The Skeleton Stuffs a Stocking

by Leigh Perry

  “That’s for visitors only—adjuncts aren’t supposed to park there.”

  “Georgia!”

  I took a deep breath, realizing how rattled I was. “You’re right, that’s a good idea. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  When I finally got to the parking deck, I saw that Sid, bless his empty chest cavity, had managed to turn the car on and switch on the heat before retreating into hiding. Despite the exertion, I was half-frozen after my long walk.

  “Any word from Brownie?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, checking my phone again for any missed calls, emails, or texts.

  “I’ve got some news about our disappearing driver.”

  “Tell me on the way,” I said and drove out of the parking deck.

  “A couple of people remembered T.J. and said that he transferred to another college in the middle of the semester. That’s odd, right?”

  “It happens,” I said, “but it’s unusual. Students typically don’t get any credit for the semester if they do that, which means they’ll have to make up a lot of extra classes.”

  “I’m speculating that T.J. might be the dorm thief who was never prosecuted but had to leave Bostock in a hurry.”

  “Good thinking,” I said, but I wasn’t giving it much attention because I was too focused on driving as fast as I could without hitting anything. To get to the visitor center parking, I had to drive past the main entrance, and I saw the picket line was gone. “What time did they move the rally to?”

  “Half an hour from now,” Sid said.

  “Ossifying pieces of sacrum! Couldn’t they wait until tomorrow for their stupid yelling?”

  One of Sid’s arms slithered up the back of the seat and patted me on the shoulder. “We’ll find him, Georgia.”

  “Coccyx, Sid, if I’ve gotten Brownie hurt or—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence and tears were stinging my eyes.

  “We’re going to find him,” Sid said. “Now give me your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you out there alone and I can’t go with you while it’s light out, so I’m texting Charles to meet you.”

  I handed the phone to him. “My password is—”

  “Yeah, as if I didn’t know.” He typed in a text. “I told him it’s an emergency and that you need him to meet you in the visitor’s parking lot.” A minute later, there was a ping, and Sid said, “He’ll be there as soon as he can.”

  Almost anybody else would have asked for more information, but not Charles. He knew I wouldn’t have sent a message like that if it weren’t important.

  He wasn’t there when I parked, which gave me time to wipe my eyes and blow my nose. Sid continued to pat me until I said, “Here he comes.”

  “Stay in touch,” Sid said and ducked back under the blanket.

  I hopped out of the minivan and nearly ran to Charles.

  “Georgia, what’s wrong?”

  “Brownie’s missing!” I said more loudly than I’d intended and had to take a deep breath before I could explain.

  “Have you called campus security?”

  “Coccyx, I didn’t even think about that.”

  “Of course not, you’re distraught. I’ll handle it.”

  While I resisted the urge to dash across campus yelling for Brownie, Charles stepped away to call the Bostock Security office. I could tell from his expression when he hung up that he wasn’t happy with what he’d heard.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid that they’re not overly concerned because he hasn’t been missing very long. They might be more receptive at another time, but with the union rally starting at any moment, their attention is elsewhere. I apologize for wasting our time.”

  “No, it was a reasonable thing to do. I’m just not feeling reasonable.”

  “No matter. We’ll take charge of the search ourselves. Where should we start?”

  “I don’t know. When I saw him earlier, he wasn’t planning to come on campus. Something must have changed his mind.”

  “Am I safe in assuming that he’s aware of your investigation?”

  Oops. “I’m sorry, Charles. I shouldn’t have told him without consulting you, but—”

  “Don’t give it a second thought. Brownie is entirely trustworthy. Now, in what direction was your investigation leading?”

  I gave him a brief, undoubtedly jumbled, synopsis. “The last thing we discussed was trying to figure out who drove the bus for the crew cleaning the Nichols house.”

  “He could have gone to speak to one of the drivers.”

  “I told him I was going to do that myself, though I never let him know that I had, so…No, he wouldn’t have duplicated my work without telling me.”

  “There is an extensive archive of the Bostock business reports in the library. Perhaps he went to see if he could find anything there.”

  “That makes sense. I should have thought of that, but I mostly rely on online research.”

  “Then let’s try the library.”

  That meant another march across campus and I considered driving, but given the parking situation, it was faster to walk. Though the campus had seemed eerily quiet before, now I was seeing more and more people walking purposely toward the area of campus where the main administration buildings were clustered.

  “I guess people are gathering for the rally,” I said.

  “So it would seem.”

  We finally reached the library only to find the door locked. A piece of paper taped to the door said Closed Early Due To Rally. It was stupid, but I peered in the window, just in case, but of course there was no sign of Brownie.

  My phone rang again: Dana. “We can’t get in,” she said angrily. “The cops say the campus is closed to the public.”

  “That ossifying rally again,” I said. “I’ve got Charles with me, and we’re looking for him.”

  “We’re going to ride around and see if there’s a service entrance we can sneak in through. Call if you find him.”

  She hung up before I could answer.

  I said, “Brownie’s parents are here, but they can’t get on campus because the police have it blocked off.”

  “Where shall we try next?” Charles asked patiently.

  I tried to think, or at least to guess what Brownie would have been thinking, but before I could concoct anything, I heard a siren blaring.

  A second later, an ambulance came tearing across campus and turned toward where the strikers had been going. I started walking that same direction.

  “Georgia, there’s no reason to think Brownie was injured,” Charles said.

  “I know,” I said, but I didn’t stop.

  Charles caught up. “I’ll escort you.”

  I nodded, saving my breath for walking faster.

  We finally got to the edges of the crowd. The ambulance had already arrived, of course, and I could see it was surrounded by a tightly packed mass of people. Charles went in front of me to clear a path and got us close enough that I could see the figure on the stretcher being loaded into the back of the vehicle. It was a woman I’d never met. I went from fear to relief, then on to guilt for being glad somebody else was hurt instead of Brownie.

  As the ambulance drove away, I tapped the shoulder of the man standing in front of me. “Excuse me. What happened?”

  He didn’t bother to turn as he said, “One of the scabs slipped and fell. No doubt she’ll try to blame the union.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d moved closer to the man than was polite until Charles gently pulled me back and in a crisp voice said, “That would be Dr. Hortiz, a single mother who was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s.”

  The man turned toward us and stammered, “What? I didn’t realize…”

  Charles deliberately turned his back on him and walked away, drawing me with him.

  “I suggest we find a vantage point to observe the crowd,” Charles said. “If Brownie
is within earshot, he may also have heard the siren and come to investigate.”

  Since I had no better ideas, or indeed any idea at all, we fell back to the edges of the gathering and started making our away around. Since Charles was taller than I was by several inches, I relied on him to spot Brownie and took a minute to text Sid.

  georgia: Anything?

  sid: Nothing. Parents’ list said somebody was hurt at rally. Heard ambulance go by. Where are you?

  georgia: At rally.

  sid: !!!

  georgia: Charles is with me.

  sid: BE CAREFUL!

  By that point, Charles and I had reached the front of the crowd and were within sight of a rickety-looking platform on which the union organizers were standing and using electronic megaphones to express their grievances. Their erstwhile adversaries, the provost and various other campus officials, were off to one side trying to look concerned but not angry as the union people played to the audience in front of them. Though a lot of the people in the throng were nodding along with the union’s talking points, there were plenty of jeers from others. Outside the circle was a nervous-looking handful of Bostock security guards, looking as if they wished they really had hired the host of outside thugs the rumor mill had promised.

  I admit that I wasn’t paying much attention to the rhetoric. I was too worried about Brownie to give a splintered femur about either side of the strike.

  Since my eyes were on the crowd, not on the platform, I saw the spark that nearly ignited disaster. One of the union picketers was waving his sign around, despite the crush of people, and when somebody jostled him, his grip wavered just enough for the sign’s post to hit the person next to him. That person shoved the picketer into somebody else, who shoved at random, as far as I could tell. The shoving multiplied, and while some people were trying to get away from the confusion, others were trying to jump into the thick of it. The union organizer stopped her speech, the provost’s party started backing away, security guards put their hands on their weapons.

  Then, for no clear reason, one man punched another in the face, knocking him out of the crowd and onto the ground a few feet in front of the platform with blood streaming from his nose.

  When Madison was a toddler and fell down or hit her head on something, there would be a timeless instant before she reacted. At that moment, I could never tell what was coming next. Would she laugh it off? Would she sniffle and call for me? Or would she howl in pain?

  That’s how it felt when that man fell. Everybody who saw him froze in place as if deciding on the appropriate response. Were we going to back off or would the real fighting begin?

  During that millisecond of uncertainty, Charles slipped through the crowd, leapt to the platform, and took the megaphone from the startled union rep.

  In the ringing tones for which his students adore his lectures, he said, “Colleagues! I call you all my colleagues because we all have the same goal: to seek knowledge and to share it.” There were some murmurs and catcalls, but Charles ignored them. “We academics know that scholarship enriches the present, and it is a moment in history I want to share with you today. One of the finest triumphs of humanity over violence was the Christmas Armistice of 1914.”

  I saw the security guards helping the injured man up and trying to assess the damage to his nose, but he was listening as attentively as the rest of us.

  “Picture it. Christmas Eve on the cheerless, icy-cold Western Front as the barrage of shells exploding and rifles firing slowly fades. With the dawn, German soldiers emerge from their trenches to extend a momentary olive branch by wishing their enemies a merry Christmas. Overcoming their fear and distrust, the British abandon their positions to return that greeting. Men who had been trying to kill one another just hours before exchange cigarettes and holiday treats. The next day, the bloody conflict continues, but for that one moment, there was hope and peace.” He looked out at the crowd. “Colleagues, it’s Christmas time, and though many of us don’t observe the religious aspects, I hope we can all appreciate the cheer that the season brings. Or at least we can enjoy a few much-needed days away from our classrooms.” There were some quiet laughs in response. “I ask you to set aside your differences for this brief respite, just as the German and British troops did so many years ago.” Then he actually started singing “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.”

  It was incredibly hokey, and I couldn’t believe it when people actually joined in. But they did. So did I.

  Of course, since we were academics, by the second verse I was hearing spirited discussions about why the word was You and not Ye because ye is a subjection pronoun only, never objective; whether the carol dated to the sixteenth century or earlier; and if it was more properly “God rest you, merry gentlemen” or “God rest you merry, gentlemen.” It would have been a perfect time for snow to start gently falling, but I suppose we couldn’t have everything.

  Chapter Forty

  After the third verse, people started to wander off, and if we weren’t all arm in arm, neither was it looking like a riot was about to break out. Security took the injured man to get first aid while the man who’d slugged him followed along apologizing profusely. Union organizers and administrators alike took Charles aside to shake his hand and tell him how awesome he was, which I totally agreed with. Later on, I was sure I’d look back at that experience fondly, but for the moment, I still didn’t know where Brownie was.

  I checked my phone and found messages waiting.

  First up was a voicemail from Dana. “There were cops blocking every single entrance. We’re going to camp out at the lot across the street. Find Brownie before my idiot husband breaks his neck trying to climb over the walls.”

  Next was a message from Sid.

  sid: ARE YOU OKAY?

  Sid must have gotten notification that I’d read his text, because my phone rang before I could respond.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Charles stopped the riot.”

  “I think my ear holes must be blocked. Who stopped the riot?”

  “I’ll explain later. Have you got any more information or ideas about Brownie?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Coccyx,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. “I don’t even know where to look. This campus is huge, and without the shuttle to get around…” Something about the shuttle was niggling at me. “Sid, Deborah said the bus at the hoarder house had Bus-Stock painted on the side, but my shuttle driver David said nobody calls it that anymore. When did they change names?”

  “Hang on.” There was a mighty clacking, and a moment later Sid said, “I checked the Golden Pages and found listings for eleven, ten, and nine years ago. It was originally called Bus-Stock Shuttles, and Deborah is right, the logo is heinous. The same artist must have drawn this dreadful cartoon of the six drivers who founded the company.”

  “Six drivers?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “David also said something about the Founding Five. What happened to the sixth?”

  “Let me enlarge the dreadful cartoon.” After a few seconds, he triumphantly said, “Hello, T.J.”

  “What?”

  “There are barely legible names under each of the figures in the cartoon, and one of them says T.J. Meaning that we have now successfully linked T.J. to the bus and the dorm thefts.”

  “That’s amazing!” I said.

  “Not as amazing as it might be. There’s nobody with those initials in my files. Maybe I can go through old yearbooks and find somebody whose initials are T.J.”

  “Or T.J. something else,” I pointed out.

  “Come again?”

  “T.J. could be a nickname for Thomas Jefferson, or it could stand for Thomas Jefferson Smith. Or he could go by a different version of his name now, like if Madison decided to switch to Maddie or Mad.”

  “Why do you fleshy people have so many names?” Sid grumbled. “I’ll check my files, but with this many variations, it’s
going to take forever.”

  “I know, I’m just—” I had a flash of memory. The guide who’d taken Madison and me around campus had asked Madison what name she went by.

  That reminded me that he was the first person I’d heard say the name Bus-Stock.

  “Sid, look up the guy who gave us the tour of Bostock. Edward something.”

  More clacking. “Edward Alfred Humphries, Junior. Not even close.”

  “Another name for Edward is Ted, and Junior starts with J. Couldn’t he be T.J.?”

  “Yes!” I suspected the rattling I heard next was him doing a triumphant fist pump. “And his office is right here at the visitor center. I’m going to check it out. I’ll call back.”

  I was still waiting when I heard somebody say, “Hello, Dr. Thackery. I don’t know if you remember us, but we’re the—”

  “Yes, I know who you are, Mrs. Gleason,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound like I was talking through gritted teeth. I was starting to think they had a literal helicopter.

  “Dr. Thackery,” Mrs. Gleason said, “given the uproar of this demonstration, we think it only fair that you give our son Reggie extra time to finish his final paper.”

  Charles, who’d finished talking to the muckety-mucks, must have seen the flame in my eyes because he stepped over and said, “I’m sorry, this is not the time or place for such matters. We’re in the middle of a crisis.”

  “We know, it’s all over the parents’ Facebook group. That’s why Reggie deserves an extension. It’s all been very distracting and upsetting. We saw a video of that man getting hurt!”

  “There’s already a video online?” I said. “It only happened ten minutes ago.”

  “The parents’ group is very active,” Mrs. Gleason said with a smug expression.

  That’s when inspiration struck. I said, “Mr. and Mrs. Gleason, may I tell you something in confidence?”

  They nodded.

  “I need to find somebody here on campus right away, but he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Do you mean a student?” she asked.

  “No, an employee. If you can help me locate him, I will give Reggie an extra week to get his paper in without deducting any points from his grade.”