The Square Root of Murder

by Ada Madison

  “We could start with who would have a really strong reason to want Keith dead.”

  “You’re kidding,” Robert said. “You mean like that he kept me from getting full health care benefits because I took a lighter load the term my daughter was born?”

  “That was an administrative decision,” I said. “Keith was only one vote on the faculty senate.”

  “The deciding vote,” Robert said.

  I’d forgotten that. It was harder to justify Keith’s vote in this case as beneficial to the college, unless it was to prevent faculty from sloughing off just because they had families. If so, I’d have to call it cold.

  I looked at Fran, who was biting her lip. Probably dying to mention the change in bylaws that would have denied her the award she deserved for distinguished service.

  “Let’s face it,” Hal said. “We’d have a hard time thinking of someone who didn’t have a gripe against him.”

  How well I knew.

  A loud noise interrupted us. The sound of Lucy’s chair as she pushed it back across the tile and dashed out of the room. I didn’t get a look at her face as she uttered a raspy “ ‘Scuse me, please,” but I doubted she was smiling.

  Thanks to support from Judith, my faculty friends indulged me in telling me how they’d spent the day on Friday. Of course not for an alibi, I told them, just to see if something useful surfaced.

  Nothing did.

  “Too bad Lucy left,” Fran said.

  “She’s new. She’s probably whacked out by all this,” Judith said.

  I snapped to. Or she’s the girlfriend, I thought. Bonnie, Annie, Lucy might all sound the same to elderly ears. And Lucy’s last name was Bronson. Both Bs, two syllables. Close enough.

  Lucy could be the name of Keith’s girlfriend.

  Or his killer.

  CHAPTER 17

  I passed on joining the Ben Franklin faculty for lunch downtown. I felt I’d gotten all the information I could out of the group—that is, none—and I’d put off my meeting with the dean long enough. If I wanted to have lunch with anyone other than Bruce, it was Lucy Bronson. I made a note to make that happen.

  Like a good employee, I headed for the boss’s office. After one stop and one phone call, that is.

  The stop: I’d brought with me the manila envelope with the journal article I’d finished on Friday night before things fell apart. I stepped into the business office, two doors down from the assembly hall, said hello to Joey behind the desk, and slipped the envelope containing my twenty-first peer-reviewed research paper into the outgoing mail slot. Now I could say truthfully that I had more than twenty publications on my resume, should it come up. I wouldn’t mention the hundreds of puzzles and brainteasers.

  The phone call: I settled on a bench along the path between Franklin Hall and Dickinson Library. The heat from the concrete quickly penetrated my thin cotton dress and I shifted around to put more fabric between me and the cooking seat. I pulled out my cell and punched in Elteen’s number in Chicago, where it was mid-morning. I wasn’t proud of what I was about to do, but extraordinary circumstances, etc., as Winston Churchill, or someone of that ilk, once said.

  “Well, hello again,” Elteen said when she learned who was calling.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I wonder if you could help with a little task.”

  “Anything I can do, surely,” she said.

  “It’s about the young woman Keith was seeing. Lucy, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, I couldn’t think of her name, but yes, Lucy Brownson, something like that. What about her?”

  “Aha” nearly slipped from my lips.

  “Would it be all right if I gave her your address in case she wants to send a card to express her sympathy?” I looked up to the searing sun and hoped its rays wouldn’t turn into lightning bolts, set to chastise a sinner.

  “Oh surely. Do you have my address?”

  “I do have it, but I didn’t want to give it out without consulting you.”

  After a few more utterances from Elteen about how very sweet and thoughtful I was, I was nearly in tears and finally hung up the phone and hung my head in shame.

  “She should be back any minute,” Courtney said as I approached her desk. We both knew who “she” was. Courtney’s long, red hair was pulled back tight off her face, her short skirt dangerously close to the dean’s limit. She had a tall glass of lemon zinger iced tea ready for me. “Just in case,” she said.

  I thanked her and gave her a hug.

  “Oh, one little thing, Courtney. Lucy Bronson had to leave the meeting early and I’d like to get in touch with her. My faculty directory is in my office in Franklin.” I swung my arm in the direction of the faraway building, such a tough journey on a day like this. “Can you give me her numbers?”

  “You know, she’s so new, I don’t think she’s in the directory yet anyway.” I knew that. “But I’m sure I have it here.”

  “Thanks for being the only cooperative person on campus at the moment,” I said.

  Courtney gave me a knowing smile as she handed me a pink stickie. She probably thought I was referring only to her boss.

  I took up my post on the waiting bench. Any more of these summonses and I’d expect a plaque with my name on it nailed to the back. At least this seat wasn’t giving me a third-degree burn. I was itching to talk to Lucy and annoyed that the dean was taking my time.

  I dug in my briefcase for a small metal puzzle with interlocking rings. The idea was to unlock them, freeing them completely from each other.

  In a way I felt sorry for Dean Phyllis Underwood. In a couple of months her long-held fantasy of Henley College was to end as young men poured onto the campus, requiring separate restrooms and careful monitoring in the dormitories.

  Dean Underwood’s last-ditch effort before the recruiting for men began had been to warn the board of trustees that all alumnae funding would come to a halt if the admissions policy were changed.

  “They won’t send money, and they certainly won’t continue to send their daughters,” she’d prophesied.

  Now that I thought of it, it had been Keith Appleton who’d come up with statistics to prove otherwise, based on similar situations across the country. My privately held response to the dean’s argument was simply, what daughter obeyed her mother anymore?

  The last time I sat outside the dean’s office was also the last time I saw Keith Appleton. I wondered if Benjamin Franklin Hall birthday parties would ever be the same. Would we maintain hushed tones in his honor? Eschew cake and soda? I shivered as I thought of the turn all our lives had taken.

  Today the dean approached her office from the outside, presumably having had things to do between the president’s assembly and our meeting.

  She addressed me immediately, even before we were behind her office door. “I suppose you think that was a very smart move, Sophie, but let me tell you it was not.”

  Courtney busied herself at her computer, seeming to make more noise than necessary as she hit the keys and slapped papers on her desk. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she broke out into a high-pitched la la la la la la la. At one point she gave me a sympathetic look.

  I took a sip of tea. It felt good on my parched lips and throat. “Dean Underwood, I’m sorry I misunderstood. I thought you’d be happy someone took care of packing up Dr. Appleton’s office.”

  The dean, more perceptive than I was used to giving her credit for, was not impressed. I’d had a whole day to come up with a better cover. Too bad I hadn’t done so. “Don’t insult me, Sophie.”

  “Really, it’s just one more task you don’t have to worry about.”

  The dean shook her head in a “tsk-tsk” manner. “And then returning them like that. Did you think that would be the end of it?”

  Returning them? I didn’t know what she was talking about and was about to say as much.

  By now we were in her office. She closed the door behind us and I saw a brown cardboard mirage in the cor
ner between two antique bookcases. Three cartons, two on the floor, one piled on top. My boxes? Rather, Keith’s boxes? The boxes had been returned? The box thief stole them to give to the dean? I blinked my eyes a few times, and thought of pinching myself.

  “I hoped it would be, Dean Underwood. The end of it, I mean,” I said. When in doubt, fake it.

  “You’ve gotten poor Mr. Conroy very upset and he doesn’t deserve that.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “He thinks it’s his fault that you went off with those cartons and didn’t take them immediately to my office.”

  “It wasn’t at all his fault.”

  “And then, when he found them outside today at the basement entrance to Benjamin Franklin Hall . . . well, he was completely confused. He called Courtney, quite distraught.”

  “Poor Woody. I’ll bet his head was spinning.” Like mine. “Who was supposed to collect the contents of Dr. Appleton’s office, anyway?” I asked. No harm trying.

  “Dr. Knowles.” I thought it was a good sign that she was back to our normal mode of address, though the tone was an exasperated one, as if I had such nerve asking a question like that.

  “I’m sorry. I meant no harm.”

  “I’m not dumb, Dr. Knowles, whatever you and your liberal friends think behind my back. I know that your assistant, Rachel Wheeler, is the main suspect in Dr. Appleton’s murder. And I know how important it is to you to clear her name. That’s very noble. But investigating a murder is not your job. And it is certainly not seemly in a faculty member of Henley College.”

  Is it seemly to be murdered on campus? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. The dean’s face was red enough already. The campus couldn’t handle another medical emergency.

  Why did the dean want the boxes anyway? What was the big deal that she didn’t get them right away? She could have assigned that task to Courtney or her assistant. She could have had them shipped, unexamined, to Chicago since the police were not interested in their contents. Was there something special the dean was looking for among Keith’s possessions? His little black book? I thought about asking for her alibi on Friday afternoon. Another time.

  “I apologize for any inconvenience. I didn’t realize the boxes were that important to you.”

  “I insist you refrain from further investigation, Dr. Knowles.”

  “With all due respect, Dean Underwood”—a phrase she might appreciate—“whatever I’ve done has been on my own time.” Like my puzzle work and my beading, I added silently.

  “You’re a full-time faculty member, and one who is interested in doing the kind of research that will qualify you for a promotion. I find it hard to believe that you have time for a frivolous romp into police work.”

  “My classes, my faculty participation, and my research are all going smoothly. There has been no interruption in my duties here,” I said. I might as well have used the term “superwoman” and been done with it.

  “I don’t think you’re fully grasping the importance of what I’m saying.”

  “It’s very important to me to assist the police in discovering who committed the horrible crime on our campus. I would think it would be important to the administration as well.” That should get to her. “I plan to help my assistant in whatever way I can. And again, it’s all on my own time.” That is, none of your business.

  “Is it worth your own promotion?”

  I raised my eyebrows. I wished she hadn’t asked that question. It sounded strangely like blackmail. “What are you saying?”

  “I think you know exactly what I’m saying.”

  With that, Dean Underwood took her seat behind her desk and didn’t give me another look. It was one of her famous nonverbal dismissals.

  The dean’s message was clear: Behave yourself or stay at the associate professor level for the rest of your career. And just try to get a teaching job anywhere else. The long arm of academia.

  The brief meeting threw me off balance, seeing the boxes reappear and hearing a threat against a promotion and a title I wanted and deserved. But what occupied my mind as I walked down the stairs and out the door of the administration building was, what had the thief done with my usable discards for the charity pickup?

  My first choice for a lunch partner was Lucy Bronson, but she wasn’t answering any of her numbers. Not wanting to overdo it and frighten her away, I left only one cryptic message on her cell. I hoped we could chat.

  Maybe a normal lunch would be better anyway. This morning at nine was the start of Bruce’s seven days off. I usually gave him a little breathing room at the start of the week, but nothing had gone as usual lately.

  I called my boyfriend and invited him on a date.

  “Unless you’re completely exhausted,” I added.

  He flexed his muscles. “Not me,” he said. “And anyway, I’m moving in until this situation is resolved, remember?”

  I took that as a date.

  The small sandwich shop next to campus, about halfway between Bruce’s place and mine, was too crowded for the kind of private murder and mayhem talk I had in mind, so we switched our order to takeout and Bruce and I drove separately back to my house.

  Working backward on my day so far, I gave him the rundown on my meeting with Dean Underwood as well as the saga of the boxes.

  “She’s blackmailing you,” Bruce said, setting up my kitchen counter with plastic boxes. Pasta salad, carrot salad, and turkey sandwiches from the shop competed for space on the marble-topped island with my own veggie chips and supplementary condiments.

  “I hoped you’d see it that way.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t agree with her.”

  Two negative words, like multiplying two negative numbers, gave a positive. Too bad. I’d counted on Bruce’s support as I continued to work out the scenario for Keith’s murder.

  “You know I can’t drop this,” I told Bruce.

  He sighed loudly, close to a whistle.

  “Can she do that? Can she actually kill your chances for full professor?”

  “She’s the dean.”

  “Can’t you appeal or something?”

  “It’s her word against mine. She can always make up something that sounds like a good reason to deny me.”

  “Such as?”

  I shrugged, thinking of the legion of cases where deans like mine have wielded power against a teacher they didn’t like. One hour at the bar at an academic conference will give you a plethora of stories. I started a litany of examples.

  “I don’t participate enough in college life.”

  “You’re always there.”

  “Again, her word against mine. I don’t have enough publications.”

  “You have a packed resume. How many publications are enough?”

  “There’s no magic number. What I’d have to do is show that so-and-so got promoted last year or whenever with fewer publications and less committee work, blah, blah, blah. But do I want to spend my time on that kind of research?”

  “You’d do it for someone else.”

  “Maybe. But in the end it’s subjective anyway.”

  “I don’t understand academia.”

  “Get in line with Ariana.”

  “Why do you even stay?”

  “Because I love teaching and I love the interaction with the students. And the good outweighs the bad. Not all the administration is like this particular dean. Our vice presidents are terrific, and so is President Aldridge, with a real commitment to education. And, cue the violins, I feel like I can make a difference.”

  “I thought you’d say that.”

  “Not like you with life and death on the line. Working with emergencies all the time.”

  “That’s my life. Emergencies interspersed with the popcorn maker.”

  “I still think you should learn CPR, however,” I told him.

  He screwed up his nose. “Not me. I don’t like touching patients.”

  We took a few minutes to rehash a conversation we had early in ou
r relationship. I’d been amazed that medevac pilots stayed in the helicopter at the accident scene while the nurses tended the patients. The pilots had no medical training beyond the first aid class I’d had as camp counselor one summer.

  “Hello-o-o,” Bruce had sung out. “I’m busy in there. I’m checking our position; the fuel; the GPS, figuring out the best hospital to target, depending on what the nurses tell me; determining what the highest obstacle is between us and the facility, figuring in the power lines, the telephone poles; calculating the weight of the crew plus patients.”

  “Okay, you’re off the hook,” I’d said.

  But I still thought a class in CPR wouldn’t hurt.

  Bruce had finished his lunch.

  “Are you going to eat that?” he asked, pointing to my half sandwich and mounds of salads.

  Without waiting for an answer, he reached over and scooped up my half sandwich. It had happened before, especially when I’d been doing all the talking during a meal.

  Though I didn’t need it to make my case, I offered another horror story.

  “An associate professor I met at a conference in Pittsburgh told me his dean went after his students in order to make a case against tenure. He claimed that not enough of this guy’s math majors got into good graduate schools. Underwood could do that to me.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so, but there again I’d have to spend a lot of time appealing the decision with data.”

  “I thought you loved statistics.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “So what’s your bottom line?” Bruce asked me.

  “Meaning?”

  “Is it worth it to lose your promotion over the investigation?”

  Leave it to Bruce to ask tough questions. I surprised myself by how quickly I knew the answer. “I’m not going to stop trying to help.”

  “No matter what it means to your career?”

  “No matter what.”