Teacher's Threat

by Diane Vallere

  “Well, I’ll be. Who did that?” asked a deep male voice.

  With the incriminating piece of chalk in my hand, I turned around. An older man in a khaki suit, white shirt, and cowboy boots stood behind me. I’d been so involved in my serial-killer graffiti that I hadn’t heard him enter. I balled my fist up around the chalk.

  “Someone who isn’t a fan of risk,” the man added. He looked around the empty classroom and then back at me. “Madison Night, correct?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m the dean of the business school. Hugo Wallace.” He held out his hand.

  I slipped my fists into the pockets of my purple skirt and released the chalk then pulled my hand out and shook his. “My last class was in this room, so I didn’t have far to walk.” I smiled. “I was going to come see you tomorrow. I had specifically wanted to take this course in the morning, and I built the rest of my schedule around it.”

  “Let’s take things one step at a time. This was Professor Gallagher’s brainchild, and without him here to teach it, we’re not sure how to proceed. We may pull it from the curriculum.”

  “But the admissions receptionist told me it was moved to a night timeslot. That’s why I’m here.” I glanced at the clock. “There are twenty other students taking this course. It’s too late for them to find other 400-level courses to fill the hole in their schedules, and that might keep people from graduating.”

  “When you spoke to Barbara this morning, the plan had been to find a professor to stand in and complete the course. Finding a replacement isn’t the problem. The problem is with the material.”

  I couldn’t believe what I heard. All across the country, institutions of higher learning were being criticized for classes deemed controversial, but here at Van Doren, they were going to play it safe.

  “This is one of the most talked-about classes in your business program,” I said.

  “After what happened yesterday, I took the liberty of going through the professor’s syllabus,” Hugo said. “Professor Gallagher’s ideas were dangerous. He’s had a slew of complaints over the years, two threatening legal action. The board of education warned him…” The dean stopped talking mid-sentence. “It’s a shame what happened, but in some ways it’s a blessing in disguise. Van Doren College doesn’t need his brand of controversy.”

  “But isn’t that the foundation of learning? Healthy discussion, new viewpoints? Make people consider information even when they disagree with it?”

  “It seems I’m in agreement with our graffiti artist,” he said, motioning toward the chalkboard. “The board is having an emergency meeting later tonight where we’ll vote on a decision, but the writing appears to be on the wall—er, the chalkboard.” He seemed pleased with his joke and glanced at me to gauge my response. I was too distracted to care about witticisms.

  Everything I’d studied earlier that day had been rote. Accounting taught how to balance a profit and loss statement. Statistics taught the likelihood of a return on investments. Ethics was a required course for everyone at Van Doren regardless of their major, and Decision Making for the Business Leader was something I’d been doing by osmosis for years.

  And here was a subject that taught people to think differently. To challenge the status quo. As much as I resisted the need to do so, I couldn’t deny how riled up I’d gotten in yesterday’s class. Even the professor had commented on it: whether it was my anger toward him or my defense of my business, I’d landed on the right words to frame what I needed to do to rebound. Radical Business Strategy was the best course the college offered, and the dean was going to cancel it.

  “You just said you had a long day of classes,” Hugo said. “If we cancel this course, your evenings will be free. Every student needs a social life.” He winked.

  Oh, please. I packed up my backpack. “Are you leaving too?” I asked the dean.

  “No, I’m going to stay behind in case there are any other students who didn’t get the message.”

  As if on cue, Eric dashed into the classroom. His backpack was slung over the shoulder of his wrinkled blue checkered shirt and his bowtie was askew. He seemed surprised at finding an empty room with just the dean and me and stopped suddenly. His backpack fell off his shoulder and landed in one of the many vacant seats.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked. He looked back and forth between mine and the dean’s faces. He was out of breath, and I imagined he’d had similar scheduling complications as I had when he learned our course was being moved.

  “Class has been canceled for today,” I said. I wasn’t willing to accept the board of education would agree with the dean so easily and added the “for today” as a challenge to see if he’d contradict me.

  “You mean I raced over here for nothing?” He picked his backpack up and slung it over both shoulders. “Tell the admissions office to do a better job of communicating to the student body,” he said to the dean. “The student body who pays tuition.” He shook his head, disgusted by the scheduling snafu, and left with as much bluster as he’d arrived.

  The dean was unfazed. “I’m going to have to lock the classroom for the night.” He held his arm out, palm forward, as if ushering me toward the door. “Once the board decides how to proceed, you’ll be notified.”

  I walked into the hallway and Hugo followed. “Good night, Madison.” He stood in the doorway with the door mostly closed behind him. I said goodnight and left. When I reached the end of the hallway, I turned back around. The door to room 102 was closed, but the light was still on. The dean was nowhere to be seen.

  I’d been humiliated when Gallagher used Mad for Mod as his case study in class yesterday, but the idea that I wasn’t able to return to that very course now angered me.

  If anger was the controversy the college wanted to avoid, they were short-changing their students on the promised education. Sometimes we had to be uncomfortable to learn the lessons that propelled us forward. But the dean had mentioned lawsuits before he caught himself. Someone had a beef with the now-deceased professor, and that didn’t seem to be public knowledge.

  A part of me knew I needed a kick in the pants. I was back to square one. But in terms of the suspect pool, the field had widened—or it would when I gave this new information to Tex.

  9

  It was a little after eight by the time I got home. The sun had set, and twilight transitioned to night. Rocky paced back and forth on the other side of the door while I unlocked it. Perhaps if I’d taken him with me to the banks, my entire life would be different. Sometimes I undervalued the effect a rambunctious Shih Tzu had on the public at large.

  Rocky yipped a couple of times in rapid succession and hopped up on his hind legs. I ruffled the fur on his head. He snorted his delight at having company. I dropped my backpack and keys onto the table, threw out the stick of chalk from my pocket, and took Rocky outside. He trotted to the end of the concrete and then charged through the yard to the property next door. It was dark, and I feared the worst.

  “Rocky!” I called. I ran after him. The grass was cool against my ankles. The temperature had dropped into the high sixties, and I was dressed for temperatures twenty degrees hotter. I found Rocky and a gray striped cat having a stare-off on the other side of the building next door.

  “Hello,” I said to the cat.

  “Hello,” said a male voice.

  I looked around, not willing to accept the Alice in Wonderland moment, and recognized Dennis O’Hara, the realtor who had helped put me into my house, standing under the porch light of the building.

  “Dennis,” I said, relieved. “For a moment, I thought the Cheshire Cat had relatives.”

  “Madison,” Dennis said casually. “I was hoping to run into you today. How’s Thelma Johnson’s house?”

  A few years ago, a client who had inherited his mother’s house gave it to me for the low price of the unpaid annual taxes. I’d bought out his mother’s estate when she passed away, which had led to a murder investigation, a conspirac
y regarding a Doris Day movie, and a major motion picture due to be released next year, all of which led to a fair amount of notoriety around town and a temporary boost to my business—before my more recent fall from grace.

  “Thelma Johnson’s house is the one constant in my life,” I said. Honestly, if everything else fell into place as easily as the house had, I’d be sitting pretty. I lured Rocky back to my side. The cat sat under a bush by the side of the building and watched him. I glanced from the building to my kitchen windows and wondered if Rocky and the cat had a flirtation going.

  Dennis turned away from the door and joined me out front. “You rent a studio on Greenville Avenue, don’t you?”

  For now. “Yes,” I said.

  “Have you ever considered something more permanent?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  He pointed at the building. “It used to belong to Sam Johnson, Thelma’s husband, but she sold it after he died. It’s zoned for commercial use. It’s not functional for a living space, but with you next door, it could be a good business investment. Too small to use for storage, but you’d build equity. If you ever wanted to move, having this property could add to the value of yours.”

  I felt the same tingle I’d felt in class. “Can I see the inside?” I asked.

  “Not tonight. I wrote down the wrong lockbox code. I have a full day tomorrow, but I’m free on Friday. The owner is looking to unload the building, so if you’re interested, I can get you a good price and push things through quickly.”

  I considered my recent banking woes. “Financing might be a problem,” I said.

  Dennis shushed my concerns. “That’s easy. We take out a home equity loan and invest it here. The banks love transactions like this. They know you’re good for the money because you don’t want to lose your house, and this additional property makes more sense for you than if it were sitting on the market. Everybody wins.”

  Everybody except me if I couldn’t make the payments.

  I made plans to call Dennis and arrange to see the property and then carried Rocky home. The cat kept its eyes on Rocky (and vice versa). Forget flirtation; this had all the earmarks of a grudge match.

  It was earlier than it would have been if class had indeed taken place at night but later than usual. Between that and my early-morning swim, I was tired. Most days, I was in bed by nine thirty. The life of a coed indeed!

  I unpacked my textbooks and glanced at the required reading, but my mind wasn’t engaged. Page after page of foundational business classes told me, in uninspired language, the same lessons I’d learned through experience. I flipped through my notebook and found the page with my ideas and the power words I’d used when Gallagher had baited me: Expand. Go Big. Double Down. Take Risks.

  Every time I looked at those words, I felt the way I felt in class. Excited. Like something big, something new, was right around the corner. And in this case, it was. Not quite around the corner but next door.

  I stood from the table and stared out my kitchen window at the vacant property. It had been for sale for months, and aside from registering the For Sale sign out front, I hadn’t thought twice about it. But now, things were different.

  I’d been paying rent on an empty studio on Greenville Avenue for the past few months, and those checks had been written first with denial then anger toward the decorator who sued me, the client whose job I had completed, and myself for letting it happen. I’d tried bargaining with the universe: send me a sign that everything will work out, and I’ll start putting smiley faces on my checks.

  I’d been rewarded with a rusted-out base of a Warren Platner metal rod coffee table that I found next to a dumpster. Like everything else these days, the base required major TLC to bring it back to life. Without the capital to have the work done, it sat in my storage locker behind my studio where it waited for me to get my act together while probably rusting further. The universe may have sent me a sign, but the fine print said things weren’t going to be easy.

  After bargaining with the universe, I fell into a pit of depression that lasted an embarrassing two weeks. I lied about it to everyone but stopped returning calls of friends and skipped out on a week of swimming. Tex had gone out of town for a recruiting trip, and I spent the time eating Special K cereal three meals a day. By the time he returned, I’d accepted my circumstances. I’d also lost two inches from my waist.

  I couldn’t say whether it was the immediate effects of business school or the gradual realization that I controlled my future, but the fog had lifted from the crossroads at which I now stood. My problem since the lawsuit had been thinking too small.

  All of that was about to change.

  10

  When Tex showed up at eleven thirty, I was surprised to see how much time had passed. He, conversely, was surprised to find me awake.

  “Your light was on,” he said. “I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “If you thought I’d be in bed, then why did you come over?”

  He grinned lasciviously. “Pass up an opportunity to sleep with a college student? I thought that ship had sailed.”

  “Knowing you, it hasn’t been as long as you think.”

  “I wouldn’t trade you for all of them combined.” He reached his hand out and pulled me out of my chair.

  We kissed hello. I could see the same exhaustion on Tex’s face that I felt. For completely different reasons, we were consumed with issues of money and burning the candle at both ends. We were also both aware that what we’d found with each other defied logic. Tex could still push my buttons and I his, but in the end, we were lucky.

  The hello kiss turned into a hello trip to the bedroom, which was edited for brevity. Forty minutes later, we fell asleep under yellow cotton sheets trimmed in daisies, both of our troubles temporarily forgotten.

  My internal alarm clock woke me at five. I was alone. It took a moment to remember Tex had been there, and the pile of shoes and socks by the side of the bed confirmed he still was. I got up, pulled on a yellow velvet housecoat with large pink and white flowers appliqued on it, pushed my feet into pink leather Jacques Levine slippers, and went downstairs. Tex was at my kitchen table, flipping through my notebook.

  “What’s all this?” he asked.

  I reached in front of him and closed my notebook. “Homework,” I said. It was a white lie that might have been beige. I pulled the books toward me. “I didn’t realize I left such a mess down here. Let me get this stuff out of your way.”

  He grabbed my wrist. “Night.”

  “Captain Allen.”

  “I’m not thrilled about you going to that college.”

  “Yes, and I’m not thrilled about you wandering the streets of Dallas with a loaded gun, but these are the choices we made.” I pulled my arm away from him and filled a mug with fresh coffee. When I returned to the table, I sat in a chair opposite him and let the coffee cool for a moment before taking a sip. “You should be happy that I’m at that college. I hear things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the college thinks Professor Gallagher’s syllabus is controversial.” I pulled my mug toward me and took a tentative sip. It was stronger than I usually made it, but I was out of milk, so I powered through. “The dean of the business school said they’re still deciding what to do about his syllabus.”

  “Gallagher was a fraud,” Tex said. He leaned back and threaded his fingers behind his head. “I did a deep dive into his background, and his degrees and recommendations are bunk. His book was published by a vanity press. The last school he worked for fired him for accusations of sexual harassment from four different students. He may have propped himself up as a good guy at Van Doren, but in a previous life he was least likely to succeed.” He pulled his left arm away from his head, glanced at his tank watch, and then resumed his position. “You usually have a solid bullshit meter. You didn’t see any of this?”

  “I didn’t feel immediate affection for the man, but I attended exactly one of his classes, so
I thought I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Drop the Gallagher class,” he said. “Find another 400-level course instead. You don’t need to be involved in another investigation right now.” I studied his clear blue eyes, looking for something to rally against, but all I saw was concern (and disappointment after he glanced down at my housecoat and concluded he wasn’t going to get a peek at the goods).

  He was right. I didn’t need to get involved in another homicide investigation, not now when all my energy needed to go into rebuilding my company. I cut my eyes to the pile of notebooks and textbooks on the table. Had Tex seen my plans? Did he know I’d turned the proverbial corner?

  “You’re probably right,” I said, giving in too soon. “The dean said the college hadn’t determined how they were handling Gallagher’s course, but I’m sure they can suggest an alternative.”

  Tex’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. I kept mine wide. I had the uncanny feeling we were both hiding something.

  After eggs, toast, and coffee with Tex, I dressed in a vintage Lacoste shirt and baggy Bermuda shorts, argyle knee socks, and penny loafers. I said goodbye to Rocky and headed for campus. If I could convince the dean to let me transfer into another eight o’clock course, my life could go back to normal. Ish.

  I parked in the same lot, took the same path, and ended up at the same place as I had the morning I talked my way into Professor Gallagher’s class. Again, the campus was quiet. The temperature was in the seventies, though seventy degrees in Dallas was bad enough. Humidity clung to the air, testing the strength of my deodorant.

  I entered Canfield. I’d expected to find Barbara behind the counter, but she wasn’t there. I found Ansel Benedict, the theatrical professor, instead.

  “Good morning,” he said. He pointed at me and moved his finger around. “You’re an early bird. Have you gotten any worms?”