The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

that messy plate. It was the least I could do for him.”
    Woody set his chin with a determined, proud look, and I thought maybe he was the one person at Henley who genuinely liked Keith and whom Keith respected.
    How could I blame him for trying to uphold his friend’s reputation for neatness and order?
    I had one more thing to clear up, once Woody was stable.
    “I hear you saw Rachel Wheeler outside this door yesterday. Do you remember what time that was?”
    “Yes, ma’am, Dr. Knowles. I know she’s your friend and all and I didn’t mean to get her in trouble or nothing, but I saw her while that party was going on. I figured I better tell the police everything.”
    Except for that little matter of disposing of evidence at a murder scene. “And you didn’t see anyone else?”
    Woody shook his head. “Just her. I come by the closet over there to pick up my rags for cleaning. Anyway, no way a sweet young kid like that did anything bad, and I’m sure everyone knows that.”
    I sincerely hoped so.

CHAPTER 9
     
    Alone again in Keith’s office, I got back to my task. I piled what was left of his folders and binders into boxes. Each time I emptied a cabinet or a drawer of Keith’s desk, I had the urge to mark the piece of furniture for salvage. I wondered what the administration would do with the office and furnishings. I hoped at least they’d redo the whole place before reassigning it, bad vibes and all, to some unsuspecting freshman teacher.
    I worked quickly. By now I’d convinced myself that I really had been sent by the dean. I told myself that there might well be a voice mail from her on my cell, which I’d turned off before entering the building, or on my home phone, which I could access but chose not to.
    “Dr. Knowles, please go to Dr. Appleton’s office and take away everything but the office furniture,” she might have said.
    On the off chance that I wasn’t the legitimate designee, I tossed material into the boxes without looking too closely, for the sake of speed. I counted on the fact that any sane faculty member—that would be the dean’s actual designee—would wait until Monday to carry out an ad hoc task she’d assigned him.
    All the drawers were unlocked but showed signs of having been manipulated by police tools. Another good reason for me to take them—the police had already declared them useless. It felt strange to fling grade books, lab logs, and even a little black address book into a box for later examination, not only because their owner was dead, but because Keith Appleton was undoubtedly the most private person I knew.
    When he inhabited this office, he kept all his drawers locked. If you wanted a piece of paper from him, you had to wait until he unlocked a drawer or file cabinet, took out the document, then locked the drawer again. Now here it all was, available to anyone. To anyone foolish enough to be here on a Saturday afternoon.
    When I finished, I decided not to call Woody for help loading the boxes into my car. Maybe he was taking quiet moments to grieve for his friend. Or maybe the real delegate from the dean had contacted him. With the help of the metal dolly he’d left in the hallway, I could manage by myself.
    I rolled my baggage back down the hall, noting the special building safety features Keith had added. Under the fire extinguisher was a metal box that I knew contained a fire blanket and first aid supplies. I remembered the Franklin faculty meeting when he’d made the proposal to outfit each floor with the kits.
    Another time he’d come with a brochure from a company that made laboratory safety glasses out of recycled composition notebooks. We teased behind his back, asking each other what new thing Keith would come up with for the next meeting. We called him at various times, Green Keith and School Monitor Keith.
    Now he was Deceased Keith. I felt the tension in my jaws increase with each step. I needed to stop the tape running in my head. Maybe whatever was in these boxes would hold the answer to the problem that kept me in this wrecked state.
    I pulled my heavy load onto the elevator and pushed B for the basement, where there was a side door at ground level. Trying to get a loaded dolly down Franklin’s white marble front steps would not be a pretty sight. I hurried along a dark hallway, past storage areas and the noisy generator room. The wheels of the red dolly rumbled by entirely too many dark and dusty nooks and crannies. I hated coming down