Stump Speech Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “Hey!” he pouted. “Men are strange.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said, nudging him. “And besides, if there was another man in the house, you’d think the media would be reporting that.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause the media always assume the juiciest of explanations,” she argued. “Surely, that’s the first thing that the reporter imagined. That Ginger Cooper was probably all over the police with questions about possible other men.”

  “So,” he said, gesturing to indicate that he was following her train of thought, “if you don’t think there’s another man, what do you think? Why did this seemingly nice guy—with everything going for him—suddenly lose it? Up and kill his wife and then make absolutely no attempt to cover his tracks?”

  “That’s the more important question,” she responded, nodding.

  “What’s the more important question?” Rocky was confused and made one of his annoyed huffing sounds. Candide, now having given up on getting any more popcorn, snuggled up to his master and licked his fuzzy face in his most ingratiating, doggy fashion. “Nope, buddy. Not popping any more tonight.”

  “Why would he do something like this that would so obviously ruin his chances to win the election?” She held the popcorn bowl on her lap and drummed her fingers on its edge.

  “Maybe the wife wanted him to drop out of the race,” offered Rocky suddenly, hiking himself up on an elbow. Candide plopped off of Rocky’s shoulder and scampered to the foot of the bed. The small dog obviously imagined that more treats were in the offing.

  “So what if she did?” she asked, turning to her large, burly husband. “He could just say no. Couples disagree. I don’t smash a candlestick on your head when you and I don’t see eye to eye.”

  “Yet,” said Rocky.

  “What does that mean?” she cried, scoffing. “I’m a very gentle person.”

  “A very gentle, headstrong person,” he corrected.

  “We frequently agree to disagree,” she noted in a very even and well modulated voice.

  “As do most couples,” he allowed, nodding.

  “Just my point,” she said. Silence reigned. Both Rocky and Pamela stared ahead, apparently deep in thought. Candide looked back and forth from master to mistress. Neither seemed to be making a move towards the kitchen. With a small, infinitesimal doggie shrug and a delicate moan, he lay down at the foot of the bed where he maintained an eagle eye on his owners for any possible change in their behavior.

  “What about your friend Joan?” asked Rocky after a while.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s the one who dragged you into this political campaign business,” he noted. “What does she say about this guy getting arrested for murder?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, her tone changing abruptly. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard from her, come to think of it. She’ll probably be horrified. She really likes him. Actually, she thinks the sun rises and sets on him.”

  “It sounds like she has a crush on him,” he suggested.

  “At times,” agreed Pamela, “I think the same thing. Joan is usually so sensible about things, although she does have a bit of a wild side.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked, askance.

  “Rocky,” sneered Pamela, “she is a widow. I mean, she’s single and she certainly hasn’t been a recluse. Although, she’s very discrete.” She batted and rolled her eyes in his direction.

  “You mean, her students don’t know anything about her amorous activities.”

  “Correct,” said Pamela, giggling. “At least, not that I know. I have to admire her. I mean, if I were in her shoes—and I’m really glad I’m not in her shoes—but if I were, I would wish that I had her adventuresome spirit.” She leaned over and nuzzled her husband’s cheek.

  “My dear,” said Rocky, winding his arm behind his wife’s back and burying his nose in her neck, “you are quite adventuresome enough for me!” The increasing movement between the couple caused the bundle of fluff at the foot of the bed to leap up and join in the activity. Not exactly what Rocky apparently had in mind. “Shoo! Go back to Westphalia, silly dog! Your timing is not good!”

  “Just be mindful of yourself, Mr. Barnes,” chastised Pamela.

  “Oh?”

  “I wouldn’t want to have to kill you,” she replied, popping a finger against his nose.

  “Oh, babe,” he answered, “for what I have in mind, there will be no motive for murder in our house tonight.”

  Chapter Three

  Pamela caught sight of Joan Bentley the next morning as she was making her daily pass around Blake Hall looking for a parking space. Unfortunately, Pamela had arrived too late to secure a spot in the small departmental lot next to the imposing two-story brick structure, so she was resigned to driving in circles around the block until a space opened up in the lot—or more likely—a parallel spot cleared on the street. As she drove slowly around and around, keeping an eagle eye peeled for the slightest movement of a front tire on one of the parked vehicles, she noticed Joan’s red Taurus passing in the other direction. Joan had obviously arrived as late as she had, which was unusual for her early-rising friend. She reasoned that Joan had probably positioned herself in front of her home television set to get the latest report on the arrest of James Grant and couldn’t drag herself away until the last minute. From the brief glimpse Pamela got of Joan as she whizzed by, Joan did not look happy.

  Great, thought Pamela, we’ll both be stuck out here looking for parking spaces and we’ll be lucky if we find spots and get inside in time for our first classes. I was hoping I’d have an opportunity to find out what she knows about the arrest of this James Grant. As she whined to herself, a student driver pulled his jalopy out from a tight parking spot near the corner, screeching his tires in defiance of the close quarters of his car’s position, and zoomed down the street. Pamela pulled up directly to the car in front of the empty spot, much more cautiously than the previous resident had left–because she’d had her share of parallel parking mishaps—and expertly maneuvered her little Civic into the empty spot. A perfect location, she said to herself, right under a tree to keep her car cool during what would probably prove to be a typically hot August day.

  As she extricated herself and all of her daily paraphernalia (purse, thermos, lunch sack, books, papers, grade book, clipboard) from the front seat of her car, and headed across the street to the main entrance of Blake Hall, she saw Joan walking quickly towards her from the opposite direction.

  “I cannot believe I got a space on my first time around!” announced Joan, joining Pamela as the two women walked up the flight of cement steps that led to the big, white, double doors marking the main entrance to the Psychology Department at Grace University.

  “I suppose you’re late,” noted Pamela to her friend, “because you were watching the local news.”

  “Tell me about it,” acknowledged Joan, wiping her hand over her forehead. Pamela didn’t know if the perspiration there was from worry or the weather.

  “My God, Joan,” continued Pamela, as the two professors walked through the large lobby and headed left down the main hallway. “What happened? Your candidate was arrested for murder!”

  “My candidate!” cried Joan, grabbing her briefcase in both hands and heaving it up into her arms, “If I remember correctly, you joined James’s team yesterday. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” agreed Pamela, scrunching up her forehead as they entered the Psychology Department’s main office immediately on their right. “But I’m assuming his candidacy is over now. I mean, he’s in jail!”

  Joan moved to the wall of faculty mailboxes on the side wall of the office. She bent over and peeked into a small cubby and removed a batch of envelopes, flyers, and cards. “It must be a mistake,” she whispered to Pamela. “It just must be. I’m sure they’ll straighten everything out.”

  “Joan,” countered Pamela, retrieving her own mail from her box, “His wife is dead. Th
at’s not something you ‘straighten out.’” Joan gave her a sign to keep quiet and the women silently exited the main office and headed down the hallway and up a staircase at the far end.

  “You mean to tell me,” asked Pamela, “that you think there’s been some sort of mistake?”

  “Obviously,” said Joan with a shrug, “it’s not a mistake about his wife being dead. But surely, it’s a mistake that he’s being blamed for it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I’ve gotten to know James, Pamela,” she insisted. “I know him and I know he could never do something like that!” They arrived at Joan’s office and Joan scrounged around in her jacket pocket and brought out her key chain and quickly unlocked her office door. She stomped into her office, placing her items neatly in a pile on the top of her desk. She quickly moved to her window and readjusted the blinds so that a blast of morning sunlight changed the color and the atmosphere from gloomy to bright.

  “Sometimes we think we know someone,” explained Pamela, plopping herself down on Joan’s neat leather sofa. Joan busied herself behind her desk with a small pitcher of water that she carefully poured into five or six planters on her desk and bookshelves.

  “Pamela,” said Joan, taking her seat behind her desk, and assuming her professorial voice, “Believe me, I’m as shocked as you. But, this just must be some sort of mistake. I tell you I know James. I’ve gotten to know him. After all, we worked together on that Human Subjects’ sub-committee for over a year. I feel like he’s a really close friend—or a brother.”

  “Not a boyfriend?” She continued to clutch her belongings.

  “What?” Joan gasped. “What are you suggesting? James is married.”

  “Not any more,” said Pamela, grimly.

  “That’s disgusting, Pamela,” said Joan. “He’s more than twenty years my junior.”

  “So?”

  “Listen,” said Joan, scooting closer to her desk and leaning forward so she could speak to her friend in a very soft voice. “You know—and I know—that I enjoy an invigorating relationship with a man from time to time. But—I am not a home wrecker. And more important, James Grant is a loyal husband.”

  “And you know that for a fact?” asked Pamela, leaning forward over, her chin resting on her stack of books and papers.

  “Where are you getting these ideas, Pamela?”

  “I don’t know, Joan,” answered Pamela, somewhat deflated now. “It just seemed to me that you were so wrapped up in all of this political campaign business, that I began to wonder if there wasn’t something more to it than just your enthusiasm for Mr. Grant’s platform.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” barked Joan. “What do you take me for?”

  “I take you for a normal person, Joan,” said Pamela, in an tense whisper. “You wouldn’t be the first person to get involved in a political campaign because they were enamored of the candidate. Haven’t you heard of Monica Lewinsky?”

  “I’m not enamored of James,” shot back Joan, her neat white hairdo glistening in the sunbeams from outside. “I’m enamored of his ideas and his plans.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” said Pamela. “But, if that should change . . . “

  “It won’t,” Joan snapped.

  There was a long silence as the two women both took deep breaths and slumped in their seats. Pamela deposited her belongings on the sofa next to her. She reached over to Joan’s office door and tapped it shut. Too little, too late, she thought. If any students had been in the hallway outside, they had probably already gotten an earful.

  “Anyway,” began Pamela, looking carefully at Joan’s face. She had never seen Joan cry—ever. Joan was the most stoic of all her friends and colleagues. She remained calm during any and all crises. Now, Pamela thought she observed the beginning of a tear—not an actual tear, but just the beginning of one in Joan’s eye.

  “Can we talk about this?” asked Pamela.

  Joan, suddenly pulled herself together and, sitting up straight behind her desk, started to put the items on her desk away in drawers in a pitiful attempt to make her desktop neat.

  “Joan?”

  “What?” Joan stopped her busy work and glared at Pamela.

  “What do you know about what happened? Do you know anything?” Her eyes pleaded with Joan.

  “I don’t know any more than you do. I probably know less. I didn’t even hear about the arrest until late last night because I came back here after the rally to work on that article I have to get done for Ed Psych Reports. So when I did hear about it, it was so late that I didn’t . . . couldn’t call you . . . or anyone to find out anything. So all I know is what they reported on WRER.”

  “They’re saying the police found him standing over the body.”

  “I know. Evidently, she had called 911 to report that someone was trying to break in.”

  “No,” disagreed Pamela. “I thought the news said she reported to 911 that her husband was trying to break in.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” argued Joan, now doodling on her blotter with a pencil. “Why would James need to break into his own house?”

  “I’m sure that’s what they said on the news.”

  “I’m sure he has a key to his own home. Why would he break in?”

  “Maybe she locked him out with a chain lock or a dead bolt,” suggested Pamela, leaning back onto Joan’s sofa and crossing her legs.

  “Why?”

  “Rocky says that maybe they were having marital difficulties. Maybe he came home because he suspected something, broke in, and found her with a lover.”

  “I haven’t heard even a hint of anything like that,” mused Joan, “and I’ve been at the campaign headquarters fairly regularly over the last few weeks.”

  “If they were having difficulties,” offered Pamela, “you might assume that they’d try to keep it quiet so that the media wouldn’t get wind of it.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you ever seen his wife?” asked Pamela.

  “Stacy,” said Joan. “I’ve not only seen her, I’ve met her—and she’s lovely. Well, she was lovely. She worked for the DA’s office.”

  “And they seemed okay?”

  “I guess,” responded Joan. “I mean, they weren’t billing and cooing all the time. When she showed up at campaign headquarters, she’d only stay a while.”

  “Do they have children?”

  “No,” replied Joan. “I think they’d only been married a few years.”

  “Hmm,” mumbled Pamela. “You wouldn’t think they’d be having trouble so soon, would you?”

  “The only possibility I can think of is that maybe the campaign itself might have taken a toll. You know, on the marriage. James spent almost every single minute of the day on that campaign. If Stacy was prone to being resentful, I guess she’d have the campaign to resent.”

  “But her being resentful,” said Pamela, “is backwards.”

  “How so, Sherlock?” asked Joan, with a snide leer over her glasses.

  “I mean, it would seem Stacy would be the one to have a motive to murder James, not James having a motive to murder Stacy.”

  “That does seem more logical,” considered Joan, leaning back in her big leather desk chair, “if anything about any of this were logical.”

  A knock on Joan’s office door shook the two friends from their contemplation. Pamela being closer, rose and opened the door.

  “Dr. Bentley,” said a scruffy-looking young man standing respectfully at the entrance. “You said in class yesterday that we should stop by and have you look over our rough drafts of our research papers. I was wondering if you’d mind taking a look at mine?”

  Joan gestured for the student to enter. Realizing their private conversation was at an end for the moment, Pamela nodded farewell to Joan and headed out of Joan’s office and across the hallway to her own. As she let herself in and unloaded her own things in their proper places, she continued to mull over the strange situ
ation that had occurred. A nice young man—an ideal candidate for mayor who was performing well in the polls and whom Joan supported and whom she would probably support too—had suddenly, seemingly thrown away his chance at a position of leadership. He’d thrown away his chance to make real substantive change in their town by viciously killing his wife and then stupidly making no attempt to cover his tracks. Did any of this make any sense?

  No, she thought, as she slid onto her comfy paisley sofa beside her window that looked out onto the campus grounds. No, none of it made any sense at all.

  Chapter Four

  Pamela barely had time to open her thermos and take a few sips of one of Rocky’s specialty teas, when Joan appeared at her door, breathless.

  “Quick!” she waved at Pamela. “Arliss just called. She said to come right away!”

  “Oh, my!” responded Pamela, setting down her cup on her end table. After quickly locking her office door, she followed Joan down the hallway. Arliss was the third member of their tight little group and she was in the last few weeks of her first pregnancy. A call from Arliss to come immediately must mean the baby was on the way.

  The two women pattered down the stairs, their heels echoing in the old stairwell. On the main floor, they hurried towards the animal lab, of which Arliss was director, which was located at the end of a long corridor on the other side of Blake Hall’s main lobby. Passing the main office, they flew past the departmental secretary, Jane Marie Mira, who was just locking the office door and putting up a sign announcing her departure for a few minutes while she made her daily foray to the administration building to pick up the Psychology Department mail.

  “Dr. Barnes! Dr. Bentley!” called the young secretary. “Where are you running to?”

  “It’s Arliss!” responded Joan, yelling over her shoulder as she whizzed by Jane Marie.

  “Is the baby coming?” asked Jane Marie, now following behind the two faculty women.