Donna Andrews - Chesapeake Crimes - This Job Is Murder!

“We’re so impressed with your…tenacity, Nora,” Rutty said. “Come to dinner this evening at the faculty dining hall, and we’ll discuss your term appointment.”

“Oh, thank you, Dr. Browne.” I hated the eagerness in my voice. “I’ll be there.”

“But until then, Nora, no Washington Post . Is that understood?”

That night I walked through the woods to the faculty dining hall wearing high heels and a dress I’d bought at a thrift shop especially for the occasion. I was so excited.

Although finding Kaplan Kossek dead discouraged my writing ambitions, perhaps it would turn out to be my big break in academia. I didn’t fool myself, though. I knew I would have to agree to keep their secret in order to get my term appointment, which would be a bargain with the devil.

Rutty was waiting for me at the door. “Tonight just the English Department’s tenured faculty members are here,” s/he told me and ushered me into the large room lit only by candlelight. All the tables were pushed back against the walls, and the Tenured Ones were seated around the periphery.

For the first time in all my years at GHU, I was greeted by name by English Department luminaries, some human, some zombie, but all experts in subjects such as Shakespearean feminist deconstruction theory, the metaphysical bisexual symbolism in Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake , and the rhetorical pedagogy of heuristics made algorithmic.

Rutty led me to the center of the room, where something crinkled under me. I looked down and noticed I was standing on a large piece of heavy plastic.

Rutty slid away from me.

Gazing around the room, I saw that the Tenured Ones had all come to their feet. I smiled back at them until I noticed that every one of them held a large stone in one hand. A killing stone.

I had always said this job would kill me. Being stoned to death wasn’t quite what I expected, but it was about to happen if I didn’t escape.

I started for the door, but Rutty jerked me back. When I tried slipping between the tables, the Tenured Ones closed ranks. I was trapped.

I realized they’d put the plastic sheet under me so my blood didn’t stain the carpet woven in gold and green, GHU’s colors. How carefully they had planned my death. For the first time ever, they set aside all their bickering and backbiting to act as one. Eliminating me had brought them unity, but I found cold comfort in this.

So I turned to face them, preparing to meet my fate when I noticed a beautiful woman in a maid’s uniform going among them, filling their wine glasses. Phoebe! A trickle of hope opened inside me.

“Before we attend to the business at hand, let’s toast to Adjunct Nora.” Rutty looked out at his/her colleagues. “We owe a debt of gratitude to Nora and other minions who want to teach at universities so badly they’re willing to do it for free. Well, almost free.” This evoked a smattering of chuckles. “Because of these lesser ones, we avoid the unsavory task of teaching in order to dedicate ourselves to intellectual pursuits.”

“Here, here,” they said in unison. “To Nora and adjuncts everywhere!” They lifted their cups and drank.

As I looked around at their shadowy forms in the candlelight, I realized they all had similar physiques. They were stubby, big-footed, and broad-shouldered from jumping on each others’ backs to get ahead. How mighty and powerful they appeared, this tribe of Tenured Ones.

But like Rome, they fell. All around me, they began to fall-even the zombies. In fact they fell faster than the living. What a glorious sight! Tossing their tumblers, slumping onto the floor, or back into their chairs, cracking their heads on the tables, they went down. Rutty sank into a puddle near me, the stone s/he had been hiding sinking with him/her.

In a flash Phoebe appeared beside me and took my hand. “We must make haste and leave this unholy place!”

I followed in her wake as we wound our way around the tables and bodies.

“My sleeping potion doesn’t last long on folks who imbibe spirits the way some of these do,” Phoebe said.

Behind us, we already heard moaning. Rutty was coming around.

Outside the dining hall’s glass doors, Phoebe uprooted the FACULTY ONLY sign. “Help me,” she said. We threaded the sign through the door’s handles.

“Surely that’ll hold them,” I told her.

She didn’t look convinced and urged me to run with her. The blanket of darkness covering campus didn’t slow us down. We knew this place by heart. We were halfway up the winding path to Ayn Rand Hall when we heard them breaking open the glass doors.

From a burlap sack, Phoebe took two bottles of canola oil. “Pour,” she said, handing me one. Streams of oil flowed down the path, making it as slippery as Rutty’s promises.

We were almost home free when Phoebe presented me with a pouch filled with hundred-dollar bills-Ben Franklin, my favorite patriot, smiled from their centers. “This ought to sustain you until you can find suitable employment for a young lady of your talent,” she said.

“But where did you get…?” I looked up into the lobby of Ayn Rand Hall, where the life-size statue of George Henry stood beside an empty wall. The Econ Department’s solid gold plaque was gone.

Phoebe was smiling her dimpled smile. “ Avaritia est bona !” we said in unison.

The Tenured Ones were getting closer. We could hear them chanting, “Nora! Nora!” They were carrying fiery torches and marching up the path toward us.

“Never fear. George will stop them.” Phoebe went inside the lobby and grabbed George Henry’s statue. She was a strong ghost. I held the door for her.

“Now get in your metal carriage and go.”

We hugged. I wasn’t sorry to leave this place or this job, but I hated to leave her. “Me too,” she said without me having to say anything. She shoved me toward the parking lot.

I ran to my van, started the engine, and took off for the exit.

I was pulling out of campus when I took a last look in my rearview mirror. At the top of the hill, Phoebe had turned George Henry on his side and given him a good push. He was rolling down the path, bowling over those in the front of the mob. When their torches hit the canola oil, they burst into flames. Their screams filled the night. How ironic for a penniless adjunct to owe her life to George Henry, the patron saint of greed.

I drank in the scene and realized that perhaps now I could write my lyrical gory story after all.

Ellen Herbert’s short stories have been published in First for Women , the Sonora Review , and other magazines and have won more than ten awards, including a PEN Syndicate Fiction Prize and a Virginia Fiction Fellowship. One of her stories was read on NPR’s “The Sound of Writing.” Her short story collection, Falling Women and Other Stories, will be published by Shelfstealers Publishing in 2012. Ellen’s personal narratives have appeared in the Washington Post , the Rambler , and other magazines. Ellen teaches fiction at Marymount University and creative nonfiction at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

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