The Skeleton Makes a Friend--A Family Skeleton Mystery (#5) by Leigh Perry

Author:Leigh Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2018-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

I had to get to my afternoon class after texting with Sid about Erik, and if Professor Hynes had picked that day to observe me at work, he’d have found plenty of nits to pick. Maybe the Andorians didn’t realize it because they were involved in their projects, but my mind was definitely elsewhere.

Specifically, it was trying to figure out what could be worth killing for in a Human Resources office.

There was lots of confidential employee information in the files, of course: addresses, phone numbers, work backgrounds, family members, maybe even references to criminal records. If anybody was on the school’s insurance, there could be data about health issues, including mental health and substance abuse problems. Probably the most sensitive of all would be records of employee compensation. Most adjuncts in a given college were paid the same amount, regardless of experience or education, but staff and permanent faculty were a different story. Unless they were unionized, they negotiated their salaries individually, and most people have a sneaking suspicion that somebody else is being paid more for the same work.

I concocted so many scenarios that I could have kept a dozen writing workshops busy for years. But while none of them were completely impossible, no one of them struck me as more likely than the others.

When class ended, the first Andorian to reach the door stopped, picked something up off the floor, and handed me a large envelope. “This is for you. I guess it got slipped in under the door.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking it from her. It was an interoffice envelope, the resealable kind with a button and string closure and rows of lines so you could reuse it repeatedly, though my name was the only one written on this one. In the age of emails and texts, I rarely saw them anymore.

As the last of my students left, I sat back down and opened it. Inside were five letters, or rather five photocopies of letters. Each seemed to have been sent from a different person—I couldn’t tell for sure because the return addresses and signatures were covered with black boxes, but the fonts and letterheads were different. I started to read the first one:

Dear President REDACTED,

As a loyal alumna of Overfeld, I have agonized over this decision, but I’ve come to realize that I must tell the truth, no matter how much pain and embarrassment it causes me. When I was a student, I was sexually abused by Professor Davidson Hynes.

I stopped and, while still holding the letters, closed and locked my classroom door. Only then did I feel safe enough to continue reading.

The story is much the same as we’ve all read in the newspapers. Professor Hynes . . . No, I will not give him that honorific. Hynes started taking an interest in me while I was taking his course in REDACTED. He invited me to meet with him in his office and convinced me that my work was something that he wanted to encourage.

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