Snipped in the Bud Read Free Page A

bet.” I blew him a kiss, then checked the time, saw I had five minutes to get the flower up to Puffer’s office, and scrambled for the package.

    A knot of fear the size of Rhode Island took over my stomach as I tucked the wrapped rose in the crook of my arm and headed toward the stately, two-story brown-brick building that housed New Chapel University’s law school. The university covered an area approximately fifteen square blocks, encompassing ten buildings, three dormitories, and a handful of Greek houses. It was a small, private college, but it had an excellent reputation, and its law school held its own with any in the country—not that they could prove it by me.
    I paused at the curb to let a white Saab pass. I recognized the car as belonging to Jocelyn Puffer, Snapdragon’s wife, a subdued woman who seemed the exact opposite of her belligerent husband. Rumor had it that Jocelyn had come from a well-to-do Connecticut family that had disowned her when she married Puffer, not that I ever trusted rumors. Jocelyn wasn’t beautiful, but she knew how to dress and was always courteous whenever I met her in town, most often at the used-book store where she worked. It was unusual to see her at the university. Then again, if I were her, I’d do my best to avoid Puffer, too.
    I took a breath and continued on toward the double glass doors, but as soon as I stepped into the entrance hall and saw the sights and smelled the smells that had greeted me every day for nine miserable months, I broke out in a cold sweat. Focus on the flower, Abby. That’a girl.
    Straight ahead was the student commons—a small area with a grouping of worn sofas, a few sets of round tables and chairs, a long table against a wall that held a big coffee urn, a stack of paper cups, and other coffee supplies, and a bottled water and soft drink machine. To my right was a hallway that led to the lecture halls, and to my immediate left was a wide, stone stairway that led up to the professors’ offices—the only access other than a private elevator farther down on the right that was strictly for the use of the three professors on that side of the building. (Apparently, before six more offices had been squeezed in, everyone had been able to access it, but not anymore.) Beyond the stairway was a law library that didn’t get much use now that everything could be found on the Internet.
    I trudged slowly up the steps, berating myself for letting my fear of a bully like Puffer get such a grip on me. I was making a delivery, for heaven’s sake, not taking an oral exam. At the top I entered the large, central secretarial pool that served the nine offices around it, three on a side, plus a computer lab, washrooms, and a conference room. To my right were the offices with the most prestige, having access to the private elevator through a shared vestibule in the back—Myra Baumgarten’s, Reed’s, and Puffer’s. To my relief, no light showed through the glass in Puffer’s door. In fact, the entire floor seemed to have emptied out, except for Professor Reed and the one person I’d been hoping to find there—Beatrice Boyd.
    Known as Aunt Bea by those of us she’d consoled after we’d limped out of Puffer’s inner sanctum, emotionally bruised and verbally beaten, the fiftysomething secretary worked for two of the full-time professors, Puffer and Reed. Originally from Seattle, Bea was a product of the hippie generation and still dressed in long, colorful, cotton skirts and full, gauzy blouses belted at the waist by a fringed leather sash. She wore silver hoop earrings and turquoise rings, and never used makeup. Fortunately, her smooth complexion and big blue eyes were attractive enough without it. Her hairstyle was another throwback to the sixties—a waist-long, heavy braid of gray-brown hair, usually with a yellow pencil stuck through near the scalp like a hair pick.
    I’d always thought of Bea as the ultimate earth mother, yet she’d never had children of