The Measure of a Man

Sandra was asking more of her than she could give. Again, Jane shook her head.

“I can’t remember.” And then, to prevent the other woman from thinking that she was some kind of an air-head, she explained, “You have to understand, my parents had just been killed in a car accident. I was all alone in the world and I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly about anything. When the letter came, it was like the answer to a prayer. I couldn’t believe it. If that money hadn’t come when it had, I would have had to drop out of school.”

The way Smith had.

The thought brought her up short. Where had that come from?

And why?

With renewed verve, Jane pushed on, her sandwich completely forgotten. “All my parents had was a small insurance policy that would have barely taken care of burial expenses. Eventually, I had to sell our house to pay off most of their other bills.”

It had been a point of honor with her, even though Drew had called her a fool for doing it when she’d told him what she had done. She didn’t add that her father had had a problem hanging on to money. That he spent it faster than he earned it, striving for a lifestyle he couldn’t afford. No one, except the professor, knew about that. Not even Drew. Though her mother had loved her father, they’d argued a great deal about his compulsion.

There was no doubt in her mind that her parents were probably arguing about it the day they were killed. The driver of the semi that hit their car swore that the driver looked as if he’d had his face turned away from the road.

Sandra digested the information, trying to turn it to their best advantage. “Do you think there’s a chance that the professor might have had something to do with your windfall?”

Not likely, Jane thought. The salary of a college professor was far from a king’s ransom. Certainly not enough to secretly bestow the kind of money it took to attend Saunders on a number of students. Or even one student for that matter.

“I sincerely doubt it. When I worked in the administration building in the accounts office, I got to see what Professor Harrison, along with the rest of the staff, earned. Not nearly enough money to play fairy godmother. Why?”

Sandra shrugged. “I’m looking for something, anything, that might put him in the very best possible light in front of the board. If we could somehow show that Professor Harrison gathered together funds from other sources to help needy—” she quickly substituted another word and hoped that Jane didn’t notice “—um, deserving students, then maybe…”

That wasn’t the way to go, Jane thought. “I’m sure he would have said something to me in all this time if he was involved in some kind of charitable action.” Her eyes met Sandra’s. “We can’t lie to the board about that, tempting as it might be. Somehow, Broadstreet would call us on it.”

Sandra sighed. It had been a nice idea while it lasted—all of six seconds. “I know.”

Jane took another long sip of her soda, then asked, “So, what is it you’d like me to do?”

This time, Sandra proceeded slowly, building word on word. “You said you used to work in the administration building, right?”

That was a matter of record. It was a job she knew the professor’d had a hand in getting for her, just as he’d gotten her this one when his own secretary had retired. “Yes.”

“All the old files are archived in the basement.” Sandra didn’t wait for Jane to confirm the fact. “Maybe if we go through the ones pertaining to the professor’s former students and the others he advised, we can find something that we can use. I really don’t know what we’re looking for until we find it,” she confessed. “But I do think it’s worth a try. And I do need your help.” Sandra looked at her hopefully. “Can I count on it?”

“I’ll do anything to help the professor,” Jane told her. “That goes without saying.”

“Wonderful.” Sandra took her hand in both of hers and shook it heartily. “I’ll get back to you on this. Soon,” she promised.

Walking out quickly, Sandra left Jane pondering the situation. Chewing on a sandwich she didn’t taste, Jane wondered if there was anything else she could do to help further the professor’s cause. She felt energized and at the same time at a loss as to where to place all that energy.

She supposed she didn’t have to wait for Sandra’s go-ahead. She could just get started doing what the woman had suggested. Looking.

Except there was one thing wrong with that.

Sandra’s basic supposition had been flawed, Jane thought. She knew where the files were kept, all right, but she couldn’t get at them. They were in the basement, under lock and key. To get to look at them, she was going to need to unlock the door to the room where they were all archived.

Which meant she needed a key. Either that or a handy burglar.

She couldn’t ask anyone in the administration office to unlock the door. They’d want to know what she was doing. Most likely, they’d want to go down to the basement with her. She couldn’t very well say she was hunting for documentation showing what an excellent man and educator the professor was. Word undoubtedly would get back to Broadstreet and then they really wouldn’t be able to get at the files. There was no telling if someone in the administration office was trying to curry favor with Broadstreet. She had a feeling the man had spies everywhere.

What she needed, Jane thought, was to approach someone she felt confident was in no one’s pocket. Someone who would never run and tell Broadstreet or the board what she was up to.

Outside, it was beginning to rain. Within a blink of an eye, her office was cast into shadow, turning afternoon into practically night.

She reached across her desk and turned on the lamp. As light filled the room, Jane smiled to herself.

There was someone she could ask. Someone, she instinctively knew, who was in no one’s pocket and never would be.

Chapter Four

Some twenty minutes after she’d put in a call to Thom Dolan in the maintenance department, requesting that he send Smith Parker up to her office, there was a quick, sharp rap on her door.

Before she could say, “Come in,” he did.

Looking, Jane thought, not unlike a thundercloud casting ominous shadows over the western plains. There were even some drops of rain clinging to his hair, as the rain had just let up.

It was obvious that Smith didn’t care for being summoned, but that couldn’t be helped. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting until their paths crossed again, especially since they did so seldomly.

Smith moved closer to her desk, his very presence making the room feel even smaller than it was. The man had muscles, she thought absently.

“What’s the emergency?” he all but growled.

Without intending to, she pushed her chair back a little. “No emergency,” Jane answered. “I just needed to talk to you.”

Wheat-colored eyebrows pulled together over the bridge of his finely shaped nose. Smith looked at her very skeptically, as if waiting for a punch line. “You called me in here to talk?”

Now that Smith was actually here, she wasn’t sure just how to proceed, how to phrase her request. Except for today outside the professor’s office, whenever they did run into one another, the most she’d say was hello because she didn’t know whether or not he wanted her to acknowledge the fact that they knew one another.

When she’d first seen him wearing the navy-blue jumpsuit with the university’s logo across the back and the title of Maintenance Engineer finely stitched across his breast pocket, she had been completely dumbstruck. She remembered thinking that there had to be some mistake, or maybe even some kind of a joke. Either that, or the maintenance man was a dead ringer for the student who had sat two rows away from her. They couldn’t possibly be one and the same.

The Smith Parker she was acquainted with had been very bright. When he’d abruptly left Saunders shortly after those accusations had been brought against him, she’d just assumed that Smith had gone on to attend another college. And a man with a college degree didn’t concern himself with clogged pipes unless they were in his own house.

But then she’d heard him say something to one of the teachers and she knew it had to be Smith. His voice, low in timbre, sensual even if he were merely reciting the alphabet, was unmistakable. With every syllable he uttered, his voice seemed to undulate right under her skin.

Just the way it seemed to do now.

Feeling suddenly nervous, Jane cleared her throat. “Actually, I wanted to see you because I need a favor from you.”

Smith put down the toolbox he’d brought with him and looked at her as if she was speaking in riddles.

“A favor,” he echoed slowly, taking the word apart letter by letter, as if that would reveal something beneath it. When she nodded and he was no closer to an answer than before, Smith prodded, “What kind of favor?”

As he asked, he glanced around the office. The size of a broom closet on steroids, it still managed to be cheery because of the few personal touches she had added to it. On the wall directly behind her was a poster of a kitten, its front paws wrapped around a tree branch as its back legs dangled in midair. The animal looked precariously close to falling. For some reason that eluded him, the kitten made him think of her.

Beneath it, in white script, was the slogan “Hang in There.” He wondered how many times a day Jane said that to herself. Subconsciously he’d been saying something along those lines to himself for some time now. Of late, he’d had this feeling that something better was going to be coming his way if he was just patient enough to wait it out.

He guessed that maybe his spirit wasn’t entirely dead the way he’d once believed it to be.