11: The New Guard

The special SBU board of trustees meeting that night lasted until 9 P.M. I would tell you all about it, but then I’d have to kill you. If you didn’t die of boredom first. The upshot was that board members elected their chairman, Grant Kingsley, as interim president for the rest of the 2018-19 academic year. They tapped fellow trustee Sister Jacinta Harrington, the über-competent president of St. Hildegarde Health, as head of the search committee to find Father Joe’s permanent successor.

Kingsley, familiarly known as “GK,” looks like a general in a movie—iron-gray hair closely cropped, gun-metal eyes, ramrod-straight posture, and a military physique. But he only made it to colonel while teaching for 27 years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado as part of the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department. The “leadership” part was his specialty. He retired to the Altiora Corp., a major defense contractor with large operations in Erin. You wouldn’t think Altiora could spare its senior vice president for six months or more, but the civic-minded company granted him a leave of absence.

“GK should be a good fit,” I told Lynda, herself a military brat. “He knows his way around campus. He even taught as an adjunct in the business school under Burch.”

But I didn’t tell her that until breakfast. After the board meeting, I had to write a press release stressing GK’s tenure on the board and his crucial work on the capital campaign. This was familiar territory to me because a few emails laconically signed /gk had been forwarded my way. By the time I got home to Campion Lane, Lynda was sleeping the sleep of an exhausted mother of three kids under the age of three. Before I joined her in our marital bed, I detoured through the family room, where five stockings hung by the chimney with care for St. Nicholas Day, December 6. St. Nick had filled mine with tangerines, granola bars, and dark chocolate. I put a bottle of Cleopatra VII, her favorite scent, in Lynda’s.

The top of Thursday morning’s wood pulp edition of the Erin Observer & News-Ledger carried a full account of the murder, with Johanna Rawls and Maggie Barton sharing a double byline. CONTROVERSIAL PROF SLAIN, the headline screamed.

“You can’t say it’s inaccurate,” Lynda pointed out amid the morning breakfast-table melee. Her curls were a bit in disarray, but she looked scrumptious in a curve-hugging ribbed turtleneck the color of milk chocolate.

“That doesn’t help,” I grumbled. “This is a whole new level of bad publicity.”

“Well, don’t be too hard on Maggie for just doing her job. She just lost her great-niece—Mallory. Overdose. You know how close Maggie is to all her nieces and nephews and their kids. She must be shattered.”

“Mallory Lambert? Didn’t she play basketball for SBU a couple of years ago?” I had a vague memory that she’d suffered a career-ending injury on the court.

“Right.”

“Sad.” That must have been the family death Maggie mentioned on the phone yesterday, and the cause of demise was the reason she didn’t say much about it. That made real-world sense after a good night’s sleep, unlike yesterday’s fleeting pipedream that Maggie had what Mac would call an affaire de cœur with Burch. “Maybe family trouble is why Maggie’s been off her game lately. On the other hand, maybe she should just count the candles on her last birthday cake and follow Father Joe out the door.”

Murders on campus put me in a grouchy mood.

Several paragraphs of the story had Tall Rawls’s fingerprints, including the one that said “SBU professor and sometime-sleuth Sebastian McCabe is assisting Erin and campus police with their inquiries.” She quoted him briefly.

Maggie’s story on our eminent president’s surprise resignation also claimed a big chunk of page-one real estate, with a smiling photo. It was a nice piece, very personal, with warm anecdotes from her years of covering the great man. Each of Maggie’s SBU stories referred to the other, which was inevitable given that the late Warren Burch’s depredations had precipitated the Pirelli departure.

The news that GK was stepping into those big shoes was too late for the print edition, but the Online Observer had a quick-and-dirty re-write of my late-night press release. (“Grant Kingsley, 58, Erin-based senior vice president of the Altiora Corp., has been named...”) I happened to know that GK played golf with Frank Woodford, editor and general manager of the Observer. But then, who didn’t? “Community engagement” was Frank’s specialty, while he left the running of the paper to Ben Silverstein.

“Want to hear your horoscope, darling?”

“No.”

She read it to me anyway:

“‘The real challenge will be in choosing what to believe.’ Hey, that’s not bad for an amateur sleuth! Mine says, ‘Productivity and joy go hand in hand.’’’ She looked at our three children, the result of our productivity in marriage. “Well, that’s certainly true!”

Father Joe’s office—former office—somehow looked smaller with him not in it.

“He’s gone already?” I marveled. “His resignation isn’t official until Sunday night.” This was perhaps not the best opening line for my first meeting with my boss’s boss. But I was shocked into it. I expected that Father Joe would be there along with the new guy.

“He’ll be back later today,” GK reassured me. “He insisted that I use the president’s office today for my first team meetings—symbolism and all that. Who am I to argue with Father Joe? But I’m not going to move in here for another week. I can work out of my briefcase until then. And after that, Father Joe will get an office on this floor as President Emeritus. I insisted on that. He can share my administrative assistant when he’s not hitting the links.”

“That’s very sensitive of you,” said Lesley Saylor-Mackie. She’d had GK to herself for an hour before they invited me into the confab. Not that it was an invitation I could refuse.

The interim president pressed beyond the matter of his predecessor’s digs, a man in a hurry.

“I want to meet as many key people as I can today, Jeff, and you are one of the key people. I’ve always believed that good communication is essential to good leadership. So, your office will be essential to whatever I do in this transition period.”

I like this guy.

“Even though I’ll be a short-timer behind this desk, I’m not going to just take up space. My motto is ‘leaders lead.’ I’m going to push forward with the capital campaign, for starters. Father Joe will be very important as the face of that. Everybody knows him, everybody loves him. Day to day, you can expect me to be a little stronger hand at the rudder than he’s been, without micromanaging.”

That wouldn’t be hard. Father Joe’s laissez faire management style was the reason “Executive Vice President” was part of Saylor-Mackie’s rather cumbersome title. You don’t get rid of an institutional legend; you work around him.

“Naturally,” GK continued, “I’m very concerned about Warren’s murder. Hell of a thing to face on my first day!”

“All downhill from here,” I joshed.

“Not necessarily.” That bucket of cold water came from Saylor-Mackie. “All indications are that the killer is a member of the St. Benignus community, not an outsider.”

“That’s what worries me—that and the whole campus security issue.” GK sat back, looking comfortably at home behind the presidential desk. As his suit coat parted, I saw a wrapped cigar in his shirt pocket. “I’ve been fully briefed by Chief Hummel as well as by our own people.” This guy works fast! “I made a few calls before the board meeting yesterday. I’m also aware of what’s out there in social media. Somebody named Jason Danvers tweets more than Donald Trump.”

“He was close to Burch,” I said.

“I figured that, but he’s taking so many pot shots at safety on campus that they’re bound to hit home with some people. Can’t we do anything about him, Jeff?”

“In short, no. Ralph Pendergast, of blessed memory, would want us to fire back at him. That’s the worst possible reaction, in my considered opinion. It would call attention to his rantings, and thereby give him a bigger stage than if we just ignore him. Other professionals might argue differently, but that’s what I think.”

“Hmm. I guess you’re right. Well, Father Joe was wise to order that safety review. I’ve stressed to Cal Daley that I want a thorough job on that, not just a light coating of paint. He asked me if he could hire some outside talent and I gave him the green light.”

“Okay to tell the press about that?”

“Sure, if they ask about the review. That can only add to the credibility of the process. And by the way, Cal also authorized overtime for extra patrols on campus at least until the killer is caught.”

I made a mental note to call Hadley Reams and Maggie Barton, both of whom had asked questions about the nature of the security review yesterday.

“From where I sit”—in Father Joe’s chair—“this murder is more than just a PR problem for SBU. Warren was something of a small ‘f’ friend of mine. I got him appointed to the Altiora board because I thought he brought an interesting perspective that none of the other twenty board members had. He was head of the audit committee—although, confidentially, I’m not sure he would have survived the negative publicity about the reasons he left the deanship.”

“Of course, it’s more than just a PR problem,” Saylor-Mackie said. “But it would be foolish to deny that it’s bringing us a lot of negative attention right on top of Warren’s Title IX issue. The best thing for the university would be a quick arrest, which nobody in this room has any control over. But I’m sure all the law enforcement people are doing their best on that.”

“With the help of Sebastian McCabe, I suppose?” Was that a twinkle in GK’s gunmetal gray eyes? “I love his Damon Devlin mysteries.” Nobody’s perfect. “Introduce us sometime, Jeff.”

“Sure. As a matter of fact, Father Joe did ask Mac to stick his beard into this case. You’re copacetic with that, I gather?”

GK didn’t respond as affirmatively as I expected, given that he was a self-proclaimed McCabe devotee. “I only have one caveat about it. We already have two police forces and an energetic coroner involved. From a business management point of view, somebody better be making sure they aren’t stepping all over each other’s toes.” Only he really didn’t say toes. “I know you’re plugged in, Jeff. Are there any suspects?”

“Quite a few.”