The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

faculty. And ask them what? If they’d followed the cake trail by any chance? If they’d followed the journey of the boxes by any chance?
    For once I was looking forward to a faculty meeting. I’d had an email from Fran that all the departments of Franklin Hall would meet separately after the president’s address, as she’d requested.
    When I was stuck like this, puzzling always helped me. I finished the crossword puzzle I’d been working on that was formerly in the shape of a beaker. I’d turned the grid into the shape of a teapot and now I sent it electronically via my laptop to my editor in Kansas City. It felt good to complete a task, if a relatively unimportant one. I liked it when my life was easy to figure out.
    The sound of a motor caught my attention. Either Bruce or the box thief had opened my garage door. I almost wished it were the box thief, come to apologize and explain himself.
    It could happen.
    Not this time, but Bruce’s “Hey” was very welcome. I had to admit it felt a little creepy in my house today, knowing someone had intruded at least as far as my garage when I was out. The sooner I got to the bottom of the ill wind that had swept through Henley, the sooner I’d feel safe and grounded again.
    “Have you slept at all today?” I asked my boyfriend.
    Bruce shook his head. “I’ll get some tonight. There won’t be anything big at work, not two nights in a row. I’ll bet the most we’ll have to do is an IFT. A half hour and we’re back.”
    I knew about interfacility transfers. When a patient needed equipment or care not available in the hospital he was in, MAstar could be called in to transport him to another. The Bat Phone summoned them for that mission also, I’d learned.
    “You’re saying you can’t have two busy nights in a row at work. Is that a rule?”
    “It’s statistics. Know anything about them?”
    Cute. “I think you should at least try to nap.”
    “Before or after I tell you what I learned from Virge?”
    I jumped off the stool and grabbed Bruce’s arms. “Come here, you.”
     
     
    Surprise, surprise, the Henley PD had been working on the same case I was, and they had their own ways of getting information. Without stealing material from crime scenes or browbeating young coeds. It might turn out that while I was busy doing the above, eliminating a lot of pesky paperwork, the Henley PD had actually culled facts to work with. Another approach to a murder investigation.
    I had no problem buttering up my hungry boyfriend/ coconspirator to get the most out of him. I cooked up a fresh soufflé and served it to him with cinnamon toast.
    “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Keeping me dangling like this,” I said, taking a seat across from him.
    I loved Bruce’s disheveled off-duty look, when the dark hair on either side of his widow’s peak formed unruly arcs, the ends of which touched his eyebrows. It was what people called the “Dark Irish look,” though you’d have to go back a couple of generations to find Bruce’s Galway Bay roots.
    “You’re the one who told me not to call Virge.”
    I poured coffee for both of us. “I know I said that, but that was stupid,” I admitted.
    “Mmm hmm,” he mumbled through a mouthful of toast. He knew better than to agree completely with a statement like that.
    “I’m waiting,” I said. I’d set my laptop in front of me on the kitchen table, across from Bruce and his breakfast/ lunch/dinner combination, poor guy. I was ready to take notes. I tapped my fingers on the keyboard.
    “I always get the greatest stories from Virge. Like, this teenager on a bicycle tried to rob four people along Henley Boulevard one day last week. First, he tried to hold up a couple and when they told him they had no money, he just rode away. Then he stops a jogger, and that guy didn’t carry his wallet, so the kid tries an old lady, and, well, I forget the rest, but I guess this was all within one block, so all the victims jumped on him and held him down while one called the police.”
    “What a kick,” I said, with no kick in my voice.
    “Okay, I’ve had my fun. Not that Virge told me anything top secret, but he was willing to share for whatever reason. Everyone down there wants this to be put to bed quickly, believe me. The commissioner’s phone is ringing off the hook.”
    “Are you saying that he thinks I could help?”
    “Not in so many words. But I think it would be a good idea if you went down and talked to