Unless there is a flagrant reason to not, I try to be kind to the places I visit/live. I’m not sure why I decided to locate Management by Murder in LaGrange rather than Dubuque and to call the university LaGrange University rather than the University of Dubuque. In fiction, it’s common to lighten or darken the colors, expand and contract sizes, turn the volume up and down. The view as a transient certainly isn’t the same as that of a lifelong resident. Often the transient can bring the subject into sharper focus, the resident’s perspective having been dulled by the sameness of things.
Dubuque was a red brick Mississippi River town. It was a company town. The place survived by providing work at John Deer manufacturing and The Pack, Dubuque Meat Packing plant. Maybe you didn’t work for one or the other, but Aunt Thelma or Cousin Cyril certainly did.
One might think that the three small colleges in town would offer an antidote. Two of the colleges, Loras College and Clark College, were colleges for Catholic men and women respectively. Lots of nuns and fathers behind the podiums. The University of Dubuque was originally affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. When I lived there, the market for protestant parochial schools had diminished to the point where the school no longer required a religion course or attendance at morning prayers. The target market was secular and nationwide. Still, with only 500 students, there weren’t many faculty and students to provide much contrast to the homogenous social landscape.
It is a widespread misconception and perhaps a social paradox that college faculty are sophisticated. These are people who, in the majority, spent their lives in libraries and classrooms. They lived on fellowships and scholarships and started out with a PhD as an adjunct professor in three different universities. Occasionally they backpacked or camped with friends and family. Absolutely no reflection on their character but they are not sophisticated. Where to properly place the cutlery, what to wear to a gala, the proper wine to serve and in which glass, why you don’t ever serve French onion cheese dip for any occasion, that sort of thing. A typical faculty party will feature plastic spoons and paper plates. Whatever you wore to wash the car is fine for a party. Chicken tenders and Michelob Ultra is one hell of a good combination. Pass the chips and dip, please. Sophisticated or not, those people can be one hell of a lot of fun.
Not to belabor this, but the second-best restaurant in Dubuque was the El Rancho. They served Chinese food. The best entertainment was in the bar at the Holiday Inn, Herbie on piano, Marie on vocals. The local brewery was Pickett’s. They sourced their water from the Mississippi. Sediment in the bottom of the bottle was the norm.
Even with all that, the town had a rugged charm. It was built and sustained by working men, glad to have a job that would support a family and proud of their work. A “local” is a bar that is within walking distance of where you live. Every worker in the city had a local where he gathered with his neighbors and buddies to throw some darts, exchange insights into the Packer offense and wonder what got into those damn kids that they look the way they do these days.
A few buildings in town gave the city an elegant charm. One was the Ryan house, transformed by Hog Ryan into a mansion for two families and later became a gorgeous watering hole. Another was Lachardee’s (surely misspelled), a mansion with marvelous stained glass, beveled spindles, stone fireplaces and a crowd that talked about the latest movies and thought Theatre of the Absurd represented the current social norm. These people pooled their dollars to buy another round.
It’s interesting that the workers who had money hung out in bars built to withstand a brawl and the penniless artists lounged in the elegance of a mansion.
My grandfather was the Grand Potentate of the Elks club in my hometown. My dad ruled over the pool tables. My parents danced there on Saturday night. Spiked eggnog was served free on Thanksgiving Day and Tom and Jerry’s on Christmas. Ergo, I was an Elk. I never went to a meeting so I always thought of the club as the quintessential small town social gathering place. I paid my dues and stopped in a local club wherever I traveled.
The Elks Club in Denver was a monument to Elkdom. The club in Dubuque was tribute to the club in Denver. The building was a statement. It said, we are substantial, we do good works in the community, dedicated to the betterment of the city, a damn good place to have a bourbon and a back.
LaGrange University is patterned only on the physical facility of the University of Dubuque. When I was there, the chairman of the board had ties to the church and the president wasn’t a hard charging, stop-at-nothing entrepreneur. He was a former librarian who liked to collect old railroad lanterns. There was no research component at the school but there was a seminary.
East Dubuque was across the river in Illinois. It was as depicted: a collection of homes that housed people in the town’s entertainment industry. Laws in Illinois were much different than in Iowa. The place was much like villages that sprung up around military bases around the world. Bars, massage parlors, cheap-assed hamburger joints and a place to buy a nice T-shirt.
I haven’t been back in forty years. The population was 60,000 when I lived there. Now it’s 58,000. Of the top 12 restaurants in town, five of them are breweries. Dubuque Meat Packing has closed but John Deere still has a manufacturing facility. The output is different. These days it’s crawler loaders, skid steers and knuckleboom loaders.
It’s hard to tell if the times are indeed a changing.
Management by Murder
Synopsis
Why did the president of a small Midwestern university kill himself the day after Dan Trix arrived? The internationally renowned management consultant was hired to review the accomplishments of a research institute inside the university. How will this affect his contract? The university’s CEO quickly acknowledges the president had a disturbing secret and was terminally ill. Trix’s new job is to create a report for the university and the police confirming the president’s suicide. If the job is done right, Trix may be the next president. Trix proceeds but things just don’t add up. He suspects murder. And why has the sexy, smart, beautiful acting president of the university taken such a personal interest in him? Or could it be professional? Could she have killed her boss? Does she want the job enough to kill Trix? Is living with high-voltage tension better than living in his cold, lonely, gray cottage in England? His life may depend on getting that answer right.
Chapter 1.
Bradley David Kieper seemed like the kind of guy who would rather be anybody but himself. Had he been an actor this would have been an attribute. Unfortunately he was a college president and a gold-medal bore. When his cute and no-nonsense administrative assistant apologetically interrupted him for his signature, he was strictly no-nonsense. When the flip and sporting chairman of the board of trustees called about their weekend tennis match, he was flip and sporting. To the gruff custodian who had to check the thermostat, he in turn was gruff. Put the guy in the wrong room in a mortuary and he’d probably croak. I’m tempted to say he was the archetype for self-loathing chameleons but I’m not sure you can have an archetype if there’s only one of a kind.
I came to this conclusion in something less than a lifetime association with the man. In fact it was more like five minutes. Such high-voltage character distillation is a lot like reducing Beethoven’s Fifth to da-da-da-dum, but in my business you gotta get the guy’s hat size quick.
No doubt Dr. Kieper — he was Dr. Kieper to the custodian — had a lot on the other side of his balance sheet. He sure as hell kept some tailor in need of IRAs and capital rollover schemes. His expensive tie was the kind I can only admire in the windows in the Burlington Arcade, off Old Bond Street in London; wool so finely woven the weavers must work under microscopes. The soles on his Italian loafers were sufficiently thin such that he could probably pick up a marble in his toes with his shoes on. I hadn’t seen a diamond stickpin since my last Edward G. Robinson movie but Bradley — to that cute administrative assistant Elaine — might well resurrect the fashion.
After he and Harry-baby wittily decided on tennis at eleven and fun at one, whatever that meant, just-plain Brad apologized to just-plain Dan. “I’m usually not this inattentive to my appointments but sometimes those little mice run all over our plans.”
He hadn’t had time to be me yet and he garbled that one all by himself. I wasn’t going to give him any hints about how to act and merely nodded. Hopefully he wouldn’t take me for the quiet type and clam up completely.
He made a little steeple with his manicured fingers, half-moons shining through clear polish. Either that or he ate his weight in Jell-O every day. “We have a fine campus here, one I’m tremendously proud of.”
He was well back in a chrome and leather swivel chair that I coveted — a Corbusier that could auction well into four figures at Sotheby’s — gazing out the window like a Texas cattle baron. Given his tone and pace, I thought maybe I should take dictation.
“When I arrived, the budget was in the red, the faculty was torpid, the students belligerent. Given our tradition, the liberal over-indulgences of the previous administration were ministered to here much too long. We were floundering badly when I arrived. And now look, just look.”
I looked out his ground-level window. Two co-eds in shorts and halter tops bubbled across the quad. Brad-baby was right; things were looking good.
“The capital budget is nearly twice that of a decade ago, gifts and donations are at all-time highs, enrollment is up thirty percent and so are our freshmen SAT scores. And all this mind you, is independent of LURAD, and why you are here, of course.”
Of course, hell. I had no idea what I was doing there. I had received, via FedEx, a retainer, an appointment time, and a first-class air ticket on Delta from Gatwick to Atlanta, then on to Chicago and LaGrange, Iowa. If it hadn’t been Delta, I might not have come. The tournedos rossini they serve are superb.
“Of course,” I said.
“LURAD has transformed a declining liberal arts college into a state-of-the-art business-research interactive institution with horizons limited only by our imagination. I couldn’t be prouder of the LaGrange University Research Augmented Development Corporation if it were my own son or daughter.”
I was tempted to tell him a lot of parents hated their kids. But then he’d have a fix on me as a wise-ass, then he’d be a wise-ass. I preferred his image as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani raising funds for the Statue of Liberty.
“The procedure too often is for a university research fellow to externalize his discovery, leave the university with the invention after an extended legal battle then patent or sell it. The company or companies involved are left with a truckload of profits and the university is left with a memory and occasionally a marble memorial. Granted, the Research Triangle in Durham, N.C., has been able to internalize the profits that have been generated from some of their research, as have the Ivy League schools on a random basis. But nobody has sophisticated the idea like we have. We have systematically organized the resources of the institution to support the marketing organization required to capitalize on research and ideas.”
So far in the conversation I had said only two words and he was still fixated on the horizon. I was in the presence of a visionary.
“And in LaGrange, Iowa, mind you; not Boston or Durham or Palo Alto.”
If he’d been a kid, I think he would have added, “So there” and stuck out his tongue.
“We know they are there, Dan.”
He swiveled around to face me. The temple collapsed and became two six-guns.
“Now it’s time they knew we were here.”
He opened a leather folder that lay on a desk so large and tidy it looked more like a prop than a workstation.
“Your reputation is impressive, Dan. In fact, I’d have to say I know more of your reputation than I do of your work. The latter obviously is as distinguished as the former.” He read from a single sheet.
“This may seem a peculiar assignment for you. Normally you are contracted by organizations to find the leak in the tube and patch it up, so to speak. This time the tire is firm and rolling fast. And you are just the man to tell the world about it.”
Right. And Saddam was just the guy to sell tents for L.L. Bean.
“What we want, Dan, is something quiet and understated, published in a reputable journal, that analyzes the success of our focus-based organization. It seems to me that a title like ‘LURAD: a focus-based educational/ entrepreneurial model for the new millennium’ might organize your questions and research. I think theme is important rather than plot, Dan. The idea of what we are doing is more important than the specifics of contracts, to re-phrase the idea. Please don’t misinterpret my suggestions,” he said as his hands flipped away any misconceptions I might have had.
On his right hand he wore a weathered class ring. I couldn’t make out the word above the crest, but PREP was fairly distinct on the bottom.
“I’m not the kind of guy to tell you how to do your job. That is the antithesis of the philosophical underpinnings of LURAD. We hire clever, capable, self-disciplined people with some intuitive idea of the marketability of their research. We give them an office, the required tools for their research, and then leave them the hell alone. And that’s exactly the way you’ll be treated, of course.”
“Of course,” I said.
The light on his phone flashed again.
“Excuse me, Dan,” he said with a wink. “Yes, Elaine.” Pause. “Put him on. Harry-baby, you again. Either you catch me with my pants down or in a meeting.” Pause, nervous chuckle.
He absent-mindedly twirled a stiletto-like letter opener. After about three twirls I was able to read the inscription on the blade, “Wisdom through knowledge.”
“A meeting right now? Dr. Trix and I are about through.” Pause. “Dan Trix. Trix’ll fix it; I believe that’s the popular cliché among management consultants. He’s here to review the progress of LURAD for a management journal.” Brief pause. “Well, I can’t make it right now but…” Brad’s head twitched slightly. “I’ll see what I can do, Harry.”
“I think that about covers it, Dan,” he said to me after ending his call with Harry-baby. “I guess your next stop will be to confer with Dr. Anderson over in Lovett Hall. Nope. Wrong on that one. There I go, thinking like an academic instead of a businessman. Old habits are hard to break. Our comptroller is upstairs at the far end of the hall. He’ll take care of the financial arrangements. Your contract will be tailored after our research contracts, of course.”
Should I? Oh what the hell. “Of course.”
“Hey,” he said with a clap of the hands as he bounced out of his chair. “It’s always a pleasure to meet the guys in the fast track. We’ll talk soon.”
“Of course.”
I’ll bet he thinks we had a conversation.
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