Stump Speech Murder (3 page)

“Yes,” agreed Pamela, scrunching up her forehead as they entered the Psychology Department’s main office immediately on their right.  “But I’m assuming his candidacy is over now.  I mean, he’s in jail!”

Joan moved to the wall of faculty mailboxes on the side wall of the office.  She bent over and peeked into a small cubby and removed a batch of envelopes, flyers, and cards.  “It must be a mistake,” she whispered to Pamela.  “It just must be.  I’m sure they’ll straighten everything out.”

“Joan,” countered Pamela, retrieving her own mail from her box, “His wife is dead.  That’s not something you ‘straighten out.’”  Joan gave her a sign to keep quiet and the women silently exited the main office and headed down the hallway and up a staircase at the far end.

“You mean to tell me,” asked Pamela, “that you think there’s been some sort of mistake?”

“Obviously,” said Joan with a shrug, “it’s not a mistake about his wife being dead.  But surely, it’s a mistake that he’s being blamed for it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I’ve gotten to know James, Pamela,” she insisted.  “I know him and I know he could never do something like that!”   They arrived at Joan’s office and Joan scrounged around in her jacket pocket and brought out her key chain and quickly unlocked her office door.  She stomped into her office, placing her items neatly in a pile on the top of her desk.  She quickly moved to her window and readjusted the blinds so that a blast of morning sunlight changed the color and the atmosphere from gloomy to bright.

“Sometimes we think we know someone,” explained Pamela, plopping herself down on Joan’s neat leather sofa. Joan busied herself behind her desk with a small pitcher of water that she carefully poured into five or six planters on her desk and bookshelves. 

“Pamela,” said Joan, taking her seat behind her desk, and assuming her professorial voice, “Believe me, I’m as shocked as you.  But, this just must be some sort of mistake.  I tell you I know James.  I’ve gotten to know him.  After all, we worked together on that Human Subjects’ sub-committee for over a year.  I feel like he’s a really close friend—or a brother.”

“Not a boyfriend?”  She continued to clutch her belongings.

“What?” Joan gasped.  “What are you suggesting?  James is married.”

“Not any more,” said Pamela, grimly.

“That’s disgusting, Pamela,” said Joan.  “He’s more than twenty years my junior.”

“So?”

“Listen,” said Joan, scooting closer to her desk and leaning forward so she could speak to her friend in a very soft voice.  “You know—and I know—that I enjoy an invigorating relationship with a man from time to time.  But—I am not a home wrecker.  And more important, James Grant is a loyal husband.”

“And you know that for a fact?” asked Pamela, leaning forward over, her chin resting on her stack of books and papers.

“Where are you getting these ideas, Pamela?”

“I don’t know, Joan,” answered Pamela, somewhat deflated now.  “It just seemed to me that you were so wrapped up in all of this political campaign business, that I began to wonder if there wasn’t something more to it than just your enthusiasm for Mr. Grant’s platform.”

“That’s ridiculous!” barked Joan.  “What do you take me for?”

“I take you for a normal person, Joan,” said Pamela, in an tense whisper.  “You wouldn’t be the first person to get involved in a political campaign because they were enamored of the candidate.  Haven’t you heard of Monica Lewinsky?”

“I’m not enamored of James,” shot back Joan, her neat white hairdo glistening in the sunbeams from outside.  “I’m enamored of his ideas and his plans.”

“That’s all I wanted to know,” said Pamela.  “But, if that should change . . . “

“It won’t,” Joan snapped. 

There was a long silence as the two women both took deep breaths and slumped in their seats.  Pamela deposited her belongings on the sofa next to her.  She reached over to Joan’s office door and tapped it shut.  Too little, too late, she thought.  If any students had been in the hallway outside, they had probably already gotten an earful.

“Anyway,” began Pamela, looking carefully at Joan’s face.  She had never seen Joan cry—ever.  Joan was the most stoic of all her friends and colleagues.  She remained calm during any and all crises.  Now, Pamela thought she observed the beginning of a tear—not an actual tear, but just the beginning of one in Joan’s eye.

“Can we talk about this?” asked Pamela.

Joan, suddenly pulled herself together and, sitting up straight behind her desk, started to put the items on her desk away in drawers in a pitiful attempt to make her desktop neat. 

“Joan?”

“What?”  Joan stopped her busy work and glared at Pamela.

“What do you know about what happened?  Do you know anything?” Her eyes pleaded with Joan.

“I don’t know any more than you do.  I probably know less.  I didn’t even hear about the arrest until late last night because I came back here after the rally to work on that article I have to get done for
Ed Psych Reports
.  So when I did hear about it, it was so late that I didn’t . .  . couldn’t call you . . . or anyone to find out anything.  So all I know is what they reported on WRER.”

“They’re saying the police found him standing over the body.”

“I know.  Evidently, she had called 911 to report that someone was trying to break in.”

“No,” disagreed Pamela.  “I thought the news said she reported to 911 that her husband was trying to break in.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” argued Joan, now doodling on her blotter with a pencil.  “Why would James need to break into his own house?”

“I’m sure that’s what they said on the news.”

“I’m sure he has a key to his own home.  Why would he break in?”

“Maybe she locked him out with a chain lock or a dead bolt,” suggested Pamela, leaning back onto Joan’s sofa and crossing her legs.

“Why?”

“Rocky says that maybe they were having marital difficulties.  Maybe he came home because he suspected something, broke in, and found her with a lover.”

“I haven’t heard even a hint of anything like that,” mused Joan, “and I’ve been at the campaign headquarters fairly regularly over the last few weeks.”

“If they were having difficulties,” offered Pamela, “you might assume that they’d try to keep it quiet so that the media wouldn’t get wind of it.”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you ever seen his wife?” asked Pamela.

“Stacy,” said Joan.  “I’ve not only seen her, I’ve met her—and she’s lovely.  Well, she was lovely.  She worked for the DA’s office.”

“And they seemed okay?”

“I guess,” responded Joan.  “I mean, they weren’t billing and cooing all the time.  When she showed up at campaign headquarters, she’d only stay a while.”

“Do they have children?”

“No,” replied Joan.  “I think they’d only been married a few years.”

“Hmm,” mumbled Pamela. “You wouldn’t think they’d be having trouble so soon, would you?”

“The only possibility I can think of is that maybe the campaign itself might have taken a toll.  You know, on the marriage.  James spent almost every single minute of the day on that campaign.  If Stacy was prone to being resentful, I guess she’d have the campaign to resent.”

“But her being resentful,” said Pamela, “is backwards.”

“How so, Sherlock?” asked Joan, with a snide leer over her glasses.

“I mean, it would seem Stacy would be the one to have a motive to murder James, not James having a motive to murder Stacy.”

“That does seem more logical,” considered Joan, leaning back in her big leather desk chair, “if anything about any of this were logical.”

A knock on Joan’s office door shook the two friends from their contemplation.  Pamela being closer, rose and opened the door.

“Dr. Bentley,” said a scruffy-looking young man standing respectfully at the entrance.  “You said in class yesterday that we should stop by and have you look over our rough drafts of our research papers.  I was wondering if you’d mind taking a look at mine?”

Joan gestured for the student to enter.  Realizing their private conversation was at an end for the moment, Pamela nodded farewell to Joan and headed out of Joan’s office and across the hallway to her own.  As she let herself in and unloaded her own things in their proper places, she continued to mull over the strange situation that had occurred.  A nice young man—an ideal candidate for mayor who was performing well in the polls and whom Joan supported and whom she would probably support too—had suddenly, seemingly thrown away his chance at a position of leadership.  He’d thrown away his chance to make real substantive change in their town by viciously killing his wife and then stupidly making no attempt to cover his tracks.  Did any of this make any sense?

No, she thought, as she slid onto her comfy paisley sofa beside her window that looked out onto the campus grounds.  No, none of it made any sense at all. 

Chapter Four

Pamela barely had time to open her thermos and take a few sips of one of Rocky’s specialty teas, when Joan appeared at her door, breathless.

“Quick!” she waved at Pamela. “Arliss just called.  She said to come right away!”

“Oh, my!” responded Pamela, setting down her cup on her end table.  After quickly locking her office door, she followed Joan down the hallway.  Arliss was the third member of their tight little group and she was in the last few weeks of her first pregnancy.  A call from Arliss to come
immediately
must mean the baby was on the way.

The two women pattered down the stairs, their heels echoing in the old stairwell.  On the main floor, they hurried towards the animal lab, of which Arliss was director, which was located at the end of a long corridor on the other side of Blake Hall’s main lobby.  Passing the main office, they flew past the departmental secretary, Jane Marie Mira, who was just locking the office door and putting up a sign announcing her departure for a few minutes while she made her daily foray to the administration building to pick up the Psychology Department mail. 

“Dr. Barnes!  Dr. Bentley!” called the young secretary. “Where are you running to?”

“It’s Arliss!” responded Joan, yelling over her shoulder as she whizzed by Jane Marie.

“Is the baby coming?” asked Jane Marie, now following behind the two faculty women.

“We don’t know,” said Pamela, between huffs and puffs.  “She just called and said to come right down to the lab!”

“Maybe she’s in labor!” suggested the secretary, joining in the excitement of the chase.

As the three women reached the far end of the corridor that led to the animal lab, they came to a large, swinging, double door.  A sign above announced, “Grace University Animal Psychology Laboratory.”  Pamela did not venture here often, but she did know that the lab had recently undergone some dramatic improvements, thanks in part to the efforts of her friend, Arliss, and Arliss’s husband, Bob, who was head of the department’s animal psychology sequence.  Joan, being in the lead, pushed through the two doors, and the three women careened inside.

All around them were rows of cages and wire baskets and fenced areas where animals of varying types and sizes resided.  The odor of the large room was definitely gamey, but not nearly as strong as Pamela had remembered it several years ago before Arliss and Bob had made the major improvements to the program that they had.  The giant room also seemed much lighter and airier as the floor to ceiling windows in the old place had been cleared and cleaned.  Pamela knew that Bob had installed a new ventilation system and the entire lab shone and sparkled. 

“Over here!” called a voice from the farthest end of the lab above the sounds of squeaks, cries, and chirps.  The three women quickly hustled down the center aisle, past cages of birds, rodents, monkeys, dogs, cats, and various other laboratory creatures—all seemingly cheering the running women on in their own unique species’ way.  When the three reached the back of the lab, they saw their friend, Arliss MacGregor Goodman, bending over a medium-sized cage in the last row next to the wall.  Arliss was skinny to the point of being emaciated—except for the large belly she now sported.  Her mass of frizzy black hair was tied up in a loose pony tail. 

“Look!” she cried to the three women. “Look at Eva!”