Boson Books by John Broussard
Death and Near Death
Dead and Gone
Dead Before a Rival
Dear Diary, I’m in Love
Expect the Unexpected
Fifty-Minutes Flaherty
Mana
Mayhem, Mystery and Murder
Murder at Milltown Junior College
No Time for Death
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume I
The Yoshinobu Mysteries: Volume II
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EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
short stories by
John A. Broussard
___________________________________
BOSON BOOKS
Raleigh
Published by Boson Books
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
ISBN 1-932482-42-3
An imprint of C&M Online Media Inc.
© Copyright 2006 John A. Broussard
All rights reserved
For information contact
C&M Online Media Inc.
3905 Meadow Field Lane
Raleigh, NC 27606
Tel: (919) 233-8164
e-mail:[email protected]
URL: http://www.bosonbooks.com
Cover art by Joel Barr: “There they were in the old five and ten...surprises that you could not know you were looking for.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DIANA IN THE GROVES
WHAT A GAS!
CHECKMATE
THE MISSING SHIPMENT
THE WHITE MOUNTAIN
DEAD AND ALIVE
A FAMILY MATTER
A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE
A PARTIAL PLATE
A PLACE IN PARADISE
ACTS OF TERROR
AOMORI SAMURAI—A LEGEND
BEATING THE SYSTEM
CHICKEN STOCK FOR THE SOUL
CONNECTING LINE
CONTINGENCY PLAN
CONTROLLING THE BOARD
DOG DAYS
DOWNSIZING—CHINESE STYLE
THE FINAL SOLUTION
FINALS
GOOD NEIGHBORS
GRUNT-GRUNT
HI J
IN FLAGRANTE
IT DOES NO GOOD TO RUN
JOYLAND
LAST CHANCE GAS
LAST STOP BEFORE FAYETTEVILLE
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!
MANA—A LEGEND
MS. CHIPS
MURPHY’S CORNER
NAVY REGS
PERFECTING A MURDER
NEIGHBORS
PI
PICKING THE POCKETS
RACING DAY
ROADBLOCK
SEVEN-TOED PETE
SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT
STOLEN IDENTITY
STUYVESANT PARK
SWAMI
THE BANK EXAMINER
THE BOY NEXT DOOR
THE CHEST
THE DESHREDDER
THE GRIEF COUNSELOR
THE MAN FROM HAUSLABJOCH
THE NEOPHYTE
THE PLAGIARIST
THE PUBLIC HAS A RIGHT TO KNOW
THE REMATCH
THE REVELATION
THE ROAD TO HILO
THE ROLLS
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
THE SCRAMBLER
THE SHADOW CABINET
THE SILVER BALLOON
THE SQUARE WATERMELON
THE STRANGER
THE SURPRISE PARTY
THE SURVIVOR
THE TAPE
THE THREAT
THE TOREADOR FRESCO
THE TURNING POINT
TRANSMISSION BEYOND INSTANT
WUNDERKINDER
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
YOU CAN’T STOP PROGRESS
A WOMAN WAITING
BREACH OF CONTRACT
BRIGHTON BANK
CHANGING TIMES
FAULTY EVIDENCE
THE SEARCH FOR A MATE
MISSED DIAGNOSIS
OFF WITH THE NEW
UNRECOGNITION
LONE WOLF
LAST CALL
NEAR DEATH, WITH A VENGEANCE
DIANA IN THE GROVES
I’d never really appreciated what the term “willowy” meant until the moment when I saw her standing there in the doorway of my so-called office. I did know for sure she’d just stepped out of a double-page Victoria’s Secret ad in Vanity Fair Magazine.
It had been near the end of a rough week, on the last day of counseling, at the beginning of an impossible quarter. A new aluminum plant had started up nearby the previous month, and the small Washington State town was now flooded with blue-collar workers clamoring to have their offspring educated. The elementary grades bore the brunt of the influx, but Milltown Junior College, where I’d been teaching for ten years, was feeling the pressure too.
One more counselee to go, and then I could call it a day. I might even have time to review my notes for what I was really hired for—to teach psychology. With virtually all the classes loaded to the gunwales, the prospect of advising even one more student was mind-boggling. I’d just finished telling the penultimate one how important French was to his future, since I had hopes of cramming him into the last seat of Mme. Robittaille’s class. No sooner had I succeeded in convincing him, then I discovered the last seat had just been filled by another student. So, with similar assurances, I stuffed him into a German class instead.
To make matters worse, I was still battling the office’s ambience. Some twenty teachers occupied the warehouse-like facility, separated only by six-foot sheets of thin plywood and a token door to each eight-by-eight space. The one phone at the reception desk seemed to be stuck in a constant ringing mode, and conversations from as far as three cubicles away could be distinctly heard. I closed my eyes and prayed the last of the counselees had decided to go to work at Wal-Mart instead of crowding into Millltown JC.
A gentle rap on the doorjamb interrupted my optimistic daydream.
Not only did she have a knockout figure—all six feet of it—but her flawless complexion, long blonde hair and incredibly lovely face told me she must have taken a wrong turn somewhere about three miles out of town. I was sure she was about to ask me for directions to the nearest exit off campus. Why else would she be standing there in the doorway of my squalid office space? Only her softly voiced question, “Dr. Cornwall?” convinced me she had found the right person, but it simply intensified the mystery. I nodded.
“I have a three o’clock appointment with you for counseling,” she explained.
I considered struggling to my feet, but would very likely have knocked over one of the stacks of books on my desk had I tried to do so. In looking back, I probably also wanted to keep her from noticing my own height barely topped five-seven—if I stood up really straight. Actually, I didn’t have to be concerned about her seeing anything of my short stature, since her gaze was fixed somewhere off to my right, at least an arm’s length away. I motioned her to the only other chair crammed into my stall. She folded herself gracefully into it, revealed two nicely shaped legs, and refocused her eyes to something about four inches above my own eyes, somewhere on the top of my head. I became acutely conscious of the rapidly growing bald spot in approximately that location.
I cleared my throat and asked stupid question number one. “What courses do you want to take?” Stupid, because: a) the majority of incoming students had no idea what they wanted to take, b) those who did know were usually woefully unsuited for whatever they had in mind—such as a creative writing course when they had barely made it through high school English—and c) virtually nothing was now available anyway.
“I’m not sure what I have to
take, but I want to be a teacher.”
Good God, I thought. You were born to be a model, would make a million a year by just standing there, and you want to be a teacher—when you won’t even be able to look your students in the eye? I don’t think my sigh was audible. But at least my last counseling job of the quarter was going to be an easy one. Prospective teachers had to take a speech course. Declared fair game by the administration, with no limits on enrollment, speech classes by now were probably auditorium size, but I could still pack in another student. I had a fleeting image of myself as a Tokyo subway-train pusher while doing so.
I tore a registration form off the pad and started to fill in line one with “Speech 100.” Her look must have shifted to the pad. Her reaction convinced me she had extraordinary skill at reading upside-down handwriting, since I had problems reading mine right-side up. “I can’t take speech.” The way she said it brought my head up sharply. She was terrified. There was absolutely no question about it.
Even so, her panic level wasn’t sufficiently high for her to risk a look at me. This time my sigh was audible, as the day’s exasperation peaked. This sylph was no different from the other students I’d had to deal with. “Look! You can’t get a degree in education without taking speech. There’s absolutely no way around it.”
Her soft voice dropped to a whisper. I had to lean forward to hear her, and was suddenly overwhelmed by a strange fragrance. No expert on women’s perfumes, I nevertheless thought I could identify one or two common ones. But this one was so subtle, so elusive. Could it be no perfume at all, just a clean human-female odor?
I barely heard her. “I know. I know. But couldn’t I take it next quarter? Or next year? Maybe I could start with a math class. That’s what I want to teach.”
Her chosen field brought me back to harsh reality. I was absolutely certain she had just barely made it through high school—if she had made it through at all. Millltown Junior College’s entry standards allow anyone reaching age eighteen to register—high school diploma or no. “Selective retention” is our motto. And even then we’re overly-retentive and not particularly selective. What a way to end the day! I rummaged through the rubble on my desk to find the readouts on my counselees. The last sheet in the thick package had Diana Halstead’s name written across the top in bold face.
A moment’s glance at the document brought my head up again. She was still focused on the general vicinity of my bald spot, which made conversation disconcerting, but she was listening. My voice must have mirrored my disbelief. “You had a four-point-0 in high school.” She nodded, and I could have sworn there was a trace of a smile on the same face, which a moment before had expressed nothing but terror at the thought of a speech class.
I was more than a little impressed. It was no Mickey Mouse high school she’d graduated from. Marysvale was a small community, but was nationally known for the quality of its educational system. “You must have been valedictorian.”
I could see she valued her school performance, and justly so, but her smile disappeared. She shook her head. “The principal wanted me to, but I didn’t want to.” Her tone was as positive now as it must have been when she had originally turned down the offer.
I skipped down to her last high school semester, and there it was. An ‘A’ in the school’s calculus honors class.
In a way, it simplified things. Advanced Calculus undoubtedly had plenty of openings, especially with Hyman Weisgartner teaching it. Hyman was something else again. He’d come aboard a couple of years before. I’d seen him, shortly after he joined the faculty, sitting by himself at a table in the lunchroom, so I thought I’d show some collegiate friendliness by joining him. I sat down and introduced myself. While I can’t swear I’m reporting his first words verbatim, they did go something like, “Let n stand for the cube root of any imaginary number.” Since I had struggled to get a ‘C’ in my mandatory college-stat class, there’s not much point in trying to describe my end of the conversation. Actually, none was necessary on my part. Hyman carried the entire burden of it—zero of which I understood.
Needless to say, I never joined him at lunch again. Nor did any of the other faculty. But I’m certain the absence of eating companions never bothered Hyman, who spent the time writing on napkins, staring at the wall, absently scarfing down whatever happened to be on the day’s menu and forgetting to go to class until one of his students showed up to remind him of his scholarly duties.
What kind of a mix would result from Diana Halstead sitting in Hyman Weisgartner’s class? A year before, I wouldn’t have even considered putting her there, since I’d heard he had no patience with students. A few discussions with some of his better students quickly disabused me of the notion. Hyman didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he had almost unbelievable endurance when it came to teaching someone whom he was convinced really wanted to learn.
I informed her I was putting her in his class, then wondered how he would react to a student who refused to look at him. She interrupted before I could fill in the line on the form.
“He isn’t one of those teachers who wants students to go up to the blackboard and do problems is he?”
I chuckled at the thought. “He’d probably break your arm if you so much as picked up a piece of chalk. He wants the blackboard all to himself. But you’ll be expected to keep up with him, which won’t be easy. He gives out grades like they’re gold pieces. But I guarantee you’ll know more about math if you make it through his course than you would from the same class at the U.”
She seemed to be thinking it over. It’s always hard to read unspoken thoughts, especially if the non-speaker won’t look you in the eye. “I’ll do my best,” she said, finally.
The next choice was easy. Economics. Boring, but virtually a guaranteed ‘A’ for someone of her caliber. Dustin Carli was even more boring than his subject, and the word had long ago gotten around—which more than explained why his class still had several openings.
She agreed, perhaps because I simply didn’t comment on it either way—though I also think she was beginning to sense my desperation. Her reaction to my next choice reinforced my hunch. “You have to take a Physical Education class, you know. They’re the only mandatory courses here.”
The shapely shoulders rose slightly in acquiescence. I decided if she was going to concentrate on my bald spot, I was justified in fixing on an incredibly graceful neck emerging from a white blouse.
Thinking of her height, I ventured, “Volleyball?” I couldn’t quite picture her as a spiking specialist, but her response reassured me.
She nodded, shifted her glance to the bookshelves behind me, and answered, “I’m not much of a server, but I do pretty well at the net.”
One more course to go, and really only one possibility. This wasn’t going to be easy. The junior college wasn’t allowed to have education courses on its curriculum, since those were reserved for the state’s teachers’ colleges, so I could only fall back on what I’d originally suggested. “Look! You’re going to have to take speech sooner or later. Why not do it this quarter and get it over with?”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
Actually, the one possibility had two variations. One of the two was definitely out. Celia Compton, who happened to occupy the cubicle next to mine, was the self-appointed censor of faculty behavior, with special emphasis on ferreting out any hanky panky between faculty and students. Professor Compton was absolutely convinced every male faculty member on campus lusted after every female student.
But what concerned me at the moment was the fact her specialty in her chosen field was the totally unnecessary humiliation she inflicted on her hapless students. She had even been known to mock a student with a speech defect. No way was I about to throw this lamb to a lioness.
Chester Lockley was something else again. Completely laid back. Handing out grades like they were chewing gum. Devoted to the creed of minimal teaching. I’d encountered him one day outside of the building which housed his class
. He was smoking and looking bored. “I thought you had a class,” I commented.
“I do, but they’re giving speeches. I just can’t stand them.”
“Ideal.” I decided. And, besides everything else, Chet was a notorious womanizer. I knew he’d turn handstands at the first sight of Diana, and would undoubtedly reward her for her mere presence in his class. I was determined to put her in it, and was equally determined to brief him ahead of time about this paragon. Eased into it, I had no doubt she could definitely give a speech. Besides, someone with her looks could mouth inanities and end up being cheered—at least by the male students.
The litany returned, as I started to fill in line four. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
I decided to combine fatherly strictness with the friendliest of reassurances. “If you want to be a teacher, you have to take speech. That’s all there is to it. Besides, Dr. Lockley is very understanding (what an understatement!) and will give you all the special help you need.”
For a fleeting instant I thought those pleading eyes would meet mine, but they didn’t. Her white skin seemed to fade even more. “How big is the class?”
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