by Crider, Bill
"I don't know. Certainly my qualifications are as good as his. We both went to the same school, though admittedly he was there ten years after I was. I never did quite figure it out, and then I didn't have to. Woods wasn't around to worry about."
Joynell snapped her purse shut. "Don't let him pull your leg, kiddo. He knows all right, and so do you. It's those cigarettes." She gave Mal a hard look. "I've told him time and again to quit smoking those things."
Burns thought she was probably right, though being an English teacher he looked for the symbolism in what she said rather than the literal meaning. Mal smoked as much to defy the administration as he did for his own enjoyment of nicotine. He simply wasn't a team player. Woods had been a team player, and he only seduced girls in the privacy of his own home. Had it not been for the guilty conscience of one young woman, Woods would probably be Mal's boss right now.
"It's funny, isn't it, honey?" Joynell said to her husband. "I remember how you came home that day and said you'd like to kill that Elmore. 'Bash his head right in,' you said. And now he's gone. How did he die, Carl?"
"Ah, someone bashed his head in," Burns said.
"Now isn't that a coincidence!" Joynell squealed.
Mal looked uncomfortable, as if his pizza hadn't quite agreed with his digestive system. He squirmed in his chair.
Burns looked down and then to the side. He was embarrassed, though he didn't quite know why.
"Why, just look at you two," Joynell said. "You'd think you were both guilty. You look like two little boys that got caught with their hands in the icing bowl."
Mal gave a shaky laugh. "Listen, Carl," he said, "I wouldn't want you to think—"
"I don't think anything," Burns said. "It's just a coincidence. That's all it is." He tried a laugh himself. It sounded pretty sincere to him.
"Number fifty-nine, your order is ready," a voice announced on the speaker.
"That's mine," Burns said.
"We've got to go now," Mal said. "See you tomorrow."
"Yeah, see you tomorrow. Good night, Joynell." Burns got up and went for his pizza. Somehow, he wasn't hungry anymore.
Chapter 8
Bunni came in between the nine and ten o'clock classes the next morning to tell Burns that there would be a special faculty meeting that afternoon at four o'clock. It didn't require too much imagination to figure out what the subject of the meeting would be.
There was also something else on Bunni's mind. "Dr. Burns, you don't think that what we were doing—I mean the picketing and all—you don't think that had anything to do with what happened to Dean Elmore, do you?"
"I'm sure it didn't, Bunni. How did the pep rally go, by the way?"
Bunni's face became animated. "It was great. You should've been there, Dr. Burns. Just about everybody in the dorms was there, and Coach Thomas made a speech about school spirit, and George talked about how much being on the team meant, and . . . well, it was really good."
"I knew it would be," Burns said. "I know that even Elmore would have been convinced that he was making the wrong move as soon as he heard about it. You did have someone from the school paper there taking pictures, I hope?"
"Oh, sure," Bunni said. "They were going to run them on the front page, and on the sports page, too."
Considering that the paper usually had only four pages, that was pretty good coverage, Burns thought. "Well, I wouldn't worry about Dean Elmore," he said. "The police might want to talk to you if they find out about the picketing, or they might not. They may already have some suspects."
"Do you really think so?" Bunni asked eagerly, as if she fully expected Burns to know.
"I'm not in the confidence of the police, Bunni. I'm sure they'll let the public know whenever they find anything out."
"I guess so," Bunni said. She turned to leave. "I'll be at my desk if you need anything."
"Thanks, Bunni," Burns said. She went out of the office, back to the other side of the third floor. Her desk was in a sort of outer office that fronted the offices of three other members of the English Department, the three who were rarely seen and who were known to the rest of the faculty as Larry, Darryl, and Darryl. They came on campus, taught their classes, and went home. They never complained about their schedules, they never questioned administrative caprice, and in fact they seldom did anything more than what was required of them by their jobs. All three were men in their late thirties, all three had been at HGC for more than ten years, and all three did a respectable job in the classroom. If they were asked to come in early for a meeting, they did. If they were asked to teach extra classes, they did. No one knew them very well, but Burns had no reason to complain of their work. They left him alone, and he left them alone. They were probably the three least likely to be affected, in any way, by Elmore's death.
As Burns sat thinking about his faculty, the phone rang. It was Boss Napier, who wanted to have a little chat. Burns told him to come at eleven o'clock.
Napier had on the same leather jacket, but a different pair of boots. He was panting and winded by his climb up the stairway to the third floor. "I swear to God, Bends, I don't see how you do those stairs every day."
"That's Burns. And I sometimes do them five or six times a day. You get used to it."
"I don't think I would. Can I sit down, or what?"
By getting to his office before Napier arrived, Burns had given himself time to assume what he imagined the business psychologists would refer to as the "power position." He was seated comfortably behind the wide expanse of his executive desk in the best chair in the office. He graciously asked Napier to be seated, but the police chief had to sit in the "conference chair" placed by the desk for student-teacher conferences. It didn't seem to bother Napier a bit.
"There are a few things from our little talk yesterday that we need to hash over again," Napier said after he was seated.
Burns waited. He wasn't going to be any help, not that it would make any difference. As soon as the word got around that Napier had been to see him, and it would get around fast, he would be rumored to be either arrested or cooperating with the police. He wasn't sure he cared for either idea.
"You didn't see anybody enter or leave the building, right?" Napier asked finally.
"Right," Burns said.
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
"I thought you would be. You know, the more I think about it, the more I like you for the kill. You were there; you didn't like the guy . . ."
How did he know that, Burns wondered. Obviously he'd been talking to other members of the faculty.
". . . and you certainly had the opportunity to use the blunt instrument on him."
"What blunt instrument?" Burns asked.
Napier crossed his legs, flicking his western-cut pants to straighten the crease. "We don't know that for sure yet," he said. "We do know that Fenimore hadn't been dead more than a few minutes when you found him."
"Elmore," Burns said absently. He was wondering just what Napier was trying to tell him. "You still haven't found that paper-clip holder?"
"Not yet," Napier said. "You know, we don't get many homicides in Pecan City. We made a few mistakes in this one."
"Such as?"
"We should've sealed off the whole building, not just that one office. Oh, we still searched, but there were so many people coming and going that anyone could've carried that thing out."
Burns thought of something. "Whoever killed Elmore, and it certainly wasn't me, could have been in the building all the time. I didn't make any extra noise going up to Elmore's office, but in that empty building I must have sounded like a herd of elephants. Someone could have been hiding in the office next door or in the rest room down the hall. Then he could have mingled with the people coming back from assembly."
"Yeah," Napier said, "but you just thought of that. I thought of it last night. I wish I'd thought of it a lot sooner. But like I say, we don't get many homicides here. I'm just learning."
There wasn't
much Burns could say to that.
"What do you know about this Coach Thomas?" Napier asked, changing the subject.
Burns was amazed that he'd gotten the name right. "Not much. He's a pretty good coach, but he doesn't have much material. If he could get some good athletes, I think—"
"Cut the crap, Stearns. I don't give a damn about his football team. I want to know about that scuffle he had with Elmore in the lunch room. You were there and saw the whole thing."
Next thing you know, he'll even get my name right, Burns thought, though he wasn't counting on it. "Whoever told you that I was there can tell you as much as I can," he said. "There wasn't any scuffle, however."
"Whoever told me that you were there said there was a scuffle."
"Well, there wasn't," Burns said. "Elmore might have thought that Coach Thomas was about to rough him up, but it didn't happen. Elmore just got scared and fell out of his chair."
"You've got to admit that Thomas really had it in for Elmore, though."
"I don't have to admit anything," Burns said. "Coach Thomas was upset and maybe a little excited about Elmore's saying that he planned to drop the athletic program, but that wasn't Elmore's decision to make. A lot was already being done to prevent it, and Thomas knew it. He didn't 'have it in' for anyone."
"So you say," Napier said. "What about this Belinda Edgely woman?"
"Dorinda," Burns said patiently. "We went over that yesterday."
"Not enough," Napier said. "I hear that last year at that Kiss a Pig contest, she got really upset with Elmore, maybe even said something to him."
Burns tried to recall what he'd heard. He hadn't attended the actual consummation of the contest, but someone had told him what had happened. "I think she said something like, 'There's more than one pig here today.'"
"And he said, 'You and that one over there makes two,'" Napier said.
"That's what I heard," Burns said. "It's only a rumor."
"You think it was a cover-up?"
"Cover-up?"
"For hanky-panky," Napier said.
"No," Burns said.
"There's that snout, though," Napier said.
"Yes," Burns said. "There's that snout."
Down in the history lounge, Burns and Fox didn't discuss Napier. Burns was trying to recall the details of another run-in that Thomas and Elmore had had.
Fox was smoking Players Lights today, and the ashtray was a Dr. Pepper can. "Twenty-five in a pack," he said. "You can't beat a deal like that, except maybe for those generic cigarettes at Kroger. But I really hate those tacky yellow packages." He brushed some ash off the knit shirt he was wearing, a brown, white, and blue number with a fishlike pattern woven into it. "I remember the time you're thinking about. It really didn't involve Thomas so much as one of the assistant coaches. What was his name—Handy? Camby?"
"Hamby," Burns said. He wasn't smoking. He'd burned the roof of his mouth on the pizza the night before, and it tasted as if the Chinese army had marched through, using his tongue as a door mat. A cigarette wouldn't help. "Claude Hamby. Adonis himself. I remember the whole thing, now."
Claude Hamby had been an assistant coach the year Elmore had become dean. Hamby was a bodybuilder whose idol was Arnold Schwarzenegger. Though Hamby's own development didn't really rival Arnold's, it wasn't bad, especially for a place like Pecan City, where most of the residents looked and dressed like bit players in Red River. Hamby was fond of displaying what he had, and he loved to take off his shirt at football workouts and expose his delts and pecs. He always wore short, tight white shorts.
Though Hamby could have had his pick of the eligible women in Pecan City (of which there were very, very few, in Burns's opinion), he seldom showed any interest, a fact that had caused more than a little talk in certain circles.
That talk was nothing as compared to what came later, however, after Hamby's final fling. It happened on a warm Indian summer afternoon one Sunday in late October. A newly married couple, the husband a devout ministerial student, his wife the daughter of missionaries, went for a picnic on a piece of land outside town. The land was owned by Coach Thomas, and it was widely known among the students that Thomas never went there and that he didn't mind if they enjoyed a picnic beside the little stock tank that nestled behind a small dam out of sight of the road.
There was a little wood that ran right up to one bank of the tank, almost, and it was at that spot that the young man and his wife settled down to enjoy the afternoon. They were saying grace over their meal when they heard a rustling in the trees, and they had just stood up to investigate when Hamby stepped out between two oaks. He was stark naked.
The young woman swooned. Her husband turned red. Hamby fled back into the trees.
By the time the ministerial student reached town, the story had come to include two boys, also naked, standing beside Hamby. The student went straight to Elmore.
Hamby denied that there was anyone with him. He also made it clear that he had Thomas's permission to stroll around his property, naked if he pleased. It seemed that Hamby had a bit of the nudist in his blood, and a nude stroll was something that he required every now and again for his general well-being and peace of mind.
Thomas had confirmed the story. The student recanted the part of his story about the two nude boys. Elmore was livid and demanded that Hamby be fired anyway. Thomas supported Hamby, who had nevertheless quit at the end of the semester. The brouhaha had been too much for him.
"That bozo better consider himself lucky if he lands another coaching job closer to this state than Outer Mongolia," Elmore was reported to have said. In truth, Hamby got a job at a major school in the Southwest Conference, a fact that galled Elmore sorely.
"Yeah," Fox said, "but all that was three years ago. You don't think Elmore still held that against Thomas, do you? Or that Thomas would kill Elmore because of it?" He considered the idea for a minute. "Besides, didn't President Rogers defend Hamby, sort of halfheartedly?"
"Yeah," Burns said, "and don't think that didn't cause a lot of talk. Took a year to die down. Anyway, I'd say that the answer to your first question is a great big Yes. Of course I think Elmore still held Hamby against Thomas."
He thought a second, then grinned. "I don't mean that the way it sounds. Anyway, Elmore could hold a grudge longer than any man alive. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the very reason the football program was going to be put down the tubes. It took Elmore three years, but he finally got enough ammunition to take to the board. Damnit, I'm almost sure of it."
He leaned forward and took a Players out of the pack. He'd decided to have a smoke after all.
Fox lit up too, just about the time Dorinda Edgely pushed open the door. Fox's cigarette, which had been on the way to his mouth, hit the floor.
Burns recalled one time when they had been smoking in Fox's office and someone had knocked on the door. Fox had put his cigarette in the ashtray—a real glass one, not a Dr. Pepper can—put the ashtray in his desk drawer, and shoved the drawer closed. A student had come in, asked a few questions about an exam, and left. When Fox opened his desk drawer, smoke billowed into the room and Burns had nearly strangled him. The smoke alarm near the ceiling went off, and they had to go to Rose's closet for a ladder so that they could remove the battery.
Dorinda didn't deign to look at the burning cigarette, but she did glance all around the room. Her face was drawn, and there were black circles beneath her eyes. Her stretch pants were still stretched to the limit.
"Can we help you, Dorinda?" Burns asked.
Dorinda's eyes darted into the nooks and crannies of the room, of which there were plenty. Rose didn't like to clean in there because the room hadn't been remodeled with the rest of the building; the baseboards were dingy, and the walls were streaked. Dust had gathered in the dimly lit corners.
"I'm looking for something," Dorinda said.
"We sort of gathered that," Burns said. When Dorinda's eyes focused in on Burns, Fox took the opportunity to ease hi
s chair closer to the burning cigarette and put his foot in front of it.
"I thought I might have left it in here," Dorinda went on.
Burns had a good idea of what it was that Dorinda was looking for, but he didn't want to say so. "Nothing in here but me and Dr. Fox."
"I can see that," Dorinda said. Then, more to herself than to them, she said, "I must have lost it somewhere."
Burns got up and dragged the only other chair in the room, a warped metal folding chair that looked hardly able to bear his weight, up to the table. He sat down and indicated the chair he had vacated by waving the tip of his cigarette at it. "Have a seat, Dorinda," he said.
Dorinda looked for a moment as if she would run, but then she shrugged and sat down.
Fox sighed and stepped on his still-glowing cigarette. "Dorinda," Burns said, "I think I know what you're looking for. And I think I've seen it recently."
Dorinda, who had leaned slightly forward in her chair, sat up straight. "No!" she exclaimed. "It wasn't mine! It couldn't have been mine!"
"I think it could have been," Burns said. "Or else you wouldn't be looking so hard for it now. Retracing your steps, so to speak."
"I never went near that office," Dorinda said. She seemed to shrink a little in the chair. "I told that policeman that, but I don't think he believed me. It's true, though." She paused. "He kept calling me 'Miz Sedgefield.'"
"Don't let that bother you," Burns said. "He has a problem with names. And I think he must have heard that you had a problem with Elmore last year."
The reference to Elmore perked Dorinda up. "I called him a pig," she said. "And he was. Besides, I've heard him called a lot worse."
"I've called him worse myself," Fox said. "What's this all about?"
"The snout," Burns said.
"Oh," Fox said.
"But it couldn't be mine," Dorinda said again.
