If Only She'd Loved Him

Chapter 15

Friday 6:30 pm

Jean's body was rigid, her hands clenched tight at her sides.  Matt thought she looked like a tin soldier ready for a real war.  Almost he reached out to her, but then he stuffed his hands into his pockets, removing them from the temptation of stroking those curls.

"We need to do something, Matt," Jean said.

"I know, but the question is what?"  Action always suited him better than words, so he didn't stop for an answer, but began to stride towards her car.  She had to hustle to keep up with him. The vinyl on the seats cracked further apart as they sat down.  Matt ignored the sound.  Turning the key, he listened to the engine purr.  Jean might not care how her car looked, but she did care how it ran. 

"How well do you really know your roommate?" he asked, pulling out of the parking lot.

"Huh?"

"I mean it.  How well do you really know Megan?  I know you two have lived together for a while.  Paul commented on it one night."  Matt didn't mention that Paul was making a joke about long term roommates 'sharing' at the time.

Jean ignored the knot of anger that built up in her hearing Paul's name.  "A year and a half.  I think I know her pretty well after that much time, lots better than he does anyway."

"Hmmm."  Matt didn't respond only stared at the road as he drove back towards Jean and Megan's apartment.

"What do you mean hmmm?"

"I mean people keep secrets." Matt was getting into this, he felt like Charlie Chan, and resisted the urge to call Jean "number one son."

"And you think Megan's disappearance might be because of some secret in her past?" Jean scoffed. "Come on, Matt, Megan was kidnapped.  I was there."

Matt hung on like a bulldog; he was too intrigued by the possibilities to give up this line of questioning.  "But what did you really see, some guy in the dark, no help there, and Megan went with him willingly, that's fishy."

Jean's eyes narrowed.  "She thought he was your roommate," she pointed out.  Gripping the seat cushion next to her, she dug her nails into the vinyl.        

Mystery solved as to why her car seats were in such bad shape, Matt thought to himself.  "Just suppose," he said out loud.  "Don't look at me that way, Jean-Genie.  Just suppose that she tricked you?  Called out Haverson's name on purpose so you'd blame him.  What if she knew who this guy was all along?  What if she wanted to disappear?"

"That's ridiculous!  She'd never do that!  You didn't know her, I did.  She wouldn't do something like that.  What you're suggesting is impossible."

"Ah," Matt smiled, "but when nothing is left but the impossible, the impossible is the answer," he replied smugly, butchering a quote from Sherlock Holmes.  Jean rolled her eyes.  English majors like quotes to be correct.  Matt kept interrogating her.

"How was Megan doing in school?  Top of her class or bottom rung?  Was she passing all her classes? 

Momentarily confused, Jean answered the only question she knew for sure. "Yes, of course she was passing her classes."  Her voice slipping a bit, she conceded, "Well, maybe not all of them, her grades went downhill a bit this term, but she's got a rough schedule."  Curls flying, she tossed her head back.  "Besides," she argued, "it's not like Megan to just run away, and she sure isn't in the secret service or the mafia or anything.  There is no reason why she would want to disappear."

"No reason we know of, but what if there is one we don't?" Matt made up his mind. "I think we should go through her things, see what we can find out."

"So you can feel up her underwear?  No way!'

"Jean, be reasonable.  There has to be some clue why Megan disappeared, willingly or unwillingly.  Don't you think we owe it to her to find out why?" 

"Well," she paused for a moment.  "I guess you've got a point, but I draw the line at dusting for fingerprints, and I'm going to do her drawers solo."

"I'm sure you do a lot of things solo, and I'd like to watch while you did them," Matt muttered under his breath, just a sliver too quietly for her to hear. 

"Good, then we've got a bargain.  We'll find out the truth yet."

Jean nodded.  It was like making a deal with the devil.  If the devil was a hot, highly irritating twenty something, but so far the devil was the only one on her side.  The police and Megan's own boyfriend didn't seem to care. Not that the last one was a shock to her, she'd always known that Paul was an egotistical self-centered twiglet of a male.  She nodded her head. 

"If you think it'll help," she said.

"Can't hurt," Matt replied with a smile, showing one crooked tooth.  That tooth marred the perfection of his mouth.  Instantly, Jean loved it, and hated herself for doing so.  Matt was taken, taken, taken! she reminded herself.  Plus, he called her the dumbest nickname on this earth, and he didn't really believe her.  He was just humoring her while he tried to find out the truth about his roommate.  Still, Jean loved that rebel in his mouth, that lone tooth who hung in and refused to give in, refused to march in straight white dental lines.  She smiled back with teeth forced to conform, straightened by years of metal and pain.

Spying Jean's apartment, Matt drove the car up onto the curb and across it.  Jean frowned as she looked at her partially turfed lawn, but Matt was practically bounding in his excitement at getting to play detective. He reached her door first.  Jean took her time.  Her mind was trying to digest a whole another possibility about Megan's disappearance, but one that just didn't make sense to her.  Matt had to be wrong about Megan, didn't he?  After all she'd known her since she was a freshman struggling with Economics.  That was over three years ago.  And those were college years.  College years were like dog years, each one counted for at least seven years' worth of experience.  At least in Jean's prep-school sheltered mind-they did. 

Finally, she got the key turned in the slot, and she and Matt went inside the apartment. Trying to be a good hostess, Jean shoved most of the magazines off the glass coffee table in their living room and offered Matt a drink.  Studying the room for clues, he accepted her offer with a nod of his head.  She slipped into the kitchen, followed closely by him.  The cell phone on the counter caught both their eye, but it was Jean who reached it first.  Three missed messages flashed, accusing her in silence.