Murder On The Campus

Chapter One

As I walked across the lawn between the science building and the apartments where Betty Ann and my family lived, the grasshoppers parted before me like the Red Sea parted before Moses.

“Billy! Billy Harshburger, wait for me!” a familiar voice rang out.

I stopped as the early June sun beat down on me and waited for Kendra Jackson to catch up. “I thought you were going to the library, Kendra. Don’t you have a term paper to work on?”

“I do, but I’m going to wait until this afternoon. That swamp cooler in our apartment does okay until the middle of the afternoon, and then it can’t keep up with the heat. When it gets too hot, then I’ll go to the library and do my research where it’s nice and cool.”

Smart girl, I thought to myself as we walked on. Betty Ann and I also had a swamp cooler in our apartment. Even though it was only the early part of June, we were right in the middle of a summer heat wave, and the water-cooled air conditioners couldn’t even start to keep up with the heat. As I looked up at the cloudless sky, I could already tell that this was going to be a scorcher. If the heat was still like this come the weekend, I thought, I think I’ll see if Betty Ann would like to go home Friday after class. If she did, we could spend the weekend afternoons down on the Washita River.

“You know we have a biology test tomorrow?” Kendra asked.

“Yeah, I know,” I answered.

“Would you like to study with me?”

“Your house or my house?” I asked with a grin.

“My house,” she said with a determined jut of her chin. “It’s a lot quieter there without those three kids of yours storming in and out. Besides, David has a class tonight, and we can get a lot done when we are by ourselves.”

Betty Ann and my apartment was on the west side of a duplex, while Kendra and David’s was on the east side of the next building to the west. After World War II, the college had ended up with some single storied army barracks, and they had turned them into apartments for married couples. With the GI bill in effect, they needed all the housing they could get. They had done a remarkable job of remodeling them, except for the exterior paint job. They were all painted reddish brown, which had faded until now, I don’t know what color you would call it.

The apartment we had, though crowded, would do until I graduated in three or four years. By taking summer school every summer, I might just do it in three. Then with a degree in agriculture with emphases on ranching, I would return to the spacious ranch house and at last take control of the Payne Ranch.

My father-in-law had wanted me to run for reelection for sheriff of Roger Mills County a second time, and then he wanted me to go to college and get a degree in agriculture before taking over the ranch. Half of the ranch technically belonged to Betty Ann and me. The other half belonged to Aunt Vie. But old man Payne still ran the ranch as he had always run it—as if it were all his. I had a hard time thinking that Betty Ann and I owned half of the ranch, but we did. My father-in-law had deeded his half to us the second year we were married.

It’s not really in my character to live my life as other people ask me, but this time I had made an exception. I ran for sheriff for a second term and the only one who ran against me was Dick Stout. When the count was done, I had all but fourteen votes. The next day when I walked down Main Street in Cheyenne, I met Dick Stout, and he was wearing two guns. Now it’s not against the law to wear a gun, not by a long shot. In fact the constitution guarantees you that right, and the city of Cheyenne, Oklahoma, didn’t have any ordnance against it either. But I was curious, and curiosity got the best of me, so I asked, “What are you doing wearing guns, Dick? You didn’t get elected.”

“I know,” he answered. “But after yesterday’s votes were tallied, I figured someone who’s got no more friends than I do had better wear guns.”