Red Queen's Run

by Morris, Bourne

  Praise for the Red Solaris Mystery Series

  THE RED QUEEN’S RUN (#1)

  “Touching upon a very real subject, this author offers the perfect formula of suspects, mystery, and a handsome police detective to heat up Red’s fire. The frightening part, however, is that the foundation of school violence has become just as angry and backstabbing as the political realm. This is a great read about what goes on behind those academic doors.”

  – Suspense Magazine

  “Morris has crafted a suspenseful, thoughtful, sexy debut…Her hero, Red Solaris, is vulnerable but tough, complex but straight-shooting, a woman learning how to wield power by remembering what it’s like to have little of it. I’ll read about her adventures anytime. Long live the Queen!”

  – Christopher Coake,

  Author of You Came Back

  “A psychological thriller that reveals the Ivory Tower to be a hothouse full of monstrous egos, where bullying thrives long past playground days and ‘academic discipline’ requires research skills of the detective kind.”

  – Kate Manning,

  Author of My Notorious Life

  “Morris proves herself a masterful storyteller in this compelling debut novel. The Red Queen’s Run is compulsive reading as it takes on the ripped-from-the-headlines topic of campus violence. I can’t wait to follow its smart new heroine, ‘Red’ Solaris as this trilogy continues.”

  – Alan Deutschman,

  Author of Change or Die

  “Morris’ long career in academia pays dividends to the reader in behind-the-office-door details and drama that bring life to Meredith ‘Red’ Solaris’s dilemma as interim dean to a squabbling groups of cheats and scoundrels. One of them has killed her friend, the former dean, and as the ethics professor – and the ethical backbone of this novel—Red Solaris is compelling as she stumbles through her new role and toward the truth.”

  – Lori Rader-Day,

  Author of The Black Hour

  “A racy and delightful peek into academia’s darker corners. Bourne Morris clearly knows this microcosm as well as anyone, and lucky for us, she also knows how to turn a phrase, twist a plot and spin one hell of a yarn.”

  – Ben Rogers,

  Author of The Flamer

  “This first mystery in a trilogy by Bourne Morris, an academic herself, is more biting than comedic. Dean Solaris, the eponymous ‘Red Queen,’ is a well-developed character who should go the distance in a trilogy. Other characters ring true as well, and the evolving romantic interest is particularly well-done.”

  – Heather Hardy,

  Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, University of Nevada, Reno

  Books in the Red Solaris Mystery Series

  by Bourne Morris

  THE RED QUEEN’S RUN (#1)

  THE RISE OF THE RED QUEEN (#2)

  (December 2015)

  Copyright

  THE RED QUEEN’S RUN

  A Red Solaris Mystery

  Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

  First Edition

  Digital epub edition | December 2014

  Henery Press

  www.henerypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2014 by Bourne Morris

  Cover art by Stephanie Chontos

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Related subjects include: women sleuths, murder mystery series, whodunit mysteries (whodunnit), amateur sleuth murder mysteries, book club recommendations.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-940976-58-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Bob.

  May he make me laugh forever.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No book is written by one person. It just seems that way when you’re alone at the keyboard. But then help arrives from multitudes.

  My original editor Marjorie Braman saved me from despair and drowning and taught me how to put a novel together. Victoria Sanders led her to me. My amazing friends and readers taught me patience and cleared up the confusing parts. I owe more than I can say to the late Phil Rose, Merle Rose, Nancy Bostdorff, Cece Pearce, Diane Seevers, Leah Wilds, Cindie Geddes, Kristin Felten and Joanne O’Hare. I learned from all of you.

  Thank you Otto Penzler for recommending my agent, Kimberley Cameron, who gave me support, encouragement and a better title for the book. She also led me to wonderful editors, Kendel Lynn and Anna Davis, plus an eagle-eyed staff at Henery Press who made me see more clearly.

  Art Molinares taught me how to begin using social media and Todd Felts, at the University of Nevada, and his brilliant student, Ryan Kelly, pushed me farther. Jeff Ross and Brent Boynton envisioned wonderfully. So did Bob Felten, good friend and great teacher, who assigned four students the task of advising me on marketing. What a job they did. My gratitude to Shaun Burgess, Josh MacEachern, Garett Rosenquist and Erica Williams.

  Thanks also to many University of Nevada friends who taught me about the academy, especially Joe Crowley, Donica Mensing, Rosemary McCarthy, John Fredericks, Jannet Vreeland, the late Travis Linn and numerous faculty members.

  My fellow writers, all more skilled than I, deserve praise and gratitude and many bottles of good wine. Christopher Coake, Alan Deutschman, Kate Manning, Lori Rader-Day, Ben Rogers and Heather Hardy, thank you forever.

  I owe much to the writers of The Chronicle of Higher Education, especially Academe Today, and to the ever-reliable New York Times for keeping me current with events in higher education, especially the violent and scandalous. And, of course, my gratitude to the amazing Lewis Carroll.

  And finally, my family has been putting up with my obsessions and me for years. I love you deeply daughters and readers, Miranda and Temple, and amazing stepson, Scott, for my website. And, sweet husband, you deserve much more than a dedication for all your love and understanding. You make my world.

  Chapter 1

  Anyone who thinks a college campus is a haven of scholarship and civility hasn’t been paying attention. Last year, I sat through a dozen faculty meetings with recurring visions of Dr. Amy Bishop flooding my mind. I could almost see Bishop seated in a 2010 faculty meeting at the University of Alabama, then see her stand, aim a nine millimeter gun at her friends and colleagues across the table and begin firing. Before her gun jammed, Bishop killed three people, wounded three others, and then left the building and headed home to her husband and children.

  Madmen lurk among us.

  I don’t recall the day when members of my own faculty began to scare me, or when their normal academic debates turned to prolonged and vicious quarreling. It was as if trouble crept up on us, a slow-moving storm that turned the sky pewter just before the funnel cloud manifested. I began to worry about potential violence.

  I clearly remember the faculty meeting last August when George Weinstein’s hand came down on the table so hard it bounced the piles of paper in front of us.

  “Larry Coleman doesn’t deserve tenure,” said George, breathing heavily. Sweat shone on his upper lip. “We should never have hired him in the first place. He’s a lousy teacher and a third rate scholar. I move we request his resignation.”

  I could smell th
e fear around the room.

  Larry Coleman’s eyes turned dark. His hands closed into fists, his lips tightened over his teeth.

  “George, shut the hell up,” said Max Worthington from the other side of the table. His voice was low, almost soft, his face gray with anger. “You can’t say that about a colleague. Not here, not now.”

  “I can say whatever I goddamn please,” said George, not even bothering to look at Max.

  Max’s voice grew louder. “Tenure doesn’t protect your right to slander.”

  George moved around the end of the table until he was a foot away from Max. Max stood up. The two men loomed over us—big, tall, muscular.

  Here we go.

  Partly hidden by my open laptop, I waited to find my voice but I was paralyzed by the idea that anything I said would further inflame the situation. Pain in my stomach ruled me. It made me ashamed to think I was scared of two angry professors, but I was. I said nothing.

  Henry Brooks, our dean, sat morose and silent. Henry was the best boss I had ever known. He didn’t just manage, he inspired. Usually, he helped us play to our strengths and overcome our weaknesses. His fine, handsome features rarely displayed despair. But that day he looked old and defeated. He was my hero, but I felt sorry for him.

  “This school is in crisis,” said Simon Gorshak, the oldest of the faculty. He twisted in his seat to face the dean. “Henry, what are you going to do about it?”

  “There is a motion on the floor,” said George at the top of his voice.

  “But no second to the motion,” said an obviously exhausted Henry, “and I don’t think ad hominum remarks illuminate the conversation or our understanding.”

  George turned and went back to his chair. Max sat down and pulled his laptop toward him.

  A message arrived on my screen from Max, fuming and banging on his keyboard: “Hold on tight, Red. Palace revolution coming up.”

  I typed a reply: “The revolution eats its children.”

  Chapter 2

  The telephone call that changed everything came three days after that faculty meeting. I had been drinking with Sadie in my living room, on a cold Sunday afternoon when the Nevada wind was up, promising snow all night and a black sky without clouds.

  Sadie sipped a glass of dry sherry, her thin features softened by the light from the fireplace, and tugged at a strand of silver hair that had escaped from the bun at the nape of her neck. Sadie was the retired Dean of Liberal Arts at Mountain West University and my best friend.

  “I know I encouraged you to take that job as associate dean, but don’t keep it too long,” she said. “Too much paper pushing and budgeting and personnel squabbles. It eats the time you need for scholarship and teaching.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “I haven’t touched my research for two months and I don’t even want to think about my student evaluations this semester. I’m spending way too much time trying to help my dean cope with faculty disputes.”

  “I saw Henry last week,” Sadie said. “He told me the quarreling was even more hellish now than last semester.”

  “I wish I could be of more help to him. He probably told you about our three senior professors who tear him up every chance they get. We get nothing accomplished at faculty meetings. These guys always blow up the agenda.”

  “That’s the way of faculty fights.” Sadie sipped on her sherry. “I’ve seen some dreadful power struggles disguised as debates about curriculum or budgets. Noses get out of joint, especially senior, tenured noses.”

  I knew Sadie was right but it didn’t help. “What gets me is the fierceness. This quarrel has gotten so much worse and it brings out the schoolyard bully in each of them. They hurt each other—they curse, they pound the table, they humiliate anyone who disagrees with them. And it happens at every meeting. I keep waiting for someone to throw a punch.”

  “Don’t be surprised if someone does.”

  “But these are grown men with advanced degrees and distinguished reputations. They should know better.”

  Sadie looked weary of the topic. “I think I’ll have a little more sherry before I head home,” she said, rising from her chair and walking over to the small table I use as a bar. She poured herself half a small glass and returned to the fireplace.

  I lived in a two-story brick house I bought with money I earned from a book I wrote about the newspaper business. My house was small but enough for a single professor—well-designed kitchen, a living room with a fireplace, one large bedroom upstairs and a smaller one downstairs that served as my office and guest room. My primary indulgence was a stereo system that played in every room so Mozart or Grace Slick could accompany me through my chores.

  Sadie picked up a framed picture from the mantle over the fireplace. In her firm pay-attention-I’m-changing-the-subject-voice, she said, “Beautiful” to the photograph of a slender woman with pale skin and dark red hair. My mother.

  “A beautiful drunk,” I said.

  “So you’ve told me. But you do look very much like her.”

  “I try not to act like her. I only keep her picture to remind me not to behave as badly as she did.”

  “I know. But I’ve heard you say that often enough to think you loved her anyway.” Sadie smiled and eased back into the armchair nearest the fireplace.

  My golden retriever roused himself from a nap and walked over to Sadie. He put his head under her hand. “Have you named this splendid dog yet?”

  “Not yet. I just call him ‘dog’ and he comes.” On cue, the retriever left Sadie, came over to me and put his head on my lap.

  Sadie leaned forward. “Your life is on hold, you know. You’re a beautiful woman with glorious red hair, who lives alone with her dog and goes to movies with an old lady twice her age.”

  “Sadie, I love going to movies with you. Movies and booze make you so insightful.”

  “You’re past thirty. You should be crazy about some man and yearning to have his child.” Sadie tucked another loose strand back behind her ear. “You haven’t had a serious man for ages, and you are overdue.” Sadie has an irritating grasp of my vulnerabilities.

  “I date sometimes.” I focused on the dog’s ears and avoided Sadie’s eyes.

  “What about the biology professor with the shining white teeth—what happened to him?”

  “The third date happened,” I said.

  “No good in bed?”

  “It didn’t get that far.”

  Sadie leaned further forward, elbows on knees, and gave me her impatient glare. “My dear, you have to try.”

  I matched her with my elbows on my knees. “Sadie. At that point sex with him would have just been...obligatory.”

  Sadie sat back. “Obligatory sex, ugh. That’s the worst kind.’”

  We both laughed and then our laughs fell into sighs as we stared into the fire.

  “I met an attractive guy a couple of weeks ago at one of Elaine’s dinner parties. Elaine’s brother,” I said. Elaine Morgan Witter was an adjunct professor at the journalism school and the editor of our local paper.

  “Elaine’s brother? What’s his name?”

  “Josiah. But he’s called Joe. Joe Morgan.”

  Sadie’s eyes lit up. She loves to tease. “Joe Morgan is a baseball player. Is Elaine’s brother a baseball player?”

  “No more sherry for you, my friend. The man’s a police detective.”

  “A detective. Is he attractive?” Sadie sat up straight, reinvigorated.

  I flushed remembering how I’d stared at Joe Morgan during dinner. “He’s good looking in a roughhewn sort of way. Strong face, tall, good build, the same green eyes that his sister has.”

  “A tall, green-eyed detective.” Sadie polished off the last of her sherry. “Alas, in the literature, detectives usually fall for nurses or lawyers rather than college professors. But who knows? He
sounds promising.”

  Sadie rose and headed for the coat rack by the front door. I got up to help her with her coat. Sadie is so thin I always worry I’ll crack one of her bones when I hug her.

  “I look forward to our next lunch,” she said, as she opened the door and turned toward the darkness outside. “Thanks for the sherry. It warmed me up.”

  I stood on my front steps, shivering as she made her way to her Jeep parked at the end of my driveway. When I heard her engine start, I waved her goodbye and turned back into the house.

  The phone was ringing. I picked it up and said hello. A few seconds later my heart almost stopped beating.

  It was Edwin Cartwell, one of the bellicose professors I had just described to Sadie. He was calling, he said, because there had been an accident at the journalism school. A man had died after falling down the concrete stairs from the third floor to the landing of the second floor.

  “It might be Henry Brooks,” he said.

  I didn’t believe him at first. I knew Edwin to exaggerate and dissemble. But when I asked him to repeat himself, his tone was calm, appropriate.

  “It might be Henry Brooks,” Edwin said again, without emotion.

  Might be my boss, my dean? How he had fallen Edwin didn’t know. He hadn’t seen it happen. Edwin told me he took the stairs, as always, and found Henry’s body face down on the landing. He had edged down the steps, careful not to touch the sprawled legs, the one arm flung across the last step. When he had reached the landing, he had placed his fingers on the side of the man’s neck, avoiding the blood and bone chips. The man was dead. He had checked the pulse, called 911, and then called me.