by Bill Crider
“Do you think that’s why he was killed?” Sally asked.
“It could be, but you’re forgetting something. Fieldstone might be right.”
“About what?”
“This murder might not have anything to do with the college. Bostic must have had enemies all over town, given the kind of person he was. What if one of them killed him?”
“I suppose we’ll have to find out about his personal life, too,” Sally said.
She was getting discouraged already. She wasn’t a trained investigator. She didn’t know anything about police techniques. Why couldn’t Weems just do his job?
Maybe he would, she thought. Maybe she and Jack were overreacting. That was easy for her to think, though. She wasn’t the one who’d been accused of murder.
But why did she feel so loyal to Jack? How did she know that he hadn’t done the killing himself? Maybe she was guilty of letting her emotions get in the way of her logic. After all, Jack had asked her out, and she had accepted his invitation. She hadn’t dated many men since the death of her husband six years earlier, so there was clearly something about Jack that she found attractive. Not in the same way that she found Jorge attractive, she had to admit, but then Jorge hadn’t asked her out.
Sally shook her head. She was letting her mind wander, getting off the topic, the same thing she had accused Jack of doing.
“Do we know anyone who could tell us about Bostic?” she asked.
Jack’s eyes moved in the same direction that Sally’s did, toward Naylor’s outer office.
“Wynona,” they both said together.
Wynona didn’t see them coming because she was concentrating on a crossword puzzle. She put it down hurriedly when Jack tapped on the door frame.
“I was just taking a little break,” she said. “I get a ten-minute break every afternoon. It’s part of the job description. You can look it up.”
“Don’t mind us,” Sally said. “Enjoy your break. Is the dean in?”
“No,” Wynona said. “He’s out.”
Sally knew very well that Naylor was out. Otherwise, Wynona wouldn’t have been working on the puzzle, break or no break, even though it was Friday afternoon and no one else was around. Sally, however, knew better than to say anything like that to Wynona.
“I’m sorry we missed him,” Sally said. “We wanted to talk to him about Ralph Bostic.”
Wynona was instantly alert.
“What about Ralph Bostic?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing much. It wasn’t about college business. I was just wondering about Bostic’s personal life. You know, because of the murder. But I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.”
She was pretty sure that Wynona did know about Bostic’s personal life. He was a member of the board, and Wynona would have made it her business to find out about him. Because Sally didn’t have anything to trade this time, she was hoping to appeal to Wynona’s vanity.
It worked.
“You’d probably be surprised at some of the things I know,” Wynona said.
“I’m sure I would,” Sally said. “This doesn’t really concern the college, though.”
“I’ve lived in Hughes for more than fort—well, a long time,” Wynona said, catching herself just before she revealed her age. “It’s a small town, and you know how people in a small town can talk. They don’t spend much of their time talking about the college, believe me. There are a lot of other things going on around here.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Ralph Bostic’s love life, for one thing.”
“That sounds interesting,” Sally said, giving Jack a glance to see if he was taking it all in. He gave her a slight nod to let her know he wasn’t missing anything. “What about it?”
“I’m sure you know he was having an affair with one of our faculty members.”
Sally tried not to look surprised, but the truth was that she hadn’t either, or he would have told her. Not knowing might not bother him, though, since the affair was certain to have been conducted discreetly off campus. Still, it was something Troy would usually have known about.
Jack wasn’t quite as cool as Sally. He said, “Who on earth?”
Wynona waggled a finger at him and smiled redly. Sally wondered where the secretary found lipstick of that peculiarly bright shade.
“That would be telling too much,” Wynona said. “I have to keep some things secret.”
“No you don’t,” Jack said.
“You’re keeping secrets from me,” Wynona told him. “You haven’t mentioned a thing about your trip to the jail this morning.”
Sally nudged Jack with her elbow, and he said, “What would you like to know?”
“All about it,” Wynona said.
Jack gave her the short version and finished by saying, “I have to prove I’m not guilty, and that’s why we have to find out about Bostic. Right now I’m the only suspect.”
“I know,” Wynona said. “Dr. Good told me.”
“Then you know why I need all the information I can get,” Jack said. “Now tell us who Bostic’s having an affair with.”
Wynona thought about it for a while, and Sally wondered if she should correct Jack’s grammar. Probably not. He was upset enough already, and he probably would have phrased things differently, given the time to think about it.
Wynona finally said, “Mae Wilkins.”
“Oh my God,” Sally said before she could catch herself.
Mae was one of the instructors in the English department. She was the Hughes College version of Martha Stewart, always immaculate, every hair in place. Her office was a miracle of order, with all her syllabi neatly squared away in wall shelves, the books arranged in alphabetical order by author or editor, and there were fresh flowers on Mae’s desk every day. She sold Mary Kay cosmetics on the side and apparently did very well at it, as she drove a pink Cadillac.
Wynona leaned back, grinning in satisfaction at the surprise on Sally and Jack’s faces.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” Wynona said. “Ralph Bostic always looked like he’d been changing spark plugs with his bare hands, and his pants looked like he’d been using them to clean dipsticks. It’s hard to imagine what Mae saw in him.”
Sally still couldn’t quite believe it.
“Are you sure it’s true?” she said.
Wynona looked hurt. She stuck out her lower lip and pretended to pout, a look that didn’t really suit her.
“I’m sorry,” Sally said. “I know you wouldn’t tell me anything that wasn’t true. But May and Ralph Bostic? Opposites attract, I suppose.”
“You got me,” Wynona said. “I like cowboys, myself.”
Sally didn’t want to get into what Wynona liked. She was afraid she might find out more than she wanted to know on that topic.
“Is there anything else you can tell us?”
“Well,” Wynona said, “there’s the rumor about the hot-car ring.”
This time it was Jack who couldn’t help exclaiming.
“Good grief! Was he stealing cars?”
“I wouldn’t know about that part of it,” Wynona said. “All I know is that some people think he was mixed up in getting stolen cars across the border to Mexico, where they were sold. I’d have thought you might know about that one, since some people on campus did.”
“Who?” Sally asked.
“President Fieldstone. He was going to use the information to get Bostic off the board.”
Sally didn’t have to ask the source of that story. It had to be Naylor.
“And of course Bostic was trying to keep the board from renewing Fieldstone’s contract.”
Sally and Jack had run out of things to say. They just looked at one another.
“That’s about all, I guess,” Wynona said. “I told you I knew things.”
“You weren’t kidding,” Sally said.
11
She certainly gave us plenty to think about,” Jack said as they walked back to Sally’s offic
e.
“Yes,” Sally said. “Too much. We’re out of our depth here, Jack. We need to call Weems.”
Jack followed Sally through the office door and plopped back down in the chair by her desk.
“I really wish you hadn’t said that,” he told her.
“You know I’m right about it. I can deal with hot love affairs. But hot-car rings? No thanks.”
“I didn’t think a pistol-packing woman like you would let a little thing like a hot-car ring bother you.”
“You know about the pistol?”
“Everybody knows about the pistol,” Jack said.
Sally was a little surprised, though she knew she shouldn’t have been. It was beginning to appear that there was no such thing as a secret in Hughes, Texas.
Not that she minded people knowing about the pistol. She wasn’t ashamed of it. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 36, the Ladysmith with a three-inch barrel and wood-grain grips. She kept it in a burgundy carrying case, which she felt was appropriate for a lady.
Sally had taken a concealed handgun course offered by the college, not because she’d read a book but because she was curious. And to her mild astonishment she had found out that she liked guns. She knew that wasn’t a politically correct thing to do, and it wasn’t as if she had become a militant supporter of the NRA. She wasn’t in the least afraid that the government was going to send a squad of jackbooted thugs to break into her house, shoot her full of holes with their automatic rifles, and pry her Ladysmith from her cold dead fingers. She simply liked guns, particularly pistols. She liked the way they were made, the way they fit her hand, the way she could take out her frustrations after a hard day by blasting away at the silhouettes on the targets at the school’s range.
Besides, she had discovered that she had a natural talent for shooting. She started out well, and she got even better. Even at that, however, she never felt an urge to go hunting or to use the pistol for anything other than target practice. If she had to, she supposed she might use it for self-defense, but the occasion to do that had never arisen. She thought that was just as well. She’d heard that some people were unable to pull the trigger when it came to shooting another human being, and she might well be one of them.
Anyway, it wasn’t as if she carried the pistol with her. She kept it in the lingerie drawer of her dresser, and when she took it to the shooting range, she put it in the trunk of her car. If that was “packing,” then she was guilty.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked Jack. “Shoot somebody? Somebody specific?”
Jack smiled. He had a nice smile, Sally thought. Sort of like one of those self-effacing movie stars from the old days, the kind of guy who probably couldn’t get a part in a movie now that brashness was all.
“I don’t want you to shoot anybody,” he said. “I just thought you could protect me from the hot-car ring if I had to confront any of the members.”
“I don’t think I’d be very good at that. That’s a job for the police.”
“I know. I guess I was just hoping that we could find some way to get me out of this mess.”
“What about an alibi?” Sally asked. “Did Weems ask you for one?”
“Of course,” Jack said. “But it wasn’t much help. When Bostic was killed, I was at home, reading. Alone.”
Sally didn’t read a lot of mystery novels, but she’d read enough to know that being at home alone wasn’t much of an alibi. In fact, it wasn’t any kind of an alibi at all.
“What about phone calls?” she asked. “Did you phone anyone? Did anyone phone you?”
“I don’t get a lot of calls,” Jack said. “I don’t make many, either.” He paused. “Wait a minute! I did get a call last night, from my mother. She always wants to know if I’m getting enough to eat.”
“My mother’s the same way,” Sally said, thinking that mothers were like that, even if their children were long grown and even a few pounds overweight. “What time did she call?”
“Too early,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Bostic was killed between nine and ten, or at least that’s the impression I got. I got the call around eight-thirty.”
“So much for that alibi,” Sally said.
“I could be wrong about the time of the call. I didn’t look at the clock. I could give my mother a ring and ask her about it.”
“Won’t she ask why?”
“Naturally. That’s okay, though. I just need to let her know about my problems before she sees them on TV or reads about them in the papers.”
“There shouldn’t be much in the papers yet. Weems probably won’t give out your name.”
“But he might. You never know what a guy like that will do. Besides, there’s probably some record of my little visit to the police station, official or not. Some reporter will sniff it out if it’s there, and my mother reads the papers from front to back every day. If my name’s in there, she’ll find it.”
“Will she be worried about you?”
“Isn’t that what mothers do? Worry?”
“Most of them, probably. And with good reason in this case. So do you want to call Weems and tell him what we’ve found out, or should I?”
“Why don’t you do it,” Jack said. “He won’t listen to me. He’ll think I’m just trying to create confusion and cover up for myself. Which I guess is the truth, more or less.”
Sally picked up the phone and dialed. She got Weems fairly quickly after talking to only a couple of people at the police station, but she could tell he wasn’t happy to hear from her. He was even less happy when she told him what she wanted.
“Dr. Good,” he said, “you’re an intelligent person, what with your degrees and everything. You should know better than to interfere with a police investigation.”
“I’m not interfering,” Sally said. “I’m just offering you some information that might help you.”
“Let’s say I came in your classroom one day and started telling you how to teach Beowulf because I’ve read this new translation and might have some information that would help you. Would you call that interfering?”
Sally didn’t like the idea of anyone coming into her classroom to tell her how to teach, but she didn’t want to say so. She thought about Naylor taking over Jack’s classes and wondered if the dean would consider that interfering. Probably not, but Jack would, and with plenty of justification, to Sally’s way of thinking.
“Dr. Good?” Weems said. “You still there?”
“All right, you have a point,” Sally said.
“You’re damned right I do. And that’s how I feel when some public-spirited citizen such as yourself tries to tell me how to run an investigation. You and your boyfriend need to back off and let me do my job.”
Boyfriend? Sally thought, looking at Jack, who was staring at her bookshelves. Boyfriend?
“Dr. Good? Are you drifting off again?”
“No,” Sally said. “I’m right here. I won’t be bothering you anymore.”
“That’s the best news I’ve had all day,” Weems said.
Sally hung up the telephone and looked at Jack, who was smiling wryly.
“I told you so,” Jack said.
“You don’t have to remind me. What do you think about Bostic trying to have Fieldstone fired?”
“According to Wynona, Bostic was just trying to talk the board into not renewing the contract. That’s not the same thing as having someone fired. I’m sure Fieldstone’s contract has several years yet to run. He could find another job long before it expired, if he wanted to.”
“What if he didn’t want to? What if he wanted to hang on here at Hughes until he was ready to retire?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said.
“Did Fieldstone ever stop by your office to admire your homemade knife?”
“As a matter of fact, he did come by one day. He was on his way to a meeting.”
Fieldstone didn’t make it a habit to spend much time with the faculty. He always said that he believed in leaving them alo
ne to do their jobs, though he would occasionally visit their offices when he was passing through the building.
“Did he mention the knife?”
“Yes,” Jack said. “Or maybe I mentioned it. Somebody did. I told him about making it.”
“What about Mae Wilkins?”
“You’re kidding. You think she’d admire a knife?”
“I just wondered if she’d seen it.”
“As a matter of fact, she told me once how tacky she thought it was. You don’t think she killed Bostic with it, do you? I think that if she ever killed anyone, she’d use poison, not some tacky handmade knife. Besides, guns and knives are way too messy for her.”
“You’re right, I guess. I was just thinking, though, that everyone who’s mixed up with Bostic has seen that knife in your office.”
“You didn’t mention Hal Kaul. He saw it, too.”
“He was in this building?” Sally asked. Kaul left his office even less often than Fieldstone did.
“Meeting,” Jack said.
“Oh. Well, that just makes it tougher.”
“Makes what tougher?”
“Finding out who killed Bostic.”
“You mean we’re not turning it over to the cops?”
“We tried,” Sally said. “Weems wouldn’t listen. Remember?”
“I told you so.”
“Don’t start that again. No one likes a smart-aleck.”
“I’m not so smart. If I were smart, I wouldn’t be taking a paid vacation from my classes, starting next week.”
“Nobody who leaves a knife lying around on his desk is a genius, but you haven’t started that paid vacation yet.”
“I’ve learned an important lesson about knives,” Jack said.
“I certainly hope so,” Sally told him.
“Trust me. Now what about the paid vacation?”
“If you’re not going to take it, we’d better get busy.”
“So what do we do first?”
“That’s a good question,” Sally said, “and I don’t have an answer for it.”
“Neither do I.”