Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

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the wall had held cake, frosted cookies, drinks, and colorful celebration napkins, today the gold lamè cloth had been replaced by a stark white paper covering.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.

Robert pulled a greeting card from his briefcase. “I’m going to send this around the room now for everyone to sign, and I’d like to arrange for flowers to be sent to Keith’s family also. Since we don’t have a secretary for the summer, Sophie, can you do that? And can you see to it that the family gets the card?”

“Of course,” said I, the official liaison with Keith Appleton’s family.

Fran shot me a look that said, “I knew you were his best friend.”

The department chairs took turns going over which classes remained to be brought to an orderly end. I’d neglected to mention to Fran that I’d jumped the gun with three of my students, combining the conference on grades with an interrogation. One that had yielded interesting results, by the way. I didn’t feel guilty in any way for not waiting to follow department procedure. All that mattered in my book was that each student finish the summer term and that my grades be in by the deadline.

Another announcement from Robert brought sighs of relief: due to the unfortunate circumstances of last Friday, to give everyone a chance to recover sufficiently from the shock of a death in Franklin Hall, an extension had been granted by the dean: grades did not have to be posted until the end of August.

The business over, people started getting up from the chairs and heading for the buffet table. The mood remained subdued.

“Can everyone wait just a minute?” I asked. “I think we should talk about the investigation into Keith’s murder.”

Heads turned in my direction, toward the back. Eyebrows went up, hands reaching for cookies stopped midair, but I was the most surprised person in the room.

I hadn’t exactly planned it, though in the back of my mind this sort of meeting was the ideal forum to make progress on the investigation. Ariana would have said my subconscious mind knew all along that I would do this, this way. Bruce would have asked what had brought on such rashness. I didn’t want to dwell on what I knew the dean would think.

“What are you saying?” Robert asked, incredulously. “That we do our own investigating?”

“We’re teachers, not cops,” Hal said.

“How would we go about it?” Judith asked.

“I don’t have a plan,” I admitted, addressing Judith, who might be an ally. “But it seems to me we should do more than sit around and wait for the police, who at the moment have nothing solid.”

“There’s a rumor going around that Ms. Wheeler is their key suspect,” Robert said.

“That’s just what it is. A rumor,” I said. “Who here really believes that Rachel Wheeler, who gives over and above what her job requires to make sure classes and labs in this building run smoothly, who believes she’s a killer?”

“How would we know? I don’t know any killers,” Hal said.

Why was Hal resisting? Maybe there was truth to the rumor that he and Rachel had crossed the teacher/student line. Or were still crossing it. What if Keith found out and threatened to tell Gil her fears were well-founded? Taking on Gil would have been a formidable task for Hal. Easier to eliminate Keith.

I hated the way I was thinking. It was the product of a frustrated mind the logical powers of which had hit the wall.

“I don’t see the harm,” Judith said, stirring sugar into a glass of lemonade that was already too sweet for my lemon zinger taste. “Why don’t we just brainstorm for a while? Who knows? We might come up with something.”

Bless you, Judith.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Fran said.

“It’ll be useless,” Robert said.

“We’re the ones who knew Keith best,” I said. “Surely we can spare a few minutes to think about whether we saw anything unusual in the days before he died. Someone in the building who didn’t belong, maybe, or someone doing something out of character.”

“We’ve been through this with the police,” Robert said.

“This is different. We’re his friends,” Judith said, joining the ranks of one, me, who made up his cadre of friends.

Besides the young woman he was seeing, of course. I still couldn’t get my head around that. Keith on a date. With a woman. With someone he thought enough about to mention her to Elteen. I hadn’t abandoned the possibility that he’d made the woman up out of whole cloth so that Elteen wouldn’t keep trying to set him up with a nice girl in Chicago. When did I become so cynical?

“We could start with who would have a really strong reason to want Keith dead.”

“You’re kidding,” Robert said. “You mean like that he kept me from getting full health care benefits because I took a lighter load the term my daughter was born?”