Bond With Death

by Bill Crider

  And he was worried about the calls he’d occasionally received from the Garden Gnome. It was almost as if Curtin had been trying to recruit him for the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility. What would have given him the idea that a faculty member would join a group like that? Had someone told Curtin that Jack might be interested?

  He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. Maybe Sally would like to go to lunch with him. If she did maybe Vera would be jealous enough to forgive him.

  Almost as soon as he had the thought, he was ashamed of himself. It was an example of how low he had sunk that he would consider using Sally to make Vera jealous. Besides, he didn’t really think it would work. Vera wasn’t the jealous type.

  He wasn’t sure what type she was, in fact. He was still amazed that somehow they’d gotten together. They’d known each other for years, and they’d certainly never been friendly during that time. They’d hardly even spoken to one another except in passing when they were in the mail room or on the way to a class. But now that they had a relationship, he didn’t want it to end.

  He wondered if there might be some feat of bravery he could perform to impress Vera, but if there was, he didn’t know what it could be. Anything he could do, she could do better.

  To take his mind off things, he switched from Spider Solitaire to Free Cell, but he was too familiar with that game. It wasn’t even a challenge anymore.

  He was considering giving Minesweeper a try when Sally came to his door.

  “Hey,” he said, remembering his original plan. “Want to get some lunch? We could go back to the Tea Room.”

  The mention of the restaurant jiggled something in Sally’s subconscious, something she thought might be important, but she couldn’t quite say what it was. She tried to focus on it, but nothing came clear.

  “I don’t usually eat lunch,” she said. “I wanted you to go somewhere with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To Ellen Baldree’s house. I’m worried about her.”

  “You don’t need to worry about her. She’s not going to get your job, no matter how much she wants it.”

  “I’m not worried about my job. I’m worried about Ellen personally. She didn’t come to school today, and she didn’t let anybody know she wasn’t going to be here.”

  “That’s not like her,” Jack said.

  “I know, and that’s why I want to go check on her. But I didn’t want to go alone.”

  So this was Jack’s big chance at redemption. He was going to get to be Sally’s bodyguard against the fierce Ellen Baldree. Somehow he didn’t think Vera would be impressed.

  “You don’t need protection,” he said, hoping Sally would contradict him. “Sure, Ellen’s mean, but she’s sneaky mean. She wouldn’t attack you or anything.”

  “I think I’m just now finding out how sneaky she can be,” Sally said. “I think she’s the one who sent that e-mail about my supposed kinship with Sarah Good. That’s why I want you to go with me. I don’t want your burly body as protection. I want a witness if she confesses.”

  Jack couldn’t help but be a little disappointed.

  “Can I at least give her the third degree?”

  “Jack, you don’t have to prove yourself to me. You did that a long time ago.”

  That made Jack feel a little better. He said, “Why do you think Ellen sent the e-mail?”

  “I’d rather tell you on the way to her house, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Sure,” Jack said, pushing his disappointment aside. “What are we waiting for?”

  As they left the building, Jack tried to steer Sally by the classroom where Vera was teaching. He wanted Vera to see them leaving together so he could tell her later how brave he’d been to take on the bodyguarding job. He even felt a faint hope that Vera would feel just the slightest twinge of jealousy if she saw him and Sally leaving the building together.

  But Sally wouldn’t cooperate. She grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him in the direction of one of the back doors.

  “This way is closer to my car,” she said, so Jack gave up on his feeble plans and followed her.

  “Maybe we could eat lunch later,” he said. “If you don’t like the Tea Room, we could go somewhere else.”

  This time, the restaurant’s name jarred something loose in Sally’s subconscious. The Garden Gnome had been a witch. Maybe that was what she’d tried to focus on earlier. And he hadn’t been a Wiccan, but the wicked kind of witch, like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz. “Oh, I’ll get you, and your little dog, too.” It sounded silly, but Vera hadn’t thought it was silly. Sally was sorry she hadn’t mentioned it to Weems, but she’d had too many other things on her mind last night. Besides, Weems would probably just have laughed at her.

  “If we don’t have any trouble at Ellen’s, we can go eat,” Sally said. “The Tea Room is fine.”

  She thought that if she went there again, something else might occur to her. She wasn’t sure that the bit about Curtin and witchcraft was what she really needed to remember.

  “Sounds good,” Jack said, hoping that by some quirk of fate Vera would stop by and see him and Sally there.

  Then she’ll be sorry, he thought.

  From Cotton Mather’s Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possession

  Go tell Mankind, that there are Devils and Witches; and that though those night-birds least appear where the daylight of the Gospel comes, yet New England has had examples of their existence and operation; and that not only the Wigwams of Indians, where the pagan powwows often raise their masters, in the shapes of bears and snakes and fires, but the house of Christians, where our God has had his constant worship, have undergone the annoyance of evil spirits. Go tell the world, What prays can do beyond all devils and witches, and what it is that these monsters love to do; and though the demons in the audience of several standers-by threatened much disgrace to thy author, if he let thee come abroad, yet venture that, and in this way seek a just revenge on them for the disturbance they have given to such as have called on the name of god.

  21

  Ellen lived in an old house in the part of town that had been built by some of its earliest settlers. The house was nearly a hundred years old. It was a rambling wooden structure with big windows on all sides. The house had been designed for the days before air-conditioning, when it was important to let even the slightest breeze waft through the rooms to cool them, if you could call that cooling. The windows were all closed now because Ellen had put in central heat and air when she bought the place several years earlier.

  The house had only one story, but there was a large attic, and it too had windows, though only on two sides. Sally didn’t know whether Ellen had finished out the attic, which was what Sally would have done if she’d owned the place. She would have loved to have the space for an office/library.

  The yard was one of those Chamber of Commerce yard-of-the-month contenders. Sally didn’t particularly like to work in the yard, but she admired people who did. Ellen’s grass was perfectly trimmed. The sidewalk and driveway were edged. There was no grass growing in the flower beds that ran along the front of the house, just gardenia and azalea bushes that grew in the well-mulched soil surrounded by periwinkles.

  “I wish she’d come over and do my yard,” Jack said.

  “I don’t think she’d be willing to do mine even if I paid her,” Sally said as she drove her Acura into the short driveway.

  When the house had been built, there hadn’t been much use for a driveway, and the garage was just a small building that might have been added to the property to house a Model T, though it would have been a tight fit.

  Jack got out of Sally’s car and tried to see inside the garage. But the door was made of wood, and there were no windows in the building.

  “She could be out of town,” Jack said when Sally joined him.

  “Why would she leave town?”

  “Maybe she found out you were onto her.”

  “She couldn’t possi
bly have known, and even if she did, what good would leaving town do her? She’d have to come back sooner or later. Let’s knock on the door.”

  Sally went to the front of the house. A porch ran along the entire front and around to the side. A high-backed wooden rocker sat near the front door, and a wooden swing hung from the ceiling. There was no doorbell, so Sally hammered on the screen door with the heel of her hand. The door was loose in the frame and it jumped around, making quite a bit of noise as she pounded on it, but no one answered.

  Sally looked around for Jack. He was still over at the garage, trying to pull back the door.

  “Jack,” Sally said. “Come over here.”

  He let go of the door and said, “There’s a car in there. I could see it. I don’t know if it’s Ellen’s.”

  Sally didn’t know whose else it could be. She banged on the door again. Still no one came or called.

  “I’m going to try the back,” Sally told Jack.

  She came off the porch and followed a flagstone walk around to the back of the house. Jack went with her.

  Ellen’s back yard was even more impressive than the front. There was a clump of banana trees, a big oak for shade, some bamboo, and even a little fishpond. A wooden bench rested under the oak near its trunk.

  “This is really nice,” Jack said, looking around.

  Sally wasn’t interested in the yard. She wanted to find Ellen. She walked up a couple of concrete steps to the screened-in porch and knocked on the screen door.

  “Ellen! Are you in there?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that she might be hiding?” Jack said. “If she did send that e-mail, you’re the last person she’d want to see.”

  He was right. Sally said, “You call her, then.”

  “Me?”

  “You. Come on up here.”

  Jack stepped up beside Sally and called Ellen’s name, but he got no more response than she had.

  “She’s not here,” Jack said. “Or she’s hiding out. Either way, we’re wasting our time.”

  Sally pulled the screen door open.

  “Oh, no,” Jack said. “I’m not going in there. That’s illegal.”

  “It’s not illegal if the door’s open,” Sally said, though she was pretty sure that wasn’t true. “And nobody asked you to go in.”

  “Well, I’m not. If this were a movie, we’d go in there and Ellen would be dead on the floor with a knife sticking out of her back.”

  Sally went through the door and stood on the porch. A white wicker table and chairs sat to one side. Hanging baskets that held spider plants dangled from the ceiling. It was a pleasant place, but too warm.

  Across from Sally there was another door, this one leading into the house, probably into the kitchen. Sally took three steps across the wooden floor and took hold of the handle.

  “I don’t think you should go in there,” Jack said from behind her. He was standing just inside the screen door.

  “I thought you weren’t coming in.”

  “This is as far as I go. I don’t think you should open that door. Let’s leave.”

  Sally turned the knob and the door swung inward.

  “Ellen? Are you all right?”

  “I’m leaving,” Jack said. “You’re about to get in real trouble.”

  “Nobody asked you to stay.”

  Sally went through the door and into the kitchen. The interior of the house was cool, and Sally could hear the central air unit humming away.

  The kitchen was neat, as Sally would have expected from everything she’d seen so far. Not as neat as Mae Wilkins’s kitchen, maybe, but it would do. No dirty dishes in the sink, the tops of the table and counters all spic and span, the stove top gleaming. The countertops were white granite with flecks of black. A coffeemaker sat on the counter, with an electric can opener and a mixer nearby. The electric stove and side-by-side refrigerator were both white and looked new.

  “This is it,” Jack said. “I’m not going one step farther.”

  Sally turned and gave him a look.

  “Just go sit in the car and wait for me,” she said. “You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

  “I’m just trying to get you to do the right thing. We don’t have any business in here.”

  “I do. One of my faculty members didn’t report for work today, and I’m going to find out why. Maybe she’s sick and needs help.”

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound so bad. But what if we find her dead body in the living room?”

  “We’ll look around for Colonel Mustard.”

  “Very funny,” Jack said.

  Sally went into the next room, which was the dining room. Three long windows let in the sunlight. An antique sideboard stood against a wall, and in the middle of the room was a Duncan Phyfe table. Sally suspected that it was faux Phyfe.

  “Fee, fie, faux Phyfe,” she said under her breath.

  “What?” Jack said.

  “Nothing.”

  Sally didn’t think the six Queen Anne chairs around the dining table were genuine antiques, either. If they were, Ellen was making a lot more money than Sally. Or she’d come into a big inheritance.

  There were two exits from the dining room, both leading to hallways. Sally picked one of them and stood in the entrance to the hall.

  “Ellen? Are you feeling all right?” she called.

  No answer, except from Jack, who said, “We really shouldn’t be here. It just doesn’t feel right to be roaming around in someone’s house when we don’t even know if she’s home.”

  “I thought I told you to go wait in the car.”

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “All right, but keep quiet. Look, there’s her home office at the end of the hall.”

  A light was on in the room. Sally started forward without looking to see if Jack was following. She stopped when she heard a noise from behind her, from the direction of the kitchen. She thought that Jack had left after all, but when she turned to look, Jack was standing right behind her.

  “I heard something in the kitchen,” she said. “Did someone come in?”

  “I hope not,” Jack said. “But I heard it, too.”

  Sally looked past him. She could see part of the dining room and part of the kitchen, but she didn’t see anyone in either one of them.

  “Maybe it was my imagination.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want anybody to catch us in here. I’ve been to jail once, and I didn’t like it.”

  “You were there for an hour or two. That doesn’t make you a hardened ex-con. You didn’t even get a tattoo.”

  “I didn’t trust the needles,” Jack said.

  Sally didn’t reply. She turned back to look down the hall and heard another noise behind her. This time she was sure it had come from the kitchen.

  “Somebody’s in there,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s Ellen,” Jack said.

  “Ellen?” Sally said. “Is that you? We were worried about you, and the door was open, so we just came on in.”

  Someone moved to stand just beyond the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Ellen, being taller, wider, and male.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” the newcomer said.

  “Uh-oh,” Jack said.

  Sally was glad he hadn’t said I told you so.

  The man was in shadow, as the light from the windows didn’t reach him, and Sally couldn’t make out his features.

  “I asked what you were doing here,” he said.

  Sally thought she recognized the voice.

  “Larry? Larry Lawrence.”

  Lawrence came through the doorway and into the dining room.

  “That’s right, and I’m going to ask you one more time, what are you doing here?”

  “We were worried about Ellen,” Jack told him. “She didn’t show up at the college this morning, and that’s not like her. We thought she might be sick.”

  Sally admired the way he had pic
ked up on her excuse.

  “And by the way,” he added, “what are you doing here?”

  Larry swaggered around the table. He was in his middle fifties, but solid as a stump. His hair was still thick and his step springy. He swung his arms like a man looking for a fight.

  “I’m the one asking the questions,” he said.

  Jack didn’t back down. He took a step toward Larry.

  “That’s what you think.”

  Just what I needed, Sally thought. A macho fest. She reached out and put a hand on Jack’s arm.

  “Just hold on,” she told him.

  Jack shook her hand off, but he didn’t move any closer to Larry.

  Sally said, “Larry, we’ve told you why we came, and I think we have as much right as you to be here. Or more, since you haven’t told us your reason.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said.

  “Hush, Jack. Well, Larry?”

  “It’s not any of your business.”

  “It might be. But even if you think it’s not, think about this: Jack and I aren’t moving from this spot until you tell us why you’re here, so if Ellen’s in trouble, she’s not going to get any help.”

  Larry took a while to think that over, but Sally didn’t mind waiting. As long as he and Jack weren’t fighting, she was satisfied.

  “All right,” Larry said after about half a minute. “I don’t see what difference it’ll make if I tell you. Ellen’s working with me on the Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility. I tried to call her a couple of times at the college this morning, times I knew she wasn’t in class. I didn’t get an answer, so I called Wynona. She said Ellen hadn’t showed up today, and I came to check on her.”

  “Very considerate of you,” Jack said, though he didn’t sound to Sally as if he meant it. “Too bad Ellen’s on the wrong side of the bond issue.”

  Sally was thinking the same thing. She couldn’t understand why a faculty member would want the bond to fail. And then it hit her. For Ellen, secretly opposing the bond was an underhanded way to get revenge on the college administration for its collective failure to recognize her distinguished qualifications and appoint her department chair.