Maid of Murder

Chapter Twelve

Mains stepped out of the automobile when I slammed my car door. Without salutation, I marched across the lawn. He leaned against the passenger side door and waited.

I kicked the right rear tire of his car lightly. “Nice car.”

Mains was subdued. “I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes, Miss Hayes.”

“I really don’t think I have time today, Detective Mains, but thank you for asking.”

“It’s important.”

“No doubt,” I said. I stumbled over one of Ina’s leprechauns as I made my way toward the duplex.

“Olivia Blocken is dead.”

I whipped around. His statement had sucked out a piece of my lungs, leaving a gaping hole in its place.

“She died earlier this morning. She never woke up from the surgery. She was brain-dead before the end of the operation. Her family decided to remove life support.”

I forced my brain to process his words. Dead? Brain-dead? Life support? His lips continued to move, but the sound didn’t reach my ears. My breath shortened.

“I think we should go inside to discuss this,” Mains said.

“We will not go inside. I don’t want you in my house again.” I managed to lower my volume by a half decibel. “Now, tell me why I wasn’t told of Olivia’s condition yesterday. You were here, why didn’t you tell me then?”

Mains removed his mirrored sunglasses and placed them in his shirt pocket. “I wasn’t aware of it until after I saw you.” He held up his palm. “And—”

“They didn’t want me to know, did they?”

He nodded.

As I suspected, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. The hole in my chest grew larger and threatened to swallow me piece by piece. It would start with the heart and work outward. Suddenly, all the anger I projected onto Mains dissipated into the white-hot atmosphere, and I was exceptionally tired. I bumped into yet another leprechaun, and it fell face down in the grass. My lack of sleep was catching up to me. Mains held up his arm, as if to catch me. I wouldn’t allow it and waved him away.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Hayes?” His cop-look was gone, replaced with an expression of concern.

“You can stop calling me Miss Hayes,” I muttered as I bent down, ostensibly to right the leprechaun, but really to hide my face.

“I can do that, India.”

I nodded, then turned and walked toward the house.

Mains moved from the sedan and followed me. “I’m sorry. I have to ask one more thing.”

I stopped but didn’t turn around. The grass needed mowing and impatiens watering.

“Do you know where your brother is?”

I forgot the lawn and garden. I turned to face him. “He doesn’t know?”

He removed his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and restored them over his eyes. “He knows, I’m afraid. Mrs. Blocken called his apartment about nine-thirty this morning and told him the news.”

That jolted me. “Oh, no.”

Mains nodded.

Looking up the quiet street, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, pushing my glasses far up into my hair. The frames scratched my forehead. “Have you spoken to him since then?”

“That’s the problem. We can’t find him. He wasn’t at his apartment or his office at Martin. We tried your parents’ house as well. Is there anywhere else he might have gone?”

The anger that abandoned me earlier reignited. “Do you want to know so you can help him or to arrest him?”

Mains’s expression altered from concern to frustration. “No one is arresting anyone. Yet.”

“I have no idea where he is.”

Mains handed me one of his business cards, the third he had given me in the last twenty-four hours. Was the accident really only yesterday? I wondered.

“If you see your brother, call me, or ask him to do so.”

I dropped the card into my shoulder bag along with the other two that languished there.

“As of right now, this is a homicide investigation.” With that, he was gone.

My key wouldn’t fit; it repeatedly missed the lock in the brass doorknob. I kicked the wooden door with my flip-flopped foot. Pain shot through my toe and up my ankle. A black scuffmark marred the door’s paint. I held one shaking hand with my other and forced the key into the lock. I dumped my keys and shoulder bag on the hardwood floor just inside the doorway. I shut, locked, and bolted the door. Hobbling to the kitchen-cubby, I opened the freezer and grabbed an ice pack. On the living room couch, I elevated my foot with the blue-gelled ice pack.

I wrapped the remainder of my body in the orange bed sheet. Silky black fur clung to the bright cotton. Head under the light sheet, I felt entombed, distanced, but not completely safe from the terrifying world on the other side of the cotton. The bright summer sun dripped through the kitchen window and penetrated the cloth. My pale skin gleamed in the hot ocher light. The determined sunrays fought through my clenched eyelids, and the shadows alternated red hot and bright black. Second by second my foot released hold of its pain.

I felt Templeton’s body alight on the back of the couch. Walking the sofa’s length, he butted my shrouded head with his own. My acute memory replayed every slight, every remark, every hurtfully cruel word or deed I had ever committed against Olivia, a lifetime’s worth, until she was the princess and I was the mustachioed villain.

And then I thought about Mark.

I threw off the sheet and catapulted up. Templeton flew across the room, his expression astonished. I ran into my bedroom and changed into a T-shirt and long men’s shorts with a few flecks of indigo paint on the right hemline. In the bathroom, I washed my face, damp with tears I could not recall. After scooping my heavy hair into a tight knot, I scooped up my keys and shoulder bag and ran out the door.

As I turned the car off quiet Calvin Road, Ina and her blue-haired friend Juliet careened onto the street in Juliet’s vintage compact automobile. Ina waved wildly. I didn’t wave back.