Teacher's Threat

by Diane Vallere

  Tex was quiet for longer than seemed natural. “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “Sorry. Investors are calling. See you tonight.” He disconnected.

  With newfound time on my schedule, I bought a cup of coffee at the School Pride kiosk and killed time observing photos in the display case. One grouping caught my attention. It was a compilation of graduates who’d gone on to run successful business in Dallas. The third picture from the right on the second row was someone who’d been in and out of my life for years. Donna Nast, CEO and owner of Big Bro Security.

  Donna, or Nasty, as I (and many people who’d had the pleasure of interacting with her) sometimes called her, was a former police officer turned independent business owner who’d helped me out enough times that I no longer thought of her as my nemesis.

  Frenemy was a better term.

  It came as no surprise that Nasty had graduated from Van Doren College. Nasty was self-interested in a way that would have made Ayn Rand proud. She left the police force after recognizing she would never be—and didn’t want to be—part of the boy’s club culture that existed at the time. She opened Big Bro Security and focused on the private sector. Her efforts were rewarded with exponential growth, a word-of-mouth reputation, and a demand that far surpassed her supply. She’d invested in my business when I had one, not because she wanted to help but because, at the time, it was a sound investment. I guess there was a time when I was good on paper.

  Since then, Nasty’s company expanded from business security to private home security. She’d also had a baby sired by one of the most successful architects in the area. He was in his late seventies. One could have made a case that Nasty’s focus on wealth appropriation bordered on pathological, but in this case, I knew better. Despite the fifty-year gap in their ages, they were two peas in a pod.

  Before I thought twice about it, I called her. We weren’t in the habit of calling each other for anything other than matters of importance, so I was surprised when she answered.

  “What’s up, Madison?”

  “Hello to you too,” I said.

  “I finally got Huxley to sleep. If the phone wakes him, I’m in for another hour of ‘Rock-A-Bye Baby.’”

  “You could turn your ringer off.”

  “I’m waiting for a call.” She waited a beat and then added, “Not yours.”

  Donna Nast was everybody’s favorite person to hate—until they got to know her. And she didn’t let a lot of people know her. She was twenty-nine, sexy, independent, and smart. She didn’t make a decision without her endgame in mind, and that had, at times, both simplified and complicated my life.

  “Did you attend Van Doren College?”

  “That was where I got my MBA. Why?”

  “A professor from the business school died yesterday. Gallagher. Did you have him?”

  “No.” There was a quick beat of silence, and then, “He was murdered?”

  “I said died. I didn’t say murder.”

  “Madison, there’s no way you would know about this unless Tex told you, Tex wouldn’t know about it unless it was a police matter. I thought you understood we don’t do the whole hello/how-are-you routine.”

  “I’m enrolled at Van Doren. I was with the professor when he died. The story around the college is that he committed suicide, but I don’t think that was what happened. I saw your picture in the display case at the Canfield Building and called you.”

  “When’s your next class?”

  “Not until eleven.”

  “Go to the library and don’t leave until I get there. We need to talk.”

  The main campus of Van Doren College was laid out in a giant pentagon. The Canfield Building resided outside the original arrangement of buildings. The library was on the opposite side sandwiched between the homes of Arts and of Sciences.

  Early birds were in the quad today. The few students I passed didn’t seem to notice me. The campus was quiet, and the sound of birds chirping dominated the air. Rocky would love it here. I wondered how the faculty would view a peppy Shih Tzu attending one of their classes.

  I entered the library and claimed a seat at a large wooden table by the front door. I couldn’t stop thinking about Professor Gallagher. I remembered again about how he’d used Mad for Mod as his case study and encouraged the room to determine my possible course of action. Instead of working on any of my homework assignments, I opened a notebook to a blank page and filled it with ideas. After my ideas, I wrote: Expand. Go Big. Invest. Double Down, and in block letters after that, I wrote: TAKE RISKS.

  Gallagher had called them power words, but they lacked power to me. They represented antiquated Gordon Gekko-esque philosophies still embraced by men who smoked cigars in clubs with leather chairs. I wore preowned dresses and hats that looked like flowerpots, and my favorite chair was named after a womb—the polar opposite of what you’d find in a men’s club. I lacked the killer instincts required to conduct business in a ruthless manner. And until recently, it had worked out for me.

  I didn’t need to reinvent myself, I just needed to go back to my roots and do things the way I’d always done them. It was like I’d told the class: there were extenuating circumstances. The client knew it. I knew it. Even the other decorator knew it.

  I’d made a careless mistake by publicly taking credit for a job I hadn’t designed. It had happened in the week after Doris Day died, and even though the actress was ninety-seven at the time, her death hit me hard. I didn’t know her, but she’d been a part of my life for as long as I could remember.

  We shared a birthday. My parents used to buy me one of her movies each year on April third, and we’d sit together around a big bowl of popcorn and celebrate. It was how I honed my eye for mid-century design. It was why I decided to become a decorator. And when my parents were killed in a car crash, it was Doris Day’s brand of cheerful resilience I channeled. When she died, the other shoe from my parents’ death dropped too, and I’d been leveled. Nobody would have been thinking straight.

  When I had a chance to talk to the decorator on the other side of the lawsuit, he understood. The case had gotten too far into the courts by then, so when the ruling went in his direction, he arranged for me to keep my business name and decorating license. My original business plan had been successful for the past ten years. Why change now?

  I didn’t need to take risks. All I needed was capital so I could fill my showroom with inventory and book new clients. Professor Gallagher was the shock jock of business teachers, and he needed to make my problem seem big so he could use them for his lecture. But maybe he and the banks had blown my problems out of proportion.

  I flipped to a new page in my notebook and started a list of clients I could call for referrals. Everything would be fine. School might be an inconvenience, but I might not even need the degree to show the banks they were wrong.

  A shadow fell across my notebook, and I looked over my shoulder to see Donna Nasty reading my new business plan with a baby strapped to her chest.

  “I hate to tell you, Madison, but you’re going to need more than client referrals to dig your way out of this one.”

  7

  I slapped my notebook closed. “That was private,” I said to Nasty.

  “I’m not interested in a list of people who hired you to install Sputnik lamps in their dining rooms,” she said. She kept her hand on her baby’s back and swayed ever so slightly. She’d given birth two months ago, and in typical Nasty fashion, had rebounded with ease. Her long copper and bronze streaked hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, and she wore her usual white ribbed tank top and jeans. Huxley had his head turned to the side of her ample breasts. He wore a light blue knit hat and a matching onesie, and even though I’d never regretted my decision not to have children, I was tempted to reach out and clasp his little foot.

  If I weren’t a little afraid of Mamma Bear, I might have followed through with the impulse.

  “What was that?” she asked, pointing at my notebook.
>
  Nasty had played a role in the lawsuit’s outcome, but we hadn’t talked much about the ruling thanks to Huxley’s arrival and subsequent demands on her attention. She’d received a surge of public praise after turning over evidence that led to a murderer’s conviction, and shortly thereafter, went into labor. I hadn’t seen her since.

  “Hi, Donna,” I said.

  “Yeah. Hi. What was that?” she asked. Motherhood had softened her. Not!

  “Notes for one of my business classes.”

  “They want you to make a list of people who have nothing to do with your current dilemma?”

  “If you saw the list, then why are you asking me what it is?”

  “Because I know you’re too smart to sit around longing for the past even if your wardrobe indicates otherwise.”

  “I want my business back. I’m brainstorming how to do that.”

  She glanced around the library. “We can’t talk in here. Come with me.” She turned around and walked away. I jammed my notebook into my backpack and followed about twenty feet behind. I caught up to her in front of the Arts Building. “Walk and talk,” she said. “Tell me about Professor Gallagher.”

  “I first met him two days ago in his office. The semester already started, so I had to talk my way in. He made no secret of the fact that he didn’t think I would last.”

  “But he signed your late admittance requisition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh.”

  I’d had enough conversations with Nasty to know she processed information faster than Fortran. Her occasional interjections in our conversation weren’t for me. She took in data and hit her mental enter key to compute. Occasionally she’d ask a direct question to clarify something, which I likened to a circular reference. Once I started imagining Nasty as a computer program, we got along a lot better.

  “Between my meeting with him and class, he must have looked me up, because he used my circumstances as a case study for discussion. At first, I thought he wanted to humiliate me, but it might have been to see how I responded to the material.”

  “Probably a little of both. You don’t look like you can take it. If you were going to drop out, it would save everybody’s time if you did it sooner rather than later.”

  “Why does everybody think I’m incapable of operating like a businessperson?”

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  “You don’t have to shop at Brooks Brothers to be in business.”

  “Yes, but if you want the banks to see you as a good risk, it doesn’t hurt to look the part.”

  It had to have been a guess. There was no way she could have known about my day of rejection and my trouble securing a start-over loan. But her comment hit too close to home, and I got defensive. “I did it once, I can do it again.”

  “I’m sure you can. How did you do it the first time?”

  “I put everything I had into an apartment building and rented it out. I used the income from my tenants to fund my business. In time, the business was doing well, so I sold the apartment building.”

  “Which you regretted, because you bought it back.”

  “That wasn’t regret. I needed a property to renovate for a county-wide competition. You know this. You were one of my investors.”

  “When you first met me, did you ever expect me to invest in your business?”

  “No.”

  “But I did. Do you know why?”

  “You thought I was good on paper?”

  “You’re crap on paper. But you have passion for what you do, and people respond to passion.” She rubbed her hand up and down Huxley’s back. “If I had to guess, I’d say you didn’t respond well to the professor using your company as a case study in class.”

  I thought back to the feeling I’d had when Gallagher first described my situation. “He should have asked me if it was okay first.”

  Nasty shook her head. “What’s the name of your course?”

  “Radical Business Strategy.”

  “What gave you the impression he was going to do anything according to a code of consideration?”

  I shrugged. “I just thought, you know, this is a college. The professors should want their students to learn, not to scare them off.”

  “The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  Sometimes I hated talking to Nasty. It was easier when I wrote her off as being one of Tex’s former girlfriends, but so much had happened since then that in her words, they were a blip on the radar.

  I didn’t answer, mostly because I was tired of her making me think. Her question hung in the air until Huxley woke up and burped. Nasty pulled out a green towel with pictures of dollar bills on it (kidding!) and dabbed his mouth. He blew a spit bubble and then closed his eyes and laid his head against her bosom. He wriggled in his harness and then fell back to sleep.

  I secretly hoped he kept her up at night.

  “Tell me what happened with Gallagher in the parking structure,” she said.

  Happy the subject had shifted, I told her how I’d caught up with the professor in Lot B, how his car had been broken into, how I gave him my scarf to secure the passenger-side door, and how he slumped over the wheel shortly thereafter. I described the blockage in his tailpipe and the medical examiner’s stated cause of death: general hypoxia caused by asphyxiation. I ended with the rumor that the professor had committed suicide.

  “What did Tex say about it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Not nothing. He didn’t have much to tell. He said his cousin towed the car to the police impound lot where it’ll wait until he can get a forensic automotive expert to look at it.”

  “Forensic automotive is a rare field. It’s probably going to take longer than Tex wants to find someone qualified.”

  “Will that matter? A car is a car.”

  Nasty shrugged. “This guy didn’t commit suicide,” she said.

  “I don’t think so either, but—”

  She cut me off. “It’s not a theory. It’s a fact. When he started the car, the rag would have been blown out of the tailpipe or the car would have stalled.”

  “But that’s not what happened. The car started and ran. I was behind it. There was no exhaust. One of the homicide detectives said if the passenger-side door hadn’t been tied shut, enough fresh air would have gotten in to keep him alive.”

  “Who took the call?”

  “The two Sues,” I said. Nasty’s forehead creased. “Ling Tsu and Sue Niedermeyer. They’re new to the Lakewood PD.”

  “Looks like diversity has found the police department.”

  “They’re good. Best confession rate in the state. Tex said other police departments have asked him to send them to train their squads.”

  “Sounds like a different world since I left.” She rested her hands on Huxley’s back and ran them up and down his little spine. I saw a flicker of something cross her face. It flashed across her features so quickly I didn’t have time to identify the emotion.

  “I’d say there are two possibilities here. One, someone tampered with the professor’s tailpipe and rerouted the exhaust into the cabin, or two, someone poisoned him ahead of time and the vandalism to his car caused his pulse to speed up and the poison to absorb faster. Either way, we’re not looking at suicide. We’re looking at murder.”

  8

  No matter how I felt about Nasty, it was impressive to watch her work. In a matter of minutes, receiving a secondhand account of the crime scene, she had a working theory that sounded legit. I was dating the captain of the police department, and all I had was this lousy T-shirt.

  “What should we do?” I asked her.

  “I’m not going to do anything. Correction. I’m taking Huxley to his father’s house and then going to the office to work on a proposal. You, most likely, are going to your next class unless you’ve already decided to let the professor be right by dropping out.”

  “I’m not dropping out.”

  “Then I guess we know what we’re doin
g next.”

  I packed up my books. We walked side by side, the conversation lapsing into silence. The time I spent in the library, coupled with the conversation with Nasty, had spread beyond the time I would have normally been in my eight o’clock class. The formerly empty quad was filled with students headed between buildings and clusters idled by the entrances. I checked my watch, a vintage Seiko, and saw I had three minutes to return to Canfield for my foundational course. It was in a lecture hall, and I’d go undetected if I slipped in through a back door, but I didn’t want to get into the habit of being late.

  “I have to run,” I said. “Decision Making for the Business Leader starts at eleven.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Nasty asked. “Business school. Why now?”

  “Because I have the time.” I knew it was a lie. Nasty probably knew it was a lie too. I sighed. “Every bank I applied to turned down my loan application. None of them think I have a solid business plan. It’s like going to a foreign country. I can probably get by, but it might be easier if I learn the language.”

  She raised one (perfectly tweezed) eyebrow and tipped her head toward the Canfield Building. “Van Doren is a good school. I hope it works out for you.”

  She turned her back on me and walked away.

  Decision Making for the Business Leader was followed by Ethics, Accounting, and finally Statistics, which ended at six thirty. My brain was numb from classroom learning. I’d planned my course load to hit the ground running with my most challenging course first thing in the morning, and now, it was the cap to my day. While most people were unwinding with a cocktail, I was summoning the last remaining vestiges of focus within me.

  My Statistics course was in the same room as Radical Business Strategy, so I remained in the room. “RISK” was still on the chalkboard. I’d stared at the word through the entire previous lecture. I’d taken bigger risks starting my business than most people took in a lifetime. Without thinking, I picked up a thick piece of blue chalk and drew a line through the word and then again and again and again. Before I realized what I had done, I’d obliterated what was possibly the last lesson Professor Gallagher had written.