Threads of Suspicion(29)

Evie appreciated the image Robin was sketching.

“By the second year, it’s ‘we’re dating.’” Robin put it in air quotes. “Steve had made a point to meet her parents, and you could tell when around them, this is a couple that’s going to be exchanging rings. I think he was the one making sure she got her degree without distraction before things progressed. She would have already been engaged if she could have made the decision.

“He wasn’t Mr. College trying out his wings, figuring out who he was and what he wanted. He was Steve Hamilton, solid guy, career figured out, plan in mind, and Jenna was part of the plan. They were cute together, happy, content.” Robin grinned. “That was so not a common thing on a college campus. Her friends were envious, me included, in a good way. She had a good thing and knew it. She wasn’t risking that by making a mistake, getting her head turned by looking at another attractive guy.”

“They were a solid couple,” Evie reiterated. She tried to word the next question carefully. “Was anyone else interested in Jenna? A guy wishing Steve wasn’t around?”

Robin thought about it. “Sure, there were guys who were interested in her. She was smart, but you could have a conversation with her. She was nice, and people noticed that. She had a relatively narrow course subject—maybe sixty people at most taking the same classes. There were guys she would have lunch with who formed a study group of sorts. Jenna mentioned a lot of them, but they were mostly tied to some class or another. She would occasionally connect two friends for a date. But if anyone was looking at Jenna with more than mild interest, she never mentioned it, and I never picked up on it.”

Evie thought there was a line there worth pursuing further. “Was Jenna interceding in a friend’s life? Someone got pregnant and was deciding what to do, a bad boyfriend breakup, someone not going to make the grades to keep scholarship money, that kind of drama coming into Jenna’s life via someone else?”

Robin smiled. “I would be most of that, with the exception of the pregnancy. My boyfriend and I were all over the map—together, then not, back together again. Or my roommates changed again and some worked out well, while others did not. College is about highs and lows when you’re twenty, emotions tended to run intense, and I wind up easily under stress. Add in finals week, the papers you had to write—there were pills floating around to keep you awake, others to wind you down. Jenna didn’t go there, but friends of hers would, creating its own unfolding mini-crisis. If you needed to chill out about your life, you ended up visiting Jenna and dumping your troubles on her.”

Robin paused, thought about it, then said, “I can give you the names of those who would’ve been in that circle of friends, but honestly it was typical college stuff. Tragedies at the time, but looking back, nothing out of the ordinary. Nobody was dealing with a violent ex-boyfriend or a suicidal depression or a body-image illness like bulimia. It was having to tell your parents you got a C or D on a test, seeing your ex-boyfriend now dating one of your used-to-be-girlfriends, that kind of tragedy. Not big-sized crises. No one getting arrested, or even getting particularly drunk and stupid. Jenna stayed above that churn, but she was there as a friend when you needed her.”

Evie was getting a good picture of her missing girl. “Jenna was a loyal friend.”

“Exactly. To me, with Steve, with others around her, Jenna stuck with you. She wasn’t a fair-weather friend.”

“Thanks, Robin. This was helpful.”

“Truly?”

“Yes.” Evie placed a card with her contact information on the table. “If you think of anything else that might shed light on what Jenna was like, or remember a particular friend she was helping around the time she disappeared, send me an email. Or just turn on a camera and chat about her, like you’ve done today, and send the video to me.”

Robin fingered the card. “You’ll let me know how your investigation turns out?”

“I will,” Evie assured her.



Evie added a few impressions of Robin to her notes as David drove them to Brighton College, where she would meet up with Ann.

“Jenna was a good kid,” David summed up. “Not the party girl or the leader, but a linchpin among her friends.”

“A good description.” Evie considered a conclusion, tried it out in words. “I think Jenna would have opened her door that night, even at midnight, even if it was a guy, if it was someone she recognized.”

“She’s thinking like a friend.”

Evie nodded. “A boyfriend of a friend of hers—‘We broke up again tonight, you’ve got to talk some sense into her, Jenna,’ that kind of pitch.” Evie rolled the idea around in her thoughts, but it didn’t want to settle anywhere. She knew names of Jenna’s friends, only they weren’t individuals with personalities yet, just names. She needed to talk with more of them to better fit her conclusion.