A Function of Murder

by Ada Madison

  I, on the other hand, was fully wired, even after a shower and a cup of warm, purportedly sleep-inducing tea. I made a note to tell Ariana her special no-fail green brew had failed me.

  There was no dearth of items on my to-do list. I had a stack of resumes to review for the new associate professor position we’d budgeted for in the Mathematics Department, and deadlines to meet for the magazines I submitted puzzles to on a regular basis. I needed to sketch out a couple of exercises for my last week at Zeeman Academy and recover my momentum on my differential equations research, which always suffered at the end of a school year.

  None of these projects called out to me.

  Maybe a little TV would do it. I plopped on the couch in the den and scrolled through the programs I’d recorded. I hadn’t realized how many crime dramas were on the list. Usually they were my favorite genre, but not now, when there was a real crime drama in my life. I had a feeling the murder of Mayor Graves would take considerably longer than one hour to be solved.

  Feeling the need for more personal contact, I decided first to call Ariana, who was winding up her business at a bead show in California. The night was young for Ariana, where it was only a few minutes before ten o’clock. She was my best friend and owner of A Hill of Beads, my venue for exploring my creative side, as she called it. As if making a bracelet from wire and pieces of glass was more creative than composing a wordplay puzzle or solving a fourth-order differential equation.

  I was surprised to hear her voice. Could my socially intense friend be alone in her hotel room on a Saturday night?

  “Another bomb of a date,” Ariana explained. “Besides that, I’ve seen enough new products to last a year. One more tray of hammer-faceted beads or pewter findings and I’ll be dizzy. I did pick up lots of great beading books for the bookrack in the store, though. You might like to look through them first.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “I hear your attitude. Anyway, I have great hopes for tomorrow. I signed up for volleyball on the beach.”

  “Of course you did.” I pictured Ariana in an outfit that showed more of her piercing and ink than usual. For the trip, she’d highlighted her long blond hair with green stripes in honor of Aestas, the Roman goddess of the summer.

  “Get it, Sophie?” she’d asked, showing me her latest look as I drove her to the airport. “Aestas is often pictured standing by an emerald throne.”

  She knew I’d never get it, and also that it didn’t spoil our friendship one bit.

  “I got your text messages,” Ariana told me now. “Boring graduation speeches, huh? What do you expect from a—”

  “You need to hear what happened, Ariana.” I stopped her before she’d regret a putdown of a man, or category of a man, who was now dead.

  I hated to spoil my friend’s good mood, but I knew she’d want to hear what was going on in her hometown. I briefed Ariana on the murder of our mayor, stopping for a long breath now and then. I left out the parts about his thorax, but included the part about his calling me by name.

  Ariana was silent, most likely invoking Aestas. I gave her time.

  “I’m just so, so glad you and Bruce are safe,” she said, her voice soft and full of relief.

  What? Why wouldn’t we be? Had Ariana misunderstood my story? It was Mayor Graves who’d been attacked, not Bruce or me.

  With a start I saw that Ariana’s mind had gone in a direction that had never occurred to me—the stabber could have been wandering around the hallowed halls looking for victims, with a stash of letter openers, scissors, knives, or other weapons at the ready. Maybe the mayor wasn’t targeted at all, but was simply a handy, random victim, the first of many. I wondered if Virgil had thought of that. Now I realized that Bruce had thought of it—when he stood and surveyed the campus, he wasn’t just stretching, he was scanning for the attacker.

  I swallowed hard and got up from my sofa. It wouldn’t hurt to take a look around my own house. “We’re fine,” I told Ariana, carrying only my cell phone as a weapon against an intruder.

  “I wish I were there, Sophie. Do you need me to come home?”

  I expected nothing less from my sweet friend who was willing to give up volleyball on a sunny beach to take care of me. “No, no,” I said, still making my sweep of the small three-bedroom house I grew up in. “It’s not like the mayor and I were close friends. I don’t know why this is hitting me so hard.”

  “Why wouldn’t it? It happened on your campus, right in front of you. And, most important, he called out specifically for you, Sophie, as he was dying. You can’t take that lightly.”

  “I guess not.” I finished a circle of the kitchen and the hallway of bedrooms, one of which I’d outfitted as my office, ending up mildly at ease, back on the den sofa. “You know what, Ariana? I wish I could have kept all this from you until you got back. I shouldn’t be putting a damper on your vacation.”

  “Shhh. It’s a business trip. In case the IRS is listening.”

  Ariana was always good for a smile. “Business trip it is. We can talk about what’s going on here on Wednesday. We’ll have the whole ride back from Logan, and then some.”

  We agreed to let the matter go, though Ariana closed with, “Relax, Sophie.” Ariana stretched out the word “relax” till it became a massage on its own. “I’ll pour cleansing energy into the phenomenon.”

  I knew better than to ask what she meant.

  I skipped through most of the emails that had been downloaded throughout the evening. Usually I checked frequently on my smartphone, but tonight had been different. I scanned several emails regarding final grades from students who couldn’t wait the two weeks until grades were officially posted. Paula Mattson, a bio major who’d taken my statistics class, simply admitted, “I can’t stand not knowing how I did,” and her best friend, Wendy Pruit, advised me that while I was figuring out Paula’s final grade, I might find it convenient to calculate hers, also. Thanks, Wendy. So thoughtful of you.

  Simple, polite requests didn’t annoy me as did the email that popped up from Elysse Hutchins, threatening to issue a formal complaint about me to the dean if I didn’t adjust her exam grade to account for full credit on the statistics problem she’d blown. The last thing I needed was to go through a grievance process with the administration. I entertained the notion that I should just cave and give Elysse whatever grade she wanted. There’d be no decisions tonight, however.

  Several emails with one-word subjects like “OMG,” “Unbelievable!” and “howdathapen?” were on the list. I didn’t need to open them to figure out the content.

  I took a break to prepare a small plate of crostini and bruschetta, left over from Bruce’s midweek visit, to eat in the den.

  I devised a formula for the task. Read three emails, listen to one voice mail, take one bite of crispy toast and tasty sauce. Repeat the sequence until the task has been completed.

  A cross-section of faculty and students had left messages through one medium or another, some on more than one. Though I would have loved to answer Fran, one of the many who’d tried to reach me while I was with Virgil and following, I refrained from a middle-of-the-night call. I’d expected to see or hear something from Kira Gilmore, the mayor’s staunchest defender, either through email or by phone, but so far I hadn’t come across anything from her. I wondered if she’d heard the news. If she was staying in the hotel with her parents before they flew back to California, she might not be up-to-date.

  The email from Henley College president Olivia Aldridge read as expected, with an expression of sorrow at the loss of “a young leader with such promise, who’d already given so much,” and a mention that an official condolences note and flower arrangement would be sent to the mayor’s family. The president wanted to assure us that campus security was already being scrutinized and improvements were in the works. Whatever that meant. Most prominent in the email was a warning to the faculty and staff not to talk to anyone “outside the HC family,” and to avoid speaking to the press, esp
ecially. All questions should be referred to the college’s Office of Government and Community Relations.

  I got the message.

  I was sure Ariana and Bruce were considered to be part of the Henley College family, and I had no desire to call around to anyone else with the news.

  I’d run out of emails, but there were still a few more voice mails on both my landline and my cell.

  More OMGs caused me to press delete before the poor student got her entire message out. At some point I’d have to step up and offer whatever I could by way of comfort and a willing ear to my charges.

  I scanned my phone screen and saw that I had one message left, from a private caller, around noon, long before any of the action on campus, both good and bad. I almost didn’t bother hitting the arrow, but decided I might as well complete the job. I touched the screen and heard a male voice. A first, other than calls from Bruce. None of the guys in my classes had tried to contact me. Apparently males took things like grades and campus crime more in stride than females. Good to know, in case something like this incident happened in the future.

  I heard a vaguely familiar voice. “Dr. Knowles. Sophie, if I may. This is Ed Graves. Looking forward to seeing you at graduation today.” Throat clearing. “I need to talk to you.”

  I stopped the message. Ed Graves? Mayor Graves? Not only a first name this time, but a nickname? The world seemed to go into a Fourier transform where casual acquaintances became bosom buddies. Or maybe the bruschetta had soured and clouded my hearing.

  I played the message again, and listened further.

  “I need to talk to you. Someplace outside my office. Something’s troubling me about Zeeman and I’d like to enlist your help.” A pause here led me to believe the call had ended, but eventually he continued. “Please call my direct line, 508-555-0137, so we can set up a time. In the meantime—”

  The mayor was cut off by my message limit. I clenched my jaw and cursed the technology that didn’t allow him to finish, as if it were the fault of the electrons, or whatever rattled around in my phone. I wrote down his direct number out of habit, even as I realized I’d never use it.

  I played the mayor’s—Ed’s—message once again, and noted again the time it had come in—12:20 PM. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I played it twice more all the way through. Maybe I’d hear a word or phrase that would explain why he’d chosen to involve me on the last day he was alive. I hated that I didn’t know what would have followed in the meantime if my message limit hadn’t intervened. Each replay was creepier than the last as I tried to match the voice on my phone with that of our keynote speaker of a lifetime ago.

  A dying mayor had asked for my help. Twice in one day. Two times too many. I had to know why.

  Virgil was my best bet. I’d play this message for him and he’d be able to put some things together and satisfy my curiosity. Too bad it was one thirty in the morning and he wouldn’t be sitting in his office. Also, too bad it was one thirty in the morning and I still wasn’t sleepy.

  I left a cryptic message on Virgil’s office voice mail, to the effect that I needed to play a cell phone message for him, whenever he’d be available tomorrow. “If you have plans to go hiking in the hills, please call me first,” I ended. As long as I’d known him, Virgil hadn’t even taken a long walk on a flat road. I hoped I’d given him a smile that would get us off to a good start when I played the mayor’s message for him and then quizzed him about the investigation.

  I wrote down what I knew about Mayor Graves’s weekend, in case it would help Virgil. I’d seen the mayor in the hallway at the Zeeman Academy around two in the afternoon on Friday, then he’d stopped in at the eighth graders’ farewell party at three thirty.

  On Saturday, there had been a small reception before commencement exercises, starting at one o’clock, for invited guests and department chairs, in the college president’s conference room. The mayor and his wife attended, along with members of the town council and school superintendent Patrick Collins. What I knew now was that before the reception, the mayor had called me. What I didn’t know was why. Why me, and what was wrong at Zeeman Academy?

  I couldn’t remember anything unusual about the president’s gathering. No outbursts, no smashed china that I was aware of. The volatile Chris Sizemore and her brother had skipped the reception, and the rest of the faculty were well behaved, as were all of the council members.

  One thing I recalled was a brief, but typical, show of animosity between the mayor and Superintendent Collins, who seemed to have imbibed a little too much of President Aldridge’s punch. The two men were off in a corner, and no one except someone like me, who was bored by cocktail talk, would have noticed their confrontational tones and body language. After a minute or so, the two men reentered the main reception area, smiling like old friends. I’d always marveled at how politicians could do that—play golf together and pal around, or seem to, even in a cutthroat campaign or after a heated debate.

  I questioned whether, in the light of events today, I should tell Virgil about the incident. I wished I had a guidebook. Was it worse to withhold something with only a small chance of being important to the investigation, or to implicate a perfectly innocent public servant like the superintendent of our schools? What if the argument was over a baseball play or the merits of a local restaurant?

  At the end of the reception, the mayor had donned the rented robes we’d provided and joined the procession onto the stage with the faculty and staff. He gave his speech, then took his wife and left at three fifteen.

  The next thing I was sure of was that he’d stumbled toward Bruce and me, with the silver blade of a letter opener in his back, just after the enormous tower clock struck ten fifteen on Saturday night.

  Whatever he’d done in the seven hours in between had cost him his life. Or so it seemed.

  As gory as the end of the timeline was, putting things in order worked its magic and I was finally able to sleep, this year’s commencement day almost put to rest.

  I woke up disoriented, as if I were lying in the middle of a puzzle that had me stumped. Not an anagram, or a crossword, or a brainteaser, any of which I’d have a chance of solving. This was more of a rebus that I couldn’t figure out, with cartoon drawings of sharp objects and grass and rolled-up diplomas interspersed with mathematical symbols.

  I pulled myself together with French press coffee and a banana.

  I’d expected to work while waiting for Virgil to call, but discovered I didn’t have my briefcase at home. The pre-man-in-the-fountain plan had been for Bruce and me to go to my office after our late-night ice cream stroll and collect my briefcase and robes. Instead, Bruce had gone off in an ambulance with the town’s highest-ranking official and I’d driven straight home alone in his car.

  I dreaded going back to the crime scene so soon, even on a sunny day like today. It would be a while before the lovely spray of water at the heart of the campus would have its charm restored in my mind. But there was a limit to the number of hours I could survive without my briefcase. I’d reconsider later in the day.

  I pulled out my clipboard, which always had an unfinished puzzle on it, one that I was either creating or solving. This one was due to an editor at a children’s games magazine in a week. I’d chosen a bakery theme, then constructed a puzzle around cupcakes, pies, birthday cakes, tarts, and many kinds of cookies. I proofread what I had so far, wishing I had a real treat to go with my coffee.

  A call from Bruce, already at work, brightened my mood. The morning briefing at MAstar was over and he was waiting for his assignment.

  “We’re probably going to sit around the trailer all day watching videos until the Bat Phone rings.”

  Fortunately, Bruce was a big movie fan and considered himself very lucky that he got paid to watch endless loops of his favorites.

  “I’m sure you guys will dig out all the old war movies,” I teased.

  “I drew the right straw, so we’re starting with Tigerland.”

 
“I knew it. And it’s not Vietnam you’re interested in. You just like staring at Colin Farrell’s widow’s peak and pretending you’re looking in the mirror,” I said.

  “Guilty,” he said.

  Buzz. Buzz.

  My doorbell. I was glad I’d opted for a pair of capris and a decent Henley Math Department T-shirt this morning instead of staying in my pj’s, which had been my first inclination.

  I looked through the peephole. Virgil Mitchell, from the HPD, in his light summer suit, stared back. He looked more rested than I did. Best of all, he was carrying a box from the donut shop.

  “Your best bud is here,” I said to Bruce. “I hope you don’t have to bail me out later.”

  We signed off as I pulled open the door to let Virgil in. I tapped the box. “Really?”

  “I love being a cliché,” Virgil said, handing it to me.

  The delicious, unhealthy smell took over my nose and I could hardly wait to dive in. The box had barely hit my island counter when I lifted the cover.

  “Two jellies. How did you know?” I asked, squeezing cherry-colored foodstuff (I hoped) into my mouth while the other hand poured coffee for Virgil.

  “You made it clear years ago.” He smiled. “I figured we’d listen to your phone message over breakfast. As long as you don’t tell Bruce the menu.”

  I brushed powdered sugar from my T-shirt. “I’ll vacuum every trace. He’ll never know we veered from the health-food regimen.”

  “Feeling any better this morning?” he asked.

  The question caused my good humor to collapse. My light mood was over. “Not a lot.”

  “It’s tough when anyone loses his life too soon, especially when you witness it.”

  “You deal with this all the time,” I said.

  He pointed to the box of donuts. “There are rewards.”

  I laughed and thanked him for the break.

  We’d settled across from each other at my breakfast nook, overlooking the patio where my glorious lilies of the valley, late-blooming tulips, and impatiens held sway. How could it be so cheery outside when I wasn’t ready for it? Warm as it was, I wanted to hide under the lavender comforter on my bed.