Free Scoop to Kill by Wendy Lyn Watson Page B

“You said at Bryan’s funeral that there wasn’t much grant money for the humanities.”
    “Oh, right. I guess I did.”
    I glanced at my watch. I’d promised Alice I’d keep Reggie out of Sinclair Hall for twenty minutes, but time was dragging. I needed to keep him talking. Alice had suggested asking questions about being a nontraditional student, but I hadn’t prepared any questions and none were coming to mind. In the end, it didn’t matter what we talked about, as long as I kept him occupied a bit longer. So I decided to keep him on the subject of grant money.
    “So if there isn’t any grant money for the humanities, why does Professor Gunderson run that office?”
    “I have no idea,” Reggie said with a shrug. “At first, he got assigned to the office as an interim director, because the last guy left without any notice. He wailed about what a sacrifice he was making for the university, but then a month later he actually applied for the position on a permanent basis. No one else wanted to deal with the bureaucratic headaches, so he got the position.”
    “And took Bryan with him,” I mused.
    “Oh, no,” Reggie said. “Bryan only started working there this spring, after he failed his comps. Bryan couldn’t teach when his status in the department was up in the air. Of course, he wanted to go back to doing research with Dr. Landry, because Landry’s about to hit the big time with his new book. But even though Bryan worked for Landry last summer and so he was already familiar with Landry’s work, Landry said no.”
    “Why?”
    Reggie shrugged. “The official story was that it wouldn’t be appropriate for Landry, as chair, to work with a student with a complaint against the department. But that’s BS. I think Bryan did a half-assed job last summer, and Landry wanted someone who could pull his weight.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    Reggie smirked. “I heard Landry bitching about Bryan just before fall semester ended. He said something about how Bryan spent too much time on the effing Internet reading effing blogs.”
    His smirk faded and he looked a little abashed. “It’s not like I was eavesdropping or anything.”
    Which meant, of course, that he had been eavesdropping.
    “It’s just that Landry was talking on his cell phone as he left Sinclair Hall, and I was sitting outside grading papers. It was right after Thanksgiving, when we had that weird heat wave, remember?” I nodded. “Usually Landry is laid back—trying to be the cool cat, you know?—but he was on a tear that day. I couldn’t help but overhear what he was saying.”
    Reggie took a sip of his coffee. “Anyway, the bottom line is the department didn’t know what to do with Bryan, but Dickerson doesn’t pay anyone unless they work. Sticking him over in the research office was an easy fix. But I don’t think Gunderson particularly liked Bryan either. He just took one for the team, as they say.”
    Geez, I thought, despite all the tearful tributes at his funeral, it was looking more and more like Bryan Campbell was utterly friendless. I wondered how one young man with so much promise could have become such a pariah.
    “So,” Reggie said, snapping my attention back to my more immediate concern, “Alice said you’re interested in enrolling in Dickerson.”
    I raised my glass of iced tea in a mock toast. “You make it sound so appealing. How can I resist?”
     
    Reggie was a lousy ambassador for Dickerson. Once the conversation turned from his own place in the universe and departmental gossip to the life of an undergraduate, he completely checked out. He answered my questions with disinterest bordering on, well, a coma. When I could pry more than a sentence out of him, he showed utter disdain for the students he taught, the ranks of which I ostensibly wished to join.
    Eventually, I decided Alice had had plenty of time to check through Reggie’s pictures, and I was feeling less and less good about helping her romance