Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

I wondered how long Archie would leave me to sweat, literally.

The answer came when the door opened and Archie appeared. The large clock on the hallway wall behind him read five after four. I’d been ten minutes early, therefore, I’d been captive for seventy-five sweltering, mind-numbing minutes.

“Sorry,” Archie said as he entered Interview Two looking cool and crisp, and hardly sorry. He’d probably spent the time with a cold pack around his neck.

In spite of his name-which called to mind a bumbling, wrinkled old caricature of a detective-Archie looked like Hollywood’s idea of the insightful young cop who one-ups his dumpy-looking colleagues and his boss and takes down the serial killer. His well-groomed, sharp look, the opposite of Virgil’s, unnerved me.

“Can I get you some coffee?” he asked.

A hot drink. Just what I needed. I almost laughed.

I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

“A soda?”

Another shake. “I’m good.”

I kept my hands on my lap, careful not to touch anything. I pictured what Archie would do after I left, pulling out a handkerchief, picking up a soda can, and shipping it off for DNA analysis. Of course my fingerprints and DNA would be all over Keith’s office anyway, but with legitimate reasons as well as the one bad one. Still, one couldn’t be too careful.

Archie took the seat opposite me. Although he loosened his tie, he managed to sustain the in-charge male model look.

“So, Dr. Knowles.”

“Sophie,” I said, eager to put this experience on an informal, less stressful level.

“Sophie, then.” If this was Archie, yielding, I’d hate to see his rigid side. “How well did you know Dr. Appleton?”

An easy one. I cleared my throat. “He was a colleague. We saw each other several times a week in Franklin Hall, plus there were faculty meetings, committees, the usual.”

“Would you say you two were close?”

“No, not close,” I answered, putting a spin on close , marking it as truly the wrong word.

“Would you say you were competitors, then?”

“No, not at all.”

“Not even a little?”

“No,” I insisted.

“I have in my notes that Dr. Appleton just won an award of some kind. Were you up for that award also?”

“You mean the Mass Association of Chemists naming him a Fellow? No, I don’t belong to that group. It’s not my field.”

“What about Henley College awards? For good teaching, publishing, that kind of thing?”

“We’ve both had our share. We weren’t competing for them.”

He scratched his head. “No offense, but it’s kind of hard to believe.”

“We’re in completely different fields. Differential equations”-I pointed to my chest-“and protein purification.” I cast my hand away from my body to indicate where Keith might be, were he still alive. I tried not to sound exasperated.

Archie appeared to be writing this explanation in his notebook, but I couldn’t see the details. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he were writing, “Beer, Chips, Beef Jerky.” I was tempted to spell “protein purification” for him.

“One more time: You were on the same faculty. You were up for the same promotions, true?”

“That’s not how it works. We don’t have a pecking order like that.” Not exactly, that is. I wasn’t keen on reciting the bylaws’ definitions for the various faculty rankings on a college campus, from adjuncts who taught one or two classes only, to instructors who were full-time but without significant credentials or seniority, all the way to full professors.

Archie flipped through pages of his notebook, back from where he started with me. “Weren’t you both in the running for full professor, coming up this fall?”

“Well, sort of, but there’s no law that says we can’t both be appointed. As I said, we submit articles to different journals; we both have plenty of students signing up for our classes.” I held my hands palms up, then quickly folded them on my lap again. There was no point in waving my DNA around in front of this man.

Neither did I want to share with this canny, knowledgeable detective that I’d set myself the goal of attaining full professorship for this year. I was on the young side of the demographic for the title, but I hoped my work supported it. Archie didn’t need to know that Keith had two years in age on me and one in seniority.

I looked around the bare room, catching my reflection in a window on the side wall. Haggard would have been a good descriptor. Sagging eyelids, hair frizzed beyond belief, disheveled shirt. I wanted to leave and head for the nearest shower.

Where was Virgil? Where was Bruce, best friend to Virgil? Why was I stuck with this know-it-all young partner who was interrogating, not interviewing? I’d been expecting to answer questions about Rachel, or Pam, or Liz, or Casey, or Fran, or Lucy, or Hal. Even Dean Underwood. I thought I’d been sent here to help. Now I had to face the reality that Virgil had not been joking when he’d implied I was in the pool of murder suspects.

I was getting hotter and hotter and hoped I wouldn’t pass out. I felt sure only guilty people passed out in situations like this.

Archie finished his flipping for the moment.

“Yeah, back to the promotions to full professor. There are perks with this, huh?”

“A small raise usually. We already have tenure. Mostly it’s the status, I guess.” I stopped. I should be answering with the smallest possible number of words. I’d read that somewhere. Or seen it on television.

“Usually you expect these announcements early in the fall term?”

Why was he harping on this? What made him think he knew anything about college faculty operations in the first place?

“That’s right.” Archie waited me out, and I added, “With four slots open in math and science, we were both very likely to get the promotion.”

“When was the last time you saw Dr. Appleton?”

From left field, but not a problem. I thought back.

“Outside the dean’s office on Thursday, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“It was on Thursday.”

“Was there a reason you were there, outside the dean’s office?”

Uh-oh. “She’d sent for me.”

“Because?”

I let out a heavy sigh. “Nothing that important. She wanted to talk to me about noisy parties… that is… seminars in our building.”

“Had she received a complaint?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Did she say who’d made the complaint?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Did you have any guesses?”

“No.” I’d crossed my fingers by now.

“And you saw Dr. Appleton where?”

I gritted my teeth. “Coming out of the dean’s office.” “But you didn’t assume he was the one who’d made the complaint about your noisy parties?”

“They weren’t…” I paused and took a breath. “No.”

“Because?”

“Well, she’d already sent for me long before he would have been in her office.”

A victory, but a small, short one.

“You’re close to your assistant, Ms. Wheeler?” Archie asked, a knowing look in his eyes.

“It’s not like we go to movies together or anything, but yes, I consider her a friend.”

“And yesterday, can you tell me what your interaction with Ms. Wheeler was?”

“I had a class in the morning that she had set up, and then she came at the end to take it down, before the party.”

Archie checked his notes. “That would be the party for Dr. Bartholomew. And that was an actual party, not a seminar.”

Smart aleck cop. “Yes.”

“I’m curious. What’s involved in setting up for a math class? Don’t you usually just use a blackboard?”

I heard the hint of a jocular air, but no way was I letting down my guard. By now my lips were like chalk, dry enough to make a scratching sound on that blackboard he brought up.