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Authors: Bill Crider

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Bond With Death
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T
he Garden Gnome was a person, not a statue. He was, or had been, Harold Curtin, whose unfortunate resemblance to a gnome had given him his nickname. He didn't wear a tall red peaked cap or red pointed shoes, but then he'd been dubbed the Garden Gnome for his physical appearance, not for his attire.
He was short and stout, and he had a white beard. His face was often an alarming shade of red, as if he might suffer from high blood pressure, though that hadn't been the cause, as Sally had discovered.
Curtin had been a teacher in the English department at HCC when Sally arrived to take over as department chair. She had been appalled when she glanced over his student evaluations at the end of her first semester. They weren't just the worst evaluations in the department; they were the worst in the college. They were, in fact, the worst Sally had ever seen.
Students generally looked upon the day when an evaluation was done as an opportunity to get out of class early, so they did the multiple choice part of the questionnaire as quickly as possible and skipped the optional section that invited written comments.
But not in Curtin's case. His students disliked him so much that they would rather take the time to write a few comments than have an extra ten minutes between classes. And the comments weren't kind:
He treats us like ants in his domain.
He's never prepared for class. Most of the time he doesn't even know what the assignment was supposed to be.
His tests don't make any sense, and he never grades them. I think he just makes up his grades and puts them in his book.
We had to write five essays, but he only gave back one of them. There was no grade on it and he didn't mark any errors.
He tells us we're idiots all the time.
After reading those and a few dozen similar remarks, Sally went to Dean Naylor's office. Naylor was a large, cheerful man and one of his besetting sins was his outgoing nature. Sally didn't feel that there was anything wrong with liking people, but Naylor was a hugger. There was nothing sexist about his hugging. He hugged men and women indiscriminately, but Sally preferred to maintain a little more decorum. She usually maneuvered around the office and kept a chair between herself and Naylor whenever possible. Recently, in the face of some criticism from higher up, he had managed to curtail his hugging, but in the days when Curtin had been in the college's employ, Naylor had been for the most part unrestrained.
On the day of her visit about Curtin, Sally sat down in the visitor's chair before Naylor could get around the desk to hug her and said, “What's going on with Harold Curtin?”
“Harold Curtin? Nothing's going on with Harold. He's been here for years.”
“I know. But I'm not talking about how long he's been here. I'm talking about his evaluations.”
“His evaluations? Do you mean his student evaluations? What about them?”
Naylor was perhaps a perfect dean. He could dance around a topic for hours without ever getting to the heart of it, and he could avoid giving a straight answer better than anyone Sally had ever dealt with. He was wasted at the community college, she often thought. He should have been in the state legislature. Congress, even. Or maybe working as the president's press secretary.
“His student evaluations are terrible,” Sally said. “He's ranked
lower than anyone else here, and the students' written comments about him are scathing.”
Naylor clasped his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair.
“Well,” he said, “as you're certainly aware, students often don't know how to do an evaluation properly. Instructors spend years in college learning their discipline, and then they hone the craft for more years in the classroom. When they present a lesson, they're doing something that they've trained for and practiced for a long, long time. On the other hand, students don't take evaluations very seriously. They rush through them, and they hardly ever even think about the questions they're answering and how those answers might affect an instructor's career.”
He paused for a breath, and Sally managed to get a word in before he started again. She knew he could go on like that all day if she let him get away with it.
“The students took this evaluation seriously,” she said. “I think we can be certain of that. I'd like to see Mr. Curtin's evaluations from previous years, and I'd like for you to have a look at some of these comments.”
She handed the green sheets of paper across the desk to Naylor. He took them and shuffled them around, but he put them down with only a casual glance.
“As you know if you've read your policy manual,” he said, “all evaluations come to this office for filing after the department chairs have looked them over. A printed copy of the evaluation results for each department is sent to the department chair, who then forwards copies to individual instructors.”
“I know the process, but I wasn't here last year when evaluations were done.”
“Your predecessor, Dr. Barton, followed the procedure, I'm sure.”
Sally didn't see what the process had to do with what she was talking about. She was about to say so, but Naylor didn't give her a chance to break in.
“I'm sure Mr. Curtin has seen his evaluations and knows how
they stack up against others in his department. He's probably working hard to correct any deficiencies in his performance, and we'll no doubt see some improvement soon.”
“He's had a whole semester to improve,” Sally said. “If his evaluations were any worse last year, he should have been fired. And these are so bad that they couldn't have been worse last year. I'd like to see them.”
“As you may know, they're stored in the vault.”
What Sally knew was that there wasn't really a vault, though the storeroom was often called by that name for some reason.
“So I've heard. They should be easy enough to find.”
“I could have one of the secretaries look for them, but I'm afraid they won't be easy to locate. The evaluations are stored in cardboard boxes, but there's really no filing system. I'm afraid they're simply put into the boxes when they arrive in my office and then transferred to the vault after instructors have had a chance to look over them.”
“I'd still like to see them.”
Naylor looked at her as if wondering why she'd ever been hired in the first place.
“Very well. I'll have Wynona look for them as soon as she has a chance.”
Wynona Reed was in the outer office, and if Sally was any judge of character, she'd heard every word of the conversation between Sally and Naylor. Sally hadn't bothered to close the door, but she didn't think it would have made any difference had she done so. She knew Wynona would never stoop to something so obvious as putting a stethoscope to the door, but the secretary always seemed to know what was being said in Naylor's office, closed door or not. Maybe she listened on the intercom. Except that there wasn't one. Mental telepathy? Sally couldn't figure it out.
“When do you think she'll have a chance to look for them?” Sally asked.
“You can ask her when you leave,” Naylor said, which was as close to a curt dismissal as Sally had ever received from him. She got
up and thanked him for his time before going to the other office, where Wynona sat staring at a computer screen.
“It's not that hard to find the evaluations,” Wynona said before Sally had a chance to ask. “I'll get them for you this afternoon. He just doesn't want you to see them because they're awful. Students hate Curtin, and I don't blame them. He's lazy, and I don't think he bathes often enough.”
Sally could have told Wynona that it was unprofessional of her to make derogatory comments about one of the school's instructors, but she knew Wynona wouldn't pay her any attention. And if she did pay attention, she wouldn't care. She was one of the people who actually ran the college, and if you crossed her, you could find yourself in deep trouble.
For example, Wynona put the final class schedule together each semester and got it ready for the print shop. While the department chairs made out the first draft and arranged for times and classrooms, Wynona had the power to make changes. Not in the times. Those were untouchable. But she could change the classroom assignments. Instructors who got on Wynona's bad side might discover that they had to walk quite a distance in the ten minutes between their nine and ten o'clock classes, for instance. The walk wasn't much of a nuisance on good days, but it could be quite unpleasant on a very hot one or on a day when the rain was falling in sheets and lightning tore across the skies while the wind turned umbrellas inside out. There were plenty of days like that near the Texas Gulf Coast.
So Sally just said, “I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a call when you find them.”
“I'll do that,” Wynona said, and Sally returned to her own office.
Wynona called around two o'clock, and Sally went to pick up the evaluations. When Sally walked into the office, Wynona was reading the students' comments. That, too, was unprofessional.
So was Wynona's appearance for that matter. She looked as if she should be working as a secretary in a disreputable auto repair shop instead of in the office of a college dean. She had big hair dyed a brassy color that had never been found in nature, she wore revealing
blouses, and she had been known to talk a little trash from time to time. Sally didn't mind. She liked her, even though she wished Wynona would be a little more conventional now and then.
“These are just awful,” Wynona said, looking up and flicking the forms with a red fingernail that seemed to Sally to be too long for doing any typing. “If anybody ever got canned around here, Curtin would be the guy. But nobody ever does. Get canned, I mean.”
“Nobody?” Sally said as she reached across the desk and removed the green sheets of paper from Wynona's hand.
“Nobody. We had a guy working in the counseling center around five or six years ago. Jay Sammons. He had some kind of breakdown and started insulting the students instead of helping them. But did they fire him?” Wynona shook her head. “
Nooooooo
. They put him in a little office way in the back of the center and had him doing enrollment statistics all day. He finally left when his wife got a job in San Antonio. Otherwise, he'd still be stuck back there, like that crazy old aunt in the attic that Ross Perot talked about.”
Sally thanked Wynona for the evaluations and took them back to her office to look them over. They were no worse than the ones Curtin had received on the forms Sally had already seen. They were no better, either. Sally decided to call Curtin and have him come by for a conference to discuss his evaluations.
And that was when the trouble started.
 
 
“
H
e always blamed you for his firing,” Jack said. “I don't think he ever got over it.”
“I'm sure he didn't,” Sally said. She needed a Hershey bar, but she didn't want to show weakness in front of Jack. “And it was reasonable for him to blame me. After all, I was the one who made the recommendation.”
“I know. I never thought it would really happen. He had tenure.”
The Garden Gnome had had tenure, all right. Sally remembered that tenure was one of the first things he had mentioned when he came into her office on the day they were to discuss his evaluations.
“I don't really care what those things say,” Curtin had told her, pointing to the incriminating sheets of paper on her desk. Sally had taken the time to clear a place for them, so they were right out in the open. “I have tenure, and no matter what a bunch of callow freshmen and sophomores say about me, I plan to continue teaching any way that I see fit.”
Sally had looked him over. His beard was short, but it hadn't been trimmed for a while, and it appeared that part of his breakfast was caught in it. A bit of bacon, perhaps. His hair was no neater than his beard, although there wasn't any bacon in it that Sally could see. Curtin's face and eyes were red, and his shirt and pants were as wrinkled as if he'd slept in them for a week or so.
“I believe in academic freedom,” he continued, sitting in the chair by her desk. “Don't you?”
“Of course I do,” Sally told him. “I also believe that we have an obligation to give our students the education they're paying for.”
Curtin put a hand to his mouth and belched, as if to show his opinion of that idea. The rest of the conversation was no more satisfactory, with Curtin hiding behind tenure and academic freedom as Sally pressed him to say he would take steps to become a more effective instructor.
“Who says I'm not effective? Those little twerps in my classes? Who are they to evaluate me? I have more college credits than any of them will ever get. They'll all be lucky if they don't spend their lives selling chalupas and burritos at the Speedy Taco.”
“They're the ones we're paid to teach,” Sally said, wondering if Curtin was entirely sane. “We have to give their opinions some weight.”
“Maybe you do. I don't. Now if that's all you have to say, I have a class to teach.”
“Go ahead, then. I'll call you soon about setting up some times for classroom observations.”
Curtin had risen to his feet, but he sat back down, looking at Sally as if she had said something objectionable.
“Classroom evaluations?” he said. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean exactly what I said. I'll be sitting in your classroom to observe your teaching methods and your interaction with the students. I'll let you pick the times and the classes so there won't be any surprises.”
Curtin shook his head. “You aren't coming in my classroom.”
“Yes,” Sally said. “I am.”
She dug through some of the papers on her desk and pulled out a copy of the college's evaluation policy. When she located the section she wanted, she started to read: “The department chair shall visit every instructor in his or her department at least once every two years and fill out the standard departmental observation form. The
form is to be filed in the department chair's office after it has been discussed by the chair and the instructor and signed by both.”
Curtin stared at her for a second. Then he said, “Barton didn't ever come in my classroom.”
Sally had already checked the files Dr. Barton had left behind. As far as she could tell he hadn't done any classroom observations in the last ten years. Since the reports were supposed to have been kept on file in Barton's office, no one in the administration knew he hadn't been doing them. And the faculty certainly hadn't complained.
“I don't care what Dr. Barton did or didn't do,” Sally said. She handed the policy manual to Curtin. “Here's the procedure, on page eighteen. You can read it for yourself.”
Curtin didn't take the policy manual. He waved a hand at it to show what he thought of it, then stood up and said, “I don't care what that says. You're not coming in my classroom.”
“Yes, I am,” Sally said, and two weeks later, she did, though not at all in the way she had planned.
 
“I remember that little episode,” Jack said when she reminded him of it. “That was the most excitement we'd had around here in a long time. Come to think of it, you've really livened things up since you became department chair. We've had much more exciting times since you came to good old HCC.”
Having been thrown together with Jack during a couple of those exciting times, both of them involving murder, one of which Jack had been accused of committing, Sally had gotten to know him better than any other member of her faculty. She had been about to break her rule against dating members of the staff, but she had been saved from herself when he had become entangled, both figuratively and, Sally was certain, literally, with Vera Vaughn, who taught sociology and dressed like Ilsa, the She-Wolf of the SS. Jack was still a good friend, however, and Sally enjoyed his company.
“Did the Garden Gnome really hit that student with a stapler?” Jack asked. “Even for him, that was pretty drastic.”
“He did it, though,” Sally said. “I saw him.”
She remembered the incident all too well. She had been teaching her composition class, talking about thesis sentences, when she heard someone yelling. She thought at first that something was going on outside the building, but then she realized the noise was coming from the classroom across the hall from her own.
She knew that Curtin was teaching American literature in that room at that time, and she thought that maybe he was trying out some innovative method of getting his students' attention in order to improve his evaluations. She should have known better.
The yelling got louder, and Sally could hear two distinct voices, both of them angry. Her students heard them, too. Some of them looked a little apprehensive.
“Excuse me,” Sally told the class. “I'll be right back.”
She left her classroom and went across the hall. The door to Curtin's room was closed, but she could hear the yelling even more clearly now then before.
The door had a tall, narrow panel of glass on the left-hand side, and through it she could see Curtin standing beside his desk, toe to toe with a student who was considerably taller and brawnier. Their faces were red and their necks were swollen. It was clear to Sally that something bad was about to happen.
She could have gone for the campus police, as their office was in the same building, but she was afraid she'd be too late to stop the trouble. So she decided to intervene.
She was too late anyway.
She opened the door just as the student reached out with a big, beefy hand as if he might be going to take hold of Curtin's arm.
Curtin didn't give him a chance. There was a stapler sitting atop a stack of papers on the desk. Curtin grabbed the stapler and swung it, knocking the student's hand away.
Sally could have sworn that she heard a sharp hissing sound as every student in the classroom inhaled in shock.
The student was stunned. He looked down at his hand and then at Curtin.
“You hit me,” he said.
Curtin was stunned, too. He had a disbelieving look on his face, as
if he'd just awakened from what he'd thought was a nightmare and found it to be all too real. He dropped the stapler, and the sound it made when it hit the floor tiles echoed off the walls of the room.
Sally walked over to Curtin and said, “Dismiss the class and stay here. I'll be back.”
Then she told the student to come with her to the police office. He followed her in a daze, shaking his head. He kept saying, “He hit me,” over and over.
 
“Whatever happened to that kid?” Jack asked.
“Jerry,” Sally said. “Jerry Ketchum.”
“Right. Whatever happened to him?”
“You mean officially?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing. He was out of line. He admitted as much. He'd been upset with the grade on a test he'd taken, not to mention that Curtin hadn't put a single mark on it to show how he arrived at the grade. So he'd protested. Curtin argued with him, and things got heated.”
“They sure did. What happened to Ketchum unofficially?”
“He dropped the class after we got a replacement for Curtin, and I don't know what happened to him after that. I don't recall ever seeing his name on a graduation list. Maybe he dropped out of school altogether, or maybe he transferred to another college. It could be that he blamed himself a little for what happened.”
“Well, it does sound as if he got a little carried away.”
“Yes. But that was nothing compared to what Curtin did. You can't hit a student. You can yell at him, maybe even call him names, but you can't hit him.”
“Curtin claimed it was self-defense.”
“The student was reaching out, but he wasn't really threatening Curtin. Curtin overreacted.”
“Didn't Ketchum's parents threaten to sue the college?”
“Yes, but since Ketchum more or less admitted that he'd started the whole uproar, they decided not to sue. I don't think they'd have been successful.”
“They thought you should have done more, didn't they?”
“Yes. They thought we were all too easy on Curtin, but their son shared some of the blame. They didn't like my saying that, but it was true.”
“There was a little more to it than that, though.”
“There certainly was. Curtin had been drinking. I could smell liquor when I stood next to him. He never admitted it, and of course I couldn't prove it, but it was obvious.”
“And so he got fired.”
“That's right. I don't think a faculty member at HCC had ever been fired before.”
“And it was all because of you.”
“Me?” Sally said. “How could it have been because of me? I didn't hit anybody with a stapler. I didn't come to class drunk at ten in the morning.”
“Curtin claimed he wasn't drunk.”
“All right. I'll give him that much. He wasn't actually drunk. But he'd been drinking.”
“He didn't take any Breathalyzer tests.”
“You sound like his lawyer.”
“I'm just saying what he said. And he believed it. Therefore, it was all your fault.”
“It wasn't my fault. And the school was very generous with him. In fact, the college gave him a sizable severance package just to get rid of him.”
“That's right,” Jack said, “and he invested most of it in tech stocks. He was riding high there for a while.”
Sally knew that part of the story, too. Curtin had let several of his former colleagues know how well he was doing and how stupid they were for continuing to work while he lived a life of ease and tranquility.
“It didn't last,” Sally said.
“Tell me about it. I had some of my retirement funds invested in tech stocks, too, I'm sorry to say. I didn't lose as much as Curtin, but I lost plenty. Curtin blamed you for that, too.”
“He blamed me for the tech stock debacle? That's pushing it, even for Curtin.”
“Well, he didn't actually think you caused the collapse of the NASDAQ. But he blamed you for the fact that he was forced into retirement, so it follows that he blamed you for the fact that since the market dropped, he'd been living somewhere around the poverty line. I'm surprised that Fieldstone hasn't called you in for a little talk about it.”
“He's called me in, but not to talk about Curtin. He wants me to repudiate witchcraft.”
Jack laughed so hard that Sally was afraid he might fall off the chair. When he finally got control of himself again, he said, “I got that e-mail. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it made sense. It explains that cat of yours, for one thing.”
“Lola is not a witch's familiar.”
“She's mean enough to be.”
Sally knew that Jack was only joking, but she still felt a bit defensive. She didn't like for people to say bad things about Lola. It was all right for Sally to say them, but others weren't allowed.
“Lola's a very sweet cat,” Sally said.
“To you, maybe. Not to anybody else.”
“Let's get back to Fieldstone,” Sally said.

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