Blood Feud Read online

  Blood Feud

  A University Mystery

  Brenda Donelan

  Blood Feud

  ©Copyright 2018 Brenda Donelan

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is dedicated to the people and places of India.

  Thank you for the inspiration.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  DID YOU ENJOY THIS BOOK?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY BRENDA DONELAN

  When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog will kick him.

  Hindu proverb

  Chapter 1

  “What do you mean, my research trip is cancelled?” shrieked Professor Marlee McCabe as she stood trembling in her dean’s book-filled office. She’d requested a semester-long sabbatical from her teaching duties at Midwestern State University to conduct research on the prison system in Ireland. Her request had been approved by the sabbatical committee, and she was only weeks away from departing for the Emerald Isle. Until the dean summoned her to his office early that December morning, that is.

  “It’s not cancelled, exactly,” Hank Barnaby said, hedging as he spoke. He grasped his rumpled khakis by the waist and hitched them up a notch before he continued. “It’s more like it’s been postponed.”

  “Wait, is this some kind of trick? Are you just messing with me?” Marlee asked, feeling a little sheepish that it took her this long to clue in to the joke.

  “No, Marlee, I’m not joking. I got word on this from the President’s Office, and he told me to let you know of the change right away. You were the only one teaching in the social sciences who received sabbatical for the upcoming spring semester, and he needs you for an important assignment. Unfortunately, that means your planned research trip to Ireland is off for now.”

  “An important assignment?” Marlee scoffed. “What is this, Mission Impossible?”

  Dean Barnaby laughed a little too loudly, an attempt at lightening the mood. He hated conflict, wanting this interaction with the feisty professor to go off as smoothly as possible. “No, not at all. President Long was recently informed that Delhi University, our sister institution in India, wants an American professor to teach criminology there next semester. And since you were going to be on sabbatical anyway, and criminology is your field of study, the president volunteered you.”

  “And I can’t refuse?” Marlee asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Of course, you can refuse, but….” The “but” hung heavy in the air. Marlee was savvy enough to know that you didn’t refuse the requests of the university president unless you had a career death wish. Hank Barnaby sank into his cushioned chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “But you still get to take a semester break from MSU, and you’ll be in India. Won’t that be fascinating? I assume you’ve never been there?”

  Marlee didn’t even try to hide it as she rolled her eyes. Hank sounded more like a travel agent than an academic bureaucrat. “But what about my research in Ireland? I had everything set up. Travel, lodging, contacts, research agenda, everything! When will I get to work on that project?”

  “You can apply for sabbatical every six years, so you can just defer your research project in Ireland until then. I’m sure you’ll have no problem getting approved for sabbatical in six years when you apply again, given how you’ve agreed to help us out this time.”

  “Six years! That’s a century in academic research time.” Marlee knew she didn’t need to explain the necessity of conducting research resulting in published papers. Without it, she’d never make it to full professor status. She felt her whole academic career toppling before her.

  “Maybe you could alter your research agenda and do the study in India rather than Ireland.”

  Marlee sighed. “The whole premise of my research is based on the fact that much of the American criminal justice system, especially prisons, is based on the Irish system. I don’t know of any such connection between India and the United States.”

  “Couldn’t you cobble something together?” Hank was doing his damnedest to sell Marlee on the idea, an unfavorable task he’d been given by President Long.

  “You think this is all okay? How would you feel if the rug was ripped out from under you like this?” Marlee challenged.

  The dean took a deep breath, choosing his words. “I’d be pissed as hell. But the reality is that you don’t have much choice in this situation. You can either go to India to teach the class and do some research on the side, or you can refuse and watch your career go down the toilet. I know you have tenure, but the president has a good memory and will remember when your name comes up for proposals for new projects, conference money, and that sort of thing. Nobody can force you to go to India and sacrifice your Ireland sabbatical, but I assure you that you’ll be duly rewarded by the president as long as he’s here at MSU. And I would certainly look very favorably on most projects you want to propose when you get back from India.”

  There really was no choice. Marlee would be in India January through May, and she could either make the best of it, or drag her feet and get on the bad side of the administration at Midwestern State University.

  “When do I leave?” Marlee asked.

  “About December 28th. You’ll be able to enjoy Christmas before you leave. We have it all set up,” The dean said, talking a mile a minute now that Marlee was on board. “You’ll meet with the dean from your department the first week of January to get the details of your teaching assignment. The university is providing you with faculty lodging. This trip won’t cost you anything since MSU and Delhi University are paying for travel, food, lodging, and incidentals. And since you’re teaching only one class, you’ll have plenty of time to do research. Have any major studies been done comparing the Indian prison system to that of the United States? That could be an area that hasn’t been studied much. You might have a better project in India than you would have in Ireland.”

  “Don’t push it, Hank,” Marlee said with a small laugh. “I’ll go, and I’ll make the best of the situation, but keep in mind I’ll have a whole semester abroad to put together a list of things I want when I return. So, brace yourself.”

  A huge grin passed over the dean’s face, relieved that he wouldn’t need to trouble the president with bad news. “Thank you for agreeing to do this. Neither the president nor I will forget it. You’ll be able to write your own ticket when you get back here. Want to only teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10:00 and 2:00? No problem! Want to teach a class on the need for prisons in Antarctic
a? Done! Need funds to take your students to a conference in California? You bet!”

  “Okay, okay! I need to cancel everything I had lined up for Ireland; flights, reservations at several bed and breakfasts, and meetings with Irish prison officials. Jeez, that’s going to take forever to get all that done!”

  “Send the flight and B&B contact info to the secretary. She can cancel those for you. You probably want to talk to the prison wardens yourself,” Hank said.

  Marlee nodded. She had ongoing email and telephone communications with officials at three separate prisons and had worked hard at getting permission to visit and tour their institutions while doing her research. They had even agreed to provide her with their statistics on inmate numbers, types of crimes they committed, length of sentence, and other facts pertinent to her study. Now Marlee needed to let them know she wasn’t coming… at least not for another six years.

  With slow, deliberate steps, she walked back to her office, closed the door, and plopped down on her office chair. With her head in her hands, she pondered the new developments in her career. Even more disturbing than cancelling, or postponing as MSU was calling it, her Ireland research, was the fact that she wouldn’t have enough time to get started on any kind of research on the prison system in India. She knew very little about the country and even less about its prisons. Final exams were next week, and it would take her at least another week to finish the grading for her classes, file end of semester reports, and attend at least two committee meetings. There just wasn’t enough time to study up on India and its correctional system before she arrived.

  How would she go about making contacts with prison officials when she was in New Delhi? Would they be as open to a researcher asking questions and perusing their imprisonment statistics as the wardens she talked with in Ireland? And what if she hated it there? Marlee knew she would be locked in to staying in India the full semester, regardless of her opinions on the country, the university, and her ability to carry out meaningful research. She’d thought about traveling to India sometime, but for a sightseeing trip with friends rather than teaching and research.

  Marlee was a planner and didn’t like surprises. She’d spent the last year putting everything in place for her prison research in Ireland. Just twenty minutes ago, she was going to Ireland to carry out research on a fully planned project and maybe even do genealogy research on her family’s Irish heritage if she had time. Now she was leaving for India in less than a month with no real idea of what she was doing or how she was going to do it. Things really couldn’t be in more turmoil. Unless you took her love life into consideration.

  Living in water and being an enemy of the crocodile is not good.

  Hindu proverb

  Chapter 2

  She roared into her garage, slammed the door shut on her Honda CR-V, and stomped into the house, shaking the fresh powder off her snow boots. Pippa, her sixteen-pound Persian cat, met her at the door, and the kitty was not happy. She gave Marlee a sorrowful meow to indicate a tragedy had occurred. It might be a lost toy, the disturbance of her afternoon nap spot, or a food dish which was less than half-full.

  “What’s the matter, kitty?” Marlee cooed, bending to scratch the fluffy gray cat. Her greeting was met with a snarl and a strike at Marlee’s hand. “Uh-oh, somebody’s in a mood.” Marlee glanced around the empty house to determine the cause of Pippa’s unrest.

  She kicked off her snow boots and threw her coat and mittens on the back of a chair. As she made her way through the kitchen, dining room, and living room, she noticed the temperature. Or lack thereof. Pippa followed on Marlee’s heels, meowing as if to point out the problem.

  The thermostat read forty-seven degrees. “Holy crap! You’re almost frozen!” Marlee fiddled with the programmable thermostat, coaxing it into working again. She replaced the battery and reset all of the buttons, to no avail. Scooping Pippa into her arms so they could share body heat, she called the heating company closest to her house. She had them on speed dial since they handled heating, cooling, plumbing, and a few other types of jobs that Marlee needed help with on occasion.

  An hour later, a bearded repairman named Marcus gave her the bad news. “You need a new furnace. This one’s over twenty years old, and it’s a goner.” Luckily, he would be able to install a new one, but not until the following morning. That meant Marlee and Pippa would have to survive a night of freezing temperatures in the little stucco house. According to the weather forecast, the snow would stop later that afternoon, and the temperature would drop to below zero.

  After making a couple phone calls, Marlee lined up space heaters she could use to keep them warm and the water pipes from freezing. She wrapped Pippa in a fuzzy blanket, leaving her on the couch and returned quickly with three space heaters. One was placed in the bathroom in front of the sink and the other in front of the sink in the kitchen. She shut the doors to the bedrooms and the basement and then set up the last space heater in the living room. Almost immediately, it began smoking and had to be unplugged.

  “Oh, shit!” Marlee shouted, wondering what she should do now. There was enough heat in the kitchen and bathroom to keep the pipes from freezing, but the living room was still too cold to be habitable for her and Pippa. Remembering some random survival tip that she had seen on the Internet while procrastinating on grading, she went to her garage and returned with a terra cotta flower pot and cement blocks. She arranged the cement blocks into a box and placed a lit Yankee candle under the inverted flower pot. An hour later, the living room was as warm as the furnace usually kept it. The only real concern was keeping Pippa away from the lit candle since she had a history of catching her tail on fire.

  A restless night was spent on the couch. Marlee had blocked off all extraneous rooms to keep the heat centralized, so she didn’t have the comfort of her memory foam mattress. Pippa walking all over Marlee didn’t bode well for a good night’s sleep either. She set her alarm clock to wake her every two hours, so she could turn off the space heaters for a bit to prevent them from overheating and starting a fire.

  By 5:30, she gave up the idea of sleep and brewed a pot of coffee. She usually slept in on Saturdays, but that wasn’t in the cards today. While sipping the steaming brew from a New Orleans ceramic mug she obtained at a conference in the Big Easy, Marlee moved to her computer and began her research on India. If I’m moving there for a few months, I need to know what I’m in for. Up to that point, her limited information on India came from Slum Dog Millionaire and travel shows on public television.

  Her Internet search started with the basics: population of Delhi around 19 million people and the average temperature in December of sixty degrees with temperatures rising to well over one hundred in the summer months. Holy crap, this place is the exact opposite of Elmwood, South Dakota! Hot, tropical, and overpopulated. She was no fan of the sparsely populated tundra but thought she might actually miss the solitude and cold climate once she traveled to India.

  Then she moved on to find out more about Delhi University, where she would be teaching American Criminology next semester. Information on the university was abundant, yet there was little information about the department in which she would be teaching. A couple more clicks got her to the special lecture series, and she was surprised to see her name already on the roster. Marlee chuckled as she thought about the level of confidence the president and the dean had, knowing that she would accept the assignment. Another click of the mouse, and she discovered she would be housed in the Sociology Department. Oh, no! Not the sociologists, she thought. They’re all crazy!

  The university itself looked inviting enough with brick buildings, state of the art computer labs, and smiling, fresh-faced students. Delhi University was highly regarded for its technology programs and had a strong international focus throughout the various courses of study. Noticing the physical similarities to Midwestern State University, Marlee thought, this looks pleasant. Somebody did a really good job of staging the scene and photographing it. She reca
lled a trip to Italy in which online photos of the hotel depicted a plush, rural resort when, in reality, it was a run-down dump in the middle of nowhere.

  The more she thought about her upcoming teaching stint in India, the more she dreaded it. Marlee still had Irish sugar plums dancing in her head. Her months of preparation were hard to put behind her, and she resented being forced to change her focus of study. She’d still technically be on sabbatical even though teaching one class was a requirement. Teaching only one class would be a breeze since she usually had four plus her research agenda with the addition of committee work and advising undergrads. There would be adequate time to do some type of research while there if she could get the cooperation of the prison officials in New Delhi. But what if they don’t cooperate? She would just have to buckle down and make the most of the research opportunity in India since it might be her one and only trip to the country.

  Marlee was so caught up in the details of her trip that she forgot about the early hour as she telephoned her dean at his home to discuss further details on her assignment. After four rings, a drowsy female answered the phone and turned it over to Hank.

  “Hello? What’s the matter? What happened?” The dean’s voice was husky, and he seemed braced for an emergency, as one does when they sign their life away to administrative servitude.

  “Hi, Hank. It’s Marlee, and I had some questions about my trip to India. Hope I didn’t wake you up.” She winced as she glanced at the wall clock and saw that it was only 6:45 a.m.

  Nothing was said for ten seconds, then he cleared his throat. “Can I call you back? Around 9:00?” The dean was an easy-going guy, but she knew how much he valued his sleep. She felt thankful he didn’t rip her head off for calling at such an ungodly hour on a weekend.