The Nightingale Before Christmas(66)

“Yes—why?”

“I dropped by the student paper office today,” he said. “Only one person there holding down the fort, since the college is on Christmas break. But she didn’t remember anyone sending a reporter over to do a story on the show house. And they don’t have a Jessica on staff. She looked through all their files.”

He let me ponder that for a while.

“Maybe Jessica’s trying to wangle a spot on their staff by coming up with a good story,” I suggested at last. “Maybe she’s off writing up her exciting account of the show house where one of the designers was murdered. The paper’s on hiatus until classes start up again, so she’d have no reason to turn it in yet.”

“Maybe.” He didn’t sound as if he found the idea too plausible.

“Damn! I didn’t ask her for any credentials.” I was getting angry now. “I sent a press release over to the student paper, and a week later, someone shows up saying she’s here to write a story. I fell for it.”

“It’s a natural mistake.”

“She played me.”

“So let’s find her. Ask her what she was up to.”

“How?”

“I’ve called the student records office,” he said. “They have photos of all the students in their files. Go down there and they’ll show you all the Jessicas.”

“All the Jessicas? You think they’ll have a lot of them?”

“Did you know that between 1981 and 1997, Jessica was either the number one or number two most popular name in this country? And it hasn’t been out of the top two hundred since 1965.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

“So yes, there are quite a lot of them. And if none of the Jessicas look familiar, they’re going to let you thumb through the whole student photo file. Women students, anyway.”

“If she’s there, I’ll find her,” I said.

“And meanwhile, in case she’s not there. I’m arranging to bring in a sketch artist,” he said. “So call me as soon as you identify her … or when you’ve looked through all the records.”

So much for having a productive day.





Chapter 19

I drove over to the campus and prowled around until I found a parking space reasonably close to the administration building. If classes had been in session, I might almost as well have walked from Clay’s house, but most of the students were gone now. And the administration building wasn’t all that close to any of the shops and restaurants being overrun by holiday tourists and locals alike.

The student records office was festively decorated with tinsel and evergreens and a small tree in the corner, but I detected no signs of Christmas spirit in the single glum staffer sitting behind the information counter.

“You must be the one here for the Jessicas.” She stood up and walked over to open a little gate and let me behind the counter that separated visitors from staff. “We’ve got all the student photos in a database. Should be online, really, but our IT guys are always too backed up to get to it. I’ve got you set up here at this computer.”

She pointed to a desk toward the back of the room.

“Thanks,” I said. “Please tell me you’re not here right now just to let me in.”

“No,” she said. “My boss insists that we have someone here any day that’s not a federal holiday. I drew short straw this year. I’m Jen, by the way.”

“Meg.”

We shook hands. She showed me how to page through the photos. Then she drifted back to her desk, picked up her coffee mug, and came back to sit on the file cabinet beside me, where she could watch as I paged through the photos.

“Why are you looking for this kid, anyway?” she asked after a while.

“She pretended to be a reporter from the student newspaper,” I said. “But they don’t have a Jessica. And she might have information relevant to a case Chief Burke is working on.”

“The murder,” she said, nodding. “Is she a suspect?”

“No idea. Is this all the Jessicas you’ve got?”

“Guess she was using a fake name. I can show you the rest of the women students. Hang on a sec.”

She leaned over, punched a few keys. Large numbers of men and women students appeared on the screen. Another few keystrokes and the men disappeared.

“Help yourself,” she said.

It took an hour, during which I found out all about the family Christmas revels Jen’s boss was keeping her from enjoying, and her plans to look for a new job after the holidays.

Michael’s mother called me once, right in the middle of my search.

“What’s your family’s gluten situation?”