The Square Root of Murder (22 page)

“I don’t think Virge has a theory on that. Wherever it was prepared, apparently Keith was given an injection of an unnaturally high concentration, about the same as they use for the death penalty.”

“He’d have to be unconscious, don’t you think? Otherwise he’d fight off the attacker.”

“Or else it was a surprise. Someone he knew got close and . . .” I shuddered. Bruce put his fingers on the side of his neck. “The injection site was right here. The heart just stops.”

“The heart, or Keith’s heart?”

Bruce took my hand across the table. “Sorry, Sophie. They’re saying it was very quick, anyway, that he didn’t suffer for a long time. Some comfort, huh? I know it’s tough on you, even though you weren’t best friends.”

“Some people think we were.” I told Bruce about the many nice words for Keith that came from his cousin and Woody, how generous he was behind our backs.

“Who would have guessed?”

“Not me,” I said.

I hadn’t given much thought to the biological details of Keith’s death. While I’d certainly heard of potassium chloride in connection with fertilizer, it wasn’t in my skill set to remember much of chemistry and chemical formulas. Way too complicated. Besides, chemistry was dangerous. One little atom off and a substance went from harmless to lethal. There was sodium chloride, which was simply salt, and potassium, which I believed was in bananas, but potassium chloride was something that could kill.

I found it amazing that an ingredient commonly kept in a college chemistry laboratory, where students and teachers walked around every day, could be lethal. I knew it in theory, I supposed, a century ago when I took general college chemistry, but this made it in-your-face real.

Bruce had said Keith had been injected. “Did they find the needle?”

“No, nothing like that. They’re still doing fingerprint matching from the furniture, et cetera, but they doubt there will be any that can’t be accounted for from the people who regularly came and went in his office.

“It sounds like the police are kind of stuck.”

“Well, they don’t have much more.”

“How fragile we are,” I said, by way of nothing.

Bruce led me to the den where we sat on the couch for a long time, leaning against each other. I assumed Bruce’s thoughts were, like mine, about the tiny line between life and death, sometimes an atom or a pinprick away.

“Did you ever figure out what all those hang-ups were on your answering machine yesterday?” Bruce asked when we were ready to resume our lives.

“Haven’t given it any more thought.”

“Did you say there was no caller ID?”

“No name came up, but it was a Mansfield area code. A lot of faculty live there.” I stopped a second. “Come to think of it, that’s where Fran Emerson lives. I’d forgotten. I don’t know why she wouldn’t have left a message, but I’ll check with her tomorrow. I’ll see her at two meetings.”

“Did you try using the reverse directory online?”

“I made one pass. For a few bucks I could have taken it another step but it’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t like it, especially the timing, probably right before the break-in, to make sure you weren’t home.”

“But that’s good, right? That means they weren’t out to harm me; they wanted the boxes is all.”

“I still don’t like it.”

I smiled. “You’re just trying to make a case for staying here.”

“Do I need a case?”

Thus ended our briefing for the time being.

 

 

I was strangely unafraid of being alone on Sunday night after Bruce left for work. Maybe because I had a pseudo plan, meaning the will but no actual appointment, to tell all to the police on Monday. I knew I’d feel hugely relieved once I talked to Virgil. I hoped it was Archie’s day off.

It also helped that Bruce called or texted every hour before midnight and wanted me to do the same every hour after that if I was awake.

“No way. I want you to get some sleep,” I told him. “Let’s just have a code. If your phone rings and no one’s there, it’s me, and I need help.”

“Not funny.”

I worked for a while on what I called the Unpopular Puzzle but couldn’t seem to simplify it and still keep it interesting. Maybe I’d ask its only fan, Gil Bartholomew, if she had any ideas.

At some time during my fitful sleep, I found myself being pelted with frosted cake wrapped in yellow sheets of paper. The sheets were overwritten with crosswords that had no order or design. A nightmare.

 

 

No one liked faculty meetings. Whenever you were at a meeting of any committee, it was time away from your students, your research, your class preparation. And so few meetings were actually productive except when you walked away with yet another chore you’d “volunteered” for. I noticed more and more hands on laps these days, as texting and surfing the ’net became the best tactic for surviving the surfeit of meetings.

All-hands meetings were a little different in that you seldom came away with more work to do. Today, roughly one hundred of us, full- and part-time faculty plus another twenty or so staff members, spread ourselves out in the auditorium on the first floor of the administration building. The auditorium was pretty cool and comfortable. The room held rows of blue leather-covered seats, all on one level, enough for five hundred people, with a stage at the front end. It was the original assembly place for the college when the total enrollment was little more than four hundred young ladies of the early to mid part of the twentieth century.

The story went that all students were required to gather here one day a week while the academic dean read to them from one of the discourses in John Henry Newman’s
The Idea of a University
. Each student had an assigned seat and attendance was taken. There would follow a short lecture on a topic from Newman’s book. No Q and A, no discussion, no voicing of opinions. And, need we mention, no talking before, during, or immediately after the hour. I pictured the girls filing silently to their next class, like a line of nuns on the way to chapel.

Those were the days when the faculty ruled the school. I thought of a stickie Fran had on the edge of her computer: “When it gets to be your turn, the rules change.

I would have bet that students back then didn’t question the choice of textbook, whereas on a routine basis I heard, “Why did you pick this book, Dr. Knowles? There aren’t enough graphics,” or “The quizzes are too close together. We need more time to study.” Neither would early twentieth century students have dared to negotiate grades.

It would have been a paradise for the dean. I wondered how I’d have fit in.

I took a seat near the back of the auditorium, not caring to be chatty with any of my colleagues today. They’d situated themselves mostly by department, in groups of two and three, which was about the only way you could interact in rows of seats that were bolted together straight across.

I saw Hal and Lucy in front of me to my right. Lucy looked despondent. It couldn’t have been easy for her to learn that her brand new boss was murdered in the middle of the day while she was partying. Lucy had pulled back her shiny black hair today and held it with a pale blue scrunchie to match her spaghetti-strap dress. The effect was to make her look even younger than the late twenties I guessed she was.

We all waved, but solemnly.

It was nearly ten o’clock, almost time for President Aldridge to convene the meeting. I had no good story for the dean, post-assembly, and no idea where the boxes were.

Fran Emerson, in flowing, pale green, gauzy fabric, slipped into the seat next to me.

“They should excuse department chairs from attending these meetings,” she said.

“Really, all mathematicians.”

“I’m sure Aldridge is going to announce a memorial service for Keith. Do you know when the real funeral is?”

“Me? No. Probably he’ll be sent to his family in Chicago.” I’d forgotten again how I was the one in the know as far as the deceased was concerned. “Oh, by the way, did you try to get me on the phone a couple of times on Saturday afternoon?”

Frown lines, a pause, then “Let’s see. Saturday? No, it was soccer day. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“How do they do that?”

“Do what?”

“Send dead bodies across the country.”

Another misconception: the girlfriend of an emergency worker was in the know when it came to transporting the dead.

“I have no idea.”

The microphone whined its way through feedback, getting our attention more than a bell would have.

President Aldridge, a fiftysomething woman with a physique like Fran’s, tall and imposing, stepped to the microphone at the center of the stage, between the American flag and the flag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She wore a dark suit with a loose jacket, and managed to make it look classy rather than stodgy.

Behind her the college vice presidents and deans sat in a row. I couldn’t see Dean Underwood’s expression from this distance, but her posture was the stiffest on the stage. Heavy blue drapes hung behind them all.

The assembly began.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I’m sure you know why I asked you to gather here this morning.” A pregnant pause. “Henley College has lost one of its most distinguished professors. We are all the more shocked at his violent death.”

There was no mention of Apep
,
Keith’s nickname, after the god of darkness, the destroyer of dreams.

The room was hushed, the audience attentive, although any one of us could have given the sincere if uninspired speech—a wish that the perpetrator be brought to justice and heartfelt condolences to Dr. Appleton’s family. The president treaded lightly on the security issue, warning us all to be extra cautious on campus though certainly nothing like this had ever happened in Henley College’s history and we had no reason to think it would ever happen again. She was working on a brand new security program for the campus, most of which would be in place by the time school reopened for fall classes. She closed with a reminder that we should continue to cooperate fully with the Henley police department.

That last I assumed was directed at me.

As for the new security program, that was probably directed at parents, alums, and the press as much as anyone. I hadn’t thought what a PR nightmare this must be for the administration.

As for our teacherly duties, we were to work with our students to a mutually satisfying conclusion to the summer session. The staff was working on a memorial to be held in this very hall as soon as arrangements could be made.

We stood for a moment of silence, during which I wondered how exactly they did send a body across the country. Maybe Bruce would know.

 

 

Ten minutes later, after a hot, sweaty trudge across campus, the Henley College math and science faculties reconvened in Franklin Hall. Although all of us had keys to the front door, we waited on the wide landing at the top of the steps for the last person to arrive, then entered the building as a group, practically shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t hard to guess why.

The hallway was dark and hostile. We were greeted by the indeterminate sounds of an empty building, followed by buzzing fluorescents when we flicked on the lights. We walked past classrooms and laboratories and right past my office; I still hadn’t entered it since Friday afternoon. Afraid of what I’d find behind my desk? I couldn’t explain it.

Strangely, no one spoke until we reached the lounge on the first floor where the two sides of the L met.

We were minus only a couple of instructors who were too far away on vacation to make it back, and the physics department chair who was still doing research on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Franklin Hall lounge, where we last met for a party, was more like a funeral parlor today. Where a few days ago the long table against the wall had held cake, frosted cookies, drinks, and colorful celebration napkins, today the gold lamè cloth had been replaced by a stark white paper covering. On it were iced tea, lemonade, and simple shortbread cookies. It was what my Catholic friends told me Lent was all about. I assumed Robert Michaels, Keith’s chairman, had made arrangements for this spread. In a normal time, it would have been Rachel’s chore.

As clear as day, I pictured Rachel slipping a piece of Hal’s cake onto a small paper plate. The next image was of Rachel bending over Keith’s body, realizing he wasn’t reaching for something that had fallen behind his desk. In my mind I saw her place the cake on the floor outside the door, but then the cake flew back on its own, landing on the chair in the office, and then flying out again, hovering over Woody’s barrel in the hallway, ultimately descending into the trash.

While I was mentally drawing the trajectory of the cake and starting to plot the course of the yellow sheets of paper, the meeting came to order in a weird kind of way.

The three department heads sat on the only couch, at one end of the room: Fran Emerson, head of mathematics; Judith Donohue, head of biology; and Robert Michaels, head of chemistry, who looked the most despondent of all.

Robert, mid-thirties, I guessed, with a thick shock of reddish hair, was serving his first term as department chair. He spoke first. “It’s unreal, isn’t it?” he asked. “One minute you’re at your desk, and the next . . .” His voice trailed away.

Murmurs and short exchanges rippled through the room in answer. I noticed Lucy Bronson keeping to herself and thought again how difficult it must be for her, with only five weeks under her belt at Henley. If I remembered correctly, she’d come from a small school in Maine and, therefore, had little of the support needed at a time like this. I made a note to reach out to her, if only to invite her to a beading class.