Amanda Flower - Maid of Murder

I frowned. The current situation was not conducive to any levity, and what I’d said wasn’t funny, anyway.

Regaining control, Mains smiled. “I’m sure she does. Now, if you don’t mind, I only need a few more minutes with Mark.”

I scowled, but stepped away from the ambulance. At the fountain, the small cluster of people divided again, and a female EMT rolled a stretcher toward the other ambulance. Although I couldn’t see her, I knew that Olivia lay on the stretcher. Two EMTs lifted Olivia into the ambulance. Sirens blared, and the ambulance raced off campus. The emergency workers cleared the scene, uselessly wiping their sweaty faces in the humid air. The half dozen police officers circled the fountain, like August yellow jackets around an especially fragrant garbage can.

Mid-morning and the humidity had already plastered my hair to my neck and face. I heard snippets of Mains’s and Mark’s conversation. Mark was harder to hear. I found myself in one of those rare moments when I longed for my cell phone, if only to call my mother and tell her that Mark was okay. She would be climbing the church’s narthex by now. My cell was uselessly sitting in my office back at the library.

Turning my thoughts from my mother, and from Olivia and the stretcher, I mentally replayed the scene at Blockens’ yesterday afternoon and Mark’s strange appearance. Why had he asked to see her? Did he honestly think that she’d leave Kirk for him? Did she actually come? I wondered. There was no other reason for her to be on Martin’s campus than to see Mark. Why would she come? To appease Mark? To finally settle things between them?

I held my knit blouse away from my body, hoping a nonexistent breeze would cool me.

“Miss Hayes,” Mains said, breaking into my thoughts.

“Call me India,” I said, startled.

“Okay, India.” He smiled. “Your brother’s free to go.”

Mark removed the blanket from his shoulders. I gasped. He was soaked to the skin, and his clothes were covered with watery traces of blood. Olivia’s blood. I swallowed hard.

Mark was completely composed. He folded the blanket and handed it to an EMT as if he were computing simple trigonometry. From personal experience, I knew this was a bad sign.

“Do you need a ride home?” I asked. “I could take you to Mom’s, if you want,” I added, although I couldn’t think how that would be helpful. “Or Carmen’s? Wherever you want to go.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see Mains still watching us.

“I don’t need a ride,” Mark snapped.

I jerked back, stung.

“I have work to do in my office. You can leave.”

“Hey,” I snapped back. “Don’t get pissed at me because—”

“I’m not pissed at you.” Mark, who usually hated that kind of vulgarity, said.

“Then don’t be such a—jerk. I’m here to help you. Mom called, and I—”

“Great, just what I need, my mommy and baby sissy to watch over me. Call Mom and tell her everything’s fine. Okay?”

“Why are you acting this way? Everything is not fine.” I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice so that Mains wouldn’t overhear. “What happened to Olivia? Did she meet you here?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief from my voice.

“Is it so hard to believe that Olivia would want to speak to me?” My brother’s voice cracked.

“No. Not at all.” I hastened to reassure him. I could deal much better with an angry Mark rather than a weepy Mark. “What happened?”

He dropped his head. The white-hot sunlight reflecting off his blond crown nearly blinded me. “I don’t know. She called my office last night and said that she’d meet me by the fountain in the morning. By the time I got here, she was already in the water. I pulled her out and called 911. She was bleeding. From her head I guess, but there was blood everywhere. I couldn’t remember CPR. I couldn’t do anything.”

“You called 911.” I tried to console him.

“Like that’s enough. If she dies—”

“She won’t die. Now, what time were you supposed to meet her?”

“Nine-thirty. I found her at nine-forty-five; I looked at my watch.” Tears banked on his lower eyelids.

The last remaining EMTs piled into the lone ambulance and exited Martin at a sedate speed. Mains had disappeared. I looked around and finally spotted him standing by Empowerment with a handful of cops.

“Are you sure you want to go back to work?”

His shoulders sagged. “I’d like to go to the hospital to see Olivia.”

A Blocken lynching played out in my mind. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”

A silver luxury car pulled up to the fountain. The driver, a solid man with silver hair leaped out of the car before it was fully settled into park. The man was Sam Lepcheck, college provost and spin-doctor extraordinaire , and his presence was never a good sign.

Lepcheck approached Mains and conversed for a few minutes, then nodded and scratched his chin. I could hear the bad press headlines careening through his mind. “Stripling native tumbles into Martin’s hideous fountain,” and the like. Lepcheck sucked in a big gust of air—Mains must have told him that the victim was Regina Blocken’s daughter. So much for the amicable town and gown relationship that Lepcheck tried so desperately to foster. Mark’s name floated across the pavement to us.

I grabbed my brother’s arm. “It’s time to go.”

I dragged Mark across campus toward the library and my car before Lepcheck decided to make my brother the fall guy. Mark already ranked on Lepcheck’s hit list because he hadn’t completed his Ph.D. Martin prided itself on having roughly ninety percent of its teaching faculty toting doctorates, and although Mark planned to reach this accolade sometime before his seventieth birthday, his pace was a bit slow for Lepcheck. Fortunately for Mark, and, I supposed, unfortunately for Lepcheck, Martin had a notoriously poor math department, and staffing was always a challenge. So the college had hired Mark on the basis of his master’s degree and his alumnus pledge that he would complete the higher doctorate.

Halfway to the library, Mark froze. “Theodore! I left him in my car.”

“You left your cat locked in your car? It’s over ninety degrees.”

Theodore was Mark’s twenty-five-pound Maine Coon cat, and a permanent fixture around campus. Mark found him as a kitten abandoned outside Dexler three years ago and had no idea how much cat he was getting. Maine Coons are known for their impressive statures, but Theodore was at least ten pounds overweight. Mark taught Theodore to walk on a leash, and it wasn’t uncommon to see the two of them strolling across campus together. Many students carried cat treats or goodies from the cafeteria in their knapsacks for Theodore, resulting in his present obesity.

“I left the windows down,” he defended himself.

Mark and I raced back across campus to the small faculty lot behind Dexler. The fastest way to reach the lot was to dash by the fountain. I saw Lepcheck’s gaze follow us as we flew by. We were the spitting image of respectable faculty.

Mark’s hybrid car was one of three cars in the lot, and like he promised, the windows were down. I reached the car first. Theodore lay on the backseat of the small car, on his back, his front paws suspended listlessly in the air. I threw open the door and touched him. He chirped pathetically. Mark reached my side and cried, “Is he okay? Theo! Theo!”

“He’s overheated. You don’t leave him in the car like this a lot, do you?”

“No, just this once. Theo, I’m sorry.” he sniffled and patted the cat’s upturned belly.

“Let’s get him out of the car and cooled off,” I leaned into the car to pick up Theodore. When I placed my hand on his round tummy, he attacked. His claws dug into my bare arm and he bit down hard on my fingers. “Ow! Get him off me.”