Maid of Murder (6 page)

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.”

Mark grabbed Theodore’s paws and pried them from my skin. I knocked Theo on the head, and he relinquished my fingers. I inspected my arm. Tiny puncture marks and purple bruises dotted my forearm and hand. Blood welled up from deep scratches. I jumped away from the car and cradled my arm.

Mark pulled Theo out of the car. “Poor baby.” Theodore lay in his servant’s arms, purring happily.

There was no time to tend to my wounds. With Lepcheck lurking about I needed to get Mark off campus. I ushered man and cat toward the library.

Taking a less direct way to the library, we avoided Lepcheck and the fountain. I made Mark put on my lavender cardigan. It wasn’t much of a fashion statement, but at least it covered the bloodstains on his white dress shirt. Luckily, he was wearing dark jeans, so I didn’t have to sacrifice my skirt. Just inside the service door, Mark slumped in a padded folding chair with growling Theodore stretched across his lap.

“Stay there.” I ordered both of them.

I hurried through the workroom and collided headlong into Jefferson Island, the cataloger. The collision was more painful for me, since Jefferson is six-four and three hundred plus pounds. A transplanted Georgian who detested the north with every fiber of his being, Jefferson had dressed conservatively in a white button-down shirt and gray polyester pants. He also wore a red leather bolo tie with a pewter Dachshund charm in honor of a childhood pet.

Now he regarded me through narrowed eyes. “Miz Hayes, please watch where you’re goin’. You nearly bowled me over.”

I rubbed my aching nose. “Sorry, Jefferson.”

“Rush, rush. All you Yankees rush. It gives me a headache. Even with all that rushin’, nothing gets done. Who gets the books on the shelf around here? Me, that’s who. Who—”

His bulk thoroughly blocked my path. Frustrated, I interrupted his pity party. “Move.”

Shocked, Jefferson stepped aside. “Pardon you, young lady.”

Lasha stood behind the checkout desk reprimanding a student worker. “If you put the books in the wrong place, you might as well as burn ’em, because we sure as hell are never going to find them.”

The student, a thin junior, ducked his head to hide a defiant smirk.

“I don’t care if it takes you all day. Take that cart up, and do it right.”

The student scurried away. Lasha scrutinized him with beady disgust. “I thought they taught them numbers and letters at Martin; it appears I was sadly mistaken.” She looked at me. “Romania.”

“Lasha, can I speak to you in private?”

“Sure thing,” she said. Jefferson stood two feet behind me, watching our exchange. “Georgia, watch the desk.”

“That’s not in my job description,” the cataloger blustered. “It’s not my responsibility to watch the desk.”

“It’s only for a few minutes, and if you get into any trouble, ask one of the student workers.” She slid past him. “Are you coming, Latvia?”

Lasha shut her office door behind us. The office was the size of closet and half of the limited space was taken up by a metal desk. She sat behind the desk in a office chair she’d bought with her own money. “What’s up?”

I sat in one of the two arm chairs in the room. My knees butted up against the front of her desk as I told her about Olivia, and Mark’s involvement with the accident. She expressed sympathy, and I thanked her. “Of course, I am worried about Olivia, but I’m also concerned about Mark. I was wondering if I could take the rest of the day off.”

Lasha waved away my request. “I think this constitutes an emergency situation. Just go ahead and leave. Looker will have to come in earlier.” Looker was Lasha’s nickname for Bobby. He reveled in it. “We’re understaffed today, as it is. Dixie and a half-handful of students aren’t going to cut it.”

“He’ll love that.”

“That’s why you can call him.” Before I could protest, she rose and slipped out of the office, throwing over her shoulder, “Use my phone.”

I called Bobby’s home, but no one answered. I tried his cell.

“Bobby—”

“No to whatever you are about to ask me. No. The answer’s no.”

“Bobby, I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t urgent.”

“Like yesterday was urgent?”

“It’s Mark,” I blurted.

“What happened?”

I ran through the same story I’d spilled to Lasha, a tad more dramatically—Bobby’s tougher to sell.

After I finished, Bobby asked, “Is Olivia okay?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Last I heard, she was unconscious.”

I heard hushed conversation on Bobby’s side of the line. “Who are you talking to?”

More muffled voices, one of which sounded suspiciously female. “Bree,” he finally answered.

“Olivia’s Bree?”

“I’m showing her around Stripling.”

“Uh-huh. You work fast,
mi hermano
, I’ll give you that.”

“Listen, Bree just called the Blockens on her cell. She’s heading to the hospital to meet them.” Dramatic pause. “I’ll come in.”

“Thanks, Bobby, you’re the best. I swear to God, you’re an angel. If I had any musical talent, I’d write a ballad about your greatness.”

“Charming. There’s a
but
.”

“A
but
?” Suspicion arose.

“Oh, yeah. Library orientation.
All
freshman English classes.”

In the third week of August, the freshmen would arrive on campus. The new students have a few carefree days before the upperclassmen arrive lurking for prey, and the administration slams them into classrooms with overburdened faculty. By the second week, early post-adolescent synapses zap and the freshmen realize that college wasn’t ultimate recess, but
school
. During this time of painful discovery, the English professors farm out their freshman classes to the reference staff (i.e., Bobby and me) to teach the students how to use the library.

“Bobby, no.”

He said, “Take it, or leave it.”

“Arrgh. Okay, I’ll take it.”

“Great. Tell Lasha I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Oh, and India, you might want to get on the Internet and look up the latest trends for teenyboppers. I think you can really grab them early if you pepper some of their lingo into your presentation.”

I hung up the phone.

After telling Lasha that Bobby was on his way, I returned to the workroom to retrieve Mark. He’d propped himself against the loading doors. Theodore purred in his arms. A small cluster of female students, a few of them library workers, surrounded them.

Erin, a willowy redhead, cooed. “He’s adorable.”

I hoped she referred to the cat, but she watched Mark from under her eyelashes.

I mumbled a greeting, then took Mark’s arm. “Ready to go?”

Mark bit his lip and nodded. I told the students that I had a family emergency and Bobby would be coming in early.

“Bobby, huh?” Erin said with orchestrated disinterest. Everything about her screamed seasoned. I’d seen Bobby check her out when he thought no one was looking and vice versa. I’d have to keep an eye on them this year. I don’t know if I could stand this job if Bobby got sacked for behavior unbecoming a librarian.

Once we were in my car, I called Mom and told her I was bringing Mark to her house.

“Why? What happened? Is Mark okay?”

“He’s fine. We’ll be there in a few minutes. Gotta go.” I snapped the phone shut.

During the short ride to our parents’ house, Mark sat silent, Theodore cradled in his lap. At each stop sign, I glanced at him, wondering if the day’s event would be enough to send him back over the edge.

I turned the car into my parents’ driveway. They lived in a brick, L-shaped ranch with dark purple shutters and bright red front door that they bought after my dad’s accident. While trimming a sycamore tree on the property of Stripling Presbyterian Church where my mother was pastor, my father fell from his self-made rigging and broke his back. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

Roses and black-eyed Mexican sunflowers bloomed in full glory along the wooden ramp that led to the front door. Wearing a pair of overall jean shorts and a pink tie-dyed T-shirt, my mother waited impatiently on the ramp. She’d separated her long hair into thick gray pigtails.

“India, I don’t appreciate you hanging up on me. I was worried sick about Mark, and then I had to worry about you on top of that.” She said as I wrestled the car door open. Mark exited easily.

“And Mark, where have you been? Why the cryptic phone call? Honestly, both of you. Carmen would have at least called to tell me what was going on. I was waiting and worrying, afraid to leave for the church because you might—” She stopped abruptly. “Is that blood on your shirt? And you’re wet.”

Mark wrenched away and set Theo down on the driveway.

“What happened?” Mom demanded. She directed this to me.

I slammed the car door shut. “I’d tell you if you’d give me a chance.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady. Is that your blood Mark? Are you hurt?”

She started toward my brother again, but he scooped up Theodore and sprinted into the house, a good move on his part.

“Just tell me if he’s hurt,” Mom said. This time I heard real fear in her voice.

“He’s not hurt, but Olivia is.” That shut her up and gave me a chance to tell her what had happened. “I’m going to head over to the hospital to see how she is.”

She waited, looking nervous, until Mark disappeared through the front door. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go to the hospital with you?”

“Yes,” I said a little too quickly. “I think it would be better if I go alone.”

“I’ll take care of Mark.” She was halfway to the front door by the time she’d completed her sentence.

* * * * *

The hospital in Akron’s proper is a city unto itself, and each year more of its outbuildings swallow parts of Akron’s downtown. The large state university in Akron was doing the same thing coming from the opposite directions. I wondered when the two finally met who would overtake whom.

I left my car in the parking deck closest to the Emergency Room entrance. I knew the layout fairly well because my father spent three weeks in the hospital after his fall.

As I stepped through the mechanical doors, the faint scent of antiseptic hit me, reminding me of my father’s accident. I had been in Chicago, finishing my freshman year of art school. Mom had called from the emergency room and told me to come home immediately. I told her I had one more exam to take the next morning and I’d drive home after the exam.

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you’d treat this family crisis the same way you’ve acted about your brother’s problems.” Before I could respond, or even think of a response, she hung up.

The next day with my car waiting outside the visual arts building, packed to the gills with clothes and dorm room trappings, I took the final, confusing the impressionists with the expressionists. I drove the six hours home, straight and alone. Choosing the wrong bank of elevators when I arrived at the hospital, I lost myself in its endless corridors and passages. A friendly, large-toothed nurse helped me find my father’s room, on the opposite side of the hospital, where he was attached to metal rods and plastic tubes.

Mom and Carmen hovered over my father with anxious chatter and didn’t even notice when I walked into the room. I didn’t call attention to myself. Instead, I focused on Mark who had huddled in a corner, his long arms wrapped around his body like a straightjacket. He was even thinner than he had been over Christmas, the last time I’d been home. I walked over to him, took his hand, and led him out of the room.

The rest of the summer, as Mom had shopped for a new wheelchair-accessible house and had dealt with hospital bills and dad’s rehab, I had taken care of my brother. I had driven him to appointments and to Martin where he was taking independent study courses in higher math. I had made sure he took his medicine everyday, and had even contemplated transferring to Martin for the next school year so that I could watch out for him, but Carmen had talked me out of it. And I had never thanked her for that.

Now, on the day after the Fourth of July, the emergency room was crowded with firecracker mishaps and holiday binges. The injured and families of the injured in varying degrees of pain and distress filled the main waiting room. No Blockens. A pair of old men watched a baseball game playing on a TV tethered high in the corner, and children squabbled over toys in the corner while their parents flipped through dog-eared magazines. A dishwater blond woman shot them dagger looks and bent over her dog-eared copy of
The Bell Jar
.

Glancing from face to face, I felt my first twinge of apprehension. It was instinct that had made me head to the hospital as soon as I could. I hadn’t wanted it to be like that last time when I had put something trivial by comparison first. But this was different. This wasn’t
my
family in crisis. I shouldn’t have come. I’ve never been a Blocken favorite, except to Olivia, and my family wasn’t too high on their charts either. In some way, I knew Mrs. Blocken would blame Mark for the accident.

Before I could flee, though, Bree appeared carrying a paper cup of coffee. “India?”

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’s in surgery now to release fluid from her brain.”