The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

Dean Phyllis Underwood. In a couple of months her long-held fantasy of Henley College was to end as young men poured onto the campus, requiring separate restrooms and careful monitoring in the dormitories.
    Dean Underwood’s last-ditch effort before the recruiting for men began had been to warn the board of trustees that all alumnae funding would come to a halt if the admissions policy were changed.
    “They won’t send money, and they certainly won’t continue to send their daughters,” she’d prophesied.
    Now that I thought of it, it had been Keith Appleton who’d come up with statistics to prove otherwise, based on similar situations across the country. My privately held response to the dean’s argument was simply, what daughter obeyed her mother anymore?
    The last time I sat outside the dean’s office was also the last time I saw Keith Appleton. I wondered if Benjamin Franklin Hall birthday parties would ever be the same. Would we maintain hushed tones in his honor? Eschew cake and soda? I shivered as I thought of the turn all our lives had taken.
    Today the dean approached her office from the outside, presumably having had things to do between the president’s assembly and our meeting.
    She addressed me immediately, even before we were behind her office door. “I suppose you think that was a very smart move, Sophie, but let me tell you it was not.”
    Courtney busied herself at her computer, seeming to make more noise than necessary as she hit the keys and slapped papers on her desk. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she broke out into a high-pitched la la la la la la la . At one point she gave me a sympathetic look.
    I took a sip of tea. It felt good on my parched lips and throat. “Dean Underwood, I’m sorry I misunderstood. I thought you’d be happy someone took care of packing up Dr. Appleton’s office.”
    The dean, more perceptive than I was used to giving her credit for, was not impressed. I’d had a whole day to come up with a better cover. Too bad I hadn’t done so. “Don’t insult me, Sophie.”
    “Really, it’s just one more task you don’t have to worry about.”
    The dean shook her head in a “tsk-tsk” manner. “And then returning them like that. Did you think that would be the end of it?”
    Returning them? I didn’t know what she was talking about and was about to say as much.
    By now we were in her office. She closed the door behind us and I saw a brown cardboard mirage in the corner between two antique bookcases. Three cartons, two on the floor, one piled on top. My boxes? Rather, Keith’s boxes? The boxes had been returned? The box thief stole them to give to the dean? I blinked my eyes a few times, and thought of pinching myself.
    “I hoped it would be, Dean Underwood. The end of it, I mean,” I said. When in doubt, fake it.
    “You’ve gotten poor Mr. Conroy very upset and he doesn’t deserve that.”
    “No, he doesn’t.”
    “He thinks it’s his fault that you went off with those cartons and didn’t take them immediately to my office.”
    “It wasn’t at all his fault.”
    “And then, when he found them outside today at the basement entrance to Benjamin Franklin Hall . . . well, he was completely confused. He called Courtney, quite distraught.”
    “Poor Woody. I’ll bet his head was spinning.” Like mine. “Who was supposed to collect the contents of Dr. Appleton’s office, anyway?” I asked. No harm trying.
    “Dr. Knowles.” I thought it was a good sign that she was back to our normal mode of address, though the tone was an exasperated one, as if I had such nerve asking a question like that.
    “I’m sorry. I meant no harm.”
    “I’m not dumb, Dr. Knowles, whatever you and your liberal friends think behind my back. I know that your assistant, Rachel Wheeler, is the main suspect in Dr. Appleton’s murder. And I know how important it is to you to clear her name. That’s very noble. But investigating a murder is not your job. And it is certainly not seemly in a faculty member of Henley College.”
    Is it seemly to be murdered on campus? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. The dean’s face was red enough already. The campus couldn’t handle another medical emergency.
    Why did the dean want the boxes anyway? What was the big deal that she didn’t get them right away? She could have assigned that task to Courtney or her assistant. She could have had them shipped, unexamined, to Chicago since the police were not interested in their contents.