The Square Root of Murder (16 page)

I went through my harrowing interview with Archie and earned Ariana’s sympathy and a few more of the small anise cookies she’d made.

When it came to my visit to campus, I fudged a bit.

“I borrowed the files from Keith’s office,” I said, as an explanation for why Keith’s possessions had been in my garage in the first place. I wasn’t sure why I decided on the spot not to admit to the ruse I’d used to acquire the material, unless it was to corroborate Ariana’s theory that no one tells the whole truth all the time. I wondered if my skirting the facts would negate the effects of the herbal tea. “It’s creepy that they’re gone now.”

“I wonder where in the universe they are?” Ariana mused.

“In the hands of the murderer is my best guest. My big problem is what to do when the dean finds out I took them and then lost them.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t just outright tell the dean you want to help the police. What do you have to lose?”

I smiled. “Only my promotion to full professor.”

“Is there a lot of money at stake if you don’t get it?”

“A couple of thousand dollars at most. It’s the principle.”

“I knew that,” Ariana said.

“Thanks.”

“Not that I wouldn’t miss you, but I wish there were some place better for you. I mean, I know you love Henley but there must be other colleges where they have math departments and cooperative deans. This is Massachusetts, right? The college state?”

“Yes, there are other colleges, but not necessarily other jobs. Most colleges are cutting back on full-time faculty and using adjuncts.”

I explained the common practice of giving desperate, unemployed teachers the option of teaching for a flat rate per course. To put together a living, teachers would take on classes at several institutions. They ended up with a lot more work for a lot less pay.

“And no benefits, I bet,” Ariana added.

“You got it.”

“I’ll never understand academia.”

Sometimes I didn’t either.

Ariana pushed herself off the easy chair and slapped the palms of her hands against each other.

“We need to cleanse your house and your garage.”

Her thin caftan, in shades of red and blue to match her hair, seemed appropriate to her task. She went to her car and brought back her smudging kit, her ritual for purifying a person or a place. I watched as she opened all the windows and doors to allow the free flow of energy.

I often wished I had Ariana’s faith in a smoldering bundle of herbs; I wished I could believe that the smoke from white sage would carry all the negative energy out of my environs. Instead, what came to mind was a lecture I heard at a conference, on the steady flow energy equation. It soothed me that I could picture the equation and fill in some numbers for the ambient conditions in my home.

Meanwhile, Ariana recited peace-giving words to the north, south, east, and west.

Might as well cover all bases, I always told myself when Ariana performed this ritual. It can’t hurt.

 

 

I avoided my stove and oven in the summer months, eating directly from the refrigerator most nights. Ariana had no such fear of additional heat and set to work making dinner while I followed her instructions and took a bath with the rosewater salts she’d made in her own kitchen.

How bad a day is it that starts and ends with meals made and served by someone I loved in the comfort of my home? I smelled the stir-fry as soon as I entered the hallway. Peppers, broccoli, and soy brought my nose to life. Ariana’s homemade bread baking in the oven added to the promise of a delicious meal.

“Tofu and rolls in ten,” Ariana called out.

I used the time to listen to my voicemail on my landline, which I hadn’t checked since I left home this morning. Twelve messages, mostly related to the incident that changed Henley’s summer school schedule and scarred the campus forever.

Pam, Liz, and Casey assured me they’d be at the library tomorrow morning and wondered again if we could all meet together to save time. I thought not. Three other students in the statistics seminar wanted to know how I was planning to finish off the term. In spite of my bravado with the trio at Franklin Hall this afternoon, I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. I’d return their calls when I had.

Sometimes I longed for the days when teachers had office hours that were defined by limits, and were not expected to be available twenty-four seven, at school and at home, in person and online, as if we were emergency workers. Now, all our phone numbers and email addresses were listed on the syllabi on the Henley College website, along with our social networking pages.

The next three calls had been hang-ups. I checked the caller log and saw that all were from the area code for Mansfield, Massachusetts, where the MAstar’s flagship base was located. Bruce usually used his own cell phone to call or text me, but when he did use the facility phone, it was a Mansfield area code that came up, never with the same seven-digit number, from some central switchboard, I assumed.

It wasn’t like Bruce to not leave even a simple “Hey, it’s me,” and certainly not three times. He’d try my cell before he’d try my landline three times. I replayed the messages and noted the time stamps. The first was at two thirty, when I was on my way to the police station after dropping the boxes off; the second was at three twenty, while I was waiting for my interview with Archie; the third came in at three forty, still waiting for Archie.

I texted Bruce: “U call?” and made a note to ask him about it after dinner if I didn’t hear from him sooner.

Two calls were from Seth Phillips, our local reporter for the
Henley Forum
. I figured he’d been denied comments by the important people on campus and was down to mere associate professors.

Another student’s message had come in, with an idea about how to finish the semester. She’d suggested, “Just have a big party and call the class over,” followed by an “Oh, my God, that sounds totally awful after what happened. Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“And where were you on Friday afternoon between noon and four o’clock?” I asked my machine as each student reported in.

Ariana heard me speaking to the machine in a scolding tone. She smiled.

“Since when did you give up puzzles to take on a murder investigation?”

I picked up the nearest puzzle, a dodecahedral twisty puzzle made of plastic, one that Ariana herself had given me. I gave it two twists, resulting in further scrambling of the colors, just to make a point.

“Do I have time for one phone call before dinner? I want to get in touch with Keith’s cousin in Chicago.”

“Go for it,” Ariana said.

I went into my office and checked my address book for Elteen Kirsch and found her number.

Elteen had the voice of a rather old woman, a little shaky and high-pitched. Was it physics that accounted for that? I’d have to ask Hal why voices went up an octave or two as we got older. Or maybe it was a nurse question for Gil, his loving but apparently jealous wife.

“I know who you are, Dr. Knowles,” Elteen said. “It’s so nice of you to call. Keith talked about you and considered you a very good friend.”

I was used to this by now. I had no explanation for why Keith went around telling everyone what good friends we were but butted up against me at every turn on faculty committees. As recently as graduation last June, Keith became a one-man campaign against the speaker I’d proposed, a noted Harvard scholar in linguistics. Keith had serious disagreements with the man’s political views. I’d argued that it was a coup for Henley to get him, that we weren’t inviting him to talk about politics and, anyway, that shouldn’t matter. This was America, wasn’t it? In the end, after winning over the dean, Keith had prevailed and our substitute speaker was a retired botanist with no views whatsoever.

Elteen had been going on about her cousin. I came in at, “He was very good to us. I can’t tell you how many times he bailed us out when Teddy got sick and couldn’t work. And our Delia is going to a wonderful private high school thanks to her uncle Keith.”

Here was a further glimpse into Keith Appleton’s other life. The Keith who called me his friend, gave money to his relatives and to the school janitor. The kindly Uncle Keith.

“How generous of him.”

“Oh, he was very generous. I feel so bad that he died so young. And right when he was finally starting to keep company with someone, too. A nice young woman, he said.”

Excuse me? Did keeping company mean what I thought it did? Had Keith hooked up with someone? Bruce had claimed I was oblivious to things like that. But wouldn’t I have known if Keith were dating? Or if Rachel and Hal had something going as Gil thought? Was I so buried in my job—make that jobs—that I didn’t see what was going on around me? Well, too late now.

“Did you ever get to meet his friend?” I asked, trying to keep it gender neutral, just in case.

“Oh dear, no. You know he only met her this summer. Bonnie, wasn’t it? Or Annie?”

Of course I knew. I was his best friend. I mumbled a name and changed the subject.

“Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” I said.

“That’s very kind of you.”

I wondered if I dared try to use this condolence call to ask a question of a cousin who saw Keith only in the most favorable light. The “any known enemies” query died on my lips.

“We’re all very blessed to have known him,” I said, and left it at that.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used the word “blessed.” How strange that it should be Keith Appleton who inspired it.

 

 

Roasted peppers and balsamic vinegar notwithstanding, the tofu recipe didn’t cut it for either of us tonight and Ariana and I ended up in my den with large bowls of mocha chip ice cream, cruising television channels until we gave up on finding anything decent. Nothing could make me laugh and no script was as dramatic as the one playing itself out in my life.

I watched Ariana clean her bowl with her long, thin index finger, which she then licked, a microcosmic symbol of what I loved about her. She had this endearing quality of being able to find the best in any culture. One minute she was burning incense, the next she was reading an international geopolitical thriller; she ate rice cakes one day and ordered fries with ketchup the next.

“Should I be worried about you?” Ariana asked.

“Nah. I mean, it’s hard not to be upset about what happened to Keith. It’s going to take time to get used to. He was a strong presence on campus.” I almost said, “We were blessed to have him,” but that moment had passed.

The notes to
Come Fly With Me
filled the room
.

I looked over at my cell phone, charging on my end table. Bruce calling.

“I’m going to take this,” I said.

Ariana got up and pointed to the clock on the kitchen wall, a room away. Twenty after twelve. “I should be going anyway.”

We waved good-bye and blew kisses as I unplugged the charging cord and swished the phone on.

“You home?” Bruce asked.

“All fed and watered,” I said. “Ariana, the cook and the queen of soothing gestures, is just leaving.”

We spent a few minutes catching up on the day—Bruce had worked an evacuation drill and one real emergency call between nine and eleven thirty tonight, meaning hardly any turnaround or downtime.

“We worked with the Marines on the drill,” he said.

“Very cool. We could handle the truth.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t you remember in
A Few Good Men
where Jack Nicholson yells out at Tom Cruise, ‘You can’t handle the truth?’ ” Bruce’s imitation of Nicholson left a lot to be desired.

“Oh, yeah. How could I forget?”

“One of my faves.”

I was ready to ask him about the hang-ups. I tried to sound casual.

“Did you get my texts?” I asked.

“Yeah. But I couldn’t tell what you meant. Did I call when?”

“Did you try to get me a couple of times today?”

“Not since I talked to you earlier. I slept till about five, then ran around doing errands, then the madhouse here. Why?”

If it wasn’t Bruce, then who? Someone else at MAstar headquarters? Gil was the only other person I knew. If she wanted to track down Hal, she would have left a message. In any case, there were more telephones in the town of Mansfield than those at MAstar—one other number in my address book teased at the back of my head, but I couldn’t remember—so I was fighting a losing battle trying to figure it out. I had to stop letting petty things get to me.

“Why?” Bruce repeated.

“Oh, nothing. I got a couple of calls with no message and just wondered.”

“You sound funny. Everything okay there?”

My mouth was ready to form the word
break-in
but closed just in time, and opened on another note.

“Oh, yeah, just this thing with Keith and all.”

“I should be there.”

“Nah, you’d be in the way.”

“So you say.” I heard the familiar finger-snapping. “I almost forgot. How’d it go with Archie?”

“Nothing to it. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to bed, even if you can’t.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

“Lock up,” he said.

Like never before, I thought.

I’d successfully avoided contacting my students until it was too late to return their calls. Technically, it was never too late to call a student in a college dormitory. Half the girls were up all night, the other half during the day, so there was always the chance that one of them would need her math teacher. As many calls involved personal distress, such as “He never calls me. What shall I do?” as homework, such as “Do you really expect us to do three problem sets every week?”

I wished now that my biggest problem was giving dating advice.