The Square Root of Murder (5 page)

I enjoyed my small, three-bedroom cottage, the home I’d grown up in. When my mother became ill, I’d moved back until it became necessary to place her where she’d have professional care. That day had been one of the hardest in my life. Margaret, who’d been an independent widow most of her adult life, seemed to take the enormous change better than I did, adjusting to assisted living and claiming that it was enough to know that I was now enjoying the family home. I didn’t see the point in telling her it could never be that easy for me.

People who visited me here for the first time were surprised at the cozy atmosphere, expecting a high-tech look to match my image as a modern-day mathematician. But I liked the contrast: the latest computer and peripherals in my office at Henley, and a claw-foot tub and gingham quilts at home.

On tonight’s list was work on my research, class prep for the rest of the summer session, assignments to post on the web, and journals to read. A periodical with a cover story on nonlinear wave equations was at the top of my pile. I also had puzzles to solve, math games to create, and even a key chain to bead if I was in the mood. I didn’t need to belong to a group for any of these activities.

I made up a plate with oranges and grapes, three kinds of cheese, and plain crackers. I called it a meal; Bruce would have called it the first round of appetizers before the prime rib. Bruce claimed I wasn’t being true to my country kitchen décor with such insubstantial menus.

“You should make some meatballs,” he’d said on his last day off.

“Excuse me? Meatballs?”

“You know, like that scene in
Goodfellas
, where the wiseguys are making an Italian dinner in prison?” Bruce tended to bring everything back to a favorite movie.

“Funny, that scene doesn’t stand out for me,” I’d answered.

“How about the potato soup and quail in
My Dinner With Andre
?”

The only way to stop Bruce at times like that was to force-feed him the most convenient snack, often involving high salt content.

There was no question tonight that I needed to finish up my latest journal article. Publish or perish was still an operative phrase in academia. Full professorship was contingent on a substantial publication record, and my clips from puzzle magazines didn’t count. I had a respectable list of peer-reviewed articles, but one could never have too many when one’s dean had an eagle eye out for maintaining Henley College’s accreditation. And mine.

I took care of the one additional reference I needed to round out my article on traveling waves of the mathematical kind. I printed and signed my cover letter and prepared the package for mailing on Monday to the antiquated press that didn’t take email attachments. They’d still have it long before Labor Day, and I could add the note to my resume by the official opening of the fall semester and the first meeting of the promotions committee.

I could now check off Lofty Academic Responsibilities and turn to my latest puzzle, which was calling to me loudly. I couldn’t stand that no one at the party had liked it. I picked up a copy of the brainteaser that had been ix-nayed by the Ben Franklin group this afternoon. Too tough, eh? What did they want? Simple word-in-word puzzles, like figuring out that CHIMADENA is “MADE in CHINA,” or that O ER T O is a “PAIN-less operation?”

Maybe I should heed the second loudest call instead. I put the puzzle aside and took out my bead case. I’d invested in a portable cabinet organizer that Ariana had recommended as a starter piece.

“Starter?” I’d exclaimed. Equipped with fifteen clear jars, three sliding storage boxes and many dividers, the cabinet seemed sufficient to last a lifetime of beading.

“You’ll see,” Ariana had warned.

She was right. I was already thinking of buying extra canisters to accommodate the charms I’d bought to add to key chains and bookmarks. Once into a hobby, I did tend to go all out.

I looked around at the ragged piles of books and journals scattered throughout my kitchen and den, and the overflowing briefcase I used for school. Beading was now the most organized area of my life.

I settled on a saddle stool at my large kitchen island, one of my favorite spots in the house. I pushed aside an issue of Bruce’s
Rotor
magazine and a copy of an article from the Mathematical Association of America to make room for one of my bead drawers. The light was good in the spacious, cheery yellow room, and I was comfortable with my food and my work, overlapping them in some spots.

A section of orange in one hand, I sifted through my collection of silver charms with the other. I picked out a few that I’d decided to use for my next projects. A tiny airplane charm for Bruce, since I hadn’t found a helicopter yet; a cupcake for Ariana, whose sweet tooth was legendary; and an old-fashioned telephone for my aunt in Florida who was once a switchboard operator.

Speaking of which . . . I should have unplugged the phone when I started working. Too late now, since I could never let a phone keep ringing.

My screen told me the call was from a private party. I grimaced. I liked the option of knowing who was on the other end. More inconsistencies in my life. My cottage kitchen had an antique glass-front corner cupboard on one side and the latest phone system on the other. Of course my purse hosted a smartphone.

Since I wasn’t fully in the beading zone yet, I picked up quickly.

“Dr. Knowles?”

I heard Rachel, sounding distraught, even more than yesterday when she’d talked of abandoning her research. Rachel didn’t block her phone numbers, so she must be in distress somewhere remote.

“What’s wrong, Rachel?”

“It’s Dr. Appleton.”

“Is he on your case again?” And after-hours at that.

“No.” I waited while Rachel took deep, audible breaths, as if she’d just come up for air after nearly drowning. “He’s dead.”

“He’s . . . ?” I switched ears as if that would send the message into a parallel mathematical plane where
Dr. Appleton is not dead
.

A strange feeling overtook my mind and my body. In a matter of seconds, I’d become lightheaded and shivery and a wave of sorrow and guilt surged through me, as if my awful thoughts had caused Keith to have a heart attack and die.

I turned my attention to Rachel, on the other end of the line. “When did this happen?”

“Woody found him in his office,” Rachel said, sobbing now. It might not have been the first thing she’d uttered while I’d been trying to mentally undo the deed. I pictured our poor old janitor coming upon a body, and of someone he knew. I heard Rachel take some breaths. “I guess it was some time around four o’clock when Woody started his rounds on the chem floor.”

“What happened? A heart attack?” I gulped, not wanting to hear that a strong, nasty wish from a mathematician had knocked Keith off course.

“They told me he was poisoned.” Rachel’s voice was weaker with each utterance.

“Food poisoning?” I shot a look at my fruit, crackers, and cheese and lost my appetite on the spot.

I remembered partaking generously of the big spread at the celebration in Hal’s honor. I put my hand to my throat. Was I alive because I’d resisted a second piece of cake? I carried the phone to my patio doors and looked out on my lawn. Who else of the attendees might be sick? Or dead? I paused to check the status of my own system: no stomachache, no headache, no dizziness, no queasy feeling other than my response to this news. I was suddenly grateful for my roses, my crab apple tree, and even my new lawn chairs.

Maybe something I hadn’t eaten was tainted, like the onion dip or the store-bought pie.

“Was there something in the food at the party?” I asked Rachel, while my kitchen spun around. A serious solid of revolution.

“He was . . . they’re saying Dr. Appleton was murdered, Dr. Knowles.”

A whole new set of shivers and waves of unrest came over me and seemed to push me back into the kitchen and onto the ladder-back chair in the corner. Suddenly the room was too bright; the many tones of blue in the braided rug under my feet were too gaudy. I shaded my eyes and tried to process what I was hearing.

I’d wished Keith Appleton would leave Franklin Hall, not the land of the living. Hadn’t I? Really, I just wanted him to be civil, I explained to the universe around me. My mind raced to undo Keith’s demise.
If I make my intentions clearer
, I thought,
Keith will spring back to life.

“Who told you all this, Rachel?”

A long, nerve-racking pause. “The police. They came to my house and brought me down here and they questioned me, for, like, hours.”

Down here? I remembered the lack of caller ID readout. “Are you at the police station?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they”—I could hardly get the word out—“arrest you?” I almost said, “like, arrest you.” I was that rattled.

“No, no. But they just let me go a minute ago; I wanted to call you right away. Believe it or not, there’s a pay phone here.”

“Did they confiscate your cell?”

I didn’t know where I got that idea, except perhaps from seeing hardened criminals give up their possessions on television crime dramas. I also didn’t know why it mattered. I was simply thrashing around trying to make sense of the last few minutes. I knew if Bruce were here, he’d recite the titles of a dozen movies where the star winds back time and redoes the past.

“No, they didn’t take it,” Rachel said, but I’d lost track of the question.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I still have my cell. But I didn’t want to use it. What if they’re bugging it or something? And I know once I get home, I won’t be able to call you. It will be awful. My mom is a wreck and all her sisters will be showing up.”

“So you’re free and they haven’t charged you or anything?”

“Yeah, I’m free, but they told me not to leave Henley.”

I breathed more easily. “They must be questioning everyone, Rachel.”

“They said they were but I don’t see anyone else from school around here. I’m sure they think I did it, Dr. Knowles. They think I poisoned Dr. Appleton.” Rachel’s voice faded away and then came back. “Dr. Knowles?”

“Why in the world would they think you killed him?”

“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Will you meet me somewhere tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“The police interview room was stifling and I feel like I haven’t had a shower in a week.”

I did a quick calculation of the timeline. It was now eight o’clock. If Woody called the police after four, by the time they arrived, questioned Woody, put things together, and decided to question Rachel, it would have been at least six. That meant the longest Rachel could have been at the station was a couple of hours. I had no trouble believing that two or three hours in adversarial interrogation by the police could seem like a week.

“Just one thing, Rachel. Was Dr. Appleton okay when you went upstairs to give him the cake and drink from the party?”

A long pause while I sat down and drummed my fingers on my knee.

“I didn’t see him. I knocked, you know, lightly. He doesn’t like to be disturbed if his door is closed. That’s the code for all his students. If he doesn’t answer a light
tap, tap, tap
, we just go away.”

I couldn’t recall Rachel’s coming back down to the lounge with the food and drink, but neither had I been tracking her movements. I wondered if she was a suspect simply because she tried to deliver a treat. Had Woody seen her, perhaps, and assumed she’d gone in and . . . I couldn’t imagine.

“You should be home with your family,” I said. A pittance of advice but I wanted her out of what must have been a depressing environment, though I had no experience to confirm it. I imagined the police had one set of rooms for casual visitors and another, more dismal setup for suspects.

“I guess I should get home. Can I call you tomorrow to set up a time to meet?”

“Absolutely.”

Once we hung up, I sat with the phone on my lap. I had so many questions. Did Rachel have a lawyer? Were there any other suspects? There should be. So many people had it in for Keith Appleton.

But who hated him so much they would kill him? No one I could think of.

Rachel’s thinly veiled plea for help rang in my head. I hadn’t a clue how to assist a murder suspect, but my faith in her innocence was unshaken. For all her whining and complaining about Keith, I couldn’t recall ever seeing her angry. Certainly not angry enough to hurt someone. When she was upset, as she’d been yesterday, she tended to cry or withdraw. Rachel would rather quit than fight.

I thought I was ready for more sustenance. I headed for the cheese plate, but still couldn’t bring myself to eat. None of the food in my house had been at the party, but what was to say that the person who poisoned Keith hadn’t snuck into my home and injected the contents of my fridge with whatever substance killed him?

The realization that this fear was irrational didn’t stop me from emptying my food into the sink. I flushed it down the disposal, holding my nose against the odor of shredding apple and cheddar cheese.

For some reason, they smelled of death.

 

 

It took a while for me to collect myself enough to take some action. Finally, I picked up the phone. I had one and only one contact in the Henley PD, and it was once removed at that.

I punched in the speed dial number for Bruce. I usually waited for him to call me when he was on duty, to avoid waking him from a nap or catching him mid-flight to an accident scene. Or in the middle of a serious poker game, as I had a couple of times.

“I know you’re not calling to tell me you love me,” he said. “Pretty awful what happened, huh?”

“You’ve already heard about Keith Appleton?”

“I’m not best friends with a homicide detective for nothing, Soph.”