Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

Archie was nicer to me than last time, leading me to believe I was no longer a viable suspect in his mind. He nodded politely as I announced that I had information from some of my students and from the janitor at the college. I hated to drag Woody into the morass of those who lied to the police, but I felt that once I explained his motivation, he’d be forgiven quickly and not held accountable.

“It’s about the cake and soda,” I said. “I know why you didn’t find any at the scene.”

I spread out the timeline, which included what I knew of my students’ visits, without naming them. To my chagrin, Archie had had no call from anyone at Henley since his initial interrogation. I wondered about the legitimacy of marking the three applied statistics students down a grade for their cowardice. I was most disappointed in Rachel, over whom I had no grading power. Not that I would ever do such a thing.

I oriented the timeline so Archie could read it. I’d marked the events of the day and laid them out in a straight horizontal line. “I’ve been over this a million times,” I said, breaking my rule never to exaggerate with numbers. “This is what I have.”

Ten A.M.,Woody hangs Keith’s award on his office wall.

Eleven forty-five A.M.,Woody sees Keith’s car in the lot.

Twelve fifteen P.M.,Franklin Hall party begins.

One forty-five P.M.,Rachel finds Keith dead, sees no yellow sheets, leaves cake and soda outside door. Two thirty P.M.,Three girls arrive, see Keith dead, see cake and soda outside, no yellow sheets.

Four P.M.,Woody arrives, calls police, removes cake and soda from office, sees yellow sheets.

Four ten P.M.,police arrive, see no cake or soda, but do see yellow sheets.

I indicated the place on the line between two thirty when the cake and soda were still outside the office, and four P.M., when the police found yellow pages, allegedly of Rachel’s thesis.

“Here’s where the killer came back,” I said. “To incriminate Rachel, he went back and planted the cake inside the office and threw pages from Rachel’s thesis around, except Woody messed things up by trashing the cake. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Archie stroked his chin while his head bobbed comically.

“The killer came back and messed with his own crime scene,” Archie said. “Busy guy.”

Archie picked up my timeline and held it close to his face, studying it. “So you’re saying the killer was essentially hanging around the crime scene waiting to plant evidence. I’m assuming you think he also planted the chemicals from the cabinet so it would point to Rachel, who had a key.” I nodded. “Why didn’t he just drop everything at once? Why risk going back?”

“Well, there was no cake and soda until Rachel took it upstairs. That gave the killer the idea. And then I guess throwing the marked-up yellow pages in was just an afterthought. Overkill. So to speak.”

“So the killer was at the party and saw Rachel head up to deliver the cake and soda and decided to take advantage of the situation. The overkill. Where’d he get the yellow pages?”

I felt my face flush. My eyes suddenly itched. All along, I’d suspected the killer was one of the attendees at the Franklin Hall party, but that had been theory. Now the fact seemed to emerge from the timeline and the logic of the movements on Friday afternoon. The killer saw Rachel leave the room with the cake and soda. The killer had access to draft pages of Rachel’s thesis. I saw draft sheets in the trash around Franklin all the time, though something was different about those sheets compared to the way Virgil had described the ones at the crime scene. I wished I could remember his exact words. No matter, the point was that the killer could have picked them out of the trash any day of the week, if he was part of the Franklin family.

I didn’t like my theory so much anymore.

Apparently Archie did.

“Nice work,” he said, “which we could have-”

“If I or the girls had come to you immediately, you’d have come up with this.”

“I could charge you all with obstruction,” he said. I drew in my breath. “But I don’t see the point.” I let out my breath. “I’m assuming Rachel Wheeler told you she entered the office and found the victim, then exited and put the food outside the door.”

I nodded, grudgingly.

“I notice you haven’t given me the names of the three students who went to the office at two thirty.”

“I can’t tell you my sources.”

“What? Are you a reporter now?”

More like a priest, I thought. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“Come on, Dr. Knowles. This is not one of your math puzzles. This is a murder investigation.”

He was right. When he shoved a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, I acquiesced and wrote “Pamela Noonan,” “Elizabeth Harrison,” and “Casey Tremel.”

“You did give us the janitor without a problem.”

I hoped Archie didn’t mean that poor Woody was about to be accosted by the Henley PD.

“It was hard to explain how the cake went missing in the end without involving him. But he was only-”

Ding. Ding. Ding. Pause . Ding. Ding. Ding.

A low-level alarm went off on Archie’s watch. He checked the time and got up abruptly. “Excuse me one minute.”

It was more like fifteen minutes. I saw many no smoking signs in the room, but no warning against using electronic devices, so I took out my phone to check my email. There were messages from my applied statistics students as well as companies trying to sell me shoes and posters, but nothing from Lucy. I was curious to know if she’d admit to dating Keith, and, if so, whether that put her higher or lower on the list of suspects.

Maybe I should have shared that info with Archie, too. Nah, I wouldn’t want to spoil my reputation as The Great Withholder.

I chose one of the games my phone offered to keep me amused. I decided on an easy one: moving three boxes of graduated sizes from one pile to another in the smallest number of moves. The restriction was that only one box at a time could be moved, and you could move a box only on top of a larger one. This was a very smart game in that if you tried to move a bigger box onto a smaller box, a nasty beep sounded. After a few seconds the game reminded me of the movements of the boxes that held Keith’s office effects. I quit the game.

I went online again, clicked around, and found a neat game to foster algebraic reasoning. I bookmarked it for use in a math workshop. When things got back to normal.

The algebra game put me in a good mood by the time Archie returned with a cup of coffee in a mug that had seen better, cleaner days. Strange to take coffee at the sound of a wristwatch alarm, but to each his own. Maybe he was on medication that required a concomitant dose of caffeine.

“I’d have gotten you a cup, too, but I don’t recommend it. Can I get you a soda?” Archie asked.

“I’m good,” I said.

“So where were we?”

“I’m very concerned that it’s too late to solve this murder. It’s been more than forty-eight hours.”

“I know you hear that all the time, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule. For big cities it might be true since those guys are dealing with at least a murder a day. They can’t afford to let fresh ones go, so a case is considered on its way to cold much sooner than here.”

The idea of a homicide as “fresh” brought back the taste of the spicy pasta salad I’d had for lunch. I rubbed my nose, smelling a ripe body.

“What’s next?” I asked.

Archie laughed. “What? Are you part of the squad now?”