The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

with a special and dedicated editor, Michelle Vega.

 
    HENLEY BOULEVARD

Sometimes it is useful to know how large your zero is.
    —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

CHAPTER 1
     
    Who thought summer school was a good idea? Especially in Massachusetts, where the humidity can take your breath away, never mind frizz up your hair.
    I loved teaching in one of the oldest buildings on the beautiful campus of Henley College. Today, however, with the temperature hovering around ninety-five degrees, I’d have been willing to give up the magnificent collegiate architecture of Benjamin Franklin Hall for a sleek, modern, air-conditioned building.
    But I had only myself to blame for the fact that I was teaching on a wretched Thursday morning in July. I’d persuaded the dean to fund a learning center in Franklin, the building that housed Henley’s mathematics and science departments.
    I was the go-to person for a program that provided tutoring sessions, online problem sets, videos, and classes in special topics for students at every level of achievement in math. The program, plus a twice-a-week seminar in applied statistics, kept me in a hot, stuffy classroom for many more hours than I liked.
    By noon today I’d spent three hours using math games to help incoming freshmen who had declared themselves victims of math anxiety. I waved a sheaf of practice sets in front of my face, creating a warm breeze, and declared the session on graphing calculators over.
    Students filed by, picking up a tip sheet for overcoming their fear of math as they left the room, hopefully for cooler realms.
    “I just can’t do retro,” I overheard one young women say to another.
    “I totally get it,” said her companion.
    “Is there an algorithm you don’t get?” I asked, unable to resist.
    “No, we’re talking about clothes, Dr. Knowles,” the first woman said.
    “I knew that.”
    Rachel Wheeler, my assistant, stayed behind to walk me out. Rachel was everyone’s assistant, in fact; a post-graduate student helping out in all the math and science labs.
    “Do you have a minute, Dr. Knowles?” Rachel asked. Her narrow face was somber, her usual animated personality subdued. I hoped it was simply the nasty July heat that gave her a bedraggled look.
    “As long as we walk while we talk,” I said, eager to leave the stifling, musty building. “We might be able to catch a breeze.”
    No such luck. We walked in stagnant air down the imposing exterior steps that led from Franklin’s clock tower to the lush campus below, and headed for the parking lot.
    I envied the small group of scantily clothed students in front of the gym, frolicking in the fountain that surrounded a statue of our esteemed founder. I hoped our humorless dean wasn’t looking out the window of her administration building office. The simple caper could generate a long memo from her about decorum taking precedence over the possibility of heat stroke.
    “Thanks for setting up the measurements lab for tomorrow,” I said to Rachel. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
    “I’m thinking of quitting.” Rachel’s head was down; her eyes seemed focused on her red patent sandals.
    I’d heard this threat all summer, and it wasn’t about the math labs or converting from inches to centimeters. Rachel’s thesis work in chemistry had not been going well.
    “Did the metric system finally get to you?” I asked, a weak joke, an attempt at lightening the mood for someone who’d been tutoring metric since her freshman year. I was sorry Rachel was having such a hard time with her key project.
    We shuffled past the tennis courts, where the asphalt seemed to be sending up plumes of steam. A few yards later, Rachel stopped in front of the campus coffee shop. Ordinarily the smell of Huey’s dark roast would draw us in, but I could tell Rachel needed more than an iced cuppa.
    “I mean it this time,” she said.
    “He’s been that bad?”
    Anyone in the Henley academic family who was listening would have known we were referring to Dr. Keith Appleton. He was Rachel’s thesis adviser and the chemistry teacher known not fondly as Apep , after the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos, the destroyer of dreams.
    Rachel’s big dream was to do this extra year of study and research at Henley and then enter med school in Boston. She needed Apep’s help and recommendation to make it all come true.
    “He told me my data is crappy.”
    “He used that word?”
    “No, he’d never use that word, but