The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

by Madison, Ada

  I wondered if the HPD had searched the grounds for him. Maybe they’d find him in the tower. Which was where I was headed. Smart.

  My eyes watered and my cheeks burned from the cold. I pulled one thickness of my knit scarf over my nose, leaving just enough of an opening to breathe, and continued on until I reached the yellow and black tape that warned of construction hazards. I figured our PR representatives convinced the cops that the message was just as effective in keeping people away. Another dose of crime scene tape so soon after the last one wouldn’t be good for our image.

  Since it was only a warning, not a “Keep Out—This Means You” sign, I slipped under the stiff plastic and walked as close as I could to the tower entrance, where a uniformed officer stood guard. Perhaps it was the stately shape of the tower that inspired him to stand as stiff as a royal guard, arms straight by his side, an imaginary rifle perched against his shoulder.

  “Hey, good morning,” I said to the tall, lean young man, as if I were reporting to work on the project. I tried to present a purposeful demeanor, someone with a right to proceed into the tower. A musician, perhaps, ready for an early morning practice session. Or the cleaning lady, hired to polish the enormous bells and dust the keyboard.

  “Morning,” the officer said, moving his body toward the center of the opening, the better to block it from my meager frame.

  I looked past him—stopping only to read his name,Dillon—and at the yawning cave-like opening. I knew the main tower entrance was through the front of Admin, up the grand set of steps that led to the vestibule of the building, but off to the left. I guessed the cops had chosen to use this rear entrance to the tower rather than park their vehicles out front. I commended them for not appearing to commandeer the whole building, which faced Henley Boulevard, the wide commuters’ thoroughfare.

  “Is Detective Mitchell here yet, Officer Dillon?” I asked.

  He looked at his watch. “Should be here any minute,” he answered.

  I tilted my head even farther to the side, past his shoulders, toward the sepulchral mouth of the tower entrance.

  “Okay if I go in?” I asked, hoping he drew his own conclusion, that once Detective Mitchell arrived I’d be going in anyway.

  “Hmm, uh,” he said, relaxing his posture, frowning. Considering the reasonableness of my request, I hoped.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other to emphasize how cold it was and how inhumane it would be to leave a lady outside in these hostile weather conditions. Especially since she clearly was here to meet the detective in charge. It wouldn’t be good for Officer Dillon if he were reported as being uncooperative.

  “I guess it would be okay,” the accommodating officer said, stepping aside.

  “Great, thanks,” I said, and hurried by him before he could reconsider.

  Once through the opening, I needed a good minute to adjust to the darkness. And to the sour, dank odor. It was going to take an enormous dose of air freshener to prepare this venue for concerts, no matter how much structural retrofitting had been done.

  I remembered reading FAQ in memos distributed by the administration when the tower work started. One hundred seventy-six feet tall with a belfry at the top. I recalled phrases such as “a beautifully appointed lobby,” “historical artifacts,” and “newly refurbished practice rooms.” Not that I could see any of that at the moment.

  Andrew—along with Jenn, before her recent troubles—was excited about a complete schedule of concerts, six days a week when school was in session, and tours of four levels of the tower, which would include the Henley College Carillonist’s (that would be Randy Stephens’s) studio, and a carillon library.

  Was I in the right tower? I couldn’t connect any of the buzz and brightness of the memos and brochures with the hollow aboveground crypt, a monument to mustiness, that I’d wheedled my way into.

  In the dark, I nearly tripped over the first step, only two or three inches off the stone floor. I braced myself, slamming my hands against the wall, and decided I’d have to throw away my gloves at the first opportunity.

  Was the passageway this unpleasant when Wendy Carlson climbed the steps twenty-five years ago to play an instrument that gave out such beautiful sounds? When Kirsten Packard climbed them? Had it been in her plans that she’d never walk down them that last time?

  The stone steps spiraled up, making it difficult to see past a couple of feet. I climbed farther, turning corner after corner, hoping a ray of light might seep through the thick, damp wall. I could hear nothing but a whooshing of the wind (please—wind, and not bats’ wings) and an occasional tapping or rummaging sound.

  If the two police cars had arrived fully loaded, there could be as many as seven officers upstairs, the eighth being my manipulable young friend who was stationed at the doorway, though not too effectively, as I could attest. For all practical purposes, I was surrounded by cops. Why did I feel completely alone and unsafe? I had probably climbed the equivalent of only one normal flight of stairs up from the guard and the sunlight. Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I heard a loud clank and the turning of a giant key, locking me in the tower forever.

  If I were going to turn back, now would be the time.

  I forged ahead, rounded one more corner, and finally heard muffled voices. I considered yelling for help. Maybe one of the cops would come down and escort me the rest of the way. I was saved from embarrassment by a shaft of light through a window in what I guessed was the belfry. I climbed the steps leading to it, expecting eventually to see the practice room.

  Creak, creak, creak.

  I jumped at the sound of a door opening just behind me.

  A voice, low and menacing, nearly knocked me off the step.

  “I thought you’d never get here.”

  I turned to see Virgil. Did everyone expect me these days? From the BPL to the Henley College tower, I seemed to show up on a cue that I didn’t know about.

  I bent over to catch my breath.

  “I’d have been here a lot earlier if I’d gotten the memo you distributed to all the badged officers in the HPD,” I said.

  “You did okay anyway. Didn’t mean to scare you, by the way,” he said. Unconvincing. My judgment was that he enjoyed my little gasp of fear ever so slightly.

  “I walked right by this door. How did I miss it?” I asked him and myself.

  “Maybe because it’s the same color as the wall?” Virgil said, ushering me into a brightly lit room, the lobby described in the administrative memos and in the shiny brochures we approved at faculty senate meetings.

  The room was warm enough for me to lower my scarf to a fashionable level around my neck. Although the temperature wasn’t so comfortable that I could remove any layers of clothing, it was clearly okay for Virgil, who’d draped his coat over a chair. I was tempted to throw it over my shoulders, but with my knit hat and bulky jacket, I looked enough like a waif as it was.

  I saw immediately that the room had two entrances. The normal one from the front tower entrance, at the top of the steps facing Henley Boulevard—the one Virgil had used—and the slimy back entry that I’d so wisely chosen. What I’d done was like climbing to the top of the Empire State Building, then realizing there was a bank of elevators.

  The ordinary visitor here for a tour or a concert wouldn’t—shouldn’t—see the innards I’d just passed through. Why hadn’t the guard sent me to the nice part of the tower? Maybe he thought I knew what I was doing. Wrong.

  And which portals did Jenn use, entering and leaving? I wondered.

  I followed Virgil into the lobby, also a museum of sorts. Wood and glass display cases in the center of the room housed yellowed pages of sheet music and black-and-white photographs of the original construction of the Administration Building, tower included, almost one hundred years ago. At one end of the rounded enclosure was a stained glass window depicting what looked like a gathering of gods and muses, perhaps those especially assigned to music. Upright cases against the wall held
small instruments and parts of instruments with documentation I felt sure was interesting. A blowup of a schematic showed how the bells in the tower were connected to the keyboard by a system of wires, springs, and levers. The drawing looked like something Ted’s physics students might have left behind in a Franklin Hall classroom. Fascinating, but for another time.

  I looked at Virgil, big, quiet, and eminently straight-faced. I’d half expected him to toss me back down to the lanky Queen’s guard at the mouth of the cave. Virgil and I were the only people in the room; I assumed the crew of officers was searching other floors. Virgil waited me out. I knew I couldn’t win; I had to ask.

  “Did you get it back?”

  He dug in his pocket. “Your phone? Yup, here it is.” He handed it to me. “Fully charged.”

  How could I not be grateful? “Thanks. Were they able to retrieve anything?” I paused a beat. “Would you tell me if you found Wendy?”

  Virgil laughed. We were both in good humor for so early in the morning. “No, and maybe.”

  “Back to the money. Any clues?”

  “None here and none on that bill you found in the bushes.”

  “It doesn’t have some magic logo that says this bill was taken from XYZ bank, on such and such a date?”

  “Nope. And that makes me think that the rest of the loot, if there is any more, will likewise be clean.”

  “That’s disappointing,” I said.

  Virgil pointed to floors above us. “We haven’t given up on finding anything yet. The guys are up there now, going slow, trying to be as careful as possible.” He waved his hand around the newly polished room, floors and walls gleaming, not a speck of dust or a chip of wood in sight. “It’d be a shame to have to knock out what just got put up.”

  “I’ll say,” came from another voice. Foreman Pete Barker, the smoker, had walked in from the true, clean, and unscary entrance and come up behind me.

  This morning Barker was dressed as expected. Unlike the natty clothes he’d worn to the police station, today’s outfit comprised jeans and a down vest, accessorized with a bright orange hardhat that he carried. A fine dusting of plaster and a few paint stains on his thick shoes showed evidence of Barker’s being a worker as well as a boss.

  “You’ve done a great job,” I said.

  “Thanks. But, hey, if the uniforms mess it up, I wouldn’t mind starting all over again here with another contract.”

  “That doesn’t seem quite fair,” I said, loyal to the college’s budget office.

  Barker shook his index finger at me and smiled. “But it wouldn’t be my fault, would it?”

  He moved on and I entertained a new thought. As foreman, Barker had the only key among the construction people. What if he’d already found the money, by chance? Or, what if he was one of the gang who met Kirsten and Wendy, Einstein and Ponytail, in the diner in the old days. I considered nicknames. “Smoky”? “Sharpy,” for the way he dressed during off-hours? Or, one that would fit me also—“Shorty.” Could Barker have killed Ponytail? Maybe he caught the rejected Ponytail where he shouldn’t be and— Nah, for now I was sticking to my original theory and pinning it all on Einstein.

  I realized that Virgil was talking to me. I abandoned thoughts of Barker, who’d moved on himself.

  “Of course, the easiest thing would be if Jenn Marshall told us where she was getting the money,” Virgil said. I hoped I hadn’t missed something important.

  “If she was getting money,” I said.

  I liked how careful I could be when the reputation of one of my students was at stake.

  “Any chance that you can talk to Jenn again?” Virgil asked.

  “If you can keep her parents at bay.”

  “I can call them in. There’s always a form or two that can be dug up for them to fill out.”

  “So that’s what all the forms are for.”

  “You didn’t hear it from me,” Virgil said.

  “I’ll be happy to give it a shot.” I cleared my throat. “Before that, I have a couple of requests.”

  “You’re bargaining with me? An officer of the law?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I think we should get footage from the west entrance to the campus. There’s a camera on the guardhouse between the library and Admin, the vehicle entrance. We don’t know for sure that Jenn went to the tower after leaving Franklin Hall, but there’s a high probability. If we get the footage for Thursday, it might show Jenn going to the tower right after our seminar that ended at noon. Then we might also see Einstein following her to the passage on the northeast side.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Also, we should get her bank records. If she’s been taking cash from here, she can’t be hiding it all under her mattress.”

  Unless she spent it all. I thought of Jenn’s new backpack. I knew they could be pricey these days. I remembered Patty, her roommate, mentioning a couple of other new things. A laptop? A smartphone?

  “All done,” Virgil said.

  “You already have her banking information?” I hoped my wording didn’t sound too much like “You mean you thought of that, too?”

  “Now and then we get it right.”

  “Then I should get another request. I asked for two.”

  Virgil gave out a loud guffaw, which echoed in the room, once again empty except for us.

  I gathered that I’d pushed my luck far enough.

  Just as well. I had to get to class. That was, after all, my primary job.

  As I finished my conversation with Virgil, Barker came back into the room and offered to take me on a tour of the upper floors of the tower.

  “There’s a great view from up there,” he said. “You can see the whole city, down to the Cape, and Boston if you try really hard.”

  I didn’t want to one-up Barker and tell him that I’d seen that view from much higher up. On one of our first dates, Bruce rented a helicopter and took me for a ride over Henley and surrounding cities. How to impress a girl.

  Circling over the campus had been the most interesting—looking down on the complex architecture of Admin; marveling at the way the Nathaniel Hawthorne dorm seemed nestled within the other two, like a perfectly designed puzzle; swooping over the fall trees and the smooth, lush lawn. From the air, the campus seemed like a fortress that could withstand any storm. I hoped it would be none the worse for wear from the present crisis.

  “And those big bronze bells, they’re something else,” Barker continued. “You gotta see them.” He pointed straight up, to the belfry. Without waiting for my response, Barker went on, with great enthusiasm and arm waving. “Fifty-three of them installed in that pretty cramped area,” he said, shaking his head at the marvel.

  I followed Barker’s gestures to a beautifully finished spiral stairway that led to the next level. The polished steps and handrails seemed more suited to a home in an affluent suburb than to a bell tower, especially considering my first tower-climbing experience of a few minutes ago. I realized also that to me, the Henley Tower, the belfry in particular, had become the place where Kirsten Packard died. I welcomed the idea of replacing that association with something more uplifting.

  It did seem odd that a man holding a hardhat was helping me with that.

  “The new library is right below that,” Barker said. “There’s music books—of course, right?—but there’s also pictures along one wall that show you how the bells are cast in the foundry. Would you believe it takes a temperature of two thousand degrees?”

  As cold as I’d been lately, I didn’t think I’d mind working there.

  “The bells, they’re enormous,” Barker continued, spreading his arms to indicate enormity. “I’m telling you, you could hide a person in that big one.”

  “Is that where the HPD officers are now? In the belfry?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t seen a uniform since I left my guard friend at the entrance.

  I hesitated to mention “searching” in case Barker didn’t kn
ow the purpose of the current police activity. He might guess that they were looking for something, but perhaps not the specifics. Was it possible that Virgil was able to get his cooperation, even identifying the workers on the video, without telling the foreman the details of the investigation into a member of his crew?

  “The cops aren’t done yet, but the practice rooms are free. Didn’t you ever wonder how they could practice on that big thing without the whole city hearing them?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” I said.

  Barker placed his hardhat on the floor—and not on the glass case near him, I noticed. He leaned against the wall and crossed his ankles, thick with leather work boots. I had the feeling that he didn’t have a lot of people to talk to on a regular basis. Or maybe he didn’t want to waste the time of his workers in conversation. Whereas I was just a teacher with all the free time in the world. I figured I could be accommodating, since he’d probably need a cigarette break soon anyway. And I did want to know more about the carillon.

  “Well, it turns out the practice keyboards have no bells; they just make their own sounds close enough to what the bells will sound like. The real bells won’t be used until the tower’s opened and the concerts start.”

  “Fascinating,” I said, meaning it, but having a hard time imagining this burly construction worker caring about musical bells. If he was so open-minded, maybe I could interest him in mathematics.

  I wished I had a better feel for where Barker stood in the investigation. Was he the helpful foreman he seemed to be, innocently involved in our exciting new construction, working with the police to provide information on his workers? Or was his enthusiasm due to having stumbled upon a cash treasure trove that he counted as his just deserts for years of hard work? There was also that earlier notion I’d entertained, that Barker, aka Smoky (in my mind only), had come back to Henley after twenty-five years, like Einstein and Ponytail, to claim the spoils of a robbery.