The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

work,” he said, “which we could have—”
    “If I or the girls had come to you immediately, you’d have come up with this.”
    “I could charge you all with obstruction,” he said. I drew in my breath. “But I don’t see the point.” I let out my breath. “I’m assuming Rachel Wheeler told you she entered the office and found the victim, then exited and put the food outside the door.”
    I nodded, grudgingly.
    “I notice you haven’t given me the names of the three students who went to the office at two thirty.”
    “I can’t tell you my sources.”
    “What? Are you a reporter now?”
    More like a priest, I thought. “Do I need a lawyer?”
    “Come on, Dr. Knowles. This is not one of your math puzzles. This is a murder investigation.”
    He was right. When he shoved a pad of paper and a pen in front of me, I acquiesced and wrote “Pamela Noonan,” “Elizabeth Harrison,” and “Casey Tremel.”
    “You did give us the janitor without a problem.”
    I hoped Archie didn’t mean that poor Woody was about to be accosted by the Henley PD.
    “It was hard to explain how the cake went missing in the end without involving him. But he was only—”
    Ding. Ding. Ding. Pause . Ding. Ding. Ding.
    A low-level alarm went off on Archie’s watch. He checked the time and got up abruptly. “Excuse me one minute.”
     
     
    It was more like fifteen minutes. I saw many no smoking signs in the room, but no warning against using electronic devices, so I took out my phone to check my email. There were messages from my applied statistics students as well as companies trying to sell me shoes and posters, but nothing from Lucy. I was curious to know if she’d admit to dating Keith, and, if so, whether that put her higher or lower on the list of suspects.
    Maybe I should have shared that info with Archie, too. Nah, I wouldn’t want to spoil my reputation as The Great Withholder.
    I chose one of the games my phone offered to keep me amused. I decided on an easy one: moving three boxes of graduated sizes from one pile to another in the smallest number of moves. The restriction was that only one box at a time could be moved, and you could move a box only on top of a larger one. This was a very smart game in that if you tried to move a bigger box onto a smaller box, a nasty beep sounded. After a few seconds the game reminded me of the movements of the boxes that held Keith’s office effects. I quit the game.
    I went online again, clicked around, and found a neat game to foster algebraic reasoning. I bookmarked it for use in a math workshop. When things got back to normal.
    The algebra game put me in a good mood by the time Archie returned with a cup of coffee in a mug that had seen better, cleaner days. Strange to take coffee at the sound of a wristwatch alarm, but to each his own. Maybe he was on medication that required a concomitant dose of caffeine.
    “I’d have gotten you a cup, too, but I don’t recommend it. Can I get you a soda?” Archie asked.
    “I’m good,” I said.
    “So where were we?”
    “I’m very concerned that it’s too late to solve this murder. It’s been more than forty-eight hours.”
    “I know you hear that all the time, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule. For big cities it might be true since those guys are dealing with at least a murder a day. They can’t afford to let fresh ones go, so a case is considered on its way to cold much sooner than here.”
    The idea of a homicide as “fresh” brought back the taste of the spicy pasta salad I’d had for lunch. I rubbed my nose, smelling a ripe body.
    “What’s next?” I asked.
    Archie laughed. “What? Are you part of the squad now?”
    I shrugged. “You have civilian volunteers, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, to make the fund-raising calls and fill in as crossing guards. Interested?”
    I was beginning to like Archie. “I’ll pass.”
    “I thought so.”
    “So, what is next?”
    Archie looked past me, over my shoulder. I turned to see what had attracted his attention. Virgil and Rachel had entered from the back and were headed for a desk and chair set across the room. That couldn’t be good.
    Archie stood and I followed. He led me out of the room in the opposite direction while I strained my neck to get a glimpse of the expressions on Virgil’s and Rachel’s faces. Too far away. I consoled myself with the observation that Rachel was not in handcuffs or prison garb.
    It amazed me how little it took to give me comfort these