Oak Grove University is purely a creation of the author's imagination. Although set within easy distance of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, it is not meant to be any specific school within the North or Central Texas regions. Naturally, my knowledge of various schools in the area went into the creation of Oak Grove but to make specific connections between it and a real university would be a mistake. And to place the murder herein on a specific campus would be a total mistake.

Similarly, the characters in this book bear no relation to any real people, on or off Texas campuses.

For Bobbie Simms, who would have liked this book and been proud of me.

I miss you yet, Bobbie.

The Perfect Coed

Susan Hogan is smart, pretty—and prickly. There is no other word for it. She is prickly with Jake Phillips and her Aunt Jenny, the two people who love her most in the world. And she is prickly and impatient with some of her academic colleagues and the petty jealousies in the English department at Oak Grove University. When a coed’s body is found in her car and she is suspected of murder, Susan gets even more defensive.

But when someone begins to stalk and threaten her—trying to run her down, killing the plants on her deck, causing a moped wreck that breaks her leg—prickly mixes with fear. Susan decides she has to find the killer to save her reputation—and her life. What she suspects she’s found on a quiet campus in Texas is so bizarre Jake doesn’t believe her. Until she’s almost killed.

The death of one coed unravels a tale of greed, lust, and obsession.

Chapter One

Susan Hogan drove around Oak Grove, Texas, for two days before she realized there was a dead body in the trunk of her car. And it was another three days before she knew that someone was trying to kill her.

On the second day, she noticed a slightly unpleasant, sweet-but-foul odor in the car as she drove south on Main Street, headed for the Oak Grove State University campus and her eight o’clock American lit class. Susan’s 1998 Honda Civic often had mysterious odors that were all her own fault. Her mind ranged over the possibilities—leftover spaghetti and meatballs that she’d put in an icebox dish to bring to school for lunch, maybe a to-go box from her favorite Thai restaurant in Fort Worth, spilled coffee since she drank hers with cream.

No matter. She was late for her class, so she opened the windows to let the cool air of the October morning blow through the car as she passed through the town. Oak Grove was one of those towns kept alive and even attractive by the presence of a small university. Main Street was landscaped with trees, benches, and some brick paving. Boutiques and small cafes sat next to a bookstore, a lawyer’s office, and the traditional old brick-and-stone bank. Just before the campus, the street curved uphill through a city park. It was, Susan always thought, a perfect place to live and teach. She didn’t really care if the university was second-tier, not as prestigious as some of the bigger schools in the state. She’d been here almost eight years, and Oak Grove was home by now.

“I’ll clean the car tonight,” she told herself, “before Jake sees it or smells it.”

Her thoughts wandered to Jake Phillips. He was the police chief on the Oak Grove campus but more than that, he had been Susan’s lover for two years. That he loved her, she had no doubt; that he might get tired of her high jinks and stubbornness was a thought that lingered in the back of her mind. Sometimes she wondered if she kept the relationship because it irritated her department chair, John Scott, that she was involved with someone with no more than a community college two-year degree. Well, maybe at first, but she knew now she was hooked. She needed Jake in her life.

As she drove onto campus, Susan looked at the seemingly endless construction, adding new imitations to the lovely old red-brick, red-tiled roofs of the original buildings. The administration had been on a construction jag in the last few years, adding buildings so fast it made the head spin, a few with ornate, out-of-places arches. But for the most part there was an attempt at consistency. For all her sometime rebellion at academic restrictions and prejudices, Susan always felt a sense of being home when she arrived on campus.

She was late, she reminded herself. Parking in the faculty lot behind Baker Hall, the liberal arts class building, she sprinted to her class. Her twenty or so college juniors looked ready to bolt for the door. Casually, she walked in, said good morning, and began her lecture on Emily Dickinson. As usual, the girls were interested, scribbling frantic notes; the boys glanced out the windows and chewed their fingernails in boredom. Susan was as happy as they were when the hour ended. Next time she’d cater to the boys and talk about Walt Whitman.

Caught up in a departmental meeting, at which Scott lectured on the importance of faculty maintaining their dignity, among other things, as well as planning for her afternoon graduate seminar and keeping office hours, Susan forgot about the smell in her car. During office hours, three students had to see her privately to explain why it was absolutely impossible for them to turn their papers in that day. Another boy came to explain the plagiarism in his paper about Nathaniel Hawthorne.

“My mother helped me write it,” he said.

“Then your mother stole from one of the leading Hawthorne scholars,” Susan said icily. The boy’s grade remained an F.

Then Brandy Perkins appeared in tears to report that she had missed Susan’s noon class on women’s lit because her roommate, Missy Jackson, hadn’t come home the night before and she was too worried to concentrate.

Susan wanted to suggest that she call the roommate’s boyfriend’s apartment, where she’d probably find the girl. Staying out at night wasn’t all that unusual for coeds these days. But instead she asked, “If you’re that worried, have you called her parents?”

A shake of the head. “I didn’t want to scare them.”

Susan doubted the Jacksons scared easily. They had been one of about six parents who called to complain about Susan’s ideas in the women’s lit class she taught last spring. She was, according to the Jacksons, corrupting young minds and turning them away from their faith. She had lectured on Carolyn Heilbrun, women’s activist, professor, free spirit, and author of the Amanda Cross academic mysteries, and as she recalled, Missy had been one of those particularly taken by Heilbrun’s life story and her book,
Writing a Woman’s Life.

Dark circles under Brandy’s eyes suggested that she had indeed spent a sleepless night, and Susan somehow suspected there was more going on here than a roommate who spent the night with her boyfriend. Brandy’s manner—secretive and yet scared—sounded an alarm to Susan.

“Have you called the campus police?”

Another shake of the head. “If she’s okay, think how embarrassing that would be.”

And if she’s not?
“I think your roommate is probably fine, and I think you should come to class from now on. It’ll keep your mind off worrying, and you might get more out of it than you think.”

She was in the midst of her afternoon seminar, listening to a senior defend her paper on Edith Wharton, when Mildred, the department secretary, stuck her head in the classroom door.

“Dr. Hogan, I’m sorry to interrupt…”

It was an unwritten rule that no class was ever interrupted, except perhaps in case of fire. Susan whirled on Mildred. “Yes?” Her tone barely hid her surprise—and a bit of indignation.

“Mr. Phillips, the chief…” Mildred began to stammer, and Susan wanted to urge her along. “He’s on the phone. Says… well, he says he has to talk to you now. It can’t wait twenty minutes until class is out.” She looked a little brighter. “I asked him to wait, but he said no.”

Jake calling her out of class? Susan didn’t know whether to be angry or worried.
She gave the class a reading assignment from Wharton and dismissed them.

Running to the office, she knew that she was at least a little bit scared. When she picked up the phone, she demanded, “What is it?”

Jake was businesslike and clearly impatient. “Susan, when did you bash the trunk of your car? I can’t open it with my key.”

“Why are you trying to open my trunk?” she asked, relieved that he wasn’t telling her that her house had burned down or some equally major catastrophe had happened.

“Because,” he said with ice in his tone, “we’ve had four complaints of a really foul odor coming from your car. I got a thousand problems this morning—someone reported a missing coed, someone’s parked in the dean’s parking space. I don’t have time to pry open your trunk and discover a five-day-old takeout order of Thai food.” Now he was really impatient.

Susan could see him, his blue eyes that icy color they got when he was angry or upset. He’d be running his hand across his burr haircut. That wonderful lopsided grin, under the nose bent by too many breaks in high school football, would be missing, and his mouth would be in a grim straight line.

“I didn’t leave any food in the trunk!” she responded indignantly, her fear turning to anger. “Want me to come pry it open? Just give me a crowbar and watch me go.”

“What happened to the trunk?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. I noticed a couple of nights ago when I came out of the library that it had a new dent, but I didn’t need to get into the trunk, and I sort of forgot about it. I suppose someone backed into it.” Susan’s car had several dents, which always made Jake nervous because he drove a Toyota pickup in perfect condition.

“Just give me permission to open it. I’ll call you back. But, Susan, if it’s Thai food…” His voice drifted off.

“Okay. You have my permission.”

She thought she’d just go back to her office, collect her things, and head for her car. But Ernie Westin stopped her. Susan and Westin were locked in a race for tenure, a race he periodically tried to prove to her that she was losing. Westin had almost convinced her that the tenure committee would not approve all eligible candidates because that might indicate a lack of credibility on their part. And the automatic pay raise that comes with tenure would stretch the department’s budget. She wasn’t sure she believed him but she was working as hard as she could on her publication record, which now consisted only of articles. Tenure review committees always looked for an academic book, and she was working on a book about Zane Grey, hoping to prove that his novels were not potboiler westerns but carefully constructed works, filled with sexual tension and symbolism. Ernie was working on a study of Greek tragedies.

“I have a contract for my book,” he said. “Do you?”

He stood, trying to look casual by leaning in the doorway, his eyes darting toward her and then away again. Susan often thought he resembled a toad, with his round belly, prominent eyes, and raspy voice. He was rapidly going to both fat and middle age and had that kind of gray complexion associated with ivory-tower academics who never let the sun shine on them. He was also a whiner. She bet he read all his class lectures, in a monotone, from his notes and then wondered why there were no questions. Who cared? Susan thought tenure committees should sit in on classes rather than just review publications, but the world didn’t always go Susan’s way.

She moved past him toward her desk. “No, Ernie,” she said with as much patience as she could muster. She really wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. “I’ve been too busy preparing for classes to work much on it.” There it was, that old academic dilemma, publish or perish, which didn’t encourage great classroom preparation.

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