It was clear that I was going to need to create a real, physical timeline. I wished I’d brought my laptop to the library, but there’d be time once I got to my home office.
“I know things were broken and on the floor, but was there any extra paper? I’m wondering about that yellow paper you all use for your drafts.”
“Dr. Appleton wouldn’t look at the yellow drafts,” Pam said.
“Never,” Casey said.
So I’d heard. “And no one had, say, just dumped some there?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Nope.”
“Nuh-uh.”
I made a note. For Rachel and the girls, it was yes on the cake at the door; no on the yellow pages. For the police, I recalled, it had been no on the cake and yes on the yellow pages. Something kept bugging me about the yellow pages, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
If I could just separate all this from the horrible fact of Keith Appleton’s murder, it would be a fun puzzle.
CHAPTER 15
The old problem of withholding information from the police reared its head again. I now had information from Rachel, Pam, Liz, and Casey that would be useful to Virgil and Archie in establishing a timeline. I also had that clue from Keith’s cousin that he was seeing someone. I assumed the police could track her down even without a name and probably had done so already. Wasn’t that the first thing they did, look to the spouse or significant other?
I wished they’d told me if they found a girlfriend in Keith’s life. More than that, I wished I had an official role in the investigation, but how realistic was that? Both Virgil and Archie had made it clear that I was useless at best, a hindrance at worst.
I’d encouraged all four girls to go to the police with the truth about their tramping on the crime scene. Maybe that was it, as far as my responsibility as a citizen. Should I waste time reporting to the police and nagging the girls, or wouldn’t it be better if I could just figure everything out first and hand everyone the solution? That process worked well with my puzzle editor. Why not with the Henley PD?
Yeah, right.
My interview with the girls had been so satisfactory, I almost forgot about the boxes and the dean. Pam had given me a ride home. As we’d approached my driveway and I’d dug out my spare remote control for the garage door, I’d had the fantasy wish that the boxes might have reappeared.
No such luck.
At three in the afternoon on Sunday, alone in my house, I had approximately nineteen hours before the president’s meeting, followed immediately by my meeting with the dean, at which time I needed to have either the boxes or a good story.
I checked my messages. There was nothing that shed light on my current state. Even a ransom note would have been welcome. I imagined: “Give me an A in applied statistics and I’ll return the boxes.”
“Deal,” I’d have said.
A message from Ariana reminded me about the next beading class where we would make “fun, fantastical, magical luggage tags.” Ariana liked to note that her December 5 birthday was the same as Walt Disney’s. I pointed out that the same day in the same year was also the birthday of Heisenberg, the quantum physicist who came up with the uncertainty principle.
I wished I could fit something fun or magical anywhere on my to-do list.
I left a text message for Bruce. “Where R U? Where’s my car? I need U.”
Clear enough, I thought.
In my office, the piles of work, all with imminent deadlines, sat waiting. I owed the dean three syllabi for the new term, one each for linear algebra, real analysis, and differential equations. I needed to contact the nine other summer students about their grades. I had a crossword with gaping holes where clues should be. And that wordplay puzzle, the butt of jokes at Friday’s party, that only Gil had been able to solve.
Instead of tackling the piles, I downloaded a simple timeline program that allowed the user to enter hours of the day and events into a table. The software then spit out a linear version of the input.
Maybe if I organized the information I had about the crime scene, something would pop up that had arrows pointing to Keith’s killer.
I entered everything I knew about who was in Franklin Hall in the afternoon, including students other than the four who were most involved with the party. As much as possible I wrote down names and when I thought they’d arrived and left. I included faculty members who were at the party-the department chairs, Fran, Judith, and Robert; the new girl, Lucy; Hal, and even Gil. I widened my scope a little more by including a couple of faculty senate members with whom Keith had had serious conflicts. I omitted only myself and Woody.
I couldn’t help think of the woman Keith was seeing, according to his cousin. I wished I could find her. But with only a first name, two possible first names at that, it didn’t make sense to pursue that line.
With some hesitation I added Dean Underwood’s name to the list. She and Keith were simpatico most of the time, but admitting male students to Henley was no small issue and Keith had been instrumental in gathering enough support to override the dean’s vote.
I had no doubt why Keith had been such an advocate of coeducation, but he’d confirmed my guess one day when he said at a faculty meeting, “Let’s face it. A women’s college will never have the same status as a men’s college or a coed institution.”
Having been around academia-make that, having been around, period-I couldn’t argue with him.
I recalled a group of us females standing in front of a notice on an easel outside a meeting room at a math conference in Hartford.
“Panel Today on the Role of Women in Mathematics.”
“Where’s the one on the role of men?” a female colleague had asked, through gritted teeth.
“Maybe we can take on the role of the multiplication sign,” another woman had said. She’d won begrudging laughs from the men in the vicinity.
I’d done my best as a teacher to change attitudes and create opportunities for my female students. But that wasn’t the most pressing issue on my agenda this Sunday afternoon.
I had a puzzle to solve.
I printed out my timeline on legal size paper and tacked it up on my bulletin board. I recognized the inadequacy of focusing only on the people who were in Franklin Hall or on campus that day. Someone from the town of Henley or anywhere else could have made it onto the property and into the building.
Security on the college property was very casual. You pulled up to the checkpoint at the southwest entrance, off Henley Boulevard. If Maureen or Bill or any of the other guards didn’t recognize you as a staff member or a student with a special permit, you had to give a reason for wanting to enter. You could say, “I’m here for the history seminar,” or “I’m with the band,” and the bar would be raised for you.
As for walking onto the campus, no one monitored the walkways or pedestrian entrances. And the buildings had no extra security except at night when the doors were locked. I’d often thought the security posts were there simply to be sure the parking lots wouldn’t be overrun.
Once in a while when a crime occurred on campus the school newspaper would run a story about poor security for the dorms, but all it took was the onset of exam week and everyone would forget the disturbance.
The murder of a faculty member was more than a disturbance, however, and I hoped Keith’s death would inspire a good look at campus safety overall.
I needed to do my part.
I studied my timeline and made some embellishments. I used a red marker to indicate the probable time of Keith’s death, bracketing the hours from noon to one forty-five. Only Rachel and I knew that the deed had been done by one forty-five when Rachel showed up with the cake. If, as Woody thought, Keith didn’t arrive much before noon, then he’d been correct in assuming that Keith hadn’t had a lot of time to admire his new Fellow award.