Bond With Death (14 page)

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Authors: Bill Crider

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BOOK: Bond With Death
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“They're vocal, though. Very vocal.”
“Their leader was also working with Curtin,” Seepy said. “Jennifer Jackson. Tell him about what we saw, Chief.”
“We saw a car just as we were leaving Curtin's apartment,” Desmond said. “It pulled up to the curb not far from us. Dr. Benton mentioned it at the time, but I didn't think anything of it. Now I do, because Roy Don Talon said that Sherm Jackson drives one just like it.”
“So what?” Fieldstone said.
“So maybe he or his wife had a meeting with Curtin after we did.”
“Exactly what happened at your meeting?” Sally said. “Dr. Fieldstone said words were exchanged and that things got rough.”
“It wasn't like that,” Seepy said. “We might have raised our voices
a little, but Curtin was drunk. He was doing most of the yelling. He said some things he shouldn't have, about Larry Lawrence.”
Fieldstone looked at Desmond, and Sally realized that he'd heard the stories about Lawrence's daughter.
“They were personal things,” Seepy went on. “They had nothing to do with what we'd gone there to discuss. Curtin was drunk, but he still shouldn't have said them.”
“He had a right,” Desmond said. “I behaved badly with Linda Lawrence, and Larry's very upset about it. I've tried to help out, but he won't hear of it. He's determined to hurt the college if he can, and it's my fault. I'm trying to work things out with Linda, and things are a lot better between us. I've gotten her some help for her problems, and she's almost straightened out. Not that Larry cares.”
“And it's none of Curtin's business,” Seepy said. “He was out of bounds. But even with the yelling, there was no rough stuff. Curtin tried to stand up once, and he fell down. I helped him back into his chair. That's all that happened.”
Sally wondered if they were telling the truth. They'd had time to get together and concoct whatever story they wanted to tell. Still, Desmond sounded genuinely sorry about Linda Lawrence, and maybe he really was trying to do the right thing.
“Anyway,” Seepy said, “we didn't kill anybody. And as I was saying before we got off the track, I'm sure that one of the Jacksons was there at Curtin's after we left. Maybe both of them.”
“To discuss the bond issue, do you think?” Sally said.
“Maybe,” Seepy said. “But Curtin was alive when we left. Maybe they're the ones who killed him.”
“Then Weems has to be told.”
“I know,” Desmond said. “I'll talk to him.”
“You do that,” Fieldstone said. “Right now.”
 
 
T
roy Beauchamp was waiting for Sally outside her locked office door.
“I see you got the memo,” he said, tapping on the door.
“Yes,” Sally said.
She didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him that she'd known about the memo before it had even been written. She handed her books to Troy, who held them while she got the key from her purse and unlocked the door. They went into the office and Sally told him to put the books on her desk.
“Anywhere you can find a spot,” she said.
Troy looked around for a couple of seconds before saying there wasn't a spot.
Sally took the books and put them on a precarious stack of papers. When the stack started to slide, she stopped it and jiggled it around.
“Stay right there,” she said, and it did. Maybe she was a witch after all.
Troy was fairly bouncing on his toes with eagerness by that time. He must have had some big news.
“So, Troy, what's going on?” Sally said to give him his opening.
“Harold Curtin was murdered!”
Let him have his fun, Sally thought. She said, “No! Really?”
“Poisoned,” Troy said. “I heard Chief Desmond saying something about it to one of the other cops.”
“Then I'm off the hook.”
“That's right. But did you read that editorial in the
Journal
?”
Sally said that she had.
“Those swine. I wonder who they could be talking about. Besides you, that is.”
If he didn't know, Sally wasn't going to be the one to tell him.
“It doesn't matter. Anyone could have a book about Wicca in her office. Or his office. Even you.”
“I don't, though.”
“What about Greek religion? You teach the world literature course. You must have something about the Greek gods.”
“Well, of course. But that's not like witchcraft.”
“Sure it is. There's Medea, for example. But the whole system is pagan and contrary to the beliefs of all our students. I've even had complaints about it, as I'm sure you remember.”
“Oh,” Troy said. “Yeah.”
It had been one of Troy's students who had complained about the content of the world literature course. He'd said he couldn't possibly read the assignments from the section of the book that dealt with Greek and Roman literature because they conflicted with his religious beliefs. Sally had told him to take British literature instead.
“I should have thought about that,” Troy said.
“That's right. So don't worry about any books that people might have in their offices. People are going to be offended by something. If there's nothing to be offended by, they'll make up something.”
“I'm offended by math books.”
Sally laughed and said that she was, too.
“I wonder if some offended student killed Harold,” Troy said.
“I don't think so,” Sally said, “but you never know.”
Troy agreed and left the office. Sally tried to arrange things on her desk so that there wouldn't be a paper-and-book cascade if she made any sudden moves. When things looked stable, she sat down and tried to think through all that had happened. Maybe somewhere along the way she'd missed the clue that would pull everything together.
She couldn't think of any reason why the Jacksons would kill the Garden Gnome. They were on his side, supposedly. The fact that he
was drunk could have figured into it, but Sally didn't know how.
So if the Jacksons hadn't killed him, and Fieldstone's delegation from the college hadn't, then who had?
Sally gave it up and started to wonder about other things. The e-mail about her, for one. Who would do a thing like that?
The answer came to her almost immediately. It had been there all along, and she felt foolish for not having thought of it at the beginning.
Well, she thought, it wasn't the clue to the whole shebang, and it might not even be a clue at all, but she should never have overlooked something so obvious.
There was always a chance that she could be wrong, but she knew it would be easy enough to check. Wynona would know the answer to Sally's question.
 
“Ellen Baldree?” Wynona said when Sally asked. “Sure. She was in your office a couple of times when you were in class. I thought she was ‘borrowing' a book. You know, the way she ‘borrowed' that stapler and that overhead projector.”
Sally figured Wynona was wrong. Ellen had been in the office to use Sally's computer. She had the skills, and her resentment against Sally had been building for a long time now with no relief. Sending out an e-mail that would cause Sally some trouble might be just the kind of thing Ellen would do.
“Should I have told you she was in there?” Wynona asked. “I didn't think anything of it. Is she the reason we got that memo about locking our doors and creating a password for everything?”
“Maybe,” Sally said. “I'm about to find out.”
“How?”
“I'm going to ask her.”
“I don't think so,” Wynona said. “She's not here.”
“Not here? Where is she, then?”
“That's a good question. A student from her nine o'clock class came by around nine-thirty and asked me the same thing. She didn't show up for class.”
That wasn't like Ellen at all, Sally thought. She might have resented
Sally, but she was as dedicated to meeting her classes as Sally was. She'd never missed one before, at least not since Sally had been the department chair.
“You should have told me.”
“I was going to, but you were in class, and then you didn't come back. I got busy. Anyway, I thought you knew. Faculty members are supposed to call their department chairs if they're not going to be here.”
“She didn't call me. Check her schedule and see when her next class is. You meet it if she's not here, and tell the students that Ms. Baldree will be back on Friday.”
“How do you know that she will?”
“I don't, but she'd better be here if she wants to keep her job. I'm going to call her right now.”
Sally went back to her office and checked the answering machine just to be sure there were no messages from Ellen. There weren't, so Sally dug out the faculty directory and called Ellen's home phone number. No answer. Sally left a message on the answering machine. Then she did some more thinking.
 
Jack Neville was so worried that he couldn't even concentrate on his Spider Solitaire game. Of all the things he had on his mind, Vera worried him the most. She was treating him as if he were some kind of sniveling coward just because he'd called the police at Sally's place. He'd tried to explain that he wasn't going to beat up on a bunch of women just to impress her, but she'd paid him no mind.
And he was worried about the calls he'd occasionally received from the Garden Gnome. It was almost as if Curtin had been trying to recruit him for the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility. What would have given him the idea that a faculty member would join a group like that? Had someone told Curtin that Jack might be interested?
He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. Maybe Sally would like to go to lunch with him. If she did maybe Vera would be jealous enough to forgive him.
Almost as soon as he had the thought, he was ashamed of himself. It was an example of how low he had sunk that he would consider
using Sally to make Vera jealous. Besides, he didn't really think it would work. Vera wasn't the jealous type.
He wasn't sure what type she was, in fact. He was still amazed that somehow they'd gotten together. They'd known each other for years, and they'd certainly never been friendly during that time. They'd hardly even spoken to one another except in passing when they were in the mail room or on the way to a class. But now that they had a relationship, he didn't want it to end.
He wondered if there might be some feat of bravery he could perform to impress Vera, but if there was, he didn't know what it could be. Anything he could do, she could do better.
To take his mind off things, he switched from Spider Solitaire to Free Cell, but he was too familiar with that game. It wasn't even a challenge anymore.
He was considering giving Minesweeper a try when Sally came to his door.
“Hey,” he said, remembering his original plan. “Want to get some lunch? We could go back to the Tea Room.”
The mention of the restaurant jiggled something in Sally's subconscious, something she thought might be important, but she couldn't quite say what it was. She tried to focus on it, but nothing came clear.
“I don't usually eat lunch,” she said. “I wanted you to go somewhere with me.”
“Where?”
“To Ellen Baldree's house. I'm worried about her.”
“You don't need to worry about her. She's not going to get your job, no matter how much she wants it.”
“I'm not worried about my job. I'm worried about Ellen personally. She didn't come to school today, and she didn't let anybody know she wasn't going to be here.”
“That's not like her,” Jack said.
“I know, and that's why I want to go check on her. But I didn't want to go alone.”
So this was Jack's big chance at redemption. He was going to get to be Sally's bodyguard against the fierce Ellen Baldree. Somehow he didn't think Vera would be impressed.
“You don't need protection,” he said, hoping Sally would contradict him. “Sure, Ellen's mean, but she's sneaky mean. She wouldn't attack you or anything.”
“I think I'm just now finding out how sneaky she can be,” Sally said. “I think she's the one who sent that e-mail about my supposed kinship with Sarah Good. That's why I want you to go with me. I don't want your burly body as protection. I want a witness if she confesses.”
Jack couldn't help but be a little disappointed.
“Can I at least give her the third degree?”
“Jack, you don't have to prove yourself to me. You did that a long time ago.”
That made Jack feel a little better. He said, “Why do you think Ellen sent the e-mail?”
“I'd rather tell you on the way to her house, if that's all right with you.”
“Sure,” Jack said, pushing his disappointment aside. “What are we waiting for?”
 
As they left the building, Jack tried to steer Sally by the classroom where Vera was teaching. He wanted Vera to see them leaving together so he could tell her later how brave he'd been to take on the bodyguarding job. He even felt a faint hope that Vera would feel just the slightest twinge of jealousy if she saw him and Sally leaving the building together.
But Sally wouldn't cooperate. She grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him in the direction of one of the back doors.
“This way is closer to my car,” she said, so Jack gave up on his feeble plans and followed her.
“Maybe we could eat lunch later,” he said. “If you don't like the Tea Room, we could go somewhere else.”
This time, the restaurant's name jarred something loose in Sally's subconscious. The Garden Gnome had been a witch. Maybe that was what she'd tried to focus on earlier. And he hadn't been a Wiccan, but the wicked kind of witch, like Margaret Hamilton in
The Wizard
of Oz.
“Oh, I'll get you, and your little dog, too.” It sounded silly, but Vera hadn't thought it was silly. Sally was sorry she hadn't mentioned it to Weems, but she'd had too many other things on her mind last night. Besides, Weems would probably just have laughed at her.
“If we don't have any trouble at Ellen's, we can go eat,” Sally said. “The Tea Room is fine.”
She thought that if she went there again, something else might occur to her. She wasn't sure that the bit about Curtin and witchcraft was what she really needed to remember.
“Sounds good,” Jack said, hoping that by some quirk of fate Vera would stop by and see him and Sally there.
Then she'll be sorry, he thought.
 
 
Go tell Mankind, that there are Devils and Witches; and that though those night-birds least appear where the daylight of the Gospel comes, yet New England has had examples of their existence and operation; and that not only the Wigwams of Indians, where the pagan powwows often raise their masters, in the shapes of bears and snakes and fires, but the house of Christians, where our God has had his constant worship, have undergone the annoyance of evil spirits. Go tell the world, What prays can do beyond all devils and witches, and what it is that these monsters love to do; and though the demons in the audience of several standers-by threatened much disgrace to thy author, if he let thee come abroad, yet venture that, and in this way seek a just revenge on them for the disturbance they have given to such as have called on the name of god.

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