The Square Root of Murder (27 page)

“To the nth,” I said. “Did you leave through my garage?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Just wondering if the boxes were back.”

Another great laugh. “See you soon.”

 

Halfway through his first slice of extra pepperoni, extra olives pizza, Virgil asked, “I hope you don’t mind if we eat first, then get to the other matter. No lunch today. And breakfast wasn’t so hot. Only four doughnuts.” Bruce and I raised our eyebrows. “Kidding.”

“Take your time,” I said. “Have some more chips.” As long as the “other matter” was on the agenda for the evening, I was fine.

Bruce led the dinner conversation. A good thing, since despite my declaration otherwise, I was too distracted to think about anything but the crime scene photos. I glanced at Virgil’s briefcase periodically, tempted to whisk it away to the den while the boys ate and talked.

First up from Bruce was asking about Virgil’s family. Virgil had lost his wife to cancer a few years ago; his son was in summer school at a Southern California college where he’d start freshman year in the fall. It occurred to me that pizza was not necessarily a treat for a bachelor and I should have cooked him a meal.

Bruce and I exclaimed how great Ronnie looked in his high school graduation picture, and again holding his basketball trophy, and again with his date for his senior prom. The photos were for my benefit since Bruce and Virgil met every other week for card games with other guys in their clique—though maybe family pictures never came up during those sessions.

“What’s new up in the air these days?” Virgil asked Bruce.

“
Up In The Air.
Good one,” Bruce said, an acknowledgment that Virgil knew the title of one his favorite recent movies.

“I’m not as out of it as you think,” Virgil said. He performed a neat trick with a long string of cheese that wouldn’t detach from the slice. Using his chin deftly, he didn’t miss a calorie.

“We’ve got competition,” Bruce said. I’d heard the story: a new air rescue business had set up shop across the road from MAstar. “It’s a for-profit company where one of the VPs is a Henley councilman.”

“Isn’t that what we call vested interest?” Virgil asked.

Bruce gave him a “what else is new” look. “What’s good is we signed a new contract, with Oceanview Hospital, to do all their transport.”

“Apparently the competition isn’t creating a problem for MAstar.”

“Not at all. We’re spinning it like it’s good for us. We can use it to make a case for some updated equipment and a facility upgrade.”

“You’re going to upgrade the double-wide?” Virgil asked.

We all laughed, maybe a little too hard on my part.

At long last, Virgil pushed his crumb-free plate away. “Let’s get to it, Sophie,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “Are you sure you don’t want dessert first?”

Both men broke out in the kind of laughter that ends in coughing.

 

 

It was strange, and not in a good way, to see the coffee table in my den covered with crime scene photos. Virgil had spared me anything truly disturbing, but any reminder of Keith Appleton’s murder was unwelcome.

Keith was the only faculty member in Franklin Hall to add an area rug to his office. A queasy feeling came over me when I saw a close-up of the blue oriental design carpet strewn with office supplies and crumpled yellow sheets of paper. The paper clips, pens, and pencils scattered over the floor might as well have been bloody daggers.

I must have shivered, because Virgil had a worried look on his face. “Are you okay with this, Sophie?”

I asked for it, didn’t I? “I’m good,” I said.

Bruce stuck his head in. “I’ll be in your office, Sophie, hacking into your email, if you need me.”

“Knock yourself out.”

Virgil gave us a look. “I forgot how you guys go at it.”

The close-ups of the papers were incredibly clear. However else the Henley PD might be strapped for money in the forensics department, they had an excellent camera and photography crew.

Virgil spread out more than a dozen views of Keith’s office floor, encompassing the yellow sheets, each in a different wrinkled stage. On some sheets, only partial phrases showed.

“We’ve smoothed out the pages, of course,” Virgil said, laying out another set, where the writing was more visible, but still not completely. “I think you can fill in the blanks.”

I picked up each photograph in turn and took my time reading the red handwriting. I saw “(illegible due to creasing) is rubbish” on one, and “Your Awful Data . . . (illegible due to tear)” on another. Visible in full were “Use your brains” in the margin of one sheet and “Flaky reference” at the bottom of another.

“These comments don’t even sound like Keith,” I said. “He never says ‘rubbish’, or ‘flaky,’ and what scientist says ‘awful data,’ and capitalizes the words at that? I’ve heard him use ‘worthless,’ for example, but never ‘awful’. He’d refer to data as inadequate or spurious or skewed.”

“Of course he would.”

“And look how close together the letters are in each word. That indicates a person who lacks self-confidence, has low self-esteem, and is uncomfortable with himself. That was not Keith.” I cleared my throat. I seemed to have been channeling Ariana.

“Sounds like you’ve been taking a class on handwriting analysis.”

“Maybe.”

“When did you fit that in?”

“I’m a quick study.”

“That you are.”

“What if you could get, say, a dozen members of the faculty and administration to vouch for the fact that that is not Keith’s handwriting? Would that convince you that the markings on these pages are fake?”

Virgil shook his head. “Too subjective.”

“What is your plan for checking the handwriting?” I asked, as sweetly as I could.

“I need to run it by a few people, but most likely we’ll be going back in and asking for handwriting samples from students and faculty.”

“But the killer would obviously know why you were on this track and alter his handwriting in some way.”

“Experts say you can’t do that. There’s always a tell, something that gives you away, unless you’re a professional forger, I guess. Didn’t your teacher tell you that?”

“I left early.”

I knew that would get Virgil laughing and buy me some time. Enough for me to come up with an idea.

“Let me get you the samples.”

“And how would you do that?”

“I have years worth of notes or cards from just about everyone in Franklin Hall, and that’s your main suspect pool, isn’t it?”

Virgil didn’t say “yay” or “nay” to my supposition.

Instead he asked, “Doesn’t everyone email or text these days?”

“On the whole yes, for immediate communication. But a student will often slap a handwritten note on a stickie when she submits a paper or a problem set.”

“Something like, ‘Here’s my paper’?” Virgil asked.

“More like an apology for being late or telling me there’s a reference missing that she’ll bring me tomorrow.”

“The modern version of ‘My dog ate my homework,’” Virgil said, pleased with himself.

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of emails,” Virgil said. “The techs have been at work on Appleton’s computer.”

Uh-oh. I’d been waiting for this. Rachel’s nasty email, sent to Keith the day before he was murdered, had been on my mind. “Is that why Rachel was first in line again in Interview Two this afternoon?”

“Interview Two?”

“I think of it as the torture chamber.”

Virgil smiled. “Archie’s a good guy.”

No comment.

“I know Rachel sent one that was a little out of line, but—”

“But it turns out, so did quite a few others. Not a popular guy if you’ll forgive my saying so.”

I felt a wave of relief, followed quickly by one of guilt over my delight that Rachel wasn’t the only one bombarding Keith with harsh words.

“He wasn’t as bad as it looks,” I said. “The janitor loved him and it turns out he was some kind of benevolent uncle to his family in Chicago. We just never got to see that side of him.” Here I was again, defending Keith in death as I’d never defended him in life.

“Most people aren’t as bad as they seem,” Virgil said, and I knew at that moment we were both thinking of Archie.

Back to work. “On the handwriting samples? I have loads of holiday and birthday cards and thank you notes. I could pull together quite a set that we . . . you could compare with the comments on Rachel’s thesis pages. That way whoever did this has no warning that we’re on to him.”

Virgil sat back and took one of the whistling breaths that he and Bruce seemed to have a patent on. I waited not so patiently, my mind racing ahead with how to gather the promised postcards, greeting cards, and notes from various corners of my house.

“Okay,” Virgil said. I nearly hugged him. “Tomorrow morning. Give me your best shot.”

Then I did hug him. “Thanks, Virgil. Next time, dinner will be New York strip steaks and potatoes.”

“And beer,” he said.

“And lots of beer.”

 

 

Virgil left around ten o’clock. Bruce had picked up enough of our meeting to get the gist of what was ahead of me. He and Virgil spent a few minutes in my driveway before Virgil took off in his old Malibu. He had flung his jacket over his shoulder, his wide profile dwarfing Bruce, who was in his longish khaki shorts. I could only imagine that conversation.

“Where did you find
her
?” Virgil might have asked.

“Up in the air,” Bruce might have answered.

“I suppose there’s no chance you’re going to sleep tonight,” Bruce said, when he reentered the house.

I’d already pulled a box of greeting cards onto my lap in the den. I saved cards until I had a large enough stack and then gave them to Ariana who used them in the grade school where she volunteered as an arts specialist. She and the kids made small gift boxes out of the cards. She’d show them how to fold the card so the design on the front became the top of the box. Ariana was expert at using scorers to get the edges clean and crisp. Lucky for me, I’d been negligent in handing over the cards and now had a wealth of potentially useful handwriting samples for Virgil.

“I’m not tired,” I said. “And I’m sure you’re not, since you had that nice, long nap.”

He took a seat on the couch, one pillow over. “Okay. Hand over a bunch. What are we looking for?”

I shifted the box from my lap to his. “While you look through these, I’ll search some other places for cards. We need anything with handwriting from Keith, Hal, Pam Noonan, Liz . . . oh, make it any student or teacher whose name you recognize from Franklin Hall. Plus Dean Underwood.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows at the dean’s name. “Plain Phyllis?”

I shrugged. “Why not?”

“You’re the boss.”

Bruce ran his hand across his brow, as if I’d asked him to dig a ditch. “You’ll owe me.”

“Sure, sure.”

I got up and began my sweep of all the odds and ends spots in my house, all the places I put things on their way to where they belonged.

On a rack with computer peripherals I found a small pile of birthday cards from April that hadn’t made it to the stack I was gathering for Ariana. I usually sifted through them first, including only designs I thought were workable, and also to be sure some seven-year-old didn’t end up with too personal a message among her art supplies.

In the knife drawer in my kitchen were postcards from Hal and Gil, who’d been to Bermuda at the end of June to celebrate his degree, and one from Fran and her husband, Gene, who’d taken their yearly cruise to Mexico. I hoped the scrawled “see you soon” and “the buffets are great” were enough to make some decent comparisons.

The odds and ends drawer in my bedroom dresser was a gold mine of more postcards and thank you notes stretching back to Christmas. Embarrassing, but serendipitous.

In an end table drawer in my den were recent invitations, including one from Hal to attend his graduation. It was a professionally printed card, issued by the school, but he’d handwritten a note about how Bruce was welcome, too.

Dean Underwood, true to form, always handwrote her holiday greetings to her faculty. I never dreamed I’d be putting the note to this unpleasant use.

I had more samples of Rachel’s handwriting than of anyone else. I included several pieces so the set would be complete, though I didn’t agree with Virgil that Rachel was devious enough to have framed herself in order to look innocent.

I returned to the den with a grocery bag half full of relevant correspondence. Bruce had arranged his possibles in stacks, one for each student or teacher.

He pointed to the array. “I should have read these a long time ago. It tells me a lot about how you interact with your students.” He picked a note card off one of the piles and read. “Dear Dr. Knowles, Bijillion thanks for listening the other night. I was ready to give up totally and now I know I can do it. Yay. You rock! Love, Tanya.” He put it down and pulled another. “Dr. Knowles, you’re the best. I never thought I’d pass that test, and could never ever”—those words are underlined, Bruce noted—“have done it without your extra tutoring and encouragement. Franklin Hall needs a statue of you!”

He reached for a third, but I put my hand on his. “I get the idea.”

“I didn’t realize how involved you are outside the classroom.”

“What did you think I do all day?”

He shrugged. “You know, just teach for an hour and fifteen minutes then take off for the pool, and go back the next day for another hour and fifteen minutes.”

I held my hand to my head, palm out. “Where shall I begin,” I emoted.

Bruce drew me into a hug. “You rock,” he said.

 

 

Bruce turned in around midnight. By the morning, he’d be back on a regular sleep schedule for the next seven days. A good thing, too, since he had to be up early for his yearly physical, verifying among other things that he wasn’t diabetic, depressed, or prone to seizures. A drug test was also required. All to keep his license. Good to know the skies were safe with MAstar’s PICs.