Bond With Death

by Bill Crider

  They sat at the table and made small talk about the college until the coffee was ready. Sally got up and poured it into some mugs she’d bought as a gift for a relative. She’d liked them so much that she’d kept them and bought another gift.

  When the coffee had cooled a little, Jack took a sip.

  “That’s really good,” he said.

  “I’m glad you like it. Now, about this witch business.”

  “You’re thinking about Samantha,” Vera said. “Admit it.”

  “Not to mention Darrin and Endora.”

  “I always liked Uncle Arthur and Aunt Esmeralda best,” Jack said.

  “Well,” Vera said, “it’s not like that at all.”

  “I had a feeling it wasn’t,” Sally said. “What is it like?”

  “First of all,” Vera said, “I’m not really a witch. I’m a Wiccan. But it would be hard to explain the difference to somebody like Jennifer Jackson.”

  “It’s not going to be easy to explain it to me, either,” Sally said. She took a swallow of coffee and put her mug down on the table. “But you can try.”

  Vera sighed. She put both hands around her coffee mug as if she were warming them.

  “All right. Wicca is a religion. Some Wiccans think that Wicca and witchcraft are synonyms. Not me. Admittedly, some Wiccans do magic, but I don’t. I’m more interested in communing with the Goddess. Witches aren’t into that, for the most part. They like doing spells and that sort of thing, mostly they’re frauds just doing it to get money from gullible people. But some of them are serious. They’re best avoided.”

  Sally thought about Roy Don Talon. She remembered that the Salem witches had supposedly written their names in the Devil’s book.

  “So where does Satan come into it?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t,” Vera said. “Not with me or any other Wiccan. Satan is a Christian and Islamic concept. Wiccans don’t even recognize his existence. We’re pagans, not devil worshipers.”

  “Pagans, but not devil worshipers?” Sally said. “Forget about explaining things to Jennifer Jackson. I’d like to hear you explain that idea to Roy Don Talon.”

  “Me, too,” Jack said, grinning. “Some people think that anybody who worships in a pagan way is really worshiping Satan. Even if they say they aren’t, they’re only kidding themselves. Roy Don Talon believes that, I’ll bet.”

  “Are you a Wiccan?” Sally asked him.

  “Nope. I’m just dating one. She’s goddess enough for me.”

  Sally thought that Jack’s new relationship was making him a little sappy.

  “And why is it important that I know about Wiccan business?” she said.

  “Because,” Vera told her, “you’re the one who’s being accused of witchcraft. I’m wondering if I’m the real target.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sally said. “After all, whoever sent that e-mail was basing it on my last name.”

  “That could be just a ruse.”

  Sally didn’t think so, and she wondered aloud why anyone would be interested in getting Vera fired.

  “Because I’m a Wiccan. You can imagine how that would go over with certain people in this town. Roy Don Talon and Jennifer Jackson aren’t the only ones who’d blow their tops if they found out a real witch was teaching their kids.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a witch.”

  “I also said it would be hard to explain. Make that impossible to explain.”

  Sally could see her point, but she didn’t think Vera had anything to worry about. After all, Vera’s name hadn’t been in the e-mail. But Sally didn’t get a chance to start that discussion again because Vera had something else to say.

  “And then there’s Harold Curtin’s death.”

  “What does that have to do with you?” Sally asked.

  “Nothing, but considering the way he died, people might think that some kind of spell was involved.”

  “People would be wrong,” Sally said. “You can’t kill someone with a spell.”

  “Don’t tell a witch that.”

  Everyone was through with the first cup of coffee, and no one wanted any more. Sally gathered up the cups and set them on the kitchen counter. She turned off the coffeemaker and sat back down at the table.

  “Weems thinks Curtin might have been murdered,” she said. “But thank goodness he didn’t mention any magic spells.”

  “It’s those quotations that keep bothering me,” Jack said. “They’re both related to witchcraft, and that’s why Vera is worried about what people might think. Where did Weems come up with those things? He didn’t just grab them out of the air.”

  Sally had been wondering the same thing. Weems was a dogged investigator and a fairly intelligent man, but he wasn’t the kind to come up with two blood-to-drink quotations all by himself.

  “He had them written in his little notebook,” Jack continued. “I think he copied them down in Harold’s apartment. And if he did …”

  “That would mean someone was trying to cast blame for Curtin’s death on a witch,” Vera said. “And I’m the only one of those I know. Well, in Hughes. There are plenty of Wiccans in Houston.”

  “And then there’s Seepy Benton,” Jack said. “Nobody knows for sure what he is.”

  Seepy was Dr. C. P. Benton, who preferred to be called by his initials rather than either of his first two names. It hadn’t taken long for the initials to elide into the nickname. Benton was the college’s director of institutional research. Among other things, he was an adept with computers, could create PowerPoint presentations that captive audiences actually enjoyed, and was a brilliant manipulator of statistics. All those things endeared him to Fieldstone, despite the fact that Seepy was unquestionably a little odd.

  A former mathematics instructor, he was enchanted by fractals and chaos theory. He had his own Web site (http://web.wt.net/~cbenton/welcome.htm), where he explored such things as Jewish mysticism and presented his “song of the week,” complete with a video presentation of his own performance of it.

  To say that he was a bit different from other administrators at HCC was like saying that a Farrelly brothers movie was a bit different from a Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of Hamlet.

  “You know, I’ve wondered about him,” Vera said.

  Jack laughed. “Join the club.”

  “I mean I’ve wondered if he might not be a Wiccan. I know he believes in astrology.”

  “Only when it’s supported by mathematics,” Jack said, as if quoting something he’d heard several times.

  “Whatever,” Vera said. “I still wonder if he’s a Wiccan.”

  “I suppose you have meetings,” Sally said.

  “Yes. We don’t get naked and dance around moonlit graves at midnight, though, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  “I was,” Jack said, and Vera punched him on the arm.

  “This isn’t funny, Jack,” she said.

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “We do believe in the power of the moon, though,” Vera said.

  “Never mind,” Sally said. She wasn’t interested in Vera’s religious practices at the moment. “You haven’t seen Seepy at any of the meetings?”

  “Never. But there are several groups besides the one I’ve joined.”

  Sally thought that Seepy’s possible Wiccan leanings might be worth looking into. The president was counting heavily on Benton’s skills in the bond election, and Benton would naturally be antagonistic to Harold Curtin if he was mixed up with the opposition.

  “Weems told me that Curtin might have been murdered,” Sally said, not that she thought Seepy was a killer. But she also knew you could never be sure about something like that. “And if I know Weems, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft or spells. He believes in things he can prove.”

  “You know,” Jack said, “there’s a connection between Harold and the Jacksons.”

  That was interesting, especially
given what Sally had just been thinking about Benton.

  “You told me that he was involved with Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility,” she said. “What about the Jacksons?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were with him on that. For all I know they are the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.”

  “Whoever that bunch is, they know a lot about the college,” Vera said. “I’ve seen their ads.”

  “Curtin was feeding them information,” Sally said, sure of it. “He must have been.”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  “You don’t seem so sure about it,” Sally said, “but you seem to know an awful lot about Harold Curtin and his doings. Is there something you want to tell me, Jack?”

  Jack looked around the kitchen. “I think I’d like a little more coffee, after all. You think it’s still warm?”

  Sally said she was sure it was. She got Jack’s cup off the counter and poured coffee in it.

  “Vera?” she said.

  “No, thanks.”

  Sally took the coffee to the table and set it in front of Jack. He took a couple of sips.

  “We’re waiting, Jack,” Sally said.

  “It’s not like Harold and I were friends or anything,” Jack said.

  “What were you, then?” Vera said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thought we were friends. He used to call me and complain about the college. He said he was going to help defeat the bond issue and then get elected to the board. After that he was going to get rid of Fieldstone.”

  “Did he really think anyone would vote for him?” Sally asked.

  “He seemed to think he had plenty of support.”

  “Would you have voted for him?”

  “No, and I never told him that I would. I don’t think anybody who worked at the college would vote for him, but that wouldn’t have bothered Harold at all. He thought we were all morons.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me. I told you we weren’t friends. But we worked together for a long time, and he probably just needed someone to talk to about his schemes.”

  “Did he ever mention anyone who might want him dead?” Vera asked.

  “That would have been a very long list,” Jack said. “Starting with every student who ever took one of his classes. Let’s not get too excited here. Maybe Harold died a perfectly natural death.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t,” Sally said. She was getting a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had it been only a few hours ago that she’d thought things were going to be all right? “It’s hard to believe that the e-mail and those quotations were just coincidence.”

  “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” Jack said.

  Sally sighed. Jack was right. She was getting carried away. Weems’s visit had upset her, and even the session on the firing range and the margaritas afterward hadn’t completely settled her nerves.

  “We aren’t getting anywhere with this,” she said.

  Vera agreed. “Information overload. But it’s obvious that something’s going on. That e-mail, Curtin’s death, that meeting you have with Jennifer Jackson tomorrow, a visit from Weems. It seems to me that they’re all connected.”

  “We don’t know that. We should slow down and think things over. Maybe then we can come to some conclusions.”

  “Come by my office after your meeting tomorrow,” Jack told her.

  Sally said that she would, and Jack and Vera left. Sally wondered if they’d go somewhere and dance naked under the moon.

  “What do you think, Lola?” she said as she walked into the bedroom.

  Lola, who was still under the bed, had no comment, so Sally took a shower and went to bed.

  The Deposition of Joseph Herrick

  The Deposition of Joseph Herrick, Sr., who testifieth and saith that on the first day of March 1692: “I being then Constable for Salem, there was delivered to me by warrant from the worshipful Jno. Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, Esqrs. Sarah Good for me to carry to their majesties’ gaol at Ipswich, and that night I set a guard to watch her at my own house, namely Samuel Braybrook, Michael Dunell, and Jonathan Baker. And the aforenamed persons informed me in the morning that that night Sarah Good was gone for some time from them both bare foot and bare legged. And I was also Informed that that night Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons, complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being bare foot and bare legged.”

  10

  Sally’s eight o’clock class on Tuesdays and Thursdays was developmental English, a course designed for students who had somehow managed to graduate from the public schools with few, if any, writing skills.

  Some of them had a rudimentary grasp of sentence structure, and could even write a compound sentence on demand. But it was likely to be something like one of her favorites, “Bill have him a coat, but I be cold.” It was a compound sentence. There was no way to get around it.

  Others had a better command of the proper use of verbs, but they couldn’t spell. Sally liked a sentence she’d gotten on one paper in which the student had talked about “bushing his tooths.”

  Even with all the problems that some students had, however, Sally liked teaching the class. She liked the students, and she liked helping them overcome their more obvious problems.

  But today she had trouble keeping her mind on the students’ problems because her sleep had been disturbed by dreams of some ragged woman, Sarah Good most likely, being dragged before a huge wooden structure upon which several men in dark robes sat, looking down on her accusingly and questioning her about things Sally couldn’t understand.

  In addition, her mind kept drifting to the upcoming meeting with Fieldstone and Jennifer Jackson. She wondered if they would treat her the way the villagers and the judges in Salem had treated Sarah Good.

  Sally let the class out a little early, which wouldn’t have pleased Dean Naylor had he known about it, and went by her office for a quick chocolate fix before the meeting. She told herself that she’d eat only half a bar, but she wound up eating the whole thing. She told herself that the walk to Fieldstone’s office would use up the calories, and if that didn’t do it, the meeting would.

  When Sally walked into Fieldstone’s outer office, Eva Dillon gave her an encouraging smile and picked up the telephone.

  “Dr. Good is here to see you,” she said. Then, after listening for a couple of seconds, she told Sally that Fieldstone was ready for her. “And the Jacksons are in there, too.”

  “Both of them?”

  Eva nodded. “Both of them.”

  Sally had understood that only Jennifer would be there, but she didn’t suppose that Sherm’s presence would make any difference. He was a mousy little man who generally had little to say. Jennifer was the one who did all the talking. The two of them worked together in Sherm’s little independent insurance agency, and Sally had heard that they sold quite a few policies. Jennifer was the salesperson. Sherm was the business manager. He sat in the back and spent most of his time in front of a computer.

  “You can handle them,” Eva said when Sally hesitated outside the door.

  “I know,” Sally said. “I’m just a little surprised that they’re both here.”

  “If that’s a surprise, how about this: Christopher Matthys is in there, too.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Sally said.

  Matthys was the college’s attorney, and Sally wasn’t really surprised that Fieldstone had asked him to be there. Fieldstone was a careful man, and it was typical of him to have the school’s legal representative at a meeting that was likely to be as contentious as the one between Sally and the Jacksons might become. Fieldstone would be hoping that Matthys could prevent Sally from saying something the college would regret.

  Sally didn’t think he had a chance.

  On the other hand, Sally thought, maybe she was doing Fieldstone an injustice. It could be that Matthys was there to defend Sally. She’d have to wait and
see.

  “If you’re not back in a week, can I have your Hershey bars?” Eva asked.

  “Bottom drawer, left,” Sally said, and opened the door to Fieldstone’s office.

  Jack Neville had a composition class at eight o’clock on Tuesday mornings. He spent the time discussing an essay that the students had turned in the previous Thursday. He had used his word processor to copy several paragraphs of examples from the papers, then photocopied the examples for distribution to the class. He had also made a transparency of the photocopy so he could use the overhead projector to enlarge the examples on a screen in front of the classroom and point directly to the things he wanted to emphasize.

  It was always a challenge to use the overhead in an early class. To do so, Jack had to darken the room, and darkening the room might well lead some students to seize the chance to catch up on some of the sleep they felt they needed. The challenge was in how to make talking about writing errors so exciting that nobody nodded off while he was talking.

  It was especially challenging since Jack felt like nodding off himself. Vera hadn’t wanted to go home after they left Sally’s house, so they had gone to Jack’s place. She hadn’t left until well after midnight, and because of certain strenuous physical activities they had engaged in, Jack hadn’t been able to get right to sleep. Too, his head had been crowded with all kinds of conflicting emotions. As a result, he’d slept only three or four hours, and he was never at his best without sleeping twice that long.

  Somehow he managed to get through the class without losing a single student to the sandman. A couple of them had yawned, but then so had Jack, so he couldn’t be too critical. As the class ended, he gave them the assignment for Thursday and gathered up his books and papers, which he took back to his office before going off to look for Seepy Benton.

  Benton’s office wasn’t in the administration building, for reasons that weren’t exactly clear to Jack. He’d heard that the problem was office space, or lack thereof, in the admin building, but he wasn’t sure that was the real reason. He suspected that Fieldstone wouldn’t have been comfortable with someone like Benton in an office that was next to his own, or even in the same building.