The Lesson of Her Death Read Free Page A

clothes. Above it a hundred postcards and snapshots were pinned to a corkboard. Jennie’s arm twined around the waists of dozens of boys, faces different, poses similar. Her dark hair seemed to be darker in summer though that might be a trick of Kodak convenience photography. She often wore it pinned back. Her sport was volleyball and a dozen pictures revealed her playing the game with lusty determination on her face. Corde asked if he could have one of these, a close-up of Jennie, pretty face glossy with sweat. Gebben shrugged. How Corde hated this part of the job, walking straight into the heart of people’s anguish.
    Corde touched several recent snapshots of the girl with friends. Gebben confirmed that all of them were away at other schools—all except Emily Rossiter, who was Jennie’s current roommate at Auden. Corde saw: her high school ID card. Ticket stubs from a Cowboy Junkies concert, a Bon Jovi concert, a Billy Joel concert, a Paula Poundstone show. A greeting card with a silly cartoon rabbit on the front offered her congratulations on passing her driving test.
    Corde pulled the chair away from her desk and sat. He surveyed the worn desktop in front of him, nicked, scratched, marked with her doodlings. He saw a bottle of India ink. A framed picture of Jennie with a scruffy cocker spaniel. A snapshot of her coming out of church one recent spring, maybe at Easter, blue crocuses at her feet.
    She died on a bed of milky blue hyacinths
.
    In a lopsided clay cup was a chewed yellow pencil, its eraser worn away. Corde lifted it, feeling beneath the thick pads of his fingers the rough indentations and the negative space of Jennie Gebben’s mouth. He rubbedthe wood, thinking that it had once been damp from her. He replaced the pencil.
    He went through her desk, which held high school assignments, squares of wrapping paper, old birthday cards.
    “No diaries or letters?”
    Gebben focused on the detective. “I don’t know. That’s where they’d be.” He nodded toward the desk.
    Corde again looked carefully. No threatening letters, no notes from spurned boyfriends. No personal correspondence of any kind. He examined the closet, swinging aside the wealth of clothes and checking the shelves. He found nothing helpful and closed the double doors.
    Corde stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, looking around him.
    “Was she engaged? Have a steady boyfriend here?”
    Gebben was hesitating. “She had a lot of friends. Nobody’d hurt her. Everybody loved her.”
    “Did she break up with anybody recently?”
    “No,” Gebben said and shrugged in such a way that Corde understood the man had no idea what he was saying.
    “Anybody have a crush on her?”
    “Nobody who knew Jennie would hurt her,” Gebben said slowly. Then he added, “You know what I was thinking? Since I got the call I haven’t told anybody. I’ve been working up courage. For all those people—her grandparents, her friends, my brother’s family—Jennie’s still alive. For all they know she’s sitting in the library studying.”
    “I’ll leave you now, sir. If you can think of anything that might help us I’d appreciate a call. And if you find any letters or a diary please send them to me as soon as you can. They’d be very important.” He handed Gebben one of his cheap business cards.
    Gebben studied the card. He looked up, sloe-eyed and earnest. “It’s going to be all right.”
    He said this with such intensity that it seemed as ifhis sole purpose at the moment was to comfort Bill Corde.
    Wynton Kresge sat in his office in the main administration building of Auden University. The room—high-ceilinged, paneled in oak—was carpeted in navy blue, pretty much the same color as that in his Cutlass Supreme though this pile was twice as thick. His desk was a large mahogany piece. Occasionally when he was on the phone listening to someone he had no desire to be listening to (which was pretty often), Kresge would imagine ways to get