Maid of Murder (14 page)

I certainly wasn’t.

Lew sat on the edge of my father’s favorite armchair, insisting that Mark confront Mains at the Justice Center. My mother and sister paced the living room on individual but intersecting orbits. My father observed the hysteria from his wheelchair under the picture window, adding bellowed advice into the fray. Mark cowered on the couch alone, saying only that he had been at a park all day thinking. What he’d thought, he didn’t share. His shorts and T-shirt were speckled with dirt and dust as if he’d spent many of those thoughts rolling across a sandy baseball field. His left knee had a bloody scratch. He refused to explain it, regardless of our mother’s innumerable entreaties to do so. I skirted the fringes of the room, close to the front door—whether to block the exit or reserve myself a clean getaway, I hadn’t decided.

“For God’s sake, Mark, talk to the police,” Carmen said as she made her hundredth pass by Mark and the sofa. “We all know that you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Don’t swear, Carmen,” Mom reprimanded from her loop. “Mark, honey, I understand how much you cared for Olivia, but you have to face these accusations.”

“Your mother’s right.” Lew gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Nip this thing in the bud, son.” He was certainly fond of that particular cliché.

“If you all would be quiet, maybe the boy would have a chance to speak,” Dad said.

Mom rounded on Dad. “He’s had plenty of opportunity to speak, Alden.”

“It is doubtful that you could hear him if he did, the way you and Carmen are behaving.”

“How we’re behaving? This is serious, Dad. Mark is really in trouble, but, as usual, he’s completely unconcerned,” Carmen said, as if insulted.

“Does he look unconcerned to you?” Dad said.

As one, we assessed Mark’s level of anxiety. He stared resolutely at his folded hands. All the anger he’d spat at me the day before was gone as if it had been drained from his body. In my eyes, he was thinner, paler, and utterly weak.

Tears welled up in my father’s eyes, and I suspected he saw the same. My mother and Carmen were less sympathetic.

Mom directed her next question to Lew. “Could the police question Mark here?”

“Possibly,” Lew remarked, “but wherever Mark meets the detective, he better be willing to talk. And before he can talk to them, he must talk to me. I cannot represent him if I don’t know what he knows.”

“He’ll talk,” Carmen said. She stood over Mark. “You have to talk. Don’t you want to end this? You almost lost your job today. They might not be able to fire you for being a suspect, but they have every right to do it if you don’t show up for class and spend the entire day doing God-knows-what at some nameless park.”

Mom folded her arms. “Don’t swear—”

“I know, Mother!” Carmen shouted, cutting her off.

My mother recoiled.

Carmen became positively unhinged. Pregnancy hormones no doubt. Under different circumstances, I would’ve enjoyed the spectacle.

I spoke up. “Screaming at each other isn’t helping.”

Big mistake. Carmen turned on me.

“Maybe if we all leave, Mark will feel comfortable enough to talk to Lew about, um, whatever happened.” I hastened to defend myself before she struck.

I leaned against the wall, satisfied that I had settled the entire matter. I was wrong. Mom and Carmen both sputtered in an attempt to be the first to correct me. Whoever yells loudest wins, and Mom won.

“India, we need to know what happened, why Mark is in all this trouble.”

“He doesn’t have anything to hide, so why can’t he talk to Lew with us in the room?” Carmen asked.

I thought of the framed engagement picture lying at the bottom of the trunk. He doesn’t have anything to hide? Is that really true?

If possible, Lew’s burnt skin had deepened into a darker shade of red. “I think that India has made an excellent suggestion, and, as your attorney, I encourage you to give us some privacy.”

Carmen stopped mid-stride in her circuit. “Fine.”

I jumped out of the way as she stomped out the front door. I hoped the twins didn’t inherit their mother’s temper.

“You’ll have to excuse her. She’s due in the fall,” Mom said to Lew, as if he hadn’t noticed.

She followed Carmen out the door. I wondered what her excuse was.

My father murmured quietly that he’d be in the study if needed. He left the study door open half an inch.

It was fast approaching seven, and I was thinking of adjourning to the kitchen where I could find some peace, and possibly a snack, when Mark spoke. “India can stay.”

“Fine, fine,” Lew said, beaming, apparently relieved Mark hadn’t completely lost the use of his tongue.

“I really don’t think I should,” I argued. “I mean, shouldn’t this be confidential?”

Lew pointed to an empty armchair. I sat.

“Are you willing to speak to Detective Mains?” Lew asked.

“Yes,” Mark said. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

The lawyer thought for a minute. “I don’t see why not. It’s already late in the day. It won’t hurt to sit a few more hours. You’re not under arrest. But I have to add, Mark, you’re not under arrest right now. I haven’t had much time on your case, so I do not know all the particulars, but I do know the Blocken family has fixated on you as the main suspect.”

“Was Olivia murdered?” I asked. I still couldn’t fathom that possibility.

“Undoubtedly. The coroner is a tennis buddy of mine. After your father called me and told me the situation, I gave her a ring. She explained that the pronounced bruising on Olivia’s back is consistent with other injuries she has seen when the victim is shoved hard. The coroner believes that Olivia was deliberately pushed into the fountain. There are also bruises on the front of her calves, probably sustained when she collided with the low rim of the fountain as she fell in. She must have been caught by surprise, because there were no marks on her hands indicating that she reached out to catch herself. In addition to the head injury, she had a pretty serious case of whiplash from the impact. Whoever did it had to be mighty angry. To have back bruises that pronounced, she was shoved with tremendous force.”

I shuddered.

“However, the coroner said the cops don’t believe that the murder was premeditated.”

Mark whispered something I couldn’t make out. Apparently, neither could Lew. “What’s that?”

“It’s my fault,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Your fault?” Lew asked. “Are you saying that you are responsible for Olivia’s death?”

“Yes.”

It was as though a lead rock had slammed into the center of my chest; my lungs constricted. Mark had killed Olivia? I felt lightheaded and longed to place my head between my knees, but I was afraid to move. I allowed my mind to play with the idea, but then rejected it like I did my paintings if they amounted to nothing more than wasted paint. Breath reentered my lungs.

“Did you kill Olivia Blocken?” Lew asked, calm as ever.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I could have saved her,” Mark said. “I could have been with her. I heard her talking to somebody at the fountain, but I went back to my office to wait for her to come to me. I was always the one to take the initiative in everything. For once, I wanted her to come to me first.” Tears rolled down my brother’s sunken cheeks. He said, barely above a whisper, “If I hadn’t been selfish, if I hadn’t had to prove to myself that Olivia would look for me, I could’ve protected her from whoever did this to her.”

Regardless of my parents’ rule of no smoking in the house, Lew shook a cigarette out of a crumpled pack and lit it with a yellow plastic lighter. “Did you push her into the fountain?”

Mark looked up from his folded hands, startled. “No, of course not.”

“Then, it’s not your fault that she died. Don’t take responsibility simply because you have some misguided white knight fantasy.”

“Not my fault?” Mark leapt from the couch. “Of course it is my fault. She came to Martin to see me. If I hadn’t asked her there, she wouldn’t have come. If I’d left her alone. . . . If I’d met her at the fountain when I heard her voice. . . . If I—”

“Son, sounds to me like you have a lot of ifs, but not a lot of sense.”

Mark collapsed back onto the couch.

The dramatics wore out my last nerve. I bit the inside of my lip, and the taste of blood stopped me from screaming at my brother like my sister and mother had. How dare he let me think even for a minute that he killed Olivia? How dare he indulge himself in wails and lame guessing games when he was in real danger of being fired or even arrested? I thought angrily.

Still gnawing my lip, I left the room. In the kitchen, I filled a glass with water. I rinsed out my mouth and into the sink’s steel basin. Bloody water spiraled down the drain. I wondered how this could get any worse.

Around eight o’clock, Lew came in to tell me he was going home. My brother would be spending the night at my parents’ house at Lew’s urging. He thought Mark shouldn’t be alone. My brother had agreed to visit the police station early the next morning; Lew would drive him. The lawyer had also agreed to pursue a lawsuit against the college; the paperwork would be on Lepcheck’s desk by tomorrow afternoon, although Mark hadn’t seemed to care about his jeopardized position at Martin.

Tuesday, I was the poster child of denial. I had the evening shift at the library. I spent the daytime feverishly cleaning the apartment and, for the first time in a long time, painting in my studio. Around ten, Mom called to tell me Mark had returned from questioning at the police station. She withheld any other details, and I didn’t ask. At the library, I passed my shift in a daze and four cups of coffee. Looking for distraction, I volunteered to help Jefferson catalog the new books and had little contact with people, either patrons or staff. It was Bobby’s day off. I gave my mind the day off thoughts of Mark and Olivia, as well.

The next day was my day off, and I ran out of stall tactics. My apartment sparkled from the ceiling corners to the bathroom tile. A completed oil painting solidified on my easel, but I couldn’t motivate myself to start a new one.

I picked up the morning paper off the front porch.
The Stripling Dispatch
, owned by some huge media conglomerate in Albuquerque, appeared every Wednesday and Saturday on the townspeople’s doorsteps regardless of whether they actually read it.

While the Akron paper had made a small mention of Olivia’s death in the local section, the
Dispatch
gave the story full coverage. Front page, above and below the fold. Never one to withstand the seduction of print, I read.

Martin professor chief suspect in Blocken murder

-Maribel Smythe, Dispatch staff writer

-Stripling. The day after the Fourth was a dark one for one local family. While other families were enjoying the extended holiday weekend, community leaders Donald and Regina Blocken received a frightening phone call a little after ten Saturday morning informing them that their daughter, Olivia, was in an ambulance enroute to the hospital. Olivia Blocken, Stripling High School graduate and recently of Newport News, Va., suffered from brain and head injuries after falling into the fountain outside the Dexler Math and Science building on Martin College’s campus. The fountain is a well-known landmark on the campus entitled “Empowerment.”

I skimmed down through the full-page article as Maribel Smythe waxed on about the details of the fountain. No wonder she couldn’t find a job at a large daily, I thought uncharitably. In the third paragraph, she wrote,

Due to an extensive brain injury, Blocken’s surgery was unsuccessful. Dr. Andrea Maddox stated, “Olivia’s impact with the fountain was severe. The sculpture cracked her skull and punctured her frontal lobe. My team and I did everything we could for her. We told the family that permanent brain damage was likely.”

Sunday, doctors determined that Blocken was indeed brain dead, and the family removed life support early that morning.

The police are investigating Blocken’s fall as the coroner suspects Blocken was a victim of foul play. Detective Richmond Mains, the leaddetective on Stripling’s police force, well known for solving the mailbox baseball case last April . . .

I skimmed again.

During the interview, Regina Blocken stated, “I heard that the Hayes boy was found near my daughter. He’s been obsessed with Olivia for years.”

I paused in my reading. Mrs. Blocken’s accusation again of my brother was clear.

Mark Hayes, son of politically active Alden and Rev. Lana Hayes of Stripling, and a member of the mathematics faculty at Martin College, dated Blocken during high school. Blocken and her fiancé, Kirk Row, were in Stripling this week preparing for their wedding, to be held at St. Jude Lutheran Church on Saturday. On the Fourth, Hayes crashed the Blocken family gathering, reportedly to ask Blocken to meet him the next morning, the morning of her attack, at his office on Martin’s campus.

My arms dropped the newsprint from my sight while I conjured the courage to keep reading.

The police are investigating Hayes, but stress he is not under arrest at this time.

Dr. Samuel Lepcheck, provost at Martin College, stated in a press conference yesterday afternoon that the college is in “full cooperation with the police.” He refused to comment on the involvement of Hayes in the case. However, a college source confirmed exclusively to the
Dispatch
that Hayes has been suspended indefinitely from his position as assistant professor of mathematics at Martin College.