Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

Not for Love nor Money by Robin Wilson

Carmel California’s Robin Wilson has had several dozen science fiction short stories and novelettes published over the years, and in 1995 St. Martin’s Press brought out his mystery novel Death by Degrees. The author is a former employee of the CIA, and says that he also knows the world of higher education “truly well.” His setting for this story is the world of academe, a California college where it appears that one professor has it out for another.

Professors divide themselves into sects, and you can tell one faith from another by the cars they drive. Faculties in Business Administration and Engineering drive big American cars, mostly SUVs. They vote Republican. Those of us in the Liberal Arts and Sciences favor unassuming Fords, Hondas, or Chevys, if we haven’t made tenure, or the least expensive Volvo, Mercedes, or an occasional BMW, if we have. We vote Democrat. And people in the fine and performing arts wheel around in battered VW campers or tiny Japanese vehicles that look like they ought to have a winding key sticking up out of their tops. And they vote for odd parties you’ve never heard of. There are exceptions, of course, but they only prove my case.

So I was surprised one warm autumn day after lunch in downtown Greenfield, as I was walking back to campus with my blue blazer slung over my shoulder, to be honked out of my reverie by a huge black Lincoln Navigator that swooshed to the curb next to me and revealed its driver to be the ethereal Naomi Cordier, Associate Professor of Dance, clad, as usual, in something diaphanous and floral. In her mid thirties, small, short dark hair, ravishingly beautiful, Naomi had enjoyed a good — for a dancer — ten-year run with major companies, until a foot injury had forced her retirement. She had picked up an MFA in Dance that would allow her to teach, and when she came to Greenfield State three or four years ago, every straight man on campus fell instantly in love. But Naomi in the Navigator? Think Audrey Hepburn suited up to play linebacker for the 49ers.

She leaned across to call out through the passenger-side window: “Dr. Haas! Peter! Have you got a minute? I was just on my way to campus to try to see you. I — uh — we’ve got a problem.”

And of course “problem” is the magic word for me. Like Shazam! or the click of Dorothy’s slippers, that word is transforming, in my case from a middle-aged English professor with the bland looks of a Dutch cheese salesman into the university president’s executive assistant charged with discreetly resolving all puzzles, conundrums, screwups, and dastardly acts likely to bring embarrassment to our campus.

“Sure, Naomi,” I said, climbing into the Navigator. “Where’d you get this juggernaut?”

“It’s Harrison’s,” she said, pulling back into Main Street traffic. “Harrison Buckman. You know, in Electrical Engineering?”

“Yes, we’ve done some rock climbing together.”

Harrison was much admired as “The King of Grants,” and he deserved it. His crew of a dozen scientists and technicians in our Nanotechnology Lab had brought Greenfield State University a modicum of fame.

“Harrison and I, we...” She glanced appraisingly at me and then returned her eyes to the crowded road ahead. “We’ve been living together...” Her voice died and she drove on in silence as if weighing choices. Then, with a determined shake of her head: “Harrison has been hurt. He’ll be all right. The doctor says there’s been no permanent damage, but someone beat him up pretty badly.”

“Beat him up! Who?”

“That’s the problem. Harrison says he doesn’t know who did it. He was out as usual walking his dog on the hiking trail behind our — his house last evening, just after dark, when it happened.”

“Did you call the police?”

“I wanted to, but Harrison said no, I don’t know why.”

“And you want me to do... what?”

“Will you come out to the house and talk to Harrison? He’s in too much pain to drive to campus.”

“Does he want to talk with me?”

Her voice subdued, telling tales out of school, Naomi said, “He doesn’t know I’ve come to see you.”

She wheeled the Navigator in at the campus parking-lot entrance, stopped, and turned to me, her eyes moist. “Please, Peter, we need help. Something’s wrong and I’m worried.”

I dropped down from the Navigator with a promise of action, retrieved my Volvo from the lot, and cell-phoned my office to tell them I would be late returning from lunch. I followed Naomi then back up Main and across town to Mariposa Estates, a development of modest one-story mission-style homes where many faculty lived. Naomi pulled up a driveway and into a garage, its door sliding down behind the Navigator. I parked at the curb and she met me at the door, elfin, beautiful, worried. “He’s out on the patio,” she said, leading me through a book-lined living room and out a pair of French doors onto a shaded pad of tile, into air scented with jasmine. A redwood recliner bore Harrison Buckman, a wiry, athletic man in his mid forties suddenly fattened by swaths of gauze and tape across his chest, over one shoulder, and around his right arm and hand. He turned his head towards us in obvious pain. His face was red and bruised, one eye nearly swollen shut. “What the hell, Naomi!” he muttered. He sighed and struggled up to a seated position and shook my hand with his left hand. “Hey, Peter. Sorry to bother you with this.”

“Wow, Harrison,” I said. “How fast was it going when it hit you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Naomi tell you what happened?”

“She says you don’t know who did it. Were you robbed? Don’t you think you ought to make a police report?”

Instead of answering, Buckman glanced over my shoulder at Naomi and said, “Hey, Naomi, I’m dying of thirst. Could you get me and Peter something? A beer, maybe? You, Peter?”

“Maybe a Coke.”

Naomi disappeared and Buckman leaned toward me. “Sit down, Peter,” he whispered. “I wasn’t robbed. And I don’t want to upset Naomi, but I think the guy who did this to me was Joe Hayden.”

“In Fine Arts? The painter who used to play NFL football?”

“Yes. Played defensive end a couple of seasons for the Raiders back in the ’eighties, before he got hurt. I guess he discovered painting in therapy, began to sell well up in Bay Area galleries, and got picked up by the GSU Art Department.”

“Can you identify him to the cops?”

Harrison shook his head gingerly, eyes closed. “No. I really didn’t see who it was. Just a dark shadow out of the corner of my eye and whap! Dropped a bag over my head filled with something. Ether, maybe? Whatever it was, I tried to pull the bag off, took one breath, and I was out for fifteen, twenty minutes. Came to all beat to hell, with Lolly — that’s my dog — licking my arm.” He shifted on the recliner to find a more comfortable position. “Bruised some ribs and damn near broke my right arm, and my right hand looks like he stamped on it. Broke two fingers.”

“So what makes you think it’s Hayden?”

“Hayden is Naomi’s ex. They got married about a year after she came here, but it didn’t work out and she left him.”

“And you think that’s why he popped you? Because you and Naomi...?”

“It’s a good bet. She says he’s never really gotten over their divorce. Still telephones once in a while and sends her cards on anniversaries. I don’t think she’s afraid of him, but he worries her. She says he’s gentle, a lot more artist than footballer, but maybe a little nuts.”

“All the more reason to call the cops,” I said.

“No way, Peter. I’ve got to handle this my own way. First of all, if Naomi knew Joe did this, she’d be really upset. And if word got out about it, can you imagine the stories in the Greenfield Gazette? Hell, in the San Francisco Chronicle? ‘GSU Professor Beaten in Love Triangle.’ That’s all it would take to shut off the National Science Foundation and every other granting agency. I might just as well kiss the Nanotech Lab goodbye. I mean, you don’t have to be a saint to do good science, but the big foundations like Hewlett and Keck and Carnegie, they won’t let you play in their sandbox if your reputation’s smudged with any kind of sex thing.”

I nodded. “I can see that. But why would he do something like this? Was he trying to get rid of you permanently?”

“No. I don’t think so. He could have done it easily enough with me completely out like that.”

I was puzzled. “I don’t know Hayden very well. We talked once at one of those faculty teas the Swensons throw; you know, where the only ‘t’ consumed is preceeded by ‘mar’ and followed by ‘ni.’ How sure are you he’s the guy?”

“Well, the bag he used. It’s over there by the railing. Take a look.”

I crossed the patio and spotted the bag, crumpled brown canvas, the kind of sack you might carry fifty pounds of potatoes in. Or four or five footballs. It still gave off a faint medicinal smell. On one side was a stencil in white of a pirate wearing an eye patch, the logo of the Oakland Raiders.

“See?” said Buckman. “And what his motive was, I’m not sure, but he went to a lot of trouble to disable my right arm and hand. I’m not one of those theoretical guys who do all their research with a blackboard and a computer. I’m hands-on, and in nanotechnology, a good hand is pretty important. I mean, you’re manipulating stuff under the scope that’s only a few atoms wide. Maybe he thought he could put me out of business.” Buckman paused, squirming to relieve some pain. “Anyway, I don’t give a damn why he did it, but first chance I get, I’m going to lay for him with a baseball bat. See how he likes to paint with his arm in a sling.”

I drank my Coke, made nice, and drove back to campus and walked across the Quad, aswarm with the three-o’clock class change, to the Admin Building and the president’s office. H. Evinrude Swenson had an anteroom full of people waiting for an audience, but Mrs. Abrams, his secretary and sweetly smiling guard dog, squeezed me in.

Swenson’s small inner sanctum was utilitarian, without the usual collections of plaques, awards, and certificates you find in the offices of important people, mostly because Ev didn’t consider himself very important. “I’m just a kind of greenhouse,” he told me when I first went to work for him. “Try to let the sun in and keep the cold out so all the exotic plants around here can grow and flower.” And there was only a little irony in his voice.

This time, he greeted me in his Minnesota singsong. “What tale of horror do you have for me today, Peter?”

“You know Naomi Cordier? In Dance?”

“Ah. You bet.” His voice bore the soft reverence we all reserve for things that are the best in their class.

And so I told him of Naomi and Buckman and Hayden and what had happened the night before.

Ev leaned back in his old wooden desk chair, his craggy Swedish face creased in thought. “Buckman’s right to be worried about reputation,” he said. “It’s not that granting agencies and foundations are prudish, but any kind of sex-based crime is going to scatter them like a covey of quail on the Fourth of July.”

“So what do we do? I’m afraid Buckman’s going to try to settle things with Hayden, and that’s going to be more trouble.”

“Talk to Hayden. See if you can confirm he’s the bad guy. If he is, maybe we can come up with something to cool him down, cool both of them down.

“And Peter,” he added as I started to leave. “Give this one your best shot. First priority is, make sure the people involved come out all right. Second is preserving that Nanotech Lab. It’s a major university asset, and while Buckman’s got a deputy, he can’t replace his boss as either a grantsman or a scientist.”

I found Joe Hayden in his studio, a large, high room with a slanted ceiling made up of north-facing skylights, the result of a modest remodel of an old warehouse on land taken over by the expanding university. Like all painters’ ateliers on campuses, Hayden’s was cluttered with student works in progress and daubed, wall to wall, floor to skylight, with splatters, smears, and star-bursts of color, the result of generations of student painters and their collective carelessness and exuberance. Hayden himself was large and muscular, neck as wide as his head, and exceedingly neat. Not a drop of paint on his jeans or white T-shirt. His unsmeared palette hooked over his left thumb, he stood before a large canvas on an easel and poked gently at it with a tiny brush. I know little about painting, but I could see that the image before him was a stark, nonrepresentational flare of colors and he was picking at it with the precision of a pointillist.

He looked up, smiled, and slipped his brush into a cup on the easel. “Hey, Haas. Come to join my four-o’clock techniques class?”

I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes or so, can we talk a little?”

He read my face. “Something wrong?”

“Yeah. You and Harrison Buckman and Naomi Cordier.”

His face darkened. “You’re into private territory there, Dr. Haas. I don’t see that my relationship with my ex-wife is any business of the university administration.”

I nodded. “Of course, Joe.” Academics address each other variously by title, last name, or given name, more as indications of warmth — or lack of it — than recognition of rank. “We have no desire to pry into Naomi’s business or yours, but last night someone beat the crap out of Buckman.”

“No!” Hayden seemed genuinely surprised. “And you think it was me? Because Naomi and I were married once?”

I cocked an eyebrow and said nothing.

Hayden closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as if to prepare himself for something. Then he sighed audibly and gave me a look of piercing honesty that was beyond pretense. “Look, Peter,” he said, “whatever Naomi and I had is long gone. She’s the best thing ever happened to me, but we just didn’t, you know, mesh. I loved her dearly and I still worry about her and want the very best for her, but we aren’t ever going to be partners, and if she’s got something good going with Buckman, I’m all for it. He seems like an okay guy, and if he can make her happy, well...” He ran out of gas and paused. “I guess I can see how someone might think it was me, but my God, I haven’t slugged anybody since the Rams game in ’eighty-five.”

“And last night?” I asked.

“You mean, do I have an alibi? You bet I do. Right there.” He pointed to a video camera mounted high on a wall bracket looking down at the painting on his easel. “I sleep in mornings, teach most afternoons, and do my own work evenings. I was working on this,” he said, pointing to the easel, “from just after supper until maybe midnight, and I do a time-lapse tape so I can show students how a painting is layered — you know, deeper pigments above brighter.”

“And you’re on the tape? With date and times?”

“Better be, or I’m gonna raise hell with Audio-Visual.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose someone could phony up the times on the tapes, but not me. I wouldn’t have any idea how to do it.”

I nodded. I didn’t think he would have any idea how to do it, either. “Thanks for telling me this, Joe. I think I can put this whole thing to rest now.”

“Yeah, well, apart from getting busted for something I sure as hell didn’t do, I really wouldn’t want Naomi to think I’d do such a thing.”

As I turned for the outside door, two chatting students ambled in through the hallway entrance. I lowered my voice. “One last thing. Do you have a brown canvas bag with the Raiders logo on it?”

“A ball bag? Sure. Used to use ’em like duffel bags when we were on the road. Got half a dozen of them one place or another. There’s one over there in the corner. I stick my folding easel and stuff in when we go out on campus to do landscape exercises.” He grinned a little self-consciously. “Kind of my trademark on campus, I guess. The beast who opted for beauty.” He walked past the entering students to a portable coatrack mostly hidden by the opened door, peered behind the door, looked back across the room at me with raised eyebrows, and shrugged. “Somebody must’ve borrowed it. Does it matter?”

I smiled and shook my head and left.

As I walked across campus through crowds of chattering students to the faculty parking lot, I found myself convinced of Joe Hayden’s innocence. After some years in my job, I have what I think is a finely-tuned crap filter, and I found it hard to believe that one man could be an NFL pro, a skilled painter, an effective teacher, and a consummate actor. And if Hayden wasn’t the attacker, Buckman had nothing to worry about so far as his reputation and its impact on his grant-getting. He and Naomi needed to know that right away, certainly before he felt well enough to begin stalking Hayden with his baseball bat.

In half an hour I was back with Harrison and Naomi on the Buckman patio, this time with an Anchor Steam in my hand. “I don’t think you have to worry about granting agencies and the NSF,” I said.

Harrison cocked his eyes toward Naomi and tried to hush me with a nearly imperceptible head shake. “It’s okay,” I said. “Naomi needs to know what’s worrying you.”

Naomi said, “What? What haven’t you told me, Harrison?”

Despite a glowering look from Harrison, I told her of our earlier suspicions about Joe Hayden, emphasizing “our” and “we” in every sentence to give Harrison a bit of cover. “But now I don’t think he had anything to do with the attack.”

“Of course not,” Naomi said. “My God, Joe’s about as fierce as old Lolly over there.” She nodded her head toward the hairy bundle panting in a patio corner.

“Then who...?” Harrison’s face displayed a twisted mixture of relief and renewed puzzlement.

“Let’s think about it,” I said. “Since you weren’t robbed and I don’t think the attack had anything to do with you and Naomi being an item, what’s left?”

Naomi said, “Not for love nor money...”

“Right,” I said. “Who would gain from damaging your arm, Harrison? Or from damaging your reputation, if the love triangle nonsense got out?”

Naomi and Harrison exchanged a glance.

“What?” I said.

“Harrison’s deputy at the lab,” said Naomi. “He would gain from both.”

Harrison said, “I can’t believe it was Charlie Bowen.”

“Who would take over,” I asked, “if you had to leave the lab?”

“Well... I guess it would be Charlie. At least for a while.”

“Tell me about him.”

“There’s not much to tell. Ph.D. at Cal Tech in ’ninety-seven, hired on here after a one-year postdoc at Livermore, came to work for me in the lab four years ago, took over as deputy last year.”

“And?”

Harrison waggled his left hand. “He’s so-so, I guess. Ambitious but not too good at grant preparation. He’s good at administrative detail and I like the way he keeps the lab humming along on schedule. In his own projects, he’s not very innovative and he’s maybe too careful. Sometimes you have to take chances in science, bet on possibilities. Bowen’s not a risk taker. But he can cook up a pretty productive research protocol. You know, take a hypothesis and look for ways to establish proof for it.”

“Like coming up with evidence,” I said, “to support the notion that Joe Hayden assaulted Harrison Buckman?”

Harrison’s eyes widened. “You mean he could have staged the whole thing?”

“If the attack on you wasn’t for love or money,” I said, “what’s left? How about power? Advancement? Climbing up the academic food chain?”

I could see Harrison’s mind working, testing one theory, rejecting another. “Well, I suppose...”

“Think about it, Harrison. You say Bowen’s not much of a scientist, but good at keeping the organization going. Think he might have ambitions to replace you?”

Harrison slowly nodded, conviction building in him. “Boy, if it is him, I’m going to pound that little twit into nanobits.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And then you’ve got another reputation issue on your hands. What will the NSF think about the headline ‘Lab Chief Batters Deputy’?”

Harrison breathed deeply, forcing calm. “Okay. But what else can I do? If we give this mess to the cops, they might not find any evidence that would convict him, if it is Charlie, and just making the effort would get us plenty of bad publicity.”

I pondered. Then I said, “Let’s theorize. Assume you’re convinced that Bowen bagged you, what would you do? I mean within legal bounds. More important, assume he knows you know, what would he expect you to do?”

“I’d make his life so damn miserable he’d be sending out resumes by the bushel. No money for his own projects. Rotten teaching schedule...” Harrison’s face took on a wicked smile, distorted by his swollen cheeks. “And he’ll be up for tenure next year... Ha!”

“He wouldn’t have any doubt about what was in store?”

“He’s not stupid.”

I thought some more, and then it was time to act. “Harrison? You have a computer in the house somewhere, with a printer? Some lab stationery?”

“Of course.”

“How about you — no — how about you, Naomi, can you type up a letter?”

Naomi was already on her feet, voile twirling. “I can do a few things other than dance.”

“It should read, ‘Professor Buckman. I herewith resign my position with the laboratory and my assistant professorship at Greenfield State University, effective immediately.’ On the copy lines put the chair of the Electrical Engineering Department and President Swenson, make three copies, and address three envelopes accordingly. Drop the whole bundle into a manila envelope big enough to hold a videotape.”

Naomi, smiling now at the prospect of action, darted inside.

Harrison said, “Why would he sign?”

“I’ll show you,” I said, “as soon as we get back to campus.”

We had stopped for something to eat and it was almost seven by the time the three of us crossed the deserted evening Quad, Naomi in something mauve and gauzy that swirled when she walked, and Harrison, limping, in a denim jacket draped over his shoulders. We entered Hayden’s studio, where he was just starting to resume his evening’s painting.

He was surprised, confused, apprehensive. “Look,” he said, his eyes darting from one to another of us. “I told you everything I could this afternoon, Haas.” Harrison did his best to remain expressionless and Naomi looked at Joe as if she might weep.

“It’s okay, Joe,” I said. “I think we can fix this whole thing pretty fast with a little help from you. Is that tape you made last night still in the camera?”

He held up a remote. “Yeah. I’m just about to start it again, continue what I’ve been doing.”

“Would it be a terrible loss if you gave us the tape?”

Hayden shrugged. “I can live without it. Worth it if it gets me off the hook.”

“Oh, Joe,” said Naomi. “You were never on the hook.”

This brought a smile to his face. “You want the tape, I’ll give it to you.”

“Before you unload it,” I said, “will you join Harrison and Naomi at your easel?”

“What in God’s name are you up to, Peter?” said Harrison. Hayden looked confused. Naomi cocked her head for an instant and smiled as realization of my plan dawned on her. She held up the manila envelope with the letters. “Come, gentlemen. Pretend we just won the lottery, the three of us, and we’re congratulating each other with lots of smiles.”

Naomi posed Harrison on one side of Hayden, his left hand in Hayden’s right, and she stood on the other side, her hand on Hayden’s arm. I pressed the Record button on the remote. The camera clicked on and blinked its red eye. “We’ll give it sixty seconds,” I said. “Make sure whoever looks at the tape that proves where Joe was last night will also see where he is this evening. And who he’s talking with.”

After the minute, I thumbed the remote and Joe retrieved the tape and handed it to me. I dropped it into the envelope with the letters of resignation. “You going to mail that to him?” asked Harrison, now reading from the same page as Naomi and I and smiling as broadly as his injured face would allow.

“No,” I said. “If we’re wrong about this, I think he’ll let me know quick enough. If we’re right, he won’t have the guts to try to fake me out. So I think I’ll just drop it off at his home. Maybe me being the bearer will give credibility to the bad tidings.”

“Ah, Peter,” Naomi said. “You’re not credible. You’re incredible.”

Copyright ©; 2005 by Robin Wilson.