1 Picking Lemons (2 page)

Walter was jolted back to reality by a loud
knock at the door. The first complainer of the day. People were so predictable.

*****

No one knew how old Betsy Williams was or how much she weighed, but those fluent in statistics considered that both numbers were high enough to make every breath she took an actuarial anomaly. Betsy was an adjunct instructor for the economics department and had been for at least thirty years. During those years, Betsy had watched junior professors come and go, students become senators, and had endured the growing egos of the tenured faculty.

Betsy had never been offered tenure. She had never asked for tenure. In fact, had anyone bothered
to consider her feelings, that person would have realized she liked not being in the club of tenured professors. Betsy fully occupied her non-teaching time loving a family of one husband, five children and sixteen grandchildren that no one in the economics department had ever met or asked to meet. Betsy was so busy watching school plays and soccer games and knitting sweaters and scarves it never occurred to her to worry about who was going to win the next Nobel Prize in economics, or who was ahead in the
Journal of Political Economics
publications race in the department this year. She simply did not care.

*****

C.J. Whitmore was the first woman to be granted tenure in the economics department at Eaton University. C.J. wasn’t the first female junior professor, but the first to play the tenure game successfully. She taught econometrics, the mathematics of economics, and had analyzed the data to increase the probability of getting tenure. Junior faculty of all races, genders and backgrounds worked like demons, taught their classes, published and did committee work. However, most often it was the childless, white men from the Northeast United States who were granted tenure.

C.J.
didn’t actually need a Ph.D. to realize the odds of her receiving tenure from an elite school steeped in New England boy’s club tradition weren’t in her favor. In fact, the only positive seemed to be that she was white. However, while she couldn’t change her gender or where she grew up, she could make them less noticeable.

C.J.
dressed in conservative suits, wore her hair tied back, and sure didn’t have any kids. Hell, the only time she used the ladies’ bathroom at work was after a bad shrimp taco when there was simply no choice. C.J. muted her Texas drawl and certainly made no reference to the Mom and Pop cattle ranch where she had spent her childhood. She worked 16 to 18 hours a day, only leaving her office atop 42 Knollwood for coffee hour (a.k.a. networking with the boys), and made sure her publication record was exemplary. She didn’t date anyone and certainly didn’t date faculty, not that she was tempted by the dried-up old meat on that smorgasbord. She taught her classes well, but not exceptionally. Everyone knew that the exceptional teachers were neglecting their research and research is king. She took the crappy committee work without complaint. And after only four years, she had tenure.

On the first day with tenure, the real C.J. arrived at work. She dressed in her hot pink cowboy boots, favorite turquoise skirt, and spangled cowgirl shirt. Her wrists clinked with bangles
, and her long blonde hair swung loose. She strode into a faculty meeting and watched her colleagues’ mouths hang open. “Hi, ya’ll,” she drawled in her natural Texas twang. “Don’t let me stop you from telling your stories. You know I just love a good ball-scratcher first thing in the morning.”

Walter
Scovill looked as if he was going into cardiac arrest. But the tenure paperwork was signed. They were stuck with her.

The other big change C.J. made after getting tenure was she stopped going to the faculty coffee hour.
“I’d prefer to be run over by a herd of buffalo,” she told her friend Betsy. “At least that’s over quickly. Coffee hour in the econ department? Long-winded, egotistical, old men, trying to one-up each other by talking economic balderdash. Tempting, but I’ll miss.”

So instead, Betsy Williams and C.J
. Whitmore had coffee at Wallaby’s coffee shop every morning at eleven, teaching schedules permitting. Today at coffee, C.J. was on a rant about an advertisement she had seen in
The Pug Post
, the student newspaper (whose ludicrous name only made sense if you knew the school mascot was Adorable Don the Pug). “Thirty-five thousand dollars for eggs? Have you seen the undergraduate girls? Underfed, leggy chicklets with too much makeup and not enough clothing. Would you pay thirty-five thousand dollars for any of their eggs?”

Betsy just laughed. She knew what C.J. was talking about. It wasn’t uncommon for infertile couples to advertise for the eggs or sperm of
Eaton students, offering large sums of money. But, you had to fit the exact description. Eaton University student, blonde, aged between 18 and 22, 4.0 GPA, fluent in four languages, and started a non-profit when you were twelve. This being Eaton, the would-be-parents were bound to find several donors who met their needs. “You’re just jealous that no one wants to pay that much for your eggs,” teased Betsy.

“Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just in a mood because it’s the first day of semester. You know what they say. A college without students is like a picnic without ants. By the way, can you believe some idiot scheduled a seminar for today? That’s as clever as putting your wedding on Super Bowl Sunday.”

Betsy, sipping a large, double-whip, white-chocolate mocha, clucked comfortingly. She didn’t have to go to seminars, being an adjunct instructor. In fact, she would be teaching in the afternoon.

“And
, it isn’t just any old seminar. Edmund the Ego is giving it. I wonder if he even realizes that half the department is still on vacation, and the rest will be writing their syllabi while he drones on. And he’s lecturing us on solving unemployment. How about I just liven things up and point out that a group of doughy, old men with tenured jobs wouldn’t understand the first thing about being unemployed?”

Betsy nodded and clucked some more. She had never understood the point of the “seminar,” even when she was an eager
young graduate student here at Eaton University. In theory, it was supposed to be a collegial sharing of knowledge, with your fellow academics offering helpful suggestions and ideas. But Betsy had always felt it was akin to the Roman Coliseum. The presenter was the prey, and the audience tried to kill him or her by picking apart the paper one pedantic, self-promoting comment at a time.

C.J. was still ta
lking, and Betsy tuned back in. “Talking about unemployment, has the endowment at Eaton University shrunk so much we had to fire the maintenance staff?”

Betsy
stared at C.J. in astonishment. “What are you talking about?”

“I looked out my window this morning and saw Charles Covington, octogenarian professor
, carrying a ladder towards the department. It must have been about ten a.m., give or take. This is America, the land of the ‘free to hire as much low-paid immigrant help as we need.’ The Lord Almighty would expect Noah to use sub-contractors to build the Ark. What the hell is the man up to?”

*****

Mary Beth Sanders couldn’t stop admiring her new manicure. The fall leaves were darling, and the shade of red was awesome. With a capital O. Or was than an A? Whatever. There were so many freaking letters in the alphabet. How was one to keep track?

The best thing about her job as an administrative assistant at
Eaton University was how close she was to New York City. No skanky, Elm Grove beauty school intern was touching her nails. It wasn’t worth the risk.

Mary Beth wasn’t going to be an assistant forever. No way. By the time she was twenty-five, at the very
, very oldest, she was going to be a wife. A rich man’s wife. Mary Beth was attractive…five feet, seven inches, slender, with long brunette hair. But Mary Beth understood that attractive women are like rats. They are on every street corner of every continent, and one looks just like another. No, to become a rich man’s wife, attractive wasn’t going to cut it. You needed to be... exquisite. So exquisite that all the rats would run away, and the rich husband would just see you. The manis, pedis, Brazilians, tints, microderms and Vicki Secrets spending sprees were all an investment. Ensuring her exquisiteness and therefore Mr. Rich. You didn’t need an economics degree to understand that.

In the meantime, she had to tend to this administrative dribble. Would lunchtime never come? God,
the big hand had to move from the nine to the twelve on her watch before it was time to eat. What was that? Another, um, ten…no…fifteen minutes. That was like, hours.

Why couldn’t these professors do their own work? They treated her like a slave, and slavery ended, you know, like years ago. Take Edmund DeBeyer. Apparently he couldn’t even type his own letters. Mary Beth p
ut in the Dictaphone headphones and started to transcribe.

“Dear Professor Brustad,”

Mary Beth paused. Professor. Was that one F and two S’s. Or two F’s and one S? What was that saying her friend told her? Oh yeah.
F
un is
S
hoe
S
hopping. One F, two S’s.

Mary Beth resumed typing.

“Thank you for your letter. I am honored by your positive recommendation.

In regards to your question of the jointly authored work, I have always liked to assist the careers of graduate students and young faculty by allowing them to be included as co-authors on papers where they have assisted me as research assistants.

Regards,

Professor Edmund DeBeyer”

Mary Beth was just finishing her typing, correcting “reccomendation” to “recommendation,” “asisst” to “assist,” and “carreers” to “careers,” after spell check alerted her to the mistakes, when she heard a voice whisper behind her, “I love your nails. Did you get them done for me?”

Twirling around in her office chair
, she saw Jefferson Daniels leaning against the wall. Professor Daniels was her current number one pick as Mr. Rich Husband. Smiling coquettishly, Mary Beth uncrossed and re-crossed her long legs, pausing just long enough during the process for Jefferson to catch a glimpse of what could be his. “Of course I did. Now, what else can I do for you today, Professor?”

*****

Stephen Choi stared angrily at his watch, trying to change the time with his death glare. Two o’seven. Late for seminar. Why did he care? He had been a junior faculty member at Eaton for six years, relegated to 43 Knollwood, and, despite some excellent publications, had just had his request for tenure denied. Now, he had just one year to find another job or join the unemployment lines. He could give this seminar on unemployment in two words. It sucked.

According to the vicious departmental gossip vine, Edmund DeBeyer headed the faction that argued against his appointment. DeBeyer didn’t want yet another trade economist in the department.
“I think we need to practice some trade and exchange some trade economists for something a little more cutting edge. We can sweeten the deal with a development person if needed.”
Edmund DeBeyer did not believe that all economists were created equal.

Stephen tried to sneak into the back of the basement seminar room in
40 Knollwood, hoping no one would notice he was a few minutes late. However, to his surprise, the seminar room contained only three people, and the seminar hadn’t started. This couldn’t be good. Edmund was notoriously punctual and expected the rest of the faculty to be waiting eagerly, grateful to learn from the master.

Stephen slipped into the seat next to C.J.
“Where is our Lord and master? And, for that matter, most of his kingdom?”

C.J., who had been aiml
essly scrolling through her Facebook page on her smart phone, looked up at her colleague. “Stephen, honey, you want to watch your tongue. You know Edmund leases heaven to God. He can have you struck by lightning any time he likes.”

“No, really. What’s going on?”

“Well, Edmund underestimated the faculty’s ability to relax, and, clearly, many of your colleagues have chosen to spend an additional day in Maui. As for Professor DeBeyer himself, he’s just running late. Jeffy, darling, has toodled up to his office to tell him we are waiting. Now just sit your patootie down in that chair and talk to me. I want to hear what your plans are. There is life after Eaton you know and, most definitely, a very nice life.”

Stephen scowled. His look said
, “You are so wrong. The rest of the world is just an empty wasteland.” C.J. smiled and was about to joke that Harvard was probably as dire as his look indicated, but he shouldn’t write off Stanford, when Jefferson burst into the room.

“I need help. Please, someone call 9
-1-1. Something is wrong with Edmund. I think…I think…he’s dead!”

The next day, Tuesday, started with
The Pug Post
running the eye catching, if rather unimaginative, headline “PROFESSOR MURDERED!” All across campus, students emerged from their dorms rooms deprived of both sleep and the ability to dress in warm, functional clothing. As the day was, somewhat predictably for Elm Grove at the beginning of fall, cool and breezy, the scantily clad students spent the day huddled in shivering groups, reading
The
Pug
and speculating on who the killer was. The five thousand undergraduate students at Eaton University, being of an age and social class which naturally lent them to a me-focused view of the world, were sure they knew the killer personally, swore they were the intended victim (saved only by cutting class that day), and were very thankful the murder increased the Goth-cool image of Eaton. The preppies at Harvard were going to be weeping into their polo shirts that night.

While questionably the most magnificent
street in America, Knollwood Place was now, without doubt, the most popular. Television vans, with their satellite dishes perched on top like flowers on a preacher’s wife’s hat, jockeyed for parking spaces. On-the-spot correspondents breathlessly reported back dramatic twenty-second accounts of the action, padding their two seconds of news (“he’s dead”) by making serious faces and commenting on the sadness of the day. Students and townsfolk crowded along the street, taking photos of the building “where it happened!!” for their Facebook and Tumblr pages and sending ghoulish tweets such as “at 40 Knollwood. footsteps behind me. ahhhhh” or “Top reason to drop econ: Its murderously hard! LOL!” Frustrated, the Elm Grove police department had to post multiple officers for crowd control. The Chief refrained from saying that in a city with as much drug and gun crime as Elm Grove, one measly professor was hardly worth this much man-power. Experience taught him that the interest would be short-lived.

*****

At nine o’clock that morning, C.J., having battled her way through the crowds and made it very clear to several insistent reporters that they would get more information from a headless, rotisserie chicken, stood in the doorway of her graduate, upper-level econometrics class. Sadly, she counted only seven students. If you asked C.J., every graduate student should be an econometrics major. Without statistics and data, her colleagues’ theories about unemployment or trade or the plight of those poor Starbucks-less countries were just ideas, fantasy novels, really. Surely, the brightest minds of tomorrow would want the skills to unlock the planet-saving information that people were telling economists every time they went to the store or didn’t go, as the case may be. C.J. counted again. Seven. The data indicated the graduate students thought otherwise.

No surprise
; all the chatter currently in her classroom was about Edmund DeBeyer and his untimely demise.

“Do you think one of the professors did it?”

“Of course. The only surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner.”

“I’m starting a betting pool. Every faculty member is a contender. Five bucks to enter. Winner takes all.”

“I’m in!”

“I’ll take two names. Double the odds. Who says I’m not a statistical genius.”

“Hey, do you think the murderer will kill one of us?”

“Yeah. You’re just as important and irritating as Professor DeBeyer. In fact, I used to get the two of you confused.”

“Dick.”

“That’s Dr. Dick to you.”

“Not for at least another eight years, my friend.”

As C.J. walked to the front of the class, her students fell silent
, and Jose, the self-appointed leader of the graduate cohort, raised his hand.

“Yes
, Jose?” asked C.J. “You have a question?”

“How ‘bout we investigate who did it, Professor Whitmore? You know, use our stats skills on a real problem for once.”

C.J. could see from the nods and smiles of his classmates, this plan had the support of the entire group. They wanted something more exciting than solving the widget production problems for Factory X. C.J., while not a big fan of widgets, was not easily swayed by the whims of her students. “Jose, this is a class on advanced econometrics, not
CSI: Summer Camp
.”

Jose had not
made it from working as a rent boy in Tijuana to a promising graduate student at one of the nation’s most selective universities because he took no for an answer. With his Latin good looks and impish smile, he made his way in this world using charm and persistence and, if necessary, bargaining and lying. Even his graduate school application, actually his third application (this time as “Jose”), had been 25% truth, 25% interpretation and 50% creative writing.

“Professor Whitmore,” Jose placated, using the tone of an experienced mediator who knew how to sooth
e two warring spouses into an amicable agreement, “what would be the harm? Part of Eaton’s mission statement is to create knowledge. I think you and I and the rest of the class could do that here, by applying the invaluable statistical knowledge that you are going to impart to us.”

C.J. narrowed her eyes and looked at Jose closely. There was something about that boy. He reminded her of a horse she once owned. Fast and talented, but would buck unexpectedly. She tapped her index finger to her chin as she thought about his proposal. For all she knew, one of the students sitting in her class was the killer. Goodness knew, Edmund had annoyed enough of them. She could still remember findi
ng Annika sniffling in the Smythe Lounge at the end of last spring.

“I go see him, to show him my thesis work,” sniffed Annika.

C.J. had nodded, not understanding the problem. Annika’s work was very good.

“He says to me, ‘What are you doing here? My undergraduate office hours are tomorrow at seven am.’”

Annika had burst into a fresh round of tears, remembering.

“I am his Ph.D. student! I have been working for him for two years. He does not even recognize me!”

C.J. turned and addressed the whole class. All seven of them. “If we wanted to create a model to find a murderer, what is our biggest problem?”

Jose
answered quickly, with an air of ghoulish enjoyment, “He finds out and kills us all.”

The class giggled, enjoying themselves. The start of advanced econometrics was turning out to be much more exciting than they had hoped.

C.J. sighed heavily. “That is actually not too far from the truth and is my biggest concern. But, as we are supposed to be a room of economists, or almost-economists, I was speaking economically. So, what economic problem does this case remind us of?”

As if turning a switch, the giggling stopped and a deathly silence filled the room. The students shifted uncomfortably in their seats, hoping one of their classmates knew the answer.

C.J. waited them out. This was their idea. These students were in at least their second year of the doctoral program, for some, many more. They should be able to come up with one idea among them.

The seconds dragged
painfully by.

C.J. sat on the edge of her desk, swung her pink cowboy boots and whistled.
“Feel free to consult any notes or textbooks,” she commented with an air of feigned casualness that did not mask her impatience.

There were sounds of shuffling, pencils being chewed on, and chairs squeaking across the floor as the students vainly searched for the answer.

Finally, Annika raised a tentative hand. “Is this...is this like the market for second-hand cars?” she asked uncertainly. “But, instead of trying to pick out the bad car from the good ones when we are shopping for a used car, we are trying to pick out the guilty person from the innocent people?”

“Honey,” said C.J. with genuine enthusiasm, “you’re like a ray of sunshine in a dank and muddy pigsty. Yes. Your used car dealer has a bad car, a lemon as it were, but has polished it real nice, maybe even turned back that odometer. It is
, therefore, hard to know which is a good car and which is a bad car. Same here. The murderer is going to try and present himself as an innocent person, making it hard to tell who just didn’t like Professor DeBeyer,” C.J. paused and looked pointedly at her students, causing them to giggle self-consciously, “and who is a killer.”

Annika beamed
, and Professor Whitmore turned her attention to Jose. “If you want to model this, young man, to ‘create knowledge’ as you say, you want to be able to pick the lemon. Capiche?”

Jose nodded.

“Now, enough with that. Let’s turn our attention to the real topic for today.”

As C.J. turned to the blackboard, ready to start class, she heard Annika whisper to Jose.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me? Like where you were at one-thirty yesterday? I ended up missing the seminar, not that it mattered.”

“Sorry,” Jose whispered back meekly. “I forgot that I was late in paying some of my student fees. I had to take care of it right away.
”

That’s odd,
thought C.J.
I thought Jose was on full scholarship.

*****

“Well, if this doesn’t blow the flies off your dung pile, I don’t know what does,” drawled C.J. as Betsy approached her in Wallaby’s coffee shop two hours later.

Betsy noticed that C.J., coffee in hand, had opted against the trad
itional mourning color of black and was instead decked out in red, skin-tight, velvet jeans, a yellow shirt that jangled as she moved, and the ever-present hot pink cowboy boots. Grief, Texas-style. Betsy, wearing a dark grey dress and low-heeled black shoes, lowered herself down into a comfortable couch seat with an audible sigh and pulled out her ever-present knitting.

“Well, I watch enough
Law and Order
,” said Betsy, in response to C.J.’s suggestion that she should be surprised by Edmund’s death. “Those gruesome deaths are supposed to be true stories, ‘ripped from the headlines’ they say. So, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that something like that could happen here.” Betsy paused for a moment. “Do you think they’ll make a
Law and Order
episode about this murder?”

“Um, sure. I guess they could,” C.J. hazarded an answer to Bet
sy’s question.

“I knew it!” cried Betsy. “I said so to Mr. Williams when I heard the news. I said
, ‘Mark my words, honey. Edmund’s death is weird enough to be a
Law and Order
.’ How wonderful. Now, tell me all the details of yesterday, so I can recognize the episode when I see it.”

C.J. smiled to herself. More evidence that traditional economic theorists like Walter
Scovill needed to rethink their research. Walter, like most economists, based his research on a set of assumptions, a favorite being that people are rational.

Rational people are devoid of emotion, but simply make the best choice for themselves every time, having considered all the available information. They never impulse buy apps for their smart
phone or overeat nachos while watching
Monday Night Football
or procrastinate about saving money. C.J. had looked closely, but she had never found a rational person. And it didn’t look like she was going to stumble on one today. The woman sitting opposite her had just described a murder as “wonderful” because it might be made into an episode of her favorite TV show. Surprising? No. Rational? Well...

C.J. took a long sip of coffee
and then looked up, ready to answer Betsy’s request for details. “Well, we gathered yesterday at two o’clock for Edmund’s hideously boring seminar. But, notably, not everyone was there. In fact, to begin, there was only myself, Peter Johansson, that Industrial Organization economist over in 43 Knollwood, and Walter. Annika and Jose, Edmund’s Ph.D. students, didn’t show, which I suspect had something to do with a lover’s tiff. Charles never showed, but that isn’t a big surprise. He was probably at home getting an early start on his ‘fivesies.’ Jefferson scraped it in right at two o'clock, panting like a Labrador in July. Clearly he had been on another one of those painful-looking runs. I’m all for being outdoors, but you know, I’ve never seen a cow or a sheep run laps around a pasture for ‘fun.’ People are just plain weird. You ever see a horse strap a parachute to its back and jump out of an airplane? And people say that animals are dumb. Uh huh. And Stephen showed up, but late. My guess is he was in his office performing ancient Chinese death rituals against Edmund for leading the charge against his tenure.”

Betsy looked up from her knitting, with the alertness of a hound sniffing the scent. “Sure looked like those death rituals worked. Are you sure that’s all Stephen was doing?”

C.J. frowned. Hell, yes, she was sure, wasn’t she? This was Stephen, the runt of the faculty litter. “Betsy, this isn’t actually
Law and Order
. We’re talking about Stephen. The man can’t tie his own shoelaces without falling over. How is he going to strangle Edmund with a Harvard Ph.D. hood?”

Betsy shuddered, gleefully.
“Is that really how he died? Strangled with his beloved Harvard hood? You know, Edmund loved to wear his academic robes around the office. He said they made him think professorial thoughts.”

“Yep. Well, he wore them one too many times. While he was standing at the whiteboard in his office, someone came up from behind and…” C.J. made the motion of tightening a knot with her hands.