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Authors: Dean James
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Death by Dissertation
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Also by Dean James
About the Author
Death by Dissertation
A Deep South Mystery (#3)
Dean James
Copyright
This e-book is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.
This e-book may not be sold, shared, or given away.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Death by Dissertation
Copyright © 2004 by Dean James
E-book ISBN: 9781625173225
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
NYLA Publishing
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Dedication
This book is most humbly dedicated with respect, gratitude, and affection to Professor Katherine F. Drew, whose example of professionalism and integrity I shall always strive to emulate.
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to offer my thanks to a number of people who contributed in important ways to this book. First, to the fine folk of The Overmountain Press who were willing to give it a chance, especially to Beth Wright and Sherry “Eagle Eye” Lewis; second, to my dear friends Megan Bladen- Blinkoff and Patricia R. Orr, who suffered through far too many drafts of the manuscript but never complained; third, to Chief William E Taylor of the Rice University Police Department for cheerfully answering my questions about his department; fourth, and finally, to the history department of Rice University, circa 1981-1985, which gave me the opportunity to realize my dream. I can only hope that setting a mystery in a fictionalized version of the department won’t cause them to regret it!
Chapter One
I was convinced graduate school was the lowest circle of Hell in the Inferno, but Dante discarded it as too terrifying for his readers. My particular corner of hell was a seminar room half full of dedicated medievalists; and slouching in a stuffy seminar room on a beautiful October afternoon, even for a nonathletic slug like me, was hard work. Especially when I was having to listen to Dan Erickson babble on and on about the absolutely riveting number of horses Charles Martel had had in his army when he defeated the Muslim invaders at Poitiers in A.D. 732. That was a heck of a long way away from 1991.
Dan was one of those intense, incredibly focused students that professors enthused over publicly but secretly wished to throw to a pack of salivating, feral dogs. And that would be definitely mild in comparison to the fates devised by fellow students. Everyone has had a “Dan” in class: the earnest face that follows the professor’s every word, every gesture; the neatly word-processed papers, always a few pages over the maximum, turned in a week early; the hand ready to fly, the moment his brain has formed a question. Was Dan the reason I was spending all this time in graduate school? Was I going to spend the rest of my life, post-Ph.D., teaching Dan-clones, or, worse maybe, the ones who didn’t care? Perhaps, being a college professor might approximate Dante’s view of Purgatory. Lord only knew, then, what Paradise might be.
I listened to Dan burble on about the eighth-century French climate, the physiology of the horse, and something about horses’ diets, then promptly tuned out. This was one day in Professor Julian Whitelock’s seminar on the early Middle Ages that I wouldn’t have a question to pose after the reading. It was Whitelock’s fault, forcing Dan to present a paper so close to the date of his dissertation defense. To pay the professor back, I’m sure he found his most boring one.
I avoided the eye of one of my fellow students as Dan waxed ever more enthusiastic. Maggie McLendon, sitting across the table from me, had her lips clamped together, trying not to laugh. Her expression dared me to keep a straight face. If she so much as winked or smirked at me, I wouldn’t be able to resist laughing myself.
Sitting next to Maggie was Rob Hayward, whom I had known since childhood. He cast an amused glance my way. I was probably glowering at him. Most of the time I affected bored disinterest when he was around, though he was as handsome and charming as ever. I didn’t have as much control of my wayward hormones as I thought. Which, of course, made me even angrier at him, and at myself.
Nearly two months into the semester, I still found it hard to believe that Rob was here. I had thought—and prayed—that he was out of my life forever. My worst nightmare had been realized that day in late August when I walked into the history office and saw him chatting casually with the department head.
Maggie had caught on to the tension between me and Rob, but even though Maggie and I were good friends, I wasn’t ready to confide the history of my tangled relationship with Rob, nor the depth of my feelings of betrayal and anger. My stomach clenched, and I ground my teeth. I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax. I couldn’t let him do this to me every time I saw him or thought about him.
Maggie frowned, eyes on me, and I smiled at her, even as Dan babbled on toward the blessed conclusion of his paper. I glanced around the table to see how others were reacting.
Charlie Harper, Rob’s roommate, sat next to me, and he shifted in his chair as Dan finished and looked expectantly around the room for questions and praise. Charlie had the most acid tongue of anyone I’d ever known, and I waited, with some relish, for him to unleash it on Dan.
But Julian Whitelock well knew Charlie’s proclivities and was out of his chair before Charlie or anyone else could frame a question. “Thank you, Daniel,” he drawled. “That was a most fascinating examination of a researched aspect of the life of Charles Martel. I do believe I have a new appreciation for the horse after hearing your paper. And we all appreciate your taking the time to contribute to this seminar when you are so busy preparing for your dissertation defense.” Whitelock’s cultured South Carolina accent remained carefully neutral. Judging from the glazed look in his eyes, he was exerting every vestige of Southern charm he could muster.
The quirky thing was, Dan was apparently a favorite of Whitelock’s. If he put work onto his favorites, I was glad to be one of the students he merely tolerated. I knew I was damned already to a “B” for the course, no matter what I did, and I saved myself a lot of sweat and heartache by not toadying to the professor.
“I’m afraid, Daniel,” Whitelock continued, “that we won’t have time to entertain questions for your paper today.”
Dan seemed as relieved as the rest of us, and he grinned slightly as he put his paper away. Smiling, Whitelock urged the group to give Dan a round of applause. Amidst the half-hearted clapping, the professor cast a venomous glance around the table.
A fit and fierce sixty years old, he had a patrician face and long, thick white hair, which gave him the air of a Southern grandee. He never wore white linen suits or panama hats to class, but it didn’t take much imagination to see him that way. His accent, I was certain, he exaggerated simply because he knew it annoyed everyone. The ever-present dollop of venom in his voice didn’t help much either.
“Now,” Whitelock announced, “Charles is going to read us a short paper, a preliminary to the work he’ll present in full to the seminar in two weeks.”
I looked across at Maggie and rolled my eyes slightly. She responded with a wry smile, then settled her face into an expression of intent interest. She was so adorable when she was serious, and I could have easily fallen in love with her, except for one problem. She was straight, and I was gay. If only she were a man, she would’ve been perfect. Though I didn’t dare tell her that. Oh, well. I wasn’t in graduate school to fall in love and have a mad, passionate affair, anyway. I avoided looking at Rob.
Beside me, Charlie cleared his throat noisily, opened his file folder, and began to read. I glanced down to see how many pages he had and found only a thin stack.
Good,
I thought.
Maybe this won't take too long, after all.
Charlie Harper was a very good historian. His problem, though, was that he didn’t write well. His sentences were long and complex, which wasn’t so bad if you were reading them. Listening to them, however, and following Charlie’s logic required an effort of concentration that I simply couldn’t make at the time. He had a deep and pleasant voice, though, and I let the sounds flow by without taking in the meaning of the words.
Instead, I continued my survey of the room. The other two attending the seminar were women, and one of them was a stranger whom Whitelock had not bothered to introduce. An attractive blonde of about forty, dressed in an expensive business suit, she had watched the proceedings with a face schooled to hide her thoughts. I noticed something familiar about her, but my memory refused to track down the resemblance.
The woman seated next to her I did know, though not all that well. Selena Bradbury, also blonde and maybe five years younger than the other woman wasn’t enrolled in our seminar either. She had finished her courses several years earlier and was now completing her dissertation. I thought I’d heard that she was to defend the coming week, but I couldn’t remember.
Frankly, Selena could be a tad intimidating. Her nickname among the older grad students was the “Ice Queen,” and, true to form, she had made no move to warm toward Maggie or me. Whitelock was the only person for whom she manifested any regard, and her attitude toward him was hard to fathom. She had attended our weekly seminar three times, and she asked excellent questions. Most of the time she sat quietly, watching, with those ice-blue eyes that could freeze you, like the ninth circle of Dante’s Hell.
Evidently I had been woolgathering during Charlie’s brief presentation, because I caught only one sentence before he turned over the final page and looked around at his audience.
All at once I felt an air of tension in the room. Rob’s face had scrunched up into a question mark, and Maggie’s face had gone completely blank, but Whitelock’s face had turned the shade of a ripe tomato. What had I missed? For the next seminar I was going to have to bring a Diet Coke so the caffeine would keep my mind working.
I watched Charlie. Through his dark beard and moustache I could see him grin, seeming to offer a challenge of some sort. What had he done now? I waited and wondered. No one spoke.
Whitelock struggled to his feet, the color in his face subsiding. “That’s all for today.” For a moment he sounded like he came from New York City instead of Charleston. From his place at the head of the long table, he turned and stalked toward the door. Over his shoulder, he threw the words, “Mr. Harper. My office.”
Once the professor was gone, Charlie looked around the room and laughed. “The master calls. Excuse me, folks.” With a casual air, he bundled his papers into the folder and left.