Threads of Suspicion(108)
She glanced at David and caught an expression she hadn’t seen before, a touch of joyful pleasure. He no doubt would be walking out of here with a gift for Maggie.
“Jim Ulin?” David was asking. The guy ringing up two music composition books pointed through the adjoining door to the coffee shop.
She turned that direction into a long, narrow room, a low stage with a Karaoke Friday Night sign in bright blue neon, tables and chairs arranged around a counter for food and drinks, neatly forming a U in the center of the room. Muffins, brownies, soda, coffees, and . . . pizzas, which apparently could bake in a stack of toaster ovens. Eight of them, Evie counted. If she ran a coffee shop near a college, she’d be serving pizza and staying open until midnight too. The popcorn was free and self-serve, pouring out of a carnival-style stirring kettle.
It was late for the lunch crowd, and since it was Friday, the six college students at a front table were watching people walk by, drinking coffee, and debating lamest movies, from the fragments of conversation picked up by Evie. The four at a back table were playing a card game, the remnants of a pizza cardboard on an adjoining table, and two who looked like brothers were perched on stools on the stage, dueling with guitars, mostly running riffs.
A nice place that has the feel of a college hangout, Evie mused. The guy behind the counter had finished cleaning the coffeemaker and turned her direction with a smile. She didn’t need the nametag to know it was Jim from one of Jenna’s pictures. “I’ll take a black coffee and a brownie, and if you can spare it, a few minutes of your time on your next break.” She put her card down beside a ten-dollar bill.
It got a second glance, along with a puzzled nod. “Sure. Choose a table, I’ll bring your coffee and pour myself one.”
The brownie was huge and chunky with chocolate chips. The coffee came in a ceramic mug rather than styrofoam cup—they were obviously going the green route, using dishwasher energy instead of taking up landfill space. She did prefer her coffee in something solid. She pocketed the change he brought over with her order. “Thanks.”
Jim pulled out the opposite chair. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
On the tall side, lanky, probably basketball if he was an athlete. Sandy hair and some freckles. Twenty-nine, she guessed, still looking young but for the eyes that indicated he was probably the wisest young man around here. He made a good first impression.
“I’ve been asking questions around campus about Jenna Greenhill. We have,” she explained, nodding toward David, still in the music shop. “We were talking recently with Lynne Benoit and her mom.”
That got a reaction, the kind of subtle response that made a relaxed hand twitch a finger and the knee stiffen, with the eyes shifting away to look at anything other than the cop.
“I was wondering how soon it was after Jenna showed up on campus that she began causing problems for you.”
That turned his gaze back. Evie didn’t know anything more than what she had just implied, but Jim just filled in the entire rest of the story in the memories that flitted across his face. “There are two versions of Jenna around campus,” she added lightly. “One is kindness personified; the other wants to be the center of the universe and doesn’t mind poaching other girls’ boyfriends.” Evie offered a sympathetic smile for the tension showing in him. “I’m going to guess I just found my second Candy, someone who described Jenna to me as a ‘boyfriend-stealing cheater,’ and turned similarly unflattering from there. You didn’t like her, did you, Jim?”
“No. And to say that after she’s missing just puts a spotlight on those words the wrong way.”
“If it’s the truth, it’s just what was,” Evie replied matter-of-factly.
Jim glanced around the coffee shop, confirmed they weren’t being overheard. He wrapped his hands around his warm mug and said, “Jenna was college and ambition. I was this place, the music store, my old man. I’m likely never leaving this neighborhood, and I’m okay with that. It pays the bills. The same folks have been around here for thirty years and they’re good people. Dad and I are actually friends. But Jenna was looking and flirting and mostly, I think, bored. The fact Lynne was my choice startled her . . . I think it amused her.
“Maybe some of that with Lynne did start from familiarity—she’s been around my world since she was six, and she grows on you. I’ve always liked her, even if you have to wince sometimes at how she doesn’t understand people as they really are. Lynne’s not perfect, but she’s genuinely good. Jenna, well, the wrapper fools people. I’m not saying it’s not flattering to have a good-looking, ambitious, and smart woman pause and take another look at you. But a wise man knows if you take a bite of that, you’re going to get snapped by jaws that don’t let go. I wasn’t buying what she was dangling. And that annoyed her.