Viola Avenue Read online

  It looked more like the dressing room of a strip club than a professional theater.

  “It’s not much,” he said.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “What’s my supply budget?”

  “Supply budget?” he said, and then erupted into a deep, belly laugh.

  “Yes,” she said. “For makeup, brushes, sponges, applicators, wax, false hair, adhesives, remover, cotton balls; you know, supplies.”

  “My dear Miss Fitzpatrick, your salary demands have decimated my budget,” he said. “So much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if you receive anonymous hate mail from the other instructors. I know we are lucky to have you here. Personally, I am thrilled you’re here and I’m sure we will reap the benefit of your expertise and professional connections, but unfortunately there is no more money for anything else.”

  “Didn’t the previous instructor order supplies?”

  “Unfortunately, Ms. Buttercombe didn’t arrange for anything before the semester began, and then didn’t show up for classes, so there were no books assigned nor supplies ordered.”

  “What happened to her?”

  He raised both hands in a theatrical shrug.

  “Would that I knew,” he said. “She applied for and received an advance on her first paycheck, cashed the check, and then disappeared.”

  “I can pay for the supplies, myself, I guess,” she said. “I can order the books online.”

  “Oh, no. Make the little darlings pay,” he said. “They can afford it.”

  “They won’t mind?”

  “There are very few scholarship students at Eldridge,” he said. “Most of the students here come from very wealthy families, and they all have credit cards with astronomical limits. Ask them to pay, Miss Fitzpatrick, and they will not blink.”

  They began the walk back to the elevators.

  “You all must be very sad about Professor Richmond,” she said.

  Professor Jarvis smirked.

  “If you had known him, you would know exactly which emotions I feel,” he said. “Sadness is not one of them.”

  “He was difficult?” she prodded.

  “You might say that,” he said, not even trying to mask his amusement. “You might also say he was a demanding, unbearable narcissist.”

  “Did he seem to have an alcohol problem at work?”

  “How could one tell?” he said. “Was he a mean drunk or just mean? It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  “Did anyone like him?”

  “He had his little coterie of fans,” he said. “All great actors have sycophants and hangers-on. Alan had them, too. He was the dean of Fine Arts, as well as Department Chair, which gave him power. Everyone knows what a little power can do for a narcissist.”

  “Did he ever get too close to his students?”

  The professor turned to look at Claire straight on, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Miss Fitzpatrick,” he said. “Why would you care?”

  “I’m just nosy,” she said with what she hoped was a nonchalant shrug. “I’d heard gossip.”

  “Oh, you’ll hear gossip,” he said, followed by that deep, booming laugh. “This is Drama Village, my dear, and gossip is always, always the soup du jour.”

  Professor Jarvis led Claire back up to the third floor and down the hall to the dean’s office. There was an administrative assistant there, and he introduced her before he left. Doreen Midkiff seemed like a nice, sweet, friendly person, and from her outdated curly mullet hairdo and Megamart poly-cotton separates, Claire discerned she was a local.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Doreen said. “I was born and raised in Fleurmania but I know your family from shopping here in town.”

  “Have you worked here very long?”

  “I’ve been here all summer covering for the permanent administrative assistant, who is on maternity leave. Brenda will be back next Monday, so I won’t be here after that.”

  “Did you work closely with Professor Richmond?”

  Doreen blushed.

  “Professor Richmond was not very pleased with me, I’m afraid,” she said. “I think he was used to a smarter, more sophisticated type person, and I’m as country as cornbread.”

  “Was he mean to you?”

  “No more than he was to anyone else. He was always in a foul mood,” she said. “The more irritated he got the more mistakes I made; you know how that is.”

  “It sounds like no one got along with him.”

  “He liked Brenda,” she said. “All he did was talk about how wonderful she was and how much he was looking forward to her being back.”

  “That was mean.”

  “I told my husband, Don, I said, ‘He’s mean as a snake, but I could listen to him talk all day.’ He had the most wonderful British accent, just like someone on those PBS Mystery shows. It’s hard to believe he’s gone. I heard he drunk himself to death.”

  “Did he drink here at work, do you think?”

  “I never smelled it on him, and I would know,” she said. “My father was a bad alcoholic; they think they can cover it up, but they can’t, not really. The smell comes out of their pores.”

  “Did he have enemies among the other professors?”

  “He was always fighting with somebody,” she said. “He had a way of insulting people that was almost poetic. He’d get the best of them with his words, you see, and it would tie their tongues, make them crazy. I’m not college educated, and I don’t know about plays and books, but I think he talked like what Shakespeare must have sounded like. Sometimes I didn’t know what the heck he was on about, but I loved the sound of it.”

  “What about the assistant dean? Did they fight?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He always treated Professor Jarvis with the utmost respect. If you ask me, he was a little afraid of Professor Jarvis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was nervous around him. Overly courteous, you might say, but nervous.”

  “I wonder what that was about.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” she said.

  “I’m just being nosy,” Claire said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all,” she said. “You’re a townie, and we all have to stick together.”

  “A townie?”

  “That’s what they call the people who work here who are from around here. Townies. It’s not exactly a compliment.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of townies today.”

  “Oh, we’re all over the place, in support staff positions,” she said. “But you won’t see any townies in the upper administration or tenured teaching positions.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “It’s prejudice, same as anywhere,” she said. “If you’re from here you can’t be anybody worth knowing, and you certainly can’t know anything worth teaching these rich kids.”

  “Ed Harrison teaches here; I’m going to teach here.”

  “There are exceptions to every rule, I guess,” she said. “But mark my word, neither of you will be considered for tenure track; you won’t even be invited to departmental meetings.”

  “Probably not me, but surely Ed would be,” Claire said. “He went to a prestigious school; he’s teaching full time.”

  “And he’s a man,” Doreen said. “But what do I know? I’m a townie temp; that’s worse than nothing around here. I may as well be invisible.”

  “What about the other instructors? Anyone I should watch out for?”

  “They were none of them here this summer, so I’ve only known most of them for two weeks,” she said. “They seem like a bunch of snobby drama queens to me, so I could care less what they think of me.”

  “Does anyone seem particularly upset about Professor Richmond’s death?”

  “Glad’s more like it,” she said. “The things they say, you’d be embarrassed to hear. I’d be ashamed to talk so poorly of the dead, even someone as unpleasant as Professor Richmond.”

  “Who will be the new dean?” Claire
asked.

  “That’s what they’re all asking each other,” she said. “They each of them think they should be the one, and Professor Jarvis deserves it, but they’re sharpening their knives for him, the better to stab him in the back.”

  “Really?” Claire said. “They say that?”

  “Oh, I hear things,” she said. “I’m invisible, remember? They consider me about as important as that door, or that chair. They don’t even see me half the time.”

  “How can they hurt Professor Jarvis?”

  “Back channel talk,” she said. “I heard he got run out of his last job for some reason, and was asked to leave. I also heard he’s having an affair with the wife of an important person in the administration here.”

  “Is any of that true?”

  “Who knows?” she said. “They said worse about Professor Richmond and he was the dean.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Oh, that he played favorites with the students,” she said. “Certain ones always got picked for the best parts, and it wasn’t always the most deserving ones. He has connections in New York and Hollywood, they say. He sent graduates to auditions and put in a good word for them; or he didn’t.”

  “You haven’t been here long, but you certainly know where the skeletons are hidden.”

  “This place is all skeletons,” she said. “They should call this Drama Cemetery.”

  “Where do the instructors hang out when they’re not teaching?” Claire asked.

  “In their offices, mostly, or in little whispering gangs,” she said. “The teaching assistants hang out in the break room, at the end of the hall.”

  Claire thanked her and wandered down the hallway, ostensibly reading what was on the bulletin boards, but really listening near the doorways to classrooms and offices.

  At the end of the hallway she found the break room, and lingered outside, reading a fascinating advertisement for a band named “The Noble Lie” that would be performing in the student center that weekend. To Claire, the band members all looked fifteen-years-old, and dressed as if they were mad at their parents.

  “My money’s on Jarvis,” she heard a female voice say. “He’s been here the longest.”

  “I still think Heffernan has the inside track,” a male voice said. “She’s married to the provost, and she’s socially and politically connected to the board.”

  “She’s also female, which looks good on the brochures. There’s currently only one other female dean on the entire campus.”

  “What about Agatha?” someone asked and everyone laughed.

  “Professor Pot Head,” someone said. “If she had to change offices, she’d have a nervous breakdown. What if there wasn’t room for all her macramé plant hangers?”

  “They’d never be able to get that pot smell out of her office.”

  “There’s also a chance they’ll bring in someone from the outside.”

  “A board member’s relative.”

  “Or another alumni.”

  “Maybe Buttercombe has an artistic relative.”

  Claire heard chairs scrape the floor so she wandered over to the window and pretended to be looking out as they left the break room.

  “The car twins will be devastated now Dickman’s gone,” one said as they went down the hall. “The only parts they’ll be playing from now on are third and fourth peasant.”

  “What goes around comes around.”

  Claire wandered the hallway until she felt conspicuous, and then gave herself a tour of the fourth floor, but Ed wasn’t around.

  She looked in through the open door of an unoccupied office, and smelled Patchouli, pot resin, and Nag Champa incense. “Agatha Mappe” was written on the plaque on the door. Her office hours were also listed on a card taped underneath it.

  An Indian print bedspread was tacked to one wall, and a Bob Marley poster shared space on another wall with a poster promoting a 1978 NYC’s Shakespeare in the Park series. It was “Taming of the Shrew” and there were photographs featuring Raul Julia and Meryl Streep pinned to it. They looked so young.

  Spider plants in macramé holders hung in front of every window, some of their spider babies as big as the mothers. Her desk was stacked high with a mess of papers, books, and tea cups. There were cigarette burns and cup rings on every bare surface.

  Her book case featured poetry and classics from all over the world, and she had a handwritten quote taped to her computer.

  “I am not this hair

  I am not this skin

  I am the soul that lives within.

  Rumi”

  Claire was looking out the window, thinking about this, when someone entered the office.

  “Sorry,” the young woman said. “I was looking for Professor Mappe.”

  “Me, too,” Claire said.

  “She’s awesome, isn’t she?” the young woman said. “She’s the first person who ever made Shakespeare intelligible to me. I was Drama but I’m changing my major to English because of her.”

  “Did you know Professor Richmond?”

  The young woman rolled her eyes.

  “ ‘Dickman,’ they called him,” she said. “He was crazy talented but such a lech. There was no way I was going to make the cut with him. My tits aren’t big enough and I have a conscience.”

  She laughed and Claire said, “I thought he liked men.”

  “He liked everyone,” the young woman said. “His little coven of followers is a depraved bunch. The stuff they got up to turned my stomach.”

  “What did they do that was so awful?”

  The young woman’s eyebrows went up and she looked like she regretted saying what she had.

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “I gotta go.”

  She scurried away before Claire could ask her anything else.

  As she made her way back across campus, Claire admired the state-of-the-art tennis and soccer facilities, a student center anchored on one end by a famous corporately owned espresso bar and on the other by a famous name-brand clothing boutique, and in every parking lot, luxury cars and SUVs. She realized anew what a completely different reality existed only yards from the town she grew up in. The college was in Rose Hill, in the only state in Appalachia surrounded on all sides by other Appalachian states, but inside these brick walls, it felt more like some wealthy private college in New England.

  Claire thought to herself that it was amazing what a brick wall, some iron gates, and millions of dollars of endowment money could do.

  Claire found Torby on the second floor of Charles Sanders Pierce Hall, in his small, corner office, which was messy and filled with the kind of blonde Scandinavian furniture you put together with an Allen wrench. He seemed surprised but overjoyed to see her, and offered her some vegetable juice he said he made himself with an expensive looking blender he showed her.

  “The wheat grass is particularly good,” he said. “I also use watercress and spinach.”

  “No, thanks,” she said, as she took a seat. “I’m familiar with the taste of green juice and I think I’ll pass.”

  There were multiple bottles of supplements lined up in the window sill, and a blood pressure cuff on a nearby shelf.

  “You’re a health nut,” she said. “I had no idea.”

  “My mother was an Olympic skier and my father is a cardiologist,” he said. “We grew up that way.”

  They made pleasant small talk for a little while, and then Claire broached the difficult subject.

  “How are you doing?” she asked. “I know finding someone you care about dead is a traumatizing thing to go through.”

  Torby shook his head and looked out the window.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” he said. “I keep expecting him to call and ask me to go to lunch.”

  “Did you spend a lot of time with Alan?” she asked. “Outside of game nights?”

  “We ate lunch together a couple days per week,” he said. “We’d go to the Rose and Thorn a few nights a week. Ne
d joined us most of the time.”

  “It sounds like you three were very close.”

  He shrugged.

  “He and Ned were very kind to me when I came here not knowing anyone.”

  Claire wanted to ask how close, but she couldn’t bear to offend him.

  “I guess you probably heard gossip about him,” she said. “Campuses are like that.”

  He nodded.

  “But you didn’t believe any of it?”

  He shrugged.

  “Torby,” Claire said. “There’s a chance someone killed Alan.”

  His head popped up.

  “Killed him?”

  “Someone may have put something in his drink.”

  ‘Who would do such a thing?” he asked, incredulous. “Why would someone?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Claire said. “Do you know anyone who hated Alan enough to hurt him? Did he ever mention anything like that?”

  “There were always office politics,” Torby said. “He didn’t take them seriously. He said everyone wanted his job, but he wasn’t afraid of anyone. At least, he never said.”

  “Did you ever see young people leaving his apartment?”

  “All the time,” he said. “I think he was just friendly that way. I was always welcome there, anytime.”

  “Did he ever … cross a line with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he ever hit on you?”

  “No, never,” he said. “Is that what you thought?”

  “Not necessarily,” Claire said. “I’m just trying to figure him out, and I’ve heard he was inappropriate with his students.”

  “I guess that’s why you never took me seriously when I flirted with you,” he said.

  “I didn’t realize you did,” Claire said.

  “I need to work on my technique, I guess,” he said with a rueful smile. “I wasn’t Alan’s lover, Claire, just his really good friend. I didn’t care who he had relations with, only that he was kind to me.”

  “Of course,” Claire said. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

  “You Americans are so obsessed with what goes on in the bedrooms,” he said. “I wish you were more concerned with what goes on in your boardrooms.”