“Immature? Insane? But get this. A court right here in New Mexico last June prevented a man from legally changing his name to F Censorship.”
She said, “I assume the f did not stand for Fred?”
I nodded
Chapter 23
Dean Gangji opened a copy of the Albuquerque Journal and read to the assembled department heads.
“As you all know, the State’s Attorney General had been investigating UNM. According to the paper, he found ‘a disturbing pattern of concealment and deliberate misrepresentation’. According to the report, the AG’s Office has investigated 11 complaints about UNM’s compliance with the state’s Open Meetings Act and Inspection of Public Records Act since 2015. Most of this stems from the use of $25,000 in public funds to pay the expenses of private donors and the attempt to cover up that expenditure by deleting emails and other documents that were subject to the open records law.”
He looked up from the paper. “Then there is the other scandal regarding our football coach who was suspended after some players reported being abused and charges that he obstructed a rape investigation and made racist comments. Why do I mention these things?” He held up the 12th day report. “Because they are the primary reason why enrollment is down. Many New Mexicans have lost faith in us. They’re not sure they want their sons and daughters here.”
His beard seemed to stiffen and his eyes darken. He looked down at the report. “Theater enrollment down eleven percent. Music down seven percent. Communications down four percent. Dance down eight percent.”
He looked back up at us. “Waiting for the Board of Regents and the central administration to act is not satisfactory to me. I respect both groups, but I also have responsibility for the College of the Arts. I want a plan on my desk from each of you by Monday morning on how our college can regain the confidence of our stakeholders—our current students, our alumni, public school teachers in our fields, the performing and visual arts institutions around the state, our patrons and donors. And I want concrete steps and timetables.”
He stood up and walked out, leaving us sitting in silence.
The guy next to me stuck out his hand and said, “Welcome to the college. I’m Jim Shrader, head of the music department.”
I shook his hand and said, “I’m Hubie Schuze, interim head of the art department.”
“And off to a great start,” he said.
I stared at him blankly.
“Surely you noticed that he didn’t mention your enrollment numbers.”
“I guess because they’re up?”
“Right. He didn’t want to soften his tongue lashing of the rest of us by acknowledging any good news. I imagine he’ll talk to you about it one-on-one.”
And right on cue, Jane Robinson came in the room and said to me, “The dean wants to see you in his office.”
The walls of Dean Gangji’s inner office are decorated with the heads of dead ruminants. I recognize the species native to New Mexico—mountain goats, antelope, deer, and elk. I have seen pictures of the others but am unsure of the names. One I think may be an oryx. Or may have been an oryx. It is definitely past tense. I’m a carnivore. So I have few qualms about killing animals in order to eat them. But I don’t like seeing their remains on display. Their glass eyes seem to stare at me accusingly.
The same can be said of the dean except for the glass eyes part. But beneath his real eyes his lips form slowly into a smile as he informs me that enrollment in art classes is up seventeen percent.
“16.86,” I reply.
He removes a paper from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and glances at it. “Precisely so. And to what do you attribute the increase?”
“First, all three sections of ART 2000 were initially scheduled on the same day at the same time. Rescheduling them on different days and times made it possible for more students to enroll in them. Then I hired an adjunct to teach Digital Art during the day when most students can take it. All the sections were originally scheduled in the evening.”
“What else did you do to increase enrollment?”
“I think those two changes account for the enrollment increase.”
“There is one more. Surely you noticed in compiling the 12th day report.”
I nodded. “Fewer students dropped classes prior to the 12th day. But that is not a result of anything I did.”
“On the contrary. By reacting to the needs of students as regards the days and times of course offerings, you demonstrated to them that you care about their success. You have raised student morale.”
I thought about the Hawthorn Effect, but said nothing.
“There is one downside to your enrollment increase; namely, your expenditures are higher than the previous semester.”
“Actually, they are lower if you compare expenditures to revenue, which is the correct way to measure such things. Last semester, the art department spent $1.39 for every dollar it generated in tuition payments. This semester, we are on course to spend only $1.25 for every tuition dollar we generate.”
“But you are spending more on salaries for teachers.”
“No. Counting salary and benefits, we gained $107,638 on salary not paid to Milton Shorter and Junior Prather. If you subtract my salary and benefits and those of the three adjuncts I hired, we are actually spending almost $70,000 less than last semester.”
His smile disappeared. Maybe I had been too direct or sounded flippant.
“How did you come up with these figures?”
“They’re all in the stats sheet Ms. Robinson gave me and online in the Banner software.”
“Aren’t you a potter? How is it that you are able to handle Banner?”
“I’m not. My nephew gets the figures for me. But I’m the one who analyzes them. My degree from here is actually in accounting.”
“How the devil did you end up in the art department?”
“As you said, I’m also a potter.”
He relaxed, leaned back in his chair, and laughed. Then he rotated a computer around so that I could see the screen, and he punched a few keys. I watched Stella Ramsey do the summary of her visit with Freddie and his students. The report was as positive as Sharice had claimed it to be.
“You should have told me you were going to hire an ex-convict.”
“The handbook for department heads specifies that hiring of adjuncts does not need the approval of the dean’s office.”
“Correct. But common sense should have told you that consulting the dean in the case of a possibly risky hire would have been prudent.”
“I didn’t think of it as a risk. I knew what an excellent teacher he is and also that he is a changed man. But I take your point and apologize for not consulting with you in advance.”
He nodded and smiled. “Please tell me you are not paying your nephew to manage the Banner software for you.”
“I am paying him. In cash out of my pocket.”
“For the record, you never told me that.”
“Never told you what?” I replied, and he smiled.
Chapter 24
“Wow! Congratulations. When’s the due date?”
Susannah is not good at curbing her enthusiasm, so everyone in Dos Hermanas now knew that Sharice was pregnant. It was a Thursday which meant Sharice was helping Dr. Batres work on poor peoples’ teeth.
“Sharice is guessing October.”
“Geez, that’s almost nine months away. How can she be sure so early?”
“Apparently all you have to do these days is pee on a piece of litmus paper a few minutes after your heart rate slows down from having sex.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that fast. Has she been to a doctor to make sure?”
“Not yet. She’s been talking to the staff at work about choosing a doctor. And she also wants to consult with Dr. Rao.”
“Why
would she want to talk to her cancer doctor?”
“I think she’s worried that the effects of her cancer treatment might be grounds for terminating the pregnancy.”
“An abortion!”
I nodded.
“You can’t let her do that, Hubie.”
“I don’t like the idea, but it’s not my decision. A woman has the right to control her own body.”
Her big brown eyes narrowed. “Of course a woman has a right to control her own body. Which means she can get a tattoo on her nose if she wants to or have her appendix removed. But a baby is not part of a woman’s body. It has its own body. And its own soul created by God.”
I know Susannah and her entire family are devout Catholics, but I was surprised by the zeal of her reaction. So after an awkward pause, I suggested we change the subject.
She took a deep breath then a sip of her margarita. “Sorry, but I feel very strongly about the topic.“
“So noted. And I admire you for taking a stand.”
She smiled and relaxed. “I’ve got some news myself,” she said, “but it’s not as exciting as yours.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“I know how gurney guy was killed.”
“They solved the crime?”
“No. I solved it.
What I thought was, Here we go again. What I said was, “Okay, give me the solution.”
“So you know who John D. MacDonald is, right?”
“Sure. The hamburger guy.”
“Sheesh. John D. MacDonald was one the world’s greatest murder mystery writers. Dead Low Tide was his first great mystery novel. Before that he was just a hack writing science fiction. The protagonist in Dead Low Tide is Andy McClintock, an estimator working for a Florida contractor named John Long. Long’s wife tells Andy she’s worried about her husband and asks Andy to spy on his boss and see what’s going on. Andy agrees reluctantly and asks his boss if anything is wrong, which leads to an argument. Andy resigns, but the boss, John, admits something is worrying him. He convinces Andy to stay on and help make sure the current big project is completed. He even gives Andy a raise. Andy is concerned that John may be terminally ill or even suicidal. A night or two later, Andy comes home and surprises an intruder who escapes. Andy searches his place and discovers only one thing is missing.”
She stopped talking and stared at me with those big brown eyes.
I obliged her implied request. “What was missing?”
“His harpoon gun. Ta-da!”
“So?”
“It’s obvious, Hubie. The key is that a harpoon is attached to a wire so that you can reel in a fish. So the puncture wound in Gurney Guy was caused by a harpoon, and there was no weapon left behind because the harpooner reeled it in and ran off.”
“Good theory, but it didn’t happen that way. I saw the video. No one was toting a harpoon.”
“You tote a six-shooter. You don’t tote a harpoon; you carry one.”
“If anyone had been carrying one, it would have been reported. After all, harpoons are about as common in New Mexico as bikinis in Greenland.”
“Maybe it was a really small harpoon, one you could hide in a hand bag or in the sleeve of a jacket.”
“It was unseasonably warm, remember. No one was wearing a jacket.”
“Maybe the woman had one in her purse. Was she carrying a purse?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Ask Whit to let you see the video again.”
She looked so dejected that I agreed to ask Whit. I even told her it was a good idea and asked her how things worked out in Dead Low Tide.
“The morning after Andy’s harpoon was stolen, John is found dead, and the harpoon is sticking in his throat. When the police discover the harpoon belongs to Andy, he becomes a suspect. And then John’s wife lies to the police and tells them that she and Andy were having an affair.”
“She had set him up right from the start,” I said.
“Exactly. And there’s also a hastily drawn up contract leaving John Long Contractors to Andy. So he’s jailed for killing John Long to get Long’s wife and business. We need to find out if Gurney Guy had a wife and a business.”
“Yes. But first we have to find out who he is.”
She still looked dejected, so I decided to cheer her up with a clue. “While you’re thinking about Gurney Guy’s demise, throw this into the plot. Whit told me the medical examiner found poison in the wound.”
She brightened. “What kind?”
“Palytoxin.”
She asked me to spell it.
Chapter 25
Charles Webb was waiting for me at the condo. Sharice had invited him in and given him a coupe of Gruet.
“I told Charles the good news,” Sharice said, “and he said that deserved a glass of bubbly.”
She handed me one, and Charles handed me the envelope from the Safari Motel.
“What did the DNA test reveal?” I asked.
He had an enigmatic expression I couldn’t read. “The hair in this envelope is not from a human.”
“Damn. It’s from a racoon, right?”
“How did you know?”
“Lucky!”
Now he looked bewildered. “You took a lucky guess and actually got it?”
“No. Lucky is the racoon’s name. Tristan’s mother keeps him as a pet.”
“Is he blind in one eye and recently castrated?”
I laughed and said, “You know that joke, too.”
Sharice said, “You sound like a couple of teenagers.”
Charles asked why Junior would put racoon hair in a locket and give it to her son.
Sharice said, “If you met her, you would understand.”
“Well,” he said, “that’s not any crazier than my first thought. Which was that someone put racoon hair in there as a racial slur.”
“Junior doesn’t even know you exist, much less whether you’re black or white.”
“Hey, I said it was crazy.”
Sharice said, “I know coon is a racist term in the States for a black person, but I don’t understand why. Raccoons have masks and straight hair. We have neither.”
“Coon doesn’t come from raccoon,” Charles answered. “It comes from the Spanish word barracón.”
“Which means what?” Sharice asked.
“A warehouse,” I said. “So I’m guessing it’s where the captive Africans were kept before being sold and shipped off to the New World.”
Charles nodded. “The phrase was popularized in the 19th century by a song titled Zip Coon. It was sung in minstrel shows to the tune of Turkey in the Straw:
Old Zip Coon he is a larned skoler,
Sings posum up a gum tree ann conny in a holler.
Posum up a gum tree, coonny on a stump,
Den over dubble trubble, Zip coon will jump.
Then the chorus goes:
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden duden duden day.
O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day.
Does that chorus sound familiar?”
Sharice and I both nodded.
“That’s because it was the basis for Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah in Walt Disney’s adaptation of Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus tales, Song of the South.”
“So you’re saying that Song of the South was a racist film?” Sharice asked him.
He shrugged. “That word is so loaded and overused that it’s bent out of shape. Racism is a thread through all of human history. So are jealousy and treachery and a lot of other base emotions. We need to strike a balance between recognizing it and not being obsessed with it.”
I asked him how we can do that.
He smiled. “Da
mned if I know.”
Chapter 26
The first weeks of the semester had seemed more like September than January—warm days, cool nights, and high blue skies. The only hint of winter was the snow on the Sandias.
The whistling wind woke us before dawn, and we saw snow flying horizontally across the terrace. After I bundled up, I went down to the Bronco, started the engine, and turned on the heater. Then I locked the car and scooted up to the condo ASAP. It takes the old Bronco a long time to get warm, and I planned not to be in at while it was doing so.
Sharice chided me when I came back in. “It’s not good for the environment to leave an empty car running.”
“Me driving with frozen fingers is potentially even worse for the environment.”
She handed me a cup of hot coffee which I used to thaw my hands. We eventually figured out what to wear that would look right for a visit with Consuela and Emilio and also be warm. The Bronco was toasty as we drove down Central to the south valley.
“I remember the first time you took me to meet Consuela, you called her your ‘second mom’, and I asked if your dad had remarried after your mother died. Now that I know more about him, I can understand why you laughed at the question.”
“I can’t imagine him ever having eyes for another woman. But the Floss Man enigma has me questioning everything.”
She put her left hand gently on my right thigh. ”Do you want to continue to help Whit and Charles figure it out, or would it be better if you just let it go? After all, your life is not different just because someone you never knew died and was tied to you genetically.”
“You’re right. I remember when we came down here last year for Consuela and Emilio’s big Cinco de Mayo celebration and you had to play the part of the French general who was defeated by the Mexicans.”
“Because I speak French.”
“Right. But that doesn’t make you French any more than my speaking Spanish makes me Mexican. Or Argentinian.”
“Or Nicaraguan,” she threw in. And we ran through all the countries we could think of where Spanish is widely spoken ending with my mention of The Philippines.
The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing Page 14