1 Picking Lemons by J.T. Toman

email since reading it at eight that morning. Did she want to volunteer for Edmund’s Foundation? Does a pack mule want to carry an extra fifty pounds? Sure, she would love to do extra administrative work on top of teaching an extra class. Not. Lord and the Almighty. Edmund was as much of a pain in the patootie dead as he was alive. Sensing her mood, no one in the class had suggested they form a crime fighting unit. Rather, the students had quietly and studiously written notes, silently praying for the class to end before they became the object of C.J.’s wrath.
    An hour and twenty minutes of regression analysis hadn’t changed C.J.’s outlook. As she strode heavily up to Mary Beth’s desk after class, eyes narrowed and lips tightly pursed, Mary Beth didn’t think of C.J. as “growly.” The phrase that came to Mary Beth’s mind was “bitch-witch.”
    “You know,” Mary Beth would often say, “you can tell when a girlfriend is having one of those days. The bitch-witch just oozes out of every enlarged pore.”
    C.J. grabbed some paperwork from her satchel and slammed it on Mary-Beth’s desk. “Mary Beth,” she snapped, glaring at the secretary, “these grant papers need to go off to the Contracts Office. ASAP.”
    Mary Beth took the papers calmly. “You got it, Professor Whitmore. You know, you look a little stressed out today. But you, like, don’t have to stress about this. I’ve got it.”
    C.J. took a large breath in and exhaled slowly. Inwardly, she admonished herself. Why was she making her bad morning Mary Beth’s bad morning? What was wrong with her today? She forced a smile. “Thank you, Mary Beth.”
    “No. Really. I don’t want to be an assistant for life, but I’ve got this whole assisting thing down. Like Professor Edmund? He had me type up letters for him just before he died. I had to wear the Dictaphone headphones and everything. But,” Mary Beth paused, looking sad, “he never got the letters anyway. I still got them here. See?”
    Mary Beth swiveled in her chair, took some papers out of a tray on her desk and handed them to C.J. “Do you think they’re important? I spent a long time typing them. Should I send them anyway or give them to Professor Scovill?”
    C.J. scanned the letters. A selection of refusals … without even pretending regret. Edmund would not be attending two conferences, serving on an editorial board, nor acting as a referee for a journal he frequently published in. ( Really, thought C.J. dryly, did the man not know how to use email? Or, for that matter, understand that ‘College’ stems from ‘Collegial?’ ) And …what was this letter to Professor Brustad? C.J. read the letter closely and then looked up at Mary Beth.
    “Don’t worry about these letters , Mary Beth,” C.J. assured the young secretary, with only a slight twinge of her conscience. “They’re just boring correspondence to journals and conferences. Why don’t I take them and let the people know what has happened with Edmund?”
    “Great!” agreed Mary Beth, glad to have some paper shift off her desk.
    “By the way, Mary Beth,” C.J. asked offhandedly as she was walking away, “I know you saw Stephen going downtown about one o'clock on the day Edmund was murdered. Did you see anyone else out and about that day?”
    Mary Beth, eager to keep Professor Whitmore in her improved humor, was glad t he question was so easy. “I know! It’s like, OMG! Can you believe I saw a murderer? I was telling my mother last night, I am so lucky he didn’t kill me.
    “I also saw Jefferson,” Mary Beth added, trying to be as helpful as she could be. “At ten past one. Here. In the department.”
    “Ten past one?” asked C.J. questioningly.
    “Oh. No. Maybe that’s not right. My new watch is so confusing. Maybe it was when the big hand was at the ten. That’s not the same time, is it?”
    “Not exactly,” said C.J. slowly. Not for the first time, C.J. wondered what it was like to have an I.Q.