Maid of Murder

Chapter Five

A gauze bandage was more likely to fix the ozone layer than a Martin student was to enter the Ryan Memorial Library on Saturday of the Fourth of July weekend. Regardless of this basic logic, I held my post behind the reference desk bright and early the next morning. I disliked the location of the reference desk. “Island” would be a more apt description of the area, which was a glorified high counter floating in the middle of the main floor. In it, I felt exposed and cut off from the safety of walls and back exits. After reading library management journals, the previous library director relocated the reference area directly in front of the library’s main entrance, hoping that after a patron ran into it, he’d ask a question. Although the undergrads had more bruises than before, the arrangement was not exactly working as planned—and wouldn’t, as long as Internet search engines dominated the average student’s research methods.

By ten o’clock, our only patron was an elderly journalism professor who sat in the back of the main floor cursing at the microfiche machine. Occasionally, a loud bang drifted from the professor’s general direction, but the library staff turned a deaf ear. The professor had a reputation for biting off heads. I was flipping through a new botany text to distract myself. Mark’s emotional drop-in visit to the Blockens’ yesterday reminded me of Olivia’s ill-fated high school graduation party. His two appearances were so similar that the thought of one always reminded me of the other, and I wished that I could forget them both.

The party had been half graduation party, half bon voyage. She had received a summer internship in Virginia, so she was heading south in mid-June as opposed to August. I’d snuck out of my house to go to the party. I didn’t want my brother to know where I was going. He was having a hard time accepting Olivia’s decision to move to Virginia. He had been constantly calling her and dropping in on the Blockens all spring hoping that he could change her mind with sheer persistence. The family became increasingly annoyed with Mark’s pursuit. Mrs. Blocken thought I was egging him as some kind of practical joke. “This isn’t funny, India,” she told me on numerous occasions.

The party was the highlight of the graduation season and held in the Blocken backyard. All of Mrs. Blocken’s friends were there, including the mayor and his wife and the president of Martin College and her husband.

Just when the party was at its height, Mark stumbled through the Blockens’ opened gate. Olivia sat on her boyfriend-of-the-moment’s lap, a baseball player from a rival high school. I stood with some classmates, only half listening to their chatter about summer jobs. Because I wasn’t paying attention to the group, I was the first one to notice my brother. I started to make my way to him, but there were too many partygoers between us for me to reach him before he called out.

“Olivia!”

Olivia, who was whispering something to her jock boyfriend, either didn’t hear him or pretended not to, but Mrs. Blocken certainly did. She had her gaze trained on Mark with a glare that could have melted iron. She started toward him. Mark saw her coming and backed up into the buffet table. Somehow he managed to kick out one of the legs from under it and the table fell. Cucumber sandwiches, olives, and cake toppled to the ground. The well-groomed guests gawked at Mark, who had potato salad in his hair and punch down the front of his shirt. He struggled to get up and hurried toward Olivia. His tumble had gained her full attention. She’d left her jock and stood a few feet from him.

“Olivia, I love you.” He smiled at her as if he believed that she would return his affection. “Please stay, or if you really want to go to Virginia, I’ll transfer down there.”

Olivia looked at him for a long minute as if she realized for the first time that he wasn’t joking. Up to that point, she always accepted Mark’s attentions as if it were a game that they played. I had to admit to myself that I thought the same way, but seeing Mark there covered in punch in front of all those guests, there was no question that he was earnest.

“I don’t love you,” she said. “I’m going to Virginia alone.”

Mark sucked in a breath as if he couldn’t get enough air. I was frozen with embarrassment. If the earth would have opened up at that moment, I would have willingly dove in.

Snickers and giggles coursed through the group.

“Your brother is such a freak,” one of my classmates whispered into my ear.

Mrs. Blocken shook with rage. “Get out, and stay away from my daughter.”

Mark kept his gaze fixed on Olivia.

“Leave,” Mrs. Blocken said.

A group of varsity jocks were quickly closing in on my brother. They would like nothing better than to throw a nerd like Mark over the Blockens’ fence.

Luckily, they didn’t get that chance because Olivia spoke first. “I don’t want you at my party, Mark. Go home.”

Tears welled up in his eyes, and he staggered away, back through the open gate.

Later, I found him curled in a ball in his apartment. I called my sister, and she took over with her usual efficiency, and, in the fall, I ran away to art school.

The phone at the check-out desk rang.

A moment later, Lasha Lint, the director of the library, bellowed, “Botswana, phone.”

Startled, I jumped. Lasha shook the receiver at me. Black, solid, relatively young, and loud, Lasha is nothing like the withering-violet type that many think of when they conjure up the image of a librarian. With a brutal penchant for nicknames, she hadn’t called me India since my first day at Martin.

“Botswana,” I said as I hopped off my chair, sending it skidding on its polished wheels into the reference counter. “That’s a new one.”

“I’ve been studying the atlas, honey.”

I chuckled and took the phone from her.

“India, do you know where Mark is?” my mother asked in the tense, low voice she used to console divorcées.

I prickled. “No, I’m not his babysitter.”

“I’m not asking you where he is, I’m asking if you know where he is. I know where he is,” she rambled.

“Then, why are you calling me if you already know where he is?”

Lasha shamelessly eavesdropped. I leaned against the checkout counter and rolled my eyes.

“Your brother called from campus. He was babbling.”

A hereditary trait, I noted.

“He said something about Olivia and a fountain. He was—he sounded strange. I’m worried about him. If you could walk over to his office and check—”

“I can’t just leave the library—” I started to say, but was interrupted by shrill sirens that shook the book stacks.

Lasha rushed to the window. “A police car and two ambulances. They’re heading to Dexler.”

“What’s going on?” my mother asked. “Are those sirens? India!”

“I’ll have to call you back.” I hung up and turned to Lasha. She had her nose pressed up against the glass.

“Go on, Iran.”

I staggered out the loading doors into the stifling heat and sunlight. Gathering my bearings, I jogged across campus to Dexler. As I closed in on the building, I saw three police cars, a fire truck, and two ambulances gathered around an iron fountain. The fountain, entitled Empowerment, was a twenty-foot metal embarrassment to modern art that a donor with more cash than class unloaded on the college. Never one to upset benefactors with impending tasty bequests, Martin accepted the sculpture, but tucked it behind the Dexler Math and Science building, the least visible location on campus.

I forced myself to slow to a walk and tricked myself into believing that the sirens had nothing whatsoever to do with my loony brother. A handful of summer faculty and students had clustered about thirty feet from the fountain. A uniformed campus security guard blocked their view to whatever they were trying so desperately to see.

“It can’t be Mark. He wouldn’t—” I refused to allow my brain to complete that thought. When I reached the assemblage of Martinites, I asked a dour chemistry professor. “What’s going on?”

“Nobody knows. Something about Mark Hayes,” the professor said with a glint of excitement in his eyes.

I forced my way past the security guard who looked just old enough to star in a zit cream commercial. He stood on his tiptoes to peek at the action and didn’t notice me until I was already well beyond his reach.

“Wait! You can’t go back there,” the boy-officer cried, astonished that anyone would cross his imaginary line. Obviously, he hadn’t been at Martin long.

I hurried around the left side of the fountain’s base. A cluster of public servants in different official uniforms stood over something on the ground. An EMT wheeled a stretcher over to the group. They swallowed the EMT and the stretcher into their ring. I stopped, afraid to proceed, afraid for Mark. An image of a somber orderly pulling a sheet back and asking me to identify the body entered my mind. Suddenly lightheaded, I doubled over, gulping deep breaths. I had to stop watching crime shows.

“Miss, you shouldn’t be back here. Are you all right?”

I stared at a pair of black walking shoes. After two more deep breaths, I straightened to stare into the concerned face of a middle-aged EMT. White remnants of sun block glistened on his bald head. The dizziness passed.

“Is that,” I stopped and began again. “I’m looking for my brother, Mark Hayes.”

The EMT nodded. “Don’t worry, Miss, he’s fine. He’s a little shaken up, but fine. I’ll take you to him.”

Mercifully, the EMT led me away from the cluster of emergency workers to an ambulance. Mark was perched on the end of the ambulance’s bay. Despite the heat, a heavy wool blanket enveloped his frame. A dark-haired man in khakis and a green polo shirt asked him serious-sounding questions. Mark stared at the ground, his thin shoulders shaking.

“Mark!” I rushed past the khaki-clad man. “What happened?”

I hopped up beside him on the edge of the ambulance. He sniffled. Fat tears rolled down his face and stalled at his beard. I patted his arm, wishing that my sister Carmen was there. She was better equipped to handle emotions.

The khaki-clad man uttered a frustrated sigh. “Who are you? We’re in the middle of an interview here.”

I recognized the man’s face, but couldn’t put a name to it, a fairly common occurrence for a community of Stripling’s size. “I’m his sister. India Hayes. Can you telling me what’s going on?”

“Well, Miss Hayes,” the man said. His voice had the lilt of recognition. “A woman tumbled into the fountain and was badly hurt. Your brother’s a witness.”

“Who’s the woman?” I asked, but already I knew.

The man consulted his minuscule memo pad. “Olivia Blocken.”