The Square Root of Murder

by Ada Madison

  He nodded and gave me a genuine smile for the first time. “Thanks for your cooperation. Sorry to put you through this, but you know I had to.”

  Not really, but I knew I should count my blessings and split immediately. So, why didn’t I?

  “Do you have any leads in the case?” I asked, astonished that I hadn’t dashed for the safety of my car already. I took one more stab at shifting police attention from Rachel. “I’d be happy to share with you what I’ve observed about Dr. Appleton’s dealings with the students, the other faculty—”

  “We’ll let you know if we need you,” Archie said, back to his serious cop tone.

  I left without another word.

  I replayed the entire interrogation over in my head a number of times on the way home. It seemed clear to me that Archie and/or Virgil had interviewed Dean Underwood before they got to me. I could think of no other way that Archie would have known to quiz me on promotions and on the summons to her office. I wondered what their approach to the dean had been, antagonistic or deferential. Was she an informant or a suspect? After all, if it weren’t for Keith’s support of the change to a coeducational institution, Dean Underwood might have been able to keep her ladies’ academy fantasy.

  In my mind, everyone was a suspect, except Rachel and me.

  The clock on my dashboard, not the most accurate, read five twenty-five. I’d hoped to have enough time before Ariana arrived with herbs and lotions to get a decent start on Keith’s files. I wasn’t completely satisfied that the police had eliminated me from their list. I counted on something concrete to point to the actual murderer.

  I turned into my driveway, pressing the garage door opener from a few yards away. The door rolled up and I headed in, between my treadmill and my workbench.

  The treadmill was in its place, if forlorn for lack of use this summer.

  The workbench was empty.

  CHAPTER 11

  It took some time for me to fully accept that my garage had been burglarized and my plan for a big breakthrough had been thwarted.

  My gardening tools were in place, hanging from a pegboard; my fire extinguisher and two wooden ladders, one long, one short, were in their usual spots against a wall. Small items on racks here and there seemed unmoved. Besides the boxes, the only things that appeared to be missing were the shopping bags with clothing and odds and ends I’d been collecting for the charity pickup. My guess was that the thief assumed the bags were part of my haul from the campus, if indeed that was what this was all about.

  I stood there looking around uselessly until I realized the burglar could still be on my property, even inside my home.

  I made a dash for my car, banged the door locked with my elbow, and drove back out to the driveway. At least if he or she came out of my house, guns blazing, I’d have a little protection, and I might be able to screech away down the street.

  Call the police, said my logical brain. And tell them what? my other brain asked. That I was a petty thief myself, having absconded with boxes of papers and office material that didn’t belong to me, and now they’d been re-stolen? I supposed I could call the station, drag a couple of officers out here, and report that I was missing a few bags of used clothing and usable discards. I could list my old toaster oven, a pillow that was too frilly for my taste, and a stapler that I’d replaced with an electric version.

  No, calling the police was out of the question. How inconvenient.

  I started to formulate a Plan B.

  There were three entrances to my garage—the first was through a door from my kitchen; the second was the electric roll-up door; and a third, side exit led to the narrow passageway outside where I kept my trash containers. The kitchen door, like the rest of my interior perimeter, was always alarmed when I left the house; the other two were not wired for security.

  All I had to do now was open the kitchen door a crack and listen for a beeping sound. Beeping would mean the alarm was still set and my house had not been entered illegally; no beeping would mean someone had intruded. Or might still be rattling around in there. If everything worked properly, in the event of an intrusion, the alarm company would have contacted me. But the system had never been tested in that way—both good news and bad.

  I tapped my steering wheel, thinking.

  I made my decision based on one, trusting the security system and its monitors, and two, the fact that I had neither heard nor seen, nor had I smelled, any sign of an intruder since I arrived.

  I got out of the car, picked off a large rake from the pegboard, and headed for the alarmed but unlocked kitchen door. I turned the knob as silently as I could and pushed the door in, the long, potentially lethal rake at the ready in my other hand.

  Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  I let out a breath. My home had not been violated. I entered the security code, the beeping stopped, and my heart rate returned to normal. I walked back out to the garage, to the side next to my treadmill, and examined the most likely point of entry, through the door between the garage and the side alleyway. Sure enough, the push button on the knob was out, in the unlocked position. I imagined how easy it had been to pick the skimpy lock. Bruce had been after me forever to install a deadbolt and had offered to do it. Too bad I’d told him I’d take care of it.

  Back to the problem of the missing boxes.

  Maybe a gust of wind had blown through, knocking the boxes to the floor. Never mind that boxes were sturdy and heavy, and that there was no cross ventilation available. Even so, I looked under the workbench and behind the water heater. I walked around my garage like someone who couldn’t remember where she’d put a large load of freight. Maybe I’d stuffed the cartons into the tiny area under the metal shelving that held seasonal decorations and archives from my teaching career, or behind the treadmill.

  Of course, there was no sign of them.

  I had to face facts. The boxes had been stolen. Re-stolen. Only Woody knew that I had taken them, and unless he’d been stalking me, he didn’t know I’d taken them off campus. Even if he did know, I couldn’t imagine the sweet old man making tracks to my house while I was at the police station and carting everything back.

  Had Woody told someone? The dean came to mind. But even if she’d already found out that her appointed messenger had been preempted, I couldn’t picture her sending someone to break into my home to retrieve the material. She’d be more likely to have Courtney call me to her office at an inconvenient time so she could cluck her tongue at me in person.

  The thought I’d been avoiding, that someone had been lurking, following my movements this afternoon, kept creeping back.

  Each possibility was more unsettling than the next.

  I sat on an old metal stool and leaned on the empty workbench, working hard to calm myself and think clearly. Why would anyone want files from a dead man’s office? For the same reason I did, to look for clues to his murder. Or to remove something incriminating.

  At the sound of a car entering my driveway, I started and nearly fell off the rickety stool. I’d never been so glad to see Ariana’s happy face and animated wave as she exited her decades-old convertible.

  “How come your car’s out here?” she asked.

  “I hope you brought your herbs and lotions,” I said.

  We sat in my den, sipping a special tea that Ariana promised would cleanse my body and my mind, as I told her the events of my day. Laying it all out for her helped me think more objectively.

  I reviewed my meeting with Rachel and recalled how surprised I was to learn that she’d walked in on Keith after his death. It came to me again how horrible that must have been for her.

  “Woody found the piece of cake and soda Rachel was taking up to Keith, sitting on a chair in his office. Why wouldn’t Rachel tell me she left the cake there?” I asked Ariana. “She told me a bigger truth, that she lied to the police. Why wouldn’t she tell me the whole truth? Why would she say she left the cake outside the door?” The rambling questions were for me more than for Ariana
.

  “Some people can tell the truth only in small pieces,” she wisely observed. “I wish I could see samples of everyone’s handwriting. I have a new book that shows how strong T-crossings and dark, dominant periods are indicative of someone about to explode in rage.”

  I checked to see if she were teasing. She wasn’t.

  I went through my harrowing interview with Archie and earned Ariana’s sympathy and a few more of the small anise cookies she’d made.

  When it came to my visit to campus, I fudged a bit.

  “I borrowed the files from Keith’s office,” I said, as an explanation for why Keith’s possessions had been in my garage in the first place. I wasn’t sure why I decided on the spot not to admit to the ruse I’d used to acquire the material, unless it was to corroborate Ariana’s theory that no one tells the whole truth all the time. I wondered if my skirting the facts would negate the effects of the herbal tea. “It’s creepy that they’re gone now.”

  “I wonder where in the universe they are?” Ariana mused.

  “In the hands of the murderer is my best guest. My big problem is what to do when the dean finds out I took them and then lost them.”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t just outright tell the dean you want to help the police. What do you have to lose?”

  I smiled. “Only my promotion to full professor.”

  “Is there a lot of money at stake if you don’t get it?”

  “A couple of thousand dollars at most. It’s the principle.”

  “I knew that,” Ariana said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not that I wouldn’t miss you, but I wish there were some place better for you. I mean, I know you love Henley but there must be other colleges where they have math departments and cooperative deans. This is Massachusetts, right? The college state?”

  “Yes, there are other colleges, but not necessarily other jobs. Most colleges are cutting back on full-time faculty and using adjuncts.”

  I explained the common practice of giving desperate, unemployed teachers the option of teaching for a flat rate per course. To put together a living, teachers would take on classes at several institutions. They ended up with a lot more work for a lot less pay.

  “And no benefits, I bet,” Ariana added.

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll never understand academia.”

  Sometimes I didn’t either.

  Ariana pushed herself off the easy chair and slapped the palms of her hands against each other.

  “We need to cleanse your house and your garage.”

  Her thin caftan, in shades of red and blue to match her hair, seemed appropriate to her task. She went to her car and brought back her smudging kit, her ritual for purifying a person or a place. I watched as she opened all the windows and doors to allow the free flow of energy.

  I often wished I had Ariana’s faith in a smoldering bundle of herbs; I wished I could believe that the smoke from white sage would carry all the negative energy out of my environs. Instead, what came to mind was a lecture I heard at a conference, on the steady flow energy equation. It soothed me that I could picture the equation and fill in some numbers for the ambient conditions in my home.

  Meanwhile, Ariana recited peace-giving words to the north, south, east, and west.

  Might as well cover all bases, I always told myself when Ariana performed this ritual. It can’t hurt.

  I avoided my stove and oven in the summer months, eating directly from the refrigerator most nights. Ariana had no such fear of additional heat and set to work making dinner while I followed her instructions and took a bath with the rosewater salts she’d made in her own kitchen.

  How bad a day is it that starts and ends with meals made and served by someone I loved in the comfort of my home? I smelled the stir-fry as soon as I entered the hallway. Peppers, broccoli, and soy brought my nose to life. Ariana’s homemade bread baking in the oven added to the promise of a delicious meal.

  “Tofu and rolls in ten,” Ariana called out.

  I used the time to listen to my voicemail on my landline, which I hadn’t checked since I left home this morning. Twelve messages, mostly related to the incident that changed Henley’s summer school schedule and scarred the campus forever.

  Pam, Liz, and Casey assured me they’d be at the library tomorrow morning and wondered again if we could all meet together to save time. I thought not. Three other students in the statistics seminar wanted to know how I was planning to finish off the term. In spite of my bravado with the trio at Franklin Hall this afternoon, I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. I’d return their calls when I had.

  Sometimes I longed for the days when teachers had office hours that were defined by limits, and were not expected to be available twenty-four seven, at school and at home, in person and online, as if we were emergency workers. Now, all our phone numbers and email addresses were listed on the syllabi on the Henley College website, along with our social networking pages.

  The next three calls had been hang-ups. I checked the caller log and saw that all were from the area code for Mansfield, Massachusetts, where the MAstar’s flagship base was located. Bruce usually used his own cell phone to call or text me, but when he did use the facility phone, it was a Mansfield area code that came up, never with the same seven-digit number, from some central switchboard, I assumed.

  It wasn’t like Bruce to not leave even a simple “Hey, it’s me,” and certainly not three times. He’d try my cell before he’d try my landline three times. I replayed the messages and noted the time stamps. The first was at two thirty, when I was on my way to the police station after dropping the boxes off; the second was at three twenty, while I was waiting for my interview with Archie; the third came in at three forty, still waiting for Archie.

  I texted Bruce: “U call?” and made a note to ask him about it after dinner if I didn’t hear from him sooner.

  Two calls were from Seth Phillips, our local reporter for the Henley Forum. I figured he’d been denied comments by the important people on campus and was down to mere associate professors.

  Another student’s message had come in, with an idea about how to finish the semester. She’d suggested, “Just have a big party and call the class over,” followed by an “Oh, my God, that sounds totally awful after what happened. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  “And where were you on Friday afternoon between noon and four o’clock?” I asked my machine as each student reported in.

  Ariana heard me speaking to the machine in a scolding tone. She smiled.

  “Since when did you give up puzzles to take on a murder investigation?”

  I picked up the nearest puzzle, a dodecahedral twisty puzzle made of plastic, one that Ariana herself had given me. I gave it two twists, resulting in further scrambling of the colors, just to make a point.

  “Do I have time for one phone call before dinner? I want to get in touch with Keith’s cousin in Chicago.”

  “Go for it,” Ariana said.

  I went into my office and checked my address book for Elteen Kirsch and found her number.

  Elteen had the voice of a rather old woman, a little shaky and high-pitched. Was it physics that accounted for that? I’d have to ask Hal why voices went up an octave or two as we got older. Or maybe it was a nurse question for Gil, his loving but apparently jealous wife.

  “I know who you are, Dr. Knowles,” Elteen said. “It’s so nice of you to call. Keith talked about you and considered you a very good friend.”

  I was used to this by now. I had no explanation for why Keith went around telling everyone what good friends we were but butted up against me at every turn on faculty committees. As recently as graduation last June, Keith became a one-man campaign against the speaker I’d proposed, a noted Harvard scholar in linguistics. Keith had serious disagreements with the man’s political views. I’d argued that it was a coup for Henley to get him, that we weren’t inviting him to talk about politics and, anyway, that shouldn’t matter
. This was America, wasn’t it? In the end, after winning over the dean, Keith had prevailed and our substitute speaker was a retired botanist with no views whatsoever.

  Elteen had been going on about her cousin. I came in at, “He was very good to us. I can’t tell you how many times he bailed us out when Teddy got sick and couldn’t work. And our Delia is going to a wonderful private high school thanks to her uncle Keith.”

  Here was a further glimpse into Keith Appleton’s other life. The Keith who called me his friend, gave money to his relatives and to the school janitor. The kindly Uncle Keith.

  “How generous of him.”

  “Oh, he was very generous. I feel so bad that he died so young. And right when he was finally starting to keep company with someone, too. A nice young woman, he said.”

  Excuse me? Did keeping company mean what I thought it did? Had Keith hooked up with someone? Bruce had claimed I was oblivious to things like that. But wouldn’t I have known if Keith were dating? Or if Rachel and Hal had something going as Gil thought? Was I so buried in my job—make that jobs—that I didn’t see what was going on around me? Well, too late now.

  “Did you ever get to meet his friend?” I asked, trying to keep it gender neutral, just in case.

  “Oh dear, no. You know he only met her this summer. Bonnie, wasn’t it? Or Annie?”

  Of course I knew. I was his best friend. I mumbled a name and changed the subject.

  “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” I said.

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  I wondered if I dared try to use this condolence call to ask a question of a cousin who saw Keith only in the most favorable light. The “any known enemies” query died on my lips.

  “We’re all very blessed to have known him,” I said, and left it at that.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the word “blessed.” How strange that it should be Keith Appleton who inspired it.

  Roasted peppers and balsamic vinegar notwithstanding, the tofu recipe didn’t cut it for either of us tonight and Ariana and I ended up in my den with large bowls of mocha chip ice cream, cruising television channels until we gave up on finding anything decent. Nothing could make me laugh and no script was as dramatic as the one playing itself out in my life.