Student Body Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles by Susan Rogers Cooper available from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Selection of Titles by Susan Rogers Cooper available from Severn House

  The E.J. Pugh Mysteries

  ROMANCED TO DEATH

  FULL CIRCLE

  DEAD WEIGHT

  GONE IN A FLASH

  DEAD TO THE WORLD

  STUDENT BODY

  The Milt Kovak Series

  SHOTGUN WEDDING

  RUDE AWAKENING

  HUSBAND AND WIVES

  DARK WATERS

  COUNTDOWN

  BEST SERVED COLD

  STUDENT BODY

  An E.J. Pugh Mystery

  Susan Rogers Cooper

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by Susan Rogers Cooper.

  The right of Susan Rogers Cooper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8711-5 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-819-4 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-883-4 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Graham Pugh stood outside his dorm room door knowing two things: on the one hand, he was glad to be back from winter break; on the other, he was going to have to bite the bullet and kill his roommate.

  There was just no way he could go another semester in the same room as Bishop ‘Call Me Bish’ Alexander. He was an arrogant asshole with a frat-boy mentality that no fraternity would let pledge. So Graham was stuck with him, day in and day out. He would admit, if only to himself, that Bishop was not a bad-looking guy: almost as tall as Graham, at least over six feet, with black hair and blue eyes that seemed to draw women like a magnet. But a broken magnet. None of them stayed more than a week.

  Except Gretchen Morley. Gretchen was basically a female version of Bishop and, for the three weeks they were together, insisted the couple be dubbed ‘Grebish.’ Graham thought it sounded like a Kosher food item. No one ever, ever called them that. Maybe in a pique of self-loathing, Bishop had dumped Gretchen, something he’d never done with any other girl, to Graham’s knowledge, and Gretchen, being the female equivalent of Bishop, keyed his car twice and sent him a box of Ex-Lax brownies. Bishop, to Graham’s horror and delight, ate the entire lot. Graham moved into a friend’s room for the duration of that particular incident.

  But now, here he stood, contemplating murder. He knew a lot about murder, not from ever having committed one but from his mother’s penchant for solving them. He wasn’t so in awe of his mother for having this particular talent as he was in her ability to find so many dead bodies. How many murdered people does the average human being know, for God’s sake? he often thought. But maybe she wouldn’t get too involved in the murder of his roommate, being as how she was home in Black Cat Ridge and he was miles away in Austin at the University of Texas. Surely, even if she did figure out he did it, she wouldn’t turn him in. ‘Right?’ he asked himself. ‘Maybe not?’

  It was as he was contemplating these things that his dorm room door swung open and before him, in all his splendor, stood Bishop Alexander.

  ‘Hey, Gray,’ he said, shortening Graham’s perfectly respectable name to Graham’s continued annoyance. ‘Didn’t know you were back.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Graham said and pushed his way unceremoniously past his roommate.

  ‘I was headed out,’ Bishop said. ‘Wanna come with?’

  ‘No,’ Graham said. Then, thinking that his mother really hadn’t raised a total asshole, amended, ‘Thanks, but I’m tired. Need to unpack and stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, no doubt. Your mom send any goodies back with you?’ Bishop asked.

  Graham had one bag full of said goodies, but replied, ‘Nope. Not this time.’

  ‘Shit,’ Bishop, whose own mother’s idea of dinner was making reservations, said. ‘See ya!’ he called over his shoulder and was out the door.

  And Graham sat down on his bed, head in hands, and thought, Surely I can kill him and get away with it.

  Classes for the new semester started the next morning and he had a seven a.m. he hadn’t been able to avoid. So he unpacked, made a quick dash to the dorm’s cafeteria for a bite, then headed back to his room, read the syllabus for the seven a.m., checked to make sure he still had the right book and fell into bed. He was asleep in about two minutes – a feat he’d acquired at the age of thirteen but hadn’t been able to pull off since he started college.

  His alarm went off at six a.m. His eyes flew open and he wondered what the hell that noise was and why in the world anyone would want to wake up this early. Then he remembered his seven a.m. and struggled to a sitting position. He felt hungover but knew he hadn’t had anything to drink the night before. Damn early hour! he thought. He had no idea what Bishop’s schedule was and didn’t really care. He made his way groggily to the bathroom, did his morning ritual and was headed to his desk to get his books when he saw the mess on the floor by Bishop’s bed. His first reaction was: Did the idiot not make it to the bathroom? His second thought was: Oh, shit, what did I do in my sleep?

  Today was my day to sleep in. Well, actually, every day was my day to sleep in lately. The girls – all three of them – were fairly self-sufficient, fixed their own breakfasts and took turns driving the old minivan to school. My husband, who never wanted to admit to a certain amount of self-sufficiency, had finally decided that if he wanted breakfast it was obvious he was going to have to make it himself. On this Monday morning the girls left early because of Megan’s cheerleader practice, Alicia’s band practice and Bess’s need to find a nice quiet place to read. My three daughters – one by birth, one by adoption and one by fostering – were all either seventeen or about to be seventeen, and all three were seniors this year. Just the mere thought of the outlay of money that was ahead made my blood run cold. We were going to have four kids in college a
t the same time. The mind boggles.

  My husband Willis was out the door that morning without breakfast by six-thirty due to an early meeting with a client. It was at a coffee shop so I wasn’t terribly worried about his lack of calorific intake. I was asleep when the phone rang. Blissfully, soundly asleep.

  Nothing lasts forever. Soundly was gone and blissfully might never return, I discovered upon answering the phone. ‘What?’ I growled.

  ‘Mom! Oh, God, Mom! Help!’

  I sat up in bed. ‘Graham? What’s wrong? What’s happened? Are you OK?’

  ‘It’s Bishop, Mom. I think he’s dead!’ Graham said.

  I took the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Maybe I was still asleep. Maybe I was dreaming all this. ‘Graham?’

  ‘Yeah, Mom?’

  ‘Have you checked his pulse?’ I asked.

  ‘God, no! There’s blood everywhere!’ he said.

  ‘Have you called the police?’

  ‘Aw, well …’

  ‘Graham!’

  ‘Mom! I think maybe I did it. In my sleep,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘I’ve been wishing him dead, you know.’

  That I did know. He’d mentioned it several times over the winter break, even once saying all he wanted for Christmas was Bishop’s head on a platter, John the Baptist style.

  ‘Graham, listen to me,’ I said, using all my willpower to keep my voice calm and not start screaming. ‘You need to call the police. Whatever you do, though, do not tell them you think you may have done it in your sleep. Do not tell them you wished him dead. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Call the police,’ he said.

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  ‘That he’s dead?’ he asked.

  ‘Say you think something’s wrong with your roommate. Say that you woke up and saw blood but you were afraid to touch him. Tell the nine-one-one operator to call the police and an ambulance.’

  ‘OK,’ my son said. ‘But Mom?’

  ‘What, honey?’

  ‘What if—’

  ‘What if nothing. Do what the police tell you to do and call me on my cell. Your dad and I are on our way.’

  ‘OK. OK. Right,’ he said and hung up without a goodbye. Under the circumstances, I decided not to hold that against him.

  For once, it was a good thing Willis didn’t get the contract with the man he’d met for breakfast that morning, because it wouldn’t have done his reputation much good to cancel it immediately. I’d driven straight to his office to tell him about Graham’s call in person. I’d already packed two bags and had them tucked in the small trunk of my two-seater Audi. After Willis had calmed down enough to be rational, we headed to the school to let the girls know we were going to Austin. We had to pull them all out of class and, as one unit, and in unison, they said, ‘We’re going with you!’

  ‘We’re in the Audi!’ I said.

  ‘We’ll take the minivan!’ Megan offered.

  ‘The minivan won’t make it to Austin. It will hardly make it to Codderville,’ I said, mentioning the older town on the other side of the Texas Colorado River from our much newer town of Black Cat Ridge. The town where their grandmother, Willis’s mother, lived and the only place to which, so far, the minivan had been able to make.

  ‘We can go back and get my truck,’ Willis said.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get on the road!’

  So we checked the girls out of school, they ran home in the minivan to pack a quick bag (whenever Megan makes the claim of a quick anything, however, there is a universal rolling of eyes), and I followed them back in my Audi to secure it in the garage. Willis showed up in his entirely too big pickup truck that had room for all five of us – six if we needed to haul Graham around with us – and we headed west. Nothing is ever easy when you’re dealing with six people, especially when three of them are teenaged girls.

  It was one of those perfect winter days we often get in south central Texas. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the high seventies by noon and sweaters were being tossed on the floor of the pickup. I made sure everybody had their winter coats because, in Texas, you just never know. High seventies at noon, sleet by three. It happens. Trust me.

  Although Willis tends to drive like an eighty-year-old grandpa, we made record time and got to Austin in just over an hour and a half. Graham called me on my cell phone when we were little more than a half-hour out. ‘I’ll put you on speaker,’ I told him.

  ‘Dad’s with you?’ he asked.

  ‘And us!’ Megan shouted out.

  ‘Jesus, Mother! What the hell—’

  ‘Just tell us what’s happening,’ I interrupted.

  ‘He’s dead all right. That’s what the EMTs said anyway.’

  ‘How?’ Willis asked.

  ‘Stab wounds. Lots of ’em,’ Graham said, his voice low. Then he said, ‘Mom—’

  ‘What do the police say?’ I interrupted yet again. I didn’t want his sisters thinking he might have done such a horrible thing. I knew, obviously better than my son, that there was no way in hell he could have done this – awake or asleep.

  ‘They just asked me lots of questions. Like when I last talked to him, or saw him, and did I hear anything during the night. Stuff like that.’

  ‘And did you? Hear anything?’ Willis asked.

  ‘No. I was asleep,’ Graham said.

  ‘Where are you now?’ I asked him.

  ‘At that bagel place across the drag,’ he said. Graham’s dorm was on the south side of campus, close to Guadalupe Street, with McMillan Hall, the dorm Graham had been in since his freshman year, on one side and businesses that catered to the college crowd on the other. That section of Guadalupe Street that bordered the university was universally called the drag.

  ‘We’ll be there as quickly as possible,’ I told him, said goodbye and rang off.

  ‘You’re going to have to drop us off and try to find a parking space,’ I told Willis.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. He’d lived in that same dorm back in the early eighties when the two of us had met. Shortly thereafter we’d moved into a small apartment together, but we both knew that parking anywhere around the university was difficult if not impossible.

  We left our bags in the pickup as we’d need to find rooms for all of us since there was no way Graham would be allowed back in his dorm room. The girls and I hopped out of Willis’s truck on the drag and headed to the bagel shop. Graham was sitting at a table by the window that overlooked the drag, keeping an eye out, and waved half-heartedly when he saw us.

  I’m sure the last person my son wanted to see was Alicia, our foster daughter. The two had become an item a year or so back – an item that thankfully didn’t last long. Willis and I thought about forbidding it but knew that would just make the idea all the more attractive. When Graham’s old girlfriend came back into town, the relationship between Alicia and Graham had died a natural death. The two had pretty much avoided each other since then. Difficult to do, however, since when Graham was home they lived in the same house. Somehow, they managed it.

  Alicia hung back as Megan, Bess and I rushed into the bagel shop and accosted Graham with hugs and questions. He allowed the hugs – just barely – and shrugged at the questions.

  Finally he said, ‘Y’all know as much as I do.’

  ‘You haven’t talked to the police again?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Do they know where you are?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘You didn’t tell them where they could find you?’ I asked, getting a little anxious.

  ‘They didn’t ask,’ was his reply.

  ‘So who did it?’ Megan asked, wide-eyed.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ Graham demanded a trifle loudly. OK, a lot loudly. The bagel shop was pretty crowded this mid-morning and many heads turned at his
outburst.

  Backing off, Megan said, ‘Jeez, I was just asking! Lighten up!’

  ‘Lighten up?’ he said, standing and fisting his hands at his side. ‘Lighten up? You lighten the fuck up!’

  ‘Graham, keep it down,’ I suggested, touching his shoulder.

  He pulled away from my touch. ‘I just want to get the hell out of here!’ he said, and I could see he was trying hard to hold back his emotions. It wasn’t working, but he was trying.

  Willis found us about then and went to his son, embracing him. That’s all it took. Graham broke down, clinging to his father and sobbing.

  I took the girls, all three of them, and moved out to the drag.

  I left all four kids with Willis and crossed Guadalupe to Graham’s dorm, taking the elevator to the fourth floor, the location of the room shared by my son and the victim – formerly Bishop Alexander. There was a uniformed policeman at the door, barring my way.

  ‘I’m the mother of the roommate of the victim,’ I said. ‘I need to let whoever’s in charge know we’re taking Graham to a hotel.’

  The uniform nodded and called into the room. ‘Detective, roommate’s mother’s here.’

  A man broke away from all the others who were standing around looking down at, I presumed, the body of my son’s roommate. When the detective moved toward me it left an opening with a view of the body. I craned my neck to see what I could see – not because I’m one of those people who like to look at car wrecks on the freeway but because I have a knack, you might say, for solving crimes. The detective frowned at me and I straightened up. He probably wouldn’t understand.

  He was maybe fifty years old, tall and nice-looking, with salt-and-pepper hair and a Magnum, P.I. mustache. He looked like he worked out. There was no tummy hanging over his belt, which had a Texas star as a buckle. He was wearing an actual suit, which, to my untrained eye, looked expensive. Since my husband doesn’t own a suit, I have no real experience in that area.

  ‘Mrs Pugh?’ he asked, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Nate Champion.’

  I shook the proffered hand and acknowledged that, yep, that was me. ‘I need to take my son somewhere, a motel or hotel. Needless to say, he’s very upset.’