Death of the Ayn Rand Scholar by Gray Cavender (classic literature list txt) 📕

after she talked with Professor Naremore, would a murderer say something that was so incriminating? At least his feelings about her were straightforward. Maybe Professor Gilroy’s sorrowful emotion was faked. After all, Professor Siemens had demeaned him…publicly.

Her dad knocked on the door to her condo at 6:25pm. “Ready,” she said.

“Hi Jilly.” He gave her a hug. “Before we go, I have two books for you.” He displayed them, one in each hand. “This one’s by Fred Cavell…the one I used to read to you from.” He made sure she could see the cover. “And this one is by Billy Gilroy. I got it from the Tempe Library.”

“Thanks, Dad. I’ll look them over.” She laid them on the kitchen table.

Her mom was behind the wheel and drove them to Café Forte in Old Town Scottsdale. It wasn’t Art Walk Thursday night so there was no trouble parking. They were directly across the street from the restaurant. They’d eaten there many times and were friends with the women who owned it so there were greetings, hugs, and catching-up before and after they sat down at their reserved table.

While they waited for the water and also freshly baked bread, Jillian and her mom and dad continued the visit they’d begun on the drive over. Her mom thought that she looked tired. Her dad agreed, although he also thought that she looked very alert. He said, “Maybe it’s Sherlockian, you know, a ‘the game’s afoot’ sort of a thing.” Jillian shared what she thought was appropriate in terms of a progress report.

The waiter came—they also were all on a first name basis—and described the specials. For appetizers, Jillian had the polenta cakes, her mom ordered a kale salad (one of the specials), and her dad had the caprese salad. Jillian’s entre was a seared ahi tuna salad, her mom had the mushroom ravioli (another special), and her dad had the pecan-crusted chicken breast. They ordered a bottle of French Rose, a nicer one than usual because it was half-price wine night.

Once the orders were in and before the wine arrived, her dad said that he’d Googled Professor Siemens. “She was very conservative, and seemed to have had lots of dust-ups.”

Jillian nodded. “I’ve been reading Google entries, too…on Professor Siemens…and on Ayn Rand. She was a controversial figure in her day, too.”

Her mom said, “Maybe the Professor was trying to live-up to the reputation of her predecessor.”

Her dad said, “From what I’ve been reading, Rand wasn’t just controversial, she also was a complicated person. Of course, I imagine that Professor Siemens was her own person with her own ideas, and not necessarily just emulating her subject. Who knows? Still, I expect that her murder might be harder to solve, given all the controversies that seem to have surrounded her.”

“Oh, I have faith in Jillian and Wes,” her mom concluded.

The wine came, mom did the tasting, and they changed topics away from Jillian’s case. The food was great, the wine, too—her dad had only one glass because he was the designated driver on the way home—and they shared a chocolate truffle tort for dessert…whipped cream on the side. Three forks...three decafs.

Mom and dad dropped her off at her condo and said their goodbyes in the car. Once inside, as Jillian headed to the bedroom, she decided that she’d do a little work on the case. It was too late to watch the Helen Mirren film about Ayn Rand, so instead, she would review the photos from Professor Siemens’ two offices. She especially wanted to see the books on the professor’s shelves. Jillian didn’t expect that this would yield anything important, but was following her own protocol.

But first, she changed into more comfy clothes, including her red City Lights Bookstore T shirt. This was in honor of the decision to also browse the two books of poetry that her dad had loaned her.

For obvious reasons, Jillian checked the Ross-Blakey Hall office photos first. She began with the crime scene photos taken by the forensics team, which she viewed online. Jillian had good visual recall so her recollections were consistent with the photos. She quickly scrolled through the gory ones of the Professor’s body, then slowed at the paperweight, especially the close-ups. It was hard to imagine that such a small object could be a murder weapon, but, given the forensics report, it had the heft. She thought it would have taken a strong person to cause these injuries.

Jillian realized that she was assuming that it must have been a strong man, but made herself re-set, and consider a woman…motivated by strong emotion…Wes had emphasized the emotional aspects. She mentally scrolled through the list of women in this case, dismissing some at first before adding them back in to the mix. The disarray—the chair, the plant, the coat rack—attested to the violence that ended with a death.

Next, Jillian turned to her own photos of the Professor’s bookcase in her English Department office. As she read the titles, she frequently minimized her screen, shifted to Google, and pulled-up info on the books and authors. There were books on literary theory (she learned from Google that these were classic texts), books on The Canon of Western Literature and a book challenging that Canon. There were several books on this history of the novel. There were several classic anthologies…Jillian remembered one from freshman English. There was an entire section of books devoted to Ayn Rand, including several analyses of her novels. There were Orwell’s novels, two volumes of his collected works, and several Orwell-related books...not surprising, given the poster behind her desk.

Jillian shifted back to crime scene photos…the ones she’d taken. She scrolled for a time, stopped on her own photo of the paperweight, and looked away from her IPAD screen. Jillian thought it was ironic: something that commemorated her mentor, Milton Friedman, had been the murder weapon.

She turned to the forensic photos from BAC. Jillian thought about how predictable people are. The BAC office was a kind of mirror image