The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles) (21 page)

I looked at Virgil, big, quiet, and eminently straight-faced. I’d half expected him to toss me back down to the lanky Queen’s guard at the mouth of the cave. Virgil and I were the only people in the room; I assumed the crew of officers was searching other floors. Virgil waited me out. I knew I couldn’t win; I had to ask.

“Did you get it back?”

He dug in his pocket. “Your phone? Yup, here it is.” He handed it to me. “Fully charged.”

How could I not be grateful? “Thanks. Were they able to retrieve anything?” I paused a beat. “Would you tell me if you found Wendy?”

Virgil laughed. We were both in good humor for so early in the morning. “No, and maybe.”

“Back to the money. Any clues?”

“None here and none on that bill you found in the bushes.”

“It doesn’t have some magic logo that says this bill was taken from XYZ bank, on such and such a date?”

“Nope. And that makes me think that the rest of the loot, if there is any more, will likewise be clean.”

“That’s disappointing,” I said.

Virgil pointed to floors above us. “We haven’t given up on finding anything yet. The guys are up there now, going slow, trying to be as careful as possible.” He waved his hand around the newly polished room, floors and walls gleaming, not a speck of dust or a chip of wood in sight. “It’d be a shame to have to knock out what just got put up.”

“I’ll say,” came from another voice. Foreman Pete Barker, the smoker, had walked in from the true, clean, and unscary entrance and come up behind me.

This morning Barker was dressed as expected. Unlike the natty clothes he’d worn to the police station, today’s outfit comprised jeans and a down vest, accessorized with a bright orange hardhat that he carried. A fine dusting of plaster and a few paint stains on his thick shoes showed evidence of Barker’s being a worker as well as a boss.

“You’ve done a great job,” I said.

“Thanks. But, hey, if the uniforms mess it up, I wouldn’t mind starting all over again here with another contract.”

“That doesn’t seem quite fair,” I said, loyal to the college’s budget office.

Barker shook his index finger at me and smiled. “But it wouldn’t be my fault, would it?”

He moved on and I entertained a new thought. As foreman, Barker had the only key among the construction people. What if he’d already found the money, by chance? Or, what if he was one of the gang who met Kirsten and Wendy, Einstein and Ponytail, in the diner in the old days. I considered nicknames. “Smoky”? “Sharpy,” for the way he dressed during off-hours? Or, one that would fit me also—“Shorty.” Could Barker have killed Ponytail? Maybe he caught the rejected Ponytail where he shouldn’t be and— Nah, for now I was sticking to my original theory and pinning it all on Einstein.

I realized that Virgil was talking to me. I abandoned thoughts of Barker, who’d moved on himself.

“Of course, the easiest thing would be if Jenn Marshall told us where she was getting the money,” Virgil said. I hoped I hadn’t missed something important.

“
If
she was getting money,” I said.

I liked how careful I could be when the reputation of one of my students was at stake.

“Any chance that you can talk to Jenn again?” Virgil asked.

“If you can keep her parents at bay.”

“I can call them in. There’s always a form or two that can be dug up for them to fill out.”

“So that’s what all the forms are for.”

“You didn’t hear it from me,” Virgil said.

“I’ll be happy to give it a shot.” I cleared my throat. “Before that, I have a couple of requests.”

“You’re bargaining with me? An officer of the law?”

“Not exactly.”

“Shoot.”

“I think we should get footage from the west entrance to the campus. There’s a camera on the guardhouse between the library and Admin, the vehicle entrance. We don’t know for sure that Jenn went to the tower after leaving Franklin Hall, but there’s a high probability. If we get the footage for Thursday, it might show Jenn going to the tower right after our seminar that ended at noon. Then we might also see Einstein following her to the passage on the northeast side.”

“Good idea.”

“Also, we should get her bank records. If she’s been taking cash from here, she can’t be hiding it all under her mattress.”

Unless she spent it all. I thought of Jenn’s new backpack. I knew they could be pricey these days. I remembered Patty, her roommate, mentioning a couple of other new things. A laptop? A smartphone?

“All done,” Virgil said.

“You already have her banking information?” I hoped my wording didn’t sound too much like “You mean you thought of that, too?”

“Now and then we get it right.”

“Then I should get another request. I asked for two.”

Virgil gave out a loud guffaw, which echoed in the room, once again empty except for us.

I gathered that I’d pushed my luck far enough.

Just as well. I had to get to class. That was, after all, my primary job.

As I finished my conversation with Virgil, Barker came back into the room and offered to take me on a tour of the upper floors of the tower.

“There’s a great view from up there,” he said. “You can see the whole city, down to the Cape, and Boston if you try really hard.”

I didn’t want to one-up Barker and tell him that I’d seen that view from much higher up. On one of our first dates, Bruce rented a helicopter and took me for a ride over Henley and surrounding cities. How to impress a girl.

Circling over the campus had been the most interesting—looking down on the complex architecture of Admin; marveling at the way the Nathaniel Hawthorne dorm seemed nestled within the other two, like a perfectly designed puzzle; swooping over the fall trees and the smooth, lush lawn. From the air, the campus seemed like a fortress that could withstand any storm. I hoped it would be none the worse for wear from the present crisis.

“And those big bronze bells, they’re something else,” Barker continued. “You gotta see them.” He pointed straight up, to the belfry. Without waiting for my response, Barker went on, with great enthusiasm and arm waving. “Fifty-three of them installed in that pretty cramped area,” he said, shaking his head at the marvel.

I followed Barker’s gestures to a beautifully finished spiral stairway that led to the next level. The polished steps and handrails seemed more suited to a home in an affluent suburb than to a bell tower, especially considering my first tower-climbing experience of a few minutes ago. I realized also that to me, the Henley Tower, the belfry in particular, had become the place where Kirsten Packard died. I welcomed the idea of replacing that association with something more uplifting.

It did seem odd that a man holding a hardhat was helping me with that.

“The new library is right below that,” Barker said. “There’s music books—of course, right?—but there’s also pictures along one wall that show you how the bells are cast in the foundry. Would you believe it takes a temperature of two thousand degrees?”

As cold as I’d been lately, I didn’t think I’d mind working there.

“The bells, they’re enormous,” Barker continued, spreading his arms to indicate enormity. “I’m telling you, you could hide a person in that big one.”

“Is that where the HPD officers are now? In the belfry?” I asked, wondering why I hadn’t seen a uniform since I left my guard friend at the entrance.

I hesitated to mention “searching” in case Barker didn’t know the purpose of the current police activity. He might guess that they were looking for something, but perhaps not the specifics. Was it possible that Virgil was able to get his cooperation, even identifying the workers on the video, without telling the foreman the details of the investigation into a member of his crew?

“The cops aren’t done yet, but the practice rooms are free. Didn’t you ever wonder how they could practice on that big thing without the whole city hearing them?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said.

Barker placed his hardhat on the floor—and not on the glass case near him, I noticed. He leaned against the wall and crossed his ankles, thick with leather work boots. I had the feeling that he didn’t have a lot of people to talk to on a regular basis. Or maybe he didn’t want to waste the time of his workers in conversation. Whereas I was just a teacher with all the free time in the world. I figured I could be accommodating, since he’d probably need a cigarette break soon anyway. And I did want to know more about the carillon.

“Well, it turns out the practice keyboards have no bells; they just make their own sounds close enough to what the bells will sound like. The real bells won’t be used until the tower’s opened and the concerts start.”

“Fascinating,” I said, meaning it, but having a hard time imagining this burly construction worker caring about musical bells. If he was so open-minded, maybe I could interest him in mathematics.

I wished I had a better feel for where Barker stood in the investigation. Was he the helpful foreman he seemed to be, innocently involved in our exciting new construction, working with the police to provide information on his workers? Or was his enthusiasm due to having stumbled upon a cash treasure trove that he counted as his just deserts for years of hard work? There was also that earlier notion I’d entertained, that Barker, aka Smoky (in my mind only), had come back to Henley after twenty-five years, like Einstein and Ponytail, to claim the spoils of a robbery.

While I tossed the possibilities around in my mind, the unsuspecting Barker talked on about his newfound love of all things carillon.

“Oh yeah, there’s this other neat thing, too—on the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster every year, carillonists all around the world play the same melodies. Like a memorial. Quite a thing.”

“It sounds as though you’ve enjoyed this project,” I said.

“Oh yeah. You gotta get up to the belfry sometime.”

It was hard to refuse the opportunity, especially one that would take me close to cops on a mission, but a glance at my watch told me I had to leave for class. If Fran were around, I’d have been tempted to get her to sit in for me, since I wasn’t the presenter anyway. But my teacher conscience won out over my tower curiosity. “I have a class in about ten minutes; otherwise I’d love to.”

“Rain check?” he said, handing me his card.

“Sure.”

Barker pointed an index-finger gun at me. “Okay, I’m going to hold you to it.”

“Okay yourself,” I said, and proceeded to bundle up again, now adding “flirting” to possible motives for Barker’s interest in aspects of the tower that had nothing to do with construction.

Barker headed out through the nasty stairway. He called over his shoulder, “You know, maybe there’s something to this going-to-college thing.”

“We can always use more math majors,” I responded.

Left alone, I had a choice of where to exit the tower. I could follow Barker, back down the spooky way I’d ascended, and end up closer to Ben Franklin Hall, with a straight shot to my classroom. Or I could exit through the decent stairway that Virgil had pointed out, the one that led to the front entrance of Admin. Less scary, but giving me a much longer walk on this below-freezing morning.

It didn’t take too long to decide on the bright and airy route, ice notwithstanding. I rushed down the tower steps and came out on Henley Boulevard, then hurried down the outside steps and along the street, heavy with commuter traffic, to the vehicle entrance to the campus. Shivering all the way.

I thought it only right that I stop long enough to give our campus gatekeeper, Morty Dodd, a brief report on the intriguing police presence on our campus this morning. Morty seemed happy that I remembered my promise, which reminded me how easy it was to please some people.

“Sorry I have to rush,” I said, doing my usual foot-stomping dance to keep circulation going. “But I have a class in a couple of minutes.”

“Hold on, Professor Knowles,” he said.

Morty picked up his cell phone and hit a contact number. “Jake, get over here, okay? We got a lady that needs a ride.”

Before I could figure out what Morty was up to, I heard a rumbling sound. A motorcycle? A snowmobile? A yellow construction vehicle come to life? I turned to see what we all called the security golf cart. A low-riding four-wheeler, white with blue and gold racing stripes and the college seal, and a canvas canopy over the otherwise open frame. Better than full-body exposure.

I climbed in, and Jake whisked me away to the parking lot and deposited me next to my car, where I picked up my briefcase. He tipped his hat and drove off while I stood a moment and waved at him and Morty, who’d stepped out of his box to watch our journey.

I walked the few steps to the entrance to Franklin Hall, counting the blessings of my job.

• • •

Heat!

Franklin Hall was mercifully toasty this morning. A real maintenance person must have visited our building over the weekend, not the fake hunky guy who’d fooled Judy Donohue in spite of her credentials as chair of the Biology Department. I dropped multiple layers of clothing and headed for the classroom, sans gloves, sans scarf, sans shivers.

Only two minutes late, I presided over a lackluster calculus class for the next fifty minutes, reviewing volume of revolution exercises and laying the groundwork for the next homework assignments. I promised that tomorrow’s topic of problem-solving strategies would be both fascinating and useful to their lives as a whole.

“Like how to get a date?” one male student asked.

“You wish,” said the female seated closest to him.

I passed on commenting, following one of my rules:
Whenever possible, let the students do the work for you.

At the back of my mind the whole time was the real-life problem of the three women who dominated my life of late—Jenn Marshall, Kirsten Packard, and Wendy Carlson. How could the trio have consumed so much of my attention lately, when I’d known nothing about two of them until last week, and the third had given me no cause for concern for a year and a half?

I couldn’t wait to visit Jenn in the hospital this afternoon. At the request of an HPD homicide detective, no less. I wished Virgil had issued me a temporary badge, in case Mr. and Mrs. Marshall or the large nurse who attended Jenn tried to interfere. I supposed I could make myself a fake document, perhaps call it a “certificate of civilian authority.” Perhaps not. I’d have to make do with my erect posture and confident manner.
Lots of luck
, I said to myself.

My free hour was nearly as uninspiring as my calculus class. Both Judy Donohue and Ted Morrell were missing. There’d been one good outcome from the lack of heat last week—it had forced us all to the lounge and to close contact around the pots of boiling water on the hot plate. Now with our offices at normal temperatures, for the most part our routine would go back to chatting while we filled our mugs, then returning to desks in our private quarters. Which is what I did now.

It was just as well that Judy, a TMI kind of person, didn’t show, since I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear about her date with Virgil.

My email inbox was crammed with spam again, but I knew help was on the way via Andrew this afternoon. I wrote quick replies to the legitimate messages.

To Bruce:

So glad to hear you’re off tonight. Better still, that you’re going to cook for me! xoxoxoxox
(smiley face emoticon).

To Ariana:

So sorry to hear about your latest date
(sad face emoticon).
Will have your favorite gingerbread and vanilla ice cream to welcome you home
(smiley face emoticon).

To Fran:

So glad to hear about your newest student and her love of puzzles. Will send a package off soon
(smiley face emoticon).

To several students:

So glad you’re enjoying the history of math seminar
(smiley face emoticon), or
So sorry you’re finding calculus harder than you expected
(sad face emoticon).

Before heading out for the seminar room, now fit for human occupation, I needed a couple of relaxing minutes with a puzzle. I pulled out the metal pieces that had recently fallen out of my purse, clanking to the floor of the BPL at Wendy Carlson’s feet. I sorted through the rings and curvy loops that made up three pocket puzzles and put them in piles on my desk. One puzzle was especially challenging, the size and shape of a napkin ring if I could ever complete it.

Tap, tap.
“Ready for class, Dr. Knowles?”

Andrew Davies at my door. Saved from another fruitless (but relaxing) attempt to complete the puzzle.

“Are you still up for checking out my email problem?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

“Can’t wait,” he said.

“Neither can I.”

“I know I’ll crack it.”

I liked his spirit.

• • •

Brent Riggs was front and center for the presentation today. The subjects: the Bernoulli family—the brothers Jacob and Johann, and Johann’s son, Daniel. A politically correct choice on the part of an astute freshman who knew he was being subtly recruited by both Ted and me for our respective departments. Jacob and Johann were known for important contributions to math; Daniel was a noted physicist. Brent was leaving all his options open.