Maid of Murder (8 page)

After Mains’s sedan disappeared around the corner, I asked Ina if she was all right.

After spurting for a few minutes, she managed, “You’re dating an Englishman. Don’t you know what the English did to our people? The suffering. He didn’t give you any potatoes, did he?”

“I’m
not
dating Richmond Mains. He’s a police officer. He asked me some questions about a case.”

“A police officer to boot. The English are always looking for ways to bully,” Ina said.

I rubbed my throbbing shoulder and felt the sharp fingertips of a migraine tickle my brain.

“Why would a police officer speak with you? Have you done something wrong?”

“No, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not feeling too well. I think I’ll go lie down.”

As I opened the door, Ina leaned further over the railing so that her feet no longer touched the stoop. “I prefer Bobby McNally. Now, he’s a fine-looking Irish lad.”

“Aye, that he is,” I remarked in a mock brogue.

Once inside, I looked longingly toward my shut bedroom door. All I wanted to do was go to bed and pretend the day had never happened, but I knew if I didn’t show up at the obligatory Hayes Fifth of July shindig, there’d be heck to pay later. For a brief minute, I contemplated skipping the whole thing, but if I didn’t appear, my mother would come looking for me or send Carmen to do the job. I headed toward my bedroom, not for a well-deserved rest, but to get ready for the inquisition at my parents’ house. I made a mental note to wear running shoes instead of my standard flip-flops, just in case I needed to make a quick exit.

My parents’ house was only five minutes from my duplex, the long way, and I found myself there much sooner than I liked. Once in my parents’ driveway, I sat for a few moments admiring my mother’s cosmos and snapdragons and gathering my strength.

The front door to the ranch sprang open, and my father flew down the ramp in his titanium wheelchair. “India, stop moping in that heap of metal and greet your poor old dad.”

I slipped out of the car. “Happy Belated Fourth, Dad.” I leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Are Carmen and Chip here already?”

“That they are, my girl. Don’t tell her I told you so, but your sister is as big as a triple-wide trailer.”

I laughed. “No promises.”

He made a three-point turn and sailed up the ramp with little effort. Before the accident, my father was an active man, an avid jogger and recreational athlete. His thin runner’s body was long gone, now replaced by the thick chest and broad shoulders of a wheelchair racer.

I trudged up the ramp, dreading with each step my mother’s unavoidable questions about Olivia. Her first concern would be how all this affected Mark. She would look to me for answers. I couldn’t blame her because I knew we were all wondering the same thing. “Will Mark have a relapse?”

After Olivia’s ill-fated graduation party and her subsequent departure for points south, Mark had fallen into a state of severe depression that had lasted months. My mother had been convinced that he would do something to himself. She’d sent him to counseling and had found a doctor to prescribe antidepressants. In the end, it wasn’t the hours of counseling, or the drugs, that had pulled Mark out of his self-made pit, but mathematics. During much of that time he’d retreated to his apartment to write new theorems, which was his idea of self-comfort. When he’d finally created a new one, he’d been so excited that he’d showed one of his math professors, who had helped him get it published in a prestigious math journal. While hiding away in his apartment with math books and his calculator, Mark had missed the first quarter of his junior year of college, but since he was such a genius, most of his professors had let him make up the missed classes with extra assignments. The following fall semester one of his professors had talked him into applying to graduate school. Since then, Mark had thrown himself into the study of math and little else.

The front door led directly into the family room. Atop the hardwood floors, the furnishings were tasteful, but inexpensive, and the only embellishment to the minimalist style was a wall of crosses that my mother had collected in every size, color, and medium, along with a few choice paintings by their favorite local artist.

As I stepped inside, a high-pitched voice exclaimed, “Dia!” and my four-year-old nephew Nicholas catapulted himself into my arms. My nephew was a miniature replica of his father, with dark hair and eyes, and tan, southern Italian skin. Nicholas rambled on about attending kindergarten in the fall and the other kids in his playgroup. Apparently, a little tyke named James was a real pill. When Nicholas first began to talk, he learned quickly in our family that you had to speak loud and fast or risk interruption.

“Okay, Nicky, let Aunt India sit.” My sister’s calm voice preceded her into the room.

Nicholas continued to talk and cling to my neck.

“It’s fine, Carmen,” I said.

I sat down on the couch, Nicholas on my lap. Carmen frowned at me. She hated it when anyone undermined her authority in any venue, especially in Nicholas’s case.

There was no mistaking Carmen as my sister. We both had fair skin and changeable gray eyes, gifts from our father. Although my dark hair was long and wild, Carmen had hers in a no-nonsense mom cut. My mother had been known to mix up our baby pictures.

As I sat, I noted that my sister was, as my father adeptly described, as big as a triple-wide trailer. Carmen was pregnant with twins, in accordance with her life plan. Nothing screwed up Carmen’s life plan: At thirty-one, she’d have three kids, a house, a guinea pig, and a loving husband. After graduating high school, she had attended one of the half-dozen Presbyterian colleges that cluster in western Pennsylvania, a choice that had thrilled my mother, a Presbyterian minister, to no end. As intended, Carmen had met her future husband, Chip Tuchelli, while there, and they’d married right after graduation. They had moved back to Stripling and established their careers as teachers: Carmen, high school, and Chip, elementary. They’d borne Nicholas, and now my blessed sister was pregnant with twin girls. It was all very disgusting.

Before Carmen could remind me that Nicholas was her son, my mother entered the living room. She wore a long patchwork skirt and a lime green T-shirt. Her gray hair was pulled back into a high ponytail.

“Oh, good, you’re
finally
here,” my mother said. “How’s Olivia?”

“She’s in surgery, or she was. She might be out by now.”

Carmen sat down beside me on the couch. “Mom told us what happened. Mark really pulled Olivia out of the fountain?”

I nodded.

Carmen shook her head. “I just read about her upcoming wedding in last week’s paper. The announcement was the entire front page.”

My mother gave me a beady stare. “Yes, the paper was the first that I had heard of the upcoming wedding. Why do you think that is, India?”

I hid my expression behind Nicholas’s head, which was a challenge as it wove back and forth. “You don’t use the Internet.”

“What’s that, India? I didn’t hear.”

I peered around Nicholas. “Maybe you need a better news source.”

“Like my daughter, perhaps?” Glowering, she adopted the same tone she used with church parishioners to encourage them to cough up something extra for the offering plate.

Carmen changed the subject. “How are the Blockens holding up? Mom said that you went to the hospital after you dropped off Mark. Will Olivia be all right?”

“Of course, she’ll be all right.” I looked around. “Where’s Mark anyway?”

“Outside with your father,” Mom said. “You should have come directly from the hospital. Mark hasn’t said three words since you left. Maybe you can get him to talk.”

“What do you want me to do? Beat what happened out of him?” The all-too-familiar knife of guilt twisted in my chest.

“I don’t like your tone, Miss. You can’t let him bottle it all up inside again. Like last time. If you had been here then . . .”

Carmen watched us from the corner of the room as if preparing herself to break up another fight. Nicholas looked bored with the pointless adult chatter, jumped from my lap, and ran outside. “I’m gonna help Grampa and Pa cook.”

“Pa?” I asked my sister, happy for the change of subject.

“I’m sure it’s only a phase. He’s fascinated with the wild west,” she answered me.

I laughed. Carmen frowned. Our reactions summed up our relationship. I followed my mother and sister to the backyard where my brother-in-law and father scorched veggie burgers and tofu hot dogs on the grill.

Chip waved at me with his spatula and continued a debate with my father about the best way to skewer tofu. I sat at the picnic table, set and ready for the meal, and shaded my eyes. The afternoon temperature and humidity rose in tandem.

Mark sat in a lawn chair not far from the grill, staring into space. I waved at him, but he looked through me.

I shook off the foreboding feeling creeping up my spine. “Can’t we eat inside with the central air?”

My mother huffed. “Do you want to be dependent on a conditioned environment for the rest of your life, India, like an unfortunate lab rat?” She stalked to the barbecue to instruct my father and brother-in-law in the obvious method to skewer tofu.

I took that as a no.

My sister lowered herself slowly to the bench seat.

“Whew. I don’t remember being this hot when I was expecting Nicky.”

“He was born in January,” I remarked.

Carmen fanned herself with a plastic plate. After a minute of creating Hurricane Andrew force winds, she asked, “What do you think happened to Olivia?” She glanced at Mark. “How do you think Mark is? Really?”

I picked up my own plate and fanned myself. “How does he look? Why does everyone think that I know Mark so well? He’s your brother too.”

“Yes, but you two are so much closer in age.”

“Carmen, you’re only three years older than Mark.” Carmen always thought the three years separating her and Mark, not to mention the five years separating her and me, were the equivalent to four eons. Mark and I were born only eighteen months apart.

Carmen shrugged.

“Food,” Dad declared and wheeled over to the end of the table.

Chip followed with a platter of fake meat. Mark got up from his lawn chair and went into the house. My mother moved to follow him.

Dad grabbed her arm. “Leave him alone, Lana, he’ll come out when he’s ready.”

Mom looked uncertain, but sat at the table with the rest of the family. After passing the pasta salad, Mom raised an eyebrow at me. “India was just about to tell us how she learned about Olivia’s wedding.”

I pulled the piece of watermelon away from my mouth. “I was?”

“Yes, you were,” she said, spearing a piece of tofu with her fork.

When Carmen wasn’t looking, Nicholas grabbed the watermelon from my plate.

It took all my power not to roll my eyes. “She called me a few months ago to let me know. Happy?”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Dad asked.

I took a new piece of watermelon. “I was going to—”

“I’ve decided to eat more protein during the third trimester of the pregnancy,” Carmen interrupted.

I smiled my thanks at her.

“That’s a good idea,” Dad said.

Mom was suspicious. “What kind of protein?”

Carmen forked a cucumber from her salad. “Oh, you know, beans, nuts, a little chicken, peanut but—”

“What?” My father bellowed.

I thought I heard the Stripling High School bell tower, three miles away, echo at his cry. But it could be my imagination. My mother followed with a more colorful exclamation that would turn the church elders’ heads.

“I have to think about the girls.” Carmen defended herself.

“I can’t believe this. Alden, do we even know our children anymore?”

Did you ever know them? I thought to myself.

“Mother, be reasonable.” Carmen said.

Good luck.

“Don’t you want the babies to be healthy? They need protein.”

Dad’s face was turning an impressive shade of red. “Hello, soy. It has a higher—”

“I never ate meat during any one of my pregnancies,” Mom said.

“I know, Mom,” Carmen said sensibly. “And maybe that shortage of animal products contributed to Mark’s depression and India’s fear of commitment.”

I did roll my eyes that time, and Carmen gave me an apologetic smile.

“I understand your concern, Carmen, but you’ve never eaten chicken yourself. How do you know how it will affect you, let alone your fetuses?” Mom asked.

“Well, I . . .” She paused and then confessed. “I have had chicken before, and fish, too.”

Shock registered on my parents’ faces. Chip slouched down on the bench. I was willing to bet he was her chicken and fish supplier. My quiet brother-in-law hid a grin behind a napkin, and Nicholas—weaned to these types of shouting matches—chomped on a carrot. I, however, knew it was a matter of milliseconds before I was enlisted to support one side of the argument or the other.

“Nicholas,” I raised my voice over the indignant declarations flying across the picnic table. “Let’s play tether ball!”

“Yeah,” My nephew agreed, and we ran away to a far corner of the backyard where a tetherball pole stuck out of the ground. We whacked the ball around the pole. I took care not to hit it too hard and hurt little Nicholas. He, unfortunately, was in a competitive take-no-prisoners state of mind and whipped the ball and rope back at me, nailing me in the forehead.

I was sitting on the grass and Nicholas was rubbing my forehead, saying, “Sorry, Dia,” when Mark and Theodore ambled out of the house. My parents, momentarily distracted from their lecture, watched Mark with apprehension.

Nicholas abandoned me when he spotted the mammoth feline. “Teo,” he cried and raced across the yard. Before Nicholas reached him, Theodore lay down on the grass in slug position beside Mark.

I stood, still rubbing my forehead. Carmen deflected my parents’ attention by asking Mark what he did on the Fourth.

“India didn’t tell you where I was yesterday?” Mark asked.