Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure (10 page)

The passenger door opened. I turned the still-dark lens toward the emerging person and pushed the high-beam button. A bundled-up gnome stepped out, arms up to protect its eyes. “Hi, Karen.” The gnome had my mother’s voice.

I stood there, dumbfounded. My mother? Then another well-known woman’s voice screeched, “For God’s sake, Karen, get that damn light off of her.” Out of the foggy darkness my sister Connie stepped forward, dressed in a dark-blue business suit and clunky dress shoes.

“Connie!” I shrilled. “What the hell?”

“I’m on my way to the airport,” she said, her eyes wide and wary, as if she did indeed expect me to brain her with the mag light. “Mom’s gonna stay with you.”

“She’s
what
!”

My mother answered meekly. “Karen, Connie said she simply didn’t know what the hell else to do with me. I promise I won’t be any trouble.”

Connie dumped Mom’s suitcase, told me about her medications, and then sped off. Very few words were exchanged. She was in a hurry to get to Bradley International in Hartford (and to get away from me). I was mute with shock and outrage. And, oh, yes, dammit, compassion, too, of course. And love. My poor little mother; how could I resent her, no matter how unexpected she was? But why did she have to show up
now
, when my career was hanging in the balance? She couldn’t be left alone, and I had to prepare my damned tenure application—again. And I had to do it tomorrow. What would I do with Mom when I was on campus?

There she stood in my kitchen, still in her pinkish-gray down coat—my very own personal crisis. My mother. My love. “Here, let me take your coat, Mom. Have you had supper? Would you like a cup of tea?”

“That’s very nice of you.” Struggling out of the bulky coat, she spoke formally, as if I were a stranger. “But I don’t want to be any bother.”

I dropped her coat on a yellow-painted kitchen chair and threw my arms around her. “Mom, don’t be silly. You’re no bother. And we both have to eat.” I gave a gentle squeeze and let go.

“That was a nice hug,” she said, and my heart melted. I took her by the shoulders and held her away from me so I could get a good look at her. My Mom is short and puffy like a dumpling, and her gray-white hair had been recently set, then backcombed into a Queen Elizabeth coiffure. But it was her eyes that held me. I’d last seen her during the summer, when she was alert and smiling. Since then something had happened to her eyes. The light had gone out of them.

Connie had tried to tell me.

Chapter 12

Thursday 10/15

The following morning, Mom was ensconced in my green vinyl office chair turning pages in a copy of
People
magazine that Monica had given her. Unexpectedly Monica had taken quite a liking to her—and she to Monica. I didn’t know what I would do with Mom on Friday, when I had two classes to teach, but for now she was safe and content with her gossip magazine.

I turned my computer on and scrolled through the list of Word files, intending to check for the ones I needed to rebuild my tenure file—resume, activities report, letter, etc. But first I checked my e-mail—eleven “friend” requests from students. I sighed, accessed my Facebook page and accepted them all. Then, curious, I scrolled down the page. There on the lower right-hand corner was something called a Friend Finder. I clicked on it, and sure enough half a dozen photos sprang up, mostly of people I hadn’t seen in ages. How had Facebook found out I knew Stuart Horowitz? Or Shamega Gilfoyle? Or Mike Vitale? This was downright creepy!

I clicked on Stuart’s icon. He was an old friend from the university I’d taught at in Manhattan, and we’d kept in touch, e-mailing once or twice a year, but it been six years since I’d actually seen him. Now here he was, resplendent in full color, still with his cyclist’s fit physique and that general air of knowing more than it was politic for him to tell.
Cool
, I thought, and added him as a friend. Big mistake, I thought; first step on the long, long road to wasted time. So I added Shamega and Mike. Then, immediately, I got a message that Mike had accepted my friendship. A little thrill ran through me; I had two more friends. I looked up at my mom. She was still engrossed in
People
. So was I: I scrolled down the Friend Finder, clicking on familiar faces as I went. After all, it was all about
people
, wasn’t it?

“Karen,” my mother said, looking up from her magazine. “There’s something I have to tell you.” She sounded almost lucid. Almost like her old self again. “But you can’t tell Connie or Denise.”

“Really? What is it, Mom?”

“A secret,” she said. “No one living knows it but me.”

“What kind of a secret?”

There was a loud knock on the door, and we both jumped. My mother went still and silent. Who could it be? Students usually gave just a tentative tap.

Lieutenant Neil Boylan stood in the hall, dressed in his usual sharp civvies. Behind Boylan, the uniformed Lombardi towered over his lieutenant in full winter blues, his wide-brimmed hat in his hand.

My mother’s small voice said, “Karen, there’s a policeman here.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. You don’t have to talk to him.” I shut down my computer. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant Boylan?”

“Can we come in?” He stepped inside. “Just have a few questions for you.”

“Looks to me like you’re already in. Have a seat.” I pointed him to the black-and-gold alumni captain’s chair and turned to Lombardi. “Trooper, why don’t you take the desk chair?”

“I’ll just stand here, ma’am, if you don’t mind.” Lombardi was a stone-faced stranger as he pulled out a notebook and pen. I could see the trooper’s Adam’s apple move up, then down. It was a comfort to know he’d be keeping Felicity up to date on everything, but, oh, how, at that moment, I wanted Charlie.

“So, Professor, you have a cup of coffee handy?” Boylan leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, his ankle on his knee. “Sure could use it while we chat.” He showed me some teeth. Were we going to be pals? That old ploy?

“What do you take?” I sat behind the desk, pressed the number for Monica’s extension, and asked for coffee “for the police lieutenant.” I wouldn’t have dared ask her to bring coffee if it was just for me.

“Sure is a change in the weather,” Boylan began.

I looked at him, expressionless. “It is, after all, mid-October.”

“It is that,” he replied, showing teeth again, more natural this time—a rueful grin.

The door opened and Monica hefted in two steaming mugs. Lombardi refused his, so she took it away with her. She took my mother, too, for which I was grateful.

The brew smelled fresh and terrific, and Boylan took a deep draught. Monica must have made it fresh, in the filter cone. Then he set the mug down. “So, what do you hear from Piotrowski?” His tone was friendly, but his attitude when I’d met him at the scene had left me wary. As had Felicity’s warning, but he didn’t know about that.

“Not much,” I said. “He really just got there.”

“Good man, Piotrowski.”

I agreed.

He took another deep drink. “I’ll bet his being over there has got you worried sick. Being left all on your own like that.”

“Not really,” I said. “Just what are you after, Lieutenant? You didn’t come here to play Mr. Lonely Hearts.”

His expression hardened, and he sat up straight, both shiny black oxfords flat on the floor. “Well, okay. If you want to play it like that. Word around campus has it that you and Lone Wolf were career rivals, Professor—both candidates for the same plush job.”

I tried to keep a pleasant expression on my face, but my heart had turned to molten lead. “Well, we were both up for tenure in the same department, if that’s what you mean by ‘career rivals.’”

“Yeah, like I said, both up for the same plush job. And only one opening.” He ran his tongue over his top teeth, then lifted the coffee mug.

I stared at him straight on. “Are you insinuating something, Lieutenant?”

“It’s not my job to insinuate anything.” There was the cat’s grin again. “My job is simply to ask questions and pay attention to the answers. So, I’m just trying to verify the information gleaned from our interviews. I’ve seen it before—workplace conflict can lead to hard feelings and considerable strife.” He took another drink, surveying my office while he did so—the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the tall, multipaned windows. “Pretty nice set-up you’ve got here.”

I held Boylan’s flat gray eyes. “I’ve worked very hard to get where I am, Boylan. I’ve earned it. I don’t have to think about killing colleagues.”

The desk phone rang, and I blinked. I reached over and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” My voice was expressionless.

“Babe. What’s this crap Schultz is telling me?”

I signed so deeply I could hardly speak afterward; it was such a relief to hear his voice. “Charlie,” I said, staring directly at Boylan. “Good timing. Your colleague, Lieutenant Boylan, is here asking me some questions.” My voice was still flat. In the few second’s long-distance lag before Charlie’s response came, my eyes burned with tears.

“He is, huh? Put the son-of-a-bitch on the phone, willya, Babe?”

“Okay.” I handed the receiver to Boylan, who rose and stood by the desk. His expression had turned to cast-iron.

“Yeah?” he said and listened for a long few minutes. His eyes narrowed as he turned from me to Lombardi, eyeing him assessingly, making the connection with Felicity. “Yeah,” he said again. Then, “Right,” and slammed the phone down.

Don’t hang up on Charlie!
I managed to keep my internal scream silent.

Lombardi loomed motionless by the door. Only his Adam’s apple moved, up and down, as if he were trying to expel an acorn.

Boylan turned his gaze back to me, his expression now inscrutable. “Bringing in the heavies, are you, Professor?” The cat’s smile was now the grin of a backyard predator.

I was beginning to wish Charlie had left well enough alone. Whatever he’d said to his colleague seemed to have antagonized him even further.

“I don’t like to have to do this,” Boylan said, his expression impossible to read. “But it does seem to me that ‘reasonable suspicion’ comes into play here.
Motive
and
opportunity
—you’ve got both. No matter what your…good friend might say.”

He slid a legal-looking paper from his inside breast pocket and shook it open. “Search warrant,” he said.

I jumped up.

“You creep,” I said. “You had that all along. No matter what I said, you were going to toss my office!”

“Oh, no,” he said. Without taking his gaze off me he ordered, “Lombardi, get the computer.”

“No,” I cried, totally losing any iota of composure I might have retained. “You can’t do that!”

“Oh, yes, I can.” Waving the document in my face.

“Just let me have a half hour to print out my tenure stuff. I need it for my tenure petition.”

“Get that damn computer, Lombardi. Now. We’re out of here.”

“For God’s sake,” I whimpered, as they exited the room. “Not the computer. Don’t take my computer!”

Neither Mom nor I said a word all the way home.

***

I grabbed the phone the minute I got to the house. If Charlie could call me at my office, he must somehow be back in touch. I dialed the number for his Baghdad base, but got the same runaround Felicity had: comms were down at Piotrowski’s temp base, and they were waiting for backup. Could be forty-eight hours, could be more. It all depended. It was just busted equipment. Not to worry, lady.

Chapter 13

Friday 10/16

I usually pride myself on making the obscure topic of Native American political oratory come to vivid life. But Friday morning, with so much pressing on my mind—Mom, Joe’s murder, my stolen tenure documents, the police seizure of my office computer—I was less engaged in the lecture than the students were. As I droned on, Garrett Reynolds typed away on his laptop—e-mail, no doubt—and Stephanie Hart nodded automatically, deep into her drawing. Cat Andrews was even more out of it than usual, and I wondered if perhaps she was in shock over Joe Lone Wolf’s death. Was she one of the students who’d been particularly fond of Joe? I felt a miniscule pang of guilt: I hadn’t returned her poke on Facebook.

Then Ayesha Ahmed walked into the classroom, and all heads turned. Not only was she late—unusual in itself—but, except for her face and her hands she was completely covered. Ayesha wore a floor-length robe in a fine, pale-green linen with long, wide sleeves and embroidered tucks across the bosom. The toes of a pair of scruffy sneakers peeked out from beneath the robe. Where were the sassy blue jeans that went with the sassy attitude?

Claiming her usual seat, she arranged her books and backpack, and lowered her eyes. She folded her hands, and they disappeared into her sleeves. The
hijab
was white today, pulled low over her forehead, showing not a tendril of her dark, shiny hair. In dress and demeanor Ayesha was suddenly light-years away from the girl she’d been all semester. A buzz went around the room, which I silenced with a prolonged icy stare. Only Hank Brody continued to gawk at the transformed young woman. Poor Hank; she didn’t even seem to notice that he was in the room.

I continued to sleepwalk my way through the lecture, but now I was thinking about my (okay, I’ll say it) my
pet
student. Something was going on with Ayesha—maybe something I couldn’t hope to understand. All I could do as her English professor—all I had the right to do—was discuss with her the reason for not having handed in her mid-semester paper.

In spite of my distraction, I noticed Cat Andrews, wearing a wrinkled cotton dress over leggings, with her neon-tipped buzz cut a matted mess of hair and hair gel, focus for a long moment on Ayesha. Then Cat’s gaze drifted to Stephanie and to Garrett. Suddenly, an expression that mimicked thought crossed her face, she snapped to attention and looked directly at me for a millisecond, as if she were about to interrupt the lecture. Then she seemed to think better of it. After class I again thought she was about to speak to me, but Garrett came up on one side of her and Stephanie on the other, and they all walked out together. Not wanting Ayesha to get away, I moved swiftly to the door. Between the holiday and the suspension of classes after Joe’s death, there hadn’t been a class in a week, so, of course, I hadn’t had a chance to speak to her about her unsubmitted paper.

“Ms. Ahmed,” I said, in a half-joking manner. She had tarried, packing up her backpack meticulously, and was the only student remaining in the room. She looked up at me, and I continued, serious now, “I was very surprised not to receive your essay last Friday.”

“Oh,” she replied. Her expression was inscrutable. “Didn’t you get my e-mail?” It was impossible for me to read whether or not I was being played. She wouldn’t meet my gaze, but averted her eyes in the way I’d seen with certain observant Muslim women.

“E-mail? No.” For the ten-thousandth time I cursed the invention of the Internet, a professor’s bane as well as blessing. “When would that have been?”

“Last Thursday. Before I went home. I attached my essay to it.”

“Really? Hmm. No, I didn’t receive anything from you. And you know my policy—no e-mail submissions for formal papers. Says so on the syllabus.” Too tricky. Too prone to the-computer-ate-my-homework excuses.

“Oh.” Then she did look straight at me. Her dark eyes seemed as free of guile as an angel’s. “Well, then, I don’t know what happened, but I do have a printout of the essay with me. Shall I just give you that?” She went shuffling through her backpack.

“Certainly,” I said. The other students’ papers were graded and returned. I could read this one tomorrow. As Ayesha held out the essay, her hand trembled briefly, causing the fabric to ripple on the wide embroidered sleeve. The slender hand was dark and beautiful against the pale green, but it was not quite steady.

I gave the girl a searching look. Was she, too, one of Joe Lone Wolf’s student following? “Is everything all right, Ayesha?”

She started. Her eyes widened. “Yes, of course. What would be wrong?” Her body shifted, weight on one foot, as if she were ready to flee.

I took the paper, and she did—flee that is. The only question in my mind now was whether I should call the Dean of Students’ office right away, or whether I should read Ayesha’s paper first to see if it gave me any clue as to what was on her mind. I’d queried Earlene about Ayesha before the long weekend began, but at that time she’d heard nothing from her, and mine was the only professorial query she’d gotten.

“I’ll wait until she’s back on campus,” Earlene had said. “Then I’ll arrange a casual kind of chat. See if I can get a sense of what’s going on.”

I erased the blackboard, packed up my briefcase and headed toward the door. When I’d left my mother in the English office with Monica, they’d been talking about
Sex and the City
.

My
mother
?
Sex and the City!

***

The spacious hallway was oak-paneled to shoulder height and the dark wood floors worn into parallel paths by generations of student feet. Everything shone with polish and, this early in the morning, the smell of cleaning fluid from the overnight janitorial administrations still tinged the air. As I left the classroom a strong hand grabbed my upper arm. Startled, I let my book-bag slip. The heavy bag fell to the floor with a thud, landing on a well-polished brown oxford.

“Ouch!” Neil Boylan yelled, releasing me. He stood on one foot and flexed the other experimentally.

“You scared the hell out of me, Boylan!”

He stepped tentatively on the injured foot, then put his entire weight on it and took a step or two. Evidently I hadn’t crippled him for life. “If you’d been watching where you were going—”

I could think of no reason for the lieutenant to be lurking outside my classroom that augured anything but trouble. He was alone this time, no sign of Trooper Lombardi—or any other officer, plain-clothes or uniformed. “What’s with that girl?” he asked, nodding toward the robe-clad, head-covered Ayesha, who had just come out of the ladies room. “I saw you talking to her in the classroom. Looked pretty intense.” His eyes slitted as he watched her begin to descend the stairs.

His cold scrutiny of my student gave me a little chill. “Nothing’s wrong with her,” I said. “She’s Muslim. That’s all.” The response was louder than I’d intended—and sharper. A dark-haired student clutching a sweating Diet Coke gave us a wide berth. “What do you want?”

“I have to ask you about something.”

“What?”

“Let’s go to your office.”

“No. I have someone waiting for me.” I didn’t want him anywhere near my mother. My mother! What was I going to do with her? I couldn’t impose on Monica more than once.

“Let’s talk here,” I said.

“Well,” he shrugged, “if you want to be seen in public being grilled by a homicide cop.”

Boylan was right: I didn’t want to be seen on campus with him. We descended the eroded stone steps to the first floor, and then I led him out of the building through a side door. Once we were outside, he gave me a sideways glance. “I’ve been talking to your colleagues.”

“Yeah?” Wanting to get at least a couple of blocks away, I turned toward a street that headed out of town. I walked fast through this old light-industrial area with its remaining red-brick factories and mid-twentieth-century car showrooms with grimy plate-glass windows. Boylan kept step with me. A cold, damp wind cut through my wool coat. I tucked the knitted scarf tighter around my neck. The smell of Mexican food wafted from a small restaurant, and I realized I’d had no breakfast.

“Yeah. And I heard about your altercation.” He was going to make me work. I’d seen Charlie use the same technique, edging toward the question, putting the interviewee off balance. I could play the game, too.

“What altercation?” But of course it could only be the one, and my breath grew shallow.

“Oh, a little squabble in Dickinson Hall. About ten days ago?” He wore a sleek yellow cold-weather hiking jacket. Now he stopped and zipped it up. “You know that stuff I said out by Lone Wolf’s apartment the other day?” Then he stood still, not quite meeting my eyes. “Well, then I was just jerking your chain. Just for fun.”

“Ha, ha.”
Jerk
was the right word. But could this possibly be an apology?

“Even yesterday, hearing about how you both wanted that job, I thought, jeez, give the girl a break. But now, what people are telling me—I’ve gotta take it seriously.” He snapped his jacket shut at the collar. “No matter what Piotrowski says.” He pulled on a pair of fur-lined gloves. He hadn’t been looking at me, but now he turned his head and gave me a long stare. “Or does.”

I could feel my face freeze into a mask. “Is that so?” What was it between Charlie and Boylan? I wished I could ask Charlie, but, since that brief moment in my office, he hadn’t called, and he hadn’t answered my e-mail, either. I was beginning to worry about him even more than usual. What was it he’d said last time we’d spoken at length? That he’d be out of touch for a while? That they were going “out into the provinces”? I sure as hell didn’t like the sound of that.

Boylan and I walked past a long-abandoned gas station, its pumps forever frozen at $1.19 a gallon. I tripped over a sidewalk crack raised a couple of inches by an errant tree root and caught myself before I fell.

“Yes, that’s so,” he blurted. “As you damn well know. Competition for the same big-time job? A nasty public argument with the victim? Workplace conflict—it’s a motive as old as the hills.” He tipped his head toward me. “That fight between you and Lone Wolf? What was that all about?”

I sighed, huffing out like a race horse. “It wasn’t a fight. It was simply a disagreement.”

“Over what?” His expression would have frozen steam.

Oh, God—I didn’t want to bring Ayesha into this, but I was certain that Ned Hilton would have already told the investigator about her. “I didn’t like the way he was treating one of my students—the one you just saw on the stairs.” I stopped walking and lowered my heavy book bag down on a low cement wall outside an auto-parts store; he might as well hear
my
version of that ugly scene.

***

“Sorry, Monica, I got delayed.” My mother was sitting in a corner of the English office with a large bone crochet hook and a ball of bulky cerise yarn. “Hi, Mom. Looks like you’ve been busy.”

She looked up and frowned. “I’m not ready to go yet.” A nearly completed winter scarf was spiraling from her ball of yarn.

“Adele told me she likes to crochet,” Monica said.
Adele
? So she and Mom were on first-name terms already. “We took an early coffee break and went over to the Hook Nook. And, see, she’s only been on this for—what?—an hour? and she’s got a whole scarf almost done.” She smiled at my mother, who tucked her head modestly.

I took the soft rosy scarf in my hand. It was beautiful, crocheted in an intricate openwork pattern. “Mom, that’s lovely—”

“What’s going on here?” Ned’s voice came from behind me. Had he been lurking there, waiting for me?

“Shit,” Monica hissed.

“We’re just—”

“Never mind, Karen. I have to talk to you.” Why was Ned assuming such a tone of authority? Hadn’t Miles resumed the English Chair?

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“In my office. Monica, no calls.”

As I followed Ned into the chairman’s inner office, I glanced back with a puzzled look. Monica rolled her eyes.

Ned sat well back into the window alcove behind his desk as I took the facing chair. “I’ll make it brief,” he said. “You must know that it was my duty to inform that police detective about your…your
contretemps
…with Joe Lone Wolf.”

“I do know that.”

“You do?” He gazed at me assessingly. “Oh, yes. You have connections within the state police, don’t you? But do you know that, here on campus, there are rumors that you killed Joe?” Light coming through the mullioned windows behind Ned momentarily bestowed upon him an aura of sanctity.

“What?” Gripping the arms of the leather chair, I tried to conceal my astonishment. My colleagues thought I was a killer? Boylan hadn’t said anything about that. “That’s nonsense!” I bit off the words. The image of Earlene pleading prudence steadied me; I would not lose my cool.

“Is it?” Ned’s expression approximated one of sage authority. “In any case, you should know that I felt it necessary just now, when I saw that police detective—what’s s his name? Boyle? Well, when I saw him entering the Administration Building, I thought I should pass that campus speculation on to him.”

Sudden sheer hatred for my colleague shot through me. My first year at Enfield had been Ned’s tenure year. I thought back to those months when his tenure had been under consideration—the way he’d skulked around campus toadying up to senior faculty. I’d vowed then, that if Ned’s slavish servility was what academic life required of its denizens, I’d join my sister at WalMart. And since his tenure, Ned’s secure position in the academy had not liberated his spirit; rather it seemed to have narrowed both his mind and his character. A life lived exclusively in the intellect can do that to you; I’d seen it before.