The Square Root of Murder

by Ada Madison

  The girls closed their eyes, séance style, and at that moment I felt they were putty in my hands. I wasn’t proud of the rush I got. Was this how Archie felt when I was cowering before him yesterday afternoon? If I didn’t get my promotion, was I too old to sign up for the police academy? Questions for another time.

  “It was a mess,” Pam said. “And, you know, Dr. Appleton always kept everything in order.”

  “A real neat freak,” Liz said.

  “Was there any food around?”

  The girls looked at each other and nodded.

  “There was a paper plate with cake outside the door,” Pam said. “I think I saw Rachel make up a plate for him.”

  “And a can of soda,” Liz said. “Some kind of cola, I think.”

  “We were going to pick it up and take it in, but we decided not to move it, in case that’s where he wanted it,” Casey said.

  “You know, like, maybe he was trashing it,” Liz added.

  I tried to process this factoid and insert it into my mental timeline. Rachel took the cake upstairs and left it outside Keith’s door at about one forty-five. The girls saw it there at two thirty, but Woody saw it on the chair in Keith’s office at four. And, of course, the police didn’t see it all because Woody tossed it to protect Keith’s reputation as a neat freak.

  I was already juggling all the visitors to Keith’s postmurder office. The killer was there before Rachel and the girls arrived, but someone else was there between the girls’ visit and Woody’s discovery. It had to have been the killer coming back to plant evidence against Rachel. Would a killer risk two trips? I wondered if all crime scenes were as busy as this one.

  It was clear that I was going to need to create a real, physical timeline. I wished I’d brought my laptop to the library, but there’d be time once I got to my home office.

  “I know things were broken and on the floor, but was there any extra paper? I’m wondering about that yellow paper you all use for your drafts.”

  “Dr. Appleton wouldn’t look at the yellow drafts,” Pam said.

  “Never,” Casey said.

  So I’d heard. “And no one had, say, just dumped some there?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Nope.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  I made a note. For Rachel and the girls, it was yes on the cake at the door; no on the yellow pages. For the police, I recalled, it had been no on the cake and yes on the yellow pages. Something kept bugging me about the yellow pages, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  If I could just separate all this from the horrible fact of Keith Appleton’s murder, it would be a fun puzzle.

  CHAPTER 15

  The old problem of withholding information from the police reared its head again. I now had information from Rachel, Pam, Liz, and Casey that would be useful to Virgil and Archie in establishing a timeline. I also had that clue from Keith’s cousin that he was seeing someone. I assumed the police could track her down even without a name and probably had done so already. Wasn’t that the first thing they did, look to the spouse or significant other?

  I wished they’d told me if they found a girlfriend in Keith’s life. More than that, I wished I had an official role in the investigation, but how realistic was that? Both Virgil and Archie had made it clear that I was useless at best, a hindrance at worst.

  I’d encouraged all four girls to go to the police with the truth about their tramping on the crime scene. Maybe that was it, as far as my responsibility as a citizen. Should I waste time reporting to the police and nagging the girls, or wouldn’t it be better if I could just figure everything out first and hand everyone the solution? That process worked well with my puzzle editor. Why not with the Henley PD?

  Yeah, right.

  My interview with the girls had been so satisfactory, I almost forgot about the boxes and the dean. Pam had given me a ride home. As we’d approached my driveway and I’d dug out my spare remote control for the garage door, I’d had the fantasy wish that the boxes might have reappeared.

  No such luck.

  At three in the afternoon on Sunday, alone in my house, I had approximately nineteen hours before the president’s meeting, followed immediately by my meeting with the dean, at which time I needed to have either the boxes or a good story.

  I checked my messages. There was nothing that shed light on my current state. Even a ransom note would have been welcome. I imagined: “Give me an A in applied statistics and I’ll return the boxes.”

  “Deal,” I’d have said.

  A message from Ariana reminded me about the next beading class where we would make “fun, fantastical, magical luggage tags.” Ariana liked to note that her December 5 birthday was the same as Walt Disney’s. I pointed out that the same day in the same year was also the birthday of Heisenberg, the quantum physicist who came up with the uncertainty principle.

  I wished I could fit something fun or magical anywhere on my to-do list.

  I left a text message for Bruce. “Where R U? Where’s my car? I need U.”

  Clear enough, I thought.

  In my office, the piles of work, all with imminent deadlines, sat waiting. I owed the dean three syllabi for the new term, one each for linear algebra, real analysis, and differential equations. I needed to contact the nine other summer students about their grades. I had a crossword with gaping holes where clues should be. And that wordplay puzzle, the butt of jokes at Friday’s party, that only Gil had been able to solve.

  Instead of tackling the piles, I downloaded a simple timeline program that allowed the user to enter hours of the day and events into a table. The software then spit out a linear version of the input.

  Maybe if I organized the information I had about the crime scene, something would pop up that had arrows pointing to Keith’s killer.

  I entered everything I knew about who was in Franklin Hall in the afternoon, including students other than the four who were most involved with the party. As much as possible I wrote down names and when I thought they’d arrived and left. I included faculty members who were at the party—the department chairs, Fran, Judith, and Robert; the new girl, Lucy; Hal, and even Gil. I widened my scope a little more by including a couple of faculty senate members with whom Keith had had serious conflicts. I omitted only myself and Woody.

  I couldn’t help think of the woman Keith was seeing, according to his cousin. I wished I could find her. But with only a first name, two possible first names at that, it didn’t make sense to pursue that line.

  With some hesitation I added Dean Underwood’s name to the list. She and Keith were simpatico most of the time, but admitting male students to Henley was no small issue and Keith had been instrumental in gathering enough support to override the dean’s vote.

  I had no doubt why Keith had been such an advocate of coeducation, but he’d confirmed my guess one day when he said at a faculty meeting, “Let’s face it. A women’s college will never have the same status as a men’s college or a coed institution.”

  Having been around academia—make that, having been around, period—I couldn’t argue with him.

  I recalled a group of us females standing in front of a notice on an easel outside a meeting room at a math conference in Hartford.

  “Panel Today on the Role of Women in Mathematics.”

  “Where’s the one on the role of men?” a female colleague had asked, through gritted teeth.

  “Maybe we can take on the role of the multiplication sign,” another woman had said. She’d won begrudging laughs from the men in the vicinity.

  I’d done my best as a teacher to change attitudes and create opportunities for my female students. But that wasn’t the most pressing issue on my agenda this Sunday afternoon.

  I had a puzzle to solve.

  I printed out my timeline on legal size paper and tacked it up on my bulletin board. I recognized the inadequacy of focusing only on the people who were in Franklin Hall or on campus that day. Someone from the town of Henley or a
nywhere else could have made it onto the property and into the building.

  Security on the college property was very casual. You pulled up to the checkpoint at the southwest entrance, off Henley Boulevard. If Maureen or Bill or any of the other guards didn’t recognize you as a staff member or a student with a special permit, you had to give a reason for wanting to enter. You could say, “I’m here for the history seminar,” or “I’m with the band,” and the bar would be raised for you.

  As for walking onto the campus, no one monitored the walkways or pedestrian entrances. And the buildings had no extra security except at night when the doors were locked. I’d often thought the security posts were there simply to be sure the parking lots wouldn’t be overrun.

  Once in a while when a crime occurred on campus the school newspaper would run a story about poor security for the dorms, but all it took was the onset of exam week and everyone would forget the disturbance.

  The murder of a faculty member was more than a disturbance, however, and I hoped Keith’s death would inspire a good look at campus safety overall.

  I needed to do my part.

  I studied my timeline and made some embellishments. I used a red marker to indicate the probable time of Keith’s death, bracketing the hours from noon to one forty-five. Only Rachel and I knew that the deed had been done by one forty-five when Rachel showed up with the cake. If, as Woody thought, Keith didn’t arrive much before noon, then he’d been correct in assuming that Keith hadn’t had a lot of time to admire his new Fellow award.

  I hadn’t even given Bruce the details of Rachel’s confession of sorts when I reported on my meeting with her at MAstar. And though I wished it with all my heart, I doubted that Rachel had offered up her story to the police.

  Virgil said the medical examiner had placed the time of death between noon, based on Woody’s having seen Keith’s car at that time, and four, when Woody found him.

  I was getting increasingly uncomfortable knowing more than the police did, thanks to Rachel’s reluctance to tell them the whole truth. The Big Three’s two thirty visit to Keith’s office didn’t shed any new light on the time of death, but it did give us information on the cake and the yellow sheets that were allegedly Rachel’s thesis.

  If I really wanted a good night’s sleep, I should go to the police.

  Now, a conscientious voice inside my head said.

  You don’t have a car, said my bad girl voice, looking for any excuse.

  Give yourself one more chance to put it all together, said my puzzle voice.

  Two to one. I’d give myself that chance, at least until the dean cornered me tomorrow.

  I sat at the counter in my kitchen with a reheated omelet. Not recommended.

  I had to come up with a strategy. I could query the Ben Franklin faculty. And ask them what? If they’d followed the cake trail by any chance? If they’d followed the journey of the boxes by any chance?

  For once I was looking forward to a faculty meeting. I’d had an email from Fran that all the departments of Franklin Hall would meet separately after the president’s address, as she’d requested.

  When I was stuck like this, puzzling always helped me. I finished the crossword puzzle I’d been working on that was formerly in the shape of a beaker. I’d turned the grid into the shape of a teapot and now I sent it electronically via my laptop to my editor in Kansas City. It felt good to complete a task, if a relatively unimportant one. I liked it when my life was easy to figure out.

  The sound of a motor caught my attention. Either Bruce or the box thief had opened my garage door. I almost wished it were the box thief, come to apologize and explain himself.

  It could happen.

  Not this time, but Bruce’s “Hey” was very welcome. I had to admit it felt a little creepy in my house today, knowing someone had intruded at least as far as my garage when I was out. The sooner I got to the bottom of the ill wind that had swept through Henley, the sooner I’d feel safe and grounded again.

  “Have you slept at all today?” I asked my boyfriend.

  Bruce shook his head. “I’ll get some tonight. There won’t be anything big at work, not two nights in a row. I’ll bet the most we’ll have to do is an IFT. A half hour and we’re back.”

  I knew about interfacility transfers. When a patient needed equipment or care not available in the hospital he was in, MAstar could be called in to transport him to another. The Bat Phone summoned them for that mission also, I’d learned.

  “You’re saying you can’t have two busy nights in a row at work. Is that a rule?”

  “It’s statistics. Know anything about them?”

  Cute. “I think you should at least try to nap.”

  “Before or after I tell you what I learned from Virge?”

  I jumped off the stool and grabbed Bruce’s arms. “Come here, you.”

  Surprise, surprise, the Henley PD had been working on the same case I was, and they had their own ways of getting information. Without stealing material from crime scenes or browbeating young coeds. It might turn out that while I was busy doing the above, eliminating a lot of pesky paperwork, the Henley PD had actually culled facts to work with. Another approach to a murder investigation.

  I had no problem buttering up my hungry boyfriend/ coconspirator to get the most out of him. I cooked up a fresh soufflé and served it to him with cinnamon toast.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Keeping me dangling like this,” I said, taking a seat across from him.

  I loved Bruce’s disheveled off-duty look, when the dark hair on either side of his widow’s peak formed unruly arcs, the ends of which touched his eyebrows. It was what people called the “Dark Irish look,” though you’d have to go back a couple of generations to find Bruce’s Galway Bay roots.

  “You’re the one who told me not to call Virge.”

  I poured coffee for both of us. “I know I said that, but that was stupid,” I admitted.

  “Mmm hmm,” he mumbled through a mouthful of toast. He knew better than to agree completely with a statement like that.

  “I’m waiting,” I said. I’d set my laptop in front of me on the kitchen table, across from Bruce and his breakfast/ lunch/dinner combination, poor guy. I was ready to take notes. I tapped my fingers on the keyboard.

  “I always get the greatest stories from Virge. Like, this teenager on a bicycle tried to rob four people along Henley Boulevard one day last week. First, he tried to hold up a couple and when they told him they had no money, he just rode away. Then he stops a jogger, and that guy didn’t carry his wallet, so the kid tries an old lady, and, well, I forget the rest, but I guess this was all within one block, so all the victims jumped on him and held him down while one called the police.”

  “What a kick,” I said, with no kick in my voice.

  “Okay, I’ve had my fun. Not that Virge told me anything top secret, but he was willing to share for whatever reason. Everyone down there wants this to be put to bed quickly, believe me. The commissioner’s phone is ringing off the hook.”

  “Are you saying that he thinks I could help?”

  “Not in so many words. But I think it would be a good idea if you went down and talked to them.”

  “You mean tell them about the boxes and all. Didn’t you tell him today?”

  “I don’t even know what the ‘all’ is, by the way,” Bruce said. I wasn’t shocked that Bruce was aware that I’d been holding back from him. He’d had a lot of experience with my moods, tone of voice, and signs of tension. “And no, I didn’t tell him about the boxes. That’s for you to do.”

  “I don’t see the boxes as all that important anyway,” I said. “The crime scene people had already been through Keith’s office and taken whatever they wanted. Eventually Woody or some other faculty member would have cleaned out the rest of the stuff. Why not me?”

  “I’ll buy that,” he said.

  “I hope the dean does tomorrow.”

  “It’s not as if you’re withholding ev
idence.”

  “I might be.”

  Bruce put his fork down. His heavy eyebrows moved closer together.

  “Hit me with it.”

  What kind of psychology training were medevac personnel given that Bruce was able to turn things around and I ended up spilling everything first?

  I told Bruce about the parade of people who walked through the crime scene and even messed with it, as Woody did.

  “Soph,” was all he said.

  “I know, I know. I’ll go by tomorrow right after I see the dean, I promise. Now it’s definitely your turn.”

  “Well, I’m glad to report that the cops are on target. They’re putting the murder at sometime after one o’clock, which fits with Rachel’s finding him already dead at quarter to two.”

  Whew. The police figured it out on their own. I felt marginally better. All I needed to do was give them the curious timelines for the cake and the yellow sheets.

  “Are the results in on the poison? Can they tell what it was that killed him?”

  “Potassium chloride.”

  “Like the label on the bottle on Keith’s desk.”

  “Uh-huh. I actually saw the crime scene photo of the bottle. It was transparent, with a white label, and it was in solid form, a granular white powder. But it’s very soluble in water. I guess it’s common in a chem lab. We probably even have some in the supply trailer.”

  I thought of Rachel’s missing key to the cabinet in the main chemistry lab. “So someone used Rachel’s key to get it out of the cabinet, melted it in water, and put it in a syringe?”

  “I don’t think melted is the right word.”

  I shrugged it off. “Close enough. Where did all that happen? I mean, do you just go to the sink and mix it all in a glass?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Virge says there was no such evidence in the Franklin Hall chem lab. No glass, so to speak, as in your scenario, or stirrer. They think the actual mixing was done off-site.”

  “Then why would the killer put the bottle on the desk? Isn’t it obvious it was just a plant, to point to Rachel?”