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inconsistencies in my life. My cottage kitchen had an antique glass-front corner cupboard on one side and the latest phone system on the other. Of course my purse hosted a smartphone.
    Since I wasn’t fully in the beading zone yet, I picked up quickly.
    “Dr. Knowles?”
    I heard Rachel, sounding distraught, even more than yesterday when she’d talked of abandoning her research. Rachel didn’t block her phone numbers, so she must be in distress somewhere remote.
    “What’s wrong, Rachel?”
    “It’s Dr. Appleton.”
    “Is he on your case again?” And after-hours at that.
    “No.” I waited while Rachel took deep, audible breaths, as if she’d just come up for air after nearly drowning. “He’s dead.”
    “He’s . . . ?” I switched ears as if that would send the message into a parallel mathematical plane where Dr. Appleton is not dead .

CHAPTER 4
     
    A strange feeling overtook my mind and my body. In a matter of seconds, I’d become lightheaded and shivery and a wave of sorrow and guilt surged through me, as if my awful thoughts had caused Keith to have a heart attack and die.
    I turned my attention to Rachel, on the other end of the line. “When did this happen?”
    “Woody found him in his office,” Rachel said, sobbing now. It might not have been the first thing she’d uttered while I’d been trying to mentally undo the deed. I pictured our poor old janitor coming upon a body, and of someone he knew. I heard Rachel take some breaths. “I guess it was some time around four o’clock when Woody started his rounds on the chem floor.”
    “What happened? A heart attack?” I gulped, not wanting to hear that a strong, nasty wish from a mathematician had knocked Keith off course.
    “They told me he was poisoned.” Rachel’s voice was weaker with each utterance.
    “Food poisoning?” I shot a look at my fruit, crackers, and cheese and lost my appetite on the spot.
    I remembered partaking generously of the big spread at the celebration in Hal’s honor. I put my hand to my throat. Was I alive because I’d resisted a second piece of cake? I carried the phone to my patio doors and looked out on my lawn. Who else of the attendees might be sick? Or dead? I paused to check the status of my own system: no stomachache, no headache, no dizziness, no queasy feeling other than my response to this news. I was suddenly grateful for my roses, my crab apple tree, and even my new lawn chairs.
    Maybe something I hadn’t eaten was tainted, like the onion dip or the store-bought pie.
    “Was there something in the food at the party?” I asked Rachel, while my kitchen spun around. A serious solid of revolution.
    “He was . . . they’re saying Dr. Appleton was murdered, Dr. Knowles.”
    A whole new set of shivers and waves of unrest came over me and seemed to push me back into the kitchen and onto the ladder-back chair in the corner. Suddenly the room was too bright; the many tones of blue in the braided rug under my feet were too gaudy. I shaded my eyes and tried to process what I was hearing.
    I’d wished Keith Appleton would leave Franklin Hall, not the land of the living. Hadn’t I? Really, I just wanted him to be civil, I explained to the universe around me. My mind raced to undo Keith’s demise. If I make my intentions clearer , I thought, Keith will spring back to life.
    “Who told you all this, Rachel?”
    A long, nerve-racking pause. “The police. They came to my house and brought me down here and they questioned me, for, like, hours.”
    Down here? I remembered the lack of caller ID readout. “Are you at the police station?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Did they”—I could hardly get the word out—“arrest you?” I almost said, “like, arrest you.” I was that rattled.
    “No, no. But they just let me go a minute ago; I wanted to call you right away. Believe it or not, there’s a pay phone here.”
    “Did they confiscate your cell?”
    I didn’t know where I got that idea, except perhaps from seeing