Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

“We wouldn’t want anything frivolous to appear on Henley’s faculty publication record,” she’d clucked.

After fourteen years, I was finally used to being addressed as Margaret Stone, my mother’s maiden name, when a puzzler fan emailed me.

Now here I was wearing pumps and what could pass for a suit, with a dark brown skirt and an almost-matching jacket, hoping to please the person who held my career in her wrinkled old hands. The thought produced another wave of perspiration and new, sweaty smudges on my leather briefcase. I wasn’t this nervous sitting next to Bruce in his helicopter, even when he surprised me with a new stunt.

To calm myself, I took a newly purchased cube puzzle from my briefcase, this one with six images of Tiffany windows, and set the case down on the immaculate floor.

Dr. Underwood was too old for the job, I decided, fingering the smaller blocks that made up the colorful cube. The academic dean seemed to have come with this building. I loved hundred-year-old buildings, but not the antiquated customs that sometimes accompanied them.

I knew that Dr. Underwood was upset for reasons bigger than me. Her side had lost the great debate about whether Henley College should follow the trend of the day and admit male students.

“Coed?” she’d exclaimed at meetings when the issue was first raised.

She’d made the word sound profane. The dean and her allies had fought the idea long and hard, citing the history of Henley, founded in the early part of the twentieth century as an academy for “young ladies.” There had been plenty of boys at the all-male schools a stone’s throw away to invite to mixers. If that model worked a hundred years ago, it could work now, the dean said in so many words, skipping past the fact that there wasn’t a single all-male school left in New England.

Times had changed and demanded creative ways of maintaining a large enough student body for our college to survive. The reality was “coed or no ed” as the pro-coed side-my side-warned.

It took the board of trustees and the faculty senate another two years to seal the deal. This fall was to mark the debut of men on campus. The undergraduate enrollment had climbed to more than double what it was last year.

“More men in your life? Should I be worried?” Bruce had asked me.

I let him think so.

The old clock chimed three fifteen. The sound echoed down the empty hallway. During the summer, no classes were held in the Administration Building. The only people around were the admin staff, and whomever the deans summoned. Today that privilege seemed to be mine alone.

I worked the Tiffany puzzle, clicking the dogwood, the grapevine, and the hibiscus into their slots on the different faces of the cube. I checked the other sides. The views of Oyster Bay, the magnolias, and the autumn landscape were lined up correctly. Stunning, but too easy.

“Good afternoon, Sophie.” A statement cum greeting.

I looked up to see Keith Appleton walk toward me. He’d just come through the door from the dean’s office. The not unreasonable thought went through my head that Keith was involved in why I was waiting for the dean right now instead of beading.

“Hey, Keith,” I said, in part to aggravate him. He hated when we faculty took on the slang and tone of the students.

Having made that point, I decided I wouldn’t follow up right now with a request to talk to him about Rachel’s thesis. I needed to time my battles more carefully.

“Did you have a chance to look over the amendment I proposed to the Distinguished Professor bylaws?” he asked.

“Yeah, about that. The change would eliminate several women on the faculty.”

Keith gave me a quizzical look. “Is that a problem?”

“We’d be penalizing women for taking maternity leave.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Again, is that a problem?”

“Keith, how can you-”

The tune of Come Fly With Me rang in my purse.

My cell phone. I smiled when I heard it and saw the ID for MAstar, the nonprofit medevac company Bruce worked for. And just in time to prevent me from an irreversible setback in my so-called friendship with Keith.

“We’ll talk later,” Keith said, turning on his heels, clearly too important a man to be standing around waiting for me to take a call.

“And a good day to you, too,” I said to Keith’s back, but not loud enough for him to hear me.

“Huh?” Bruce, who did hear me, asked.

“Not you,” I said.

“Come on out and visit me,” Bruce said.

How tempting. Not just to see my guy, but because the temperature at the airfield was always about fifteen degrees cooler than in town.

“I’m outside the dean’s office.” I whispered, though I was sure no sound penetrated the thick door between me and my superior.

“Uh-oh.”

“You said it.”

“Any idea what she wants this time?”

“Not a clue, but Keith just walked out of the office.”

“Uh-oh squared.”

“I love when you talk math.” I looked at the big clock. “Up from your nap?”

“Starting to think about dinner,” he said.

Bruce kept a pretty predictable routine on the days he worked. He’d have an early dinner, relax for a while, and then go into work for his twelve-hour shift as an EMS helicopter pilot. “Officially, it means Emergency Medical Services,” he’d say. “Unofficially, it means Earn Money Sleeping.” It was Bruce’s way of trying to convince me that his job of touching down at crash scenes amid telephone poles and power lines wasn’t as dangerous as it sounded, simply because he could sleep or watch movies between heart-pounding incidents.

I started when the dean’s office door opened. I clicked the phone shut with a soft, hasty, “Gotta go. Love you,” to Bruce.

Dr. Underwood, in a legitimate navy suit with a mid-calf hemline, filled the doorway. I was annoyed at the shiver that rippled down my spine. So what if the dean was at least six inches taller than my five feet three inches? I was about twenty years younger.

But this wasn’t a physical contest, and Dr. Underwood’s folded arms and serious expression wielded a lot of psychological power. I stuffed my phone and my puzzle cube into my briefcase as if I’d been reading comic books instead of doing my homework.

After what seemed too long a time, the dean unfolded her arms and indicated the path I should follow. “Come in, Dr. Knowles.” The invitation fell somewhere between those of an oral surgeon and a serial killer.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Underwood,” I said, through dry lips. No “Hey, dean” from me. I took my place across from the dean at the wide, dark oak desk that dominated the office. How bad can it be ? What? Was I too noisy in class?

“You’ve been very noisy,” the dean said. I could barely suppress a smile. But Dr. Underwood’s tone was somber. “I have complaints that your gatherings in Benjamin Franklin Hall are getting out of hand.”

I raised my eyebrows. This was what the urgent summons was about? “I’m sorry? You’ve had complaints?”

The dean nodded and let out a heavy sigh, perhaps in memory of an earlier time when only sweet young girls and sedate faculty populated the seventeen-acre campus. “Apparently you had an exceptionally loud and disruptive party in the faculty lounge of your building last Friday afternoon.”

I wanted to point out that it wasn’t my building, though I had a great fondness for it. Benjamin Franklin Hall and its lounge were shared by the departments of mathematics, physics, biology, and chemistry, in ascending order, up through the four floors. Some said the top floor was specifically designed for chemistry-in the event of an explosion, the roof might blow off, but at least the other departments would survive.