And suddenly it was over and people were walking away in twos and threes, the car engines starting amid the silence in a cruel benediction that life would go on. When Cheryl Beth felt the brush against her sleeve, she jumped.
“I’m sorry!”
The young woman beside her had short brown hair parted in the middle, a pleasant heartland face, and permanently sleepy eyes. She apologized again and introduced herself as Melissa.
“April said I should talk to you.”
“What about?”
She hesitated. “Lauren. I was with her that night at Brick Street.”
“The bar in Oxford?”
The woman nodded. “Lauren and I were best friends since high school. We both went to Miami. But I saw less of her after she started spending more time in Hamilton for the nursing classes. So we decided to catch up that day. We went riding, and then we changed and came into Oxford to have a few drinks.”
“When was this?”
“It was two weeks before…” She looked away at the casket, where only Lauren’s parents now stood wordlessly.
“Two Saturdays before she was killed?” Cheryl Beth asked.
“Exactly.”
Melissa said the bar was crowded and they were standing, drinking beers, when a man approached Lauren and started a conversation.
“He was very funny. He obviously knew how to talk to girls.”
“What did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a great look at him. At first, I was pretty much ignoring him. Then I got separated from Lauren and was talking with some friends at a table. He had a great body. It wasn’t that warm outside, but he wore tight jeans and a T-shirt. He was very well built. He had no hair. He was bald or shaved his head, and didn’t have a beard or anything.”
“Middle-aged?” Cheryl Beth said. “April told me that Lauren said it was a middle-aged man.”
“Lauren couldn’t tell age. This guy might have been a little older, but not like my father, you know?
He was obviously more interested in Lauren than me. I was used to that. She was always the pretty one.” She stifled a sob. “She told me he said he was an artist and wanted her to model for him.”
The skin on the back of Cheryl Beth’s neck tingled. It was enough to make her look around to confirm that they were alone.
“And Lauren said no…”
“That was when he got mean. By that time I was watching them. He called her names, really nasty stuff. I swear to God he went from Mister Charisma to Mister Creep in a heartbeat. She wasn’t mean to him. But she had a boyfriend and wasn’t interested in whatever this guy wanted. The bartender told him to leave and I went back over to Lauren to make sure she was all right.”
“Was he a student, Melissa?”
“I’d never seen him before around campus, but there are fourteen thousand students. Something about him didn’t fit in…” She dug in her purse and produced a cigarette. “Do you mind?”
“No.” In the presence of so much else that could kill a person, Cheryl Beth wasn’t going to give a healthy living lecture. Melissa lit up and took a long, deep drag.
“This reminds me,” she said. “Sense memory. I’m a theater major. Lauren and I ducked outside a few minutes later to have a smoke. And he was there, maybe half a block away, watching us. He was under a streetlight. His look was really unnerving. We got a couple of guys to walk us to our cars that night.”
“Lauren told April she thought this man was stalking her.”
“She told me the same thing. We talked on the phone and texted, I didn’t see her again. But I know she saw him once at Hamilton and again on campus at Oxford. Both times, he started following her.”
“Oh, my god. Why didn’t she go to the police? That would have been the first thing I did.”
“She thought she was being paranoid. She thought if she ignored him he’d go away.” The reality set into her tear-reddened eyes. “Do you think he was the one who…?”