Maid of Murder (16 page)

“Okay. I believe you.”

Mark’s despondent face broke into a weak smile.

“Promise me you won’t do anything about this. You’re in enough trouble as it is. I’ll handle it.”

“Handle it? What are you going to do?”

“Well, I can’t tell the police about the photograph, because I swiped it from your office just before they arrived, now can I?”

“Where is it?” He asked, his tone hushed.

“Safe,” I answered evasively. “I’ll find out where that picture came from. Maybe you’re right, maybe it will lead to someone who knows who—what—happened to Olivia.”

He nodded. “What are you going to do?”

I shook my head. “Never mind. There’s something else.” I had to ask him even if it sent him back into a black mood.

Mark waited and I gathered my courage.

“It’s something Bree said to me. She said that you sent Olivia flowers and candy long after Olivia moved to Virginia.”

Mark’s pale face flushed with embarrassment.

“You actually did? I thought she was making it up. I thought you had no contact with Olivia.”

Mark looked down at the sidewalk. “She called me.”

I blinked. “When?”

“Every now and again when she was having problems or just needed someone to talk to.”

“What exactly does every now and again mean?” I felt my agitation grow.

“Every six months or so. I hadn’t heard from her in the last year or so, though. I know now that’s because of Kirk,” he said sadly. “That’s what I wanted to talk to her about: why she hadn’t been calling. I wanted her to know that I would still be there for her.” He looked like he was about to cry.

“She led you on,” I whispered.

Mark’s face hardened. “She didn’t promise me anything.”

“She called you. She shouldn’t have. She didn’t let you get over her. That’s wrong. It was selfish and wrong.”

“I know she cared about me.”

I gritted me teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Mark looked up from the sidewalk and met my gaze. “She asked me not to. She said you wouldn’t understand.”

“Damn right, I wouldn’t understand. She led you on for years, and you let her.” My anger at Olivia burned within my chest. How could she treat my brother so poorly? How could the both of them keep it from me for so long?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Sorry, what are you sorry for?”

“You’re right; I let her lead me on. I loved it when she called. Now look what’s happened because of it. She’s dead, and I’m the number one suspect.”

My anger deflated, and I patted his arm. “You’re not responsible for what happened to her. I will figure this out. We have the picture to go on now, remember?”

He nodded.

“Go home, if Lepcheck sees you here, he’ll have one of the rent-a-cops throw you in a janitor’s closet. Or worse.”

After a little more prodding, Mark agreed, got into his car, and drove away.

I picked up the cooler and shuffled to the fountain. Nicholas was still on the ground with his pile of blocks, now deconstructing the fortress, but my father was in front of the protestors waving what appeared to be a permit to protest in Lepcheck’s face. Lepcheck’s complexion blazed maroon under his bottled tan.

Putting the cooler down next to my nephew, I crouched beside him and whispered, “Hey, Nicko.”

He looked up from his blocks. “Dia!” he shouted at top voice.

I winced and peered up to see if we had attracted Lepcheck’s glance, but my father had his undivided attention. I held a finger to my lips. “Shhh.”

He mimicked me. “Shhh.”

“I have to go. Can you tell Grandpa that after he’s done talking to that angry-looking man?”

“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.

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, there 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.”

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.