Free Bond With Death by Bill Crider Page A

warm?”
    Sally said she was sure it was. She got Jack’s cup off the counter and poured coffee in it.
    â€œVera?” she said.

    â€œNo, thanks.”
    Sally took the coffee to the table and set it in front of Jack. He took a couple of sips.
    â€œWe’re waiting, Jack,” Sally said.
    â€œIt’s not like Harold and I were friends or anything,” Jack said.
    â€œWhat were you, then?” Vera said.
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe he thought we were friends. He used to call me and complain about the college. He said he was going to help defeat the bond issue and then get elected to the board. After that he was going to get rid of Fieldstone.”
    â€œDid he really think anyone would vote for him?” Sally asked.
    â€œHe seemed to think he had plenty of support.”
    â€œWould you have voted for him?”
    â€œNo, and I never told him that I would. I don’t think anybody who worked at the college would vote for him, but that wouldn’t have bothered Harold at all. He thought we were all morons.”
    â€œEven you?”
    â€œEven me. I told you we weren’t friends. But we worked together for a long time, and he probably just needed someone to talk to about his schemes.”
    â€œDid he ever mention anyone who might want him dead?” Vera asked.
    â€œThat would have been a very long list,” Jack said. “Starting with every student who ever took one of his classes. Let’s not get too excited here. Maybe Harold died a perfectly natural death.”
    â€œOr maybe he didn’t,” Sally said. She was getting a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. Had it been only a few hours ago that she’d thought things were going to be all right? “It’s hard to believe that the e-mail and those quotations were just coincidence.”
    â€œSometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” Jack said.
    Sally sighed. Jack was right. She was getting carried away. Weems’s visit had upset her, and even the session on the firing range and the margaritas afterward hadn’t completely settled her nerves.
    â€œWe aren’t getting anywhere with this,” she said.
    Vera agreed. “Information overload. But it’s obvious that something’s
going on. That e-mail, Curtin’s death, that meeting you have with Jennifer Jackson tomorrow, a visit from Weems. It seems to me that they’re all connected.”
    â€œWe don’t know that. We should slow down and think things over. Maybe then we can come to some conclusions.”
    â€œCome by my office after your meeting tomorrow,” Jack told her.
    Sally said that she would, and Jack and Vera left. Sally wondered if they’d go somewhere and dance naked under the moon.
    â€œWhat do you think, Lola?” she said as she walked into the bedroom.
    Lola, who was still under the bed, had no comment, so Sally took a shower and went to bed.
    Â 
    Â 
    The Deposition of Joseph Herrick

    The Deposition of Joseph Herrick, Sr., who testifieth and saith that on the first day of March 1692: “I being then Constable for Salem, there was delivered to me by warrant from the worshipful Jno. Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin, Esqrs. Sarah Good for me to carry to their majesties’ gaol at Ipswich, and that night I set a guard to watch her at my own house, namely Samuel Braybrook, Michael Dunell, and Jonathan Baker. And the aforenamed persons informed me in the morning that that night Sarah Good was gone for some time from them both bare foot and bare legged. And I was also Informed that that night Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted persons, complained that Sarah Good came and afflicted her, being bare foot and bare legged.”

10
    Â 
    Â 
    S ally’s eight o’clock class on Tuesdays and Thursdays was developmental English, a course designed for students who had somehow managed to graduate from the public schools with few, if any, writing skills.
    Some of them had a