Three Dogs in a Row

by Neil S. Plakcy

  She began her career on Wall Street as a trainee analyst (read glorified secretary), then worked her way up to a brokerage position, starting her own hedge fund in the glory days of the 1980s. She cashed out when Wall Street was on a high and retired to her farm to train dogs and run a private investment firm.

  It was interesting that she and I shared two alma maters—I had my undergraduate degree from Eastern, and an MA in English from Columbia, though I was about twenty years younger than she was. I remembered how blasé she had been about her connection to Eastern when I met her at the art exhibition, and it made me wonder again why she was so involved with the college if she didn’t care about it.

  I realized that I should probably let President Babson know that Rita was dead, that there was at least a possibility that it was murder, and that one of our students might be a suspect. That was going to be a happy little meeting. But I bucked up and stood. “Hold the fort while I’m gone,” I said to Rochester. “Don’t bother to take any messages, though.”

  I walked down the narrow hallway, lined with old pen and ink drawings of the campus in the 1880s, and into the executive suite.

  “Do you think he’d have a minute for me?” I asked Babson’s secretary, an older woman named Bernadette Bridge. She had unnaturally red hair in a sprayed bouffant.

  “Mike MacCormac’s in with him,” she said. “I’ll buzz.”

  That was good. Since Mike was my boss, the director of alumni relations, I’d be able to kill two birds with one stone.

  Oops. Bad cliché.

  Bernadette hung up the phone and said, “You can go right in.”

  Babson was sitting behind his big oak desk when I walked in. He was a tall, rawboned man, with penetrating deep green eyes and dark, curly hair he styled with the greasy kid stuff I had abandoned when I reached puberty.

  The office was filled with all the trappings of his presidency. On the walls hung lots of Eastern memorabilia, including old football programs and pennants, interspersed with photos of him with prominent alumni. I recognized Rita Gaines in a photo of Babson with the board.

  Mike MacCormac was sitting across from Babson, in a spindle-backed chair with the Eastern logo. He typified the no-neck monster stereotype of college athletes. He was thick-set and muscular, with buzz-cut dark hair and a heavy five o’clock shadow, even early in the morning. At thirty-five, he was seven years younger than I was, shorter and stockier.

  “Come in, Steve, sit down.” Babson motioned me to the chair next to Mike.

  “I got a call from a friend of mine on the Stewart’s Crossing Police,” I said as I sat down. “Rita Gaines’s body was found at her farm this morning.”

  “Oh, my,” Mike said. “I spoke to her last week.” His face paled, and Babson’s mouth opened in an “O” of shock.

  “What a terrible loss,” Babson said. “She was a real supporter of Eastern. And she was on our Board of Trustees. Oh, my. We’ll have to put out a statement.”

  “The police don’t know the details yet. But there’s at least an outside possibility it was murder. I wanted you both to know as soon as possible.” I explained about meeting Rita at the art exhibit on Saturday night, and how I had witnessed her complaint about Felae’s painting.

  “I remember that,” Babson said. “I had to ask Dr. Weinstock to take the picture down, as a personal favor to me. When Rita got hold of something she was like a dog with a bone. She wouldn’t let go.”

  “Well, the student in question wasn’t happy,” I said. “He showed up at her farm on Sunday afternoon and threatened her.”

  “The police told you that?” Mike asked.

  “I was there. My friend on the police force has been training his dog out at the agility track on Rita’s farm, and he took me out there so Rochester and I could see the course. We were both there when Felae showed up.”

  Mike leaned forward. “You’re telling me that a police officer witnessed one of our students threaten a member of the Board of Trustees. And then someone murdered her?”

  I held up my hand in the universal gesture of stop. “We don’t know yet that it’s murder. The police don’t have a cause of death. All I know is that Rick called me a few minutes ago to ask for the student’s name and address.”

  “Who is he?” Babson asked.

  “All I gave out was his name-- Felae Popescu. I told Rick that only the registrar is authorized to release personal data on students. I think he grew up somewhere in Eastern Europe, but I don’t know if he came to the US with his parents, or on his own.”

  “This is a very tricky situation,” Babson said. “We have to cooperate with the police, and of course we want them to find out who killed Rita, if indeed this turns out to be a murder case. But at the same time we are in loco parentis for these students—especially a young man from a foreign country.”

  The doctrine of loco parentis meant that college administrators had a legal responsibility to look after the students in their care—and that we had to be especially careful in protecting Felae until he was formally arrested and the police took over his custody.

  “I’d better speak to Dot,” Babson said. He picked up his phone and punched in a number, then drummed his fingers on his desk as he waited for Dorothy Sneiss, the college registrar, to come on the line.

  “Dot?” Babson said into the phone. “What do you know about this student—Felix something? Yes, that’s it. You did?” He listened. “All right. Keep me informed if the police come back to you for anything else.”

  He hung up. “She provided the police with the address and phone number she had on file. If they want any information on his academic or disciplinary records, though, they’ll have to give us a subpoena.”

  Mike turned to me. “Can you ask this friend of yours to hold back the details of the investigation from the press? Until they know for sure if her death has any connection to the College?”

  “I can ask,” I said. “I don’t think Rick would release any details of an active investigation anyway.”

  Babson drummed his fingers on his desk again. “Keep an eye on things, will you, Steve? Let us know if her death ends up having anything to do with Eastern? We had enough bad publicity over Joe Dagorian’s death. And draft a statement for me—something about how much we appreciated Rita’s support and we express our condolences.”

  “I’ll get right on it.” The statement would be easy; it was going to be tougher to convince Rick Stempler to keep me in the loop on his investigation.

  5 – Schemes

  It was already noon when I left Babson’s office, so I detoured to the Cafette, an on-campus sandwich shop in an old carriage house behind Fields Hall. It was a worn, homey-looking place, decorated with Eastern pennants and faded T-shirts, with old wooden picnic tables and benches.

  I got extra roast beef on my sandwich so I could share with Rochester. The goofy dog jumped up to greet me as soon as I walked in the door. It was either love, or the smell of the meat. I called Rick and left a message for him, then I peeled open my sandwich. I was about to hand off a piece of meat to Rochester but I remembered what Rick had said. I had to eat my own meal before I fed the dog.

  I couldn’t hold out, though. After I’d taken a couple of bites I gave into his mournful look and fed him a piece of beef, which he wolfed down greedily. At least he didn’t like potato chips, so I had the whole bag to myself.

  When I finished eating, I took Rochester out for a quick pee, then returned to my desk to focus on Rita Gaines. I had developed a standard press release for the death of benefactors and emeritus faculty, and I plugged in what I could find about Rita’s background and her commitment to Eastern College, and how sad we all were about her death. By one-thirty I had a draft complete, which I emailed to Babson for his review. He emailed me back with the OK, and I sent out the statement to the local media.

  I looked at the clock and realized it was time to teach. I jumped up and tossed Rochester a treat, which he gulped immediately. “Stay out of trouble while I�
��m gone, big guy.”

  When I returned to Bucks County, Lucas Roosevelt, the chair of the English department, had done me a huge favor and hired me to teach a couple of classes. So when he had called me a few weeks before and asked for a favor in return, I felt I had to oblige. He was in trouble because one of his elderly adjuncts had passed away halfway through the semester, and he had to scramble to find someone to fill in for her.

  He asked me to take over her class in professional and technical writing. I’d already taught the class when I was adjuncting, and I had a strong background in tech writing anyway. Teaching made me feel involved in the real work of the college. But more than that, I enjoyed being in the classroom, and especially teaching tech writing. I focused on the concept of audience, and on how material could be presented in a bunch of different ways—in reports, flyers, presentations, and so on. I allowed the students to choose their subjects, so I got to learn about new things every time I taught, from drifting to heart disease to the nutritional requirements for school lunches.

  I walked across the campus to Blair Hall, mixing in with the restless tide of students moving between classes. I followed a bushy-haired kid whose T-shirt read “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m in the witness protection program.”

  Most of Blair Hall was dark and gloomy, with tall, gothic-arched windows and dusty fluorescent lights hung on pendants. The classrooms had rich wooden wainscoting and scuffed floors, and I had fond memories of seminars in the small rooms on the third floor, a professor and a handful of students discussing the meaning of life and literature.

  At least that’s the way I remember it. My classmates and I were probably as uncommunicative as today’s students, and our professors must have felt like brain surgeons, probing our heads for any spark of intelligence.

  My class met in a first-floor computer lab in an addition at the back of the building that hadn’t been there when I was a student. Tall windows looked out on a walkway between buildings, letting in a flood of spring sunshine. Computers lined the perimeter of the room. I walked up to the teaching podium and turned on the computer and projector.

  About twenty students either sat at the terminals or at a couple of round tables in the middle of the room. “Hey, everybody,” I said, as I waited for the equipment to warm up. “You all eager for the end of the semester?

  There was general agreement. It was time for the students to present their PowerPoint presentations, so instead of teaching, I got to sit back and listen. I moved to one of the round tables and dropped my bag, then asked Lou Segusi, one of the stronger students, to close all the blinds.

  “Who wants to go first?” I asked.

  Barbara Seville, a petite blonde, raised her hand, then teetered up to the podium on very high heels. When I began teaching the class, right after the midterm break, she had been a bubbly girl, a member of the Booster Club who was always willing to raise her hand with a comment. Because of the death of the woman I’d replaced, Barbara had gone through a lot of emotional upset during the term, and for the last few weeks she’d been very quiet, just keeping her head down and doing her work. I felt bad for her and tried to cut her a break when I could.

  Her presentation was on schizophrenia, and it was marked how her demeanor had changed from earlier in the term. She kept her head down as she spoke, so that we all had to strain to hear her. At least her slides were colorful and filled with information.

  Yudame (pronounced you-dummy), a skinny boy with a wild bush of hair that varied in shade from blond to brown, followed her with a business presentation. With his tie-dyed T-shirt and Birkenstock sandals, he looked more like an escapee from the 1960s than the kind of kid who’d be leaving Eastern on a direct path to an Ivy League MBA, but you never know these days.

  That reminded me of Rita Gaines. As Yudame fumbled with his jump drive, and then getting the presentation going, I wondered what kind of a student Rita had been. Her abrasive personality made me think she’d been talkative in class, even argumentative.

  Yudame’s presentation began with an animation of angels flapping their wings and strumming harps while flying over Wall Street, which got the class’s attention. “I’m going to talk today about people called angel investors,” he began.

  His next slide popped up, a mockup of a stock certificate for Facebook. “Angel investors aren’t creatures from the Bible; they’re rich people who provide startup capital for small businesses, in the hopes that they will get big payoffs.”

  He went on to explain the way an individual or small group might come up with an idea for a product or service, but need money to get it off the ground. “Usually an inventor starts with money from the three F’s: friends, family and fools.” He paused for a laugh.

  “Once the business has shown it has some potential, the inventor turns to outside sources of capital. But venture capital companies like the big Wall Street firms like to see a real product and a record of earnings before they pour millions of dollars in. That gap is filled by angel investors.”

  I was surprised to see Rita Gaines’s photo pop up on the screen. “One of the most prominent local angel investors was an Eastern College alumnus named Rita Gaines. She passed away recently but she made a lot of investments in high-tech companies.”

  I had read a bit about Rita’s investments in her obituaries, and I was pleased that Yudame had done enough research to discover her, and that he was savvy enough to include her in his presentation. And sensitive enough not to add angel wings to her photo.

  We made it through half the presentations that day, with the rest scheduled for Wednesday. As I was walking out, Lou Segusi said, “Hey, Prof, can I talk to you?”

  I picked up my bag. “I need to get back to my office. Can you talk on the way to Fields Hall?”

  “Sure.” He hesitated, then jumped in. “So, I’ve been doing this tutoring gig at the Writing Lab, like I’m supposed to.”

  He had been pressured into writing papers for a couple of other students, and while they had been expelled I had argued on his behalf, and he had agreed to volunteer for tutoring in the lab, which helped students improve their writing.

  “How’s that going?” I asked, as we walked outside.

  “Real good, real good. But there is this problem.”

  “Hey! Lou!”

  We both turned at the sound of a young woman’s voice. She was a voluptuous brunette with skin the color of very light coffee. “Oh, hey, Des,” he said.

  He turned to me. “This is Desiree.”

  I nodded. Lou had been sneaking around with Desiree earlier in the term, and when her boyfriend found out, he’d broken Lou’s arm. All part of the drama of undergraduate life; I remembered a number of similar incidents when I was a student.

  “This is Professor Levitan,” Lou said to Desiree. “The one I told you about.”

  Desiree came up to Lou and snuggled under his arm. I noticed it was the one that hadn’t been broken. “Listen, I’ll talk to you about that later, Prof,” Lou said. “Thanks.”

  “Sure. You know where my office is.”

  They turned away from me, and I wondered what Lou’s problem was. I hoped it wasn’t going to involve police action—as his previous problems had. I’d had enough of that.

  When I got back to my office I still hadn’t heard from Rick, so I called and left another message. I spent the rest of the afternoon coordinating details for an alumni reception during graduation weekend. Mike was hoping to put together a group he wanted to solicit for major gifts for the capital campaign, and I knew everything had to be perfect.

  As I was shutting down my computer for the day, Rick finally called. “Got your messages but I’ve been swamped all day. You up for a beer tonight? We can talk about whatever you want then.”

  “Sure. Let me take Rochester home, and I’ll meet you at the Drunken Hessian around six. We can get a couple of burgers there.”

  Spring was bursting out all over campus as Rochester and I walked back to my car, and I could see that the Bui
lding and Grounds department had been busy prettying up the place in advance of graduation. Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths bloomed in big clay pots, the grass was neatly trimmed, and new, darker asphalt covered the winter’s potholes.

  Rochester stopped several times to sniff and pee, and I enjoyed the fresh evening air. Around us, students hurried from dorms to libraries lugging rolling suitcases full of textbooks. There was a palpable sense of urgency and desperation around us probably having to do with final exams coming up.

  A pair of students passed us as we were entering the parking lot. “I can’t believe he’s going to fail me,” a girl in a Burberry skirt cried. “I went to every class. Just because I didn’t write the papers.”

  “These professors are assholes,” her friend said. “They have no sense of priorities. I tried to explain to my organic chemistry professor about James getting tickets for the Squashed Mushrooms concert on Monday night in Philadelphia, and asked if I could take the final exam some other day. He stared at me like I was crazy.”

  I’d heard many similar stories from my own students, and I had probably said the same kind of thing when I was an undergrad. I refrained from commenting to either girl.

  That reminded me of Lou Segusi, and I wondered again what his problem was. I hoped he hadn’t gone farther than he was supposed to with his tutoring, writing the papers for students he was supposed to be helping with grammar and structure.

  Then Rochester strained ahead, and reminded me what my real priority was. Taking care of one very bossy golden retriever.

  6 – The Drunken Hessian

  Once Rochester had been emptied and refilled, I left to meet Rick at the Drunken Hessian, a bar in the center of Stewart’s Crossing. It had the oldest continuous liquor license in the county, and looked like it hadn’t been redecorated since Lucius Stewart started his ferry crossing business in the late 1700s. At least they kept up to date with their beer selection; they had the best range of microbrews in Bucks County.