The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles) (19 page)

As I unbuckled my seat belt, Judy let out a little gasp. “Sophie, I never asked you how Jenn is. What’s happening to me? I’m reverting to sixteen years old. Talking about me, me, me. I can’t believe it. Tell me, how is she?”

“I would have stopped you if there were anything big to report. I had less than five minutes with Jenn,” I said, taking the easy way out.

It was too late to tell Judy how the words Jenn spoke were still running around in my head and that I had conflicting theories about what they might mean. I didn’t have the energy to bring her up to speed on my trip to Boston. She didn’t know that I’d found Kirsten Packard’s physics major roommate, Wendy Carlson. She didn’t know I’d found out that Ted had lied when he claimed he hardly remembered Kirsten and couldn’t remember her roommate’s name. I couldn’t tell her one thing without dragging every other little thing along. I didn’t miss the irony that I now had more interesting tidbits of information than the self-proclaimed mistress of gossip.

“Is she awake and talking?” Judy asked.

“Not really, just mumbling.”

“Poor kid,” she said.

“I told her and her parents we’d work something out so she doesn’t have to drop her Intersession classes, and then we’ll see where she is when the spring semester begins.”

“That’s nice. You should talk to Claire in the dean’s office. She helped us with that last year when Mona Farrell had her ski accident.”

“Good to know. Thanks.”

“I’ll bet Jenn and her parents were thrilled that you were there.”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

I waved good-bye to Judy and hello to the cops and went into my well-protected home.

• • •

The police car notwithstanding, I went through my house, room by room, closet by closet. Nice that I could laugh as I asked myself a critical question: What was my plan if there was someone behind the shower curtain or my rocker or inside a kitchen cabinet? Scream? Offer a cup of coffee? At least I should carry my portable phone so I could hit nine-one-one immediately. And a weapon would be useful. My father’s old metal slide rule was handy, hanging in its leather case on the wall above my computer. Nothing to worry about.

I almost shouted, “Clear!” when I’d finished the tour of my cottage. I could now turn to the mountain of catch-up work waiting for me. Check my email; review notes for both of tomorrow’s classes; finish a summer-themed crossword puzzle for a magazine editor who was waiting for it; follow up on the changes I’d had to make for paying bills with my credit card; answer dozens of legitimate emails from students, or friends in Africa and Florida.

The thought of Florida brought images of my BFF, Ariana, who was due back home next week and would be on my case about how far I’d gotten (not) on my beading project for the class I was taking at her shop. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t called her for a couple of days. At the moment I couldn’t even have said for sure where the half-finished hair clip was. I’d stuck it in one of my “miscellaneous” drawers before my guests arrived the other night. I might never see it again.

I also needed a spreadsheet for the logistics of the last couple of days. I took time to tick off a few reminders: I now had my cell phone charger, but not my cell phone, which was still in the hands of the HPD. Bruce’s car was in front of my house from his cleanup and visit. Bruce had my car but not his phone, which was in my hands. Virgil’s car was on its way to him through Judy, who’d driven me home with it, but I was out of that loop.

All set. I could go to work.

What I really wanted to tackle first were all the threads of Kirsten Packard’s death in the distant past and Jenn Marshall’s attack in the recent past. I was haunted by the idea that Jenn had stolen Einstein’s money and he beat her up to get it back. It wasn’t the Jenn I knew, but it would explain the worried, preoccupied state she seemed to be in lately. I’d attributed her mood to fatigue, but it could just as likely have been guilt.

I recalled seeing or hearing about Jenn’s new laptop and smartphone. Patty Reynolds would probably be able to tell us if her roommate had made any other out-of-the-ordinary purchases recently. I hated the road I was traveling with these thoughts, but I saw no way to avoid it.

I turned to something simple, like setting up an example for using the disc method to calculate a volume of revolution around an axis. Then the weekend caught up with me. The total number of hours of sleep I’d had since Thursday night didn’t add up to double digits, and for most of them, I’d been sitting in a chair or riding in a car going at highway speed.

I exchanged my sweater for a robe and stumbled down the hall to my guest room, hitting the up arrow on the thermostat on the way. I fell into a bed that was fully outfitted, thanks to Bruce. I dozed off, Jenn’s words swimming in my head. In my dreams I was pummeled from all directions by car keys, belonging to me, Bruce, Virgil, Judy, and cops in two counties of the Commonwealth. I kept warding them all off, muttering about a man named Kenny, who was pretending to be a copyeditor. If Andrew found my email scammer without too much effort, I’d put him to work on finding Kenny. My evil twin had some ideas for him as well.

Clang, clang. Clang, clang.
Bells ringing.

I woke up at ten o’clock to the sound of my alarm clock. What? I smashed down on the button to turn it off. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d set the clock in the guest room, or when any guest had done so. I picked up the vexing clock and checked the back panel. Sure enough, the alarm had been set for ten
PM
. Either Bruce had done it accidently when he reassembled the items on my nightstand earlier today, or my intruder was the playful type and wanted to rattle me.

I sat up and resigned myself to the fact that I might never again sleep for more than two hours at a stretch. I adjusted my robe around me and wondered also if I’d ever again wear nightclothes to bed. Who was it who’d said “Sleep is overrated”? Maybe I could convince myself it was true.

I tried to recall what I’d been doing before I fell asleep. Trying to solve a puzzle. What else was new?

Clang, clang. Clang, clang.
The bells again.

Apparently, I’d hit the snooze button instead of the off button. I could fiddle with the tiny switches in the back or I could stop this nonsense once and for all by throwing the clock across the room. I chose the reasonable route and, not surprising, triggered the bells again.

But this time the ring set off something in my head. Not the equation for the volume of revolution, but everything else. I felt as though I’d been awakened by a large carillon bell, perhaps the more than eighteen-ton bourdon that was pictured in the Music Department’s photo gallery. The bell resided at the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago, but all thirty-seven thousand pounds of it might as well have been stuck in the corridor outside my guest-room.

The pieces came together like the notes on carillon sheet music. With a little help from the HPD, I’d be able to follow the tune from Kirsten, Ponytail, Einstein, and
money
, all the way to Jenn and
money
and
sorry
and
wrong
.

Usually I was elated when I saw the pieces of a puzzle fall together. This time my pleasure was greatly reduced by the fact that my solution involved accusing my lovely, bright student of theft. For the first time that I could remember, I hoped my logic had led me down the wrong path.

As much as I hated to interrupt a date that might still be in progress, I couldn’t wait to call Virgil with my newest, definitive theory. I worked out as tight a sequence of events as I could for such a complex story, so my call wouldn’t take too long. Besides, first dates were usually short, I reasoned.

I sat on the couch in my den and rehearsed, as if I were writing a newspaper account:

Twenty-five years ago, Kirsten Packard, using her roommate Wendy’s key, hides money from a bank robbery inside the carillon tower. Ponytail and Einstein don’t know exactly where, and probably kill her trying to find out. After her death, a wall is erected; the tower is sealed. Ponytail and Einstein can’t get back in to look for the money.

In the present day, with the tower about to be reopened, Einstein takes a job on the project, but, with no key card of his own, he can’t hang around in the tower long enough to search for the money.

Jenn stumbles upon the money during a practice session. Jenn
(I winced)
has been taking money from the stash. Ponytail and Einstein follow her, and Einstein attacks her to get her key card, then kills Ponytail so he’ll have the treasure all to himself.

There it was. It couldn’t have been neater. Why hadn’t this obvious narrative occurred to me days ago? Was I losing my touch? My reputation as an expert puzzler was at stake. The most likely explanation was that I’d been blinded by my tendency to think my students could do no wrong. Jenn Marshall wasn’t the first of my math majors to stray from perfection, but each time, it caught me by surprise.

At first, I didn’t even want to think about how Ted would react when we caught Einstein and he confessed to pushing Kirsten to her death. But if Ted knew about that possibility from the start, it would have given him yet another reason to cover it up—to protect Wendy from being Einstein’s next victim. No wonder he was upset with my nosing around.

My theory in place, I played devil’s advocate with myself, trying also to anticipate Virgil’s cross-examination.

The biggest question was, what had Ponytail and Einstein been doing for twenty-five years? No more news-making pranks or bank robberies? I thought it unlikely that they would have been model citizens all this time.

I decided to let Virgil help me with those little details. It was his job, after all. I slid Bruce’s phone on and tapped Virgil’s name.

“Hey, Sophie.”

“How come you knew it was me and not Bruce?”

“Bruce knows I’m busy right now.”

I felt my face flush. “Oh, Virgil, I’m sorry. I’m ruining your date.” I didn’t add what I was thinking—that it was all the more lamentable since dates were in short supply for him. “I can call you tomorrow.”

“No, no, just kidding. Besides, I warned Judy that my job wasn’t nine to five, Monday to Friday.”

“And what was her response?”

“She warned me back that she might be keeping biology experiments in my fridge.”

I heard Judy’s laugh in the background and my face reddened again. I wasn’t accustomed to hearing Virgil in such a sharing mood about his personal life. It was going to take a while for me to get used to it. For now, I’d have to deal with a lot of blushing.

“Sounds like you’re very compatible,” I said.

“What’s up?” Virgil asked, back to work.

“I know why Einstein attacked Jenn,” I said.

A big sigh from Virgil, then, “If he attacked Jenn.”

“We have three crimes, Virgil—Jenn’s attack, my break-in, and Ponytail’s murder. Don’t you think they’re related?”

“Let’s look at this in a way you’ll understand, Sophie. It’s not like getting a box with five hundred jigsaw pieces, where you know they all belong to the same picture. The real world doesn’t work that way.”

How dare he? Of course it does.

“Hear me out,” I said. As quickly as possible, I gave Virgil the rundown, starting with Jenn’s whispered admission to me in the hospital. “What do you think?” I asked, nearly breathless.

“Jenn actually admitted taking money from a stash in the tower?”

I repeated Jenn’s words. “Doesn’t that sound like an admission?”

“I have to admit, it’s closer than I got.”

“You mean you figured that out already?”

“I was working on it. Couldn’t get anything out of the girl, though.”

“Glad I could help,” I said, with only the slightest touch of sarcasm.

Virgil laughed.

“Not to poke holes in my own theory, but it does seem weird that Ponytail and Einstein would have stayed around all this time, just waiting for the tower to be opened. What if it never reopened? What if someone started looking into Kirsten’s death again.” Like me, I thought.

“Well, in fact, they were very busy,” Virgil said.

“Huh?”

“We ran Einstein’s real name—”

“Which Barker gave you and neither of you will tell me.”

“And it turns out he and Ponytail lived in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut for a while, and maybe Vermont, both of them under at least three different names.”

“Circling the state where the cash-filled tower was.”

“Ponytail was charged a few times with theft. Some jewelry, some money. He did a little time in minimum-security prisons in each state. Einstein was brought in twice, but never charged.”

“Then you know Ponytail’s real name, too?”

“We’ve given the press both names now, so it can be revealed.”

There was no use announcing my pique at being lumped in with the press. I waited, like the general public.

“They’re cousins,” Virgil continued. “Einstein’s parents adopted Ponytail after his mother died and his father split.”

“Which might be why Ponytail never turned on his partner. Double loyalty,” I guessed. Until his benefactor murdered him, I noted.

“That and they probably had an agreement that one of them at least would be able to keep a clean record,” Virgil said. “I’ve seen it before. Makes it handy. One of them wouldn’t have his mug on file when it came to casing a target or getting a legit job.”

“Waiting till the tower opened up,” I offered.

“Maybe not that specific, but, yeah, if there’s a big enough stash up there. Their birth names are Harold, that’s Einstein, and Gabriel, with the ponytail. Last name, Warnocky,” Virgil said.

By now learning the “real” names of the fighting duo on the security video was anticlimactic. I realized I’d grown quite fond of the guys’ nicknames. They seemed to suit my image of the men—poor, deceased Ponytail, like a meek, bushy-tailed animal being led around by one of the smartest guys in the world, who, it turned out, was his cousin.

“Einstein killed his cousin,” I said, processing the new data.

“Looks that way.”

“And now they both have records,” I said, moving from my den to my office. “Once Einstein’s caught, that is.”

I took a seat at my desk, my laptop open in front of me. I opened a new document and started a list.

“The first thing we need to do is make a thorough search of the tower,” I said to Virgil as I typed “1. Search tower.”

Virgil laughed. “See me saluting,” he said.

“It’s going to be open to the public very soon, Virgil. You should get there first thing in the morning.”

“Hold on,” Virgil said. “My date is calling me.”

“But—”

“Gotta go. I’ll be around tomorrow.”

I was at the keyboard, typing “2. Find Wendy. In danger from E.?” when I heard a soft
click.

Detective Virgil Mitchell had (almost) hung up on me. What did he mean he’d “be around tomorrow”? Was that his way of agreeing to the search of the tower? Or was he putting me off?

I was worried about Wendy Carlson. Virgil didn’t mention whether they were able to trace her call to me in Boston. And Einstein (a much snappier moniker than Harold Warnocky, which relegated him to the far end of the alphabet) was still on the loose with one, if not two, murders on his résumé, and not much to lose. If Virgil had been more hospitable, I’d have been able to ask him about the status of all three—my smartphone, Wendy, and Einstein.

I’d have to speak to Judy about teaching her new boyfriend some manners. Unless she’d been the one who’d broken the connection.

• • •

Eleven
PM
. A snack was in order. Too bad I hadn’t thought of taking the rest of my chocolate delight to go instead of passing it on to Bruce. I rummaged in my fridge and came up with bits of Brie and Jarlsberg cheeses, a few crackers, and a handful of grapes. Too healthy, so I added a cup of hot chocolate to the menu, plus two cookies from my emergency supply. I kept them primarily for Virgil, who loved my peanut butter cookies. If I were out of them the next time he checked in my cabinet, it would serve him right for hanging up on me.

I carried my laptop and the ad hoc feast into the den and settled in my favorite curl-up place on the couch.

This time the rampant spam in my inbox didn’t bother me; Andrew would be on it soon. I ran through legitimate emails and texts from Fran (missing me, worried about calling in the middle of the night again), Ariana (missing the snow, had had enough winter sun, hoping I was beading a lot), and students (missing Jenn, wanting to know when they could visit).

It took about an hour to get my materials in order for my nine o’clock calculus class and finish a biography of the Bernoulli brothers, Jacob and Johann, the subjects of my eleven o’clock seminar, to be led by freshman Brent Riggs. Both Ted and I were courting Brent as a major for our respective Physics and Math Departments, and I suspected Brent had chosen his topic accordingly, to include notables in both fields. What freshman was going to play favorites among his professors?

I wanted to run my Kirsten-Einstein-Jenn theory by Bruce and took a chance that he was on a midnight movie break at the MAstar trailer. I called the company’s landline. The one that was not the Bat Phone.

“Miss your cell phone?” I asked, between nibbles of cheese and sips of warm chocolate.

“Nope. We’re watching
The Hurt Locker
.”

“Isn’t that a little heavier than your usual fare? A bomb defuser who loves his job?”

“We’re running down the list of Best War Movies of all time.”

“What’s next?”

“
MASH
.”

“That’s more like it,” I said, knowing the MAstar crew usually liked a little humor with their battle stories. Who could blame them, since most of the pilots and flight nurses were either military veterans or retired firefighters whose own stories often hit the height of seriousness.

“What are you up to?” Bruce asked.

“Snacking.” I crunched down noisily on a rice cracker to prove it.

“That’s it?”

“Well, I do have a theory to run by you.”

“Imagine my surprise.”

“But it can wait till the movie’s over.”

“Nah, I know how it ends.”

“Imagine my surprise.”

“Touché.”

I wondered if I should evaluate my tendency to get involved in circular repartee. Did it make me a shallow person? That was a meditation topic for another time.

I recited my story to Bruce, adding details I’d learned from Virgil about Ponytail and Einstein, the Warnocky cousins. He had some questions, as I’d hoped. There was nothing better than a thoroughly vetted theory.

“Once the tower opened, Einstein could have gone up anytime he wanted, and taken his cousin with him,” Bruce said.

“I talked to Barker, remember? The Henley construction foreman in the smoking section outside HPD. He told me he has the only key card outside the Music Department. He lets the workers into the tower as needed.”

“They could have smashed their way in at night,” was Bruce’s suggestion.

“You watch too many action movies. They couldn’t very well leave a wreck in their wake and not attract attention. And if they couldn’t find the money, they would have blown their chances. Or maybe they did go up once or twice and manage to get in quietly but—mission not accomplished. So they staked the tower out at night and saw Jenn go up.”

“Why didn’t they follow Jenn into the tower in real time and get the money on the spot?” Bruce asked.

“Same reason as above. It would attract attention, and what if it was a false lead and Jenn didn’t know where the money was? Another blown chance,” I said.