Rhapsody in Red

by Donn Taylor

  “I don’t see how I can help,” I said at length. “I’m neither a lawyer nor a detective.”

  “I visited Dr. Sheldon again last night,” she said, her voice now calm. “He told me a lot of things about you.”

  “He overrates me,” I said. “I just teach history.”

  “Not according to Dr. Sheldon.” Her blue gaze made me feel like a bug pinned to a display board. I wondered what label she’d hang on me.

  “You began graduate school at the state university,” she said, “but you got disgusted because some professors used their classes for political indoctrination. So when it came time to write your dissertation, you quit and joined the Army.”

  She had it almost right. Actually, I’d earned a commission through ROTC as an undergraduate. The Army had approved my request for active duty.

  “Dr. Sheldon acted skittish about what kind of military work you did, so I assume it was classified. But apparently the Army didn’t meet your standards either, so you resigned your commission and went back to graduate school.”

  “I didn’t resign. My category—my term of service—expired and I didn’t renew it.”

  “You put together a supervising committee of older, nonpoliticized professors and wrote your dissertation on something in the Renaissance that was hard to get political about.”

  “It was then. It isn’t now. Some people say everything is political.”

  “You had trouble finding a job at a first-line university because of your military service.”

  “We don’t know why I lost out. Other people may have been better qualified.” I felt more and more like that bug.

  “Dr. Sheldon says your selection committee here deadlocked because of the military angle, but as department chair he hired you anyway.”

  “I was grateful to get a job. Any job.”

  She sighed. “I had the same kind of trouble getting a job. That’s why I need so desperately to keep this one.” She cleared her throat and went on. “He says you were a crusader from day one. You went after the national blame-America-first crowd with that essay, ‘A Critique of Cold War Revisionism,’ exposing basic errors in the revisionists’ methods. That was before the Cold War ended. When the Soviet archives were opened, they proved you right on every point.”

  I shrugged. “‘. . . but that was in another country; / And besides, the wench—’”

  Her eyes flashed blue fire. ”Don’t you dare quote Marlowe to me again. That wench is not dead. She’s only asleep, and you need to jolt her awake. You’ve led two faculty movements here. The first voted down the administration’s move to throw out the traditional core of required courses and make almost every course elective. The second was the move to drop chemistry from the nursing curriculum.”

  “You’re wrong about that wench. She’s completely and finally dead, with a wooden stake driven through her heart.”

  “Doctor Sheldon says you became persona non grata with the administration. Between that and the shock of your wife’s death, you’ve let yourself degenerate into a recluse and a cynic.”

  “Guilty on both counts. I like it that way.”

  Her hands tightened into fists. She seemed close to tears. “You need to come out of your shell and do something constructive. And I need help before I lose my job and get put in jail.”

  As if being pinned to a board wasn’t bad enough, now she was twisting the pin. But I let her down as gently as I could. “I’m sorry, Professor Thorn. As I said, I’m neither a lawyer nor a detective. I don’t have the qualifications to help you, much less the authority.”

  “All right, then.” She stood. If her blue gaze had scorched me before, it now became an acetylene torch. Her chin raised that telltale fraction of an inch. “I’ve done everything else by myself. I’ll just have to do this, too.”

  She showed commendable determination, yet a single tear trickled down her right cheek.

  After she’d gone, I sat for several minutes, half-stunned by the sheer force of her, while my internal music grumbled away with something too obscure to identify. She had a lot of things right, but there was one factor she’d failed to mention. On the two faculty votes I’d carried, I’d moved for secret ballots and Dr. Sheldon had seconded. With that shield of anonymity, faculty members could vote their conscience without fear of retribution, so Dr. Sheldon and I were the only ones with our necks bared to the guillotine. As I fell into disfavor with the administration, my faculty friends withdrew from me. I think they still respect me. But they do it silently and from a distance.

  I’m still angry about that. So now I just teach history.

  My emotional downer lasted only until my nine o’clock class, Theories of the American Revolution. That’s a senior seminar studying how successive generations have interpreted the same historical facts in different ways according to the circumstances of their own times. It always inspires me, and by the end of the period I was not only walking on clouds—I was walking on air above them.

  But not for long. Captain Clyde Staggart met me at my office door with his dogfaced detective in tow. Staggart was grinning and holding something behind his back. I’d heard that police procedures in Overton City were . . . uh . . . somewhat informal, but until now I’d had no occasion to gather empirical data on the subject. It looked like Staggart was about to fill that gap in my experience.

  I didn’t invite them in but they came anyway, taking the two chairs Professor Thorn and I had occupied earlier. I sat behind my desk, that being the most available signal that they’d invaded my territory.

  When they were well-settled and waiting, I said, “Come in.”

  Staggart laughed, the muscles of his bull neck bulging. “You always were a sarcastic one.” His hand still hid something on the side away from me.

  I asked, “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?” As long as we were being sarcastic, we might as well be trite.

  Staggart held up the thing he’d been hiding. It was a small book with a light blue cover. “What do I have in my hand?”

  I tented my fingers on the desk and said, “It appears to be a book. What’s the catch?”

  His grin broadened. “Its title is The Elizabethan Love Sonnet, and it’s by somebody named J. W. Lever.”

  My skin began to crawl but I held his gaze. “So?”

  He opened the book to show the inside of the front cover. “It has your name written in it in what I think is your handwriting.”

  I could recognize the book from where I sat. But to be sure, I got up and moved to where it should have been in my bookshelves. In its place there was an empty space. I pointed and said, “It should be right here. Where did you find it?”

  “In Laila Sloan’s office, this morning. Why did you give her a book of love sonnets?”

  “It’s not a book of love sonnets. It’s a book about love sonnets. I didn’t give it to her.”

  “So you say. Then how did it get there?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. And I don’t know how long it’s been missing. I haven’t looked at that book for years.”

  His grin changed to a frown. “And just what might a history teacher be doing with a poetry book in his office?”

  I sat down again behind my desk. “My specialty is history of ideas. That book explains that the sonnet forms themselves have meaning even before they’re filled out with words. It also says that one form illustrates sixteenth-century methods of thought and another one was better suited to the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century.”

  Staggart grimaced. “What kind of gobbledegook is that?”

  It was my turn to grin. “Take my course and I’ll teach you.”

  “All right, Big Brain.” His mocking grin returned. “How do you explain what we found on Professor Sloan’s computer?”

  He took a folded sheet of paper from the book and held it close enough for me to read it through the middle lens of my trifocals. My skin had crawled before, but now a hot brick settled in my stomach.

 
The paper contained a printed-out e-mail:

  Laila, my sweet, I can never get enough of you. Yes, I’ll keep this a secret, but when can we get together again?

  Fondly,

  Press

  The sending address was my university e-mail account. Anger blazed up in me until my temples throbbed. My words gritted out between clenched teeth. “I didn’t write that.”

  His grin became a leer. “Press, boy, you’re blushing.”

  I ground out more words. “I didn’t write it. If I ever do start writing love notes, I won’t use a computer. When did you say you found the book?”

  “This morning when we searched Sloan’s office again.”

  “How did you miss it when you searched Wednesday night? A book is a pretty obvious thing, even to a cop.”

  Staggart glowered at me. “The point is that we found it. That door has been locked and the office marked ‘off limits’ with yellow tape. Nothing was tampered with.”

  I met his gaze. “The fact remains that I didn’t write the note. There’s never been anything between Laila Sloan and me.”

  His leer broadened. “The note sounds like there wasn’t anything at all between you. Literally. Do you want to talk now or later?”

  My jaw ached from gritting my teeth. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  Staggart hurled his bulk out of the chair and leaned across my desk, the veins in his temples pulsing. “You’ll talk, Press, boy. You’ll tell me all about it at a place and time of my choosing.”

  He whirled with surprising speed for a man that big and made his exit, with Dogface trailing behind.

  I sat for a long time trying to cool down, my fingers drumming occasionally on my desk. That bogus note apparently made me the unnamed third party of Professor Thorn’s note. Instead of my being pleasantly outside the mess she’d described, this note dumped me right back into the middle of it. Beyond that, this Friday had brought me two disastrous meetings thus far, and it wasn’t yet noon.

  There was a whole afternoon left for things to go wrong.

  CHAPTER 7

  My spinning thoughts went nowhere.

  At noon I caught a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee in the campus grill. That hot brick seemed to have established residence in my stomach, but I needed to eat something before my afternoon class.

  I wanted to be alone, but the only open seat was at a table of faculty. Bob Harkins and Gifford Jessel—my fellow suspects—were there along with two members of the English faculty, one male and one female. Harkins waved his hamburger as an invitation for me to join them, and Jessel welcomed me with a nod and a grin. None of us said anything about the murder.

  The female, a composition specialist, showed us a student paper with one sentence circled in red: “The problem is not young people, it is our effluent society.”

  “He meant to say ‘affluent,’” she explained, in case we didn’t know the difference.

  “I don’t know,” Bob Harkins said. His eyes had a mischievous twinkle that made him look as young as a student. “‘Effluent’ is sewage. Maybe he meant it as social criticism.”

  The composition teacher’s mouth hung open. “I never thought of that.”

  The male beside her said, “I thought you were complaining about the comma splice.”

  The female teacher objected, and they argued over the relative merits of “content” and “mechanical correctness.” You might say it was a typical faculty lunch.

  My Western Civ class went well—good student interest, good questions—and by the end of it that hot brick had absented itself from my stomach. But not for long. A student met me at the door and said I was wanted in the dean’s office. Like right now.

  When I got there, though, Dean-Dean was in conference behind a closed door. Mrs. Dunwiddie avoided eye contact, which was not a good sign. Presently, the door opened and two faculty members emerged. Close behind came Dean-Dean, who motioned me in.

  One half of his office is the archetype of disorder. His desk sits there, with a computer monitor perched on one corner and the miscellaneous scatter of a month’s papers covering the rest of it. Behind the desk is his swivel chair, and behind that stands a table with more scattered papers and a telephone.

  The other half of his office is an archetype of order. Above several hardwood chairs, the walls display framed photographs of fields and streams. Dean-Dean’s precisely labeled key rack graces the wall by the entry door.

  “Come in and close the door, Professor Barclay.” Dean-Dean’s head jerked about in the usual birdlike motions. “I must have had twenty people through here today, with seven more to come.”

  Dean-Dean likes to let everyone know he’s busy.

  He took a seat behind his desk. That, his use of my formal title, and the closed office door were storm signals for his authoritarian mode.

  My internal music swung into an awkward bassoon solo. No surprise there. I’ve wondered if I didn’t make a subconscious sound association of bassoon with buffoon. Maybe a psychiatrist could figure that out, but I’m not about to ask.

  Buffoon or not, though, faculty have to take Dean-Dean seriously. He may not be very bright, but neither is a rattlesnake.

  “Captain Staggart talked with me this morning,” he said, looking down at his desk. “He says he’s found evidence of a . . . uh . . . personal relationship between you and Professor Sloan.”

  I don’t mind his running along the ship’s deck to make the ship go faster, but this was different. On this run he seemed to carry a harpoon pointed at me. I thought it best to file a nonconcurrence.

  “There has never been anything personal between me and Laila Sloan.” I said it as bluntly as I could, deliberately omitting her title. I wasn’t going to promote her again, even posthumously. “I’ve spoken to her a few times on campus. That’s all.”

  “Captain Staggart says he found a love note.”

  “I have never sent her a note of any kind.”

  “The personal lives of our faculty greatly affect public opinion of our university.” Dean-Dean glanced at me and looked away again. “If evidence from this investigation leaks out, it could make trouble for us. We can’t afford to get a reputation for . . . for untoward conduct. We’re on the monthly budget of more than one hundred churches.”

  By now my temper was up. I knew it was a vain effort, because Dean-Dean always believes the first person he talks to, and it’s next to impossible to change his mind. But I tried anyway.

  “If you were worried about what the churches think, you shouldn’t have taken the crosses off the entries to the campus. You shouldn’t have hired a Wiccan on the religion faculty. And if you carry through with the coed dorms idea, you’ll stir up more untoward conduct than either one of us can imagine.”

  Dean-Dean flushed. “Those are matters for presidential decision. President Cantwell’s consultant recommended the coed dorms, and he said that flaunting the crosses would alienate students who might otherwise enroll. He said we need to create an environment of inclusiveness.”

  “Then President Cantwell should fire the consultant. You know the biblical text: ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’”

  “The president has made his decision about the crosses, and our enrollment is up. He thinks the coed dorms will make us even more attractive.”

  I wanted to ask, “Attractive to whom?” But I’d pushed as far as I could, so I took us back to the original subject. “Nevertheless, there’s never been anything between Laila Sloan and me.”

  Dean-Dean leaned forward. “Then how do you explain that e-mail? And how did that book get into her office?”

  I shrugged. “Staggart is the detective. Ask him.”

  “There is one other thing.” Dean-Dean clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. “Years ago, you gave us false information on your application for employment. Your military service: Captain Staggart says you were in Special Forces, but your application said it was Infantry.”

  I laughed. It was a forced laugh, but
it seemed appropriate. “The application was correct. My basic branch was Infantry. Special Ops was an additional qualification. I also completed a course in chemical warfare and fired expert with the rifle, but I didn’t list them, either. They weren’t pertinent.”

  Dean-Dean drummed his fingers, his usual ploy when he’s stumped. “Your application still raises questions. And Captain Staggart says you were active in that . . . that nastiness in Nicaragua in the eighties. He also said you had some kind of trouble in the Army. If all that had been known, you’d never have been hired here.”

  “The Army trouble wasn’t my trouble.” I didn’t want to get into that, and I certainly didn’t want to rehash a dead issue in Latin American politics. That got settled in 1990 when the Nicaraguans voted out the Communists.

  “What I’m telling you,” Dean-Dean said, his hands again clasped on his desk, “is that you’re skating on thin ice as far as this administration is concerned.”

  The telephone rang. Without so much as a “Pardon me,” he swiveled his chair around to answer it.

  “Mind if I stretch?” I said to his back.

  “Go ahead,” he muttered. He picked up the phone and launched into a heated conversation about something or other, his free hand gesturing for emphasis.

  I stood and stretched, my mind whirling again from the impact of the three disastrous interviews that day. Staggart might, as Sergeant Spencer said, want to pin the murder on me. But the printed e-mail he’d shown me proved nothing, even though it appeared to confirm the one involving Professor Thorn. Staggart hadn’t arrested me, so his purpose still had to be harassment rather than anything concrete.

  On the other hand, he’d told Dean-Dean things about the investigation that he shouldn’t have, and his skewed version of my Army service was clearly intended to poison the dean’s mind. Staggart’s minimum objective, then, was to get me fired. That didn’t surprise me.