The Rise of the Red Queen Read online

  Congers got up and strode to the window. I estimated he was about six foot three. His posture was military straight. He must’ve been as magnetic as a movie star when he was young. Hell, he still was.

  “Dean Solaris, you have to help me. Jamie’s car is missing. I’ve talked to Student Services, the campus police, and the Landry police. I filed a missing persons report even though the Landry police say it’s too soon for them to act on it. I know it’s too soon. I’m a retired cop.” His speech was rushed, words tumbling one after the other. “I also know I have to dig deeper and, fortunately, I know how. I was deputy police chief in Las Vegas before I retired. What I want—what I need to do—is to interview your lab professor and some of the students here.”

  Oh, dear.

  “Mr. Congers, did the Landry police offer to investigate?”

  He stopped pacing. “Of course not. Their chief claims they don’t have the manpower to check up on every college kid who takes a hike.” He sat down in the chair again, looking at the floor. Then he lifted his chin, fixing dark eyes on me. “Dr. Solaris, I know I need your permission to talk to your students. That’s why I’m here.”

  Deep breath. “I’m sorry, but I can’t give you permission to interrogate my students. However, I can get ahold of the lab professor, and I may be able to find someone else to help. Did you speak to a Detective Joe Morgan at the Landry police station?”

  “I don’t recall that name.”

  One of his hands was resting on my desk.

  I reached across and touched it with my fingertips. “Mr. Congers, I understand. I care very much about my students and I know sometimes trouble happens. Let me call Detective Morgan. He’s a good friend and I may be able to get him to check around.”

  “I could use all the help I can get, Dr. Solaris.”

  “Joe’s good at getting stuff out of students. Also, many of my students know him and might feel more comfortable—more forthcoming.”

  I heard Nell in the outer office and called to her. At the sight of her curly gray hair and slender figure, Congers rose. “Good morning, ma’am.” There was a softness in his voice I hadn’t heard when he spoke to me and a look in Nell’s eyes I couldn’t remember ever seeing before. No doubt she found him as attractive as I did.

  “Nell Bishop, this is Wynan Congers. Mr. Congers’ granddaughter, Jamie, is a journalism student, and he needs our help. Please get him a cup of coffee and find out where he is staying.”

  Nell smiled and extended her hand to Congers. I’d never seen my solemn assistant shake hands so eagerly or release a hand so reluctantly.

  I turned to Congers, who was still looking at Nell. “Mr. Congers, I have a meeting I must attend, but Nell will take care of you and get in touch with the lab director.”

  The man’s voice was almost a whisper. “I’m truly grateful to you for trying to help me.” He took a breath and reset his shoulders. “Jamie’s the center of my life.”

  I put my hand on his arm and felt it tense beneath my fingers. “We’ll figure this out. I promise I’ll call this afternoon and we’ll get back together again.”

  After Congers left, I braced myself for the next item on my agenda, the one that had my stomach in knots: meeting the search committee. They’d already interviewed numerous candidates and their questions were probably honed to razor sharpness. I knew my competitors had done brilliantly. Or so the rumor mill said.

  Well, not just the rumor mill. I had a spy or two.

  My best friend’s encouraging words rang in my ears. “Everyone on campus has spoken highly of you, Red. Any committee member checking you out is bound to run into rave reviews for your performance last year.” This had come from the former Dean of Liberal Arts, Sadie Hawkins. Sadie was retired, but still a superb source of inside information on the Mountain West campus.

  “Sadie, be realistic,” I’d said. “I was a journalist for a big city paper, but only for five years before I went to grad school. One of the finalists has a Pulitzer.”

  “But he has nowhere near your academic experience,” Sadie had insisted. “You know how academic battles are won. Arm yourself, my courageous queen. Pin up your gorgeous red hair, take a deep breath, then go into that meeting and earn your nickname.”

  Remembering Sadie’s words, I tried to focus on the importance of my interview, but my mind kept wandering back to the possibility that something unfortunate had happened to Jamie Congers. I prayed for a new boyfriend or an easily explained episode of hooky, but I continued to feel uneasy, infected with the intensity of her grandfather’s concern.

  Chapter 2

  When I’m on campus, I walk everywhere. There are shuttle buses that help you get from one end to another, but I avoid them. The Mountain West campus restores my soul. A vast bed of yellow roses is one of my favorite sights, and it came into sight as I walked to the search committee meeting.

  I tried to shake my concern about Jamie as I headed up the steps to the library. My former dean, the late Henry Brooks, used to say whenever I anticipated the worst, “Cheer up, maybe it won’t happen.” Perhaps Jamie Congers would show up later in the day with a hug for her worried grandfather and reassurances all around.

  Meanwhile, I had to stop thinking about her. Mine was the final interview for the permanent dean’s position and I should’ve been rehearsing answers to possible questions from the committee. Sixty-three journalism academics and ten professional journalists had applied for the dean’s job, and I was one of only three finalists. But I was an inside candidate and keenly aware of university search committee preferences for hiring outsiders.

  “Promoting an insider is not their idea of a task well done,” Sadie had warned me. “The university appetite is always for new blood. A dean’s position is an opportunity to enrich the cadre of top faculty with a distinguished scholar or a famous professional.”

  I also knew that my competitors were formidable. The one who worried me most was Manuel Lorenzo, an old friend who’d helped me last year when I was first appointed to lead my school. Manny was a dean at one of the nation’s largest journalism schools. His scholarship was legend and his faculty members adored him. The search committee had probably cheered and opened a bottle of champagne when they got his curriculum vitae—university speak for a complex academic résumé.

  My other competitor was Victor Watts, a superhero who held a chair at a prestigious journalism school in the east, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning book author, and a former foreign correspondent for NBC. I wondered what would motivate him to move to a town as small as Landry, Nevada, but he seemed eager for the job.

  The search committee for the permanent dean of journalism gathered in a private room on the second floor of the university library. All three finalists met with the committee in the morning, then went to lunch with three of the members, then had dinner with the committee chair.

  I was the last on the list of the finalists to be interviewed. I had seen Manny Lorenzo across the quad the week before and waved a cheerful greeting. If I didn’t get the job, I reckoned Manny would make a good dean for our school and a good mentor for me.

  As for Victor Watts, I had seen him emerging from the library looking much like the photograph on the back of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book. An elegant man, Watts was dressed as if he had just finished a photoshoot for an issue of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. He nodded a greeting that suggested he knew who I was. I wondered if he really did.

  I walked down the wide hall, past portraits of former presidents of Mountain West University. Graceful buildings like the library always comforted me, reminding me of why I’d given up noisy, hectic newsrooms for the carpeted quiet of scholarly surroundings. I loved teaching, but I’d just spent a year learning about academic management and I liked that too. I enjoyed running the journalism school, and I wanted to keep doing it.

  “Good morning, Red.” A hearty welcome from Bill Verden, Dean of Sc
ience—a friend and, I hoped, my supporter.

  “Please come in, Dr. Solaris,” said Bridget Thomas, Dean of the College of Economics, chair of the search committee and a woman I had never thought of as a friend. Her smile was as thin and as narrow as her lips, not even a suggestion of teeth. Aloofness was her uniform.

  “Please call me Red. Everyone does,” I said, hoping I could melt her chilliness with a show of cheerful informality.

  “Why don’t you sit here?” said Mark Froman, guiding me to the head of the table.

  I wasn’t crazy about Mark, either. His expensive shirts seemed molded to his body, showing off his muscular ropey arms. His eyes were black and beady. He had a bad habit of grasping my shoulders, always trying to steer me one way or another.

  Mark was the outside member of the committee, not a university employee.

  He had been chosen from the Landry community by Philip Lewis, the university president. A major donor to the university, Froman had inherited a fortune and was independently wealthy. He spent his days serving on non-profit boards in Nevada and California.

  The rest of the committee, deans and professors from schools at the university, already sat at the table. I’d met most of them before, and knew a couple of them well enough to be familiar with their families.

  Bridget began after unbuttoning and then buttoning a navy jacket that didn’t fit her especially well. “Now, Dr. Solaris, since you’ve just spent the last year as interim dean of journalism, why don’t you start by telling us what you think you accomplished. And then, please describe what you failed to accomplish in that post.”

  Strengths and weaknesses. What a bore. But I had rehearsed for this one.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, I led the school through the tragedy of the death of our last dean, Henry Brooks. That loss was particularly hard on many of us and…”

  “Brooks was killed by one of your faculty, right?” Mark Froman said, fingering the Rolex on his impressive forearm.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And he’s in jail for it. Right? And for assaulting that student.” Black eyes gleamed.

  Bridget interrupted. “Please go on, Dr. Solaris.” She glared at Froman. “I think we’re all entirely too familiar with the scandals in journalism last year and the killing of Henry Brooks.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes, well, perhaps my most important accomplishment was bringing an end to the quarreling among the faculty and getting the school back on the right path. We improved our curriculum and prepared for reaccreditation. I was also able to raise a considerable endowment for a chair in memory of the late dean.”

  “Indeed you were,” said Bill, “and it was one of the largest endowments in the history of the university, I recall.”

  I flashed him a smile.

  “And you steered through some cutting edge new courses in journalism technology, I believe,” added the engineering dean.

  “Yes,” I said, somewhat relieved. Maybe some of these people might vote for me after all.

  “And your failures?” Bridget asked.

  “I’m not sure it’s a failure so much as a challenge I still have to face,” I said, enunciating every syllable and making sure my audience had time to take good notes. I was getting to the part that I considered my unique qualification: my familiarity with the school’s past and my assessment of what needed to happen in the future. “I still have considerable work to do on restoring the reputation of the school. I have yet to regain the confidence of some of our alumni, as well as some of our students. We took a huge hit last year and my plan is to…”

  “You bring up a major problem,” said Mark Froman. “Perhaps too big a problem for someone who was directly involved in the school at the time of its scandals.” So much for the structure of my argument. Froman had blown it away.

  It didn’t get easier after that. Bridget Thomas and Mark Froman seemed determined to dredge up every aspect of last year’s tragic episodes.

  On the way back to my office, a group of giggling, pretty girls passed me in the hall and my thoughts rushed back to Jamie. My head rejected it, but my instincts said another one of my students was in trouble—a sense of déjà vu from last year, when I’d witnessed the deep anguish of a student in serious trouble.

  I tried to recall if I knew which one of our new black female students might be Jamie. Maybe the tall, beautiful girl I’d seen last week taking the stairs two at a time. Large eyes and incredible skin, she moved with the grace of a dancer and the strength of an athlete. I remembered her grandfather’s face and knew I’d help him find her no matter what the cost in time and energy. That was my job.

  His words—“Jamie’s the center of my life”—echoed in my ears.

  Chapter 3

  Nell met me outside my office. “Everything go all right?” Her soft eyes were filled with concern. Nell’s face is younger than her years, but she looked pale and anxious.

  “Hard to say. I think some of the committee members like me but others seem to prefer a candidate from outside the university. One whose hands are clean of last year’s mess.”

  “Oh, Red, we are all sure you did everything you could.”

  “Not everything, Nell. You know as well as I do that I took much too long to intervene. I’m afraid some of the committee members know it too. If I’d gone to the administration sooner, I might have prevented the assault of that girl.” I could still see my student’s battered face when she told me what her former lover had done to her. The worst part was her assailant had once been my good friend and confidant, a man I’d trusted way too much.

  “We were all fooled.” Nell tugged at one of her steel gray curls. “None of us saw the truth until it was too late. You can’t blame yourself.”

  But I could blame myself. And I did.

  As I sank into the chair behind my desk and put my hands over my eyes, I remembered the day I finally confronted the killer. Maybe Froman was right.

  I was too involved in all the violent events of last year to lead the school as its permanent dean.

  My cell phone rang and I glanced at the screen. It was Joe—the man who’d shown up that day at the last minute and saved my life. “How did the search committee go?” His slight note of concern pleased me. Whenever he thought I might be down, he transformed from detective to counselor.

  “About as well as could be expected.”

  “I’m betting it was better than that. You have no idea how persuasive you can be when you put your mind to it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “We’ll see. You’re always pessimistic, and you’re especially good at expecting the worst to happen. But I have another reason to call you. I got a visit from a Wynan Congers. Says his granddaughter’s missing, one of your students. You gave him my name?”

  “I did. Congers talked to the police but got nowhere, so I told him to see you.”

  “You know how much I’d enjoy helping out the next dean of the journalism school, but I’m not sure what I can do for this guy. The girl’s over twenty-one and has only been gone a short time. My chief’s not likely to put a team on her case for another few days.”

  “Congers knows that. But he’s sure something awful has happened to her. He wants to talk to students and the head of our lab where she worked.”

  “Okay. Tell me what you know about her.”

  “Transfer student with good grades, according to her records. Light-skinned African American. Short curly hair. Tall. Great figure and a gorgeous face.”

  “That’s how Congers described her too. Maybe she’s gone to Hollywood.”

  “She’d fit right in, but her grandfather is certain she would have called him before taking a trip anywhere.”

  “She’s an adult, but I’ll see what I can find out. Her grandfather gave me her roommate’s name and address. He’s already talked to the roommate but wants me to
see what I can dig up.”

  “Thanks very much. That will mean a lot to Congers. He’s a retired deputy police chief, you know, from Vegas.”

  “So he said. I plan to do what I can to help the guy.”

  “Thanks, Joe. You’re terrific. I’ll help, too. I have Everett Jones, the head of our computer lab, coming in this afternoon so Congers can talk to him.”

  My thoughts stayed on Congers as I headed out to the parking lot where Bill Verden stood beside his ancient Buick convertible.

  “Would it be all right to leave the top down?” he said as he opened the passenger side door for me. “My wife keeps a scarf in the glove compartment if you like.”

  “Leave the top down, Bill. I can use the fresh air. Where are we going for this lunch?”

  “Froman wanted us to meet at Antonio’s. You’re okay with Italian, right?”

  “I’m okay with food. I’m starving. Who else besides you and Froman are going to grill me along with my fish?” I reached for the scarf, remembering I had to look tidy for my official lunch with the search committee.

  “Gert Simons. You know Gert.”

  “Sort of.” I didn’t know her well, and what I did know was she always seemed timid. I couldn’t figure out how Gert Simons had survived the politics of the university, much less achieved the level of director.

  The warm wind felt good on my face as we drove out of the south end of campus and took a narrow side street to the main drag of Landry. Shops and bars and three small casinos sat in a row of one-story buildings with the sky and mountains behind. The sky was that absolutely cloudless blue that covers the high desert.

  I turned my head to Bill Verden’s profile. “Bill, how the hell did I make it into the final three? I felt a lot of negative vibrations in the meeting this morning.”