Deadly Seduction (10 page)

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Throughout those early years of his marriage to Susan, Jimmy Grund steadfastly held on to the independence he had enjoyed throughout most of his adult life. At least twice a year, he would fly his six-passenger Lance Piper plane up to places like Charrington Lake, Ontario, with some of his good male friends such as Peru Police Sgt. Gary Nichols, his fellow lawyer Don Fern, and business partner Don Bakehorn.

Susan accepted that these journeys were entirely innocent, male-bonding trips—and in any case they invariably gave her an opportunity to go out and party while Jim was away. She had already made a close friend in attorney John O’Neill during an earlier occasion when Jim was away. But now she had a vast mansion on the best side of town to call her own, and she fully intended to entertain in style.

During those first few years of their marriage, Jim adored seeing Susan act and dress sexy whenever they went out. It was almost as if he was saying to the rest of the community, “Look at her but don’t touch, ’cause she’s mine and no one else can have her.” He rewarded her with a monthly allowance of almost $1,000 to spend on whatever she liked. It was more than Susan had ever earned at any of the menial jobs she had worked since leaving school.

But the tide turned in the late 1980s when Susan started going out to functions in Indianapolis on her own because Jim wasn’t interested—or sometimes wasn’t even invited. On a number of occasions, Susan would make it plain that her husband was not smart enough to be seen on her arm. It was all a long way from those days when Susan believed that Jim was going to provide her with the perfect ladder to ascend to social acceptability.

There was also another side of Susan’s character that was beginning to emerge. Some nights she liked to dress up in body-hugging black leather skirts and meet certain girlfriends and men friends at local clip joints like The Ice House. Susan really enjoyed the sensation of knowing that as she maneuvered across the crowded clubs, men’s eyes would be locked on her body, watching every curve.

Susan’s real background did occasionally come through, thanks to her rather inept taste in clothes. Sometimes, on those nights out she would mix the wrong colors or wear cheap, dangly jewelry with chic dresses. Often she would be wearing a see-through top showing off her ample breasts, which many of her associates believed had been injected with silicone to improve their shape. Susan always wore plenty of cosmetics, although they were applied with sublety where possible.

Susan’s trips into sleaziness seemed to be a release from her daytime image as the finely coiffured lady of good taste married to the respectable lawyer with the huge house up on the hill. Certain low-life acquaintances would join her in these clip joints but she didn’t get drunk or take drugs. That definitely wasn’t Susan’s way of dealing with things. She had never actually been drunk in her life. She didn’t like to lose control, ever. But these trips to the other side were like a catharsis, enabling her to let herself go and be herself just for a few hours. And when Susan Grund decided to be her old, slutty self, any man in the room had to beware because she needed a conquest like others need a new hairstyle.

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Back on the respectable daytime Peru social scene, Susan was continuing to make inroads at an impressive pace. One of her friends even introduced her to a senator one day at a social function at Peru’s oldest and most respected bed-and-breakfast establishment, the Rosewood Mansion.

Susan felt a tingle of excitement run up her body the moment she met this rich and famous man. He represented an even more potent ride away from her upbringing on the other side of the tracks than Jimmy Grund. But she decided not to be too forward this time. She knew that if she was going to stand any chance with a man of this standing then she would have to take her time. Instant sexual gratification was not going to get her a free ride into Washington.

Susan also started running a number of local beauty pageants because she knew it was a good way to climb to even greater social heights. Meanwhile, Jimmy Grund remained completely unimpressed, much to her frustration and annoyance. He was happy that Susan had something to occupy her day, but he did not give a fig about the social scene in Peru because he had been part of it from the day he was born. He had seen right through it years earlier and he had absolutely nothing to prove.

Then Susan persuaded Jim to financially back a boutique she wanted to open in the center of town. Initially, Jim ploughed at least $25,000 into the business.

Susan was ecstatically happy because the store—called Clothes by Susan—further elevated her social standing in the community. Now, she was not only the wife of a very successful lawyer, but she was also a businesswoman in her own right.

But others were watching her entrance into the fashion world with more than just a hint of skepticism. Her stepson David was irritated because his father was always pleading poverty when it came to allowances. Yet it was clear to David that his father had ploughed most of his available cash into that boutique. It caused a further rift that took father and son several months to heal. Ironically, once that rupture was smoothed over, Susan’s relationship with David started to improve beyond anyone’s expectations.

April 4, 1989, was the fifteenth official day of spring in Peru and Susan Grund was feeling full of the joys of life. Her relentless pursuit of the title as most social lady in town was fast becoming a reality.

On the breakfast table that morning she was positively glowing as she read a report in the Peru edition of the
Kokomo Tribune
headlined,
WOMEN TO VIE FOR TITLE.

The piece kicked off, “Two north central Indiana women are amongst entrants in the 1989 Mrs. Indiana America Pageant to be presented in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton at the airport in Indianapolis on April 15 and 16.

“Elizabeth Griffey of Delphi and Susan Grund of Peru will compete at the state pageant where Indiana’s representative to the Mrs. America Pageant will be selected.”

Susan was thrilled. Her only complaint was that her name was not ahead of Mrs. Griffey in the report.

The article informed its readers, “Susan is married to James H. Grund, a lawyer in Peru. They have two children, Jacob and Tanelle.”

The report also stated that amongst Susan’s sponsors for the pageant was Gary Nichols, the police officer who arranged the blind date on which she first met Jim Grund.

Less than three months later, Susan managed not just one, but two photos in the same issue of the local newspaper as she taught youngsters how to hold themselves for the 4-H Miss Miami Queen contest, as well as the 4-H Little Miss Queen competition. Everyone at the paper noticed how incredibly photogenic Susan was.

But there was another side to Susan during this period. She was becoming increasingly restless about her life in Peru. Their beautiful house was complete. She had a generous allowance from Jimmy that had just gone up to $2,000 a month. He was out at work from dawn till dusk every day and often later. Life needed a new challenge for Susan. She had been on her best behavior for a couple of years now. Perhaps it was time to find a new bed partner.

Susan was spurred on by the fact that she felt unsatisfied by her sex life with Jim. She complained to one girlfriend about his inability to get an erection and she made it plainly obvious that if an opportunity for an extramarital affair came along she would grab at the chance.

Initially, she began a steamy illicit liaison with an accountant in a nearby town. This was naturally kept secret from almost all Susan’s family and friends at the time. She did not want to risk ending her marriage to Jim, but she just felt the urge for a bit of excitement.

She had first met her new lover when he did some accounting work for her. At first, Susan and her new friend had a few innocent lunches together with other businessmen in nearby Logansport.

Then Susan began making sexual advances toward the man and he submitted. There followed a passionate yet impersonal affair that resulted in them having sex on at least a dozen occasions. Sometimes they met in motels, but on at least three occasions they made love at Susan’s sister’s house in Kokomo, including one incident when her nephew Paul arrived home early from school to find his aunt naked in bed with her lover.

The affair with the accountant was completely non-threatening to Susan’s marriage. She looked on it as a way to gain sexual satisfaction without hurting anyone. In fact, it was so casual that the couple would often go for as long as two months without actually meeting.

Eventually, the affair fizzled out because Susan’s lover felt guilty about his business relationship with Jimmy Grund. But he never forgot how Susan would openly talk about her sexual prowess. It was almost as if Susan enjoyed telling her men friends about her sexual kicks just to keep them on their toes and to make sure they knew that she did not need them that badly because there were plenty more where they came from.

But one prospective lover who did get away was an extremely handsome choreographer for a local cheerleading team. He had first met Susan when she had driven with a friend and her husband to Indianapolis for a ballgame and they all ended up going out for dinner and dancing. That evening, Susan was wearing a very sexy dress with seamed stockings and spiky three-inch patent leather black pumps. Throughout the night she kept telling the choreographer how open her marriage was and how she was free to have as many bedmates as she wanted. She also let slip that her husband did not even know where she was because he was away on a fishing trip at the time.

Later on, Susan and the man went to a friend’s apartment in Indianapolis. The friend was out of town for the night. The moment the choreographer and Susan lay on the bed to watch television, she grabbed him and started fondling him. The man then stopped Susan and told her that he was gay and had a male lover and wasn’t interested in women.

Susan was astounded, but tried again to excite the man. In the end, she gave up and drove home to Peru early the next morning.

A few months later, Susan introduced the man to Jimmy Grund at a fund-raising event in the Peru area and they got on well. Grund even seriously considered putting up cash to fund a dance studio the man wanted to open in Peru.

Word of Susan’s attempt to seduce this man swept around Shanty Malone’s bar like wildfire. It became a running joke amongst regulars—including many of Jim’s closest friends—that over-sexed Susan had tried to seduce a homosexual.

And throughout all this extramarital activity, Susan was continuing to make quite a name for herself on the Peru social scene. She remained a regular in the society columns of the local newspaper and even wrote a letter to the editor complimenting him on a humorous article published the previous week. She was positively bursting with enthusiasm for the community of which she was now such a major part.

In the letter—dated December 13, 1989—she wrote, “We are a small but proud community. It is nice to be friendly. Welcome to Peru.”

It was fairly sickly sweet in its wordage, but that was the image Susan was desperate to project in Peru. She knew there were a few people around who loved to drag up her past life from when she lived on the wrong side of the tracks. But she was out to prove that she was as classy as any lady in Peru.

Local society columnist Nancy Newman was most impressed by Susan Grund who went to a great deal of trouble during her involvement with the Miami County Orange Queen pageant. Susan would groom the girls, organize the publicity, chaperone the entrants, and teach them how to walk and how to handle dates with boys.

Nancy Newman was convinced Susan was very nice to someone if she wanted something. But she would often pass people on the street whom she had met previously and not utter so much as a hello.

Susan was also known to some reporters on the local papers as a feisty lady who did not hesitate to make their lives a misery if they refused to plant something in the press for her.

And she seemed to have a near-obsession with the activities of the family who owned the
Peru Daily Tribune.
Nancy Newman was told off by Susan one day because she did not know where her house on Summit Drive was located. “But that’s where the family that owns your newspaper lives,” exclaimed Susan to her journalist friend.

Nancy Newman was a rare example of someone in Peru who knew all about Susan’s impoverished background. She had regularly met with Susan’s retarded brother Eddie and her father, William, at a sheltered workshop for backward children in Peru many years before.

Despite Susan’s attempts to pretend her father barely existed, William was known to quite a number of people in Peru as a very simple but gentle man, nothing like the brutal image portrayed by his daughter.

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Not long after this, Susan persuaded Jimmy Grund to put even more cash into her clothing boutique in Peru. She even bragged to one friend that she had partly financed Clothes by Susan by forging Jim’s name to get another $10,000 loan for extra stock.

Around this time, Susan went on a clothes buying trip to Chicago with her close friend Terri Mettica, who ran a similar store in nearby Logansport. Terri could not help noticing how Susan flirted with all the clothing wholesalers they met during their trip. She made a point of wearing low-cut dresses and Terri reckoned that most of the men they dealt with hardly even noticed her because Susan was coming on so strong.

Only a few months later, Susan’s store burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. Within hours of the blaze, Susan admitted to close friend Terri that she did not have proper insurance coverage and she was financially ruined.

A week later, Terri got another call from Susan. This time she said she did have insurance and she wanted Terri to supply her with invoices from her store so Susan could collect from the insurance company.

The Peru Fire Department proclaimed the blaze unsolved, but admitted there were definite question marks over how it was caused. However no one was ever prosecuted for starting the fire.