The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1)

by Judy Alter

  So much, Susan thought, for a toney restaurant. We aren’t bringing Aunt Jenny here Saturday.

  They waited an extraordinarily long time for their car. The last weekend had seen the time-change from daylight to central time, so even just before seven it was almost dark—and with the dark came the chill of October nights. Both women shivered.

  “You think they parked your car in Dallas?” Susan asked, trying to make a joke.

  “At least in North Fort Worth,” Ellen replied. “Damn, it’s cold!”

  Ellen Peck never swore, and Susan, who had under duress been accused by Jake of swearing like a trooper, stared at her. Ellen, she decided, was scared and angry, both at the same time.

  At long last Ellen’s Mitsubishi roared up to the curb and a young man jumped out, full of apologies about taking so long. “Got the wrong car the first time, ma’am. Sorry.”

  Ellen gave him five dollars and hoped to heaven he’d turned the heat on already. He hadn’t.

  They were silent as Ellen maneuvered through Fort Worth’s downtown streets. Instead of heading toward Forest Park, she turned north on Throckmorton.

  “Where are you going?” Susan asked.

  “I have this strange feeling,” Ellen said. “I just want to be sure no one is following us.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ellen, this isn’t a grade B melodrama,” Susan said crossly.

  “You sure?” Ellen asked. “I’m beginning to think it is.”

  Susan was silent for a minute. Then she said, “We don’t know any more than we did before—all we got out of that was a couple free drinks.”

  “At those prices, that wasn’t a bad deal. But, Susan, we do know a little bit more. I’ve got that man’s card in my purse. Here, fish it out and see what it says.” She took the purse from the side of her seat, where she always kept it, and handed it to Susan.

  Susan pulled out the card and read, “Kenny Thomas. At your pleasure. 817-332-4557.” She sighed. “Well, it’s a downtown Fort Worth phone number. Doesn’t tell you much else. We have no proof he’s running a call-girl ring.”

  “We’ve certainly got instincts, though,” Ellen said. “If I ever doubted your story, Susan, I apologize. It’s obvious what he’s doing… and what those girls are doing.”

  “Did you see that one?” Susan asked. “She looked terrified. I wanted to run and grab her, save her.”

  “Might’ve been the best thing you could have done for her.”

  Susan was already blaming herself for not having taken more action. Ellen’s words didn’t help, and she stared out the window, lost in thought.

  “Susan?” Ellen’s voice had a real edge to it. “The car behind us is really tailgating. Pushing me hard.” They had turned off Throckmorton and were now on the part of Forest Park that followed the river and was almost like a four-lane country road. The only car around was the one behind them.

  Susan turned and saw headlights blazing at them, not inches from the back of their car. “Can you pull off?”

  “No place here. And I’m afraid to slow down, afraid he’ll ram us. I’ve picked up the speed some, but so did he.”

  “Why doesn’t he just pass us?” Susan asked. “No other cars on the road.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me,” Ellen said. “It’s like he wants us.”

  “We’re about halfway to the freeway,” Susan said. “If we can make that, we’ll be back in traffic.”

  “Yeah,” Ellen said grimly, “if we can make that.”

  “Ellen, drive as fast as you can.” The car behind them kept pace with them.

  “Susan…” It was a wail for help from Ellen, but it was too late.

  The car turned as though to pass them, then slowly began to crowd them off the road. Susan was afraid they would tumble down the embankment into the Trinity River, and she began to review everything she’d ever read about escaping from a sunken car. The momentum of speed Ellen had built up carried the car. It flipped once and landed upright, lodged against a small tree, the motor still running. The car that had forced them off the road sped off into the night.

  If it weren’t for that tree, Susan thought, we’d be in the river. God must be looking after me, in spite of all.

  They sat in total silence in the darkness, too stunned and scared to speak. Susan moved every part of her body just a bit and thought, It’s like the night the car tried to run me down and the moped wreck, only worse. This time, nothing new seemed broken—a miracle if she’d ever heard of one. “Thank God for trees,” she said. “Ellen?”

  “What?” Ellen’s voice was hoarse and strained.

  “You okay?”

  “No. I’ve got the most tremendous pain in my side that I’ve ever had in my life. It hurts bad, Susan.”

  “Okay, let me think. We’ve got to stay here for a bit, not moving, make sure that whoever it was doesn’t come back to see if he did what he wanted to do. I’ll call Jake.” She fished in her purse for her cell phone.

  “I can’t move anyway,” Ellen said and began to sob.

  Jake didn’t answer at his house, and no one answered at her house. Susan had a vision of Jake and Aunt Jenny, sitting happily on the deck, ignoring the phone because they couldn’t hear it.

  “Don’t even think of getting out and walking. You can’t leave me here.”

  “I can’t walk either,” Susan reminded her.

  Ellen gave a giggle that verged on hysteria. “We’re a great pair. I can barely breathe, and you can barely walk.”

  Susan was more concerned about Ellen’s pain and raspy breath than she wanted her friend to know. She dialed 911 and in as businesslike tones as she could muster told them where they were and what Ellen’s condition was.

  It seemed hours that they sat there, Ellen breathing hard and Susan shaking from cold and fear, but it was probably only minutes until they saw the flashing lights of a police car. Then an officer waving a flashlight made his way down the embankment to the car. “Anybody in there?” he called.

  “Yes,” Susan answered in a loud, strong voice. “Two of us. The driver’s hurt.”

  He jerked open the driver’s door and knelt beside Ellen. “How’re you hurt?”

  “Pain right here,” Ellen panted, pointing to her rib cage, “and it hurts to breathe.”

  “I’ll call an ambulance, but it sounds to me like a broken rib. You okay, lady?”

  “Yeah, didn’t even rebreak my broken ankle,” Susan said. She had gotten in the habit of telling people it was her ankle rather than the lower part of whatever bone it was. It required less explanation that way.

  The officer asked where they were headed and what had happened. When they told him a car deliberately ran them off the road, he shook his head. “Lot of kooks on the road these days. No telling what you did to make him mad.”

  Susan knew exactly what they’d done and who it was, but she didn’t want to go into it with this officer. What she wanted, she realized with a lurch, was Jake.

  “How’d you know to look for us?” she asked.

  “Funny thing,” the officer said. “’Bout the time your call came in, we also got an anonymous call about a car run off the road on Forest Park.”

  Susan shuddered. Whoever did this hoped they were dead. “Would you radio security at Oak Grove University and have them tell Jake Phillips what happened? Ask him to meet us at the hospital.”

  “Jake? Sure, I know Jake. Went to police academy with him. You a friend of his?” The officer’s face was lit with a smile.

  “I may not be for long,” Susan muttered.

  * * *

  Jake got to the hospital about an hour later, having broken every speed limit. The ambulance had transported Ellen, who was in the emergency room. Susan sat in the ER waiting room doing just that… waiting. She felt like she was waiting for her fate. Jake’s mood was neither comforting nor loving. “What in the hell have you been doing?” he demanded.

  “Ellen and I just went for a drink…”

  “Come on
, Susan, I’m not stupid. You went to The City Restaurant… and you went to check on that red-haired stranger. And you lied to me.”

  “He has a name. Kenny Thomas. And, Jake, I know I’m right. Brandy came in with two other coeds from Oak Grove. That’s how he found out about us, who we were. And that’s why he ran us off the road.” The words tumbled out as Susan tried desperately to convince Jake that she had not been merely willful and foolish.

  “He ran you off the road? Did you see him? Can you testify against him?”

  “Well… no. It was dark. I don’t know that it was actually him. But, Jake, it was deliberate. That car tailgated us, kept forcing Ellen to go faster, when it had every opportunity to pass us… It’s a wonder we weren’t killed.”

  “I’ve thought of that, Susan,” Jake said dryly. “Don’t try to play violins for me now. I’m glad you’re all right, and it sounds like Ellen has a broken rib and maybe a collapsed lung. Painful but not serious.”

  Susan hung her head. “Okay, so I put Ellen in danger, and we didn’t get anything for it.”

  “Sounds that way to me,” he said. “Could easily have just been some drunk ran you off the road.”

  Susan noticed that he had deliberately kept his distance from her. Where, she wondered, was that protestation of love she’d heard—what? not twenty-four hours earlier? “Aunt Jenny?”

  “I was at your house when the call came in. She called and invited me to supper. When I got there, she said you’d gone for a drink with Ellen, which sounded uncharacteristic to me—the two of you drink at your house if you want to share confidences.”

  “I’ve caused her all kinds of worry, haven’t I?”

  “Yeah, you have. Not to mention me. You made me a promise, you know—nothing risky.” For a minute, he thought she’d tell him she was sorry, but she didn’t. “And I never thought you’d lie to me. I guess that’s the worst of it.”

  Susan couldn’t look him in the eye. Finally she tried to turn the conversation in another direction. “There is one bit of good news,” Susan said, fishing in her purse. “Ellen got that Kenny Thomas’ card. We have a phone number.”

  “But not proof he’s doing anything illegal, from running a call-girl service to running cars off the road,” Jake said. “It’s probably all coincidence, but I’ll give this to Jordan. With the police finding you tonight, this thing’s public.”

  “Nobody else was doing anything,” she protested. “I’ve made progress.”

  Jake stared at her so long and hard that she dropped her eyes again. Finally, he spoke. “Susan, there’s something else. I took the moped to a repair shop, just to have it checked. Someone had tampered with the accelerator. It was stuck—that’s why you couldn’t slow down.”

  “Stuck?” she echoed him in amazement. Then she said softly, “Kenny Thomas. I think he was the one who tried to run me down that night. I’m convinced of it. But why me?”

  Jake shrugged and looked her squarely in the face. “Susan, your life is in danger. Someone’s tried to kill you three times. And to frame you for murder.”

  “And scare me to death with wilted plants and dead kittens.”

  “I think that’s someone else,” he said. “I don’t know how the two link up together.”

  “We better solve this murder quick so I can get my life back.” He didn’t have to try to scare her—she was scared enough without any help.

  Jake drove her home but declined to stay and eat the shepherd’s pie Aunt Jenny had kept warming in the oven.

  “It’s not your cooking,” Jake assured Aunt Jenny. “I’m just not hungry tonight.” He turned toward Susan and was almost formal when he said, “I’ll take you to the doctor’s office day after tomorrow.”

  Later Susan sat at the table, her unfinished meat pie before her. Finally, she raised her glass of wine and took a sip. “Great dinner, Aunt Jenny.” She was really thinking that, once more, things had gotten worse. Now she’d made Jake mad—and who knows when, if ever, she’d hear from him again. She doubted he’d just walk out of her life, but that possibility terrified her.

  Aunt Jenny read her mind. “I think you’ve pushed him too far, Susan,” she said, her hands on her hips as she stood before her niece. “Call him and apologize. All that man wants to do is protect you and love you.”

  Susan knew her aunt was right, but the depression that had settled on her was so great she couldn’t face lifting the receiver, figuring out what to say. “I’ll call in the morning,” she said.

  She went to bed exhausted in mind and body. When the phone rang, she fumbled with it groggily, putting the mouthpiece to her ear, then finally righting it and managing a sleepy, “Hello.” The clock said three, which made Susan more alert. No one would call at that hour unless it was an emergency. Had something gone wrong with Ellen?

  A high-pitched voice, obviously disguised, whispered into her ear, “Die, Susan Hogan. You must die.”

  “Who is this?” she demanded, clutching the phone tightly.

  There was a giggle, in the same high-pitched tone, and then the phone clicked in her ear.

  Whoever ran us off the road is telling me he’ll try again, she thought in panic. I should call Jake—but Jake is mad at me. Sleep would not come again, and she lay in bed crying from terror and a terrible sense of loss—the loss of her life. She muffled her sobs in the pillow, so Aunt Jenny wouldn’t hear. Susan didn’t want solicitous care right now—she wanted to be miserable. It was nearly dawn when she finally closed her eyes, and even then she slept fitfully, her dreams full of headlights racing at her… and Shelley.

  Chapter Thirteen

  With the morning sun streaming into her bedroom, Susan stretched tentatively… and realized that every muscle in her body was an aching mass of knots. For a minute, she was puzzled, and then it came back to her: the accident, the car that ran them off the road, Ellen in the hospital with a broken rib and a punctured lung, Jake angry with her, the threatening phone call in the night. She lay still a moment, knowing she had nothing to do the whole day, indeed could do nothing, and yet feeling a compelling urgency to get up, to get on with finding Missy Jackson’s murderer. She had to make this living nightmare end.

  Sitting up in bed, she was aware of soft voices in the kitchen. Jake must be here for breakfast, she thought with relief. He’s not going to stay mad at me. She threw her ratty old terry-cloth housecoat over the T-shirt in which she had slept, smoothed her hair knowing that the comb alone would never fix it and it needed washing. At least I don’t have to pretend for Jake. She did brush her teeth.

  Clomping into the kitchen on her crutches, Susan was amazed to see not Jake but Eric Lindler calmly seated at the table eating breakfast.

  “More eggs, Eric?” Aunt Jenny asked.

  “No, thank you, Miss Hogan. This is plenty. I’m not used to such good food in the morning. The dorm food… it’s not like this.”

  “Eric!” Susan’s sharp voice cut through their pleasantries.

  He jumped to his feet, almost stumbling over his chair. “Dr. Hogan! I came to see if you were all right.”

  Suspiciously, she asked, “Why did you think I wouldn’t be?”

  He reached across the table, grabbed the newspaper and brought it to her, with the headlines showing prominently: “Teachers Roll Car in Fort Worth.”

  Susan groaned as she took the paper and hobbled to the couch. The article described how the two very specifically identified Oak Grove faculty members had been “returning from downtown Fort Worth”—why didn’t they just say we’d been for drinks and be done with it?—and their car left the road, flipped once, and landed against a tree. “No reason for the accident has been determined as yet.”

  “No reason! Somebody ran us off the road, that’s the reason! Damn!” Susan threw the paper across the room.

  Eric was back at his plate, slathering ketchup on Tater Tots. “Ran you off the road?” He stopped, fork in midair. “Really, Dr. Hogan?”

  Susan stared at him. His surprise was
genuine, she thought. No matter what Aunt Jenny thought about him, he wasn’t the one who had tailgated them last night. Susan would have bet on that. “Yes, Eric, ran us off the road.” She thought for a moment. “Can you think of any reason someone would do that?”

  As Eric protested that he absolutely could not, Aunt Jenny interrupted. “Now, Susan, you leave this boy alone. He’s still grieving.”

  Susan thought seriously of telling Aunt Jenny to shut up, especially when she saw Eric grin, but her love of the old woman was too strong—and so were the manners that Aunt Jenny had drilled into her. Before she could think clearly what to ask Eric next, there was a knock at the door. Susan looked up, still expecting Jake, but saw instead the face of Judge John Jackson.

  “It’s the judge,” Aunt Jenny said, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Let him in,” Susan suggested.

  “Oh, my!” Aunt Jenny’s hands went to her hair, probably with the intent of smoothing it, but they accomplished just the opposite. “Oh, my, what’s he doing here at this hour?”

  “Maybe he’s hungry,” Susan said, “but Aunt Jenny, he’s looking straight at you through the glass panel in the door. Go let him in.”

  Eric sat spellbound by the whole scene.

  “Judge!” Aunt Jenny said, “What a surprise.”

  “Hope I’m not too early,” he said, walking right into the room. “Came to see about Susan.”

  “Join the party,” Susan muttered, and then she wondered all the more why Jake hadn’t joined the party. Sure, he knew she was all right, but was he so mad at her that he wouldn’t come to see how she was this morning?

  Instead of coming over to Susan, Judge Jackson stopped in front of Aunt Jenny and in a soft voice asked, “How are you this morning, Jenny?” He grasped her hand and held it just a shade longer than a handshake.

  “Oh, me? I’m fine. It’s Susan we’re worried about.” Nervously, she pulled her hand away.

  “Of course.” Turning toward Susan, the judge found himself staring at an unfamiliar young man, eating a hearty breakfast. “Son, I don’t believe I know you.”