Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  “I think the process is pretty standard across universities,” Ryan said. “There’s a lot riding on a tenure decision.”

  “You’re right, of course, Detective. Essentially, it’s lifetime employment. As you can imagine, the process is spelled out in considerable detail in a number of different documents. When a candidate is denied tenure—which is relatively uncommon—he or she has a right of appeal. That appeal can be based on substance—the university says the candidate’s work is sub-standard; the candidate disagrees—or on a violation of due process.”

  “That you didn’t follow your own rules,” Ryan said.

  “Exactly—” Van Vleet said.

  “What went wrong with Suzannah’s case?” I wanted to move things along.

  “It was a minor technicality, really. She submitted her portfolio to the department committee a couple of days late.”

  “And that got whose nose out of joint?” I said.

  “It was another member of the department, a guy named Mitch Abrams.”

  I glanced over at Ryan to make sure he was writing the name down in his notebook. “What was it to Abrams?”

  “Abrams also came up for tenure that year. He didn’t get it.”

  “I don’t understand the relationship.”

  “A lot of us didn’t understand the relationship. We still don’t. But what it came down to was that, a couple of months later, when the tenure decisions were announced, and Suzannah got it but Abrams didn’t, he complained to the provost that the system had been compromised because Suzannah’s portfolio was late but she got tenure anyway.”

  “I still don’t get it. Was Abrams saying she got the job he should’ve gotten?”

  “No,” Van Vleet said. “That would have made too much sense. In fact, there’s no quota on tenure. They both could have gotten it.”

  “So what was his beef?”

  “His beef was that if the university bent the rules for Suzannah, they should have bent the rules for him, too.”

  “What kind of rules did he want them to bend? Were his papers a couple days late, like hers?”

  “No, he demanded a complete do-over, with new committees at every stage. He argued that the process was tainted. He said the university violated its own due process because she got more time than he did.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “The chair went to bat for Suzannah. Said it was her own fault. The delay, I mean.”

  “And the university accepted that?”

  “That’s right. It was the chair’s first year in that position. Mistakes happen. The university decided that the technical violation of its procedures in Suzannah’s case did not justify Abrams’ demand that his case be re-heard.”

  “End of story?”

  “Not exactly. The university has its own appeal procedure in place, so Abrams brought his case to the appeals board, but they sided with the university. They decided that since there was no violation of due process in Abrams’ own case, the fact that there was an irregularity with Suzannah’s case was regrettable but not relevant.”

  “Okay,” I said. “A nuisance, but no big deal, right?”

  “Abrams didn’t go quietly. He went to the Chronicle—”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s the trade paper for college teachers. A national paper. They wrote it up. Made us look kind of unprofessional. Then, the next year, Abrams did a lousy job teaching—”

  “The next year? He wasn’t fired?”

  “After you’re denied tenure, you get one more year before you go.”

  “Really?” When I got fired last year, I had till five pm that day.

  “Yeah, he sabotaged his classes in every way he could. He was in the student newspaper every other week, writing editorials about how corrupt we were.”

  “The administration let him do that?”

  Van Vleet smiled. “The newspaper’s run by students.”

  “What’s the name of the chair at that time?”

  “Frances Hamblin.”

  “We’ve met her,” I said. “She’s the Melville scholar, right?”

  “That’s right. She was new at the job. She didn’t want to ruin Suzannah’s career, get her fired. Frances understands that we’re a family here. Those of us who’ve been here years and years, people like myself and Frances, we build our lives around this department and the fellowship we find within this community. We live here, grow old here, fight and make up, transgress and forgive. It was a bump in the road. That was all it was.”

  I turned to Ryan. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask Professor Van Vleet?”

  Ryan shook his head. “No.”

  “We want to thank you very much for talking with us. I know this is a very difficult subject—and you have to forgive us as outsiders—but we appreciate you helping us understand what’s going on.” The three of us stood up. “We’ll be back in touch if we need to talk some more.”

  “My pleasure, Detectives. Good luck with the investigation,” Van Vleet said, with a smile, quite pleased with his successful lecture on sexual politics and the tenure system.

  Chapter 22

  I looked at the clock on the dashboard in the Charger: 3:47. “Think there’s anything there?”

  “About the business of missing the deadline on her tenure application?”

  “Yeah, that and Austin giving money to the cerebral-palsy group.”

  Ryan was shifting his cane so he could buckle his seatbelt. “From the stuff my father used to talk about, half the faculty used to miss every deadline. It was a point of pride: you know, their minds were on loftier things. So that was no big deal.”

  “How about sleeping with students?”

  “Like Van Vleet said, I think that’s been going on since there’ve been women in colleges.”

  “And the cerebral-palsy stuff?”

  “That could be a coincidence,” Ryan said. “All we know about Austin’s background is what Suzannah told us: father walked out, mother died of cancer. He could have brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles. There could be cerebral palsy in his family.”

  “Suzannah Montgomery is home now, right, taking care of her kid?”

  “Unless his seizure was so bad she took him to a doctor or the ER.”

  “Call the secretary in English, would you? Get her address.”

  Ryan took his notebook and phone out of his jacket pocket. He punched in the number and got the information. “You want to interview her now? She’s probably pretty upset about her kid.”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s a shitty time. But we don’t have any other leads to run down, and it’s too soon to head back to headquarters and tell the chief we’re out of ideas. Besides, if she’s wrung out, it might be harder for her to lie to us.” I looked at Ryan. He wasn’t really buying it. “We’ll see she didn’t have anything to do with killing Austin, and we’ll scratch her off our list, okay?”

  He nodded, but he wasn’t happy.

  “You know where it is?” I said.

  “It’s up on the Bench: 4204 Table Rock.”

  I started the Charger and pulled out of the lot slowly. I headed back toward town, then up Larchmont toward Table Rock. “Here’s what I want to do. We’ll tell her the secretary mentioned she went home because of the kid. That’ll give us an opening to talk about the cerebral palsy. I want to hear how she responds when we tell her we know Austin was donating to the charity.”

  I looked over at Ryan. He was looking out his side window. Giving me the silent treatment was about as close as he came to telling me off. I was okay with it.

  We were crawling along in a row of cars doing five miles slower than the limit. Even though the Charger was unmarked, I could tell that the cars around us made us as cops. The big spot light next to my rear-view mirror will do that.

  We turned onto Table Rock, winding all the way up, catching glimpses of the city between trees and houses. Up at the end of the cul-de-sac, the houses sat on one-acre plots that looked down o
n the heart of town. We pulled onto the long, curving driveway, big cement squares with a rippled pattern built-in and bordered by brick. There was no grass out front, just these big river rocks in various shades of greys and tans, interspersed with tufts of tall plains grasses. The house itself was U-shaped, with a four-foot-tall stone and brick wall enclosing the courtyard to make a rectangle. Inside the courtyard I could see high-end outdoor furniture with soft cushions around a fire pit, and, next to the house, a long brick barbeque with an outdoor kitchen next to it. My house would have fit inside the courtyard.

  We parked in front of the three-car garage and walked up to the front door. There was something unusual about the front door but I couldn’t place it.

  Ryan sensed what I was thinking. “No front steps,” Ryan said. “Wheelchair.” He was talking to me again.

  I rang the doorbell. A couple of moments later, Suzannah Montgomery opened the door. She looked like me after I’d had an episode with my own son: wrung-out and weary, a toxic brew of guilt, anger, and regret. The bags under her eyes were puffy, and her eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Professor Montgomery, Detectives Seagate and Miner? We talked to you for a couple minutes yesterday, at the grad student’s defense?”

  It took her a few seconds to place us. “Yes, I remember,” she said, her hand still on the doorknob. “Do you need to talk to me?” She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, no socks or shoes. But she did have all the silver bracelets and necklaces on.

  “I know this is a bad time, Professor, but I’m afraid we do need a couple of minutes.”

  “Sure,” she said, stepping back to invite us in. We stood in the marble-floored foyer, looking straight through the house to the wall of windows, then a wide deck overlooking the city. Suzannah Montgomery led us into a living room off to the left. It had a tan low-napped carpet, like you see in stores, made so it didn’t slow down wheelchairs. A wine-colored leather couch and matching armchairs were arrayed around a fireplace bordered in river rocks. She gestured for us to sit.

  “We’re real sorry to barge in on you like this. The secretary in the department told us you had to come home because your son was having problems.”

  She rubbed her eyes. “He has seizures. This one was pretty bad. His father took him to the hospital.” She put her hands on her hips, like she wanted me to get to whatever bad shit I wanted to deliver.

  “Is he all right?”

  “He didn’t injure himself, if that’s what you mean.” She shook her head. “But no, I don’t think you could say he’s all right. He gets so frightened.” She pressed two fingers to the corners of her eyes to keep from crying. “This one will take him days to get over.”

  “I can only imagine,” I said. “Does he stay at home during the day?”

  “No, he goes to a special school. They called my husband. He works here at home.”

  On the mantelpiece was a framed photo of her and her husband with the boy and his older sister. “Can I look at your photo?”

  “Of course,” she said, forcing a small smile. Her jewelry jangled as she waved toward the mantelpiece.

  I stood up and walked over to the photo. “Oh, he’s such a beautiful little boy,” I said. “Was he about, what, eight in this photo?”

  “No, that’s a recent photo. He’s twelve. But he’s very small.”

  She sat on one of the leather arm chairs. I could see she was exhausted, but she didn’t want to sit down in the chair, which would signal we could stay longer.

  I walked back to the couch and sat down. “As you know, Professor, we’re trying to learn everything we can about Austin Sulenka. Because you were his adviser, we assume you knew him better than most of the other faculty members did.”

  “Working on a thesis with the student will necessarily bring the faculty member and the student together. Either that,” she said, tilting her head, “or drive them completely apart.”

  “How was that going? I mean, his thesis.”

  “I’ve done enough of them to know that you can’t really say. The student can be slogging along, making very little progress, and you’re absolutely certain it’s not going to work—at least, that it won’t be ready to defend in time for graduation. Then, all of a sudden, the student makes some sort of breakthrough—finally understands what you’ve been trying to tell him for months and months, starts to buckle down, whatever—and then he knocks out one chapter after another and finishes in time, and it’s first-rate work.”

  “Was Austin going to finish in time for graduation?”

  She shook her head and put on a pained expression. “Like I said, I can’t say for sure that he wouldn’t have finished, but he hadn’t yet made that breakthrough. And as you saw yesterday, with Melissa, other students are already defending.”

  “Professor, do you know that Austin Sulenka donated over seven-hundred dollars over the last year to United Cerebral Palsy?”

  Her head pulled back, almost imperceptibly. “What? No,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

  I looked at her. Her eyes darted out toward the glass wall overlooking the deck, then back to me. I waited for a count of five.

  “That’s very odd,” she said.

  “We thought so, too,” I said.

  “Perhaps he had a family member with the disease?”

  I let her comment hang there. “Has Austin ever been here, in this house?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Several times. Last few years, we’ve held the Fall department get-together here. He does attend them.”

  “Did he ever meet your son?”

  She furrowed her brow. “You know, I’m not sure. He might have.” She nodded her head. “I think Adam was here once or twice during those get-togethers, so it’s possible they did meet.”

  “He might have seen this photo,” I said, pointing to the fireplace.

  “We have many photos of Adam around the house.”

  “Do you talk with your students about Adam?”

  “Not as a rule, no. I mean, I don’t ever mention Adam or cerebral palsy in my teaching. But in small groups, I’m sure I have mentioned it. As you said, the secretaries know why I had to leave campus this afternoon.”

  “Do you think Austin’s donations to United Cerebral Palsy might have had something to do with Adam?”

  Suzannah Montgomery exhaled and put her hands out. “He never mentioned anything like that to me. I can say that for sure.”

  I waited a few beats. “Do you think Austin might have had—I don’t know—some kind of crush on you?”

  “I really don’t think so, Detective.” She scratched at her neck with her long fingernails, then smiled. “I mean, look at me. I’m forty-eight. Most days, I look fifty-eight. I’m married, two children, one with special needs. I don’t see myself as someone who would attract any man, certainly not a young man.” She shifted her weight on the chair.

  I paused. “It just seems so curious, the donations to United Cerebral Palsy.”

  She shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t explain that.”

  “Did you know he sold his plasma and his sperm?”

  “No.” Suzannah Montgomery frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s no grad students in English with cerebral palsy that you know of?”

  I caught a glint of anger in her eyes, just for a second. “Not that I know of.”

  “Professor Montgomery, were you having an affair with Austin Sulenka?”

  Her face turned red, and her eyes were blazing. “How dare you even ask me such a question?”

  “It’s just a question, Professor.” My eyebrows went up. “You can give me a yes or no. You were or you weren’t.”

  She stood and walked toward me, her finger pointing like a pistol. “Detective, I am married to a very attractive man who looks ten years younger than me. Every woman in Rawlings who is under sixty and wants to save the salmon thinks that the best way to do that would be to sleep with him. I have a fourteen-year-old daughter who thinks I’m a royal bitch beca
use I won’t let her wear a tank-top to middle school. And I have a twelve-year-old boy who weighs forty-eight pounds, has the mind of a five-year-old, and wears diapers. Who this afternoon had a seizure that lasted almost three minutes, that terrified him so badly that he was crying hysterically for over an hour—and who for the next week will not sleep through the night without waking up screaming. And you want to know if I was having an affair with a graduate student? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Is that a no?”

  “I will contact your supervisor tomorrow. In the meantime, you can go to hell. Start by getting out of my house. Now.” She strode out of the living room, toward what I assume was her bedroom.

  I turned to Ryan. “You want to follow her and get her answer?”

  He stood and gave me a dirty look. Then he turned and started walking out of the living room, toward the front door.

  Back in the Charger, Ryan put his belt on with a little more force than necessary, then folded his hands in his lap and stared out the windshield.

  “What?” I said.

  He didn’t respond, didn’t look at me.

  “Listen, I know she’s had a shitty day. But I thought it would be useful to try to catch her off guard.”

  He turned to me. “What do you think we accomplished in there—besides angering a distraught woman?”

  “I wanted to follow the cerebral-palsy thing. Ten to one Austin was giving that money to the charity because of her.”

  “So what exactly does that prove?”

  “It doesn’t prove anything. But do you see a guy like Austin—a guy nailing multiple women on any given night—thinking that cerebral palsy is really a terrible disease, so he’ll let someone tap his arm couple times a week, and he’ll jerk off into a plastic cup so he has money to give to the charity—all because his thesis adviser has a kid with cerebral palsy?”