Bond With Death

by Bill Crider

  So Benton was relegated to a space on the second floor of the business building. It was actually a pretty good deal, Jack thought, certainly better than being located right where the president and his minions could keep their eyes on you all the time. Jack would have preferred it that way, and he suspected that Benton did as well.

  Jack went into Benton’s outer office and asked Molly Evans, the I.R. director’s secretary, if Dr. Benton was there. Molly was a smiling woman with a good sense of humor, which was an asset if you were working with Dr. Benton, in whose office there was none of the formality that existed elsewhere on campus. Nobody announced that you were there. Molly just smiled and said, “He’s here. Go right in.”

  Jack went past her and into Seepy’s office, which made Sally’s look as if it had been cleaned and organized by Mae Wilkins. There were papers everywhere, even stacked in one corner of the room. A guitar case sat on one chair, and hanging on a coatrack were a coonskin cap and a braided leather whip. Some kind of astrological chart covered most of one wall, and on another were framed photographs of fractals. Jack knew that Benton had taken the photographs himself and was rather proud of them, but Jack didn’t ask about them because to do so was to risk a lecture on Mandelbrot sets or whatever they were. Jack wasn’t sure of the proper term, but he wasn’t going to say that either. Benton loved to lecture and would do so at the least opportunity, and Jack wasn’t in the mood to talk math.

  Benton was sitting at his computer desk, looking at the monitor. While the rest of the office was chaotic, the computer desk was uncluttered. Jack stood and watched as Benton made a few movements with the mouse, clicked to save, and swiveled his chair around.

  “What can I do for you, Jack?” Benton asked.

  He spoke slowly and reassuringly, perhaps because he had once taught college algebra, a course that Jack knew from his own undergraduate experience could destroy a student’s self-esteem faster than a bad complexion or having to drive an inferior car.

  In addition to being glacially calm, Benton was a soft-looking teddy bear of a man. Today he wore a Hawaiian shirt with a blue background covered with large white flowers that Jack suspected belonged to no known species growing either on the mainland or the islands. His black beard was shot through with gray, as was the thinning hair that curled wildly on his head.

  “Can we talk?” Jack said.

  “Sure. Move the guitar and have a seat.”

  “I meant privately,” Jack said, indicating the door that was open to the outer office.

  “Molly never listens in. She’s afraid I might play something on the guitar and sing along. Which reminds me. I wrote a new song last night. It’s called ‘Fabric Free.’ Would you like to hear it?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Molly called from the other room. “I’ve already heard it three times.”

  “Some people have no appreciation for the arts,” Benton said, shaking his head as Molly shut the door between the two rooms.

  Jack leaned the guitar case against the wall well out of Benton’s reach and then sat in the chair.

  Benton looked hurt. “I thought an English teacher might appreciate my song. It even rhymes.”

  “Knowing you,” Jack said, “I have a feeling I know what the lyrics of a song called ‘Fabric Free’ might be about.”

  “I’m not in my nudist phase anymore.” Benton’s hurt look became slightly unfocused and faraway. “Those were good times, but Hippie Hollow just isn’t the same these days.”

  Jack was afraid to ask why not, but Benton told him anyway.

  “All the people who go there now are as old as I am. Time and gravity can be cruel to the human body, Jack.”

  Jack said he knew the truth of that all too well.

  “So what did you want to talk about, then?” Benton asked. “Did you want me to cast your horoscope? I’ve been doing a little of that lately to pick up a little extra money. I charge a hundred dollars, but I could give you the faculty discount.”

  “What’s the faculty discount?” Jack asked, suppressing a yawn. He didn’t want his horoscope cast, but he was curious.

  “You know the faculty discount you get at all the stores in town?”

  Jack was puzzled. “I don’t get a discount at the stores in town.”

  “That’s right, and I’m giving you the same one.”

  Jack was never quite sure when Benton was joking, but he assumed that this time he was.

  “Thanks,” Jack said, “but I’ll pass. What I wanted to talk to you about might be a bit related to astrology, though.”

  “Good. I’m always interested in things like that. What was it, exactly?”

  “Harold Curtin,” Jack said.

  11

  “Come in, Dr. Good,” Fieldstone said as she entered his office. Matthys stood up and greeted her, smiling as if to reassure her that he was indeed on her side. Fieldstone stood as well, but only to offer Sally a seat. He and Matthys were dressed in navy-blue suits that were all but identical.

  The Jacksons stayed right where they were, hardly bothering to spare Sally a glance. They sat in their chairs, backs straight, eyes forward, knees together.

  When Sally had taken a seat beside Matthys on the leather couch, Fieldstone went back behind his desk. The Jacksons were facing the desk, in profile to the couch.

  Fieldstone didn’t lighten the atmosphere a bit when he said that the meeting was being recorded. He’d gotten permission from the Jacksons before Sally arrived. After that little announcement, he performed all the unnecessary introductions and then said, “I think Mrs. Jackson would like to speak first.”

  “Yes, I would,” she said.

  She was painfully thin, Sally thought, almost anorexic. Her fingers were long, just skin and bone. Her hair looked great, though. It was cut quite short and almost made her angular face look pretty. If she and Sally had been friends, Sally would have asked where she got her hair done.

  Sherm Jackson just looked average. He was the kind of man who could disappear in a crowd of three. He wore a gray jacket, gray pants, and a nondescript tie. Sally wondered if he would speak at all during the meeting.

  Jennifer Jackson turned slightly in her chair. Not much. Not enough so that she would have to meet Sally’s eye, but enough so that she would seem to be talking to both Sally and Fieldstone.

  “Yesterday I got a very troubling e-mail,” she said. “It was about Dr. Good. Here’s a copy of it.”

  She handed a piece of paper to Fieldstone, who hardly looked at it.

  “For the record,” Fieldstone said, “I got the same e-mail. It says that Dr. Sally Good, a member of the HCC faculty, is a witch, descended from Sarah Good, notorious witch of the seventeenth century, executed for the crime of witchcraft in 1692. A ridiculous charge, as Dr. Good will explain. The campus police are working with one of our computer specialists to see if they can find out where the e-mail originated.”

  “It had a return address.”

  “Which is a fake,” Fieldstone said. “We’re working on it, however, and we’ll find out the real sender.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Jennifer said, turning a bit more toward Sally. “I don’t think the college needs an instructor whose past is so questionable. You might remember that she’s defended witchcraft before.”

  “That’s not true,” Sally said.

  “I haven’t finished,” Jennifer said. “Dr. Fieldstone said I could have my say, without interruption.”

  Fieldstone hadn’t mentioned that little fact to Sally, who gave him a reproachful look. Fieldstone made no response except to say, “Please go on, Mrs. Jackson.”

  Sally started to object, but Matthys nudged her elbow. He was still smiling, so Sally settled back on the couch.

  “Well,” Jennifer said, “when an organization of which I’m a member tried to cleanse the local library of several books about witches, Dr. Good stepped right up to stop us. Everyone knows those books are just thinly disguised satanic tracts that glorify witchcraft. Who knows how
many children have been lured into witchcraft by reading them?”

  “I do,” Sally said. “None. And while we’re at it, please tell me how many times Satan is mentioned in those books. Have you ever read them?”

  Jennifer was shocked. “Of course I haven’t. Why would I do something like that?”

  “To find out if what you’re talking about is true or just a pile of … rubbish. I’ve read the books, every one of them. Satan is never mentioned at all.”

  Jennifer’s hands clenched. “Dr. Fieldstone said I could finish without being interrupted.”

  “I forgot,” Sally lied.

  Matthys muffled a derisive snort, but Sally heard it. She ignored him. Jennifer either didn’t hear or didn’t care.

  “As I was saying, Dr. Good has defended witchcraft before. Now we find out that she’s a descendant of a witch who was hanged for her satanic practices. I don’t think we need her teaching students from our community.”

  “That’s enough,” Sally said, standing. “I don’t care what Dr. Fieldstone told you. I’m not going to sit here and listen to that kind of slander without having something to say about it. It is slander, isn’t it, Mr. Matthys.”

  Matthys stood beside her. “It certainly sounds like it. She’s implying that you’re unfit for your profession, and if that’s untrue, it just might be actionable.”

  “And we have it on tape,” Sally said.

  “But I’m just repeating what I received on my computer!”

  “Repeating a libel would still be slander,” Matthys said. “We’ll take action against the sender of the e-mail as soon as we find out who that is.”

  Jennifer looked pained. “But it’s true that Dr. Good defended witchcraft. If it hadn’t been for her and a few of her friends, those books wouldn’t be in the library now.”

  “I was defending the freedom to read, not witchcraft,” Sally said, resisting the urge to add, “You idiot.” Name-calling would get her nowhere. “And as Dr. Fieldstone told you, my late husband was a distant relative of Sarah Good, not me.”

  “I think there’s a lot more to the story than that,” Jennifer said.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I think you put a curse on Harold Curtin and killed him.”

  “Harold Curtin?” Seepy Benton said. “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “I know that, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

  “You’re heading up the college’s campaign to get the bond issue passed. Harold was one of the opposition leaders.”

  “I know that, too. What’s your point?”

  Jack explained what Sally had told him about Weems’s suspicions.

  “So you think I killed Harold so we could win the election?”

  “No,” Jack said. “But Weems is acting suspicious of Sally, and even of me.”

  “You’ve been in trouble with him before.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” Jack said. “Anyway, what I’d like to know is who might want to get rid of Harold.”

  “Except for all his former students, most of the faculty he knew, and nine-tenths of the people he met, I have no idea.”

  “You know something about this bond election. You know who’s for it and against it. You might know if Harold had made any new enemies.”

  “Have you heard about the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility?”

  Jack said he had.

  “And did you know that Harold was involved with them?”

  Jack admitted that he’d heard it from a pretty good source, Curtin himself.

  “Other people are in the group, but Harold was helping them quite a bit. He was giving them information about college operations and finances, but he was exaggerating. They’ve used some of the exaggerations in their advertisements.”

  “Like the one that says taxes will go up by thirty percent if the bond passes?”

  “No. And anyway, that’s not an exaggeration.”

  “It’s not?” Jack didn’t like paying taxes any more than anybody else, even though he knew his money was going to support the college. “No wonder there’s opposition.”

  Benton settled back in his chair, laced his fingers together, and rested his hands on his stomach. Jack knew that he was about to get a lecture. He hoped it would be a short one.

  “There are ways to use facts to make them appear much worse than they are,” Benton said. “While it’s true that there would be a thirty percent tax increase if the bond passes, what’s left unsaid is that because college taxes are so low, the increase would amount to about seventy-five dollars a year for the average taxpayer. That would be six dollars and twenty-five cents a month. I think everyone could afford that.”

  Jack thought the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility were dirty fighters to twist things and make them appear much worse than they actually were, but dirty tactics were to be expected in any kind of campaign.

  “If that’s not one of the exaggerations you were talking about,” he said, “what is?”

  “The business about administrative travel,” Benton said. “Did you see that ad in the newspaper about the college board’s trip to Hawaii?”

  Jack remembered that one. There was a photo of the board members that had been altered to show them all dressed in grass skirts. The caption had been something like Board members party in the islands while you suffer in the Texas heat.

  “That trip wasn’t paid for by the college,” Benton said. “Even though it was legitimate college business. The Hawaii meeting was an important training session, and it was attended by college board members from all over the country.”

  Jack didn’t question the meeting’s importance, though it did seem to him that while college boards and presidents held their meetings in places like Hawaii, San Francisco, and Key West, meetings for college faculty were more likely to be in Dallas, Houston, or Austin.

  “Who paid for the trip?” Jack asked.

  “The board members paid for it themselves, out of their own pockets. The ad sticks to the truth, but like the one about the thirty percent increase, it leaves something unsaid. You might have noticed that it didn’t say the college paid for the trip. It just implied it.”

  Jack couldn’t remember the ad exactly, but he was sure Benton was right.

  “Are you telling me that one of the board members might have killed Curtin because of that ad?”

  “No. I’m telling you that none of them liked him very much. But as we know, that would put them on a very long list.”

  Jack didn’t blame the board members for not liking Curtin. And thinking about his past experiences, he believed that at least one board member, Roy Don Talon, was capable of murder.

  “And don’t forget Larry Lawrence,” Benton said.

  Larry was easy to forget, Jack thought. He’d been Fieldstone’s administrative assistant for years, longer than Jack had been at the college, until he’d taken early retirement a couple of years previously. He’d been the perfect man to play second fiddle. He was quiet, unobtrusive, glad to work behind the scenes and let the Big Guy get all the credit.

  “Why would Larry be a suspect?” Jack asked.

  “I didn’t say he was a suspect. He might be, but he wasn’t against Harold’s stand on the bond issue. He was helping him.”

  Jack said he didn’t believe it. “Larry was always a strong supporter of the college.”

  “That’s right. He was. You English teachers always use the right verb. He’s not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “We administrators have to keep some secrets. Otherwise we wouldn’t be any better than the faculty members.”

  “If the cops come and ask you, you’ll tell them. Surely you like me better than you like the cops.”

  Benton looked over to where his guitar case leaned against the wall.

  “Maybe the cops would listen to my new song.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. They’d haul you in and give you the third degree. Believe me, I know.”


  “Maybe you do, at that. All right. This has to do with cops. You know how Chief Desmond has a thing for younger women?”

  Jack knew. There were few if any real secrets at the college. But sometimes things could be successfully covered up if the right people worked on doing it. Desmond was one of the right people.

  “He hasn’t been dating students, has he?” Jack said.

  While Fieldstone felt that the personal lives of college employees were their own business, there was a college rule against fraternizing with students. Faculty members had been known to violate the rule in the past, and it had gotten them into trouble.

  “Desmond’s not crazy,” Benton said. “He’s just having a late midlife crisis.”

  “He’s been having it for about fifteen years.”

  “Possibly. Anyhow, one of the younger women he liked was Larry’s daughter.”

  “You said liked.”

  “There’s that verb tense thing again. And you’re right. I did use the past tense. Desmond dumped her, and she went through a bad time. She was teaching in Houston, but she quit her job, moved back home with the Lawrences, and developed an unfortunate substance abuse problem.”

  “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.