The Square Root of Murder (24 page)

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 our 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.”

“That’s my girl,” Bruce said.

I was glad to hear it, but my head hurt. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Have you gone in to see Virgil yet?”

“Something else else.”

Probably because Bruce was ready for a nap, I was able to finagle my way out of making the call to the Henley PD immediately and into getting him to talk about his own dealings with them yesterday.

We’d moved to the den and I sat on the couch with his head on my lap. I used my most soothing voice while I rubbed his head.

“Did you think of anything else from your meeting with Virgil?” I asked. Manipulating girlfriend.

“I told you everything, about the poison and all. I know the police have questioned everyone from the president to the groundskeepers. Even delivery people and trash collectors who were around that week. The chief is pretty shook up. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.”

“It’s the same on the campus. I wouldn’t want to be working in counseling or admissions right now,” I said. “Can you imagine how frantic the parents are? Of the incoming freshmen especially. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were already some withdrawals. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better. I’m going to try to meet Lucy Bronson, the new girl in chemistry, later . . .”

No sense continuing. Bruce was fast asleep. I wondered how much of my rambling he’d heard. I slipped off the couch and put a pillow under his head to replace my lap. On a cooler day I might have tucked him in with one of my afghans, but the heat had let up only slightly and my west-facing den was warm from the afternoon sun.

I checked my cell in case I’d missed a call back from Lucy. Nothing.

I considered calling the police station to be sure Virgil was there. I hoped it was Archie’s day off. In the end, I decided to take my chances. I didn’t want to go on record as having preferred one cop over another.

I remembered hearing about a forty-eight-hour rule—that most murder cases are solved within forty-eight hours or not at all. It was already more than seventy-two hours since Keith had been murdered. What hope was there?

I had to give it a shot and talk to the PD, no matter how delinquent I’d been up to now.

My timeline was complete and printed out. I stuffed it in my briefcase.

There was nothing left to do but turn myself in. I left a note for Bruce and took off.

 

 

I was the only guest on the bench in the waiting area of the police building, a common posture for me this week, sitting in wait for a superior of one brand or another to chide me. Hanging around the lobby was much better than sitting in Interview Two, however, where I’d stewed before my meeting with Archie on Saturday.

I’d attached a small, round MAstar pin to my knit top. I’d picked up the pin and a cap and other logo items at a visit to the facility. My thought was that the whole emergency services thing might resonate with the cops in the building and provide good karma.

Uniformed officers, young and old, male and female, passed by me, chatting, carrying clipboards and folders, talking on cell phones. A few were behind the high counter making and taking calls. Every now and then one of them smiled at me or asked me if I’d been taken care of.

I checked out the oversized bulletin board across from me. I smiled at several cartoons and one-liners, my favorite being “If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, should it be reported as a hostage situation?”

My attention was caught by the word
STATISTICS
at the top of a series of bar charts. Lo and behold, tacked to the board was a graphic profile of Henley, Massachusetts, compliments of Bristol County.

I’d finished extracting the metal loops of the twister puzzle while waiting for Dean Underwood this morning and didn’t have another handy. Lacking anything to read, I walked to the corkboard and took a look at my hometown from a different perspective. Laid out on several sheets of legal-size paper was the Henley data on gender (exactly half male and half female, what were the chances?); race (ninety-two percent Caucasian); and age. I was dismayed that on my upcoming forty-fifth birthday, I’d jump to the next bracket, comprising eighteen percent of Henley’s population. Henley had a median income slightly higher than that of the state. Good to know.

Crime statistics were on the sheet also. Only seven police incidents labeled property crimes were noted for last year. If I reported all the times the boxes from Keith’s office had been stolen, the total would go up by two or three for this year. I had no clue whether the person who took the cartons from my garage was the same one who carted them to the basement of Franklin Hall. Maybe the thief who robbed the thief (me) was also robbed. I felt a wordplay puzzle coming on.

As for violent crime, there hadn’t been a murder or manslaughter in the last eight years, which was as far back as the chart went. I was sure the numbers were very different for Boston, forty miles to the north. Leave it to Keith Appleton to give our town a memorable, one of a kind statistic.

I’d been waiting almost an hour, amusing myself with other trivia on the statistics chart. Motor vehicle theft was down fifty percent from ten years ago; the month with the most number of crimes was July for three years running; the total population was up six point nine percent from last year. I flipped through data about climate and the educational level of the Henley population.

“Fascinating, huh?”

The loud voice startled me, though I saw that he hadn’t intended it. I hoped I didn’t look as crestfallen as I felt when I turned to face Archie McConnell.

He, on the other hand, was smiling. It was the smile of victory.

“I like numbers,” I said.

“You would.”

He ushered me into a large office with room for three desks and several extra chairs. A lot of coming and going and paper shuffling throughout the area, but no one was seated.