Maid of Murder

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Twenty minutes after I left The Cookery, I threw my keys and shoulder bag in my apartment’s entryway and bid them to sit. Templeton slept in the middle of my sheet-covered sofa, opening one eye before uttering a contented sigh and curling back up. Genius that I am, I deduced that Theodore was not on the premises. Undoubtedly, Ina shielded him from devilish Templeton by hand-feeding him boneless chicken breast.

The answering machine on my snub-nosed kitchen counter blinked incessantly and declared ten missed calls, a personal record. I assumed that at least seven of those messages were from my mother. I was not disappointed.

The first nine messages were either from Carmen or my mother. I skipped those. The tenth message was from Lew, who’d called only ten minutes before I walked in the door.

Curious, I dialed his number, which I’d now memorized.

“Thanks for calling back. I just got back from the jail. I told Mark about your parents’ decision about the bond.” Lew let that pronouncement hang in the air.

I sat in the rocking chair. “How did he take it?”

“As well as could be expected. Shocked mostly.”

“God,” I murmured in a half curse, half plea.

“I just spoke with your parents. They’re not budging.”

I clenched my jaw. “So much for all their talk about equal rights and the common man.”

“Your parents are wrong in this case. You know it, and so do I, but they’ve done a lot of good in this town for a lot of people. Heck, without them, all the Martin yuppies would have total control.”

“Yes, everyone should have equal opportunity to rot in jail.”

Lew inhaled a mouthful of smoke. “Are you still interested in posting Mark’s bond?”

Student loans be damned. “Yes.”

“I called in that favor to hold Mark at the Stripling PD longer than normal, but the best I was promised was Saturday morning. If you don’t want Mark to go to the county prison to await his trial, you’ll have to bail him out before then.” He repeated the names and numbers of three bond agencies. “You’ve got collateral, right?”

“Sure,” I said, even though my only collateral was my car, which was suspect at best even before Kirk took a key to the hood.

Lew sighed as if he knew the true answer to the question. He probably did.

“Lew, how are you working this case? Are you looking for other suspects?”

Lew took another drag on his before-dinner cigarette. “I’m just a one-man show, and Mark’s isn’t my only case.”

“Did Mark tell you that he heard someone with Olivia at the fountain?”

“He did. Cell phone.” He echoed my own thoughts.

I thought of the engagement picture, which weighed heavily on my conscience. “That’s not all.”

“I’m listening.”

Pounding shook my front door, followed by the mechanical click of the lock giving way. Ina barreled into the room, Theodore slung over her thin shoulder like an obese newborn. “India! Fella’s sick.” She rushed toward me. Theodore did look a little green. Templeton, who slept the slumber of the victorious, arched his back and hissed.

“Are you under attack?” Lew’s voice came over the line. He didn’t seem that concerned.

Before I could respond, my parents walked and wheeled through the open door in matching Free Mark Hayes T-shirts. My brother’s likeness behind roughly drawn, black bars was preserved in blue cotton.

I cut Lew off in the middle of another raspy question as to whether I was witnessing Armageddon. “My parents are here. I’ll talk to you later. Tomorrow.” I hung up the phone.

My mother and Ina lobbied for my attention.

“India, where have you been all day? Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?” my mother demanded.

“I think he’s fainting,” Ina cried and shoved Theodore’s fuzzy mug into my face. “See, isn’t his coloring bad? I killed him!”

Templeton was long gone by this point, in my bedroom, no doubt shredding my slippers.

My father interjected his own admonishments.

Despite my mother’s powerful pulpit voice, for which the elderly removed their hearing aids, Ina won the shouting matching by sheer hysteria. “He’s going to die. Call the vet. Call the vet!”

“Okay,” I yelled over the racket. I took Theodore from Ina’s shoulder and felt his nose. It was cool and damp, although his eyes were slightly glazed. I ignored my parents, who continued to yell in my left ear. “What happened?” I asked Ina.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ina protested. “I treated him like a king.”

“What did you feed him?”

“Not much. Cat food,” she said defensively. “And a can of tuna. A little frozen shrimp. Some cheese cubes. Oatmeal. A sauerkraut ball.”

“A sauerkraut ball?” Theodore seconded the motion as I felt his stomach rumble in my arms. Oh no. I ran through the open door and threw the cat into the yard. He landed with a solid thump and threw up sauerkraut ball and God-knew-what-else on Ina’s sailor-outfitted leprechaun.

My parents and Ina stood behind me dumbfounded.

“You could have killed him,” Ina said. Then she saw the unfortunate leprechaun. “Oh, Fella, not on Ralphie!”

My dad wheeled over. “India, that is no way to treat an animal.”

My mother heartily agreed.

Theodore stumbled and slumped onto the grass and, after a moment, began to eat it. I ignored the yelps and proclamations in my ears as I marched around the house, unraveled the garden hose, and dragged it to the front yard. I cleansed Ralphie and returned the hose to its place beside the driveway. My movements were deceptively smooth.

I stepped in front of them. Ina wrung her hands over her head; my mother shook her entire right hand at me, one finger apparently not expressive enough; and my father snapped his fingers in my face.

“Stop it,” I said.

They froze like puppets with tangled strings.

Across the street, an open-mouthed neighbor, who pretended to prune her double petunias, gave up the charade and watched the spectacle, as did the man three houses down on his riding lawnmower.

“Stop it, all of you!” I became painfully aware that I was yelling at the top of my voice, but was unable to reduce my volume.

“India, you’re making a scene,” Mom said.

“Making a scene? What do you think you’re doing? Or what you’re always doing, huh?”

My father opened his mouth to speak.

I held up one hand to stop him. “No. I’m sorry that I didn’t call you back. I had to work. I went to a funeral—” I stopped mid-sentence, choking on the word. The finality of it, the finality of Olivia’s life was too much. For better or worse, Olivia had been my best friend for the vast majority of my life. She was a friend who listened to me whine for countless hours about my parents, a friend who came to all my art exhibitions even though it was most definitely not her crowd, and a friend who saved me from the evil clutches of Maggie Riffle and her coven of bullies-in-training. Seeing Maggie again had reminded me that it was Olivia who had saved me from that near swirly. That had to count for something. That loss was worth the inattention to my parents. Apparently, they did not agree, and I knew never would.

I shook my head, trying to sort out my thoughts, trying to think of something that I could say to them that could make them understand. In my silence, my parents and Ina began shouting again. The words I needed did not come to me because they did not exist. I turned away from them, stepped into my apartment, and shut the door. I secured the lock, deadbolt, and chain. After unplugging my landline and turning off my cell, I went to bed.

A half hour later, the knocking at my front door finally stopped.