The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

use for your drafts.”
    “Dr. Appleton wouldn’t look at the yellow drafts,” Pam said.
    “Never,” Casey said.
    So I’d heard. “And no one had, say, just dumped some there?”
    “Not that I saw.”
    “Nope.”
    “Nuh-uh.”
    I made a note. For Rachel and the girls, it was yes on the cake at the door; no on the yellow pages. For the police, I recalled, it had been no on the cake and yes on the yellow pages. Something kept bugging me about the yellow pages, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
    If I could just separate all this from the horrible fact of Keith Appleton’s murder, it would be a fun puzzle.

CHAPTER 15
     
    The old problem of withholding information from the police reared its head again. I now had information from Rachel, Pam, Liz, and Casey that would be useful to Virgil and Archie in establishing a timeline. I also had that clue from Keith’s cousin that he was seeing someone. I assumed the police could track her down even without a name and probably had done so already. Wasn’t that the first thing they did, look to the spouse or significant other?
    I wished they’d told me if they found a girlfriend in Keith’s life. More than that, I wished I had an official role in the investigation, but how realistic was that? Both Virgil and Archie had made it clear that I was useless at best, a hindrance at worst.
    I’d encouraged all four girls to go to the police with the truth about their tramping on the crime scene. Maybe that was it, as far as my responsibility as a citizen. Should I waste time reporting to the police and nagging the girls, or wouldn’t it be better if I could just figure everything out first and hand everyone the solution? That process worked well with my puzzle editor. Why not with the Henley PD?
    Yeah, right.
    My interview with the girls had been so satisfactory, I almost forgot about the boxes and the dean. Pam had given me a ride home. As we’d approached my driveway and I’d dug out my spare remote control for the garage door, I’d had the fantasy wish that the boxes might have reappeared.
    No such luck.
    At three in the afternoon on Sunday, alone in my house, I had approximately nineteen hours before the president’s meeting, followed immediately by my meeting with the dean, at which time I needed to have either the boxes or a good story.
    I checked my messages. There was nothing that shed light on my current state. Even a ransom note would have been welcome. I imagined: “Give me an A in applied statistics and I’ll return the boxes.”
    “Deal,” I’d have said.
    A message from Ariana reminded me about the next beading class where we would make “fun, fantastical, magical luggage tags.” Ariana liked to note that her December 5 birthday was the same as Walt Disney’s. I pointed out that the same day in the same year was also the birthday of Heisenberg, the quantum physicist who came up with the uncertainty principle.
    I wished I could fit something fun or magical anywhere on my to-do list.
    I left a text message for Bruce. “Where R U? Where’s my car? I need U.”
    Clear enough, I thought.
    In my office, the piles of work, all with imminent deadlines, sat waiting. I owed the dean three syllabi for the new term, one each for linear algebra, real analysis, and differential equations. I needed to contact the nine other summer students about their grades. I had a crossword with gaping holes where clues should be. And that wordplay puzzle, the butt of jokes at Friday’s party, that only Gil had been able to solve.
    Instead of tackling the piles, I downloaded a simple timeline program that allowed the user to enter hours of the day and events into a table. The software then spit out a linear version of the input.
    Maybe if I organized the information I had about the crime scene, something would pop up that had arrows pointing to Keith’s killer.
    I entered everything I knew about who was in Franklin Hall in the afternoon, including students other than the four who were most involved with the party. As much as possible I wrote down names and when I thought they’d arrived and left. I included faculty members who were at the party—the department chairs, Fran, Judith, and Robert; the new girl, Lucy; Hal, and even Gil. I widened my scope a little more by including a couple of faculty senate members with whom Keith had had serious conflicts. I omitted only myself and Woody.
    I couldn’t help think of the woman Keith was seeing, according to his cousin.