Teacher's Threat

by Diane Vallere

  “Professor Gallagher?” I asked.

  He shook his head in disgust. “A professor thinks he can threaten me to change how I approach life. I take inspiration where I can find it.” He gestured to the air with his fingertips up, as if summoning his muse on the spot. “Sometimes inspiration comes from a song or a piece of poetry. And sometimes it comes from a blond coed.”

  “You’re the one who tampered with Professor Gallagher’s car,” I accused. I matched Ansel’s conversational tone and said it in a voice far calmer than I felt.

  He smiled. “It is amazing what one can get away with when one dresses in costume. A professor with car trouble gets noticed. A mechanic working on that same car flies under the radar.”

  “But he died,” I said. “You killed him.”

  “He wanted to kill my spirit. He threatened to go to the board of directors and report my relations with those girls. He left me no choice.”

  Competing warnings and questions made it difficult for me to think clearly. Ansel was off somewhere else, temporarily, and despite my not being his type, the danger of being alone with him in the parking structure at the end of the day was palpable.

  I opened my mouth to speak and silently hoped my voice wouldn’t shake when I did. “Thank you again, Ansel. Break a leg at opening night.”

  I gave him the full wattage of my smile. His smile faltered momentarily and then returned. He patted the back of my hand with his left hand and then released me. I climbed into the truck. Ansel closed my door behind me. I slammed the locks. He disappeared around the back of the truck.

  An acrid smell irritated my nose. I pinched it closed. My eyes watered. I’d roll down the window as soon as I was away from him. The smart move was to get to a public place and call campus police or Tex or 911. Every one of Tex’s warnings played through my head.

  I put the key into the ignition. The floor mat was flipped up, and as I reached down to put it back into place, I noticed something odd. A small round hole in the floorboards. I ran my fingertips over the opening and felt the edges of a plastic tube.

  It was how Professor Gallagher had died. The exhaust had been diverted into the cabin of the car. Ansel Benedict was the murderer. I had my proof, but I was trapped.

  I dumped my backpack onto the passenger seat and grabbed my phone. The smart call would be to 911. I called Tex instead. “It’s Madison,” I said. “The killer is Ansel Benedict. He sabotaged the truck, and I’m trapped in the parking structure with him. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.” I felt tears streaming down my face. “I love you too.”

  36

  Starting the engine felt like imminent death, but remaining inside the cabin with the windows up wasn’t smart either. Ansel walked away from my truck and climbed into the small black Mercedes. He started the engine, backed out of his space, and drove away.

  He was overconfident. I watched his taillights as he drove toward the lot exit. The ticket booth would be closed, but he would still have to wave his ID in front of the scanner to get the gate to retract. I looked at my phone and willed it to ring. It didn’t.

  I jumped out of the truck and went around back. The wad of striped rag from Ansel’s pocket was jammed into my tailpipe. I hadn’t started the car, so the pipe was still cool. I bent down and pulled it out then checked to make sure there were no other obstructions. I ran my fingers around the inside of the tailpipe, feeling for a drill hole. I felt nothing. He’d done something to the truck, but I didn’t know what.

  Anger boiled up within me. There might have been a heat flash in the mix; at this point, it was hard to tell.

  I climbed back into the truck and turned the key. I leaned across the passenger-side seat and opened the door. Fresh air filled the cabin. I left the doors open and backed the truck out of my space and then called 911. “There’s been an accident in parking structure B of Van Doren College. Right by the exit. I don’t know if anyone’s been hurt.”

  And then I put the truck in gear. I hit the gas. I accelerated until the truck rammed into the taillights of Ansel Benedict’s small black Mercedes.

  A moment after impact, the airbag deployed and blocked my view. It took a moment for my wits to return. I blinked a few times and shoved the door open, gasping for fresh air. I saw movement in the car in front of me. Ansel’s airbag must have deployed too, but unlike me, he seemed more concerned with restarting his car and driving away.

  I unhooked my seatbelt and fell from the truck to the pavement. The rag I’d pulled out of my tailpipe landed by my hand. Acting on autopilot, my fist closed around the wad, and I crawled to Ansel’s car. I jammed it into his tailpipe, burning my fingers. I leaned against the front bumper of my truck and put the sole of my shoe against the end of his tailpipe to keep the rag in place. All I wanted to do was keep the engine from starting until the police arrived.

  A campus police golf cart appeared on the drive and headed toward us. This was my cavalry? My chest heaved as I inhaled and exhaled the fresh nighttime air. A siren sounded in the distance and then another and another.

  That was more like it.

  “He confessed,” Tex told me.

  I sat in a red leather armchair of anonymous design provenance while he doctored the cuts along the bridge of my nose and left cheekbone. We were at Rexford Allen’s Hats and More. The class had long since left. After giving my statement first to campus police, second to Ling, and third to the insurance agency, I got checked out by a medic while arrangements were made to tow Mickey’s truck to police impound. I called the cab driver who had driven me home Saturday night and he shuttled me from the school to my store. It was a good thing my Alfa Romeo was ready to be picked up; I doubted Mickey would loan me his Mustang now.

  “Just like that,” I said.

  “Not exactly. A student came forward and leveled accusations against him. Sounded like a Harvey Weinstein sort of thing. She found out she was pregnant and confided in Gallagher. When he was murdered, she got scared. She thought if she talked, he’d kill her too.”

  “Faye,” I correctly guessed.

  Tex nodded. “She didn’t know about Gallagher’s vasectomy, so when she found out she was pregnant, she chose to pass it off as his.”

  “If you release the findings of the autopsy, her secret will become public.”

  “My goal is to convict a killer, not drag a victim through the mud. I’ll see what I can do.”

  He added to the story. The assault took place in Gallagher’s office when Faye first went to see Gallagher during office hours. She confided in him, and he confronted Benedict—though not for the reasons you’d think.

  “Faye said there were others. I’ll set up an interview station at the campus to try to get statements.”

  I thought about how Faye was afraid to tell her family about what happened, but had confided in me. “When you did that deep dive into Gallagher’s past, you said there were accusations of this sort of thing against him at the last school where he taught.”

  “Right. Gallagher wasn’t thrilled about Ansel using his office for the same thing that got him canned. If someone made noise, Gallagher would make a convenient scapegoat. Benedict laid back and observed Gallagher long enough to see he was talking to Faye. He also saw the ongoing vandalism that Eric and his friend perpetuated on Gallagher’s car.”

  “So the vandalism and the tailpipe weren’t connected,” I said. “But Benedict wanted it to look like they were.”

  Tex nodded. “Your car gave us a big clue. The dean was with me the whole time, so it couldn’t have been him.”

  “But the manuscript pages, what was that about?”

  “Credibility. With Gallagher gone, Dean wanted to pass off the ideas as his own.”

  “You can always deputize me if you need some help.”

  “Not a chance, Night.” He put a butterfly Band-Aid across a cut on my forehead and then, in an uncharacteristic display of affection, leaned down and kissed it gently. He didn’t lecture me or deny I’d made a difference in
the outcome of the case because he couldn’t. We worked well together, despite all the reasons we shouldn’t. I’d learned to go with the flow.

  I spent the next several days getting ready for the weekend sale. Tex blew his cover in a meeting with Hugo, which had the added side effect of getting me credit for the entire Rexford Allen store. Not that it mattered, since I’d already decided to leave the MBA program. I staffed the pop-up with students from my Radical Business Strategy course, offering them either $20 per hour in cash or $30 per hour toward start-up capital for their own businesses. Only one took the cash.

  The sale, as I expected, was a rousing success. We drew a local crowd from our last-minute newspaper and radio ads, and Bill’s Western Warehouse sent clients our way too. Employee of the Month went to the small gray cat Joanie and I had rescued who was on the road to recovery. She knocked over a pair of cowboy boots, which initiated a domino-like chain reaction. The pair on the end landed at the feet of the owner of Southfork Ranch, who bought the whole lot. By the end of the day, we named the cat Calamity.

  I made enough for the down payment on the building next to Thelma Johnson’s house. Mad for Mod was officially expanding to a second location. In the first fifteen minutes of a class on radical business strategy, I’d come up with the business plan that I put into motion today.

  When the story broke about Ansel Benedict’s role in William Gallagher’s death, a slew of people came forward with stories about both men. Hugo joined the fray, claiming he and Gallagher had discussed co-writing a follow-up to Rad Rage called Fury Road, but out of respect for his colleague, he chose to abandon the project. Whether true or not, we’d never know since Gallagher wasn’t around to contradict him.

  Two weeks later, I received a piece of mail that tied the whole experience up with a neat bow. It was an official package from Van Doren College. I set the rest of the mail on the kitchen table and went to my newly renovated sitting room. Tex and Mickey had loaded in a blue tweed sofa, and, sticking with the astronaut theme, I downloaded and framed an image of Earth from NASA’s archives taken by John Glenn on his Mercury Mission. A plush, ivory rug contrasted nicely with the warm pine walls and the sofa, and a table lamp with globe lights provided a second bright counterpoint.

  I put Doris Day’s Day by Night album on the turntable and opened the package. Inside was a letter that said, based on a review of my business skills and ties to the Dallas community, I’d been nominated to receive an honorary MBA. The board of the college had approved the nomination. Since the timing of the approval did not line up with a regular graduation schedule, my diploma was included in the package.

  I slid a leather-bound folio out of the padded envelope and opened it. A yellow Post-It had been stuck to a sheet of clear plastic that protected the official document, and on the Post-It was this message:

  This one requires a thank you. – Nasty

  I ran my fingers over the embossed text on the diploma. I might not look good on paper, but my name sure did.

  Want more Madison? Preorder The Kill of it All, Madison Night Mystery #9, coming February 2022!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to the readers of the Madison Night Mysteries! I’m constantly delighted that a quirky mid-life amateur sleuth who wears clothes from the mid-century found her audience. A special thank you to the subscribers of the Weekly DiVa, especially those who volunteered to be dead people. Your responses made my day. Chosen for this book are Tootie Morgan, Gwendolyn Yeary, Tony Yanuzzi, and Moira Graham. Never fear, though, I’ll need a fresh crop of volunteers for the next book!

  Thank you to the Polyester Posse for your ongoing support, and to Amy Ross Jolly for your early thoughts on this manuscript. To my writing group: Ellen Byron, Lisa Matthews, and Gigi Pandian: your brainstorming and support is invaluable!

  There’s an oddball cast that inspires each Madison Night Mystery, (thought they often have no idea Madison Night exists), and Teacher’s Threat was no exception. Thank you to the following people who inspired elements of Madison’s business school experience: Scott Galloway, Adam Grant, and Mr. Wonderful.

  And, of course, no Madison Night Mystery would exist without the magic of Doris Day. Thank you for your spirit, joy, and determination.

  About the Author

  National bestselling author Diane Vallere writes funny and fashionable character-based mysteries. After two decades working for a top luxury retailer, she traded fashion accessories for accessories to murder. A past president of Sisters in Crime, Diane started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since. Subscribe to the Weekly DiVa, to get girl talk, book talk, and life talk, at www.dianevallere.com/weekly-diva.

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