SEVENTEEN
It took Julia three hours Saturday morning to track down Michelle O’Dell’s parents, Richard and Gina. She debated phoning ahead, but figured she’d get more information if she came to their door.
The O’Dells lived in a modest San Diego neighborhood near the air force base, filled with post-World War II bungalows. As many houses as had been let go had been remodeled. Julia couldn’t tell if the neighborhood was on an upswing or a downswing. The O’Dells’ place hadn’t been remodeled, but was tidy and well maintained. Flowers flourished in pots and in the ground.
Julia rang the bell. A woman answered with a cautious smile. “Mrs. Gina O’Dell?” Julia asked.
“Yes?”
Julia held out her card. “I’m Julia Chandler with the District Attorney’s Office. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk about an old case I’m working on.”
Mrs. O’Dell opened the door. She was a trim, attractive woman in her late fifties, but moved with the pain of arthritis. “Ms. Chandler, please come in. May I get you coffee? Water?”
“You don’t need to go to any trouble. I won’t be long.”
Mrs. O’Dell waved her comment away. “Come into my kitchen. It’s the coziest room of the house, and I have cookies in the oven.”
“Thank you.”
The short hall that led from the entry to the kitchen in the back of the house was filled with pictures, floor to ceiling. Half were old black-and-whites of ancestors; the other half were of a girl growing up. Julia stopped to look at a pretty girl in pigtails, this picture taken when she was eight or nine, her two front adult teeth too large for her face. Another picture showed a more mature, beautiful girl of about sixteen with long blond hair and exquisite blue eyes. Michelle grew from pretty girl to beautiful teenager. She could have been a model.
Mrs. O’Dell noticed Julia looking at the photographs and smiled. “That’s Michelle, my daughter. Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Very.”
“Smart, too. She’s at Stanford.”
“Impressive.”
Julia sat at a fifties-style table, called “retro” today and available at stores like Ikea, but this was an original. The red vinyl on the chairs had been painstakingly cared for.
Julia sat in the chair Mrs. O’Dell indicated and didn’t object to the coffee she poured. After her late night, she could use a cup. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“What can I help you with?”
“Do you remember a friend of your daughter’s? Jason Ridge?”
Mrs. O’Dell shook her head slowly. “Poor boy. His death was so tragic, so sudden. She lost her two best friends the same year.”
“You knew him well?”
“For a time. He and Michelle met at a dance, and he was smitten with her. A lot of boys were, but Jason seemed smart, too. Michelle didn’t particularly care for boys her own age, much to my dismay. She said they were immature and dumb. When she brought Jason home regularly, we were pleased.”
“According to the newspaper reports, Michelle and Jason were no longer seeing each other when he died.”
“They’d broken up about four months before that. But they were still friends. He came over several times after they broke up. I think he still wanted to work things out, but Michelle…” She sighed and smiled. “It was okay. Eighteen these days is too young to be serious. And Michelle had been accepted into a special Stanford program. She graduated a year early. Very smart, my girl.”
“I’d like to talk to Michelle about Jason, but I couldn’t find her number at Stanford.”
“Can I ask why? Is there something wrong?”
“No, not at all. But I’m investigating another-” Julia fumbled. She hadn’t expected to have to make up a story. “Um, another similar death and I wanted to ask people who knew Jason before he started using steroids if they saw a change in him prior to his death.”
Mrs. O’Dell said, “It’s a shame that young people today have so much pressure on them to succeed. Jason’s father pushed him, harder than I felt was healthy. But I wasn’t his mother, I couldn’t very well tell the man to go easy on the boy. I think that’s why Jason liked coming over here. The peace.”
“You have a lovely home.”
She beamed in the praise. “It’s small, but we don’t need anything more. We’ve been here for thirty-two years, since the day we came home from our honeymoon.”
“Is your husband home?”
“He plays golf on Saturdays. He’s retired military. Supply sergeant, not combat, but the pay and benefits were good. We could have moved, but why? Now that Michelle is in college, we can travel a little and afford to send her to a top school. We don’t need a bigger place.”
She rose and shuffled to a desk in the corner of the kitchen. She copied information from a Rolodex card onto a notepad and brought it to Julia. “Here is Michelle’s phone number and address at Stanford. She lives in an apartment off-campus.”
“Does she visit?” Julia wanted to meet with her face-to-face. She could better assess answers when she could look the person in the eye.
“Not as much as I would like.”
Julia finished her coffee. “Thank you so much for the coffee, Mrs. O’Dell.”
“No trouble at all.”
Mrs. O’Dell walked Julia to the door. She was about to say her good-byes when she remembered something Mrs. O’Dell said when she first asked about Jason. “You said Michelle lost her two best friends the same year. Jason and who else?”
Mrs. O’Dell’s face clouded. “Shannon. What a lovely girl. So sweet. She committed suicide. Devastated her parents. They ended up divorcing and moving away, they couldn’t bear the memories.”
Julia couldn’t help but think about Emily. She’d been on the fast track to an early death as well. Though she believed Emily hadn’t meant to try to kill herself, she still needed help and guidance.
“I’m sorry. It must have been devastating for Michelle.”
“She hides her pain well. I sent her to counseling, though. When tragedy like that hits, you need to learn how to deal with it. And she wasn’t talking to us, so I knew it bothered her more than she let on.”
Julia thanked Mrs. O’Dell again and left. She drove around the corner, parked, and dialed the number written in Mrs. O’Dell’s careful script.
Julia hung up without leaving a message. She’d try again later.
She debated going by the Ridge house, then decided she’d wait until tonight.
She went to the library and pulled every article she could find about Garrett Bowen and Jason Ridge. There were several articles about Bowen’s psychiatry practice and she put those aside to give to Dillon. He’d probably be able to pull out the important information faster than she could.
One article about a teen suicide popped up. Julia expected to see Bowen’s name, and was surprised to see Jason Ridge quoted.
“I don’t know why Shannon would do that. She was so beautiful and nice and she did good in school,” Jason Ridge, a junior at San Diego High said. Jason said they shared English and Biology classes together, and Shannon was a cheerleader for the football team where Jason plays varsity-level quarterback.
Nothing else in the article referred back to Jason, and it probably didn’t mean anything. Julia skimmed the rest of the article. Shannon Chase had been sixteen and hung herself in the foyer of her house when her parents went out for dinner and a show one night. No one suspected foul play. She’d left a suicide note, the content not disclosed in the article.
