’s go back to the homicide investigation you were involved in fifteen years ago. Why didn’t you tell me when I first asked? Surely you didn’t forget.”

Forget? I’ll never forget Shelley lying on that bathroom floor!
She wanted to lash out at him for even suggesting that. “I didn’t forget, but it wasn’t a homicide. We’ve already been over this.”

“But this is an official interrogation. You were considered a suspect, weren’t you?”

Susan looked him straight in the eye. “For about five minutes,” she said. “I was never… what’s the word you used? Booked? Or charged? Or anything. I went voluntarily to talk to the police and tell them what I knew about Shelley’s drug use.” A part of her wanted to cry out all over again with the agony of that telling all those years ago.

“Still,” Jordan said relentlessly, “you initially withheld information from me.”

“Jordan,” the judge said impatiently, “try to be reasonable. You are not interrogating a crack cocaine dealer or a mass murderer here. You are intimidating a woman you’ve mistakenly accused of murder.”

The officer threw him a disgusted look, asked Susan a few more questions, and said in a tired voice, “I’m booking you on suspicion of murder. You’ll go before a judge this afternoon”—he looked at Jackson and was tempted to add—“a
real
judge,” but he didn’t. “Bail will be set. I’m sure it will be reasonable.”

“You’re arresting me?” Susan asked incredulously. Her thoughts whirled again. This kind of thing didn’t happen to people like her. It was… well, it was what you read about in books or maybe the newspaper. But it didn’t happen to ordinary, everyday people.

“Yes, ma’am, I am,” the detective said wearily.

Officer O’Donnell, already embarrassed by the whole thing, took her to an office where she was read her rights—what did they call that? Mirandizing? Bastard English if she ever heard it—and subjected to the indignities of being fingerprinted and photographed. Susan submitted to it all in kind of a daze.

She had not been allowed to see Jake or Aunt Jenny or Ellen again, and when she asked about them, O’Donnell told her, “They’ve left.”

“Left?” Susan had never felt more alone in her life. She didn’t know why, but it would have made her feel safer or something to think they were still somewhere in police headquarters. Where had they gone? What were they doing?

* * *

What Jake and Ellen were trying to do was comfort Aunt Jenny. The three of them were back at Susan’s house, sitting in the living area, and Aunt Jenny was sobbing loudly, her chest heaving, her face once again alarmingly red. Ellen was more worried about her right now than she was about Susan.

Jake went to the kitchen, and Ellen followed him to whisper, “I almost want to throw cold water on her. You know, shock her out of it.”

“Not a good idea,” he said grimly, reaching for the bourbon bottle. “This is for medicinal purposes,” he said. “You go get a cold rag for her face.” Then he poured just a small bit of bourbon into a juice glass and took it to Aunt Jenny with the order: “Sip this.”

She stopped sobbing long enough to smell it and make a face. “I don’t like spirits,” she said, her voice coming with great heaves of her chest that seemed to leave her breathless.

“It’s medicine,” Jake said, and his tone made it clear he would tolerate no disagreement.

Aunt Jenny sipped, screwing up her face in distaste.

Ellen returned with a cold washrag, which she pressed to the older woman’s head.

The sobs subsided, though now the silence between the three of them was punctuated by an occasional hiccup—the aftermath of heavy crying. “I’m so sorry,” Aunt Jenny said brokenly. “We need to be worrying about Susan, and I’ve caused all this fuss. Such a baby”—the word set her off again into tears—“she’s my baby. I just can’t bear the thought of her in a jail cell.”

“She’s probably not in a cell at all, Aunt Jenny, and Judge Jackson has gone to arrange bail. He’ll need some money…” Jake thought he’d just post the bail himself, but then he wondered if it would help Aunt Jenny to be involved.

“My life savings!” she said dramatically. “Whatever it takes, whatever I have… it’s hers.”

“It won’t be that much,” Jake said kindly. “Probably a thousand dollars. I thought perhaps the two of us—”