The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

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.

CHAPTER 12
     
    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.
    I patrolled my house twice, checking doors and windows. I hated shutting off all ventilation, but there was no other way to completely alarm my perimeter. I put in the alarm code, not simply out of habit tonight. I was tempted to test it to see if the human monitors two towns over were really paying attention. I wished I’d thought to take the rake in from the garage, but retrieving it now would mean undoing all the protections first and I couldn’t bear to be unalarmed even for that short time.
    The unfamiliar feeling of vulnerability unsettled me. I crawled into bed, then crawled out and wedged a chair under the bedroom doorknob. I climbed under my crisp lavender sheet again, and climbed out again to make sure the door between the kitchen and the garage was locked, something I never did unless I was leaving town for a few days.
    Reading in bed was one of my favorite pastimes, but tonight I couldn’t concentrate. I opened the drawer in my night table and took out a clipboard with a half-finished crossword. The puzzle was due to my editor in a few days and I hadn’t looked at it at all yesterday or today.
    The sad part: I’d been working on a chemistry-related crossword, with Keith’s help. The overall shape of the puzzle was a beaker. Some clues were simple; for “tongs” the clue was “they come in a pair and hold hot things.” I’d asked Keith if he’d contribute a few difficult ones. Not too hard, though, since the puzzle was destined for a kids’ word games book. He’d given me several, starting with “crucible,” for which the clue was “porcelain container for reactions.”
    “These are perfect for middle-schoolers,” I’d told Keith. “I didn’t know you had experience with preteens.”
    He’d shrugged and said, “I used to be one.”
    I doubted it, but then I never would have guessed that Keith was seeing someone. Unless he’d made up a girl to keep his old cousin quiet. I wondered who she was, if she was real. I couldn’t think of a Bonnie on the faculty. I counted three faculty members who could pass for Annie in one form or another—all of them were married, happily from all outward appearances.
    Was Annie or Bonnie a student? I hoped not. Elteen had said she was young, but I couldn’t take her