Maid of Murder

Chapter Two

Bobby opened his front door with a flourish. “So, I won’t have to answer even one question for the horrid Library Quest?”

Bobby and I were the two full-time reference librarians at the Ryan Memorial Library at Martin College. Every year, the admissions office planned Martin’s Campers Week in late July, a week where Martin alumni can send their precious darlings, known to Martin as future tuition-payers, to terrorize college employees. Library Quest was the bane of our existence because the admissions staff, usually recent Martin grads who had majored in recreation, released about fifty kids into the library at a time for a game of Fun Facts. One of the asinine rules of the quest forbade kids from using the Internet to find the answers to the list of questions they clutch in their hot little hands. Let’s just say that the up-and-coming generation doesn’t know how to use a print index. Shoot, I could barely use one.

“Not a one,” I said.

I stepped into his Spanish-style bungalow, a half block from campus. The homes circling the perimeter of Martin were an eclectic bunch, constructed by turn-of-the-century Martin faculty. Bobby told everyone his home had been designed by a Spanish professor in 1910. He had yet to produce the documentation required to support his claim. He bought the house last year and coddled it like an infant.

Bobby perched on the sofa to tie his shoes. Tall, well built with black Irish coloring, he was a handsome lad of the Emerald Isle with a colorless Midwestern accent. He was also annoyingly persistent when he was scheming his way out of work. “Not even a science one? You always give me the science ones. If I knew anything about science, I wouldn’t be working at that miserable excuse for academia.”

“Wow,” I commented. “You should work for the admissions office.” I headed for a chair, caught my flip-flop under a sixty-four by forty-eight, stunningly beautiful, and perpetually wrinkled Navajo rug Bobby had found at a Columbus bazaar, and my knees hit the floor. Fickle inertia. “Ow.”

“Pick up your feet when you walk,” Bobby advised.

I rolled to my seat on the offensive rug and examined the strawberry on my knee. The lute-playing characters on the rug mocked me. “This is a hazard.”

Bobby picked up the black-and-white photograph of his father in his police sergeant dress uniform that I had knocked off an end table and shook his head. “Not if you know how to walk. If I got a dime every time you hit the skids, I’d be a rich man living in the Virgin Islands with a model on one side and a waitress on the other.”

“Bobby.” I growled.

He gave me a hand up. “Hey sweetheart, I’m doing you a favor. Let’s go.”

We climbed into my ancient made-in-America sedan. The car was a hodge-podge of parts of several automobile manufacturers. The late great-uncle who’d willed it to me had loved to tinker. Unfortunately, his favorite tinker toy was his car. Most of the car’s body is powder blue, but a smattering of rust red and olive green decorated the front and rear fenders.

“You really need to get a new car,” Bobby said. “This thing’s an embarrassment.”

“If you hate it so much, you could’ve driven.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know where these people live.” Before I could tell him offering up the address wouldn’t have pressed me much, he said, “Okay, tell me again why I am being subjected to this barbeque.”

“I doubt the Blockens will have barbeque. Too messy.”

Bobby shot me a look.

“I told you about the wedding.”

“Oh please, I know how many weddings you’ve been in, and this is the first time I’ve had to babysit you.”

“This one’s different.”

“Why?”

I ground my teeth. “Because of Mark.”

“Really?” Bobby said, sounding intrigued. “How’s that?”

Uh-oh, I thought, I know where this is going. “Mark had a thing for the bride, but it was a long time ago. And I haven’t seen any of the bride’s family since then, so it may be awkward. You’re the distraction.”

“Tell me about this thing your brother had for the bride.”

I thought about my telephone conversations I’d had with Mark earlier that morning with a wince. Had may be the wrong tense when describing how Mark felt about Olivia.

I eyed him. “You really want to know?”

“Of course I do. I should know what I’m getting myself into. I left my body armor at home, so no cat fights, please.”

“Olivia lived on the same street two doors down from us. Her parents still live there. Mine moved after Dad’s accident.”

I thought back to the day Olivia and her parents arrived with that huge moving truck. It was amazing how well I remembered even though I was barely four at the time. It’s funny the memories that the mind retains with crystal clarity.

I was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt that my mother had made. It was too big for me, but she had said there was no point making it smaller because I was growing like a weed on steroids. I was already the tallest girl in my preschool class.

From my yard, I watched the couple and their daughter with glossy brown hair, cut to the shoulder, go in and out of the house. The girl skipped around the yard, twirling. Her mother yelled at her several times about grass stains. The girl waited until her mother’s back was turned and twirled again.

The moving van had been in front of the house for two hours before I worked up the courage to walk over. I inched up the street; stopping every few feet to inspect the ground as if the cracks in the sidewalk were oh-so-interesting. Eventually, I found myself in front of the house. It was a huge Victorian at least a hundred years old that sat on two lots. The rest of the houses in the neighborhood, including mine, were made from the same faux colonial cookie cutter used in the 1950s to satisfy the baby boom generation and sat on postage stamp–sized properties.

The mom and daughter looked at me. The girl smiled, but her mother pursed her lips. “What is she wearing? It looks like a neon pillowcase.”

I looked down at my shirt, which I had been so proud of up until that moment, and felt ashamed. The pair in front of me wore clothes bought at the mall. I knew because it was the kind of clothes my older sister, Carmen, complained we never bought because Mom and Dad said shopping at the mall fed consumerism. I started to back away. I desperately wanted to go home and change my shirt.

The girl looked at her mother with her chin jutting out. “I like her shirt, and she’s going to be my friend.” She walked to my side and took hold of my hand. Together we sat on the grass cross-legged and watched the big men unload the truck.

Bobby’s voice shook me out of the memory. “I’d appreciate it if you not daydream while driving. I do have a will to live.”

I shot him a look. “Do you want to hear this, or not?”

He made a gesture as if he was zipping his lips shut.

I knew it would take much more than an imaginary zipper to keep Bobby quiet. Nevertheless, I continued. “I think Mark fell in love with Olivia when we were still in grade school. Even at age six she was beautiful, and she knew it too.”

Bobby made hissing cat sounds.

I laughed. “Maybe I was a little jealous. She also knew how much Mark liked her, but she never showed any interest until high school when she and Mark dated briefly. I think she only did it because she was between boyfriends at the time and Mark was a senior when we were only sophomores. Even dating a senior nerd like Mark was more impressive than dating someone in our own class. It was never serious on Olivia’s part. She dated a lot of different guys from skateboarders to jocks. I guess she counted Mark as her geek quota. When they broke up, he didn’t take it well. He called her, hung around her house, waited for her after school. It was awful. Even when she was with someone else, she was all he talked about. Well, besides the Pythagorean Theorem, that is. After Mark graduated, he went to Martin in order to stay close to Olivia, despite the fact that he could have gone just about anywhere with his test scores.”

“I bet your parents loved that he gave up the Ivy League for a girl.”

“When it was her turn to choose a college, Olivia went to a school in Virginia. That’s when it got really bad.”

“Bad how?

I bit my lip. “Look, we’re almost there.”

Bobby crossed his arms across his chest. “Fine. I’ll make up my own ending.”

“Don’t even think about it.” I took my eyes off the road to give him my best dirty scowl, a look I perfected at the library’s reference desk.

“What?” He asked innocent as a baby lamb. I knew better.

“You’re wondering if you can use that story in one of your ridiculous plots.”

Bobby had a penchant of writing short fiction for romance magazines. He’d sold several to publications like Minx and Velvet Rose. I had proofread far too many of them to want my brother to be the inspiration for the next confounded hero.

“I wasn’t thinking that.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Okay, I was, but my readers would love it. It’s got all the elements: scorned heart, love lost—”

“We’re talking about Mark here. Please. I might have to pull over and throw up. It’s wrong to use his heartbreak that way, especially for a measly two hundred bucks.”

“Hey, Minx paid me six hundred last time for Secret Kiss, a three-part series,” he said proudly.

I shook my head and turned the car onto Kilbourne Street. I pointed at a two-story colonial. “That’s where I grew up.” Someone had painted it a dark khaki. I grimaced.

“Very suburban,” he remarked.

Two houses down, I parked in the driveway of a large Victorian, complete with wraparound porch and suspended swing, outshining all the other abodes on the block. When I lived on Kilbourne Street, the Blocken house had been painted a simple white with navy trim; now it was a supposedly Victorian pink with darker pink trim. I’m sure the decorator called the colors “damask” and “mauve.”

I wasn’t halfway out of my car when I heard a high-pitched yelp, resembling a frightened puppy at the groomer’s.

“Incoming,” Bobby said as he slipped expertly out of the passenger side door.

“India!” Olivia ran toward me with her arms outstretched and welcoming as if I was a returning war hero. Thankfully, I cleared the car door before she hit. She grabbed me in a crushing hug. Because she’s so thin, this would have surprised me if I had not known about her lifelong obsession with fitness. There was a kickboxing-hardened body hidden under her elegant sundress. After an excruciatingly long minute, she released me. All the while, Bobby smirked at me over her head. He was enjoying himself a little too much, in my opinion.

Olivia looked much the same as she had in high school—same build, same endearing smile and flawless complexion. However, her hair was red, and so expertly done that I wouldn’t have suspected anything if I hadn’t known her for twenty-some years as a brunette.

“I’m so glad to see you.” She repeated the sentence at least three times until she finally noticed Bobby standing beside my car with that infuriating grin on his face. “And who’s this?” she asked with the tone of an eighth-grade girl spotting a tenth-grade hottie.

Bobby looked especially fetching standing in the afternoon sun, dressed in pressed chino shorts and blue knit shirt I knew he’d picked to match his eyes. One of the arguments I had used to persuade him to accompany me was that he might meet a new lady friend. Bobby was always on the prowl for a new heart to break. Fortunately, I knew this from observation, not experience. When I started working at Martin’s library, Bobby’s looks had intimidated me, but sometime during the last three years, he’d grown familiar. I was only reminded how handsome he was when women reacted to him like Olivia just had. Or when female undergraduates strutted up to the reference desk to ask me when the “hot book guy” would return. I’ve never told Bobby about the “hot book guy” thing; his ego is far too large already.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Olivia,” I said, as if I should have introduced him while she was crushing my bones into powder. “This is Robert McNally. He works with me at Martin.”

“Really?” Olivia on her strappy high-heeled sandals sashayed over to Bobby and took his outstretched hand. “Hello, Robert. I don’t remember librarians being as hot as you when I was in college.”

I stopped myself just short of asking her if she’s ever stepped inside her college library.

“Call me Bobby,” he replied, his eyes looking her up and down.

“Call me Olivia,” she cooed.

Call me disgusted, I thought. “Olivia, I’m dying to meet Kirk. You know . . . your fiancé?”

Her head snapped up. She removed her hand from Bobby’s light grasp. “You’re going to love him.” Olivia led us up the front walk.

Hanging back, I squeezed Bobby’s arm. “She’s engaged, for Pete’s sake.”

He smiled back, pretending not to hear.

The front door opened into the living room or, as Mrs. Blocken liked to call it, the parlor. The inside of the house had changed as well. Mrs. Blocken had obviously maxed out her creative resources and her husband’s credit cards. The interior was faux-finished within an inch of its life.

Olivia’s parents stood by the door, ready to greet their guests. I met Mrs. Blocken’s gaze and the temperature dropped several degrees. Then again, some things never change.