The Square Root of Murder (6 page)

Bruce had known Virgil Mitchell, of the small but very effective Henley Police Department, since college. I hoped to capitalize on that friendship for Rachel’s benefit.

“Why didn’t you call to let me know?” I asked.

“I was going to, as soon as I finished my second doughnut.”

I laughed in spite of the gravity of the moment. I pictured Bruce lying on his cot, flight suit on the floor at the ready, in one of the tiny bedrooms in the company trailer. He’d be heedless of how his steel-toed boots were sullying the quilted bedspread I’d given him, purchased at a crafts fair Ariana had dragged me to. “Doughnuts,” I echoed. “You try so hard to be a cliché.”

“But a well-informed one.”

I heard the sounds of explosions in the background and hoped it was coming from the television set in the den and not from outside his window. If Bruce had his way, he’d keep the facility’s media cabinet stocked with old movies and cult films, but, alas, most of his colleagues preferred contemporary action flicks.

“How much do you know about all this, Bruce? Rachel called me, but she wasn’t very forthcoming beyond that she thinks she’s a murder suspect, if you can believe that.”

I wasn’t happy about the silence that followed. I’d expected an immediate and hearty, “No way.”

“Bruce? Is there something I should know?”

“Maybe you should talk to Virge.”

My heart sank. “Can you set it up?”

“Matter of fact, he’s on the way.”

“What a guy. You knew I’d want to talk to him.”

“Just go easy on him, okay?”

“Of course.”

Whatever that meant.

 

 

While it was very handy to have a personal “in” with a cop, I tried not to abuse the privilege.

Only one other time had I needed to call on Virgil about a police matter, shortly after he’d left the Boston PD to sign on in Henley. One of my students had been caught with a small stash of drugs, but not a small enough one to escape police notice. When Jessie, who’d been clean for more than a year, told me her former associates had set her up, I believed her. I’d enlisted Virgil’s help and he’d come through for her, investigating personally and having the charges dismissed. Jessie was now a successful businesswoman and hadn’t had a substance abuse problem since.

Now Virgil would be investigating my assistant and friend for the murder of a colleague. I hoped there would be a similar happy ending—justice for Keith Appleton, and exoneration for Rachel Wheeler.

When I thought of poor Keith, I wondered what his last moments were like, whether he knew he’d been poisoned and even suspected or knew who his killer was. Or maybe he simply felt sick or thought he was having a heart attack.

It struck me that the police had determined the cause of Keith’s death rather quickly. Didn’t it take many complicated tests to determine that someone died of poison? I’d read that unless you knew exactly what you were looking for, the famous “tox screens” of crime dramas revealed very little right away. Had I misunderstood Rachel? Time would tell.

Poor Keith
.
Poor Keith.
I couldn’t erase that refrain from my mind. I knew very little about how a person’s body reacted to poisons and I had many questions. Without answers, my imagination took over. I tried to shake away all the horrible images that flooded my mind.

Not many murders had been committed in Henley—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard or read of one—and certainly there were none in the history of the college. I was sure this case was taxing the resources of the small police department. I knew Virgil had more to do tonight than visit his good buddy’s fretting girlfriend. But I believed in Rachel as much as I’d believed in Jessie, and I knew I had to do my best for her.

While I waited for Virgil, I paced the rooms of my house—leaving the bright kitchen; walking into and around my dark-toned, comfortable den; stepping out the door to the hallway, lined with photos; weaving first into my modern home office; then into my spacious lavender-colored and lavender-smelling bedroom; and then into the whiter-than-white guest bedroom; rambling back down the hallway to the kitchen.

Along the route, I managed to take calming respites for puzzle solving. I always had a crossword, a jigsaw puzzle, several cubes, and metal and wood puzzles and games laid out strategically in different rooms of my house. I was never far from a mindbender of one kind or another, some bought, some made by me. I encouraged my guests to participate. Bruce, my most frequent guest, hardly ever did, citing his need to reduce stress when he was off the job. He tried in vain to get through to me that solving puzzles wasn’t everyone’s idea of relaxation.

When the phone rang, I was in my bedroom, leaning on my dresser to work a complex eye twister in a book I’d purchased, trying to determine which figures had been made with one continuous line and which had been constructed of two or more lines.

I checked the screen on the landline next to my bed and saw a Mansfield number. I picked up the headset and greeted Fran Emerson, my department chair.

Why hadn’t I thought to call her? Or anyone? It seemed I’d gone into a completely passive state, puttering around my house.

“Can you believe it, Sophie?” she asked. Her voice was muffled against a background of unintelligible sounds. I guessed I was hearing Fran’s grandchildren, visiting for the summer from out of state. “I feel so bad now, the way we were talking about him this afternoon.”

I knew what she meant. “You didn’t say anything mean, Fran,” I offered. Unlike me, who had wished the man off the campus.

I carried the phone to the den and sank into the corner of my couch. On the low antique coffee table in front of me was a beautiful cherry wood frame, four inches square, containing eight L-shaped wooden pieces and one rectangular piece in a different shade of wood. Bruce had given it to me a few weeks ago and it remained unsolved. The idea was to fit all the pieces in the frame, with no space left over. The L-shaped pieces interlocked nicely in the area, leaving only small triangles of space to fit the lone rectangle.

As I’d done many times before, I fiddled with L-shaped pieces, moving them around to create a space the rectangle could occupy—without chopping it into pieces, that is. Tonight, in only three moves, I met the challenge. I looked at the design, neatly in place.

Maybe it was a good sign. Or, simply, all my nervous energy had focused itself on the puzzle.

I heard Fran shush someone, presumably a small someone. I wasn’t sure where we’d left off.

“Still,” she said, “I certainly had mean thoughts about Keith.” She paused and I imagined her cataloging her uncharitable, if unspoken, words. “I suppose we should be thinking of holding a memorial service. Probably our dear Dean Phyllis is already working on it. Or the president, I’ll bet. I don’t even know where Keith’s family lives. Do you?”

“He doesn’t have many relatives that he keeps up with. Just one cousin that I know of, Elteen Kirsch, in the Chicago area. Keith spends holidays with her and her family. The police may already have notified her, but I have her name and address if they need it.”

I made a note to offer that bit of information to Virgil as a paltry gesture to assist the police, from whom I was about to ask a lot.

“I didn’t realize you two were that close,” Fran said.

“We’re not. Keith called me from her home on spring break once and wanted me to overnight a package he’d left on his desk.” Not that I was being defensive.

“Well, that makes you closer than anyone I can think of,” Fran said.

I had the fleeting thought that maybe Rachel was right, that if Keith had any friends at all, I was it. The notion only made me feel worse about the negative vibes I’d been sending his way, practically until the moment he died.

My usually comfortable home seemed unbearably warm tonight. I carried the phone into the kitchen, poured a glass of ice water from a pitcher in the fridge, and adjusted the thermostat down a notch.

A call-waiting beep saved me from further explaining to Fran the nature of my friendship, or lack thereof, with the deceased.

I clicked my tongue. “I’d better take this call,” I told Fran, though I didn’t recognize the ID. “We’ll talk soon.”

I pushed a button to hear chem major Pam Noonan. “Oh, my God, Dr. Knowles,” she said, making one word out of the first three. “Did you hear?”

“There are cops at all the doors.” Liz Harrison’s voice now, with the hollow sound of a speakerphone. “And this big TV truck.”

Without waiting for my answer, Pam had apparently yielded the mic to her roomie, who sounded as excited as Pam. “I can’t believe it,” Liz said. “We’re sitting here and, oh, my God. Franklin Hall is a crime scene.”

“You’re in Franklin Hall?”

“No, no, we’re sitting in my dorm room.” A new voice.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Casey,” she said, as if she was insulted that I didn’t recognize her voice. But I knew Casey Tremel only because she was close to Pam and Liz. “They made everyone go home who lived near enough and then they closed Nathaniel Hawthorne and Clara Barton and put the rest of us into Paul Revere, which is where I live anyway.”

Campus-speak was always flavored with the greats of Massachusetts history. I assumed the big shake up in the dorms was to make security easier.

“But first the cops interviewed us all, like on TV,” Pam said.

“They wanted to know where you were, did you see anything strange, and all that,” Liz said.

“We walked over to Franklin, but they wouldn’t let us into the building.” Pam’s voice again.

“I guess they’re done with us,” said someone.

“They’re using that yellow and black tape just like on TV and there are cops at all the doors. A lot of good they did at Franklin today. So much for Henley’s security department, huh?” said someone else.

I taught these girls in my summer statistics class. How come my students had so much time to watch television? I’d have to step up the homework assignments. And were they calling all their teachers tonight, or was I the only lucky one? Maybe the word had spread that, as Rachel had judged, I was Keith Appleton’s only friend on campus.

I tapped the mic in my phone. “Ooh, sorry, girls, I have another call. You three take care of yourselves and try to put all this out of your minds. We’ll talk later.” I was sure I’d be getting a call back soon.

Not wanting to appear to gossip about a colleague, I was equally abrupt with the next several callers. Collecting and analyzing data was an occupational hazard for me—I couldn’t help noting that the science majors, who had Keith in many classes, seemed less sad about their professor’s death than they were excited about a campus drama. I found myself listening for clues to Keith’s killer, as if the pool of suspects were restricted to those who called me, his alleged best friend. I ticked them off, teachers and students alike: Pam, Liz, Casey, Fran. I added all who were at the party this afternoon. Lucy, Robert, Judith, and nearly a dozen others. Anyone but Rachel.

Through a curious philosophy of what constituted a mathematics or science major, Henley College required its science majors to take math classes, but not vice versa. Thus, few of my own math majors had taken Keith’s classes. I hated to think that that was why they seemed more inclined to express sympathy over his death. I liked to think they were more sensitive, living on a higher plane and all.

I could hear Bruce’s loud guffaw in my ears, from times past when I’d expressed a similar observation. I heard the same from Ariana.

Another round of communication came through emails, to and from Hal and other faculty members, and even from Gillian Bartholomew, from the MAstar computer.

I was struck by how rapidly the news had traveled. The entire City of Henley emergency services staff and equipment must have reported to the campus to answer Woody’s nine-one-one call. I had an image of the neatly manicured campus lawns and walkways crowded with larger-than-life vehicles, sirens blaring. No medevac helicopter, but everything else—fire truck, police cars, ambulance. And, of course, the local press.

I tried to read an article on reducing the order of a differential equation, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t find a cube or twisted metal puzzle to engage me, and beading seemed too frivolous an activity to take up with Keith Appleton in Henley’s morgue.

I settled again on the sofa in the den. I ran my hand over the thick fabric, a rich burgundy chosen to match the old chair across from me, which had come from my grandmother’s home. I picked away at a new acrostic. I’d been disappointed that the puzzle in last Sunday’s
New York Times
had been trivial and I’d quickly replaced it on my clipboard with one from an anthology. This one wasn’t all that challenging either, but I had a moment of enjoyment figuring out that for the clue “L” the answer was “the bottom of the barrel” and for “H” it was “the middle of nowhere.”

The satisfying moment passed quickly and thoughts of a murdered colleague rushed to claim my full attention.

My landline. From the way I jumped, you’d think this was the first call of the evening. The evening that wouldn’t end.

Bruce was calling to check on me, sweetie that he is.

“Is Virge still there?” he asked.

“He hasn’t even arrived yet, but I’m sure he’s up to his ears right now.”

“Do you need anything? All we’re doing is watching DVDs. I can get Bodie to come in for me.”

Double sweetie. “Thanks, but I’m fine. You know me, bouncing from phone to email to puzzle and back. Just hanging out.”

“Like us. It’s very cloudy, so we really can’t take a call. Two minutes ago, we refused one, in fact. A young guy fell off his motorcycle at that busy intersection near the high school. But the ceiling is way too low, so, no go.” A nanosecond pause. “Hey, a rhyme. Remember that movie quiz where you had to figure out a title from something that rhymed with it, like Sandra Bullock in
Read
turned out to be
Speed
, and—”