by Crider, Bill
Elaine shook her head. "You wouldn't have been happy. If you want to do something else, maybe you should get into police work. Ever since you caught that shoplifter last Christmas, R. M. says that you might have investigative abilities."
"R. M." was Pecan City's police chief, Boss Napier, and it really bothered Burns to hear Elaine refer to him so familiarly. He would never, even in his wildest imaginings, have thought that he and Napier would become romantic rivals, but that was exactly what had happened, and Elaine seemed to take what Burns deemed was an unseemly amount of pleasure in stringing both men along.
"I'd make a lousy policeman—"
"Policeman?"
"Policeperson, then," Burns said. He thought the word was absurd, but he was weak in Elaine's presence. "Whatever you call them, I'd be terrible. I may have to take it under consideration, though." He told her about the suspicion some people had voiced about Eric Holt being groomed to take over Burns's job.
"That's ridiculous," Elaine said, reaching out and brushing a speck of dust off one of her bowling trophies. "Why would Dr. Partridge do something like that?"
"Who knows?" Burns said. "There's no rule that says deans have to have reasons that anyone would understand."
"Don't be so gloomy. You always look on the dark side of things. Why don't you do something positive, instead?"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. You're the person with investigative abilities, not me."
"There's nothing to investigate," Burns said.
"If there are rumors, there's something to investigate. Rumors don't just start from nothing."
Burns found himself smiling. "Around here, they do."
And that was true. There were always rumors of one kind or another swirling around at Hartley Gorman College. Gossip was one of the most popular pastimes at the school, but then Burns supposed it was a popular pastime in almost any organization of any size.
"Maybe I could find out a little something about Holt, though," he said, remembering what Fox had mentioned about Tom Henderson.
"What kind of something?" Elaine asked.
Burns didn't know. Even Henderson hadn't seemed too definite in his comment to Fox. Still, the whole business of Holt's coming to HGC so suddenly seemed very suspicious.
Gwendolyn Partridge had a degree in literature, and she had no doubt read Holt's articles in the journals, but why would the idea of having Holt come to Hartley Gorman ever occur to her in the first place? Wasn't it more than likely that there was some connection between them, just as some of the rumors implied?
And why would Holt come to Hartley Gorman, for God's sake? Sure, he was already teaching in a community no larger than Pecan City and at a college that probably had a library no better than the one at HGC, but he was established where he was. Why change just because he was asked?
"I think I'll talk to a few people," Burns said, getting out of the chair.
He picked up the calf-roping trophy to replace it, but Elaine stopped him.
"Just leave that on the floor. I found it at a garage sale last weekend, and I haven't made a place for it on the shelves yet."
"You didn't happen to see Earl Fox at the sale, did you?" Burns asked.
"As a matter of fact, I did. He was buying some polyester pants."
Burns nodded. It figured.
"That new Kevin Costner movie starts Friday night," he said, changing the subject. "Would you like to go?"
Elaine looked at a trophy on the front of her desk. It was topped by a strutting twirler made of gold plastic.
"R. M. mentioned something about a basketball game," she said finally.
Burns was not surprised. Napier, though he didn't look the part, had proved to be a regular Casanova.
"You could come with us," Elaine said. "I'm sure R. M. wouldn't mind."
"Ha," Burns said.
Elaine turned her big green eyes on him. "Now just what is that supposed to mean?"
"What?"
"That noise you made. That 'ha' sound. What is that supposed to mean?"
"It's supposed to mean 'ha,'" Burns said.
"I don't know why you don't try a little harder to get along with R. M.," Elaine said.
"Ha," Burns said again.
It wasn't that he and Napier didn't get along, exactly. Their relationship was never going to rival that of Aeneas and faithful Achates, but they did get along. Or at least they got along when Elaine Tanner wasn't part of the equation.
Burns liked to think he had the advantage with Elaine because of propinquity, if nothing else, but he was beginning to wonder.
"Maybe I'll see you at the game," he said.
Chapter Three
The Counseling Office at Hartley Gorman College was located on the first floor of Main (Hartley Gorman I in the old system that Burns was trying to forget, obviously without too much success so far). It shared quarters with the Records Office, and both of them were crammed in among the offices of the Education Department and the Print Shop.
The counselors had a difficult job. They had to advise students about which courses to take, explain which courses would transfer to other schools and which courses HGC accepted in transfer, deal with students who had learning difficulties, handle disciplinary violations of the student behavior code, help students with their degree plans, and interpret the arcane secrets of the HGC catalog for students who could not figure them out for themselves. They also handled admissions testing and were responsible for placing students in the correct courses after their enrollment.
Or those were some of the things they were supposed to do. Burns was not sure just how many of them were actually accomplished, or accomplished with any degree of efficiency.
One reason for his doubts was that he received calls semester after semester asking the same question: "Can students take British literature before American literature, or does it make any difference?"
It wasn't the question itself that bothered him. What bothered him was that the same counselor called him to ask it over and over. Maybe even that wouldn't have been so bad if the answer to the question were not printed in the catalog for anyone to see and read. The counselors were supposed to be the college's experts on the catalog, weren't they? Burns could not avoid the nagging worry that if they were, then the college was in big trouble.
When he entered the office, he was greeted by Dawn Melling, the very one who could never seem to get the course sequences straight. She was a statuesque young woman with a large bust, a small waist, and long red fingernails. She had a huge beehive of dark black hair that Burns was certain was a wig, though why anyone would choose such a wig he wasn't quite sure. She looked a little like Elvira, except that her dress wasn't as revealing as those usually chosen by the Mistress of the Dark.
"Why Dr. Burns," she said. "What brings you here?" She was from Georgia and had a pronounced Southern drawl, though she had not lived in Georgia since she had come to HGC as a student ten years previously.
"I, uh, want to look at some catalogs," Burns said.
Being around Dawn always disturbed him. Her overtly sexy appearance had something to do with it, but she was by all accounts happily married to Walt Melling, the school's chief recruiter, and Burns was sure she would never dream of straying. What disturbed him was a certain vagueness in her character, a certain je ne sais quois that kept Burns off balance in every conversation they ever had.
In other words, he was never quite sure what she was talking about. Once he had seen her in the parking lot, getting out of a brand new Ford Taurus, and he asked her how she liked the new car.
She reached into the car and retrieved her briefcase, then turned to Burns. "Drives like a glove," she said.
Burns never had figured out just what she meant, though it wasn't for want of trying. Sometimes he would wake up from a deep sleep and think, "Drives like a glove?"
"Which catalogs are you looking for?" she asked now.
"College catalogs," Burns said, so she wouldn't give him the l
atest from J. C. Penney. "From other colleges," he added, so that she wouldn't give him a handful of HGC catalogs and shoo him out.
"Of course you do," she said. "Right this way."
She turned and led him into a small cubbyhole beside the main office. On one wall there was a shelf filled with paperbound catalogs of all shapes and sizes.
"Were you looking for anything in particular?" Dawn asked. She sounded like a salesclerk in the clothing department at Sears.
"I think I can find it," Burns said. He didn't want anyone looking over his shoulder while he searched.
"Just call me if you need any help," Dawn said. "I know all about these things." She waved a red-tipped hand at the crammed shelves.
"Thanks," Burns said, convinced that she knew absolutely nothing at all about the contents of the catalogs.
He waited until she had left the room before he looked for the catalog he wanted. Since they were arranged more or less in alphabetical order, he found it easily and pulled it from the shelf.
The spine was royal blue, as was most of the front cover, and the words CATALOGUE OF AUSTAMONT COLLEGE were printed on it in white. The name was printed on the cover as well, along with the fancy spelling of catalog, and the academic year for which the catalog was valid was printed below the name.
Burns sat in the student desk that was the only piece of furniture in the room and opened the catalog to the back. He wasn't interested in the course descriptions. He was interested in the list of faculty members. Austamont College was one of HGC's sister denominational institutions, located in Missouri. It was the school where Gwendolyn Partridge had been before her recent move, and hers was the first name Burns looked for.
It was there, all right:
PARTRIDGE, GWENDOLYN E. Professor of English. Chair,
Division of Language and Literature. B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Texas
Tech University. 1977.
The italicized year was the date that Dr. Partridge had joined the faculty at Austamont, and it was probably also the year she had received her final degree. She had become a division chair at Austamont, and the next step up the ladder was a deanship, which had apparently not become available to her at that school, for whatever reason. So she had applied for the one at HGC.
Burns then scanned the list of faculty members for the name of someone he might know, either from graduate school or professional meetings.
There was only one name that was even slightly familiar, that of Barry Towson. Burns had talked to him about paperback mystery fiction at a meeting of the Popular Culture Association in San Antonio the previous year. They had agreed on a fondness for writers not generally much remembered by the general public, writers like J. M. Flynn, Bob McKnight, and Milton K. Ozaki. Towson would probably remember him, Burns thought.
Burns flipped back to the beginning of the catalog and copied down the school's area code and phone number.
Then he replaced the Austamont Catalogue and took down the one from Claireson University, where Holt had taught before arriving at HGC. Flipping to the faculty listing, Burns noted that Holt's degrees were from North Texas State University (now for some reason known as The University of North Texas).
That was funny, Burns thought. Mal Tomlin was about Holt's age, and Tomlin's degrees were from North Texas. Yet Tomlin had never mentioned having encountered Holt there, as far as Burns knew. Of course, in the '70s there had probably been a large number of students in pursuit of graduate degrees in English there, and Tomlin was in another department entirely, so there was nothing unusual in the fact that their paths had never crossed.
Burns looked through the faculty listing for other names he recognized, but this time he came up with none. Well, he could ask Tomlin to call a few of his friends from graduate school to see if they had known Holt, and there was always Tom Henderson, who thought Holt looked familiar.
Burns returned the catalog to the shelf and left the cubbyhole.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Dawn Melling asked as he emerged.
"Yes," Burns said. "Thanks, Dawn."
She smiled, revealing startlingly white teeth. "Anytime. Come back and let us service you again."
Pondering the implications of that last statement, Burns left the Counseling Office and headed for the stairs.
Tom Henderson's office was on the second floor of Main, on the opposite side of the building from Earl Fox's. The location was a matter of the building's structure and was not a deliberate gesture on the part of Fox, though the truth of the matter was that Henderson was a burr under Fox's saddle, a more or less constant source of irritation. Burns did not wish Fox any ill, but at the same time he was glad Henderson taught social studies and not English.
Henderson was a scrawny scarecrow of a man, the ninety-eight-pound weakling grown middle-aged. He was the type who felt threatened by anyone who dared question his absolute authority in the classroom, or even by anyone who merely appeared to question that authority.
Let a student wonder why he had received an 86 on a quiz while someone with the identical answers had received an 87, and Henderson was likely to burst into a rage that purpled his leathery face and bulged his eyes.
And in this case, it was correct to use the masculine pronoun to refer to the student, because it was extremely rare for a female student in one of Henderson's classes to get anything but an excellent grade.
Burns had once overheard two women talking in the hall about Henderson's classes. One was recommending introductory psych to the other.
"Just be sure to wear a short skirt, sit on the front row, and cross your legs," the first one said. "You won't get any less than a B, I promise you."
Burns knew that Fox dealt with a number of complaints every semester from students, generally males, who felt that Henderson had persecuted, teased, or tormented them, but that so far there had been no complaints of sexual harassment. So far. Burns thought that maybe Henderson was one faculty member who could profit from a little political correctness.
Burns walked to the door of the men's room (and how politically correct was that appellation? he wondered), turned left and went down the corridor to Henderson's office.
The door was closed, and Burns's first thought was that Henderson was in class. Then he heard muffled voices from behind the door and changed his mind.
He raised his hand to knock and almost hit a student in the forehead as the door was jerked open and she rushed out of the office.
She threw Burns a look and then swept by, but not before he saw the traces of tears on her cheeks.
He looked into the office. Henderson was standing by a window, hands in his pockets, looking out at the campus as if nothing untoward had occurred.
Maybe nothing had. Maybe the student had merely been upset by a homework assignment or a bad grade. It had happened before, even to Burns, who hoped that was all there was to it.
He tapped on the door facing, and Henderson turned from the window.
"Hello, Burns," he said. He seemed perfectly calm. "Nice day, isn't it."
"Too nice for anyone to be crying," Burns said.
Henderson smiled grimly. "Oh, that was nothing. She was just angry because she read the wrong assignment and therefore made a failing grade on one of my pop tests."
"Oh," Burns said. Incidents like that weren't uncommon. He thought about mentioning it to Fox later, however, just in case. "It happens."
"Too often," Henderson said. He sat behind his desk. It was much neater than Burns's own desk. There was nothing to be seen except a desk calendar and a bust of Sigmund Freud.
"Have a chair, Burns," Henderson said. "What can I do for you?"
Burns sat down and looked at Henderson, who was wearing a tan cardigan over an open-necked white shirt. There was a ruff of chest hair sticking out like the straw from a scarecrow's shirt. Burns wondered if Henderson let it show like that to compensate for the fact that he was a victim of male pattern baldness. Burns was reasonably sure that incipient baldness was the rea
son for Henderson's unfashionably long sideburns and the swirl of hair that hung over his collar in the back.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into things, Burns thought. Sit in an office with a bust of Freud, and there was no telling what strange thoughts would occur to you.
"I was wondering about Eric Holt," Burns said. "Earl says you mentioned something about his looking familiar."
Henderson opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out a pipe. He put the pipe in his mouth, but he didn't light it. "Getting ready for the smoke-free environment," he said by way of explanation. He gave the pipe a couple of dry puffs. "Not very satisfactory, though."
"Probably not," Burns said. "Have you remembered anything about Holt since you talked to Earl?"
"Not a thing," Henderson said. He took the pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the desk beside the bronze bust of Sigmund Freud. "He looks familiar for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it."
"Maybe you knew him in grad school," Burns said. "He went to North Texas."
"It can't be that, then," Henderson said. "I went to school in California. San Diego State." He smiled. "I was certainly glad to get away from there. You can't imagine the things that went on there in those days."
Burns could imagine, all right, but that wasn't the point of his talking to Henderson. "Have you seen him at any professional meetings?"
"I don't know. Not unless he's been attending meetings out of his field. I know that I haven't been going to any English meetings." He picked up the pipe again. "Is he in any trouble, Burns?"
"It's nothing," Burns said.
Henderson reached out bony fingers and fiddled with the pipe. "I've heard a few things," he said.
"Rumors," Burns said. He wasn't going to share anything with Henderson. "You know how things get started around this place."
Henderson's mouth twisted in a sort of grin. "Do I not."
Burns didn't have anything to say to that.
Henderson left off his fiddling with the pipe and leaned back in his chair, steepling his thin fingers and resting them against his pointy chin.
