Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

“That was an administrative decision,” I said. “Keith was only one vote on the faculty senate.”

“The deciding vote,” Robert said.

I’d forgotten that. It was harder to justify Keith’s vote in this case as beneficial to the college, unless it was to prevent faculty from sloughing off just because they had families. If so, I’d have to call it cold.

I looked at Fran, who was biting her lip. Probably dying to mention the change in bylaws that would have denied her the award she deserved for distinguished service.

“Let’s face it,” Hal said. “We’d have a hard time thinking of someone who didn’t have a gripe against him.”

How well I knew.

A loud noise interrupted us. The sound of Lucy’s chair as she pushed it back across the tile and dashed out of the room. I didn’t get a look at her face as she uttered a raspy “ ‘Scuse me, please,” but I doubted she was smiling.

Thanks to support from Judith, my faculty friends indulged me in telling me how they’d spent the day on Friday. Of course not for an alibi, I told them, just to see if something useful surfaced.

Nothing did.

“Too bad Lucy left,” Fran said.

“She’s new. She’s probably whacked out by all this,” Judith said.

I snapped to. Or she’s the girlfriend, I thought. Bonnie, Annie, Lucy might all sound the same to elderly ears. And Lucy’s last name was Bronson. Both Bs, two syllables. Close enough.

Lucy could be the name of Keith’s girlfriend.

Or his killer.

I passed on joining the Ben Franklin faculty for lunch downtown. I felt I’d gotten all the information I could out of the group-that is, none-and I’d put off my meeting with the dean long enough. If I wanted to have lunch with anyone other than Bruce, it was Lucy Bronson. I made a note to make that happen.

Like a good employee, I headed for the boss’s office. After one stop and one phone call, that is.

The stop: I’d brought with me the manila envelope with the journal article I’d finished on Friday night before things fell apart. I stepped into the business office, two doors down from the assembly hall, said hello to Joey behind the desk, and slipped the envelope containing my twenty-first peer-reviewed research paper into the outgoing mail slot. Now I could say truthfully that I had more than twenty publications on my resume, should it come up. I wouldn’t mention the hundreds of puzzles and brainteasers.

The phone call: I settled on a bench along the path between Franklin Hall and Dickinson Library. The heat from the concrete quickly penetrated my thin cotton dress and I shifted around to put more fabric between me and the cooking seat. I pulled out my cell and punched in Elteen’s number in Chicago, where it was mid-morning. I wasn’t proud of what I was about to do, but extraordinary circumstances, etc., as Winston Churchill, or someone of that ilk, once said.

“Well, hello again,” Elteen said when she learned who was calling.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “But I wonder if you could help with a little task.”

“Anything I can do, surely,” she said.

“It’s about the young woman Keith was seeing. Lucy, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, yes, I couldn’t think of her name, but yes, Lucy Brownson, something like that. What about her?”

“Aha” nearly slipped from my lips.

“Would it be all right if I gave her your address in case she wants to send a card to express her sympathy?” I looked up to the searing sun and hoped its rays wouldn’t turn into lightning bolts, set to chastise a sinner.

“Oh surely. Do you have my address?”

“I do have it, but I didn’t want to give it out without consulting you.”

After a few more utterances from Elteen about how very sweet and thoughtful I was, I was nearly in tears and finally hung up the phone and hung my head in shame.

“She should be back any minute,” Courtney said as I approached her desk. We both knew who “she” was. Courtney’s long, red hair was pulled back tight off her face, her short skirt dangerously close to the dean’s limit. She had a tall glass of lemon zinger iced tea ready for me. “Just in case,” she said.

I thanked her and gave her a hug.

“Oh, one little thing, Courtney. Lucy Bronson had to leave the meeting early and I’d like to get in touch with her. My faculty directory is in my office in Franklin.” I swung my arm in the direction of the faraway building, such a tough journey on a day like this. “Can you give me her numbers?”

“You know, she’s so new, I don’t think she’s in the directory yet anyway.” I knew that. “But I’m sure I have it here.”

“Thanks for being the only cooperative person on campus at the moment,” I said.

Courtney gave me a knowing smile as she handed me a pink stickie. She probably thought I was referring only to her boss.

I took up my post on the waiting bench. Any more of these summonses and I’d expect a plaque with my name on it nailed to the back. At least this seat wasn’t giving me a third-degree burn. I was itching to talk to Lucy and annoyed that the dean was taking my time.

I dug in my briefcase for a small metal puzzle with interlocking rings. The idea was to unlock them, freeing them completely from each other.

In a way I felt sorry for Dean Phyllis Underwood. In a couple of months her long-held fantasy of Henley College was to end as young men poured onto the campus, requiring separate restrooms and careful monitoring in the dormitories.

Dean Underwood’s last-ditch effort before the recruiting for men began had been to warn the board of trustees that all alumnae funding would come to a halt if the admissions policy were changed.

“They won’t send money, and they certainly won’t continue to send their daughters,” she’d prophesied.

Now that I thought of it, it had been Keith Appleton who’d come up with statistics to prove otherwise, based on similar situations across the country. My privately held response to the dean’s argument was simply, what daughter obeyed her mother anymore?

The last time I sat outside the dean’s office was also the last time I saw Keith Appleton. I wondered if Benjamin Franklin Hall birthday parties would ever be the same. Would we maintain hushed tones in his honor? Eschew cake and soda? I shivered as I thought of the turn all our lives had taken.

Today the dean approached her office from the outside, presumably having had things to do between the president’s assembly and our meeting.

She addressed me immediately, even before we were behind her office door. “I suppose you think that was a very smart move, Sophie, but let me tell you it was not.”

Courtney busied herself at her computer, seeming to make more noise than necessary as she hit the keys and slapped papers on her desk. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she broke out into a high-pitched la la la la la la la . At one point she gave me a sympathetic look.

I took a sip of tea. It felt good on my parched lips and throat. “Dean Underwood, I’m sorry I misunderstood. I thought you’d be happy someone took care of packing up Dr. Appleton’s office.”

The dean, more perceptive than I was used to giving her credit for, was not impressed. I’d had a whole day to come up with a better cover. Too bad I hadn’t done so. “Don’t insult me, Sophie.”

“Really, it’s just one more task you don’t have to worry about.”

The dean shook her head in a “tsk-tsk” manner. “And then returning them like that. Did you think that would be the end of it?”

Returning them? I didn’t know what she was talking about and was about to say as much.

By now we were in her office. She closed the door behind us and I saw a brown cardboard mirage in the corner between two antique bookcases. Three cartons, two on the floor, one piled on top. My boxes? Rather, Keith’s boxes? The boxes had been returned? The box thief stole them to give to the dean? I blinked my eyes a few times, and thought of pinching myself.