Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 06 - Death without Tenure

by Joanne Dobson

  “Really?” I breathed.

  “Yeah. So now I knew where he lived, and—”

  “Did you go in after him?” Felicity asked, very casual.

  She scowled. “What was I gonna do? Throw a hissy fit? Like that would get me my money back! No, I was thinking about maybe finding some guy who could put some…muscle…on him, but it’s not as easy as you might think to hire a reliable goon. So, after a couple of weeks, I changed my mind, decided to head back to the college and talk to his boss…like, maybe I could attach his salary or something. And then your chairman tells me…Carlo is dead.” A tear splashed in her Diet Coke; Graciella wasn’t quite as tough as she wanted us to think.

  The bartender tapped her on the wrist and pointed to her own watch—a Mickey Mouse deluxe. Graciella nodded.

  “Gotta get back to the table, but first…one thing I don’t understand. A smart place like Enfield College? How did Carlo…or whoever he was…get away with passing as Indian?”

  Both she and Felicity looked to me for an answer. “I heard that someone on the hiring committee thought it would be offensive to ask him for proof.” Ned, I bet.

  The blackjack dealer snorted. “You know, in spite of this face…” She motioned to her undeniably Native visage…“and even though the casino has an Indian-preference hiring policy, I had to come up with papers to prove I was the real thing. Didn’t the college know enough to ask for proof of his official tribal enrollment? Didn’t they require him to submit his enrollment number?”

  I shrugged. “I doubt the college even knew there was such a thing as ‘official tribal enrollment.’” Someone at Enfield has a lot to answer for, I thought.

  ***

  “So, is she telling the truth?” Felicity asked as we trudged up the ramp of the big, concrete parking garage. My cop friend was pretty happy, having won $500 on the slots on our way out of the casino. I’d lost twenty, my limit—twenty I could have spent on eldercare for Mom; I had no intention of imposing on my friends beyond the end of this week.

  “The truth? I thought so,” I said, clicking the remote button on my car key. “Her story was convincing.”

  “But ya know…” Felicity slid into the passenger seat. “Let me play devil’s advocate here. She could have killed him easy. She followed him home. She knew where he lived. We have only her word that she didn’t barge into his place, confront him, and…” She spread her hands wide.

  I checked over my shoulder before backing out of the tight parking space. “Right. And she would have just by chance been carrying a lethal dose of peyote. Which she would then have crammed down his throat. Was there any sign of a struggle?”

  “Not that I heard of.” Felicity raised her painted eyebrows. “On the other hand, maybe you’re right. Maybe Graciella had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was the mob, and they did put out a hit on Carlo Mangeri.”

  “But…peyote buttons again,” I said. “Wouldn’t they be just a little bit too…esoteric…for the mob?”

  It was her turn to shrug. “And why would they kill him? He couldn’t pay them if he was dead. Nah. They’d just beat him up.”

  As we drove out into the wan late afternoon light, a blue-and-grey patrol car passed us, turning slowly onto the entry ramp on its way in to the garage,

  “Holy shit!” Felicity ducked down beside me. “That’s Boylan in the passenger seat!”

  “It is?” Stupidly I craned my neck to see for myself, and looked directly into the startled eyes of Lieutenant Neil Boylan, Massachusetts State Police, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Homicide.

  Before we even got to the main road, they pulled us over, lights flashing, short bursts of siren. “Stay in the car,” Felicity said, her face dead white underneath the garish make-up. “And don’t tell the bastard anything. We’re not going to be able to talk our way out of this.”

  “I’ll talk if I want to,” I objected. “We have a right to be here.” Then Boylan’s irate face filled my window.

  He was staring right past me at his errant colleague. “You! Goddammit, Schultz. Pelletier is bad enough. But you? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Felicity looked straight ahead, mute.

  I took a deep breath. “My friend and I are here for a girl’s night out. What’s the problem?”

  My friend gave me a hard elbow nudge to the ribs.

  “Ow!”

  Boylan’s eyes narrowed even further. It was a wonder he could still see out of them. “A night out? It’s still afternoon.”

  “Well,” I chirped. “You take your fun when you can get it.”

  “Shut up, Karen,” Felicity muttered in my ear.

  Boylan chewed on his lip. “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be interfering with an official investigation, would you?”

  “Investigation? Of course not.”

  Felicity’s elbow was now permanently planted in my side.

  Boylan’s belligerent attitude was beginning to make me angry. Why was he here anyhow? Unless he’d talked to Ned Hilton in the hospital, he’d have no way of knowing about Graciella Talltrees. I looked him directly in the eye. “Are you following us? Is this police harassment?”

  Felicity, still staring straight ahead, let out an exasperated huff.

  But I was thinking fast—what on earth would have sent Boylan to Enfield Regional to talk to Ned in the first place? Could it be he had some evidence pointing to Ned as the killer? Hmm.

  “Watch it, Pelletier,” Boylan snarled. “That mouth is gonna get you in trouble one of these days.” He turned abruptly and walked to the rear of the Subaru. I heard a sharp crack and the tinkle of glass hitting asphalt. Then he was back by my open window, beckoning to the uniformed trooper. “Give her a citation for a broken tail light. And make it snappy. We’ve got a dealer to interview.”

  Graciella Talltrees was in for an unpleasant surprise.

  “And, Schultz?” Boylan leaned back into the window. “Don’t think you’ve heard the last of this—you and Lombardi. You’re in for it, both of you.”

  My friend’s face was now puce, but she didn’t say a word.

  ***

  We were half way home, and it was full dark, before I said: “I don’t think she did it, do you?”

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felicity replied. “Boylan knows about her, and she’s his responsibility now.”

  Chapter 24

  All that next week, I waited for the other shoe to drop with Boylan, but neither Felicity nor I heard from him. Nonetheless, his implied threats nagged at me like a budding toothache. And it didn’t help that, without even Ned’s merely nominal leadership—he was still hospitalized, and colleagues were scrambling to cover his classes—the department was in a state of chaos. On Tuesday, Dean Patel called a lunchtime meeting of the entire English faculty—in his office, a definite assertion of control. The purpose was to browbeat some one, any one, of my senior colleagues into assuming the chairmanship for the rest of the year. Junior faculty weren’t eligible. Thank God. Sanjay made an eloquent plea for someone to come forward in this time of crisis and take hold of the department. No deal. He offered money. No one bit. Even more enticing, he offered compensatory leave time, but senior faculty just played hot potato with the departmental leadership: My book is under deadline. I’m already Chair of Women’s Studies. I’m on the Committee of Ten. I have a bad cold. Then, halfway between the roll-up sandwiches, the bullshit excuses, and the mocha brownies, Sanjay threatened to put the department into receivership.

  Miles had had enough. “Oh, for Godsake,” he exploded, “you people are nothing but a bunch of big babies, solipsistic, narcissistic babies.” Abruptly he pushed himself up from his straightback chair, which tumbled over onto the beautiful carpet with a heavy thud. Glaring at the fallen chair in all its cherrywood innocence, Miles breathed heavily. Then, with narrowed eyes, he scanned his colleagues seated around the conference table. Turning to the Dean, he said. “Okay, Patel, I, at least, am a responsible adult. I was chairman for twenty-f
ive years—I think I’ve more than fulfilled my obligation. But I’ll take the chair again. Let’s go to Rudolph’s and plan out the rest of the semester. I could use a stiff drink.” The sigh he breathed was so prolonged it seemed to have begun in 1963. He stalked out, followed by Sanjay Patel, who made no attempt to hide an exasperated roll of his eyes as he looked back into the room.

  Friday 10/30

  By late Friday afternoon, I was in a state of turmoil. Mom was still staying with Felicity on my teaching days. Charlie was still out of touch. Miles seemed to have made no headway in finding a replacement for Joe. So, after another surprise noontime department meeting and having taught three classes—my own two and Joe’s literary Outsiders class—with office hours in there somewhere, all I wanted was to shake the campus dust from my shoes.

  On my way to the parking lot, I passed the boxy brick Health Center building just as Ayesha Ahmed pushed open the chrome and glass door. When she saw me she hurried out between a pair of lighted jack-o-lanterns, came down the steps, and clutched my arm. “Professor, are you on your way home?” Her eyes were wide and her dark skin seemed all of a sudden ashen.

  “Is something wrong? I can stay, if you need to talk.” I really didn’t want to. I’d seen Ayesha in class twice, the second time an hour ago in Joe’s class. She’d been uncharacteristically subdued both times. Now, having approached me, she swallowed hard. Any effort at maintaining her aplomb had disappeared. “Can I go with you?” she asked in muted tones.

  “Go? You mean, go home? With me?” I set my heavy briefcase down on the cement walkway, and gave her a serious once over. Hands twisted together so tightly her knuckles were white. Skin pulled tight around her mouth. A tic in her right eye. Definitely not in good shape. “Well, certainly, if it would help. But what’s the matter? Are you still getting hate mail?”

  Ayesha looked both ways on the busy walkway that led through this outer section of campus near the athletic fields. Late autumn twilight was descending, and at that moment, the mock-Victorian sidewalk lamps lighted up simultaneously, casting a pale glow on the faces of dinner-bound students. Peace had fallen on the campus in this in-between hour, classes over, the evening magic ahead. “No. It’s not hate mail. I’ve taken care of that.”

  I flashed on an image of Ayesha speaking earnestly to someone in the cafeteria one morning. Someone I would never have expected to see her with. And he had had a hangdog look on his face. “It was Garrett Reynolds, wasn’t it?”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “Yes. Stephanie and Cat put him up to it. They thought it would be funny. But that doesn’t matter anymore. I explained a few things to him, he apologized, and it’s over.” A tear glittered at the inner corner of each dark, slanted eye. “This is something else, and I’d rather not talk here.”

  And she didn’t talk about it at all—or about much of anything—until we were settled at my kitchen table with chunks of fresh ciabatta from Bread & Roses and bowls of leftover beef stew from the refrigerator.

  “What you said in class?”

  “Yes?”

  “About life being real and…what?…earnest?”

  “Oh, you mean the Longfellow poem?” We’d been discussing poems of Emily Dickenson and Walt Whitman with an eye to the effects of Outsider status on both the style and substance of their poems. Then I’d given the students copies of a popular nineteenth-century poem, what you might very well call an Insider poem. “Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal; / Dust thou art, to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul.” After all the dodgy theoretical relativism Joe had been plying these kids with, I wanted to see how a taste of some old-fashioned absolutism would play. Clearly Ayesha had found it memorable.

  “Right.” I reached for the grinder and peppered my stew. “Two major Puritan concerns that carried over into nineteenth-century thinking—reality and sincerity. By that time they’d pretty much dropped the Puritan’s damnation and predestination. Why do you mention the Longfellow poem?”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, not looking at me, spooning up gravy.

  “Oh, no!”

  “That’s as real as it gets, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and pretty earnest, too.” I balanced my spoon on the bread plate. “May I ask who the father is?”

  Ayesha gazed at me solemnly. “You may ask, but I’m not going to say. I’m not telling anyone, not even my parents.” She pushed her bowl away. “He can’t do anything about it, anyhow.”

  “Why not? It’s as much his responsibility as yours.”

  She laughed, with a twenty-year-old’s sagacity. “Oh, no, it’s not. Not now.”

  A wild thought invaded my suddenly reeling mind, and I recalled that scene in the department hallway, Joe’s transgressive touch on Ayesha’s arm. I do know that’s not the way babies are conceived, but his presumption in touching her might indicate a certain familiarity. Oh, my God! Joe Lone Wolf! No, please tell me—not Joe Lone Wolf!

  But I shut my teeth over the words, and they never got off the tip of my tongue. “What are you going to do?”

  “I need some time to think it over.”

  “Planned Parenthood—”

  “No! I’m going to have this baby!”

  I opened my mouth, but she squashed my question.

  “And keep it!”

  “What will your parents say?”

  “They’ll kill me,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, no!” I reached over the table and grabbed her hands. “We’ll go to Dean Johnson. She’ll find you a safe place—”

  “Professor!” Ayesha was giving me an odd sideways smile. “I don’t believe it! Not you!” Speaking slowly, as to a child, she explained: “What I mean when I say they’ll kill me, is that they’ll kill me, not that they’ll kill me.”

  “But I thought…” Better not to say what I thought. “What about chastity and honor and…all that? Will your parents…disown you?”

  “What do you think this is?” she shot back. “The twelfth century? Of course they won’t disown me—they’ll be furious, but they’ll support me. My parents are religious, but they’re not extremists. I’m the only one in the family who observes the…sartorial conventions, and that’s only since I came to Enfield. It shocked my mother when I put on the hijab, but I wanted to see what it felt like to be ‘Muslim in America.’” With her forefingers she indicated the quotation marks.

  “What does it feel like?”

  Ayesha didn’t respond for a moment. Then, “I really meant it in class when I said I was questioned by Homeland Security seven times.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason. It’s just that, with my head covered, I look like a suicide bomber. Seemingly.”

  “How awful for you.”

  She shrugged. “On the other hand, there are some real advantages to wearing the hijab. Men don’t hassle me on the streets any more. Besides, it’s toughened me up. You have to have courage to wear a hijab in post-9/11 America.”

  She lay her spoon down across her bread plate, giving up any pretense of eating, then sipped at the glass of milk she’d asked for. “You have a daughter, don’t you, Prof? What would you do if she came home and told you she was going to have an out-of-wedlock baby?”

  I laughed, and she gazed up at me, startled.

  I cleared my throat; I didn’t make a habit of telling students my personal history. “First of all, it wouldn’t be an ‘out-of-wedlock’ baby—it would just be a baby. My…grandchild.” Oh, god, was I that old? “Of course, I would give Amanda all the love and support she’d need in such a difficult situation.” If she ever comes home, self-enlightened or not. “And I could offer her a hell of a lot of first-hand experience.”

  She frowned at me quizzically. Then her eyes widened. “Really? You?”

  “Yep. Me.”

  Her eyes focused on me, glittering. Suddenly I was an object of fascination. “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Oh, wow. At least I
’m grown up—I just turned twenty.”

  ***

  After she promised to go home for the weekend and tell her parents, I drove Ayesha back to campus on my way to pick up my mother in Springfield. In the security light outside the massive dormitory doors, my student looked small and slight. When she’d swiped her key card and opened the door, she turned back to wave at me. I gave the horn a little tap, put the car back in gear, and slowly drove off. I was thinking once again about Ayesha and Joe Lone Wolf and that scene in the hallway when she had cringed from him. What had she told me a few days earlier—that I shouldn’t worry about her. That she had family resources? I knew her brothers had been on campus at least once recently to pick her up—Suppose…

  Then I mentally slapped myself in the face. Get real, Karen. Stop being so paranoid. After all, this is not the twelfth century.

  ***

  As I drove past Dickinson Hall after dropping Ayesha at her dorm, the building was completely dark except for light in a single office—two rectangles of illumination in the long wall of shadowed brick. The campus was lively, as always on Friday nights. Students in groups of three or four criss-crossed the commons, cruising for booze, cruising for hook-ups, cruising for drugs. Cruising for the sake of cruising. I pulled the Subaru onto the walkway by the massive front door of the English department’s building and turned off the lights; which one of my colleagues would still be working at this hour of night? I counted down from my own office windows. Two. Four. Six. Then the two lighted windows. My god! Someone was in Joe Lone Wolf’s office—at 9:57 on a Friday evening. It wasn’t unusual for professors to spend late hours at work, but not Joe. Never Joe.

  Not even when he was alive.

  I just sat there in the car. Who would be in Joe’s office? And why? The police had long since removed the barrier tape from the door—I knew because, of course, I’d been in there myself. But that was legitimate—I’d been authorized to look for his grade book and notes.

  A young couple passed by, laughing, her hand in the back pocket of his jeans, his hand in the back pocket of hers. Someone hooted from the direction of the Science Building. A slender girl walked alone toward the library. It was Cat Andrews. She was smoking and her head was bobbing—in tune to some iPod beat, no doubt. I sat as far back as I could in the shadow of my seat. I didn’t want to be mentioned tomorrow morning on Cat’s Facebook page. Prof P skulking L8 in front of D hall. A tryst? Which male prof was she aw8ing?