Red Solaris Mystery Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Bourne Morris

  No. I failed. I failed to trust Joe. I was a neurotic, self-destructive idiot.

  Charlie looked up at me and made a soft whimpering sound. “You miss him, too,” I said. “Sorry I drove away your best friend.”

  Friday morning the streets were wet from an early rain. The deciduous trees were still barren, but a few had started tiny buds. That happens in Nevada when January warms up. No leaves were out yet. The first to bloom would be the pink flowering plum trees unless a deep frost bit the buds off. The big, bright sky stretched out behind the still bare limbs and over the mountains beyond. I loved Landry. I wanted to live here forever with Joe. But how long could I stay in Nevada with my heart so heavy?

  I turned onto the campus road. There were still patches of snow under the tall pines near the north sides of the brick buildings.

  I headed for Stoddard’s office. He and Philip Lewis were both there and, oddly, both seemed pleased to see me. Perhaps they looked forward to relieving me of my duties as dean.

  Stoddard held up the draft Nell had delivered. Lewis looked intently at me and a faint smile appeared.

  “This is useful, Meredith,” said Stoddard.

  “I’ll probably use a short version of it for my own note to the deans of journalism,” said Lewis.

  What? “Short version? Simon wrote a five page diatribe.”

  “And it produced an interesting consequence,” said Lewis, his smile broadening. “Believe it or not, at 6:00 this morning a messenger delivered a lengthy response to Simon’s diatribe to my door. It was a copy of another letter that has been sent to all the deans to whom Simon sent his original letter.”

  “And the response came from the most unusual sources,” said Stoddard.

  I waited. Stoddard handed me a copy of the other letter. It totally refuted Simon’s assertions about the journalism school. It contained facts and figures about our research I thought only Nell and I would have known, plus a glowing description of our graduates’ success and the rigor of our curriculum. It was signed by George Weinstein and Edwin Cartwell.

  Whoa.

  “We were surprised, too,” said Stoddard. “As best we can determine, Simon sent copies of his diatribe to Weinstein and Cartwell.”

  “Expecting their support?”

  “Probably, but not counting on Cartwell’s love of the students or Weinstein’s fierce pride in the school’s reputation and independence,” said Lewis. “They both must have devoted considerable time to this and then had a messenger deliver copies of their letters to our homes early this morning.”

  “So you don’t need what I worked on,” I said.

  Lewis put his hand on my letter. “Actually we do, Meredith. It will help us with a follow-up to those whom Simon wrote. The back-up material you gathered will also help you with your report to the accreditation committee next fall. You may have gotten a good start on the major part of the work.”

  I was still in a daze, when Stoddard said, “Red, we know how hard this must have been for you.”

  I fought the impulse to scream. What do you mean you know how hard this was? Don’t you realize how often I have the feeling I have made mistakes and overreached, how often I have had major doubts about my ability to lead the school? How sure I was you both wanted me out as dean?

  Instead, I swallowed hard and said, “I concentrated on developing a response to Simon Gorshak’s letter. I didn’t want to give you another reason to put us into receivership.”

  “Meredith,” said both men simultaneously.

  “My dear, you have to learn when you can count on our support,” said Lewis.

  Yeah, sure. Stoddard had forgotten the coldness of the instructions he had given me yesterday.

  Lewis might never understand how I felt hearing his offer to put journalism into receivership and under the thumb of another dean.

  “What about Simon?” I said. “I’m told I can’t fire him.”

  “True, you can’t Meredith,” said Lewis. “But I have ways of dealing with treacherous faculty. If I can’t persuade him to resign, well, I have put more than one faculty member on mandatory leave of absence for health reasons. Serious health reasons.”

  “Like the fear that I might follow him into the parking lot and tear him to pieces.” Stoddard stopped with a grin, rubbing his massive hands together.

  “I don’t think you will see much of Simon this semester,” said Lewis.

  What a turnaround. I almost smiled as I walked back to the journalism school. The prospect of Edwin and George rejecting Simon made me giddy. Maybe Larry Coleman’s tenure prospects were not so troubled after all. Maybe there was hope.

  Except for Joe and me.

  In spite of the white-haired woman’s prediction, in spite of everything that had happened, I was afraid. Still afraid I would screw up the dean’s job. Afraid I would never be with Joe again. Afraid to go back to my office and face the faculty. I wanted to go home and curl up under my quilt.

  But I kept walking to the school. “Courage is not the absence of fear,” my father had been fond of saying, mangling any number of quotes from Mark Twain and others. “Courage is acting in the presence of fear, even when you are scared to death. That’s what you did when you took the driver’s keys.”

  Fine. I liked the notion I had courage, but I still waited for the fear to diminish. As you get older, shouldn’t you become less fearful? “It doesn’t work that way,” he had said. “Fear is just there. All the time.” And I knew then that he was also afraid. Afraid of losing his wife. Afraid of diminished reputation as a result of old age and weakened effort. And then dementia came and took away his memory and his fear along with it.

  Is that what was in store for me?

  Phyllis was in my office, her arms spread wide, her beautiful face wreathed in a smile. She gave me a great warm hug. “You make me believe the impossible,” she said.

  Nell brought in mugs of coffee and a jug of milk.

  “How did you ever get those two to write that letter?” Phyllis sipped her coffee.

  “I had nothing to do with it. George and Edwin wrote it all on their own. How did you find out about this?”

  “Oh, a copy of Simon’s trash made the rounds. And a copy of George and Edwin’s splendid rebuttal was in all our mailboxes this morning.”

  “Events overtake me,” I said, feeling a surge of pleasure for the first time in days. “How nice.”

  “Maybe things will get better now,” she said, putting her hand over mine. “Maybe the faculty fight will go away.”

  “Die of its own weight?”

  “Die of its own stupidity.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “After all, the essential argument was never over the new media courses. That became obvious at the retreat.”

  “It was always about Henry and the three stooges wanting Henry to be humiliated, wanting Henry to lose.”

  “Except that two of the stooges turned on the third.”

  “And you had nothing to do with their conversion?”

  “I didn’t even know about their response until this morning. Stoddard thinks it was all due to their love for the students and the school.”

  “Perhaps,” said Phyllis. “But maybe because Henry’s dead and Simon’s been such a jerk, George and Edwin decided to step up and do the right thing. Maybe they think you’re not so bad after all.”

  “I’m having trouble seeing George and Edwin as the cavalry, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  I went looking for George and Edwin and found them both in Edwin’s office looking as conspiratorial as ever.

  “Thank you for the letter you wrote to the deans,” I said.

  “No thanks required, Meredith. We did it for the school,” said Edwin.

  “Simon’s missive was incredibly stupid,” said George. “There was no way I could let it go unanswered.”

 
“Do you think Simon wanted us put into receivership?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” said Edwin. “But it was clear he meant to do the school damage and sacrifice our reputation. He hates the idea of you as dean, but I think there was more on his mind. He’s been angry at the university for years.”

  An unusually reasonable analysis from Edwin, but I took what I could get.

  “Will he be fired for this?” asked George, who still looked gloomy. He was dressed in a large yellow ski sweater that emphasized his massiveness and reminded me of Nell’s warnings about him.

  “According to Phil Lewis, tenured faculty can’t be fired even for this attack. But the president thinks he can encourage Simon to go away.”

  They looked at each other but neither spoke.

  “Well, anyway, I appreciated what you did,” I said. “The administration was impressed and that may help us keep our independence.”

  I walked back to my office. “Any calls?” I asked Nell.

  “Several,” she said, handing me a stack of messages.

  Joe had not called, but almost everyone else had. I closed my door and wrote Joe a letter. I mailed it later that day—special delivery, overnight please.

  I waited all weekend but no word from Joe. Four days without him. No calls. No response to my messages or my letter. I made some supper and drank a large glass of wine by myself. I left the dishes in the sink and sat in front of the fire, idly petting Charlie and feeling tired and overworked and very sorry for myself.

  Around eight that evening, I resolved to do something. I took a shower, washed my hair, dressed in jeans and a soft red sweater, and headed over to Joe’s apartment house. It was after ten when I pulled up to a complex of three story brick buildings a block away from police headquarters. Joe lived in the nearest building on the third floor. The complex housed mostly police and firemen who were single or married without children. The apartments were all one-bedroom look-alikes. Joe’s was at the end of the hall. As I neared his door I heard music. That meant he was home and not watching television.

  After a few moments of hesitation, I knocked on the door. No response. I knocked again. Joe opened it. He was barefoot, wearing shorts, no shirt. He looked incredibly desirable. I didn’t see anyone else over his shoulders, but I sensed he was not alone.

  “This is not a good time, Red,” he said. His eyes were dark.

  I said nothing.

  “Sorry,” he said, and closed the door.

  I drove back home and returned to Charlie and the wine bottle. I spent that night curled around the dog on the floor in front of the fire. Sometime before dawn I woke and put my hand on Charlie’s shoulder. His fur was still wet from my sobbing.

  Chapter 26

  The meeting to discuss Larry Coleman’s tenure application began at three in the afternoon on the last Friday in January. All the tenured faculty members showed up except for Simon.

  “Anyone notice if Coleman came in with a violin case this morning?” I heard Ardith whisper to Phyllis.

  “Probably not,” said Phyllis. “It’s too cold for the homicidal.”

  “Don’t be too sure. Simon isn’t here, yet.”

  I called the meeting to order.

  Each of the other nine tenured members of the faculty were told to spend no more than a few minutes on their opening remarks.

  After a half hour of discussion, Edwin made a surprising motion to approve Coleman for tenure and send our recommendation forward to the university Promotion and Tenure Committee.

  “I had my doubts about Larry,” Edwin began, “but since the retreat and reflecting upon the new media presentation, I have reconsidered. In fact, I plan to ask Larry to guest lecture in one of my writing classes later this semester.”

  A few jaws dropped. Good for Edwin. There’s a man who knows when the train is leaving the station. The change in his attitude toward Larry was remarkable. But the look he gave me was icy. He cared about the school, but I wondered if he was just waiting for a better chance to punish me?

  Phyllis seconded the motion. Everyone voted in favor. Even George muttered “aye.”

  The meeting adjourned.

  On the way out I heard Ardith say to Phyllis, “Do you think Coleman will forgive those who trespassed against him?”

  “Oh, I think Larry may seem to forgive but he will never forget the past months. He will carry a dagger for George and another for Edwin. But, for now, the weapons will be concealed.”

  Cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist but, sometimes, the first instinct of the academic.

  Karen Coleman sat in a chair next to her husband in the hall outside my office. When I returned from the tenure meeting she gave me a tepid smile and left.

  “I’ll wait in the car,” she said to Larry.

  “Let’s go into my office,” I said, motioning him in and closing the door behind us.

  I sat with him at the round table. “It went well,” I said. “Your tenure application will go forward first thing Monday morning. I have every expectation it will be approved. I don’t want to jump the gun, but I think you should feel good about this and take Karen out for a nice dinner.”

  Larry folded his arms across his chest and cleared his throat. “What was the vote?”

  I could have claimed the vote as confidential, but the hallway gossip would make my discretion irrelevant.

  “Unanimous. In fact, Edwin Cartwell made the motion to approve and both he and George voted aye with the majority.”

  “But not Simon?” Larry’s eyes held the hardness I had seen before.

  I sighed. “Larry, Simon didn’t attend. But I do think it’s important to note that George and Edwin both supported you.”

  He rose and shook my hand.

  “Well, thanks Red. I appreciate your help in this and your leadership. I guess I won’t keep Karen waiting any longer.”

  His eyes told me we were not out of trouble yet.

  A faculty meeting the following Monday confirmed my suspicion. It was not that anyone said anything antagonistic. In fact, on the surface, all seemed friendly. Simon was absent.

  Coleman was quiet. George was expansive. Edwin was polite and the rest of the faculty seemed animated by the possibility that civil conversation was the order of the day and the year-long battle was finally over. But it was not over.

  As I watched the group, I realized Coleman was also a wounded water buffalo. The quarrel may seem resolved but, in his heart, hatred remained.

  George prattled on oblivious, too self-absorbed to realize how deeply he had injured his colleague. Edwin seemed indifferent.

  Afterward, in the hallway, Larry offered courtesy to both George and Edwin, but I could see the unforgiving look in his eyes. The curriculum dispute would disappear but anger and a residual subterranean spitefulness would stay. More fighting was in our future.

  When I got home Monday evening, I found a note in my mailbox. Like the earlier one, it was unsigned and created on a computer:

  “Now would be a good time to go back to Ohio before you get hurt. Henry Brooks ignored my warnings. Don’t make the same mistake. I can promise things will turn out badly for you if you stay.”

  My stomach lurched. I took the note into the house, holding it carefully by the edges. I knew I had to call Joe even if only to leave another message on his voicemail. There had been no sign of Simon at school, but I could still remember the menace in his voice.

  A storm had been brewing since mid-afternoon. Suddenly the wind came up howling and tossing the trees outside my windows. I looked outside and saw snow falling heavily. When the phone rang, I thought it might be Sadie who lives near an unreliable power line. Last year, she had spent a weekend keeping warm at my house after an ice storm had taken out her electricity.

  The voice was very soft, but it was not Sadie’s. It was Joe’s. I had to fight back
tears at the sound of it.

  “I got your message. You okay in this storm?” he said.

  “I’m okay. But, I wouldn’t mind some company.”

  “I’m down the street. I’ll be there in a minute or two.”

  I raced upstairs so fast it set Charlie barking with excitement. I brushed my hair and checked my sweater for crumbs from lunch. No time to change into the soft red sweater. Just as well. It was probably bad luck.

  The doorbell rang.

  Joe hadn’t used his key. He stood in the doorway stamping his feet and brushing snow off his jacket and out of his hair.

  No kiss. No hug. Just “hi.”

  Charlie was thrilled. He got lots of patting and rough scrubbing on his chest while I stood there watching the play between the man and my dog. Joe took off his jacket, walked with Charlie into the living room and sat on the hearth.

  I sat in the chair facing the fireplace. Joe stared at the carpet. At length, his head came up. “I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said.

  “I’m glad.”

  “I know we should talk. It’s just been hard to call your number.”

  I decided to get to the matter that had preoccupied me. “I’m sorry I interrupted you the other night at your apartment. I should have called first.”

  “You didn’t interrupt anything,” he said. “Because I...because nothing happened after you left.”

  Oh.

  “I haven’t been with anyone else,” he said.

  “Joe, I am so...” I started to move toward him but he held up his hand.

  “Let me see the note.”

  I stopped, got up, and went to the hall table and picked up the note by one corner. He pulled a clear envelope from his jacket pocket. I handed the note to him and watched him read and then carefully slip the note into the envelope.

  “We’ll check it for prints.” He resumed petting Charlie.

  “Joe, I...”