A car pulled into the space to my right. I glanced over at the metallic green Mini Cooper and saw Professor Carson Reed at the wheel. Great. Of the hundreds of people I could have seen at the college that day, I had to find the only two on campus who held grudges against me.
From the corner of my eye I watched Reed polish off the last of a burger, crumple the wrapper, check his teeth in his rear view mirror and get out. He eyed my Vette but ignored me as he strode off, briefcase in hand.
I once liked Professor Reed. A tall, vain, handsome, single man in his late thirties, with a reputation on campus of being a playboy, he’d been one of the few professors whose lectures I’d actually understood, even if I hadn’t passed his exams. Plus he’d written several papers on the importance of taking a stand against injustice—a subject dear to my heart.
Then Reed became the legal advisor for a cosmetics laboratory that had come to town—a company that I’d recently discovered tested products on animals kept in little wire cages, something I couldn’t—make that
wouldn’t
—tolerate. Just a week ago, during a demonstration to protest that very fact, Professor Reed had had me arrested for obstruction. Apparently, he hadn’t welcomed the picket line I’d organized to block the entrance gate.
As I was being led away in handcuffs, I told him in a loud voice that I’d do it again if it meant saving the lives of innocent creatures, and I’d take on anyone who advocated torturing helpless animals—including him. Then I called him a hypocritical snake-in-the-grass for selling out to corporate greed. The local newspaper even quoted me on that.
Needless to say, Reed was no fan of mine, especially since photos of the protest made the front page of the
New Chapel News,
and the accompanying article painted him in a particularly unflattering light. For a man with Reed’s arrogance, I didn’t imagine it had been an easy pill to swallow and I was certain the less he saw of me the better. Then again, I wasn’t in any rush to see him, either, but since his office was next to Puffer’s, the odds of it were high.
I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw a squad car pull up behind me. Puffer had called the cops after all.
“Well, well. Would you look who we have here?” a droll male voice to my left said.
Resigning myself to embarrassment, I got out of the Vette and turned to face Sgt. Sean Reilly, a good-looking, forty-year-old, Irish-American police officer with intelligent brown eyes and a perturbed scowl. “Top o’ the lunch hour to you,” I said, trying to prompt a smile.
It didn’t work. “It’s not the top of
my
lunch hour,” he grumbled.
“I’d say not, if they have you making routine traffic stops.”
My second attempt at humor didn’t work either. Reilly planted his hands on his black leather belt. “I don’t make routine traffic stops. I heard dispatch read your license plate number and volunteered to take the call as a favor to
you.
”
Ouch. And Nikki had laughed when I’d paid extra for a vanity license plate that read: PHLORIST R ME. “Gee, that was really sweet of you, Reilly. Does that mean I can go?”
“No. It means you can tell me why you tried to run down Professor Puffer.”
“Let’s clear up that misconception right now. I didn’t try to run him down. He stepped out in front of me.”
“He said you came within an inch of taking his life.”
“
Pfft.
It was at least two.”
Reilly’s scowl deepened.
“He’s a drama queen, Reilly. Okay, so maybe I was fiddling with my radio for a second. That’s beside the point. The point is, he has it in for me because my father hauled him in on a DUI once.”
“Did you, or did you not, almost hit him?”
I scratched the end of my nose, trying to think of a way around the question. Clearly, I should have paid more attention in those law classes. “Yes, I almost hit him but—”
“Uh-uh,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “No buts.”
“Mitigating circumstances!” I cried. Wow. I
had
remembered something. “Puffer walked out from between two parked cars and was gabbing away on his cell phone. He didn’t even look up to see if anyone was coming.”
Reilly studied me for a long moment, then finally growled, “All right. Get out of here.”
“I’m free to go?”
“On one condition. That I don’t get any more calls about your driving. Got it?”
“You bet.” I blew him a kiss and watched him pull away. Then I checked the time, saw I had five minutes to get the flower up to Puffer’s office, and scrambled for the package.
New Chapel University covered an area of approximately fifteen square blocks, encompassing ten buildings, three dormitories, and a handful of Greek houses. It was a small, private college, but it had an excellent reputation, and its law school held its own with any in the country—not that they could prove it by me. I tucked the flower in the crook of an arm and headed toward the stately two-story brown brick building that housed the law school, pausing at the curb to let a pale blue Jaguar go past. I recognized the car as belonging to Jocelyn Puffer, Snapdragon’s wife, a reserved, almost subdued woman who seemed the exact opposite of her husband. It was unusual to see her at the university, not that I blamed her for making herself scarce. I’d want to avoid Puffer, too.
I took a breath and continued on toward the double glass doors. As soon as I stepped into the entrance hall and saw the sights and smelled the smells that had greeted me every day for nine miserable months, I broke out in a cold sweat.
Focus on the flower, Abby. That’a girl.
To my right was a hallway that led to the lecture halls, and to my left was a wide, stone stairway that led up to the professors’ offices, the only access other than a private elevator around the corner on the right that was strictly for the staff and the disabled. Beyond the stairway was a law library that didn’t get much use now that everything could be found on the Internet.
I turned left and climbed the steps, berating myself for letting my fear of a bully like Puffer get such a grip on me. I was making a delivery, for heaven’s sake, not presenting an oral argument. At the top of the staircase I entered the large, central, secretarial pool that served the nine offices around it, three on a side, plus a computer lab and a conference room. The area was empty and quiet now, the secretaries having gone to lunch, except for the one I’d been hoping to find—Beatrice Boyd, whose habit was to eat a tuna salad sandwich at her desk.
Known as Aunt Bea by those of us she’d consoled after we’d limped out of Puffer’s inner sanctum emotionally bruised, she was a plain woman with a long, narrow face and graying brown hair that she wore braided and wound on the back of her head, usually with a pencil stuck into it like a hair pick. She used no make up other than lilac lipstick and never wore any jewelry except a slender silver watch. She worked for two of the full-time professors, Puffer and Carson Reed, and as everyone always said, she had the patience of a saint to put up with them.
As I approached, she took her purse out of her desk drawer and straightened, a distracted look on her face. She had on the same navy blue skirt and white blouse that had always been her uniform. “Oh!” she cried when she saw me. “You gave me a start, Abby.” She gave me a belated smile that seemed a little on the forced side. “I wish I had time to chat with you, but I have an errand to run.”
I held up the wrapped lily. “And I have a delivery for Professor Puffer.”
“He’s not in,” she said, starting for the stairs. “Just set it on his desk.”
“Sure.” I watched her briefly, wondering what her hurry was. Then I remembered why I was there and turned to stare at Puffer’s closed office door. Okay, I could do this.
Holding the lily in front of me like a shield, I walked toward the dragon’s lair, trying to ignore the baseball-size knot of fear in my stomach. As I passed Professor Reed’s office I could hear him talking in a sharp, but hushed, voice. No one answered, so I figured he was on the phone. From the sound of it, he wasn’t a happy camper.
I stopped at Puffer’s door, knocked, and when no one answered, took a deep breath and stepped inside, extremely relieved to find that Beatrice was right. The dragon was gone.
His office was just as I remembered it: a wall of bookshelves with the books arranged not only by color, but also by size; another wall of awards and photos from his JAG days; a Formica topped desk with metal legs; a high-backed leather chair; a door at the back that led to a vestibule with an elevator that went down to the lecture hall; and, finally, the wooden chair upon which I had sat many times, fighting back tears, while he ridiculed my papers.
The memory brought an angry blush to my face, which, on a redhead’s fair skin, was bright enough to look feverish. I plunked the cellophane wrapped flower on the desk, next to his computer monitor, propped the bill beside it, and was ready to leave—then I saw the can of glossy black pencils and couldn’t resist the temptation. I glanced over my shoulder at the doorway to make sure no one was there, then snatched one of the sleek tools and held it as if I were going to snap it in two, imagining the satisfaction of hurling the eraser end at Puffer.
Suddenly, the door at the rear of his office opened and in charged the dragon in all his intimidating glory—head up, shoulders back, spine stiff and nostrils flaring, as if he were a general in the military embarking on a war campaign.
And there I stood like a deer in the headlights, holding his pencil.