Maid of Murder (An India Hayes Mystery)

by Amanda Flower

  “The one with the purple face?” whispered Nicholas.

  “That’s the one.”

  I beat a hasty retreat.

  I knew I was being a coward, but I couldn’t hang around with Lepcheck in sight. No need to tempt fate with the status of my employment.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Something nagged at me about Olivia’s death, aside from its occurrence and the general suspicions against my brother, of course. After stopping at my car where I kept a candy stash for just such an occasion, I made a stop before I left campus. I jogged to the east side of Martin, past the gymnasium and into the thick of the dorms. I stopped in front of a small modular building tucked away between the gym and the end of fraternity row: the safety and security office.

  I didn’t come to this part of campus often, only when I had a dire need to bribe the real powers-that-be on campus.

  The modular’s door was unlocked, and I stepped in. The reception area was empty. Lucky for once, I caught the safety and security secretary on her smoking break. I slipped around the desk and scurried down the hall to the office at the very end. After a deep breath, I knocked once and opened it. The room was absolutely freezing, but the man sitting behind the desk looked like he’d recently marched the Mojave Desert at high noon. The lights blinked, but the tired window air conditioner labored on.

  “Well, hell’s bells,” he said by way of greeting. “They caught you again.”

  “Really, Mutt,” I said. “I’m completely innocent.”

  “Uh-huh. First things first.” He drummed his fingers on the desktop.

  I slid a king-sized chocolate bar onto the metal desk that divided the tiny room. The candy bar was a little worse for wear after spending the morning in my smoldering car, but Mutt didn’t seem to mind. He chuckled softly and made a gimme sign with his hand. I rifled through my shoulder bag, pulled out another bar, and slapped it down next to its mate. Mutt gestured that I could sit.

  I settled on the lone metal folding chair, grimy from decades of dust and chocolate.

  “Well, lovely India, what can I do for you today? Fix a no-parking zone ticket? Speeding?”

  I shifted uncomfortably on the frigid metal. “Not this time.”

  “Hmm.” Mutt worried his chin, seemingly enjoying tormenting me. Then he snapped his fingers. “I know you’re here to save your brother from a murder rap.”

  I jumped. But, then again, I didn’t know why Mutt’s comment surprised me. Lee Mutton, head of safety and security, had intimate knowledge of every rumor that pulsated through Martin’s campus, and none came bigger than Olivia’s murder.

  Mutt unwrapped a chocolate bar and finger-combed his mustache in preparation. His navy uniform was opened to the navel, displaying the unseemly view of his signature beer belly barely restrained by a white T-shirt. Appearances couldn’t be more misleading. Mutt ran the entire campus from his little office where security monitors lining the walls flickered from scene to scene with an efficiency of an iron hand. Mutt was Jabba the Hut in navy cotton blend. And if Mutt ever found a reason to rise from his abused desk chair, look out. Rumor had it that the three-hundred-plus, six-three security lord once threw a frat boy out of a second-story window while breaking up a rave. Of course, it was probably all rumors. He couldn’t possibly still be head of security after chucking Martin’s bread and butter out of a window, could he? Another rumor claimed that Mutt wasn’t fired for said chucking, because he has some dirt on Lepcheck so horrible that he’s virtually untouchable. I considered all of this as Mutt polished off the first candy bar and chugged a sweaty can of cola before moving on to the second.

  “So?” he asked between bites. He wiped chocolate from his lip with the back of his hand.

  I took a breath. “You’re right. I haven’t broken any of Martin’s hallowed traffic laws—at least not lately.”

  He smirked. Chocolate clung to his mustache. “Hallowed, huh? My, you professor-types and your big words.”

  “I’m not technically a professor.”

  “Excuse me, you librarians,” he amended.

  I plunged in. “Have you been involved in the Blocken case?”

  Mutt finished the second bar and became officious. “Not so much. The police are salivating over this one. And the whole situation has more Lepcheck than I can stomach.”

  “What do you know?”

  “You know,” he said philosophically, “This isn’t really like fixing a parking ticket. It’s a little more complicated. Lepcheck would put me on the curb if he knew I was even speaking to you about it.”

  “I thought you were un-fire-able.”

  “That’s the word on the street.”

  I opened my bag and slapped two more chocolate bars on his desk. I’d need to restock after this visit.

  Mutt smiled. “Like I was saying, I don’t know that much. But my boys were some of the first ones on the scene.”

  “Boys?” I arched my brow. At least three female security officers patrolled the campus.

  Mutt grunted. “My boys and girls, then. Happy?”

  “Very.” I nodded for him to continue.

  “One of them, Mike, found your brother sobbing over Olivia at the scene. Mark had already pulled the girl out of the fountain and was holding a shirt to her head wound. Mike said Mark was a scarier sight than the girl. Mark wouldn’t let anyone close to her until the EMS arrived.”

  I shuddered, envisioning the scene: Mark cradling Olivia’s bloodied head, blood and water ruining her designer sundress. The image of Mark’s tortured face, even in my imagination, was more than I could stand.

  “Hey, you okay?” Mutt asked, halfway concerned. The third chocolate bar was long gone. He patted the fourth as if to say, “I’ve got something special in mind for you.”

  “I’m fine.” I pushed the image deeper into the recesses of my mind to fuel future nightmares. “Did you catch the mur—the accident on video?”

  “Of course that Mains hotshot asked me the same thing the morning it happened. If I had, this case would be an open-and-shut deal, but we don’t have any security cameras on that side of campus. Low traffic.”

  “Aren’t low traffic areas the most attractive to crime?”

  “Don’t preach to the choir. I bring the same point up at my annual budget hearing. I have a feeling the board’ll spring for it this year.” He paused. “We do have one camera, the Dexler lot, that shows your brother walking toward the fountain at about eight-thirty, back to Dexler, and then again to the fountain forty-five minutes later.”

  “He’s already explained that. He went to the fountain, heard Olivia talking to someone, and left to wait for her in his office where he asked her to meet him. He got tired of waiting and walked back to the fountain, again, and found her.”

  “Why’d he go to the fountain in the first place?”

  “I—he probably was pacing around campus. He walks when he’s nervous, and I know he was nervous about seeing Olivia again.”

  Mutt looked doubtful.

  I changed the subject. “What happened to Olivia’s car?”

  “What car?”

  “Well, she’d have to have a car to drive to campus from her parents’ house, and she certainly didn’t drive it out of here.”

  “There wasn’t any unknown car on campus for any extended period that I know of, and trust me, I would know. I offered a free personal day off work to the officer that writes the most tickets this summer.”

  “Can you do that?” I asked, thinking of the campus’ strict attendance policy. You had to have your mother’s fresh death certificate in hand or be in intensive care before the college would give you an extra day off.

  “No, but they don’t know that. I’d watch those yellow lines if I were you.”

  “There’s no way that Olivia walked to campus. Her parents live over ten miles away, and she’d rather die than take public transportation.” I blanched at my poor choice of words.

  Mutt ignored the faux pas. “I’m telling you, th
ere was no car here long enough to get a ticket.”

  “But, a car could have been here for a shorter period, not giving your boys and girls time to whip out their ticket pads and pencils. Just enough time to shove Olivia in the fountain and leave.”

  Mutt inched the last chocolate bar closer, but did not open it. “All I know is that your brother’s car was in the lot the whole time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I stopped at Lula’s Flowers on the town square and bought the most expensive arrangement that my meager budget could bear. I might not eat for a few weeks, but the arrangement was worth its price. It was a cluster of yellow roses, orange lilies, and fragrant herbs in a blown glass vase. No carnations or baby’s breath. I signed the card simply “India.”

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I drove the ten minutes to the Blocken home. I hadn’t seen a member of the family since they chased me out of the hospital on Saturday afternoon. I knew that I wouldn’t be welcome, not as long as they suspected my brother, but visiting them was the only way I could think of to find out how that photograph got into my brother’s office. Logic told me that one of the Blockens must have been involved because they were so certain that Mark attacked Olivia. Nostalgia told me that the family would never do such a horrible thing despite how they felt about Mark. Spite told me that Lepcheck planted the photos. As the three points of view fought for dominance, I found myself directly in front of the Blocken home.

  I knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. Either no one was home, or they saw me and refused to answer. I stepped off the Victorian’s elaborate porch and returned to my car with the flowers. I hesitated on the stone walk, then I meandered around the house to the wooden gate between the garage and house. I peered over the gate and saw O.M. sitting alone on a picnic table butted up to the side of the garage, smoking a slim cigarette and rifling through a box of chocolates. Her short hair was the startling neon blue hue that I’d seen at the hospital.

  I tapped on the gate. Chocolate flew out of the box and onto the chemically treated lawn. She stubbed her cigarette on the underside of the tabletop. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. Can I come inside the gate?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  I hung my arm over the gate to unlatch it. The gate was tricky, it had to be jiggled and jerked to cooperate. Although I hadn’t opened it in several years, I had no trouble. The gate saddened me.

  Seeing that I was alone, O.M. picked up her half-smoked cigarette and fished a lighter out of her oversized dark denim jeans.

  I set the flowers on one of the umbrella tables, remnants of the Blocken Fourth of July picnic that seemed so long ago. “Care if I sit beside you?” I asked.

  She shrugged. I climbed onto the picnic table next to her and leaned against the garage. We didn’t speak for a few minutes. O.M. smoked, and I secondhand smoked. Her pixie-like face was devoid of makeup and expression.

  “Want a cigarette?” She held the pack out to me.

  “No thanks.”

  She shoved it back in her pocket and turned her face away. I wished I smoked.

  “Those chocolates look good.”

  She handed me the box. Moon-shaped thumbnail prints indicated ninety percent of them had been investigated and passed over. Chocolate encrusted O.M.’s right thumbnail, creating a muddy swamp color with her poison-green nail polish.

  I chose a piece that was free of nail marks. I popped it in my mouth. Apricot. Yuck. “You know there’s a guide on the box lid, so you don’t have to mutilate all the candies.”

  “When they get all mixed up, the guide’s shot to hell.”

  She had a point. I swallowed the apricot candy. At least she was talking to me, even if belligerently.

  I tried to soften her further. “I like your hair.”

  She ran her hand, the one free of chocolate, thankfully, through it. After a full minute of silence, she whispered, “I dyed it for the wedding to make Mom mad. She hasn’t noticed yet.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “How would I know? They don’t tell me anything.” She took one last drag of her cigarette and stubbed it under the picnic table. She carefully placed the butt in her pocket. “My parents and Kirk are fighting over the arrangements and stuff. He wants her to be buried in Virginia. If he thinks that Mom’s going to let that happen, he really is psycho.”

  “He did lose his fiancée,” I said in Kirk’s defense.

  “I lost my sister, and I didn’t go crazy. He was so angry yesterday. I thought he was going to hit my dad.”

  “Over the funeral?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I was upstairs in my room with music on when he came over. I couldn’t really hear them until Kirk started yelling at Mom and Dad. By the time I got to the stairs and could see them, Kirk was so bonkers, I couldn’t understand what he was saying with that Southern accent of his. After Kirk left, I asked what happened, but Mom acted like I wasn’t even there.”

  Looked like I had my first suspect: the furious fiancé.

  I saw an opening. “Have you been missing any photographs of Olivia?”

  She seemed surprised by the question. “No. I mean I’m not missing any. But if my parents are . . .” she shrugged. “Why?”

  “Uh,” I began. I didn’t want to tell her about the engagement picture, but I didn’t want to be another exclusive adult. “Things get misplaced.”

  O.M. frowned. Before she could persist, we heard a car roll up the driveway. A car door slammed, and a moment later, Mrs. Blocken stood by the gate I’d left opened.

  I jumped off the picnic table.

  “Olga!” she called. “Have you seen—” Mrs. Blocken stopped when she spotted me. Her face reddened to the shade of her coif. “What are you doing here?”

  “I—”

  “Leave my house at once. How dare you come here?”

  O.M. pulled her knees to her chest and looked away, out into the yard.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mrs. Blocken.” I felt like a five-year-old.

  Her eyes blazed. Her attention transferred to the bouquet of flowers I bought. “Where did these come from?” She picked up the vase and read the card. “Do you know why Olivia chose you as a bridesmaid?”

  I blinked, struck dumb by the question.

  “To get back at me.”

  “At you,” I managed to say.

  “She wanted to get married in Virginia, and I said absolutely not, that her father and I would only pay for a Stripling wedding.” She spun the vase in her hands. “I didn’t know about the wedding party until a month ago when it was too late to replace you. You should have heard the glee in her voice when she said your name.”

  Mrs. Blocken looked me directly in the eye and dropped the vase onto the cement walk. The beautiful hand-blown glass shattered into a thousand pieces.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I whispered and fled, trampling the lilies and roses as I brushed past her.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I told myself that I didn’t care about Mrs. Blocken’s hostility, but my tear ducts thought differently. Wiping my eyes and muttering, I drove to the duplex. I pulled into the drive and spotted Ina sitting on the front porch, Theodore in her lap. I rubbed my face vigorously before getting out, so it’d appear I only had a nasty sunburn.

  “India,” Ina called. “I read the Dispatch this morning. It doesn’t look good for Mark, does it?”

  I waved away her question. “How did Theodore get out here?”

  “Who? This little mite?” She scratched him under his double chin. He purred with the ferocity of a jet engine.

  “I don’t think little is the right adjective, but yes, the cat in your lap.”

  “Well.” She settled in for a good tell-all.

  I sat down on the glider beside my door. This could take all afternoon.

  Theodore purred.

 
“I was out in the yard, rotating my leprechauns,” Ina said.

  I glanced at the yard; the leprechauns were in a different configuration.

  “You know they get tired of being in the same place all the time.”

  I nodded and wondered if I had anything in my duplex suitable for lunch.

  “I was trading Blinky with Petunia.”

  “What?”

  “India, you really should learn their names.” At my blank stare, she added, “The leprechauns’ names.” She shook her head in disgust.

  I rubbed my left shoulder. “Ina, what about the cat?”

  “Right. I was out here moving the gang around, when I heard a terrible ruckus from your apartment. I mean really terrible. Banging. Screams and yells. It was awful. I thought for sure you were being murdered. You know the town’s homicide rate skyrocketed this week.”

  Yeah, from zero to one.

  “I broke into your apartment with my key, and Templeton was beatin’ the stuffing out of this little guy. Your wildcat was in a rage. He was biting and scratching. Just awful. I clapped my hands, and Templeton ran into your bedroom, but poor little fella just lay there. I felt for sure he was half-dead. I picked him up as gentle as could be and brought him over to my place to care for him. He didn’t make a peep while I tended him and brushed his fur back into place. Templeton might have rabies. Won’t that be sad if you have to put him down?”

  “Templeton does not have rabies.” I enunciated each syllable.

  Ina looked doubtful. Theodore hung over her thin arms like a swooning maiden. It really wasn’t the best day for me to referee cat wrestling. “Can you watch Theodore for the rest of the afternoon, until they both settle down?”

  “Why of course. I’d hate for anything to happen to this little fella.”

  Little. I snorted mentally. “Do you need a litter box or anything like that?”

  “No, no, I have everything I need for Fella, left over from Archie.”

  Archie was Ina’s prehistoric feline who floated to the big catnip garden in the sky three years ago. The cat had lived to age twenty-five.