Stork Raving Mad(85)

I picked up my bedside book as if I were planning to read, to reassure them that they weren’t keeping me up. Michael came over, pulled an afghan over me, and gave me a quick kiss before returning to join Art and Abe.

After a few moments, I let the book fall on my chest. I did the yoga breathing exercises Rose Noire had taught me. I wondered what time it was, but I couldn’t muster the energy to turn my head toward the alarm clock. Hansel and Gretel were squirming enough to keep me from falling asleep, but with luck they’d settle down eventually. And in the meantime, it was peaceful, lying there on our nice, warm bed, listening to the faint rustle as Michael and his colleagues turned pages.

Eventually, though, the rustle of pages began to be accompanied by muffled exclamations and sharp intakes of breath.

“Good God,” Abe said finally, in a low tone. “We knew we had a problem, with some of our best performers not wanting to become drama majors.”

“And the fact that not a single graduate student has actually completed a degree in the last three years,” Michael added.

“I thought we could get around it by helping them select English classes with teachers who weren’t in on it,” Art said.

“It’s gone past that,” Abe said.

“We knew it was bad,” Art said.

“But not this bad,” Abe added.

“Why didn’t the students come to us?” Michael said.

“Because you’d have tried to do something,” I said without opening my eyes. “And they know that, and they were afraid you’d all try to do something and end up getting hurt.”

A few moments of silence.

“They were trying to protect us?” Michael said.

“And we should have been protecting them,” Abe put in.

Something that had been bothering me all day popped back in my mind and I sat up.

“Answer me one question,” I said. “If everyone knows Dr. Wright hated drama students so much and did everything she could to torpedo their academic careers, why didn’t they just avoid taking her classes?”

“They did, as far as possible,” Abe said. “At least after we all realized what she was doing and began steering them away from her classes. But last year she managed to have one of her classes made a degree requirement.”

“ ‘Literature and Popular Culture,’ ” Art said. “A semester’s worth of listening to Dr. Wright rant about everything she hated about the modern world.”

“She got Blanco to do it for her,” Michael said.

“For years, she and a couple of other English professors have been doing what they could to make life miserable for the drama students,” Abe said. “But it wasn’t till Blanco started helping them that things got really bad.”

“And now we’ll never know just why she hated the theater so much,” Art said, shaking his head.

“Yes we will,” I said. “She was a frustrated actress.”

“No way,” Michael said.

“Way,” I said. “Check the stuff Danny found. Bottom of the stack.”

The three of them bent their heads over the photocopies. I settled back under the afghan and listened again to the rustling paper and their muted exclamations.

“Fascinating,” Michael said at last. “And while normally I feel sorry for anyone who’s been bashed that badly by a reviewer, I can make an exception in Dr. Wright’s case.”

“Yes,” Abe said. “Just because life spoiled her dream of an acting career doesn’t excuse her torturing drama students for the rest of her life.”

“Inexcusable,” Michael said. “But at least now we understand why.”

“By the way,” I said. “What’s the scoop on Kathy Borgstrom? The chief heard that she was expelled from the graduate drama program for plagiarism.”

“She was,” Abe said. “The charges turned out to be unsubstantiated.”

“The charges were phony,” Art put in. “It was a frame.”

“We have always suspected it was,” Abe said. “And we might have been able to prove it if Dr. Wright had been willing to cooperate.”

“We did cast enough doubt to allow her to work for the department,” Art said.

“So she’s got even more reason to hate Dr. Wright,” I said.

None of them said anything, so I gathered they agreed with me. And maybe they were wondering, just a little, if Kathy were guilty.

“Should we be going?” Art said, after a while. “It’s 7:55.”

“No wonder I’m so tired,” I muttered. I usually began the night’s tossing and turning at eight, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent so much of the day not only out of bed, but on my feet.