The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

by Madison, Ada

  I sat on the couch in my den and rehearsed, as if I were writing a newspaper account:

  Twenty-five years ago, Kirsten Packard, using her roommate Wendy’s key, hides money from a bank robbery inside the carillon tower. Ponytail and Einstein don’t know exactly where, and probably kill her trying to find out. After her death, a wall is erected; the tower is sealed. Ponytail and Einstein can’t get back in to look for the money.

  In the present day, with the tower about to be reopened, Einstein takes a job on the project, but, with no key card of his own, he can’t hang around in the tower long enough to search for the money.

  Jenn stumbles upon the money during a practice session. Jenn (I winced) has been taking money from the stash. Ponytail and Einstein follow her, and Einstein attacks her to get her key card, then kills Ponytail so he’ll have the treasure all to himself.

  There it was. It couldn’t have been neater. Why hadn’t this obvious narrative occurred to me days ago? Was I losing my touch? My reputation as an expert puzzler was at stake. The most likely explanation was that I’d been blinded by my tendency to think my students could do no wrong. Jenn Marshall wasn’t the first of my math majors to stray from perfection, but each time, it caught me by surprise.

  At first, I didn’t even want to think about how Ted would react when we caught Einstein and he confessed to pushing Kirsten to her death. But if Ted knew about that possibility from the start, it would have given him yet another reason to cover it up—to protect Wendy from being Einstein’s next victim. No wonder he was upset with my nosing around.

  My theory in place, I played devil’s advocate with myself, trying also to anticipate Virgil’s cross-examination.

  The biggest question was, what had Ponytail and Einstein been doing for twenty-five years? No more news-making pranks or bank robberies? I thought it unlikely that they would have been model citizens all this time.

  I decided to let Virgil help me with those little details. It was his job, after all. I slid Bruce’s phone on and tapped Virgil’s name.

  “Hey, Sophie.”

  “How come you knew it was me and not Bruce?”

  “Bruce knows I’m busy right now.”

  I felt my face flush. “Oh, Virgil, I’m sorry. I’m ruining your date.” I didn’t add what I was thinking—that it was all the more lamentable since dates were in short supply for him. “I can call you tomorrow.”

  “No, no, just kidding. Besides, I warned Judy that my job wasn’t nine to five, Monday to Friday.”

  “And what was her response?”

  “She warned me back that she might be keeping biology experiments in my fridge.”

  I heard Judy’s laugh in the background and my face reddened again. I wasn’t accustomed to hearing Virgil in such a sharing mood about his personal life. It was going to take a while for me to get used to it. For now, I’d have to deal with a lot of blushing.

  “Sounds like you’re very compatible,” I said.

  “What’s up?” Virgil asked, back to work.

  “I know why Einstein attacked Jenn,” I said.

  A big sigh from Virgil, then, “If he attacked Jenn.”

  “We have three crimes, Virgil—Jenn’s attack, my break-in, and Ponytail’s murder. Don’t you think they’re related?”

  “Let’s look at this in a way you’ll understand, Sophie. It’s not like getting a box with five hundred jigsaw pieces, where you know they all belong to the same picture. The real world doesn’t work that way.”

  How dare he? Of course it does.

  “Hear me out,” I said. As quickly as possible, I gave Virgil the rundown, starting with Jenn’s whispered admission to me in the hospital. “What do you think?” I asked, nearly breathless.

  “Jenn actually admitted taking money from a stash in the tower?”

  I repeated Jenn’s words. “Doesn’t that sound like an admission?”

  “I have to admit, it’s closer than I got.”

  “You mean you figured that out already?”

  “I was working on it. Couldn’t get anything out of the girl, though.”

  “Glad I could help,” I said, with only the slightest touch of sarcasm.

  Virgil laughed.

  “Not to poke holes in my own theory, but it does seem weird that Ponytail and Einstein would have stayed around all this time, just waiting for the tower to be opened. What if it never reopened? What if someone started looking into Kirsten’s death again.” Like me, I thought.

  “Well, in fact, they were very busy,” Virgil said.

  “Huh?”

  “We ran Einstein’s real name—”

  “Which Barker gave you and neither of you will tell me.”

  “And it turns out he and Ponytail lived in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut for a while, and maybe Vermont, both of them under at least three different names.”

  “Circling the state where the cash-filled tower was.”

  “Ponytail was charged a few times with theft. Some jewelry, some money. He did a little time in minimum-security prisons in each state. Einstein was brought in twice, but never charged.”

  “Then you know Ponytail’s real name, too?”

  “We’ve given the press both names now, so it can be revealed.”

  There was no use announcing my pique at being lumped in with the press. I waited, like the general public.

  “They’re cousins,” Virgil continued. “Einstein’s parents adopted Ponytail after his mother died and his father split.”

  “Which might be why Ponytail never turned on his partner. Double loyalty,” I guessed. Until his benefactor murdered him, I noted.

  “That and they probably had an agreement that one of them at least would be able to keep a clean record,” Virgil said. “I’ve seen it before. Makes it handy. One of them wouldn’t have his mug on file when it came to casing a target or getting a legit job.”

  “Waiting till the tower opened up,” I offered.

  “Maybe not that specific, but, yeah, if there’s a big enough stash up there. Their birth names are Harold, that’s Einstein, and Gabriel, with the ponytail. Last name, Warnocky,” Virgil said.

  By now learning the “real” names of the fighting duo on the security video was anticlimactic. I realized I’d grown quite fond of the guys’ nicknames. They seemed to suit my image of the men—poor, deceased Ponytail, like a meek, bushy-tailed animal being led around by one of the smartest guys in the world, who, it turned out, was his cousin.

  “Einstein killed his cousin,” I said, processing the new data.

  “Looks that way.”

  “And now they both have records,” I said, moving from my den to my office. “Once Einstein’s caught, that is.”

  I took a seat at my desk, my laptop open in front of me. I opened a new document and started a list.

  “The first thing we need to do is make a thorough search of the tower,” I said to Virgil as I typed “1. Search tower.”

  Virgil laughed. “See me saluting,” he said.

  “It’s going to be open to the public very soon, Virgil. You should get there first thing in the morning.”

  “Hold on,” Virgil said. “My date is calling me.”

  “But—”

  “Gotta go. I’ll be around tomorrow.”

  I was at the keyboard, typing “2. Find Wendy. In danger from E.?” when I heard a soft click.

  Detective Virgil Mitchell had (almost) hung up on me. What did he mean he’d “be around tomorrow”? Was that his way of agreeing to the search of the tower? Or was he putting me off?

  I was worried about Wendy Carlson. Virgil didn’t mention whether they were able to trace her call to me in Boston. And Einstein (a much snappier moniker than Harold Warnocky, which relegated him to the far end of the alphabet) was still on the loose with one, if not two, murders on his résumé, and not much to lose. If Virgil had been more hospitable, I’d have been able to ask him about the status of all three—my smartphone, Wendy, and Einstein.
/>   I’d have to speak to Judy about teaching her new boyfriend some manners. Unless she’d been the one who’d broken the connection.

  • • •

  Eleven PM. A snack was in order. Too bad I hadn’t thought of taking the rest of my chocolate delight to go instead of passing it on to Bruce. I rummaged in my fridge and came up with bits of Brie and Jarlsberg cheeses, a few crackers, and a handful of grapes. Too healthy, so I added a cup of hot chocolate to the menu, plus two cookies from my emergency supply. I kept them primarily for Virgil, who loved my peanut butter cookies. If I were out of them the next time he checked in my cabinet, it would serve him right for hanging up on me.

  I carried my laptop and the ad hoc feast into the den and settled in my favorite curl-up place on the couch.

  This time the rampant spam in my inbox didn’t bother me; Andrew would be on it soon. I ran through legitimate emails and texts from Fran (missing me, worried about calling in the middle of the night again), Ariana (missing the snow, had had enough winter sun, hoping I was beading a lot), and students (missing Jenn, wanting to know when they could visit).

  It took about an hour to get my materials in order for my nine o’clock calculus class and finish a biography of the Bernoulli brothers, Jacob and Johann, the subjects of my eleven o’clock seminar, to be led by freshman Brent Riggs. Both Ted and I were courting Brent as a major for our respective Physics and Math Departments, and I suspected Brent had chosen his topic accordingly, to include notables in both fields. What freshman was going to play favorites among his professors?

  I wanted to run my Kirsten-Einstein-Jenn theory by Bruce and took a chance that he was on a midnight movie break at the MAstar trailer. I called the company’s landline. The one that was not the Bat Phone.

  “Miss your cell phone?” I asked, between nibbles of cheese and sips of warm chocolate.

  “Nope. We’re watching The Hurt Locker.”

  “Isn’t that a little heavier than your usual fare? A bomb defuser who loves his job?”

  “We’re running down the list of Best War Movies of all time.”

  “What’s next?”

  “MASH.”

  “That’s more like it,” I said, knowing the MAstar crew usually liked a little humor with their battle stories. Who could blame them, since most of the pilots and flight nurses were either military veterans or retired firefighters whose own stories often hit the height of seriousness.

  “What are you up to?” Bruce asked.

  “Snacking.” I crunched down noisily on a rice cracker to prove it.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, I do have a theory to run by you.”

  “Imagine my surprise.”

  “But it can wait till the movie’s over.”

  “Nah, I know how it ends.”

  “Imagine my surprise.”

  “Touché.”

  I wondered if I should evaluate my tendency to get involved in circular repartee. Did it make me a shallow person? That was a meditation topic for another time.

  I recited my story to Bruce, adding details I’d learned from Virgil about Ponytail and Einstein, the Warnocky cousins. He had some questions, as I’d hoped. There was nothing better than a thoroughly vetted theory.

  “Once the tower opened, Einstein could have gone up anytime he wanted, and taken his cousin with him,” Bruce said.

  “I talked to Barker, remember? The Henley construction foreman in the smoking section outside HPD. He told me he has the only key card outside the Music Department. He lets the workers into the tower as needed.”

  “They could have smashed their way in at night,” was Bruce’s suggestion.

  “You watch too many action movies. They couldn’t very well leave a wreck in their wake and not attract attention. And if they couldn’t find the money, they would have blown their chances. Or maybe they did go up once or twice and manage to get in quietly but—mission not accomplished. So they staked the tower out at night and saw Jenn go up.”

  “Why didn’t they follow Jenn into the tower in real time and get the money on the spot?” Bruce asked.

  “Same reason as above. It would attract attention, and what if it was a false lead and Jenn didn’t know where the money was? Another blown chance,” I said.

  “Sounds like you’ve thought this through pretty well.”

  I gave a vigorous nod, though no one was around to witness it. “The question is, how did Einstein know that Jenn did find the stash on that particular trip last Thursday?”

  “Wait, are you poking holes in your own theory now?” Bruce asked.

  “I like to stay objective,” I said, picking the last crumbs of cracker from the plate. I pulled an afghan over my legs and stuck another pillow behind me on the couch. This might be my bed for the next two-hour sleeping segment, I mused.

  “I’m thinking that Einstein attacked Jenn and then killed Ponytail, which implies he was successful in getting the money finally, and didn’t need Ponytail’s help anymore,” I said. “The fact that he took a chance attacking her means somehow he was sure she had the money in her backpack.”

  “Maybe he saw her go up into the tower that day and come down right away, no chance to practice,” Bruce offered.

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Plus, there was that one bill that fell out at the scene. Maybe there was another one, or more, before that.”

  “Like he saw her leave a trail of bills.”

  “Uh-huh. HPD still has the one I found, in their lab.”

  “So to speak.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “Their facility for forensics leaves a lot to be desired. It’s very hard for small departments like Henley to get the resources for any kind of timely reporting, even on things as simple as fingerprints.”

  “You sound like Virgil. But I get it.”

  I made the mistake of giving in to a yawn and Bruce picked up on it.

  “Are you near a bed?”

  “Close enough,” I said.

  “Do me a huge favor and get some rest. The problems will all be there in the morning.”

  It sounded like something my mother would say. I didn’t find it comforting when she said it either.

  I thought I’d earned a good night’s sleep, overrated as it might be.

  I’d done my part in creating a reasonable theory that tied up crimes spanning twenty-five years. Now if Jenn would continue to recover, and the HPD would simply bring in Einstein and make sure Wendy Carlson was safe, I could get on with my math classes and differential equations research, with puzzling, beading, and lots of quality time with Bruce on the side.

  Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

  After a quick check out the window to wave to my protectors in the unmarked car, I took a normal shower and changed into my usual winter nightwear. Feeling somewhat human, I slipped into the guest bed—tomorrow I’d restore my bedroom to its pre-intruder state—at a little before one o’clock in the morning, not even bothering to read before turning out the light and hitting the pillow.

  • • •

  Clang, clang. Clang, clang.

  This time the alarm went off according to plan. After six solid hours of sleep, I was ready to face the day. If all went well, I’d soon know who’d been bombarding my email inbox with junk. My cyberlife would be pleasant again.

  I grabbed a cup of coffee and toast and called it breakfast, eating at my counter, watching local news. There was no mention of the Henley campus, but the murder of one Gabriel Warnocky earned a few minutes of attention. The sight of his unpleasant expression and stringy ponytail brought a bitter taste to my mouth, and I added a spoonful of apricot marmalade to my toast.

  “A career criminal,” Ponytail was called, with no connection to the area. In other words, citizens of Henley should not be worried about this small blip in the city’s crime stats. The implication was that Ponytail committed his crimes elsewhere, his body inconsiderately dumped in Henley. The upbeat news lady almost made me cheer.


  Back in my bedroom, which still seemed unclean to me, I donned wool pants and three layers of upper wear. I was in as good a mood as possible, given the five to ten extra pounds of attire necessary to weather the outdoors. As I laced up my short black boots, unfashionable according to Ariana, I missed her and my sandals.

  • • •

  I drove along Henley Boulevard and turned into the southwest entrance to campus at eight fifteen, an hour later than my customary arrival time, but more rested than I’d been in several days.

  Morty Dodd, one of the regular security staff, greeted me. “Morning, Professor Knowles. Lots of action here already today.”

  “Really?”

  He pointed toward the fountain. “There’s a bunch of cop cars over in back of Admin.”

  I felt my pulse quicken. Not another incident. I couldn’t stand the idea of another crime or insult to me or my campus.

  “What happened?” I asked, shutting my eyes for a moment, shielding myself against the answer.

  “Dunno, but they drove in about an hour ago and they’re still buzzing around back there. Us guards are the last to know.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” I said. I shifted to drive and rolled away toward the tennis court parking area. Once I passed the west wing of Admin, I was able to see two HPD cars between the fountain and the wing. Not exactly “a bunch of cop cars” as Morty had reported, and I didn’t see cops “buzzing around” either, but the position of the vehicles directly at the rear entrance to the tower was ominous.

  Until I thought of my conversation with Virgil. The HPD was here to search the tower for a stash of money. I wished I could have given back that extra hour of sleep and been here to greet them.

  I parked quickly in the one available spot in what we considered the Ben Franklin lot, and walked back toward the action. I was glad for my extra layers of clothing this morning. Temperatures had plummeted, according to the weather lady on the morning news, and I felt every additional lost degree.

  The wind and freezing air triggered a hope that the Franklin Hall heater was fixed by now, and not by Einstein. The thought of Harold Warnocky, aka Einstein, aka murderous fugitive from justice, skulking around our basement last week sent an extra chill through me. What if Judy, who’d reported seeing the “hunky guy,” or one of the students had engaged him in conversation and he’d become agitated and had struck out at them in some way? He’d shot Ponytail—allegedly, I added, in deference to the letter of the law—so it was conceivable that he carried a gun on a regular basis.