Covey and JayJay Get Educated

Amateur detectives, Covey Jencks and JayJay Qualls, are drawn into a triple murder on the campus of Baker College in West Waverly in the Texas Hill Country. Both end up taking positions at the college: Covey as an adjunct instructor and JayJay as a visiting actor.

Initially they believe that money is the motive for the murders, but over time they learn that the college is a cauldron of political and social intrigue. The college’s new president and his beautiful wife, various staff members, a prominent trustee, and parties not associated with the college have the motives, opportunities, and wacky agendas that might implicate them in the murders. It turns out that a white nationalist group may be using a college house for its nefarious activities, but are they more talk than action?

The West Waverly police are little to no help in the investigation, and Covey himself has to depart the college to deal with his father’s death. JayJay takes over and makes a critical breakthrough. Upon Covey’s return, the couple must rely on deception, a bit of luck, and martial arts skills to solve the crimes and to try to prevent a high-profile assassination.

“Bitter almonds, Covey. Bitter almonds! It’s like a friggin’ Agatha Christie novel. Can you believe it?”

I could not believe it, but I certainly was very happy to hear from my buddy Cooper Dix. He and I became good friends at Austin College back in the ’80s, when he was like a one-man comedy festival everytime we were together. He told tales of 4:00 a.m. chores, late-night cow tippings, and daily classes with a seventy-year-old English teacher, who was both a stickler for proper grammar and a secret whiskey-sipper between classes, but his stories of teenage sexual frustration and growing up in small-town Arkansas had the power to bring grown men to tears of laughter and demure women to snort liquids. Did I mention that he was funny? He was a humorous business major who had an encyclopedic memory, a flair for math, and a long record of near misses with Dixie girls, who suddenly remembered they were Southern Baptists at precisely the wrong moment. His punchline in these recountings always began with the immortal words, “Imagine my surprise when …” We had to stifle laughter when he said that, so he could finish his latest tale of humiliation and embarrassment. Were these stories true? I seriously doubt it, but who cares?

Imagine my surprise when Coop called out of the blue, not to regale me with new stories or to update me on his job at Baker College in West Waverly, Texas, but instead to alert me that he might be a suspect in a murder case. Yes, funny boy was a person of interest to the West Waverly gendarmes, because two rich Baker alumni had suddenly died of cyanide poisoning only weeks after pledging large memorial trusts to the college in the event of their deaths. Their money would not flow to the college until they died, which they did at the ripe old ages of forty-six and fifty-four. Each had drunk a cyanide-laced beverage before biting the big one, and this seemed a bit suspicious to their families and to the West Waverly police. That sealed the deal. Murder was afoot!

And Cooper’s possible role in these untimely demises? As the deputy director of Baker’s Development Office, Coop had convinced both Trey Gardner and Patricia Higginbotham to pledge over a million dollars to the college in event of their deaths. These pledges “matured” several decades before their deaths were anticipated, so their families were rightly outraged and distraught. Then the smell of bitter almonds easily led detectives to the conclusion that these rich Baker Bison alums had died of unnatural causes. It did not help that Coop had been present when Trey drank the rum and Coke and Patricia drank the hot tea that had been spiked with cyanide pills.