Authors: Bill Crider

Tags: #Mystery

Bond With Death (8 page)

BOOK: Bond With Death

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“How unfortunate?” Jack asked.

“Bad enough. She's doing better now, but Larry blames the college for the whole thing. We're not liable in any way, of course. What employees do on their own time isn't any of our business, as long as it doesn't affect their ability to do their jobs.”

And as long as they stayed away from students, Jack thought. And knowing how litigious people were these days, Jack was surprised
Larry hadn't sued the school. However, if Larry had joined the anti-bond issue crowd, he had found another way to get his revenge.

“Their real reason for opposing the bond issue isn't that they don't like taxes,” Benton said. “It's not even that they don't like the college.”

“It's not?” Jack said. “Then what is it?”

“They blame Fieldstone for all their troubles,” Benton said.

“Harold blamed Dr. Good, too.”

“Most of their troubles then. At any rate, Larry and Harold want to get Fieldstone fired. Or to get the verbs right, Larry
does
and Harold
did
.”

“I knew Harold did. He was going to run for the board. I didn't know about Larry.”

Benton spread his arms. “Now you know all my secrets. I'll be booted out of the Administrators' Guild.”

“Do you think Fieldstone would kill anyone?”

“He's a college president, isn't he?” Benton said. “What do you think?”

S
ally sat in her office behind her locked door while she ate a Hershey bar and seethed. She seldom felt a need for privacy while at work, but this time the circumstances called for extraordinary measures.

She could understand why Fieldstone had arranged the meeting she had just left, but that didn't make her feel any better about it. Jennifer Jackson hadn't been content to accuse her of being a witch. She'd had to accuse her of murder, too.

Of course, Matthys had told Sally that Jennifer had done no such thing. She'd
alleged
it, but she hadn't made a direct accusation. So there was no slander involved.

For a few seconds there in Fieldstone's office, Sally had wished that she really were a witch, one of those who knew how to cast transformation spells. If that had been the case, Jennifer would have been changed in the blink of an eye into some kind of disgusting bug and left to squirm on Fieldstone's rug until someone stepped on her, or called the exterminator.

But, as Sally wasn't a witch, Jennifer had left the office with her husband, who hadn't opened his mouth the entire time except to breathe, looking smug and satisfied as if she'd achieved some kind of victory.

Fieldstone had assured Sally that wasn't true. He didn't believe in
witches, though he still thought it would be a good idea for Sally to make some kind of public statement that she didn't either.

It wasn't as bad as asking her to repudiate witchcraft, she supposed, but she didn't intend to make any public statements. After all, she happened to know a witch, or a Wiccan, which was more or less the same thing in her opinion, no matter what Vera had said about the difference.

When she'd told Fieldstone that she was acquainted with a witch, he looked as if he'd been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer.

“You're joking,” he'd managed to say after he recovered.

“Not a bit. It's not something I'd joke about.”

Fieldstone opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish looking out of a small bowl.

Matthys seemed to think the whole scene was funny. It was nice to know there was a lawyer with a sense of humor, but Sally didn't think there was anything amusing about the situation.

And there wasn't anything amusing about the fact that she'd already eaten two Hershey bars in one day. She was going to balloon up another dress size if she didn't watch out, and it would all be Jennifer Jackson's fault.

Yet another thing that steamed Sally, and a more serious one, was the way the Jacksons and even Fieldstone were condemning witches in general and Sarah Good in particular, as if the foolishness of 1692 hadn't been exposed again and again in the more than three hundred years since the witchcraft trials.

Sally was saved from her own blood pressure when someone knocked on the door. She couldn't continue brooding in a locked office, as everyone knew she rarely closed the door. Sooner or later she was going to have to come out.

She popped the last bite of candy into her mouth, wadded up the candy bar wrapper, and threw it in the trash can. She wiped her fingers on a tissue that she pulled from the box she kept on her desk for the convenience of students who started crying while explaining their troubles to her. The troubles usually came down to the fact that
the students' instructors hated them with the result that they were making Cs instead of As. Or possibly some cruelly unjust instructor wouldn't allow makeup work to some poor student who had missed two weeks of class to go on family vacation that couldn't be taken any time except in the middle of the college semester.

Sally checked her fingers to be sure there were no telltale chocolate stains remaining. There weren't, so the tissue followed the candy wrapper, and Sally got up to open the door.

Standing there waiting for her was Samuel Winston. He looked at her with the big round eyes that had caused his students to nickname him “the Owl.” Sally had the impression that he thought teaching in a community college was beneath a man of his powerful intellect, and sometimes his students got the same idea.

“Yes, Samuel?” Sally said. He was the kind of person who insisted on being called by his full name. No shortening to Sam was allowed.

Winston blinked twice. Then he said, “Someone stole my stapler. I left it in the copy room for a few minutes, and when I came back it was gone.”

Ah, Sally thought. Things are getting back to normal.

Finding the stapler didn't require the deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes. The copier room was located right down the hall from Sally's office, and Wynona Reed could see the entrance from her desk. Hardly a person who entered the copy room escaped her constant vigilance.

Sally told Winston to follow her, and they went over to Wynona's desk.

“Tell her,” Sally said.

Winston blinked.

“It was Baldree,” Wynona said before Samuel could get a word out. “Big black stapler, right? I saw her leave the copy room with it. She wasn't carrying it when she went in there.”

Sally thanked her and told Samuel to come along. He trotted along behind her as she led him to Ellen Baldree's office. Ellen, who thought she should have been named department chair when Sally
was hired, had never liked Sally, but she hadn't been openly defiant. She had adopted the “I can last longer than you” attitude and settled in to wait for Sally's firing. As it hadn't happened yet, Ellen had become increasingly sullen around Sally, sometimes even openly resentful, but she was still a professional in the classroom. She had even volunteered to take some computer classes so she could teach the department's WebCT classes, and she had developed into quite a computer whiz.

The door to Ellen's office was open. The office was so small that Ellen's desk and bookshelves barely left room for her office chair. Sally and Winston had to stand outside the door to talk to her.

“I think you took Samuel's stapler from the copy room by mistake.”

Ellen shook her head, and Sally noticed, not for the first time, how very black Ellen's hair was. As Ellen was around fifty-five, Sally was sure the color wasn't natural, and it didn't make Ellen look any younger.

“That's it,” Winston said, pointing through the doorway to a stapler that sat on Ellen's desk atop a stack of photocopied student essays. “My name and office number are scratched into the metal on the side.”

Sally stepped as far into the crowded office as she could and tipped the stapler over. She saw
S. Winston A-175
on the metal.

“I guess I made a mistake,” Ellen said. “I thought I took my own stapler with me. It must be around here somewhere.”

Sally picked up the stapler and handed it to Winston, who thanked her and went away.

“I hope you don't think I took it on purpose,” Ellen said when he was gone.

Although Sally did think exactly that, she didn't want to destroy anyone's hopes. So she said, “If you need a new stapler, you can get one at the bookstore and charge it to the departmental budget.”

“Someone stole my stapler. It looked just like that one, and I thought I'd found mine.” Sally didn't mention the name scratched on the stapler's side, and Ellen continued. “You always make such a
big deal about what a small budget we have and how we should all try to avoid spending money that I try not to charge things at the bookstore. I'll buy my own stapler.”

Staplers disappeared now and then, Sally knew. People left them in classrooms, and when they went back to get them, the staplers were gone. Students, and even instructors, seemed to think that anything sitting unclaimed in plain sight was there for the taking.

“You don't have to buy your own stapler. I think the college can afford to pay for one. I might even have a spare in the office. I'll go have a look.”

“Don't go to any trouble on my account,” Ellen said.

“It's no trouble at all,” Sally said.

She went back to her office and looked around in all the desk drawers. Sure enough, there was an old black stapler down in the back of one of them. She filled it with staples and tried it out. It worked just fine, so she took it back around to Ellen's office.

“It's a little rusty underneath,” Sally said. “But it seems to be working.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said, but her tone wasn't grateful.

“You're welcome,” Sally said, and left it at that.

She returned to her office and looked around for her world literature textbook since she had to teach a class at eleven o'clock, which was only minutes away. She was always punctual in meeting her classes in the hope that her own dependability would encourage her students to be equally reliable. The hope was seldom borne out, but Sally kept trying.

She located the text under a stack of papers and fished it out. She got her grade book out of the desk drawer and started out the door.

Vera Vaughn nearly bumped into her. Sally jumped back, startled.

“I'm sorry,” Vera said. “I wanted to catch you before you went to class. We have to talk.”

“About what?”

“Harold Curtin. He was a witch.”

From Cotton Mather's
The Wonders of the Invisible World

Now, by these confessions [of those condemned in Salem] 'tis agreed that the Devil has made a dreadful knot of witches in the country, and by the help of witches has dreadfully increased that knot: that these witches have driven a trade of commissioning their confederate spirits to do all sorts of mischiefs to the neighbors, whereupon there have ensued such mischievous consequences upon the bodies and estates of the neighborhood, as could not otherwise be accounted for â¦ .”

S
ally couldn't quite believe what she'd just heard.

“What? Harold? A witch?”

“We can't talk here,” Vera said. “Where are you going for lunch?”

Sally never went anywhere for lunch. She usually brought something from home, a sandwich or some fruit, and ate in her office.

“I'm staying here,” she said.

“That won't do. I don't want to talk about this here. I'll come by for you after class. Don't dawdle.”

Vera nodded and left. Sally went on to her class, but she could hardly keep her mind on the assignment, which was Euripides'
Medea.

It seemed to Sally that she was encountering witches at every turn. Medea herself had been a witch, and a vengeful woman besides. Her husband, Jason, who had quite an ego, had decided to take himself another wife, and that turned out to be a big mistake. He'd been sure that his wife would see nothing wrong with his plan and that she would understand why he was leaving her. She didn't. A witch like Medea would be a formidable enemy, Sally thought.

For the benefit of the class, at least those who were listening, Sally went into the play's backstory before she began discussing the work itself. She knew that a hundred years ago, maybe even sixty or seventy years ago, college students would have had a solid background
knowledge of Greek heroes like Jason and that the story of his quest for the Golden Fleece, and how he had obtained it with Medea's help, would be familiar to them. You couldn't count on anything like that today, however.

Although she tried to be thorough, Sally was sure there were things she was leaving out or glossing over. Her mind kept wandering as she thought of Jennifer Jackson's smugness and of Harold Curtin's death. And of the news that Harold had been a witch.

Harold and Medea. Now that would have been a pair, Sally thought.

And Medea and Sarah Good. Certainly the ancient Greek witch could have taught the hapless Sarah something about the power of witchcraft, though Sarah's final curse seemed to have been pretty effective.

Somehow Sally muddled through the class and escaped before any of the students could trap her at the desk and ask questions. As a rule, she was glad to stay after class and talk, but today was different. She couldn't dawdle. Vera had given her an order.

When Sally got back to her office, Vera was waiting.

“My car's in the parking lot, and Jack's already there,” she said.

Vera was dressed in black jeans, a black shirt, and black boots. She wore a black scarf around her neck. All she needed was a whip. Not many women could carry off that look, Sally thought, but Vera could.

Sally put her textbook on the desk and put her grade book in the drawer where she kept it. Then she followed Vera out of the building.

It was another swampy day, and Sally could feel her clothes wilting against her before they got to the Navigator, where Jack was sitting in the passenger seat. The windows were down, but that was only so Jack didn't suffocate. Having them open wouldn't make him any cooler.

Vera, appropriately enough, Sally thought, got into the driver's seat, while Sally climbed into the back. She didn't want to dwell on the symbolism of that. As soon as the doors shut, Vera started the engine and turned the air conditioner on high.

“Where are we going?” Sally asked as the cooling breeze from the vents poured over her.

“The Tea Room,” Vera said. “It was Jack's choice.”

The unimaginatively named Tea Room was the newest restaurant in Hughes. Sally had never been there, but she had heard about it. The menu consisted mostly of different kinds of flavored tea and coffee, along with soup and sandwiches that Sally suspected didn't have any crusts on them.

“Have you been there?” she asked Jack, who didn't seem like the tearoom type.

Jack half-turned in the seat so he could see Sally. “I was there the other day. The owner is Rick Centner. You may remember him. He was a student at the college about ten years ago.”

Sally hadn't been at HCC for ten years. And she still wondered why Jack was visiting a tearoom.

“I went to one of the poetry readings,” he said. “You must know about those.”

Sally knew. She'd gotten an invitation in the mail, and she'd seen the ads in the Hughes newspaper.

“I was afraid it would be too painful,” she said, thinking about some of the poems that had been submitted for the Hughes literary magazine.

“Some of our creative writing students were there. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Rick's also hung some paintings from our art department. He's doing what he can to give the place a little class and get some customers at the same time.”

Sally figured he'd get some of the friends of the poetry readers, along with the friends and families of the art students. She supposed it was a good start. She couldn't think who else in Hughes would go somewhere to hear poetry or to look at paintings and watercolors.

“How was the food?”

“There wasn't much of it,” Jack said, which more or less confirmed Sally's suspicions, but she didn't care. She hadn't planned to eat much, anyway.

The Tea Room was located near Hughes's small downtown area.
It was in an old house that had been remodeled and furnished with tables and chairs. The side yard had been graveled over to make the parking lot, which was shaded by oak trees that had been there long before the house was built and even before the town had been established. Their limbs spread out over the entire parking lot, shading it almost completely.

“Rick needs to have the trees thinned,” Jack said as they got out of the Navigator. “If a bad storm comes through here, it'll tear those trees to pieces.”

Sally hoped that didn't happen. The oak trees that grew all over town were the best thing about Hughes. She wouldn't want to lose a one of them.

They entered the Tea Room through what had been the front door of the old house, and as soon as they were inside, Sally noticed two things, the paintings on the walls and a Buddy Holly song that was playing on the sound system, “Rave On.” She gave Jack an accusing look.

“Now I understand why you chose this place.”

Jack grinned. “I can't help it if Rick has good taste in music.”

Rick himself came into the foyer to greet them. He had brown hair and a welcoming smile.

“Hi, Mr. Neville,” he said. “And Miss Vaughn. I had you for sociology about ten years ago.”

Vera nodded and introduced Sally.

“I'm glad to see some more of the college faculty,” Rick said. “I need all the help I can get to get established.”

“We'll do what we can,” Jack said. “Could you seat us in the pantry?”

“As a matter of fact, I can.”

Rick took three menus from a holder on the door frame and led them through a couple of rooms that, if not crowded, at least had several people in them. Sally saw one of the young waiters glance her way, and she thought she recognized him. He was probably a former student of hers, but he turned away and went into the kitchen too quickly for her to be sure.

Rick led them to a very small room that was located behind what Sally thought must have been the kitchen. It would have made a nice-sized walk-in pantry, though it now held one small table and four chairs. The table was covered by a real tablecloth. The napkins were real cloth, too. There were no paintings on the wall. Instead there were framed black-and-white photographs of Buddy Holly and a couple of other people that Sally didn't recognize.

Rick pulled out Sally's chair for her, but Sally noticed that he didn't do the same for Vera. He must have remembered her fairly well.

“I'll send someone to take your order in a minute,” Rick said when they were seated.

Jack thanked him, and Sally opened her menu to the sound of Buddy Holly singing “Not Fade Away.” The items on the menu were what Sally had expected. People who liked chicken salad could have it on a croissant, on wheat bread, or on white. She decided to go for the wheat. There was a “soup of the day,” too, but Sally didn't want soup.

She asked Jack about the photographs, and he told her that they were of the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, the other two singers who had died on the plane carrying Buddy Holly. Sally thought that was a little morbid for a tearoom, but Jack thought it was a touching tribute to the day the music died.

“That's a line from âAmerican Pie,'”Jack said.

Sally said she knew that. “And it's as morbid as the pictures.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “One thing's for sure, though. It's not true. The music never really died. We're listening to it right now.”

And they were. Buddy Holly sang about Peggy Sue exactly the way he had forty years previously.

Sally couldn't decide if that was morbid or not. She was saved from commenting when a young woman arrived to take their order. Her name was Madison, and she was a student in Sally's composition class.

“Hi, Madison,” Sally said. “I'd like chicken salad on whole wheat. And plain unsweetened iced tea.”

Madison managed not to gape the way some students did when they saw their instructors outside the classroom. Sometimes it appeared to amaze them that teachers ate, bought groceries, or went to the movies like actual human beings.

After Madison had left, Sally said, “Now, Vera, just how did you find out that Harold Curtin was a witch?”

“She used her supernatural powers,” Jack said, then winced as if someone had kicked him under the table. Sally was pretty sure that someone had.

“I didn't use anything more supernatural than the telephone,” Vera said. “This morning I got a call from a friend in Houston. Her beliefs are pretty standard for a Wiccan, but she happens to know a few people who don't believe in the threefold law.”

“I don't even know what that is,” Sally said. She was finding it a little difficult to keep up with all the new things she was learning about witchcraft.

“âAll the good that a person does to another returns threefold in this life; harm is also returned threefold,'” Vera said. “That's what Wiccans believe. But some witches who follow another path don't believe it in the least. They believe in doing harm. My friend knows some people like that.”

“Some people can twist anything good and make it bad,” Jack said.

Sally couldn't tell whether he was serious. Vera didn't kick him under the table this time, so maybe he was. Or maybe Vera just thought he was.

The tea came, and Sally tried it. It wasn't sweetened, so she was satisfied.

“You mentioned something yesterday about people who cast spells for money,” Sally said to Vera.

“Those aren't the ones I'm talking about. Those are just charlatans for the most part, and they do love charms and ridiculous things like that. I'm talking about the ones that should be avoided.”

“So why is your friend mixed up with them?”

“She's not. Or not really. You know how gossip gets around on the grapevine at the college?”

Sally nodded. In her experience, there was no better example of the grapevine at work than an institution for postsecondary education. People like Troy Beauchamp made everyone's business their business. Spreading the word was like a religion to them, and they were everywhere in the academic world.

“There are grapevines everywhere,” Vera said. “Even in the world of Wicca. So my friend heard something from a friend who'd heard it from another friend. You know how it is.”

Sally knew how it was, all right, and she knew that the result was sometimes a distorted version of the truth. The distortions, like the thunderstorms that frequently roamed the Gulf Coast area, varied in size and intensity, but they were always present. Sally was about to mention that fact when Madison appeared with their food.

Jack had gone for the soup, which was cheese with broccoli, along with honey ham on a croissant. Vera had ordered the chicken salad on whole wheat as Sally had done. The sandwiches didn't have crusts. Sally took a bite of her sandwich. It was quite good, and she began eating to the accompaniment of Buddy Holly singing about an unusual weather condition: it was raining in his heart.

After she'd eaten a couple of bites of the sandwich, Sally asked Vera how she knew the information she'd received was reliable.

“I don't know that it is,” Vera said, “but it's interesting whether it's reliable or not.”

“Then why don't you tell us what it is,” Jack said.

“I told you. Harold was a witch. He joined a coven in Houston about a month ago.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?” Sally said.

BOOK: Bond With Death

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