Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

Shriek. Bark. Shriek. Bark. Shriek. Bark.

Again and again, while I was too numb to act.

Then, six beeps, and nothing.

Until Bruce smashed through my bedroom door, knocking over the chair. Hadn’t I been brilliant adding that extra level of security?

Rrring . Rrring

Now the phone.

“SoMass Alarm. What’s your password, please?”

“Fibonacci.”

“Everything all right there?”

I looked at Bruce who was by my side and breathing heavily. He was wearing his blue MAstar cap and looking me over, not in a sexy way, but checking for blood or bruises, I knew.

“Sorry, false alarm. Everything’s fine.” I wondered briefly if security monitoring fees were like insurance rates, which rose every time you needed a service.

“Okeydokey.”

Who said that anymore? Clearly the SoMass guy did.

“What’s going on, Soph?” Bruce asked, his breathing almost back to normal.

“I set the alarm. You’re always telling me I should be doing that.”

“I never expect you to obey me. I almost had a heart attack.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be used to this? Alarms and all?”

“Not in your house. Not when I’m coming to make breakfast. What gives?”

I looked at my bedside clock. Seven-thirty. “What are you doing here so early?”

“I had this weird feeling after we talked. Bodie always comes in early anyway, so I asked him to cover and took off.” He removed his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Then I open the door and get this blast worse than the Bat Phone. I don’t know the code by heart, so I have to dig it out of my wallet.” He pulled me to him and held tight. “I didn’t know what I’d find in here.”

“I’m so glad you’re here, Bruce,” I whispered.

“I know you. You sounded worried about something.” He released me and pointed to the chair, on its back, one leg twisted out of shape. “Guess I was right. Are you going to tell me about it?”

I nodded. “How about over breakfast?”

One shower later, I walked in on Bruce cleaning up a carton of broken eggs and spilled OJ in the kitchen. It seemed that he had lost control of the groceries at the first Shriek. Bark. I couldn’t help be amused-now that I was safe and sound with my honey-that my hero emergency worker, Air Force vet, crisis-trained medevac pilot boyfriend had been thrown by a suburban burglar alarm. Not that I would mention it to him again. He’d explained it very well-it was different when it was personal.

While he was cooking, I coaxed him into telling me about his drill partnering with the Marines.

“Like I said on the phone, it was very cool, even for Air Force guys like me and Bodie. I really wish they’d make more USAF movies, though. It’s always the army or the Marines that are the stars, like Platoon and Full Metal Jacket .”

“There’s the guy in Little Miss Sunshine ,” I volunteered.

“The whacko guy who won’t talk until he gets into the Air Force Academy? Thanks a lot. Anyway, in real life there’s this training site down the Cape for mountain warfare and they do mock evacuations every quarter. This time we were asked to join forces, which makes sense. In a real evacuation, it would take every agency in the area to pull together.”

Bruce had begun the omelets, a Sunday morning tradition. He shook a spatula at me. “You’re reaching now. I should have known you were stalling when you encouraged the movie talk.”

In reality, I hated to hear about Bruce’s flights. A few years ago in the southwest a medical helicopter crashed during a training mission. The entire crew had been killed. I’d just met Bruce and spent many sleepless nights worrying after that. Now sometimes I took for granted that Bruce was no more at risk up in the air than I was tooling along the highway.

“When’s breakfast?” I asked, pushing happy thoughts in front of depressing ones.

“In two minutes breakfast will be served and it will be your turn for a full report.”

“Okay.”

Fair was fair.

I waited until Bruce had tasted his three-cheese and mushroom omelet, made with stale eggs, and pronounced it perfect. He took a sip of dark roast that I’d brewed from freshly ground beans a few minutes earlier, and looked at home and relaxed in my sun-filled kitchen.

I told him the story of Woody and the red metal dolly.

“You took what? From where?” Bruce leaned across the table, wide-eyed.

“I think the dean wanted me to,” I said.

He suppressed a grin. “Yeah, sure. I’m surprised she’s not on the doorstep right now thanking you for your service, presenting you with an award.”

An award. Why did that sound familiar? Something clicked, something about Keith’s wall of awards, but I couldn’t quite finish the thought.

“Hello?” Bruce said, waving his arms to get my attention. “What were you thinking when you cleaned out the office of a murdered man and carted his stuff home?”

“That I could help. My two police interviews didn’t go well. I made a fool of myself with Virgil and I don’t know what happened with Archie, except that he was this close”-I indicated a very small gap between my thumb and index finger-“to accusing me of murdering Keith, and I got no new information from him.”

“Why do you need information about a murder case? You’re not a cop; you’re a math teacher.”

“Associate professor of mathematics at a renowned college,” I said. Going for distraction through humor, since I hadn’t even gotten to the empty workbench yet.

“Where is all the stuff, anyway?”

Uh-oh.

“Someone broke into your house-”

“My garage.”

“-and you didn’t think to call the cops?”

“Nothing was taken except those boxes and some usable discards. What was I going to tell the police?”

“I see your point. You had stolen goods in your possession.”

“I wouldn’t say stolen exactly.”

I hated being grilled by Bruce. His crisp white T-shirt seemed to blind me as he threw questions and accusations at me. The fact that he had my own well-being in mind should have mattered more than it did.

Bruce had left his seat by now. I looked at his omelet and imagined I could see its molecules turn to a cold gel on his plate as he paced around the table. My own omelet was untouched.

“Sophie, I want you to promise me you’ll cool it on this… this investigating.”

“What investigating? I’ve barely talked to anyone but Rachel and the police.”

“Who saw you take Appleton’s things?”

“Just Woody knows about it, I think. A few of the girls saw the boxes but they had no way of knowing what was in them. And I suppose anyone could have been looking out a window and seen me, but I could have been cleaning out my own office for all anyone would guess. It was broad daylight, but it’s not as if the boxes had Keith’s name written on them.”

Bruce sat back down and pushed food around his plate. His thick, dark eyebrows were pinched in concentration. He took a long pull of his juice. From his look and his body language, if I didn’t know it was OJ, I’d have sworn he was swigging down a stiff drink.

“That’s it,” he said, setting the glass on the table with a purposeful thud. “I’m moving in until this is over.”

“How romantic.”

Bruce smiled. “You know what I mean.”

“I do, thanks.”

“Do you want me to cut out of my shift tonight?”

Bruce had one more shift, from nine tonight to nine tomorrow morning, and then he’d be off for seven days. I could certainly keep myself safe for twenty-four hours.

“No, I’ll be fine. Just call me often.”

“Deal.”