by Crider, Bill
Burns turned the subject to the murder and the questioning.
"Nothing to it," Tomlin said. "I was at home with Joynell when it happened. The coppers can't pin a thing on me."
Tomlin avoided looking at Burns when he talked, but there was nothing unusual in that; it was just a part of Tomlin's nature. Several of his students had once told Burns that Tomlin, though he taught Education and often talked of the value of looking at the audience, never once made eye contact with them in his classes. His gaze always seemed to be directed just above their heads. They often wondered what he was looking at and concluded it was the row of portraits of great educators—men like Socrates, Rousseau, Dewey, and Piaget—that lined the back wall of the classroom. So one day they went to class early and took the portraits down, laying them on the floor in the back of the room. Tomlin never even noticed. He lectured the class as usual, looking somewhere above their heads the entire time. The students put the pictures back up and left just as puzzled as ever.
"They can't pin anything on me either," Fox said. "Loretta and I were watching TV most of the night, and then Mal picked me up to go to the seminar in the morning."
Burns hadn't really suspected them of any part in the murder. "I was just wondering about the questioning," he said. "Did Boss Napier give you a hard time?"
"Sure he did," Tomlin answered. "What would you expect? Called me a wimp college teacher and told me he was going to put me in a cell with a gorilla if I lied to him. Not a gorilla like a tough guy. A real gorilla."
"Told me the same thing," Fox said. "But I didn't let it bother me." He glared at the sign. "Now that bothers me."
"Not me," Tomlin said suddenly. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out his pack of Merits. He shook one out, got his lighter out of his pocket, and lit up. He sat there puffing contentedly as Fox and Burns stared at him.
"Aren't you worried that they'll get you?" Fox said. He was always worried that he would be caught smoking, but now that there was an official sign he was doubly worried.
"Hell, no," Tomlin told him. "Like you said, whoever comes in here? Rose might, but she'll never tell. If Dorinda Edgely catches me, let her run tattle to the president. I'll deny it, and you two can back me up. It'll be our word against hers."
"Well, . . ." Fox said.
"Besides," Tomlin said, "we can make Burns sit with his chair against the door. If he's not going to smoke, he might as well be useful."
That settled it. Burns moved his chair and soon Fox was happily blowing smoke rings, or trying to. Things were back to normal. It was almost as if Street had never been killed.
And then they started in on Burns about his nose.
At lunch that day, Burns went to talk to Clem Nelson. She was in her office, eating an apple and a bran muffin. Burns, who had seen a story on 60 Minutes about a possible carcinogen that was often sprayed on apples, tried to convince her that eating one was probably almost as bad as smoking, but she didn't pay him any mind.
Then he asked about her questioning by Napier.
"He was a perfect gentleman," Clem said, wrapping the apple core in her napkin before throwing it away.
A sexist, Burns thought. He talked tough to the men and came on like a charmer to the women. It figured.
He told Clem about the letter Duncan claimed to have received and how it appeared to be accusing Street of either theft or plagiarism.
"I don't believe that Edward Street would do such a thing," Clem said. "It's true that there were times when he might not have gotten along with the rest of us because he had such an exaggerated sense of his own importance, but he would never steal."
"I've often wondered, though, why he never wrote another novel," Burns said.
Clem looked away and fumbled with a red pencil that was lying on top of her blonde-wood desk. That wasn't like Clem, who always looked directly at Burns when she was speaking to him, unlike Mal Tomlin.
"Is there something you ought to be telling me?" Burns asked her.
"Maybe," Clem said, still looking at the pencil.
Burns waited.
Clem put the pencil in a gold and black HGC Panthers coffee mug that she used for a pencil holder. Then she took it out again and bounced its eraser end on top of the desk.
"All right," she said finally. "I'll tell you. I think Street had written another book."
Burns had suspected that she knew something, but not something like that. "How do you know?" he said.
"He wrote me a letter," Clem said, looking at the pencil.
"Did you mention this to Boss Napier?" Burns asked.
"No. He didn't give me a chance. He just asked about my whereabouts on the night Street was killed and whether I knew anyone who had a grudge against him."
"Did you?" Burns said. "Know anyone who had a grudge against him, I mean?"
"Well, not really. Nothing that anyone would kill for, at least."
Burns remembered his experiences of the previous year. "You can't be sure about that," he said. "But tell me about the letter."
"It was addressed to me here at the school," Clem said.
She put down the pencil and opened the top drawer of her desk. "Here it is." She brought out a piece of plain white paper with typing on it.
She handed it to Burns, who saw at once that the sides of the paper were not quite smooth, as if perforated edges had been torn off.
"Printer paper," Burns said. He read the letter.
Dear Clem,
I know you're looking forward to seeing me again. I've been quite a success since my days at HGC, but I've never really forgotten you or all the others I knew in my teaching days there. In fact, I think about all of you quite often, so often that I've been working on a new book that is set in a college much like HGC. I'm sure that many of you will be wondering whether you appear in the story, but don't worry. The book will be a pure work of fiction. I would never reveal any of the things I learned about the inner workings of HGC during my tenure there. No one would believe it if I did. I do think the book will be a big seller and add to my already established reputation. I hope you'll buy a copy on publication. I know you'll enjoy it.
The letter was signed "sincerely" by Street.
"Pretty strange letter, don't you think?" Burns said.
"I told you that Street was something of a blowhard, didn't I?" Clem said.
"I found that out for myself. But that's not what I meant."
"I don't see anything strange about it aside from that," Clem said. "It sounds typical of Street, the way I remember him."
"Read it again," Burns suggested, "It's addressed to you, but it could just as well have been addressed to anyone. I'll bet he sent a copy of this to everyone he knew from his teaching days here."
Clem looked over the letter. "You could be right," she said. "I wondered why he singled me out."
"Another thing," Burns said. "It sounds almost like a threat to me."
"He's protesting too much, you mean. Yes, I saw that when I read it the first time."
"Right. 'I would never reveal any of the things I know.' Or, 'No one would believe it if I did.' Sounds to me as if he might have been indirectly threatening to let the world know about things that happened here, whatever those things were."
"Nothing ever happens here," Clem said.
"You've got to be kidding," Burns said.
Clem smiled. "I guess I am."
"I wish you'd told me about this letter before the seminar."
"I only got it the other day," Clem said. "The day school began. I didn't tell you because I thought you might worry unnecessarily."
"I would have worried, all right," Burns said. But not unnecessarily, he thought.
When Burns went back to his office, he noticed something lying on the wide stone ledge outside the north window of his office.
He walked around his desk for a closer look.
It was a dead pigeon.
Chapter 10
Burns spent the better part of an hour worrying about
the dead pigeon. He couldn't imagine why there would be a dead bird on the window ledge. Bunni came by to ask about the murder, and she was horrified. She didn't like live birds, much less dead ones, and she did not even stay to talk. Her fascination with the murder and with Burns's nose was less than her disgust at the sight of the bird. She went back to her desk near the offices of Larry and the Darryls.
Then Burns had a visitor. Harold Duncan stood in the doorway of the office, or rather he leaned there. His chest was heaving, and it was obvious that he had suffered greatly from his climb up the three impressive flights of stairs to Main's top floor. He didn't say anything for a full minute, just stood there and panted while Burns looked at him.
"You should have them move you to a lower floor," Duncan said when he finally caught his breath.
"I like it here," Burns said. "I'm usually safe from the administration." And other unwanted visitors, he didn't add.
"Yeah, I'll bet, and you're not easy to find even when a guy gets the stairs climbed," Duncan said. "You got a minute?"
Burns didn't particularly want to talk to the reporter, but he thought he might as well. "Sure. Have a seat."
Duncan entered the office. The dead pigeon caught his eye at once. "You ought to have something done about that. I'll bet it's diseased."
Psittacosis. Burns hadn't thought of that, until now.
"I'll call someone," he said, wondering how he was going to explain to Clarice Bond about the dead bird. "What can I do for you, Mr. Duncan?"
The reporter ran the fingers of his right hand through his thin hair and looked around the office. "You got an ashtray in here?"
Burns got a Mr. Pibb can out of the trash. "You can use this."
"You sure you don't mind?" Duncan said. "Lots of people these days don't want me smoking in their offices."
Burns was sure that not many people welcomed Duncan into their offices whether he smoked or not. He was an unsavory-looking character, and Burns suspected that the newspaper didn't send him out on the bigger assignments. If the editor had known beforehand that Street would be killed, Duncan would still be in Dallas.
"Go ahead," Burns said. "Smoking doesn't bother me."
"Good," Duncan said. He was wearing an old linen sports coat and he took a pack of Camel Filters from the inside pocket. After he got one lit he took a small spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen from the same pocket. He flipped the notebook open and said, "Looks like you had a little trouble. Want to tell me about it?"
"No," Burns said.
"That's all right. What's your opinion of the murder of Edward Street?"
"I think it's a real shame," Burns said. "Edward Street was a talented writer, and our seminar was only the beginning of the academic and critical recognition that was bound to come his way sooner or later. And for him to—"
"What a crock," Duncan said. "I wasn't expecting you to toe the party line, Burns."
Burns wondered irrelevantly how Duncan would have spelled "toe." All Burns's students were beginning to spell it "tow," as in "tow the line."
"I didn't mean to be giving you anything but what you asked for," Burns said.
"What I was asking for was an opinion about who killed the man," Duncan said.
"How about you? He called you a little slug and threatened to stomp you, didn't he?" Burns really didn't like Duncan much. Maybe it was the way he looked.
Duncan shrugged. "I get that kind of thing all the time. Doesn't bother me."
"Was there really a letter claiming that Street didn't write those books?" Burns asked.
"Sure there was. I wouldn't make something like that up. I'm a legitimate reporter, not a gossip-monger." Duncan crushed out his cigarette on top of the soda can and stuck the butt inside.
"Maybe the murderer wrote that letter," Burns said. "I'd like to see it."
"Well, you can't. The cops took it. Came by my room Saturday and got it. Said it was evidence in the case."
So much for that idea, Burns thought, somewhat surprised that Duncan had given in to the request of the Pecan City police. He thought reporters were supposed to be tougher than that.
"What did the letter say?" he asked.
"Just what I said it did. That Street didn't write the books."
"It didn't say who did write them?"
"Not even a hint."
Burns was about to ask if Duncan had any ideas on the subject when he saw someone walking down the short hallway to his office. It was Melinda Land, the professor from Houston. Burns was surprised to see her there. He thought that everyone who attended the seminar would have gone back to their respective universities by now.
"Hello, Dr. Burns," she said when she got to the door. "Mr. Duncan." She did not seem winded at all and was clearly in better shape than Duncan. In more ways than one, Burns thought admiringly.
Burns stood up, as he always did when pretty redheads walked into his office. "Hello, Dr. Land. I thought you'd be back in Houston by now." He pulled the chair from under the typing table and placed it where she could sit in it.
She sat gracefully and smiled at him. "No. I just couldn't go back, not with all the excitement here. I've always been an admirer of Edward Street's works, and I saw this as a good opportunity to do a little writing of my own, sort of the ironic story of how a man returns in triumph to the little school where he began his career and dies a terrible death."
"Sounds like a sob sister bit to me," Duncan said. He had not moved from his seat. "You should leave that to us professionals."
He seemed to Burns to have the usual reporter's disdain for academic types. For that matter, Street had shared that disdain, though he had once been a professor himself. It was strange how writers usually looked down on those who devoted themselves to the study of writing and writers.
"I can assure you that I will do a professional job," Dr. Land said. Her tone was icy.
"Well, just don't ask for any help from me," Duncan said.
"You don't have to worry on that account," Dr. Land assured him. "I'd like to talk to you sometime when you have a free moment, Dr. Burns. About Street's years here at HGC, his friends, things like that."
"Wait a minute," Duncan said. "I was here first. I was asking about that stuff." He hadn't been, but that didn't seem to bother him. He was probably working on the biggest story of his career, and he didn't want any competition, Burns thought.
Burns held up a hand. "As much as I'd like to talk to both of you, I can't really help you. I wasn't here when Street taught here. You'd better talk to Miss Nelson."
"Who's she?" Duncan said.
Burns, hating himself, though not as much as Clem would, told him.
Burns escaped to the library after Duncan and Dr. Land left. He often escaped there, into the stacks to read old magazines or into the periodicals room to read new ones.
This time, however, he had an entirely different destination in mind—Miss Tanner's office. He had never visited her before, but the events of Saturday seemed to offer him a perfectly good excuse.
He smiled at the student worker behind the check-out desk and walked on back of the elevator to the librarian's office. The door was closed.
Burns tapped on the door.
"Come in," Miss Tanner said, her voice muffled by the door, which was considerably thicker than the hollow-core door to Burns's own office.
He opened the door and went in. Miss Tanner looked up at him as she closed the bottom drawer of her desk.
"Oh, hello, Carl," she said.
"Hello, Elaine," he said, trying to be casual about the use of her first name. He knew that nowadays everyone used first names, but it had always irritated him. Let an insurance salesman inside your house, and within two seconds he would have called you by your first name five times. Burns couldn't operate like that. He usually had to know a person quite well before venturing into first-name territory.
"You almost caught me in the act," Elaine said with a sheepish laugh.
"Doing what?" Burns asked. He looked
around the office. What would a pretty woman have been doing behind a locked library door? Everything seemed perfectly normal.
"Doing this," she said. She opened the desk drawer and brought out a pink plastic bottle. "Blowing bubbles. Close the door, please."
Burns closed the door, wondering if he had heard her correctly. Blowing bubbles?
The bottle had a yellow cap, which Elaine removed. She stuck her fingers, which Burns noticed had red-painted nails, inside the bottle and pulled out a pink plastic bar with circles on each end. Puckering her lips, she blew through one end, producing a cloud of transparent bubbles, all of them reflecting the fluorescent lights from the ceiling.
One of the bubbles hit Burns on the tip of the nose and burst.
"I hope that didn't hurt," Elaine said.
"No," Burns said. He was beginning to wonder about Elaine. First the trophies, now the bubbles. HGC had a way of attracting the eccentrics, but he had hoped Elaine would not be one of them.
"I do this when I get frustrated," she explained. "It helps relieve the tension."
"I see," Burns said. "What was the problem?"
"It was that reporter, Duncan." She blew another bunch of bubbles that floated around the office. "He came by and asked all kinds of questions."
"Did you tell him about Saturday?" Burns said.
"Yes, he got it out of me. I didn't intend to, but somehow I did." She blew more bubbles.
Burns liked looking at her lips as she pursed them to blow. Now he understood why Duncan hadn't pursued the question about his nose. He already knew the answer. Duncan was probably smarter than Burns had thought. It didn't do to underestimate anyone. Burns thought again of the student who had been so poor in English and so good in art.
"How long do you have to wear that bandage?" Elaine asked. She capped the bubble bottle and put it back in the drawer.
"Not too long," Burns said. "I know it looks kind of funny, but—"
"I don't think it looks funny. I think it's cute."
Burns grinned foolishly. "I was wondering," he said. "We have a home game this coming Saturday, and I thought maybe you'd like to go." He had no idea what made him say it. He certainly had not intended to, or he didn't think he had. It was too late to take it back, however.
