Chapter 09
Wait Avenue Cooperative
Cornell University
Week 04

JJ and Morgan had originally gone to the local police to check to see if anything was missing from the file they had. It wasn't, the LEO's had their act together. After that they headed to Laura's residence to talk to her housemates. While JJ went up to look over her room Morgan talked to the other manager of the house, Tonya, a woman who resembled his sister Sarah in both looks and temperament. "So you and Laura were managers here?"

"On paper, in reality I was her number one minion. The only thing Laura didn't have was enough time, she could have run this place single-handed and do everything else if there were 28 hours in a day."

"Have you known each other long?"

"Yeah, we've lived here for eight years now."

"So you knew her pretty well."

"Probably as well as anybody."

"Tell me about her."

"Well, she was friendly, pleasant, and easy to get along with. House peacemaker, you know, she could mediate anything. Really passionate about her field. And she kept busy; I swear that girl didn't know how to sit still. Even if she was sitting she had something in her hands."

"Busy, huh? Did she keep a regular schedule?"

"You could set your watch by her. Every morning she'd be up at 5:30, have a glass of milk and a scone and head on over to Newman Hall to work out. She'd be back by 7, have two fried eggs with a slice of homemade toast and her first cup of tea, and then she'd head out for the day. That's how we knew something was wrong, she wasn't in the kitchen. I checked her room and realized her bed hadn't been slept in, and she didn't answer her phone, so I called security."

"So she never slept away from the house?"

"Nope. Not once in eight years."

And you didn't notice her missing the night before?"

"Friday night? I had a date."

"And she did the same thing every morning?"

"Every morning but Sunday. Sunday she took over the kitchen and did nothing but cook and bake. She'd load us up with bakery stuff, muffins, scones, fresh bread, and then she'd make brunch for the house, bacon and everything. Her Sunday brunches were legendary. We had to tell people that it was invitation only so we wouldn't be swamped. You could smell it from the road. Then she'd fill it out with casseroles and chili and stuff so we'd just have to heat up for the rest of the week. I'm telling you, the woman was a machine."

"Has she been seeing any guys?"

"No."

"Any girls?"

She chuckled. "No, she was straight. She just never got past the coffee or lunch stage, you know. Never clicked with anyone, and she wasn't the hook-up type."

"What was she looking for, Superman? Some romance hero?"

"She said the guy she wanted hadn't been written about yet. He'd have a backbone of steel wrapped in a thick down comforter of soft and gentle, and she was gonna hold out for him."

"Did she have any close friends that you know of?"

"Um, she used to talk about a Martha. She had dinner with her every Saturday night."

"Did you ever meet her?"

"Who, Martha? No, but if I ever do she's getting a big hug from me."

"Why?"

"She convinced Laura to go no contact with her stepmother. That woman is a hot mess of crazy."

"Oh?"

"For the first two years or so that woman called her up to six times a day, how do I clean my oven, how do I wash this shirt, what's the name of that dim sum place. I kept telling her that that woman has to be over fifty, she ought to know how to run her own life but Laura kept saying it was all too hard for her and if she didn't help then it wouldn't get done and her father would suffer for it. Or else she'd just call her to chat because Laura didn't have anything better to do than listen to that woman ramble on about her boring ass day."

"I thought her mother was a patent lawyer."

"Was. She retired when she married Laura's father. Now she's pulling the society matron bit. Finally that crazy said something that really hurt her, I mean Laura was shaken up for days. Then someone, probably Martha, convinced her to cut off all contact. She changed her number, told us all to not take any calls from that area code, and started calling her dad at the office. She finally confronted her on Facebook before she deleted her account there; she said it had to be public to work. That crazy never tried again, thank god."

"How did Laura react to it?"

Tonya considered this a moment. "What do you mean?"

Morgan gave her his best smile. "Come on, all college kids drink. Some try harder stuff. Did she do anything like that to cope?"

"Nope. The strongest drug she took was a hot cup of tea. She was a big believer in clean living. She used to say that you should either eat for fuel or eat for pleasure and she only had time to eat for pleasure on week-ends so she ate clean fuel, drank nothing but tea, water and milk, never smoked or took anything and hit the gym every day. She said she needed the energy and honey, she did."

"Okay, you told the cops no one noticed anyone hanging around, that right?"

"Oh yeah. If you live in a house with fourteen other female grad students you're going to run into a crazy-assed stalker or two, we all know what to look for. No one saw any of this coming. She went to the big box store for staples like she did every week, went to her Thursday night seminar after and then never made it out of the parking lot. Just like that."

"Did she ever mention the name Spencer Reid to you?"

"Nope."

"Ever track any classes at Georgetown?"

"Not that I know of."

Morgan pulled a picture of Spencer up on his tablet. "This guy look familiar?"

"Nope."

Morgan had an idea. "How about a Dr. Joseph Bell."

"No."

"Did she ever talk about her father's work?"

"Nope. He'd come out two or three times a year, they'd have dinner at someplace nice and that was it. I got the feeling that she cared about him but his loyalty to his current wife hurt her deeply."

"Did she ever talk about her mother?"

"Oh yeah, she missed her hard. A lot of that probably had to do with how suddenly she went, I mean one drunk driver and boom, Mom's not coming home. Her mom was a Home Ec major you know."

"No, I did not know that. Anyone else back home she was attached to?"

"Nope. She said moving out of Cali was the best thing she ever did, that hot mess poisoned the well pretty thoroughly there. The only thing she missed was the music; she likes her jazz West Coast style."

"All right. Well, I'm going to go join my partner and look over her room."

"It's exactly the way she left it. The cops told us to leave it be."

"Good, thank you. Is there a place where I can reach you if we have any more questions?"

Tonya smiled. "Are you asking for my number?"

Oh hello. "Not…like that."

She chuckled and pulled over a notepad. "You want to make it like that? Get my girl back first."