Red Queen's Run

by Morris, Bourne

  Yet, on the second cup of coffee I finally brought up the subject of Mary Cartwell. I knew it might change the mood, but I had promised a full report. Looking back, I suspect I thought it would also be a chance to talk about a woman’s need for sex without talking about this woman’s need for sex.

  “So you think her husband doesn’t know about her affair with Henry?” Joe said when I finished.

  “Yes. Mary has been married to Edwin for twenty-five years. Even though he’s strange and reserved, I think she knows what he knows.”

  “You say she’s a beautiful woman. A husband might kill for her.”

  “Might. But I think she’s right. Edwin doesn’t have a clue about her behavior.”

  “That’s interesting. I came away from my interview with Cartwell also thinking he wasn’t a likely suspect even though he was in the building. His whole story about finding Henry’s body seemed credible. And why call the police and draw attention to yourself? Also, Edwin Cartwell doesn’t seem like the type to get into a fight.”

  “So you think there was a fight?”

  Joe looked troubled. “I need to know I can trust you, Red. This is police business—strictly confidential.”

  “Right. You can trust me.”

  “Forensics aren’t complete, but the theory seems to be that Henry sustained a serious wound in his back from that glass award sculpture that was on his desk. And it’s hard to wound yourself in the back so it’s probable someone else was involved and there may have been a fight.”

  “And that caused the heart attack?”

  “Maybe. We only know he had a heart attack at some point.”

  “So, how did he get from his office all the way to the stairwell and fall down the stairs?” I knew the answer before Joe spoke.

  “It may not have been a fall.”

  I did not sleep well that night. Joe had walked me to the door. “You look tired,” he said.

  “I am.” But I hoped he would say more.

  “I’ll call you,” he said. “Even if I don’t need more information. I’m not supposed to socialize with a source, but, if your alibi holds up and my chief doesn’t blow a gasket, I’d like to have dinner again sometime.”

  Then he left me, still wanting the touch of his hands, still thinking about Henry and Mary’s story. Late that night I awoke with Mary’s erotic descriptions melding with my own fantasies about Joe Morgan. I finally fell into a deep sleep that ended at six o’clock the next morning with a phone call.

  “We need to talk.” It was Simon Gorshak. The tone was imperious.

  “Simon, I have a terrible schedule today. We’ll talk tomorrow.” I tried to match his tone.

  “The tenure and promotion committee meets at nine o’clock this morning,” Simon went on. “You and I need to talk before then. Meredith, this is important.”

  Did I want to go to school early? Did I want Simon Gorshak to come to my home? I wavered just long enough for him to assume acceptance.

  “I’ll see you in your office. Will eight o’clock work?”

  “I’ll see you there,” I said, and tunneled into my pillow.

  I was in my office by seven, looking through Larry Coleman’s file and his tenure application. Larry was due to go up this year. In our school a tenure application goes directly to the school committee of those faculty members who are already tenured. They review the candidate’s teaching evaluations, outside letters from other university faculty in his or her field, and his or her own report on six years of research.

  Once tenured, it’s hard to be fired. A tenured professor can be fired if he or she commits a crime or some horrendous act, but just being disagreeable (like Simon) or bombastic and pompous (like George) or dyspeptic and difficult (like Edwin) is not reason enough.

  So, it’s important for the school to get it right. The process is demanding and fraught with anxiety. I didn’t think Larry was the type to bring a gun to the faculty meeting, but I suspected he would file a grievance if he were denied.

  “Morning, Meredith.” It was Simon. It was also George and Edwin. An ambush. They settled themselves in chairs in a semi-circle in front of my desk.

  “What’s on your mind...um, minds?”

  Simon cleared his throat to begin, but George couldn’t wait. “Meredith, regardless of how the other members of the Promotion and Tenure committee vote, we will all vote against Coleman.”

  “Phyllis and Max are also members,” I said.

  “And it won’t matter how they vote,” said Edwin, “because it will be three against.”

  “I believe the dean has a say in all this,” I said.

  “That’s why we’re here,” said Simon. “We don’t want this to turn into another faculty brawl. The school’s been through enough this year. We want you to think about supporting our decision so we can quietly end this and send Coleman on his way.”

  Oh do you? I leaned back in my chair. “And what will be my reason for denying tenure to Larry Coleman?” I asked.

  “His research lacks rigor and originality,” said Simon.

  “And his students only give him good evaluations because he is popular and far and away the lightest grader on the faculty,” added Edwin.

  “How about the outside opinions?”

  “Who cares?” said George. “New media experts are a dime a dozen and don’t know much. I, for one, found nothing compelling in their letters. I doubt some of them even read Coleman’s so-called research. At least not carefully.”

  I gazed steadily at the three of them. Edwin shifted in his chair. Simon cleared his throat again. Only George stared back, ready to raise his voice. Go for it, I thought. Make an ass of yourself and guarantee you won’t have my support.

  George went for it. “You’re not going to put this school through some new horror show are you Meredith?” Accusation is one of George’s favorite techniques.

  “No, George, but you three might be about to do just that.”

  “Not if you support us,” said Simon. “The administration will back your decisions. They made that clear enough.”

  “I don’t think so. I think the administration will be appalled at your vindictiveness.” I tried to keep my voice even. My stomach was starting to hurt. “None of you has a good reason to vote against Coleman. Your issue with him is about curriculum, not qualifications.”

  “Nonetheless, we will vote against him,” said Simon.

  “If you can’t convince me he doesn’t deserve tenure, how do you plan to convince a special committee?” I had to be cautious now. My anger was starting to overcome my fear of confrontation and might get the better of me.

  “What special committee?” asked George.

  “A university grievance committee,” I said. “If you deny tenure to Coleman after all his work, he’ll file a grievance. And...” I paused to make sure they were listening carefully, “and I will back him.”

  “Then so be it,” said George as he rose up and headed for the door.

  The pain in my stomach subsided. I continued, “By the time the grievance hearing is over, administrators and other faculty will see you as mean-spirited and bigoted because a colleague dared to disagree with you. You’ll be seen as narrow-minded bullies.”

  That stopped them.

  “Meredith, for God’s sake,” said Edwin.

  The pain was almost gone. I hardened. “Look, gentlemen, the schoolyard bullshit has gone on long enough. I am willing to preside over a civil argument about curriculum. But this pissing contest has to stop.”

  “Or what?” This from George, one hand on the door.

  “Or two things will happen. One, Coleman will be tenured by the university because his school is too dysfunctional to do it properly.”

  They waited a moment. “And two?”

  “You’ll discover whether or not I really am The Red Queen.�
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  Chapter 9

  Later that morning, I got a lesson in Pyrrhic victory. The journalism school tenure and promotion committee met on Larry’s tenure application and decided not to decide. Instead, as they put it in a brief memo, “given recent disputes in what is a small faculty, we think it best to have the whole of the tenured journalism faculty vote on this application.”

  Then in the afternoon, Ardith Trent, who teaches broadcast and does occasional work for local television, came to me with a problem. Ardith is a small, bird-like woman whose voice was raised to an unusually high pitch.

  One of her students had found a clip on YouTube and appropriated the idea and most of the footage. One of the mantras of newspaper journalism was, “get it first, but get it right.” And for God’s sake don’t steal it or invent it.

  “She presented it in class as her original work,” Ardith said. “No attribution whatsoever.”

  “How did you know it wasn’t her work?”

  “Dumb luck. It’s a piece I used last summer when I was freelancing in Duluth.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I called her over after class and told her I knew she had plagiarized it. And, you know what she said? I couldn’t believe it. She said it was not plagiarism because she had not copied someone’s writing. Just their video. And it wasn’t that big a deal.” Ardith sat down heavily. “Worst part? She’s one of my best students. Absolutely on target for an A until now.”

  “Not unusual,” I said. “My worst cases of plagiarism usually involved A students.”

  “Why is that?” Ardith looked close to tears.

  “I think it’s because A students always think of themselves as A students, people who never fail. So, when they run into a problem with an assignment, they cannot bear to screw up. They’d rather copy someone else’s work and hope we won’t suspect or that we’ll be too tired to care if we do.”

  Ardith took a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. She still dressed in the perfectly tailored jackets she wore when she anchored a news program.

  “How do you want to handle this?” I asked.

  “I plan to give her an F in my course,” said Ardith. “Frankly, I’d like to see her expelled from the school. I don’t want that young woman in journalism.”

  I sent Ardith off to Student Services to report her student. “See if you can find out from them if this is a first offense,” I said. “If she’s a recidivist, expulsion from the school may be the right remedy. But remember, I can’t expel her from the university, just the journalism school.”

  Nell stuck her head in after Ardith had gone. “Two calls while you were meeting. One from that Detective Morgan and one from President Lewis.”

  Joe was the only one I wanted to talk to at this point. I dialed his number on my cellphone. I got the recorded message and left my name. Pity. I really would have liked to hear the sound of his voice, and I hoped he had some new information about the case.

  Lewis was busy, too, but his assistant told me Henry’s children were going back to their homes and thinking about a small family service after the body was returned to them.

  No funeral to arrange. That was a blessing.

  Joe called me early the next morning to tell me he had no news about Henry’s case and he was going to be tied up on another incident involving a drunk nineteen-year-old ex-boyfriend who drove his truck through the wall of his ex-girlfriend’s small house. The truck landed on the bed, pinning the ex-girlfriend and her new lover. It took firefighters an hour to rescue the couple as gas and oil leaked all over them and the bed. Fortunately, they both suffered only minor scrapes and burns. The driver was arrested and booked on drunk driving plus two counts of battery with a deadly weapon. I would hope so.

  The afternoon snow turned into slushy rain bringing a sky of dull gray, unusual for Nevada, more like winter in Ohio. I turned on my desk lamp as much for its incandescent cheeriness as illumination, a counterbalance to the gloom outside my windows.

  Nell stuck her head in. “A student named Celeste Cummings wants to see you right away,” she said.

  “About?”

  “Something to do with a grade Ardith Trent gave her.”

  “Tell Celeste I’ll see her at four. Then find Ardith. I need to talk to her first.”

  Nell’s head disappeared and Ardith showed up ten minutes later.

  “Celeste is a repeat offender, a recidivist as you called it,” Ardith said. “Student Services say their records show she had one problem with her sophomore English class and another in anthropology.”

  “Plagiarism both times?”

  “No, just in English. The professor let her off with a warning and made her re-write her paper. In anthropology, she cheated on a test. Got caught reading text messages from her roommate who was back in the dorm with a copy of the textbook. The professor gave her an F on the test but not in the course. The good thing is both reported the incidents to Student Services.”

  “Now what do you recommend?” I asked. In most cases of academic dishonesty, it’s the professor’s call.

  Ardith’s thin face looked fierce. “I’ve already told Celeste she flunked my course. She seemed arrogant and indifferent and said she’d just switch over to online journalism and forget broadcast.”

  “Do you still think she should be expelled?”

  Ardith didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I do. I wish you could expel her from the whole university. She cheats at everything.”

  “I can’t expel her from the university,” I said, “but Celeste Cummings will at least be out of the journalism school.”

  Left alone, I wondered if this was typical for a university dean or if I was just having an awful first week.

  Celeste Cummings arrived at five past four. I recognized her from a freshman writing class I had taught.

  A lovely face, fine featured, large blue eyes over a snub nose and a bright red mouth. She was tall and slim, had probably been pretty since she was a toddler. I invited her to sit at the small round table with me.

  “I suppose you know Trent wants to give me an F in her broadcast class,” she said. Long, manicured fingernails tapped my table.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, I’m sorry but Trent is a dried up old bitch who resents anyone in class who she sees as on-camera competition.”

  “Is that why you think she’s failing you?”

  “No.” The lower bright red lip quivered. “She’s failing me because I used a stupid little bit of video for one of her stupid class projects and forgot to provide attribution.”

  “You know providing attribution is essential in journalism, don’t you?”

  The blue eyes flashed. “Of course I know. You taught us that two years ago. I just forgot, that’s all. It was a silly oversight and for that, she’s flunking me.”

  I sat back and took a deep breath. “This is not your first problem with academic dishonesty is it, Celeste?”

  Now the eyes were wary and the red mouth hardened. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” She pronounced each word precisely.

  “There’s the matter of the English paper and the anthropology test,” I said.

  Her jaw fell. Then anger. “What the hell do those courses have to do with this? I’m not an English or anthro major, I’m a journalism major.”

  “Not anymore,” I said. “I am expelling you from the school.”

  Now she was standing. “You can’t do this.” She stamped her foot so hard I thought she would break one of her four-inch heels.

  “Indeed I can.”

  “No, you can’t. I’ve won awards in this school. Television station managers have told me I have a great future in television. You can’t throw me out of journalism. You can’t wreck my future career over a stupid mistake.”

  I remained seated trying to look calm. “Nonetheless, Celeste,
you are expelled from the school of journalism. You will receive formal notification later this week.”

  “Bitch, I pay your salary.”

  Why do students think this is the ultimate weapon to use against faculty?

  I rose and walked to my desk. “Celeste, your tuition pays a small portion of my salary. Most of it is paid for by the state which means that the people of the state, including the television journalists of this state, pay my salary.”

  Celeste’s pretty face was distorted with rage.

  I went on: “I have an ethical obligation to all those people, particularly those who might be tempted to hire you. You have no business in journalism, Celeste. Go find another career that doesn’t require you to cheat.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Still brooding about Celeste, I picked up my cellphone on the first ring. Joe wanted to meet for a brief drink at a bar near the police station. A drink would be good after this day. Especially a drink with Joe Morgan.

  Landry’s main street is mostly bars, restaurants, and small casinos that try to skim off some of the tourists from Reno and Lake Tahoe. In winter, traffic is light.

  “I’m sorry to drag you out again,” Joe said, easing into a booth in the back of a nearly empty dive named Toots. The walls were covered with pictures of former prizefighters whose boxing bouts had taken place in Reno or Carson City. The walls had not been painted since the previous century and the leatherette seats in the booth were cracked and stained.

  “And sorry I can’t take you to a classier drinking joint, but I have to be back at the station in an hour.”

  Joe looked good. A bit harried, but good.

  “How goes the investigation into Henry’s death?”

  He frowned and motioned the bartender to come over to the table. “A Heineken’s and a...” he looked uncertainly at me. This was probably not the place to order wine.