The Square Root of Murder (25 page)

Archie took his place behind a desk with his name on it and indicated the chair I should take. We both knew that I was about to concede defeat. My role as unofficial police consultant had come to an end.

 

 

Archie was nicer to me than last time, leading me to believe I was no longer a viable suspect in his mind. He nodded politely as I announced that I had information from some of my students and from the janitor at the college. I hated to drag Woody into the morass of those who lied to the police, but I felt that once I explained his motivation, he’d be forgiven quickly and not held accountable.

“It’s about the cake and soda,” I said. “I know why you didn’t find any at the scene.”

I spread out the timeline, which included what I knew of my students’ visits, without naming them. To my chagrin, Archie had had no call from anyone at Henley since his initial interrogation. I wondered about the legitimacy of marking the three applied statistics students down a grade for their cowardice. I was most disappointed in Rachel, over whom I had no grading power. Not that I would ever do such a thing.

I oriented the timeline so Archie could read it. I’d marked the events of the day and laid them out in a straight horizontal line. “I’ve been over this a million times,” I said, breaking my rule never to exaggerate with numbers. “This is what I have.”

I indicated the place on the line between two thirty when the cake and soda were still outside the office, and four P.M., when the police found yellow pages, allegedly of Rachel’s thesis.

“Here’s where the killer came back,” I said. “To incriminate Rachel, he went back and planted the cake inside the office and threw pages from Rachel’s thesis around, except Woody messed things up by trashing the cake. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Archie stroked his chin while his head bobbed comically.

“The killer came back and messed with his own crime scene,” Archie said. “Busy guy.”

Archie picked up my timeline and held it close to his face, studying it. “So you’re saying the killer was essentially hanging around the crime scene waiting to plant evidence. I’m assuming you think he also planted the chemicals from the cabinet so it would point to Rachel, who had a key.” I nodded. “Why didn’t he just drop everything at once? Why risk going back?”

“Well, there was no cake and soda until Rachel took it upstairs. That gave the killer the idea. And then I guess throwing the marked-up yellow pages in was just an afterthought. Overkill. So to speak.”

“So the killer was at the party and saw Rachel head up to deliver the cake and soda and decided to take advantage of the situation. The overkill. Where’d he get the yellow pages?”

I felt my face flush. My eyes suddenly itched. All along, I’d suspected the killer was one of the attendees at the Franklin Hall party, but that had been theory. Now the fact seemed to emerge from the timeline and the logic of the movements on Friday afternoon. The killer saw Rachel leave the room with the cake and soda. The killer had access to draft pages of Rachel’s thesis. I saw draft sheets in the trash around Franklin all the time, though something was different about those sheets compared to the way Virgil had described the ones at the crime scene. I wished I could remember his exact words. No matter, the point was that the killer could have picked them out of the trash any day of the week, if he was part of the Franklin family.

I didn’t like my theory so much anymore.

Apparently Archie did.

“Nice work,” he said, “which we could have—”

“If I or the girls had come to you immediately, you’d have come up with this.”

“I could charge you all with obstruction,” he said. I drew in my breath. “But I don’t see the point.” I let out my breath. “I’m assuming Rachel Wheeler told you she entered the office and found the victim, then exited and put the food outside the door.”

I nodded, grudgingly.

“I notice you haven’t given me the names of the three students who went to the office at two thirty.”

“I can’t tell you my sources.”

“What? Are you a reporter now?”

More like a priest, I thought. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Come on, Dr. Knowles. This is not one of your math puzzles. This is a murder investigation.”

He was right. When he shoved a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, I acquiesced and wrote “Pamela Noonan,” “Elizabeth Harrison,” and “Casey Tremel.”

“You did give us the janitor without a problem.”

I hoped Archie didn’t mean that poor Woody was about to be accosted by the Henley PD.

“It was hard to explain how the cake went missing in the end without involving him. But he was only—”

Ding. Ding. Ding.
Pause
. Ding. Ding. Ding.

A low-level alarm went off on Archie’s watch. He checked the time and got up abruptly. “Excuse me one minute.”

 

 

It was more like fifteen minutes. I saw many no smoking signs in the room, but no warning against using electronic devices, so I took out my phone to check my email. There were messages from my applied statistics students as well as companies trying to sell me shoes and posters, but nothing from Lucy. I was curious to know if she’d admit to dating Keith, and, if so, whether that put her higher or lower on the list of suspects.

Maybe I should have shared that info with Archie, too. Nah, I wouldn’t want to spoil my reputation as The Great Withholder.

I chose one of the games my phone offered to keep me amused. I decided on an easy one: moving three boxes of graduated sizes from one pile to another in the smallest number of moves. The restriction was that only one box at a time could be moved, and you could move a box only on top of a larger one. This was a very smart game in that if you tried to move a bigger box onto a smaller box, a nasty beep sounded. After a few seconds the game reminded me of the movements of the boxes that held Keith’s office effects. I quit the game.

I went online again, clicked around, and found a neat game to foster algebraic reasoning. I bookmarked it for use in a math workshop. When things got back to normal.

The algebra game put me in a good mood by the time Archie returned with a cup of coffee in a mug that had seen better, cleaner days. Strange to take coffee at the sound of a wristwatch alarm, but to each his own. Maybe he was on medication that required a concomitant dose of caffeine.

“I’d have gotten you a cup, too, but I don’t recommend it. Can I get you a soda?” Archie asked.

“I’m good,” I said.

“So where were we?”

“I’m very concerned that it’s too late to solve this murder. It’s been more than forty-eight hours.”

“I know you hear that all the time, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule. For big cities it might be true since those guys are dealing with at least a murder a day. They can’t afford to let fresh ones go, so a case is considered on its way to cold much sooner than here.”

The idea of a homicide as “fresh” brought back the taste of the spicy pasta salad I’d had for lunch. I rubbed my nose, smelling a ripe body.

“What’s next?” I asked.

Archie laughed. “What? Are you part of the squad now?”

I shrugged. “You have civilian volunteers, don’t you?”

“Yeah, to make the fund-raising calls and fill in as crossing guards. Interested?”

I was beginning to like Archie. “I’ll pass.”

“I thought so.”

“So, what
is
next?”

Archie looked past me, over my shoulder. I turned to see what had attracted his attention. Virgil and Rachel had entered from the back and were headed for a desk and chair set across the room. That couldn’t be good.

Archie stood and I followed. He led me out of the room in the opposite direction while I strained my neck to get a glimpse of the expressions on Virgil’s and Rachel’s faces. Too far away. I consoled myself with the observation that Rachel was not in handcuffs or prison garb.

It amazed me how little it took to give me comfort these last few days.

“We’ll call you if we need anything else from you,” Archie said, all business now, nearly pushing me over the threshold, back into the waiting area.

I guessed he wanted to join the conversation—I hoped not another interrogation—with Rachel.

Walking past the bench I’d waited on and past the busy telephone desk, it dawned on me. Archie didn’t have a prescribed, alarm-triggered need for meds or coffee. He’d come out here to tell his cronies to pick up Rachel Wheeler. How dumb was I? I felt betrayed, for no good reason, since deep in my heart I knew Archie was just doing his job. Why else would he want everyone’s names? I was lucky he hadn’t charged me.

I couldn’t see why Archie couldn’t at least have been honest with me. So what if I hadn’t been completely forthcoming with him right away. Sworn officers of the law should be held to a higher standard. It was low and tacky to fake a timer alarm on your watch.

I made a note to see if I could pull that same trick with my watch, should an occasion warrant it.

On the whole, I was back to not liking Archie.

I drove toward home, defeated. I felt I should have been smarter, quicker, more persistent in my role in Henley’s first murder investigation in at least a decade, and three floors above my own campus office to boot. Ask me to construct a crossword puzzle or a brainteaser and I was on the job. I managed to meet a rigid schedule of producing original puzzles and mindbenders for several publications. But when it came to something really important, like helping a friend out of deep trouble, I was a failure, plain and simple.

I wondered where Rachel could have been that they found her so quickly. On the threshold of coming in to the station herself, I hoped. And the other girls? I’d thought all along they weren’t taking their actions seriously enough, but did I really want them grilled by Archie? I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d been well within my rights to have kept all the names to myself. Something to check, if I thought I’d ever again need to know.

The image of Rachel, slump-shouldered, walking in front of Virgil came back to me. The fact that I’d brought it on with my oh-so-spectacular timeline made everything worse. I called myself every name I could think of from ratfink to snitch to stoolie to the good old-fashioned tattletale, and variations thereof.

I wished I were one of those special television characters who could sneak into a building, plant a bug, and listen in on all conversations from an unmarked, well-equipped van. Or better still, that I’d been able to find a clue, a giant clue, that would have led us to the true killer.

Rachel’s freedom was out of my hands. I hoped her aunt’s lawyer would do better by her than I had.

Letting go of the idea that I could help left me free for what I should be doing. I had a mountain of work to do at home, what with reading student papers from last week, scheduling my summer students, and creating next month’s puzzles for my editor, but Bruce hadn’t called and I knew he would as soon as he woke up.

I selected number one in my CD player, Tim McGraw, and hummed along.
Just be still . . .

I needed another comfort destination, other than my home. As luck would have it, Ariana’s shop was only a few blocks away. I made a quick right and headed for A Hill of Beads.

I found Ariana starting to close up. I thought she was quitting early until I realized it was after five o’clock. The day flew by when you screwed it up.

My friend took one look at me and said, “Sweetie, what happened?”

Either Ariana had the special powers I’d always suspected, or I looked much worse than I felt. Visiting the heavenly-smelling shop was the best choice I could have made. I entered the world of beads and charms and faceted stones, none of which had done me wrong, and vice versa. I helped Ariana put away stray beads that customers looked at but didn’t return to their proper trays. I breathed in the calming aroma of incense as I opened cartons of new products and ran off flyers for upcoming demonstrations and classes, including one on handwriting analysis. I wondered if she’d planned to teach it herself or bring in an expert. I supposed there were such people.

After I sprayed all the counters and wiped them down, I dragged the vacuum cleaner from behind the heavy beaded curtain that hid the kitchen and workshop area.

“You don’t have to do that,” Ariana said.

“Yes, I do.”

I pushed and pulled a very old Hoover, feeling the tension transfer from my arms and legs to the long handle of the vacuum cleaner. Now and then I heard a disturbing click that was a bead on its way into the dust bag, but I knew from other closing time visits that a certain loss of inventory by this route was normal. When I was finished, the mauve area rug in the middle of the store bore satisfying tracks from the Hoover’s wheels. I wound the cord around the back of the vacuum and tucked it in at the top.

I swapped the vacuum cleaner for a soft, damp mop and attacked the slick linoleum that covered the rest of the sales floor and extended to the back room.

All flooring in A Hill of Beads was now spic and span. A job well done. Almost as pleasing as ironing.

“What else needs cleaning?” I asked.