Three-Ways: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery Page 22

  “Yes, sir, I do have the right person.”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “About seven years ago, you wrote a letter about a professor named Suzannah Montgomery, who was coming up for tenure at Central Montana State University.” Ryan paused. “Does that ring a bell?”

  The professor’s sigh came through clearly. “Yes, unfortunately, now I do remember why the word Rawlings rang a bell.”

  “Can you help us understand the situation a little better, Professor?”

  “Are you recording this conversation in any way?”

  “No, sir, I am not.”

  “I have your word on that?”

  “Yes, sir, you do.”

  “Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “Only very broadly, sir. We are following a line of inquiry about Suzannah Montgomery in relation to a murder case here in Rawlings. We have some reason to think that Professor Montgomery’s tenure case might be relevant in some way.”

  “At the time the incident occurred—you say it was seven years ago now?—our university attorney here at UMass suggested that I not comment publicly about it.”

  “I can assure you, Professor, that this conversation is completely privileged and that I am not recording it in any way.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You wrote a letter about Professor Montgomery, at the request of her department chair, Professor Frances Hamblin, is that correct?”

  “Yes, that much is correct.”

  “I have in my hand a photocopy of the letter from Professor Montgomery’s file. It is quite a positive letter, citing her ‘extraordinary contributions to the study—’”

  “You don’t need to quote from that letter, Detective.”

  “I’m sorry, Professor, I’m confused.”

  “I am fully aware of what is in that letter. I know it is written on UMass letterhead and that it bears my signature. But I did not write it.”

  “You did not write it?”

  “That’s right. I wrote parts of it, but someone else altered many other parts.”

  “Can you tell me how you know that, Professor Frederickson?”

  “Some weeks after I wrote my letter to the English chair at Central Montana, I received a phone call from the Faculty Senate chair at that school—I don’t remember her name—”

  “Was that Audrey Miller?”

  “Yes, that could be it. She told me that she was in possession of some information that my letter had been altered. She read me the letter she had and asked me if that was what I had written. I looked on my computer and told her that, no, I had not written the letter she had in her files. She asked that I send her a copy of the letter I had in fact written. Which I did.”

  “Did you hear back from Audrey Miller?”

  “Some months later I received a phone call from her. She thanked me for my candor but said the university had decided not to pursue the matter any further. And that was that.”

  “How did you respond?”

  “I told her that I was extremely uncomfortable knowing that a letter I had spent some hours preparing had been altered, and that I wished to see the matter resolved fairly. I didn’t want a bogus letter with my name on it floating around.”

  “What did she say to that?”

  “She said that she completely understood my position, that she thought the situation at Central Montana was a disgrace, but that someone in the upper administration had made the decision not to pursue it. I asked her what sort of protection she could offer me. She replied that she had written up the situation in a confidential memo to file and that, if I requested it, she would make it available to me.”

  “How did you respond to that, sir?”

  “I went to my own university attorney, who advised that since I possessed a copy of my real letter, I should simply write up the conversations I had had with Professor Miller and file that account here at UMass, which I did.”

  “Have there been any repercussions for you in the past seven years?”

  “Fortunately, no. I have tried to forget the whole incident, and, until your call a few minutes ago, I had succeeded.”

  “Professor, I want to thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. I sincerely hope I do not need to take any more of your time.”

  “I appreciate that, Detective. Goodbye.”

  Ryan raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Is there anything you’d like to say to me, Karen?”

  “Yeah, let’s go see if the chief is in.”

  We got up and walked out of the detective’s bullpen and down the hall to the chief’s office.

  “The boss in?” I said to Margaret.

  She picked up her phone and told him we were here. After a moment, she hung up. “Chief Murtaugh will see you.”

  “Thanks, Margaret.” I knocked, and he told me to come in.

  Murtaugh remained standing, so we did, too.

  “Nothing yet on Brian Hawser,” he said.

  “Okay, thanks. We wanted to run something else by you.”

  He gestured for us to sit.

  “Suzannah Montgomery, Austin Sulenka’s adviser. She got pissed at me when I asked if she was having an affair with Austin.”

  He nodded. “I can understand her reaction. Why’d you ask her that?”

  “Remember I mentioned Austin was selling plasma and sperm so he could give money to the cerebral-palsy charity? Well, that’s the disease her kid has, which struck me and Ryan as kind of a coincidence. So, anyway, we’ve done some more checking, and there’s some weird information about her coming out that we want to run by you.”

  He waved me on.

  “She came up for tenure seven years ago. She got tenure, but when we interviewed the provost this morning, she puts this envelope on her desk for me and Ryan to take with us, and she leaves the room.”

  The chief frowned. “Huh?”

  “The envelope contains letters of reference about Suzannah Montgomery from seven years ago. We learned that someone doctored one of the three letters to make Suzannah look a lot smarter than she is.”

  “The provost gave you those letters?”

  “It seemed strange to us, too. I mean, what is she trying to do: get the school into trouble with some kind of scandal?”

  “You were clear with the provost you were investigating the Sulenka murder?”

  “Absolutely clear,” Ryan said. “Either the provost really hates Suzannah Montgomery and wants to embarrass her or get her fired, or she thinks this has something to do with the murder.”

  “Have you figured out why the provost might have a grudge against Suzannah Montgomery?”

  “All we’ve got so far,” I said, “is the provost—her name is Audrey Miller—was the head of the faculty senate when Suzannah Montgomery’s tenure case came up. There was another person in the English Department also came up for tenure, a guy named Mitch Abrams, who didn’t get tenure. He made a big stink about how there were due-process problems with Suzannah’s case, so he wanted a do-over with his own case, but the university told him no.”

  “What were the due-process problems?”

  “That she submitted her papers a few days late.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, that’s all that went public. But it’s possible Mitch Abrams told Audrey Miller how the due-process problem was that Suzannah phonied up a reference letter.”

  “Suzannah Montgomery was about forty years old then?”

  “About that,” Ryan said.

  “Anyone who’d fake a letter—they start doing things like that long before they turn forty,” the chief said. “Figure out what’s going on.”

  Chapter 27

  “I’ll get her name and SS, see if they can fax me her CV,” Ryan said.

  “Great,” I said as I headed off to the ladies’, which would be as good a place as any to think about what the hell a CV is.

  When I got back a minute later, Ryan had already put a photocopy of her résumé on my des
k. Handwritten on the top was Suzannah Montgomery’s Social Security number.

  “See anything interesting?”

  “Not yet,” Ryan said. “I just want to be clear on the dates. She was hired at CMSU in 2004, the same year she got her PhD from Delaware. She started on the doctoral work in 1999.”

  “That sound normal?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Five years is normal.” He shifted in his chair. “She got her MA from Clemson in ’96. BA in ’94 from South Carolina.”

  “So, the question is, where was she from ’96 to ’99?”

  “That is the question.”

  “Who’d be smarter to ask: Delaware or Clemson?”

  Ryan scratched at his cheek. “I’d start at Delaware and work backwards.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “You do Delaware, then I’ll do Clemson.”

  Ryan went online and got the number for the English Department. He punched it in and put the phone on Speaker. A secretary picked up.

  “Good morning,” Ryan said and introduced himself. He explained we were investigating a crime that might involve Suzannah Montgomery. He stated the dates she was there. He looked down at the professor’s résumé, then added that her last name at the time might have been Suzannah Collins.

  “I’m sorry, Detective, information about our students, current or past, is protected by federal law. We cannot give it out without the student’s written permission.”

  “I think there’s an exception when it’s law enforcement making the request,” he said patiently.

  We heard the sound of her hand covering up the mouthpiece. There was a little tap, as if her ring hit the phone. I could make out muffled talking but couldn’t tell what she was saying.

  After a few moments, we heard a man’s voice. “This is Jeremy Cox. Can I help you?”

  It sounded like a boss. Ryan introduced himself again.

  Cox said, “Tell me your name and affiliation, and if you’re real, I’ll call you back in a minute.”

  Ryan spelled everything out and hung up.

  A minute later, Ryan’s phone rang and he picked up.

  “Sorry to have to do that, Detective, but I’ve gotten stranger stories from people who are just making mischief.”

  “I understand completely, Professor Cox. If I ask you a question about Suzannah Montgomery—I think she was Suzannah Collins at the time, 2004 PhD American lit—do you know who I’m talking about?”

  “Vaguely,” he said. “I never had her in a class, but the name is familiar.”

  “Do you have a file on her?”

  “Let me get it. You said Collins or Montgomery. She started here in 1999, right?”

  “That’s it,” Ryan said.

  A minute later Cox came back on. “Sorry,” he said. “The files from the nineties were just moved to another office. What do you need?”

  “Could you give me an overview of her career with you? Grades, comps, etc.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s see. Undistinguished grades. 3.12 GPA. Low pass on her comps, second time around. Defended in April 2004. To be frank with you, she didn’t make much of an impression around here.”

  “Do you have the name of her dissertation director?”

  “It was Frank Forsyth.”

  “Is he tough?”

  “Not anymore,” Cox said. “He’s dead.”

  “What was he like?”

  “The way I’d put it is, Who did he like?”

  “And how would you answer that?” Ryan said.

  “Let me phrase this diplomatically. He liked women. Unmarried women. And those married women who took a certain attitude toward their marriages. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.” Ryan paused. “Professor Cox, I want to thank you very much for this information. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “All right, Detective, good-bye.”

  Ryan hung up. “That’s Suzannah. Just getting by.”

  “How do you read that bit about the dissertation guy?”

  “Well,” Ryan said, “that could just be snarkiness about the dead guy. Maybe he was attractive, and Cox isn’t.”

  “Or it could be how Suzannah got by.”

  “Right,” Ryan said. “If she was totally pragmatic about it—you know, a kind of grad-school Tiffany Rhodes—that might’ve been how she got her degree. The university where my father works, there’s always one or two active affairs between a professor and a student—a graduate student, I mean. Everybody kind of knows about it, but if the student is over twenty-one and acts like an adult, and the professor doesn’t talk about it publicly, the administration turns a blind eye.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me see what’s going on at Clemson.” I got the department number and reached a secretary who transferred me to the chair, a woman named Gould. Unlike Cox from Delaware, Gould didn’t want to call me back to see if I was real. I asked her if she knew Suzannah Collins.

  “No,” Gould said to me. “That was before I got here, but let me see if she’s in the system.” I heard the clicking. “Yeah, she’s here. Your Social Security was correct. Suzannah Collins.”

  “Mediocre student?” I said.

  “Actually, no. She was an excellent student. GPA over 3.9. Honors on her MA exam. She even wrote a thesis, which she didn’t have to do because she took the exam.”

  “She was studying American literature?”

  “The transcript doesn’t say, but most of her courses were in British and colonial.”

  “That’s odd,” I said. “She teaches American. That’s what she got her PhD in.”

  “Not so odd,” Gould said. “People change all the time.”

  “Okay, I see. Do you know where she went after Clemson?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “Before my time.”

  “All right, Dr. Gould,” I said, “thanks for your time.”

  “No problem.” The line went dead.

  “I wonder how she went from an honors student to mediocre,” Ryan said.

  I shook my head. “It could be a million things. Something that happened in those three years from ’96 to ’99.”

  “I don’t like it. She’s an excellent student as an MA. If she lost her enthusiasm for literature, why would she go on to get a PhD? And do a lousy job at it?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Maybe the MA program was a lot easier than the PhD. She just sank to her natural level.”

  Ryan was frowning. “If you were talking Harvard or Yale or something, maybe. But Delaware’s not in that league. It’s fine, but it’s not a few notches up from Clemson.”

  “It could be something unrelated. She fell in love, starting going out with guys, whatever.”

  “Still don’t like it. She falls in love, she might decide not to go on—I mean, if the guy lives someplace where she can’t get her PhD.”

  “She starts the program, then falls in love or gets into screwing. One way or the other, she finds something else to do with her time. She’s only a year away from getting her PhD. Hooks up with a dissertation director who likes young women. She figures, what the hell? That would be how I might’ve done it.”

  “You don’t do an MA exam, get honors on it—do a thesis, too, just for the heck of it—then decide you want to keep going and turn into a weak student.”

  I shrugged. “How about this? I call Clemson back, see if there’s anyone there who remembers her?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “One more call.”

  I picked up the phone and hit Redial. I recognized the secretary’s voice.

  “Hi, this is Detective Seagate again. From Montana? I was just talking to Dr. Gould.”

  “Let me see if she’s available—”

  “No, no, I don’t want Dr. Gould. I want to talk to you. Can you tell me your name, please?”

  “Mary Clark.”

  “Okay, Mary, do you remember a grad student named Suzannah Collins, got an MA in 1996?”

  “I was in grade school in 1996,” she said. “Let me get C
ynthia. She’s been her twenty years.”

  “Okay, thanks a lot.”

  A moment later, a voice said, “This is Cynthia.”

  I explained who I was and asked if she knew Suzannah Collins.

  “Oh, yes, I remember her very well. Very sweet girl. And smart as a whip.”

  “Yeah, Dr. Gould told us she was an excellent student. You happen to know where she went after she graduated from Clemson?”

  “It was just terrible, what happened—”

  “Yeah, what happened?”

  “She was in a car accident. She was very badly injured.”

  “So, she went back home to recuperate?”

  “Well, I’m not sure you’d call it recuperate.”

  “What do you mean? How bad an accident was it?”

  “There were all kinds of internal injuries. Plus, she broke her neck.”

  “I see.” Which would explain the three years between Clemson and Delaware.

  “The thing that was so heartbreaking was the leg.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “When she was a little girl, she was a talented dancer. Then, to lose the leg in the accident.”

  Ryan and I looked at each other. Both of us shook our heads no. “She lost her leg,” I said.

  “That’s right. Above the knee. I think that affected her more than anything else.”

  “Well, yes, I can understand that. Cynthia, do you have a home address for Suzannah on your records?”

  “Give me a second,” she said. We heard her typing. In a moment she came back on and read us an address and phone number in Columbia, South Carolina. I wrote it all down. “Okay, thank you very much, Cynthia—”

  Ryan interrupted me. “See if she has a photo.”

  I nodded. “One more thing, Cynthia. Do you have a photo of Suzannah?”

  “I don’t have one in this office. But I think I can get you one, from her student ID. Would that be okay?”

  “That would be terrific.” I gave her my e-mail. “If you could get that to us, that would be great. Again, thanks very much.”

  We ended the phone call. I turned to Ryan. “Suzannah’s got a prosthetic leg?”

  Ryan shook his head. “I could be wrong, but I’ve never seen anyone with a prosthetic leg that good.”

  “I can’t even remember if she was wearing pants or showing her legs,” I said.