The Perfect Coed (Oak Grove Mysteries Book 1) (27 page)

“Sorry, Dr. Hogan,” he said, but there was no apology in his voice. “I had to be sure you wouldn’t be trouble.”

After a few minutes, the pain had not subsided but she had become more steeled to it—or maybe greater fear had lessened her concentration on the pain. She couldn’t move much without jarring the ankle and reawakening the pain that was not to be stood, but she could turn just enough to see Eric.

He had seated himself at the table, as though he were waiting for dinner. In one hand he held a butcher knife, but she saw no baseball bat.

She wondered vaguely which was worse—bat or knife—and decided, almost with a hysterical giggle, that it didn’t matter. “What are you going to do, Eric?” she asked, knowing the answer to the question full well.

“I’ll have to kill you,” he said simply. “You and your aunt. Where is she?”

“Gone,” Susan lied. “She’s gone home, back to Wichita Falls.”

“That’s not true,” he said calmly. “She’s gone to Mineral Wells with the judge for dinner. Don’t lie to me, Dr. Hogan, or I’ll kick your ankle again.”

“How do you know where she’s gone?” Susan asked, curiosity for a moment overriding fear.

He grinned, looking proud of himself. “I have a spot in the crawl space under your house. I spend lots of time there, listening to what’s going on.”

“That’s how you always knew to appear when something had happened?”
And that’s why I always felt we’re being watched!

“Right.” He nodded in satisfaction and began tossing the knife back and forth in his hands.

Susan watched in horrified fascination as the beam from the outdoor floodlight occasionally glinted off the knife. The blade was long, tapered, and looked very sharp.

“Eric, if you kill me and Aunt Jenny, then what? You can’t stay here and go to school and pretend to know nothing about it. Everyone will suspect you.”

“No, they’ll think that man that Missy worked for did it. I know about him.”

“He’s in jail right this minute, Eric.”

He advanced toward her. “I told you not to lie to me again, Dr. Hogan.”

She almost winced, feeling another blow to her ankle coming, but she kept her voice calm. “No, Eric, call the Fort Worth jail. He’s there. He was arrested yesterday, and Brandy identified him as the man who beat her.”

“Brandy identified him?” His voice raised in interest. “They’ll think he killed Missy, too.”

“You killed Missy,” Susan said flatly.

He got up, agitated for the first time, and began to pace the floor. “Yes, I had to. She was dishonoring herself, going against the strictest of the commandments. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ And she was selling herself—selling herself”—his voice rose in hysteria—“I had to do it. I followed her to Fort Worth one afternoon, watched while she went into a hotel with a man. I hot-wired your car—I know how to do lots of things like that—and I took my baseball bat with me because I knew what I was going to find. When she came out of that hotel, I convinced her to get in your car. Then I pulled her behind the hotel, hit her in the head with the bat and just kept hitting and hitting. I remember feeling I had to beat the evil out of her. I had to do the Lord’s work.”

“Where was the man?” Susan decided to do anything she could to keep this frenzied young man talking.

“What man? Oh, the one in the hotel. Who knows? Probably sound asleep after satisfying himself—with my fiancé!” His voice rose in anger again.

Okay, Susan, keep him talking but try not to let him get worked up into a rage.

“Did you choose my car deliberately?”

“Yes. I knew it was your car. Then I drove back and parked it just where you left it. You didn’t know for two days.”

“Why didn’t you dump Missy on a road somewhere? Nobody would have found her, and you’d have been a lot safer.”

“No! She had to be found. The world had to know that she’d been punished, just like Brandy’s been punished. I was going to stop Brandy next because she corrupted Missy just like you did. But she was so evil, someone else did it for me.”

“Why me, Eric? Why did you choose my car?”

“Because you corrupted Missy too, Dr. Hogan. She was… well, different, after she took your class. She told me she didn’t have to do what I told her. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be a minister’s wife! And she said it was because you made her think in your class. I didn’t want her to think. I wanted her to love and follow me!” He pounded his fist into the table and sat down, as though momentarily dispirited.

Susan’s hopes rose, but when he spoke again, she shuddered at his derangement.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Hogan. I’d kill you now and get it over with, but I have to wait for your aunt.”

“Why wait for Aunt Jenny?” She almost bit the words off.
What are you trying to do, Susan? Convince him to go ahead and kill you now?

“Miss Hogan knows too. She’s always known.”

“Eric, she’s fed you, fussed over you. How can you hurt her?”

He spread his hands helplessly. “I don’t want to, but I have to. I’ve heard her say that she knows I killed Missy. She knew I trashed your plants and did all those other things. She hears the devil’s voice.”

So Eric Lindler had trashed the plants, not Kenny Thomas. It was Eric who tried to frighten her all along. “Did you call me on the phone, Eric?”

“Yes, ma’am. Got one of those things that disguise your voice on the phone. Works pretty good, don’t you think?” Again, he swelled with pride.

“And did you put that baseball bat here? The dead kitten? The plants?”

“I did all that,” he said, puffing with pride. “Pretty clever, don’t you think? I had you scared.”

Yeah,
Susan thought,
but never as scared as I am right now.
Her mind was working frantically. What could she do when Aunt Jenny came in? How could she save both of them? Jake should be here right now, and this wouldn’t be happening. She pictured him, sitting at home, drinking a beer and reading, and she both hated him and prayed for him to walk through the door.

* * *

At the Yellow Butterfly in Mineral Wells, John Jackson sipped bourbon on the rocks, while Aunt Jenny daintily tasted a glass of white Zinfandel. John had assured her it was sweeter than whatever it was that Susan drank—that white wine made Aunt Jenny pucker her lips. They had just ordered their dinners—steak for him, shrimp for her—and were waiting for their salads.

“Isn’t this a lovely place?” Jenny asked, looking around the dining room. It was small, with only ten round tables—she had counted them—that held four people each and no more. White linen cloths covered the tables, and there were heavy white linen napkins, real sterling silver, and fresh flowers on each table. The walls were wainscoted with dark wood and above that covered with a flocked, flowery paper. Heavy drapes covered the windows and were swagged at the top and highlighted with gold cord.

“Queen Victoria probably would have liked to eat here,” the judge muttered, “but it’s a mite fancy for my taste. I’ll take The City Restaurant.”

“Oh, no, we’re never going back there.”

He reached out and covered her plump hand with his own wiry fingers. “All right, then, the steak house at Ponder. Or maybe even Subie’s Cafe.”

“But you’re the one who picked this place! If you don’t like it…”

“I thought you’d like it,” he said, squeezing the hand he held, “and it pleases me that you do.”

The waitress brought their salads, explaining that they were wild greens dressed with raspberry vinaigrette.

“Raspberry vinaigrette?” the judge echoed. “Give me good old Kraft’s Italian.”

Jenny Hogan giggled merrily. But just as she took a forkful of greens that she couldn’t identify—they surely weren’t lettuce, why one was even purple!—Jenny suddenly said, “John, we’ve got to get back to Oak Grove. Susan’s in terrible trouble.”

The judge was completely dumbfounded. “Jenny, we’ve just ordered our dinners.”

“Bother the dinners! We’ve got to go
now!”

John Jackson stared at this woman who both fascinated and puzzled him, but something told him he’d better listen to her. He would later wonder if he left that steak behind because he believed Jenny about Susan being in trouble or simply because he would do anything for Jenny. “I’ll have to pay for the dinner.”

Their waitress was puzzled. “You didn’t like the salad? I can bring you soup instead.”

“No, no,” Jenny said, “please just hurry. We have to leave right away.”

Still holding the judge’s credit card, the young girl looked at Aunt Jenny. “Did you get an emergency call on a cell phone?”

“You might say that,” the judge said dryly, rising and holding the chair for Jenny. “Just bring me the ticket right away.”

The girl scampered away, and John called after her. “Where’s your phone?”

“Who are you going to call?” Jenny asked. “Susan won’t answer her phone.”

“If she doesn’t,” he said, “I’m going to call Jake.”

“Oh, my,” Jenny said, her voice tremulous.

“Jenny Hogan, don’t you faint on me.” The judge’s voice was stern.

* * *

Both Eric and Susan had been silent for a long while, Susan absorbed in pain and Eric in whatever thoughts were tormenting him when the phone began to ring.

“Don’t answer it,” he said.

“Everyone knows I’m home alone,” she said. “They’ll worry if I don’t answer it.” If she could only talk to Jake, she’d find some way to tell him that she was in trouble—real trouble.

“Don’t answer it,” he repeated.

Grinding her teeth, Susan listened to the phone ring eight times, then grow silent again.

“It won’t matter who it was,” Eric said. “Nobody can change what’s going to happen.”

Susan shuddered.

* * *

Jake was spending the evening just as Susan had pictured him—sitting in his favorite chair, reading
The Cattle Killing
by John Edgar Wideman, sipping on a few beers. He felt a certain complacency—the Missy Jackson case was closed, Brandy Perkins seemed to be recovering, Susan was safe and off the hook, and tomorrow he and Susan would have a long talk about what had gone on—or wrong—between them.
After all,
he reasoned,
crises like they’d gone through were bound to affect even the best of relationships
.
Maybe Susan hadn’t even realized she had lied to him.

When the phone rang, his first thought was,
Damn! I won’t go out again tonight!
“Phillips,” he barked into the phone.

“John Jackson, Jake. Don’t know how to tell you this, but Jenny is convinced Susan is in serious trouble. And she doesn’t answer her phone.”

Jake shook his head, puzzling out what he was hearing. “I thought you were in Mineral Wells eating dinner.”

The judge sighed. “We are… or were. Just about to be served the steak I’d ordered when Jenny announced we have to get back to Oak Grove right away. You know how she is.”

“Her intuition, right?” Jake said.

“Right.”

“Well, I don’t much believe in intuition in police matters, but then again Aunt Jenny…” Jake’s voice trailed off.

“She won’t let me talk any more. She’s pulling me out the door. Just go check on Susan, will you, Jake?”

“Sure, right away.”

In the car, speeding toward Oak Grove as fast as the judge dared drive over dark country roads, Jenny said, “I signed your credit card slip.”

“Forged my name?”

“No, I signed Jenny Jackson.” She said it without self-consciousness.

In spite of the situation, the judge laughed aloud. “Did you leave a good tip?”

“Fifty percent. I figured we owed them something extra after leaving the meal.”

The judge groaned this time. “We should have asked for to-go boxes,” he said.

* * *

As he pulled on his shoes and grabbed a jacket against the cool night, Jake Phillips felt a sudden rise of panic. If something happened to Susan, he’d never forget that he should have stayed there with her this evening, should have overcome his stiff-necked pride. He stuck his service revolver in his belt, checked his flashlight. The truck held rope, handcuffs and anything else he might need.

As he drove, squealing around the corner and speeding down the highway, taking corners at a wide turn, Jake considered whether or not he should have called Dirk Jordan’s office or his own people. He decided against it. Any of those calls would have brought cars with flashing lights and would have meant danger to Susan. If there was any trouble, he’d rather handle it by himself.

He parked a block from Susan’s house and walked softly along the edge of the houses, cursing the wide spaces between houses and praying no neighbors came out to demand what he was doing. At Martha Whitley’s house, he stopped and stood peering at Susan’s house. It was totally dark. Jake considered. Then he went back quietly to Mrs. Whitley’s front door and knocked softly. When she answered, he explained that he thought Susan might be in trouble and Mrs. Whitley should turn out all her lights, inside and out, and stay in the house no matter what alarming noises she heard. No, she should not call the police unless she heard him yell directly to her to do that.

She was flustered, protesting, until he said, “I can’t stand here and talk. Please do as I say.”

Jake looked through Mrs. Whitley’s flowerbed until he found a good-sized rock. Then he eased down the driveway and standing at the corner of the house, in the shadow of Mrs. Whitley’s house, he took careful aim and shattered Susan’s outdoor floodlight. The noise echoed through the night but brought no immediate response from inside the house.

* * *

Inside, both Susan and Eric jumped at the sudden sound of shattering glass, but Eric calmed immediately. “Someone’s here. But I told you, Dr. Hogan, it won’t matter.”

Susan wondered if he would simply kill her right now. If so, maybe she should yell a warning rather than lie here waiting to be slaughtered. But if she did that, Eric would come after her for sure, and it would be a question of who was outside and how fast they were. As she weighed her odds, Susan felt her heart pounding.

Eric paced the room, looking out the sliding glass door, then peering out the windows over the kitchen sink, but it was pitch black without the light. He whirled at an imaginary sound, peered where he thought he saw movement, but, in truth, he could see nothing. And it made him furious to know that someone was outside, trying to outsmart him, to stop him.