Maid of Murder (An India Hayes Mystery)

by Amanda Flower

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “You shouldn’t have been at her funeral. You weren’t invited.” His face was the color of an overripe raspberry.

  “Last time I checked, Kirk, funerals didn’t require RSVPs. Furthermore, I’ve known Olivia my entire life and have every right to attend her funeral.”

  Kirk stood inches from me, pressing me back into the car. I straightened to my full height and looked down at him. “You and that brother of yours orchestrated Olivia’s death,” he growled.

  “What kind of crock conspiracy theory is that? And is orchestrated your word for the day?”

  “India,” Mains warned, edging closer.

  “Mark had nothing to do with Olivia’s death, and neither did I.”

  Kirk pressed against my body and lifted his hand as if to strike. Mains was there in an instant.

  He grabbed Kirk’s wrist in a viselike grip. “If you hit her, Mr. Row, you will spend the rest of the day in jail, no matter who Regina Blocken calls.” He released Kirk’s wrist.

  Kirk lowered his hand. “Tell that brother of yours it’s prison or the funeral home.”

  Mains yanked Kirk away from me. Kirk stalked off across the parking lot.

  Mains watched him cross the street, then turned to me. “Are you all right?” His expression was one of true concern.

  “Fine,” I whispered.

  Maybe Mark was better off in jail. Even with that in mind, I would do my best to get him out.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I had resituated myself behind the reference counter at Ryan when Erin approached the desk with a handful of yellow while-you-were-out slips. She fanned them on the counter. “I didn’t go to college to be a secretary, you know.”

  I thanked her, and she looked at me strangely, probably because she expected a smart retort; I disappointed her.

  “Four messages from your mother, each more hysterical than the last, and another two from some dude named Lewis Clive.”

  The first message from my mother read, “India, call me immediately.” Followed by “India, call the second you get in.” Then, “India, turn on your cell phone and call me.” Finally, “India, this is your mother. I’m expecting a call.”

  Erin leaned on the counter. “She had me read them back to her to make sure that I got the emphasis just right.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “India, what’s going on? Rumors on campus say that your brother’s in jail for murdering that woman in the fountain. Everybody already knows that he’s been fired.”

  I took a deep breath. “Suspended,” I corrected.

  “Whatever,” she said, as if the distinction meant nothing.

  “Erin, I really can’t talk about this with—”

  “Anyway, I told them they were full of it. Professor Hayes would never hurt anyone.” Before I could respond, she turned and retreated to her post at the checkout desk.

  During my break, I went to the student union to return Lew’s phone call. A lone graduate student slept in a dimly lit booth. Piles of books, notebooks, and printouts hid the table’s dark surface and his face.

  I slipped into an empty booth and turned on my cell phone. The tiny digital screen announced that my mailbox was full. I bet I knew who most of those messages were from. I dialed Lew’s number.

  “It’s about time you called,” Lew rasped.

  I made no apology. “Isn’t a hundred thousand dollars a little steep for bail?”

  “Oh, you heard. Your mother called, I suspect.”

  I didn’t correct him.

  I heard Lew take a long drag. I feared my eardrum would be inhaled through the phone. “A hundred thousand is not unusual for a murder rap, but I agree that it is high in Mark’s case. I asked the judge to release him on his own recognizance, just as a formality, but I knew she’d never buy it.

  With Mark’s ties to the community, etcetera, I can’t understand the exorbitant amount, especially since the D.A. is only charging him with manslaughter. I objected heartily, but no go.”

  Oh, only manslaughter. Well that makes things so much better, I thought.

  “The judge and Mark have a history,” I said and told him about the trampled flower gardens.

  “Oh. God, I hate this small-town crap.”

  I agreed and longed for the anonymity of Chicago. Maybe I should have stayed there after art school.

  “That explains that. The judge took one look at your brother and set her jaw. It didn’t help that your parents were kicked out of the courtroom for disturbing the proceedings. Do you know they had T-shirts made up? But I don’t have to tell you about your folks, do I?”

  “No, you don’t. Were the Blockens there?”

  “Just the doc as far as I could see, and pretty unemotional. Olivia’s funeral was today.”

  “I know; I was there.”

  “Ah.” He inhaled.

  “How did Mark react?”

  “He sniffled a little. Thank God, he didn’t cry.” Lew coughed and took another mouthful of nicotine.

  “I mean, to my parents not posting bond.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet. The courtroom was in such an uproar after Luckas’s decision that he was taken from the room before we could speak. I’m on my way to the jail right now.”

  I ended the call and walked back to the library.

  By late afternoon, I was more than ready to go home. The week had robbed me of what little librarian fervor I’d had, and my eyes drifted shut, then jerked open at a tapping on the reference counter. I opened them to Lepcheck’s scowl. His perpetual grimace matched his understated, but pricey funeral suit nicely. Lasha stood behind him with her arms crossed over her expansive chest in a gleaming kelly green pants suit. Ina would’ve approved of the ensemble.

  “Do you have a reference question, Dr. Lepcheck?” I asked in my best helpful librarian voice.

  He tugged on the tip of his goatee, a perturbing habit. “Ms. Hayes, Dr. Lint and I would like to speak to you in her office.”

  “Who will watch the reference desk?” I asked, instantly regretting it.

  He scowled. “Now.”

  I followed their ridged backs, one black, one kelly green, toward Lasha’s cramped office. We passed Andy and Erin. Erin glanced up from a novel and Andy from a gamer website. The looks on their faces were those of witnesses watching a friend enter a Texas gas chamber. Dead librarian walking.

  Lasha hadn’t tidied her office for the occasion. The innumerable stacks of library books in varied stages of acquiring or discarding covered every flat surface including the four chairs. Lasha pushed the piles off three.

  Lepcheck looked around, but refrained from comment. His thin-lipped expression spoke volumes, though. He walked around Lasha’s desk and sat on her desk chair. Lasha’s expression spoke volumes, too. She sat on one of the three armchairs facing the desk. I chose the chair closest to the door, but before I could sit down, I tripped over a stack of library catalogs, falling into Lasha’s desk and knocking a pile of magazines to the floor. Clumsily, I restacked the magazines. I bit my lip to stop myself from speaking. Furtively, I glanced at Lepcheck.

  Lasha sighed, and I let out an exhale of relief when Lepcheck didn’t say anything.

  Lepcheck tugged his academic goatee twice more and steepled his fingers, which were slender and long, his nails buffed to a shine. Lasha crossed her legs and her arms as if to shield herself from the arctic draft wafting off of Lepcheck’s person.

  “Ms. Hayes,” he said. “You’ve startled the college this week with your behavior.”

  During any moment in academic life that the college was subjected to personification, it’s time to duck and cover. Lasha winced, making me feel more at ease. She wasn’t on his side.

  Lepcheck studied me over his manicured hands. “I fear that the unfortunate situation with your brother has skewed your focus.”

  “Skewed my focus?” My tone was ironical.

  “Martin College is an institution o
f great esteem and respect in this community.”

  Esteem and respect. I hadn’t known.

  “With that position, a level of prestige and honorability must be retained. In the last week, Martin College has fallen short of its expected level of . . .” he paused, “. . . respectability. Olivia Blocken’s misfortune was a sad circumstance for her family and for the town of Stripling. But, Ms. Hayes, it was also an unfortunate circumstance for Martin College, due primarily not to the location of the act, which is disheartening to say the least, but to the involvement of a Martin faculty member. The college has received innumerable phone calls and emails from parents concerned about their children. Martin College has fostered a reputation as a safe environment, but with the latest turn of events, that reputation is beginning to wane.”

  I gripped the arms of my chair. I was going to be fired. I could feel it in my bones. Fired for failing to curtsey when Lepcheck entered the library, fired for being the offspring of crazies, fired for being the sister of Stripling’s most wanted. It would obviously be a wrongful dismissal. Lew would certainly litigate on my behalf, and my parents’ like-minded friends would take up arms, but would I be able to survive a long court case? And if I won, would I be able to return to Martin?

  Lepcheck spoke a few more sentences that I missed. I tuned in when he was in mid-tirade. “However, the college understands that you are not responsible for your brother’s actions.”

  “Alleged actions,” I said. They don’t think I’m responsible. Maybe I won’t be fired. Or at least not today, I thought.

  Lepcheck affected a weak smile. “Nevertheless, we are concerned about your involvement on your brother’s behalf. Please understand that as long as Mark Hayes is a suspect in Olivia Blocken’s death, the college cannot in good faith reinstate him as a member of the faculty. The prime objective for Martin College is student safety.”

  Followed closely by tuition revenue, I mentally added.

  Lasha frowned. “Sam, is there a point to all of this?”

  Lepcheck winced most likely at Lasha’s casual use of his moniker. He adjusted his position in her desk chair, maybe to remind her where he was. “The point of all this, Ms. Hayes, Dr. Lint, is simple. Martin College can no longer tolerate disturbance to the education and betterment of the young people on this campus. This goes for any planned or impromptu rallies established by your parents and/or friends on your brother’s behalf. If these disturbances continue, the college will be forced to take action.”

  “What type of action?” Lasha asked.

  “That will be determined when or if the time comes.” He tugged on his goatee one more time. The lord and master had spoken. I knew that he was expecting a bow or at the very least a brief round of applause, but Lasha and I are not obliging in these types of situations.

  Lepcheck looked at his watch, nodded as if in satisfaction, and rose. Evisceration in less than twenty minutes—a new personal record.

  After he’d run off to ruin someone else’s day, Lasha spoke. “Martin doesn’t have a leg to stand on if they fire you. You know that. Lepcheck’s a weak man with weaker threats. He’s threatened me half a dozen times, and I’m still here.”

  “True,” I agreed, cheered a tad.

  Lasha looked thoughtful. “The sooner this mess with your brother is cleared up, the better for your brother, for the town, and for you.”

  “I know.” I shifted in my seat.

  “Are you still taking the weekend off?” she asked.

  “The weekend?”

  Lasha walked behind her desk to the staff calendar. “You requested it off months ago for Olivia’s wedding. Take it off, and figure out who killed your friend while you’re at it.”

  As if it were that easy, I thought.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I thought about going home and changing first, but I knew myself well enough and what a great big coward I was. If I didn’t go directly after work, I would never go at all. Instead of turning the prehistoric automobile toward my duplex, I drove in the opposite direction toward the town square.

  The Cookery Inn came into view as I turned off the square onto Blossom Avenue, which snaked behind my mother’s church. The Cookery was an old Tudor-style mansion that had been revitalized into an inn in the late nineties under the threat of demolition. I remembered the event well, as my parents had chained themselves to the front door in order to block the city’s wrecking ball. By some miracle, they had found an investor who had the imagination and the means to transform the languishing building into the town pearl it is today.

  The estate itself had once been very large, but was sold piecemeal to those businesses that couldn’t afford property directly on the square, leaving the inn on a postage stamp–sized property. All that was left of the grand estate was a large circular driveway and a garden in the back.

  I parked in the circular drive behind a red compact car. A half dozen or so honeybees buzzed amidst the pink cosmos that flanked the door. The bees made me sad, because I knew how much they would have charmed Olivia.

  I pushed open the heavy wooden door, which led directly into the reception hall. Dark wood chair rail ran the length of the room. Below the chair rail, the wainscoting was polished to a high sheen, and above the rail a floral wallpaper seemed to burst from the walls. The blossoms were so real they looked as if I could pluck them. On the right side of the room, a woman sat behind a desk reading a magazine. She looked up with a smile. When I approached her, her smile widened into a grin as we both recognized each other.

  “Well, India Hayes, what are you doing here?” Maggie Riffle asked in her unmistakable raspy voice. During high school the sound of her approaching voice had made underclassmen throw themselves into their lockers just to avoid her. Shaped liked the little, squared-off robot that my brother played with as a child, Maggie had been my prime tormentor from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Although I wasn’t her only victim, her favorite prey had always been artsy nerds, such as myself.

  I swallowed hard and greeted her. “Wow, Maggie Riffle. How are you?”

  “Not Riffle anymore. I got married. Last name’s Blankenship now.” She held out her hand to display an enormous diamond.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. The stone was at least an inch across and two inches high. It was a wonder she didn’t stab herself with it on a regular basis. “I thought you moved away after high school.”

  “I did,” she said. “I lived out west for a few years. My husband and I moved back to buy this place. I had always loved it and when it came on the market, I just had to have it.”

  “That’s great,” I said, surprised. Maggie had never struck me as a historic building buff, but, then again, we did not share our opinions about architecture when she was tripping me in the cafeteria lunch line. “Where’d you live out west?”

  “Dayton.”

  I mentally rolled my eyes. A three-hour drive west of Stripling to Dayton, Ohio, wasn’t exactly the Rocky Mountains.

  “Coo-coo.” A pause. “Coo-coo.”

  “What was that?” I asked, looking around.

  “It’s those damn doves.”

  Quickly, I stepped away from her, hoping to avoid any bolts of lightning that came shooting from the sky to strike Maggie dead. I was pretty sure it was a cardinal sin to use a curse word when referring to a dove. Instead of the bolt of lightning as expected, I locked eyes with a large white dove that was perched at the top of the crystal chandelier hanging from the hall’s ornately carved ceiling. The dove was as large as a hen. More coos echoed through the room, and I followed the sound around the high ceiling with my eyes. Two more doves roosted together in an unlit candle sconce near the French doors that led into the Cookery’s impressive English-style garden. A fourth dove watched me from the black walnut railing that led up to the second floor.

  “Why . . .” I trailed off.

  “You mean who. I have Regina Blocken to thank for those buzzards. They were sup
posed to take part in Olivia’s reception in our ballroom Saturday. That’s not going to happen now. I suppose you know why.” Maggie’s eyes narrowed and even though I hadn’t seen her in several years, I recognized her killer instinct look. I imagine that it was the same expression that a hungry cheetah wore when spotting his four-legged dinner. “I suspect you know all about that. I read about your brother in the paper. I’m surprised the little weakling had it in him. He was such a wimp in high school.”

  I gave her a wan smile. “Well, Maggie, that’s why I’m here. I’m looking for her fiancé, Kirk Row. I was told he was staying here.”

  “He is, but he won’t be much longer if he doesn’t make good on his bill. He better not pull a fast one like the Blockens are trying pull.”

  “A fast one?” I asked, confused.

  “The caterer, the cake decorator, the dove trainer, or whatever that guy is, and us are all getting stiffed. The Blockens claim since the wedding was canceled, they shouldn’t have to pay their bills. Luckily, I have non-refundable deposit to fall back on for the reception hall. I guess the dove guy wasn’t so lucky. Not that I won’t be taking a major loss. I had three other people who wanted to rent the ballroom for this week, and I had to turn them all down because of the Blocken wedding. I called them earlier today to see if any of them were still interested, but they’d made other arrangements months ago.”

  “Wow, that’s too bad,” I said, barely containing my anger at her callousness. Had I not needed her to tell me where I could find Kirk, I would have hit her; I’ve wanted to hit her for years.

  “You’re telling me.” She leaned on the reception desk, resting her arms on the guest book.

  The doves cooed in tandem from above.

  “If there won’t be a reception, why are the doves still here?”

  Maggie grimaced and shot a nasty look at the bird clinging to the chandelier. If I were a dove, I would be up in a chandelier out of Maggie’s reach, too. She looked like she wanted to serve the bird up for dinner. “The trainer said he was leaving the doves here until he was paid. I told him it would be a cold night in hell before he gets his money out of Regina Blocken. If he doesn’t pick them up by the end of the day today, I’m calling animal control. If he wanted to make a statement to the Blockens about the birds, he should have left them on the Blockens’ doorstep, not on mine.”