The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

“Archie’s a good guy.”
    No comment.
    “I know Rachel sent one that was a little out of line, but—”
    “But it turns out, so did quite a few others. Not a popular guy if you’ll forgive my saying so.”
    I felt a wave of relief, followed quickly by one of guilt over my delight that Rachel wasn’t the only one bombarding Keith with harsh words.
    “He wasn’t as bad as it looks,” I said. “The janitor loved him and it turns out he was some kind of benevolent uncle to his family in Chicago. We just never got to see that side of him.” Here I was again, defending Keith in death as I’d never defended him in life.
    “Most people aren’t as bad as they seem,” Virgil said, and I knew at that moment we were both thinking of Archie.
    Back to work. “On the handwriting samples? I have loads of holiday and birthday cards and thank you notes. I could pull together quite a set that we . . . you could compare with the comments on Rachel’s thesis pages. That way whoever did this has no warning that we’re on to him.”
    Virgil sat back and took one of the whistling breaths that he and Bruce seemed to have a patent on. I waited not so patiently, my mind racing ahead with how to gather the promised postcards, greeting cards, and notes from various corners of my house.
    “Okay,” Virgil said. I nearly hugged him. “Tomorrow morning. Give me your best shot.”
    Then I did hug him. “Thanks, Virgil. Next time, dinner will be New York strip steaks and potatoes.”
    “And beer,” he said.
    “And lots of beer.”
     
     
    Virgil left around ten o’clock. Bruce had picked up enough of our meeting to get the gist of what was ahead of me. He and Virgil spent a few minutes in my driveway before Virgil took off in his old Malibu. He had flung his jacket over his shoulder, his wide profile dwarfing Bruce, who was in his longish khaki shorts. I could only imagine that conversation.
    “Where did you find her ?” Virgil might have asked.
    “Up in the air,” Bruce might have answered.
    “I suppose there’s no chance you’re going to sleep tonight,” Bruce said, when he reentered the house.
    I’d already pulled a box of greeting cards onto my lap in the den. I saved cards until I had a large enough stack and then gave them to Ariana who used them in the grade school where she volunteered as an arts specialist. She and the kids made small gift boxes out of the cards. She’d show them how to fold the card so the design on the front became the top of the box. Ariana was expert at using scorers to get the edges clean and crisp. Lucky for me, I’d been negligent in handing over the cards and now had a wealth of potentially useful handwriting samples for Virgil.
    “I’m not tired,” I said. “And I’m sure you’re not, since you had that nice, long nap.”
    He took a seat on the couch, one pillow over. “Okay. Hand over a bunch. What are we looking for?”
    I shifted the box from my lap to his. “While you look through these, I’ll search some other places for cards. We need anything with handwriting from Keith, Hal, Pam Noonan, Liz . . . oh, make it any student or teacher whose name you recognize from Franklin Hall. Plus Dean Underwood.”
    Bruce raised his eyebrows at the dean’s name. “Plain Phyllis?”
    I shrugged. “Why not?”
    “You’re the boss.”
    Bruce ran his hand across his brow, as if I’d asked him to dig a ditch. “You’ll owe me.”
    “Sure, sure.”
    I got up and began my sweep of all the odds and ends spots in my house, all the places I put things on their way to where they belonged.
    On a rack with computer peripherals I found a small pile of birthday cards from April that hadn’t made it to the stack I was gathering for Ariana. I usually sifted through them first, including only designs I thought were workable, and also to be sure some seven-year-old didn’t end up with too personal a message among her art supplies.
    In the knife drawer in my kitchen were postcards from Hal and Gil, who’d been to Bermuda at the end of June to celebrate his degree, and one from Fran and her husband, Gene, who’d taken their yearly cruise to Mexico. I hoped the scrawled “see you soon” and “the buffets are great” were enough to make some decent comparisons.
    The odds and ends drawer in my bedroom dresser was a gold mine of more postcards and thank you notes stretching back to Christmas. Embarrassing, but serendipitous.
    In an end table drawer in my den were recent invitations,