The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

by Madison, Ada

  Inside a bell.

  I grabbed my phone, left my office, and walked to the southernmost end of the building where the windows faced the fountain and the back of Admin. On the way, I punched in Virgil’s number on my smartphone.

  No police cars on campus. No answer on Virgil’s cell. I was left with no official outlet for my brilliant thought. Or, not so brilliant, given my track record in this case. Virgil had been a step or two ahead of me all along. I should have been pleased; wasn’t that what my taxes were for? He was doing his job; I had my own. I had equations to solve. Puzzles to create.

  Either the police had found the money or they’d given up and left campus. I called Virgil’s number again. This wasn’t exactly a nine-one-one emergency. I could simply leave him a message. Saying what? I found the money. Not really true. Come back to the tower. I know where it is. Risky. A waste of taxpayers’ money, unless I could figure a way to use only my contribution to the city’s coffers, especially if I turned out to be wrong.

  I could always go up in the tower myself. Why not be sure before I caused a fuss?

  My new plan, formulated as I walked back to my office, was to eat lunch, find money in tower, go to hospital to see Jenn, have dinner with Bruce. As I was cementing the plan in my head, item number one, lunch, had arrived.

  Andrew agreed to a working lunch since we both had projects we were eager to get to. He held something that smelled spicy with one hand and pecked away on my laptop keyboard with the other. I bit into my turkey and Swiss between texts and phone calls, attempting to raise people who could help me out with access to the tower: Virgil, who should be on duty twenty-four-seven for me, if not for the entire city of Henley; Pete Barker, who’d given me his business card but clearly wasn’t conscientious about answering his phone (though I realized he had a real, full-time job); and Randy Stephens, our music chair, who was probably the least culpable of all, with no reasonable way of knowing that I’d need him. Any one of them could help me gain access to the tower. It seemed they’d all decided to take a real lunch hour.

  “What are the chances that the tower would be unlocked in the middle of the day?” I asked Andrew.

  “Zero. Dr. Stephens runs a very tight ship. I can run over to his office and sign out a key card if you want.”

  I considered Andrew’s request, which, it seemed to me, would loosen Randy Stephens’s tight ship. “Thanks, but I think I’ll head over to the hospital first and talk to Jenn. If no one gets back to me by the time I return, I’ll ask you to let me in then.”

  My unspoken hope was that Jenn would tell me if my guess about the location of the robbery money was correct, or if not, where it was. She’d had a lot of time to reflect on what she’d done and should be ready to share. It was time for tough love. Too bad I wasn’t medically or psychologically qualified to make that pronouncement.

  “I wonder when they’ll let us see her,” Andrew said. His emphasis on us, that is, mere students, caused a twinge of guilt to attack me, but there was nothing I could do about the rules. Or the Marshalls. “You’d think they’d at least let her roommate see her, but not even Patty can get in,” Andrew continued. “I understand, though. Will you tell her we’re all still thinking of her and hope she comes back soon?”

  “She’ll be glad to hear it,” I said, as I bundled up for the brief trip from Franklin Hall to my car. Another round of snow flurries was due today, though last night’s deposit was mercifully short-lived and picayune.

  I left the building feeling good. Andrew the Hacker, or Unhacker, was at work on my laptop, and I had a police-authorized mission to talk to Jenn. By later this afternoon, Andrew would have solved one thing that had been nagging at me. And though the small violation of my privacy was insignificant compared to the major crimes of the last few days, checking that one off would go a long way to bringing me a measure of satisfaction.

  After a few minutes of bone-chilling, serious clearing of my windshield, I drove toward the campus exit. I slowed down as I passed the carillon tower, giving one last thought to attempting to enter now. Too low a probability of success, I decided, and off-the-charts cold out there. I pushed the temperature lever on my heater to Hi, waved to Morty, and drove onto Henley Boulevard toward the hospital.

  With any luck, Virgil would have arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Marshall to be otherwise occupied while I had a serious conversation with their daughter. I sighed, realizing there was probably nothing he could do about Jenn’s large, overprotective nurse.

  • • •

  I stopped to buy flowers at Henley General’s gift shop then made my way along a too-familiar path to Jenn’s room. I unwrapped my scarf and stuffed my gloves into my pockets as I walked, switching the pink and red bouquet from one hand to the other as I rearranged my clothing. I sniffed the air and wished I could plan my visits to avoid food carts, coming or going.

  I arrived in time to see an orderly stripping Jenn’s bed. The young man pulled a top sheet off the mattress and dumped it into a hamper on wheels. He bent over and loosened the bottom sheet and did the same, then reached for the pillow.

  My heart raced. How could Jenn have gone from waking up and recovering, to . . . I couldn’t say, or even think the first word that comes to mind at the sight of an empty hospital bed. Instead I switched to happy thoughts—Jenn was so much better, she’d been moved to the wing for nearly recovered patients.

  “Excuse me,” I said, squeaking out the words as if I had a bad winter cold. “I’m looking for Jenn Marshall?”

  The orderly, a tall guy who could have passed for fifteen years old, shrugged his shoulders and pointed down the hall in the direction I’d come from. “You’ll have to ask them.”

  I hurried back and addressed my question to the very busy crew behind the desk.

  “She’s been discharged,” said a woman with a headset. Surely she was talking to the person on the phone and not to me.

  “Jennifer Marshall,” I repeated when I had her attention.

  “She’s been discharged,” she said, more slowly, looking me straight in the eyes.

  I was flustered to the point of asking a silly question. “Where did she go?”

  Just in time, the large nurse I’d interacted with on my first visit to Jenn entered the workstation. “She’s been discharged,” I heard again.

  “I just saw her last night. I didn’t think she’d be ready to leave so soon.” Not to mention that the police haven’t gotten all they wanted from her.

  “Her parents took her about an hour ago,” a different nurse, nicer, told me.

  “Do the police know she’s gone?” I asked whoever was listening.

  “Not our problem,” one of them said.

  Thanks, I knew that. Flowers in hand, I stood in front of the desk, a wall, really, with its busy worker bees behind it, and recognized that I’d get nothing more from the staff.

  I laid the bouquet on the high counter. “Here,” I said. “Please pass these on to a patient who might like them.” I strode off before they could refuse me that small service.

  I made my way to the hospital cafeteria, not for the quality of the coffee, but because the place was warm and I needed to make some phone calls.

  A nasty image made its way into my head as I pictured Jenn making a stop at the bank on her way out of town.

  • • •

  It was a good thing I’d had lunch, since the offerings in the cafeteria were slim and unappetizing. I bought a mug of tea, which was harder to ruin, and carried it to a table in a corner. The cafeteria was so crowded that the cleanup people couldn’t keep up, so I helped out by clearing my table of several large drink cups and a pile of napkins. I used a hand wipe to finish the job and took a seat, my back against the pale yellow wall.

  Happy to have my phone back, and charged, I checked my messages and listened to a voice mail from Randy Stephens. He wasn’t planning to go to campus today, he said. He’d taken a long weekend at the Cape. Lucky Randy. Even in winter, the Cape was a haven of both n
atural and shopkeeper-made beauty.

  “I can come if it’s urgent,” he’d added.

  Not exactly. I’d had second thoughts about asking Randy in the first place. Did I really want anyone other than the cops with me when I pulled the money out of the bell?

  I had the same question about Pete Barker, who hadn’t responded yet to my message. Rather than have him give me the tour he was so hot to give me, I’d prefer to wrangle a key from him and make the trip up to the belfry myself.

  I supposed I could trust both of them to use discretion, but I had no idea how much either of them knew about the money or the past.

  I sipped my tea, trying to let the bland aroma supersede that of the over-garlicky soups and pastas at tables all around me.

  A call to Virgil worked this time.

  “Did you know Jenn Marshall was released from the hospital?” I asked.

  “I just found out. Did you get a chance to talk to her first?”

  “I just missed her.”

  “Too bad. But we couldn’t keep her. She claimed not to know her attacker and she didn’t commit a crime. Her bank records are clean, by the way. The recent deposits are consistent with her pay from the college.”

  “She was so close to telling me more,” I said, regretting that I’d lolled around listening to carillon music in the Ben Franklin hallway and even had lunch in my office instead of heading straight for the hospital after my seminar. I consoled myself by noting how unlikely it was that I’d have been able to fend off Mr. and Mrs. Marshall if they were determined to take their daughter home to safety. I wondered if we would ever see Jenn again.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Virgil said, referring, I realized, to my statement that Jenn had been on the verge of telling me more.

  “What about her dorm room?” I asked, ruing the fact that Jenn was now on my list of suspicious characters whose life had to be dug into for evidence of a crime.

  “Clean,” Virgil said. “We got permission to look around from Patricia Reynolds, her roommate, who said Jenn never even went back to get her belongings. Her clothes and books are still there.” I heard Virgil flipping through pages of a notebook. Or else I imagined it from seeing him do it too many times in person. “And speaking of striking out, the address that Warnocky—the one you call Einstein—gave to his boss is bogus. It’s a vacant lot by the airfield.”

  “So there’s no lead on Ponytail’s killer?”

  “Alleged killer. In any case, I doubt we’ll ever see the guy again.”

  “Right.”

  A feeling of hopelessness took over my spirit and flooded my mind. Wendy Carlson was gone. Ponytail was dead. Jenn Marshall was gone. And now Mr. Einstein Warnocky had also eluded our grasp. I couldn’t have felt worse if puzzle pieces kept falling into cracks in the floor, leaving gaping holes in the picture I was trying to put together.

  Virgil echoed my thoughts. “We’re hitting a wall. I’m not sure there’s any hope now for finding the money either.”

  I perked up, remembering why I’d called Virgil in the first place. “I think I know where the money is,” I said.

  “Of course you do.”

  “Can you meet me at the tower later today?”

  “I’m going into a meeting. I’ll call when I get out.”

  “Bring your badge,” I said. “Or whatever it takes to get a key card.”

  I almost ended with “How’s Judy?” but thought better of it.

  Instead, I called Bruce next and asked him if he knew anything about the now legendary date between his buddy and mine.

  “I didn’t think you liked gossip,” he said.

  “This isn’t gossip.”

  Bruce laughed.

  I waited while a sudden burst of loud laughter, appropriately timed, erupted from a table close to mine. It looked like an office party, with wrapped presents at one end of the table. A strange choice of venue, I thought, but who was I to talk?

  “I’m simply interested in my friends’ welfare,” I told Bruce. “Both of them. So, have you heard anything from your buddy?”

  “My friend’s not talking,” Bruce said.

  “Mine either.”

  And we both laughed. The hospital cafeteria had become a happy place.

  We moved on to dinner plans. I longed to do something normal and shop for food. A selection of cheeses, veggies, bread, and cookies sounded good. Nothing that involved a hospital, a police station, a barricaded hotel room, or an unfinished tower; no computer problems or home break-ins; no funny nicknames, injured students, or former students; no missing librarians.

  “I was thinking pasta primavera,” Bruce said. “Penne, broccoli, zucchini, carrots.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Okra.”

  “Eeuw,” I said and clicked off.

  I took a last sip of tea from my mug and grabbed my jacket, ready to take off for campus.

  I stopped when I heard “Hey, Dr. Knowles.”

  Andrew the Hacker rushed toward my table.

  “I didn’t expect you here,” I said.

  “Jenn’s gone.” Andrew looked crestfallen.

  I nodded. “I was too late, too,” I said. “But she’s on her way home. That’s the good news.” In other words, we could be mourning her death.

  “Yeah, I guess that’s good. I texted Willa, Brent, and the others. They’re all upset that she didn’t even say good-bye.”

  “It might be a while before we figure out what’s happened,” I said, preparing myself for that truth at the same time. “Jenn probably needs some time. It’s not just physical recovery that matters now.”

  Andrew heaved a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “How did you know I was in the cafeteria?”

  “The nice ladies at the desk told me you were headed this way.” It was good to know the ladies’ type—cute young guys. “Anyway, I really came to tell you that I fixed it so you won’t be getting that spam.”

  “That was fast,” I said, unsure why Andrew had made the trip here to tell me in person.

  “Stopping the spam was easy. I started to dig around and I found out who did it.”

  “Someone did it? I mean, of course, someone did it, but you mean you could tell exactly who?”

  “Not always, but this guy wasn’t that good.”

  “Okay. But you didn’t have to come all this way to tell me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you over the phone. The person is . . . You’re not going to believe what I found.”

  “What is it?” I asked. I didn’t need another blow to my psyche.

  I’d expected Andrew to come up with a string of numbers as the source, or a code that he could use to filter out future spam. Not a person, not someone he knew, apparently. I took a deep breath. Was Einstein stalking my email? No, Andrew didn’t know Einstein.

  “I mean, seriously, Dr. Knowles. You’re not going to believe me.”

  Dramatic Andrew. “Tell me.”

  “It’s too . . . it’s too . . . too crazy.”

  Andrew showed no signs of giving up his results.

  “Tell me, Andrew,” I said, more harshly than I meant to.

  He flinched. “Dr. Morrell did it.”

  My turn to flinch. Ted? What could Ted have to do with my email? “Are you joking, Andrew? Did Dr. Morrell take away some credit on your lab report again and you’re getting even?”

  He held up his hand, scout’s honor style, his boyish features emphasizing the sincerity of his words. “Dr. Knowles, I’m not joking.” He reached into his backpack and extracted several pages of printout.

  I dropped my jacket on one chair and sat down on another. Andrew stayed standing. How could this be? Maybe Andrew himself hacked my email. He had all the skills not only to hack into my computer but also to pin it on someone else. Except why would he choose Ted as his victim? Why not another student, which I’d have been more likely to accept without question? He could even have blamed the meter maid who patrolled downtown Henley.
/>   I was getting so far off-track that I was accusing anyone of anything willy-nilly—from thinking Pete Barker was part of the old gang to now thinking it was Andrew who’d set out to make my life miserable with spam. Who was next? Morty Dodd, our gatekeeper, as a bank robber? Woody, our trusty Franklin Hall janitor, mugging Jenn? Maybe Virgil and Judy weren’t dating at all, but entering into a conspiracy to drive me crazy.

  I’d lost control.

  “I’ve been through this, like, eighteen different ways,” Andrew said, smoothing out the printouts, his expression becoming more and more somber. “I can show you exactly how I traced it.”

  “Not now,” I said.

  “Maybe Dr. Morrell is playing a joke on you?”

  I shook my head. “He doesn’t joke like that.” Riddles and brainteasers, yes, but pranks that caused real inconvenience? No. I thought a minute. “Andrew, could Dr. Morrell also have sent emails claiming to be someone else?” Someone like a copyeditor.

  “Absolutely. You can use a Unix command and it’s, like, no problem to impersonate someone else, so it looks like it came from anywhere you want.”

  “And using someone’s credit card information.”

  “Do you ever shop online?”

  Only about eight times a day. “Yes, I do.”

  Andrew shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “There’s your answer.”

  He pointed to the printouts again. “I can show you—”

  “Andrew, I need a minute.”

  To his credit, Andrew caught on immediately. “Sure. I’m going to grab a coffee.” He looked at my empty mug, a soggy, shriveled tea bag hanging from its rim. “I’ll bring you another tea. And how about a cookie?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I doubted that would do it, but it would be a start.

  I was grateful for Andrew’s sensitivity in giving me time to digest the new information. Henley General’s busy cafeteria wouldn’t have been my first choice of meditation site, but I felt my legs wouldn’t carry me out the door until I put things in some kind of order in my mind.

  Ted Morrell, mild-mannered chair of the Physics Department and my colleague in Ben Franklin Hall for fifteen years, had hacked into my computer and sent me down three separate paths of annoyance and concern. That I knew of. What else had he inflicted on me that I was unaware of or blamed on others?