The Square Root of Murder

by Ada Madison

  “Isn’t that what we call vested interest?” Virgil asked.

  Bruce gave him a “what else is new” look. “What’s good is we signed a new contract, with Oceanview Hospital, to do all their transport.”

  “Apparently the competition isn’t creating a problem for MAstar.”

  “Not at all. We’re spinning it like it’s good for us. We can use it to make a case for some updated equipment and a facility upgrade.”

  “You’re going to upgrade the double-wide?” Virgil asked.

  We all laughed, maybe a little too hard on my part.

  At long last, Virgil pushed his crumb-free plate away. “Let’s get to it, Sophie,” he said.

  I took a deep breath. “Are you sure you don’t want dessert first?”

  Both men broke out in the kind of laughter that ends in coughing.

  It was strange, and not in a good way, to see the coffee table in my den covered with crime scene photos. Virgil had spared me anything truly disturbing, but any reminder of Keith Appleton’s murder was unwelcome.

  Keith was the only faculty member in Franklin Hall to add an area rug to his office. A queasy feeling came over me when I saw a close-up of the blue oriental design carpet strewn with office supplies and crumpled yellow sheets of paper. The paper clips, pens, and pencils scattered over the floor might as well have been bloody daggers.

  I must have shivered, because Virgil had a worried look on his face. “Are you okay with this, Sophie?”

  I asked for it, didn’t I? “I’m good,” I said.

  Bruce stuck his head in. “I’ll be in your office, Sophie, hacking into your email, if you need me.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  Virgil gave us a look. “I forgot how you guys go at it.”

  The close-ups of the papers were incredibly clear. However else the Henley PD might be strapped for money in the forensics department, they had an excellent camera and photography crew.

  Virgil spread out more than a dozen views of Keith’s office floor, encompassing the yellow sheets, each in a different wrinkled stage. On some sheets, only partial phrases showed.

  “We’ve smoothed out the pages, of course,” Virgil said, laying out another set, where the writing was more visible, but still not completely. “I think you can fill in the blanks.”

  I picked up each photograph in turn and took my time reading the red handwriting. I saw “(illegible due to creasing) is rubbish” on one, and “Your Awful Data . . . (illegible due to tear)” on another. Visible in full were “Use your brains” in the margin of one sheet and “Flaky reference” at the bottom of another.

  “These comments don’t even sound like Keith,” I said. “He never says ‘rubbish’, or ‘flaky,’ and what scientist says ‘awful data,’ and capitalizes the words at that? I’ve heard him use ‘worthless,’ for example, but never ‘awful’. He’d refer to data as inadequate or spurious or skewed.”

  “Of course he would.”

  “And look how close together the letters are in each word. That indicates a person who lacks self-confidence, has low self-esteem, and is uncomfortable with himself. That was not Keith.” I cleared my throat. I seemed to have been channeling Ariana.

  “Sounds like you’ve been taking a class on handwriting analysis.”

  “Maybe.”

  “When did you fit that in?”

  “I’m a quick study.”

  “That you are.”

  “What if you could get, say, a dozen members of the faculty and administration to vouch for the fact that that is not Keith’s handwriting? Would that convince you that the markings on these pages are fake?”

  Virgil shook his head. “Too subjective.”

  “What is your plan for checking the handwriting?” I asked, as sweetly as I could.

  “I need to run it by a few people, but most likely we’ll be going back in and asking for handwriting samples from students and faculty.”

  “But the killer would obviously know why you were on this track and alter his handwriting in some way.”

  “Experts say you can’t do that. There’s always a tell, something that gives you away, unless you’re a professional forger, I guess. Didn’t your teacher tell you that?”

  “I left early.”

  I knew that would get Virgil laughing and buy me some time. Enough for me to come up with an idea.

  “Let me get you the samples.”

  “And how would you do that?”

  “I have years worth of notes or cards from just about everyone in Franklin Hall, and that’s your main suspect pool, isn’t it?”

  Virgil didn’t say “yay” or “nay” to my supposition.

  Instead he asked, “Doesn’t everyone email or text these days?”

  “On the whole yes, for immediate communication. But a student will often slap a handwritten note on a stickie when she submits a paper or a problem set.”

  “Something like, ‘Here’s my paper’?” Virgil asked.

  “More like an apology for being late or telling me there’s a reference missing that she’ll bring me tomorrow.”

  “The modern version of ‘My dog ate my homework,’” Virgil said, pleased with himself.

  “Exactly.”

  “Speaking of emails,” Virgil said. “The techs have been at work on Appleton’s computer.”

  Uh-oh. I’d been waiting for this. Rachel’s nasty email, sent to Keith the day before he was murdered, had been on my mind. “Is that why Rachel was first in line again in Interview Two this afternoon?”

  “Interview Two?”

  “I think of it as the torture chamber.”

  Virgil smiled. “Archie’s a good guy.”

  No comment.

  “I know Rachel sent one that was a little out of line, but—”

  “But it turns out, so did quite a few others. Not a popular guy if you’ll forgive my saying so.”

  I felt a wave of relief, followed quickly by one of guilt over my delight that Rachel wasn’t the only one bombarding Keith with harsh words.

  “He wasn’t as bad as it looks,” I said. “The janitor loved him and it turns out he was some kind of benevolent uncle to his family in Chicago. We just never got to see that side of him.” Here I was again, defending Keith in death as I’d never defended him in life.

  “Most people aren’t as bad as they seem,” Virgil said, and I knew at that moment we were both thinking of Archie.

  Back to work. “On the handwriting samples? I have loads of holiday and birthday cards and thank you notes. I could pull together quite a set that we . . . you could compare with the comments on Rachel’s thesis pages. That way whoever did this has no warning that we’re on to him.”

  Virgil sat back and took one of the whistling breaths that he and Bruce seemed to have a patent on. I waited not so patiently, my mind racing ahead with how to gather the promised postcards, greeting cards, and notes from various corners of my house.

  “Okay,” Virgil said. I nearly hugged him. “Tomorrow morning. Give me your best shot.”

  Then I did hug him. “Thanks, Virgil. Next time, dinner will be New York strip steaks and potatoes.”

  “And beer,” he said.

  “And lots of beer.”

  Virgil left around ten o’clock. Bruce had picked up enough of our meeting to get the gist of what was ahead of me. He and Virgil spent a few minutes in my driveway before Virgil took off in his old Malibu. He had flung his jacket over his shoulder, his wide profile dwarfing Bruce, who was in his longish khaki shorts. I could only imagine that conversation.

  “Where did you find her?” Virgil might have asked.

  “Up in the air,” Bruce might have answered.

  “I suppose there’s no chance you’re going to sleep tonight,” Bruce said, when he reentered the house.

  I’d already pulled a box of greeting cards onto my lap in the den. I saved cards until I had a large enough stack and then gave them to Ariana who used them in the grade school where she volunteered
as an arts specialist. She and the kids made small gift boxes out of the cards. She’d show them how to fold the card so the design on the front became the top of the box. Ariana was expert at using scorers to get the edges clean and crisp. Lucky for me, I’d been negligent in handing over the cards and now had a wealth of potentially useful handwriting samples for Virgil.

  “I’m not tired,” I said. “And I’m sure you’re not, since you had that nice, long nap.”

  He took a seat on the couch, one pillow over. “Okay. Hand over a bunch. What are we looking for?”

  I shifted the box from my lap to his. “While you look through these, I’ll search some other places for cards. We need anything with handwriting from Keith, Hal, Pam Noonan, Liz . . . oh, make it any student or teacher whose name you recognize from Franklin Hall. Plus Dean Underwood.”

  Bruce raised his eyebrows at the dean’s name. “Plain Phyllis?”

  I shrugged. “Why not?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Bruce ran his hand across his brow, as if I’d asked him to dig a ditch. “You’ll owe me.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  I got up and began my sweep of all the odds and ends spots in my house, all the places I put things on their way to where they belonged.

  On a rack with computer peripherals I found a small pile of birthday cards from April that hadn’t made it to the stack I was gathering for Ariana. I usually sifted through them first, including only designs I thought were workable, and also to be sure some seven-year-old didn’t end up with too personal a message among her art supplies.

  In the knife drawer in my kitchen were postcards from Hal and Gil, who’d been to Bermuda at the end of June to celebrate his degree, and one from Fran and her husband, Gene, who’d taken their yearly cruise to Mexico. I hoped the scrawled “see you soon” and “the buffets are great” were enough to make some decent comparisons.

  The odds and ends drawer in my bedroom dresser was a gold mine of more postcards and thank you notes stretching back to Christmas. Embarrassing, but serendipitous.

  In an end table drawer in my den were recent invitations, including one from Hal to attend his graduation. It was a professionally printed card, issued by the school, but he’d handwritten a note about how Bruce was welcome, too.

  Dean Underwood, true to form, always handwrote her holiday greetings to her faculty. I never dreamed I’d be putting the note to this unpleasant use.

  I had more samples of Rachel’s handwriting than of anyone else. I included several pieces so the set would be complete, though I didn’t agree with Virgil that Rachel was devious enough to have framed herself in order to look innocent.

  I returned to the den with a grocery bag half full of relevant correspondence. Bruce had arranged his possibles in stacks, one for each student or teacher.

  He pointed to the array. “I should have read these a long time ago. It tells me a lot about how you interact with your students.” He picked a note card off one of the piles and read. “Dear Dr. Knowles, Bijillion thanks for listening the other night. I was ready to give up totally and now I know I can do it. Yay. You rock! Love, Tanya.” He put it down and pulled another. “Dr. Knowles, you’re the best. I never thought I’d pass that test, and could never ever”—those words are underlined, Bruce noted—“have done it without your extra tutoring and encouragement. Franklin Hall needs a statue of you!”

  He reached for a third, but I put my hand on his. “I get the idea.”

  “I didn’t realize how involved you are outside the classroom.”

  “What did you think I do all day?”

  He shrugged. “You know, just teach for an hour and fifteen minutes then take off for the pool, and go back the next day for another hour and fifteen minutes.”

  I held my hand to my head, palm out. “Where shall I begin,” I emoted.

  Bruce drew me into a hug. “You rock,” he said.

  Bruce turned in around midnight. By the morning, he’d be back on a regular sleep schedule for the next seven days. A good thing, too, since he had to be up early for his yearly physical, verifying among other things that he wasn’t diabetic, depressed, or prone to seizures. A drug test was also required. All to keep his license. Good to know the skies were safe with MAstar’s PICs.

  I was satisfied that I’d gathered enough handwriting samples for Virgil. I wished he’d left the photos so I could get started now vetting the phrases on Rachel’s thesis pages. It was impossible for me to get anywhere from memory. I needed the pages with their gruesome bloodred marks in front of me. But Virgil had been firm about taking everything away with him, even though he’d be missing a chance to profit from the expertise of Ariana Volens, a professional.

  “I’ve met Ariana,” Virgil had said, as if that explained why he wouldn’t let me give her copies.

  The most I could coax out of my new (again) favorite detective was that I could stop by the office with my samples at ten in the morning.

  “That late?” I’d remarked.

  He gave me that look, before he realized I was kidding.

  Nothing better to do than go to bed. I knew I’d sleep better with Bruce in the house, but I didn’t like that loss of my own confidence. I’d lived alone for many years and not been afraid. The only reason I had an alarm system in the first place was because of my mother. When she became disabled I wanted her to have a way to call for help, so I’d had a security system installed, with a panic button on every pad.

  Another reason I’d felt safe had to do with the Henley crime statistic—no murders in recent history, let alone in Franklin Hall where I spent many hours a week.

  All bets were off now, and I wondered if I’d ever feel completely safe again.

  For tonight, I could relax. I fell asleep counting I-dots and loops and the relative weight of T-bars in fine penmanship.

  CHAPTER 21

  When Lucy quickly agreed to meet for coffee at Back to the Grind on Tuesday morning, I was mildly shocked. From the way she’d stormed out of the faculty meeting in Franklin Hall yesterday, I’d expected her to hole up somewhere until after Labor Day. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she withdrew and ended her career at Henley before it began.

  I felt bad that I’d never invited her for lunch or even a girl-to-girl chat until now, when I needed her. How did I let myself get so busy that I couldn’t reach out to a new teacher in my building? Granted she was in the chemistry department, not math, but a distance of three floors was no excuse.

  I let myself off the hook a tad, recalling that I’d never sensed that Lucy needed anything. Students talked favorably about her. I’d heard that she’d landed a small research grant that would employ a half dozen chemistry majors during their free hours, doing calculations related to some kind of reactions. She seemed to be doing well.

  I hadn’t realized how well. Dating Keith Appleton! I was now convinced she was the woman Keith had spoken of to his cousin Elteen. In her short tenure, Lucy had achieved something no longtime faculty member could claim.

  Lucy had arrived first at the small café where I’d met with Pam, Liz, and Casey a couple of days ago. If the baristas were listening in on my recent appearances here, I hoped they wouldn’t think I was setting up shop. I ordered an iced cappuccino and a raspberry scone and left a big tip.

  Lucy seemed forlorn, and not that much older than the freshmen she’d be teaching in a few weeks. She wore a knit sweater and hugged a mug of what looked like hot chocolate with a pile of whipped cream. To look at her you’d think we were in the kind of cold wave we’d had after Christmas, that had set teeth chattering and lasted for weeks. In truth, it was sweltering and all we had now was the weak fan of the coffee shop, barely adequate even at eight in the morning.

  She half rose when she saw me. I felt old, and to confirm it, my knees creaked as I sat down.

  I looked around the shop, relatively empty this Tuesday morning. I recognized some Henley dorm students whom I didn’t have in class, group studying, it seemed. I certai
nly understood why they might seek a change of scenery from the desolate campus.

  It was clear that if Lucy and I were going to have a conversation, I was the one who’d have to go first.

  “Thanks so much for coming, Lucy. I noticed how upset you were at the faculty meeting and I figured all those negative comments about Keith got to you.”

  Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “I knew he wasn’t popular on campus. But he really was the coolest guy, you know.”

  “You two had something special, didn’t you?”

  Lucy’s eyes widened and I sensed she was about to deny it. Then I saw a tiny shrug, as if she realized there was no point. “We just hit it off right away. It didn’t matter that he’s a little older.”

  What’s twenty years? I thought. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that at the meeting yesterday. There’s a lot of history you’re not aware of.”

  “I know that, Dr. Knowles.”

  “Sophie, please.”

  “I’m just saying there was another side to him,” Lucy said.

  “I know.”

  Lucy smiled at last. “Keith had such a sense of humor. He’d find a cartoon on the ’net or in a magazine almost every day, something related to science or to school, and he’d leave it on my desk, so I’d start the day with a laugh. But mostly he had this sense of, I don’t know, I guess you’d call it a duty to maintain high standards. Especially for premed students. He claimed he didn’t want to be operated on by someone who barely got by in med school and he didn’t want anyone to be taken care of by a C student.”

  Not a bad point. But I was here to see for myself whether I thought this sweet young woman was capable of killing her new boyfriend. The more we talked, however, the more the probability of Lucy as killer approached zero.

  I was ready for another iced cappuccino. Lucy was fine with her hot chocolate, so I went to the counter myself. Only once did I look over my shoulder to be sure she hadn’t fled.

  As I waited for my iced drink, a jumble of boxes on the other side of the counter prompted a new thought. The cartons were labeled “filters,” “napkins,” and “lids,” but they might as well have said, “Keith’s Stuff.”