The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

Kirsch, in the Chicago area. Keith spends holidays with her and her family. The police may already have notified her, but I have her name and address if they need it.”
    I made a note to offer that bit of information to Virgil as a paltry gesture to assist the police, from whom I was about to ask a lot.
    “I didn’t realize you two were that close,” Fran said.
    “We’re not. Keith called me from her home on spring break once and wanted me to overnight a package he’d left on his desk.” Not that I was being defensive.
    “Well, that makes you closer than anyone I can think of,” Fran said.
    I had the fleeting thought that maybe Rachel was right, that if Keith had any friends at all, I was it. The notion only made me feel worse about the negative vibes I’d been sending his way, practically until the moment he died.
    My usually comfortable home seemed unbearably warm tonight. I carried the phone into the kitchen, poured a glass of ice water from a pitcher in the fridge, and adjusted the thermostat down a notch.
    A call-waiting beep saved me from further explaining to Fran the nature of my friendship, or lack thereof, with the deceased.
    I clicked my tongue. “I’d better take this call,” I told Fran, though I didn’t recognize the ID. “We’ll talk soon.”
    I pushed a button to hear chem major Pam Noonan. “Oh, my God, Dr. Knowles,” she said, making one word out of the first three. “Did you hear?”
    “There are cops at all the doors.” Liz Harrison’s voice now, with the hollow sound of a speakerphone. “And this big TV truck.”
    Without waiting for my answer, Pam had apparently yielded the mic to her roomie, who sounded as excited as Pam. “I can’t believe it,” Liz said. “We’re sitting here and, oh, my God. Franklin Hall is a crime scene.”
    “You’re in Franklin Hall?”
    “No, no, we’re sitting in my dorm room.” A new voice.
    “Who is this?” I asked.
    “Casey,” she said, as if she was insulted that I didn’t recognize her voice. But I knew Casey Tremel only because she was close to Pam and Liz. “They made everyone go home who lived near enough and then they closed Nathaniel Hawthorne and Clara Barton and put the rest of us into Paul Revere, which is where I live anyway.”
    Campus-speak was always flavored with the greats of Massachusetts history. I assumed the big shake up in the dorms was to make security easier.
    “But first the cops interviewed us all, like on TV,” Pam said.
    “They wanted to know where you were, did you see anything strange, and all that,” Liz said.
    “We walked over to Franklin, but they wouldn’t let us into the building.” Pam’s voice again.
    “I guess they’re done with us,” said someone.
    “They’re using that yellow and black tape just like on TV and there are cops at all the doors. A lot of good they did at Franklin today. So much for Henley’s security department, huh?” said someone else.
    I taught these girls in my summer statistics class. How come my students had so much time to watch television? I’d have to step up the homework assignments. And were they calling all their teachers tonight, or was I the only lucky one? Maybe the word had spread that, as Rachel had judged, I was Keith Appleton’s only friend on campus.
    I tapped the mic in my phone. “Ooh, sorry, girls, I have another call. You three take care of yourselves and try to put all this out of your minds. We’ll talk later.” I was sure I’d be getting a call back soon.
    Not wanting to appear to gossip about a colleague, I was equally abrupt with the next several callers. Collecting and analyzing data was an occupational hazard for me—I couldn’t help noting that the science majors, who had Keith in many classes, seemed less sad about their professor’s death than they were excited about a campus drama. I found myself listening for clues to Keith’s killer, as if the pool of suspects were restricted to those who called me, his alleged best friend. I ticked them off, teachers and students alike: Pam, Liz, Casey, Fran. I added all who were at the party this afternoon. Lucy, Robert, Judith, and nearly a dozen others. Anyone but Rachel.
    Through a curious philosophy of what constituted a mathematics or science major, Henley College required its science majors to take math classes, but not vice versa. Thus, few of my own math majors had taken Keith’s classes. I hated to think that that was why they seemed more inclined to express sympathy