The Square Root of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

an extra large pizza ordered by Virgil.
    “I really like pepperoni better than steak,” Virgil said, reminding me of my promise to cook him a better dinner some day.
    “What a relief,” I said, swiping my hand across my brow.
    We ate as though we’d been lost in the desert for a week, which, in a sense, was true.
    As hard as we tried to avoid conversation about what had put Henley College on the front pages of Boston newspapers and YouTube, we strayed now and then.
    We talked briefly of the tortuous route Gil Bartholomew had traveled on the weekend of the murder. She had to take measures to get what she needed for a lethal dose of a chemical that otherwise was stocked in small medicinal quantities. She had to murder Keith at a time when everyone else was busy partying. She worked hard to frame Rachel, then deepen the frame by adding to the crime scene. Who knew how long ago she’d retrieved yellow pages from the trash. She had to track down the files from Keith’s office, steal them, remove what she wanted, and take them back to Franklin Hall.
    “Why did she return the boxes, again?” Ariana asked, confused by the timeline of people in and out of the deceased Keith Appleton’s office. “And what happened to Sophie’s usable discards?”
    Virgil shrugged. “I’ll bet you’ll see those discards down at the Main Street Thrift Shop. As for the boxes of files, she probably just didn’t want to get caught with them. Otherwise she’d have to destroy all those files and boxes and that would take time, and also attract attention. A midnight drop at the school was an easy disposal method. One time, back in Boston, this bank robber took a briefcase—”
    “Virge.” Bruce interrupted his friend in an attempt to get us off the crime tack.
    “Never mind,” Virgil said, grabbing a few circles of pepperoni from the pizza, still in its box.
    I couldn’t help apologizing over and over to Ariana about the mess I’d left in her shop. Between the undoing of the beaded curtain and the counter of bead trays Gil had knocked over, it would be many days before the inventory at A Hill of Beads was back in place.
    Ariana waved away my mortification. “I’ve been wanting to reorganize anyway,” she said. “And I’m going to order this neat velvety, shimmery curtain that I’ve had my eye on for the back room.”
    I felt a little better.
     
     
    I checked my email before going to bed. I read one from Rachel with the subject, “Confession.”
    “In police custody,” it read. “Kidding. But I’m happy to be assigned to community service all next semester.”
    I smiled as I opened similar messages from Pam, Liz, and Casey, with the same general sentiment.
    The community would be well served next semester.
     
     
    By the end of the week, the heat wave had finally ended and cool breezes blew through the campus and the town of Henley. The weather was even better on Cape Cod when Bruce and I finally checked in to a cottage at a beach in Hyannis for a long weekend.
    Bruce eventually stopped beating himself up for being miles away while I was being held hostage. Reminding him that he was exactly where I’d sent him that evening—looking for samples of Gil’s handwriting—and that he had sent the Henley PD to the shop, helped a little.
    “A lot of good I was, camping out to protect you.”
    “You could sign up for more shifts,” I said.
     
     
    By Monday I was back in my office, filing some and tossing other material from the summer program. One thing I passed through the cross shredder was the difficult puzzle Gil had solved and returned to me. I wanted no reminders of the deadly weekend.
    All my students had turned in their papers early. I guessed they were as eager as I was to put the summer session behind us.
    Courtney called right before lunch. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
    “I took a few days off.”
    “I know what it was.”
    “You know what what was?”
    “You know, the urgent matter you had to talk over with the dean the other night.”
    I’d nearly forgotten and now I started. “You know?” Had the dean told Courtney about her son? That surprised me. Who else knew?
    “Yeah, she came in the next day with the agenda for the faculty meeting. I’m not supposed to tell anyone. Big LOL here, ’cause I know you know you got your promotion. Full Professor. I’m so excited for you.”
    In what corner of the world, academic or business, were administrative assistants not the first to know the