Veritas

by Anne Laughlin

  As Beth walked through the main quad toward Old Main she saw John Barrow, still untenured, heading right toward her. There was no way to avoid him.

  “Good morning, Dean.” Like Landscome, John Barrow went for the outdated tweedy, academic look, but unlike Landscome, Barrow managed to carry it off. He was in his mid-thirties, with a full head of wavy dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and a wiry build. He was, Beth acknowledged, very handsome, and no doubt used to getting his way. She said her hello and continued walking, hoping Barrow would continue in the opposite direction.

  “Dean, if you have a moment there’s something I want to call your attention to.”

  Beth worked to keep her tone pleasant. “If this is about the tenure vote, John, it’s not really appropriate for us to discuss it.”

  “It happens that this is about something entirely unrelated. A past student of yours, as a matter of fact.”

  “Which student is that?”

  “Jennifer Manos, who’s in my senior seminar.”

  “What about Jennifer?”

  Barrow came up close to Beth, rocking back and forth on his crepe-soled feet, each forward motion impinging on her personal space. Beth took a step back. “I’m quite concerned, actually. It seems Jennifer has gone missing.” He raised an eyebrow at Beth, almost as if he thought Beth had perhaps tucked Jennifer away somewhere.

  “What do you mean she’s missing?”

  “As you know, Jennifer is an avid student, so it caught my attention yesterday when she missed her second seminar session in a row. I took the time to look up her contact information and call her mobile. It went straight into voicemail. I called her house and a flatmate said she hadn’t seen Jennifer all week but didn’t know where she’d buggered off to.”

  “John, I doubt she’s ‘buggered off’ anywhere. She’s a sensible young woman. I’ll contact the dean of students and we’ll find out what’s up.”

  “Yes, well, I’m just a bit concerned. She’s not seemed quite herself the last few weeks.”

  “What do you mean?” Beth asked. John had now stopped rocking back and forth and was shifting from one foot to the other. She wondered if he was hyperactive, though she had always been left more with an impression of sloth than energy. Perhaps he was nervous about the tenure vote.

  He spoke more quickly than was normal. “Oh, who knows what goes on in the minds of students? I just sensed she was distracted, if not unhappy. I’d hate to see anything happen to her.” Beth doubted he cared about Jennifer’s welfare as much as he did about appearing to care.

  She excused herself and continued on to her office, where she’d delegate the missing student question to the dean of students as soon as she got in. When she entered Old Main she looked toward Landscome’s suite. Landscome was safely away in London, probably for the better part of a week, which gave Beth time to figure out how to play the tenure situation with John Barrow so that she could keep her job as dean, keep the faculty from revolting, and keep Landscome happy. Beth was no stranger to the Machiavellian hornet’s nest that was academic politics, so she felt confident, for the first time in a couple of days, that she would figure out this puzzle. As she walked into her office Lillian followed close behind with another wad of message slips.

  “Dean Taylor called and she sounds upset. You need to call her right away.”

  “Okay, I think I know what that’s about. Any other emergencies in there?” Beth asked as she settled in behind her desk. Lillian looked at her pityingly.

  “Delilah Humphries is on her way over to talk about the tenure vote. She should be here in fifteen minutes.”

  Beth took a deep breath. “Okay. What else?”

  “The board just faxed over a letter saying they are moving up the due date on the annual plan by two weeks. That means you have to get it to them by next Friday.”

  “Oh, my God.” They might as well have said she’d have to write the next War and Peace in a day. Suddenly the thought of Mel jumped into Beth’s head—uncomplicated Mel and her uncomplicated lovemaking.

  “I don’t even think that’s physically possible, especially with the president out of town. Anything else?”

  “That’s the worst of it. The rest can wait, though your mother called and said she couldn’t get through to you last night at home. She wants you to call today.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Lillian laughed. “Enjoy the time with her if you possibly can, Dean. Mothers drive you crazy, and suddenly they’re gone. Then there’s that big void where the irritation used to be.”

  Irritation was simply one in a palette full of complicated emotions Beth associated with her mother. She wouldn’t deny that on the question of her mother she was extraordinarily sensitive. She never volunteered any information about her and when asked she told a version of the truth, that it was just the two of them in the family and that they weren’t close. She would not admit to anyone that her mother was a brothel owner in Nevada, not because she was ashamed, but because the news was so flabbergastingly unexpected to everyone who heard it that they could talk of nothing else. Some were no doubt scandalized by the news, while others, struggling to be broadminded, insisted on giving it a literary quality, as if Beth herself were a modern day Moll Flanders. They wanted to hear stories of her mother the madam, how she ran her house, protected her girls, cut deals with the cops and politicians that frequented her house, even though Beth repeatedly reminded them that a legal brothel really wasn’t as colorful or dangerous as the illegal sort.

  What Beth didn’t tell them, what they wouldn’t have wanted to hear, were the stories about how her mother neglected her, left her on her own for hours, sometimes looked in on by one of her girls, often not. Or of how her mother ignored her even when they were in the same room, too tired to be bothered. Beth learned soon enough to not ask for what she needed, for that seemed only to make her mother love her less, if in fact she loved Beth at all.

  As Lillian walked out of her office, Beth picked up the phone to dial the dean of students, Harriet Taylor. Harriet was in her fourth decade in her position. She knew, intimately, the vast array of stupid things that students did, as well as the great range of their energy and sweetness and eagerness to learn.

  When Beth placed the call it was picked up on the first ring and a voice barked, “Taylor.”

  “It’s Beth Ellis, Harriet. I have a message you called.”

  “Jennifer Manos is missing.” Dean Taylor got down to business, as usual.

  “God, I was hoping it wasn’t true. I just ran into John Barrow and he told me he was concerned that she might be.”

  “Oh, I bet he’s concerned, that son of a bitch.” Beth could hear Harriet blow out a breath. “I’ll get to him in a minute, but let me tell you what I know. I got a call from a student over at Hadley House where Jennifer lives. Her housemates figured out today that no one has seen Jennifer since Monday morning, when her roommate Mandy saw her still in bed when she left for class. Mandy spent the next two nights over at her boyfriend’s room and when she finally got back to Hadley she didn’t even think about the fact that Jennifer wasn’t around. She figured she’d hooked up with someone.”

  “Why does she think that’s not the case now?” Beth asked.

  “When all of the girls in the house compared notes they realized no one had seen her, and that even if she had hooked up with someone she would have come home at some point to change clothes or get books or something. The other thing is that none of the girls think Jennifer is a hook-up kind of girl. As far as they knew there was only one man in her life, and when Mandy took a call from John Barrow telling her that Jennifer hadn’t shown up in class this week…”

  “Oh, no,” Beth said. “Please don’t tell me that Barrow is sleeping with Jennifer.”

  “I wish I could tell you that he is. That would be one way to get him removed from this campus,” Harriet said. “But according to her housemates, Jennifer never said they’d gotten together, just t
hat she had a thing for him.”

  Beth got up from her desk and started to pace. “They have no idea where she might be?”

  “None. I’ve gone ahead and contacted Jennifer’s aunt. She’s listed as her emergency contact, though I’m not sure yet why her parents aren’t.”

  “Her parents are dead,” Beth said, knowing this and several other facts about Jennifer’s background. Before she left the English department, Beth had been Jennifer’s advisor. “She was ten years old when they were killed in a car wreck and her aunt took her in.”

  “Well, this keeps getting better, doesn’t it? The aunt doesn’t have any idea where she is either, and now she’s frantic. I think it’s time we called the police.”

  “Absolutely. Keep me up to date and let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Delilah Humphries entered her outer office and Beth waved her in. “I’ve got to go, Harriet.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll take care of everything, but I’ve got to tell you, if I find out that one of your faculty has caused harm to one of my students, I’m going to be on the war path.” She hung up.

  There was no time to react to this crisis with Delilah coming in. Beth retreated behind her desk. There had been a short time, a number of years before, when Beth and Delilah were lovers. She found Delilah’s charming insistence that they try a romance tempting enough to ignore her rule about dating colleagues, but once she got up close and personal, charming became eccentric and then eccentric became controlling and off-putting. Beth put an end to things quickly and after an uncomfortable period when Delilah kept trying to get Beth to change her mind, they’d manage to resume a friendship of sorts. Still, Beth was always a little nervous around Delilah.

  Delilah swarmed into the office, her presence large and commanding. She was not fat, but she was tall and big boned and seemed twice as large as she really was. She had a great mass of long hair and she wore flowing clothes, simple makeup, flat shoes, and a jangle of rings and bracelets. She whooshed, clanked, and clacked wherever she went, so there was no doubt in anyone’s mind when Delilah Humphries was making an entrance. She pulled up immediately in front of Beth’s desk, dropped her huge valise with a loud thud, and said, “I’m here to report on the matter of John Barrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “As chair of the Tenure and Promotions Committee I have just presided over what I thought would finally be the meeting in which we would vote on Barrow’s tenure. However, due to one member’s insistence that the vote be delayed until Monday morning, we won’t know the answer until then.”

  Beth didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. She’d already determined that she would not interfere with the vote, so the delay did not make any difference in terms of her role in the outcome. But if there was some aspect of Jennifer’s disappearance that involved John Barrow, she appreciated having additional time to investigate before he became a tenured professor. He would lose tenure for sleeping with a student, certainly his own student, but it was easier to keep it from being granted than taking it away after the fact.

  “I take it that the majority still seems to be against tenure?”

  “God, yes,” Delilah said. “He is one of the least qualified candidates we’ve ever seen. He hasn’t published, he does absolutely nothing on his committee assignments, and even the students think he’s lazy.” She gave Beth a long look. “Be on the level with me, Beth. What is the reaction of your president going to be if we deliver a no vote on his guy?”

  “He is not ‘my’ president, Dee. He is, unfortunately, the college’s president, which gives him the ability to veto your decision. I’m afraid that’s what he’ll do.”

  “What the hell is he thinking? Has the man ever been on a college campus before? Does he not have the slightest idea how things work here? He is ruining this place, I swear to God.”

  Delilah was running her hands through her wild hair, her eyes shut tight. When they opened she whacked the top of the desk with the palms of her hands. “Well, I’ll tell you this. If he vetoes our vote on John Barrow, he is going to have a fucking war on his hands and it will be over before he even knows what’s hit him. I don’t think the board is going to see him as their White Knight if the faculty delivers a unanimous vote of no confidence.”

  “He’s going to remove me as dean if you vote against Barrow.”

  Delilah’s eyes narrowed. “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that I will have failed to convince you to vote for tenure.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense, even for him.” Delilah blew out a long, noisy breath. “This is getting very serious, Beth. We need you as dean to perform whatever damage control is possible while this man is president. If you get tossed back into the ranks with us, he’ll replace you with some Barrow-like person.”

  Beth felt a sickening sensation as she realized something. “No, wait. It does make sense. As soon as I fail to deliver the tenure vote that he wants, which he knows I can’t do, he’ll veto the vote, get Barrow tenured up, fire me, and then put Barrow in as dean.” Beth leaned back in her chair. “It’s diabolical.”

  “It’s fucking unacceptable, is what it is.” Delilah abruptly turned and stormed out of the office.

  Lillian stuck her head in and said, “It’s time for you to go to the meeting in town with the mayor.”

  Beth laid her head down on her desk and moaned.

  Chapter Three

  The chief of Mount Avery’s police department, Sally Sullivan, drove her squad car back toward town to attend the annual luncheon with the mayor, the town council, and whoever the college sent down to represent them. She drove slowly. She would rather direct traffic in a rainstorm than go to the luncheon, but for the most part she accepted that events like this were part of being chief in a small town. She wanted her life to be different than it had been when she’d been with the Chicago Police Department and it absolutely, completely, and totally was as different as she could have imagined.

  Sally rolled her window down to let in the fresh April air and let out the stink of the manure clinging to the soles of her boots. She’d just spent the last hour on Harold Johnson’s farm, writing him up for letting his bison escape through his rickety fences, for the third time. Two bulls made their way to the parking lot of Glen Parker Elementary School and scared a few dozen first and second graders half to death. Sally grew up in the area and there hadn’t been any bison around back then. Now farmers were selling organic buffalo meat at good prices and the bison population was growing every year.

  Her cell phone rang and she answered without looking at the number, which she immediately identified as a mistake when she heard the husky voice on the line.

  “Detective Sullivan, is that you actually answering your phone?”

  The voice belonged to a Chicago cop named Carrie Modenari, a gang team member who was tough as nails on the streets and wildly passionate in bed. Sally had succumbed to Carrie’s concerted effort to seduce her when they’d seen each other in the city a few weeks before. That, it turned out, was also a mistake.

  “It’s Chief Sullivan now, as you know. But you can call me Sally.”

  “Well, Jesus, I hope so.” Carrie laughed. “Unless you wear your new country cop uniform in bed, I’m not going to call you chief.”

  Sally had really intended their night together to be a solo, but the unrelenting voicemails left by Carrie asking for a call back made it clear that she thought it might be something else.

  “So, how come you never returned my call, Sally? I never took you for a love ’em and leave ’em type.”

  Sally squirmed uncomfortably. She wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of person, and this was one of the reasons why. Being physically close seemed to produce complicated feelings, even in women who swore they were just looking for an evening’s company. Sally understood that. She never walked away from an encounter without some form of uneasiness. She generally avoided them. But after close to two years in Mount Avery without a girlfriend, Sally just
had to take her libido out for the evening. She wouldn’t have casual sex with anyone in Mount Avery, though she suspected some of the women she’d met would oblige her. And she hadn’t yet met any women in town that she wanted to date.

  “Carrie, I’m sorry if you misunderstood anything. I thought it was pretty clear we were just hooking up. I live here in Mount Avery now.”

  “Which still seems crazy. How can you go from being a big-city murder detective to small-town cop? Aren’t you bored to death?”

  Sally smiled. She was passing a feed store on the outskirts of town, every truck parked in front of it familiar to her. The high school came into view on her left, the students there frequent enough customers of her police force, but in a different galaxy from the teenagers she and Carrie dealt with in the city.

  “I’m not bored. I have my own mini-farm right outside of town. The dogs love it. I love it.”

  “Mini-farm? What, do you have those little pigs or something? Shetland ponies?”

  “Ha ha. It’s ten acres with a house and a barn and some corn and soybean fields that people farm for me and it cost about as much as a two-bedroom condo in Chicago.”

  Carrie’s voice sounded brighter. “Maybe I should visit and see what I’m missing.”

  Oops. Another mistake. Sally pulled into the parking lot of the station and took advantage of her car radio suddenly crackling.

  “Carrie, I’ve got to run. They just called an armed robbery. We’ll talk later.”