Brown-Eyed Girl (22 page)

“I do my duty,” said Hawk, grinning widely and clapping as Sally finished off the song and avoided a hug from Sam. “And should any information come to light regarding the reasons for the Casper lawyer's untoward interest in the person you've referred to as my girlfriend, I would appreciate your assistance.”

Bobby had his hand in the middle of Brit's back now, moving in circles, slowly south. Dickie looked at them, then looked at Hawk. The sheriff's eyes had gone cold. “This ain't Casper,” he said. “And in my town, I always render assistance.”

Chapter 22
Take It or Leave It

Late Sunday morning, the snow was falling thick and piling up. Sally woke up alone. Hawk had made a date with Tom Youngblood to go cross-country skiing, and they'd agreed to leave at eight o'clock. She vaguely remembered being kissed goodbye, but he'd gone quickly and quietly, as was his custom. They'd made an agreement: They were to come and go in each other's lives, as they pleased. Sometimes it made her feel panicky in a way she found embarrassing.

Her head felt snowed in. They'd played until one in the morning. She wasn't used to staying up that late any more, much less sitting around until two drinking nightcaps and doing post mortems on the gig. But then again, back when she'd done this sort of thing on a regular basis nobody had set her phone ringing before noon, let alone at—she looked at the alarm clock—8:55 a.m.

“Sally,” breathed Edna McCaffrey.

“Edna,” Sally managed to breathe back.

“Have you seen the
Boomerang
?”

“Rumor-bang?” mumbled Sally through the echo of a last Jim Beam.

“Wake up!” Edna ordered. “Get out of bed, get a cup of coffee, and get the damn paper. We're being sued.”

“Sued?” asked Sally, beginning to notice the daggers stabbing into her skull, and not liking that old-time feeling. “Why?”

“Some of our concerned colleagues evidently think we're a threat to academic freedom,” Edna snarled. “Do you want me to read you the story?”

“No. No. I'm waking up now,” Sally said, stumbling out of bed, swaying a little as her head swam. “Give me half an hour, Ed. I'm going to take a shower, make some coffee. I'll read the paper and call you back.”

“Take six Advils,” Edna advised, recognizing Sally's disorientation for what it was. “And get something in your stomach.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Right,” Sally muttered, realizing that her body had a stomach, not all that enjoyable a realization. “Call you back,” she managed, lunging to hang up the phone, lurching to the sink, splashing water on her face, looking in the mirror, and daring her dripping, ugly-looking self to beat this swirling, brain-splitting hangover senseless and get on with what was sure to be an infuriating day.

Edna, being a humane sort of person, gave Sally a good half-hour to wake it and shake it and focus her eyes. Patiently waited another ten coffee-making minutes, and even gave her an extra two minutes to read the story in the newspaper a first time, for herself. But that was it. She was just getting ready to dial again when her phone rang.

“Bosworth,” said Sally.

“Obviously,” said Edna. “He's quoted. ‘Public universities must maintain their independence from political and other pressure, and faculties must have the right to enforce their professional standards in hiring and curriculum. This bequest violates our most sacred canons, subjecting us to the dictates of political correctness.'”

“First time anybody's ever tried to claim the Boz had any kind of cannon,” Sally observed, but Edna wasn't in a laughing mood.

“‘Independence from political and other pressure,'” Edna sneered. “I don't recall him complaining every time some mining company gave the geology department a bunch of money to go tear up the national forests. Or that nice grant from the Cattlemen's Association to research the environmental hazards generated by endangered species. But this time, he's worried. The son of a bitch has managed to stir up at least a few of the no-neck neanderthals around here. Can't figure out how many, or who, but that won't be that hard. If this suit is actually filed, they'll be named as plaintiffs.”

Rage had cleared Sally's mind the moment she poured her first cup of coffee and unfolded the paper. Her stomach responded gratefully to a bagel and cream cheese. This new unpleasantness should have made her want to go back to bed and pull the covers over her head. But she had become in mid-life one of those people who love crises. The more screwed-up things got, the sharper her focus, the firmer her resolve. “Okay, so they'll have to come out and play. What I want to know is, who's paying the lawyers? UW faculty? What are they doing—selling plasma to pay legal fees? Where's the money coming from, and who's representing them?” She drank more coffee, looked again at the article.

“All it says here is that they're represented by a Casper law firm,” Edna read at the other end of the line. “Typical. The fools in Casper probably think they can get the University to move up there if they make things annoying enough here.”

“A Casper law firm? Hey—I met a lawyer from Casper at the party last night. Wonder if he'd know what's going on. He was drooling all over Brit—bet she could get some information out of him.”

“Let me do some digging first. I'm going to call that horse 's ass Bosworth and ask him what he wants the University to do about having gotten a big old pile of free money. By the time I'm done with him, we'll know a lot more.” Edna was, after all, a skilled interviewer, but Sally figured Byron Bosworth knew enough to keep his mouth shut around people he was suing.

“Okay. I'm going to call Ezra Sonnenschein's office and tell them we need him up here for a meeting the minute he gets back from Africa. He'll need to be involved.”

“Yeah,” said Edna, “and so will Egan Crain. We need a unified strategy.”

It occurred to Sally, at that moment, that she was only one of the many parties involved in this particular little brouhaha. First, there were the aggrieved plaintiffs, who undoubtedly had a variety of reasons for joining the suit (ranging, she assumed, from the understandable to the sociopathic). Then there was the University, which encompassed a whole lot of people who would have many different ideas about whether or not to cave in to pressure or hang onto the money and the Dunwoodie Chair and the Center. And of course, the archives, which was dying to get its hands on Meg's stuff, one way or another. And the trustees of the Dunwoodie Foundation, whoever they were. Maude Stark, whose stubborness, at least, was beyond question, would insist on having a say.

As for her own self, Sally was measuring her options. The best, of course, would be for the lawsuit to go away, the money to stay put, and her plan to write and teach in Laramie to hold up. But Meg Dunwoodie's story had gotten a sharp hook into her, and she ached to tell it. The ache was turning into a determination to write the book, endowed chair or no endowed chair. She'd told herself she wasn't letting a vicious skinhead keep her from doing it— could she really be afraid of a bunch of peevish college professors? If the university decided to punt on the bequest, she could always go back to LA, but she fully intended to persuade Sonnenschein that she should continue with the biography.

Of course, there had turned out to be unexpected reasons to stay in Laramie, one of which had left a black Armani suit hanging in her closet. No promises, though—at least they agreed about that, right?

“Where are you on this, Edna?” Sally asked.

“Pissed as hell and spoiling for a fight.”

“You, or the University?”

“Me, for one. The president, for another—I talked to him. He has a very hard time contemplating giving back five million dollars. And once I talk to the University counsel, I'll have a better idea how they might think about fighting this idiocy.”

“Thanks,” Sally said, pouring more coffee, drinking, scalding her mouth. “I mean it.”

“Call Sonnenschein,” Edna replied shortly. “Let's get this thing in gear.”

For two weeks, everyone played phone tag, fended off the press, milked, dismissed, and occasionally confirmed rumors, gathered information, and played more phone tag. But by a Tuesday afternoon in late January, they were sitting around the conference table in Edna's office: two members of the board of trustees; Dean Edna; the vice president for academic affairs (a handsome, blow-dried economist with a hands-off attitude; he was representing the president, but Edna assumed he'd give them ten minutes, then plead “another meeting”); the University counsel (a short-haired woman in a no-nonsense suit and turquoise blue silk shirt with a bow at the neck); Egan Crain; and Sally. They were waiting for Ezra Sonnenschein, and for Maude, whom Sonnenschein thought ought to be present. The lawyer and the housekeeper arrived together, ten minutes late but unruffled, and took seats . Sonnenschein accepted a cup of the desk-temperature coffee everyone else appeared to be drinking. Maude declined.

Edna convened the meeting. “Good of all of you to be here. Thanks especially to you, Mr. Sonnenschein, for traveling up here from Denver. You're all here because each of you is in some way involved with the Dunwoodie Foundation bequest to the University to establish the Dunwoodie Chair and Center for Women's History, and to donate the Dunwoodie papers to the Archive. I want to start out by asking the University counsel to bring us up to date on the legal situation. For those of you who don't know her, this is Virginia Minor.”

“As you all know,” Minor began, “a group of faculty has threatened to file a class action suit alleging that the terms of the Dunwoodie bequest and the execution of those terms constitute violations of academic freedom. On those grounds, the plaintiffs will ask that the University be compelled either to refuse the gift and terminate all arrangements stemming from the bequest, or to renegotiate the terms of the arrangement with the foundation in accordance with nationally standard academic practices regarding hiring, acceptance of donations, archiving of document collections, and execution of the terms of the bequest. I am informed by counsel that his clients are willing to drop the suit, if the University agrees to renegotiate terms as stated.”

“Which means what in English?” Maude asked.

“Which means,” said the University's lawyer, “that they haven't filed yet, but they will. Unless we either give back the money and fire Professor Alder immediately, or we simply void Professor Alder's contract, and try to talk the Foundation into doing an open search for the Chair, to be conducted under the authority of the history department, and relinquishing control over the monies, the Dunwoodie papers, and the biography project, in favor of management by a joint committee representing the University, the archives, and of course, the history department.”

“So with one alternative, the University loses the bequest. With the other, Byron Bosworth comes in as a main player,” said Sally.

“And either way,” Maude told Sally, “you get canned.”

“Hey,” said Sally, “if the University and the Foundation want to cave in and let the Boz pick the next Dunwoodie Professor, I would be willing to be a candidate. I'm sure my chances of being hired would be excellent.” General laughter.

“I understand,” said Sonnenschein amiably, “that the faculty group bringing suit includes a number of members of the department of history.”

“Indeed,” Edna told him, eyes glittering, “but not exclusively. There are, as far as we know now, approximately twenty plaintiffs.”

“Not bad,” Sonnenschein observed. “I would imagine that in any university in the country, you could manage to find twenty people willing to file a lawsuit alleging that the sun rises in the west.”

Sally suppressed a giggle. She hadn't had much contact with Ezra Sonnenschein, but she liked the hell out of the guy. He fit her definition of suave. He was slim, tall, and graceful, with salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes she'd have described as both friendly and piercing. She'd never seen him dressed in anything except perfectly tailored suits he probably bought in London. He carried the air of always knowing things nobody else knew, but not making a big deal about it. She felt that he was on her side, and the feeling comforted her immensely.

“These plaintiffs are more the flat-earth crowd,” Maude noted.

“In this great free country of ours,” pronounced Sally, “even flat-earthers have their day in court.”

The vice president announced that he had to rush off to another meeting, shook hands all around, said he knew that they'd work something out, and exited. Edna had been wrong. Seven minutes flat, from the time Sonnenschein and Maude walked in. The trustees exchanged a “what do we pay him the big bucks for?” look.

“I'd just like to say a word or two about the Dunwoodie Collection,” Egan interjected in the wake of the VP's departure.

Everyone looked at him.

He thrust out what he called a chin, and took the plunge. “As representative of the archives, I must inform you that we hold it to be in our interests to preserve harmony among those we consider our constituencies. At the same time, we also wish to retain our rights to the Dunwoodie papers. We would not be averse to participating in some sort of cooperative arrangement, including the one proposed by the plaintiffs. A lawsuit would of course be appallingly costly and time-consuming.” He looked around the table. “I'm sure we can come to some accomodation with these chaps.”

“Neville Chamberlain speaks,” muttered Maude.

“We understand your position,” Edna told Egan, carefully taking the edge out of her voice, “but we haven't yet discussed the University's position with regard to the proposed lawsuit, so it seems to me premature to be planning how to cooperate with the plaintiffs.”

Egan looked sick, but said no more.

“Who's representing the plaintiffs?” asked Sonnenschein.

“A Casper law firm, Whipple, Hipple and Abernathy.”

Sonnenschein thought a moment. “Why W, H and A? I thought they were an oil and gas firm. Some railroad and insurance and tax business. Right-of-center Republicans. Hardly the kind of attorneys who take on the civil liberties claims of penurious college professors.”

“Well, this
is
a shot from the right,” Sally said.

“More to the point,” said one of the trustees, a lawyer himself, “it's five million bucks.”