Murder by Mascot

by Mary Vermillion

  “What time is it?” asked someone with a blue mullet.

  “I haven’t worn a watch for, like, five years.” With that proclamation, Black Lipstick silenced her comrades.

  My own watch said 10:15. Neale might have phoned right after Vince and I left. I was about to dig my cell phone out of my pocket and check when a bullhorn blared, “DeVoster got what he deserved.”

  The crowd hushed for a moment, stunned.

  “DeVoster got what he deserved,” Lexie repeated and strode toward the crowd with some twenty people in her wake. “DeVoster got what he deserved.” She towered over the two guys who marched at her side.

  “She’s got balls,” Blue Mullet said.

  “Why equate balls with bravery?” Black Lipstick retorted.

  Her feminist commentary was drowned out by the decidedly unfeminist shouts from the other half of the crowd. But Lexie was undaunted. “DeVoster got what he deserved.”

  If she had murdered DeVoster, she sure wasn’t worried about making herself look like the prime suspect.

  “DeVoster got what he deserved.” Black Lipstick and crew joined in, pumping their fists in the air.

  Vince grabbed my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As we dashed away, the cops were barely managing to stem the black and gold flood that spilled toward Lexie.

  Chapter Eight

  I was tired of the windowless reception area of the women’s basketball offices, and I was tired of Win Ramsey. So far, she hadn’t been any more helpful than her teammates. She was simply giving me the Dixie version of the team’s party line. “We’ve all been shocked by recent events,” she said, her Southern drawl spinning the last word into three syllables—ee-vay-ents. But other than the extra syllables, the story was the same. She couldn’t imagine any of the girls hurting anybody—especially not V. She hadn’t noticed that some of the girls seemed to dislike Jessie. They’d all been upset about DeVoster’s plea bargain and redshirt—they were a team, after all. She didn’t have any guesses about who killed him—none at all—but she couldn’t believe that one of his own teammates would have. Teams pull together. With that last bit, she leaned forward in her swivel chair as if she were granting me the final piece of the puzzle.

  “Even if someone on the team is a rapist?” I said, “Or a murderer?”

  “No one on our team killed anybody.” She folded her hands on the table in between us, her hazel eyes never leaving mine. They were round like her freckled face, and one of them had a streak of brown. “We’re family.”

  I shifted my focus to her tight pumpernickel French braid. Behind her hung a photo of a rock climber scaling a sheer cliff. Determination, it said. That’s what I needed. “The team must be extra important to you since you’re so far from home.”

  Her brows squeezed together. Worry lines cut deep into the middle of her forehead. Something had been burdening this girl for a good long time. “What drew you to Iowa?” I asked.

  “You ever been to West Virginia?”

  I shook my head.

  “It used to be real pretty—that’s what Mama says—but there ain’t nothing there now. The mountains have been all cut up. There’s no coal and no jobs. No trees, hardly.” She unclasped her hands and put them in her lap. “I wanted to get me and my baby sister out of there. Coach C, she said if I came, she’d get Mindi—that’s my sister—a scholarship as a manager.”

  “Your sister is a manager?” Was there yet another tall girl I needed to interview?

  “Next year,” Win said. “We won’t be here at the same time, but the coaches will look after her—the other girls too.”

  “You’re hoping to go pro?” I prompted.

  “If I could get a good pick—second round even—I could afford to bring Mama up here.”

  I was beginning to understand those worry lines. Win had been carrying her family on her back long before she carried the Hawkeyes. “How are things looking for you?”

  She hung her head and swiveled from side to side in her chair. “It depends on the team. We need to make it deep into the tournament.”

  Her chair squeaked, and the clock over the secretary’s desk ticked loudly.

  “You shot well in the first game.”

  Win frowned. “I could be an assist leader if my teammates made their shots.” Her voice grew bitter. “I can understand V having a bad game. But everybody else? They’re letting themselves get rattled. They shouldn’t even be thinking about DeVoster. We got business to take care of.”

  This was the first complaint about the team I’d heard all morning. “Who’s having a particularly hard time?”

  “I’m not going there,” Win said, “but I’ll tell you this. It’s her fault.” She jabbed her finger at the newspaper that lay between us. On the front page was a photo of Lexie Roth with her bullhorn. “She won’t leave us alone. After it first happened, she found out it was one of us, and she called us all the time. Then she just kept fanning the fire, following DeVoster around like that. We were trying to move on. Why couldn’t she? She’s made our team look really bad.”

  Baa-yad. I was swimming in vowels.

  “She won’t let anybody forget.”

  “Do you think you should?”

  “Won’t do any good to remember.” Win shoved up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and folded her arms over her chest.

  I didn’t want her to shut down. “What did Lexie ask when she called you?”

  “All kinds of stuff. I don’t remember.”

  “You must remember something.”

  “You should interrogate her.”

  “I plan to.”

  That calmed Win down. “She mostly called our freshmen. I guess she thought they’d be more likely to blab.”

  “Do you think it’s her fault they left?”

  Win studied her lap and took a deep breath. When she looked up, her cheeks were red. “They were already homesick,” she mumbled.

  Someone knocked, and Win gave the door a thankful glance.

  Shelly stuck her head in. “I’ve got the info you wanted.” She nodded to the file folder in her hand.

  “Come on in,” I said. “Win and I were just talking about why the freshmen left.”

  Shelly remained at the door. Her eyes flicked toward Win.

  “I told her to question Lexie Roth.” Win nodded toward the reporter’s photo. “She’s obsessed with him.”

  Gazing at the newspaper, Shelly tugged at her sweatpants and retucked her T-shirt. SPAIN, it said, above a gorgeous snowcapped mountain range.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  Shelly kept her eyes on the paper. “She’d have known his running route since she stalked him.”

  Win stood.

  “About those freshmen,” I said.

  “We hadn’t gotten to know them very well yet,” Shelly said.

  “They kept to themselves,” Win added as she headed to the door.

  “Speaking of freshmen,” Shelly said, “Do you want me to get Jessie for you? I think she’s the only player you haven’t talked to yet.”

  These girls sure didn’t want to discuss the freshmen who left the team. I picked up the folder that Shelly had brought me. Maybe its contents would help me ask better questions. “I’ll come get her myself,” I said. “I need a break.” I did indeed need a break—just one girl who was willing to be straight with me.

  * * *

  The clock next to the rock-climber poster said 11:05. It was black and gold, as was nearly everything else on the secretary’s desk: the paper-weight, the pencil holder, the calendar with the season’s football schedule at the bottom. There was also a package of Herky on Parade trading cards. Celebrating 75 Years of Kinnick Stadium, the shiny wrapper said. Samurai Herky pumped his tiny fist in the air. His brows were drawn into a sharp V over his beak, his eyes rolled heavenward, and his mouth—complete with gargantuan teeth—twisted downward into a grimace that signaled either ferocity or debilitating constipation. Like any self-respecting ma
scot, the bird had his own web site. Since the package was open, I dumped the deck into my hand: Air Passenger Herky, Harley Herky, Da Herkinator. In the middle of the deck was Eldon Bly Herky, its massive silver hair and black-rimmed glasses a tribute to the men’s basketball coach. The man who—mere hours after DeVoster had been accused of rape—went on record saying that he was “110% certain” that his player was innocent of all wrongdoing. He also declared that it was hard for a young male athlete when girls constantly threw themselves at him. “Who really is the victim here?” he’d asked. The question unleashed a spate of vandalism on his Herky. The sponsors of the parade finally had to remove the avian Eldon to a storage facility in an undisclosed location.

  I wondered what would happen to Marilyn MonHerky now that she’d played a starring role in DeVoster’s death. According to the morning paper, some fans believed that the bird should be auctioned off as planned because it would attract even more bidders now that it had “a history.” Others wanted Marilyn to remain where she was as a tribute to DeVoster. What a memorial—a gender-queer Plexiglass raptor!

  I went back to the table where I’d been conducting player interviews and gazed once again at the paper’s front page. Next to a photo of DeVoster helping to build a Habitat for Humanity house, an article quoted some of his fans calling for the death penalty—apparently unaware that Iowa doesn’t have one. If the cops didn’t arrest someone soon, they’d have vigilantes on their hands.

  That would be bad news for Anne.

  She’d been painted as DeVoster’s nemesis in several venues. First by Lexie in the Daily Iowan, then on the TV news, and now in the Sunday Press Citizen. Embedded in a story, Killer Uses Pepper Spray, was a headshot of Anne that made her look like the stereotypical humorless feminist. Her name appeared in the story’s second paragraph: Under the directorship of Anne Golding, the Women’s Center at the University of Iowa donated several units of the spray to female students. I could only imagine how the DeVoster faithful would react. At best, Anne and her Center would be scourged in letters to the editor.

  She’d need lots of support. The least I could do is call and see how she was. As I headed back to the phone, I recalled Vince saying that I spent too much time on her. That wasn’t true, of course, but I’d call him first to see if Neale had finally phoned, and then I’d call Anne. Nobody could accuse me of having messed up priorities.

  Vince picked up in the middle of our answering machine message—an epic saga that featured other numbers where he might be reached. “Mar-Bar,” he croaked. “Do the words beauty sleep mean nothing to you?”

  I felt more than a twinge of irritation. While he’d been cozy under a mound of quilts, I’d been questioning sullen young hoopsters. “Has Neale called?”

  His hesitation gave me my answer.

  “She might have while I was sleeping and not left a message,” he said.

  “Right,” I said, “and when I get home, I’ll put our Sunday pot roast in the oven and iron your shirts.”

  “She just needs to sulk a couple days.”

  I heard Vince open the refrigerator, and my stomach rumbled. The stale granola bar that I’d scarfed down on the way to the stadium was but a faint memory.

  “Anne hasn’t called either,” he said.

  Vince was always so damn sure he knew what I was thinking. I wouldn’t call Anne at all. Instead, I’d skim through the folder that Shelly had brought me, and I’d interview Jessie. I was bound to find a lead sooner or later.

  “How goes the sleuthing?”

  “It could be better.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Vince said. “That sweet morsel of a coach will be forever in your debt.”

  “Not if I don’t get her players off the hook.”

  “You should interview her again, tête à tête over a glass of wine.”

  For Vince, the world is one big singles club. I opened the folder and thumbed through its top pages. As per my request, there was contact info for all the players—women and men—and their parents. But there was nothing about the freshmen who’d left—not even their names.

  “Mar-Bar,” Vince moaned, “you used the last of the coffee.”

  I’d asked for those names more than once. I was sure of it. So much for Shelly’s highly touted responsibility.

  “Will you get some more on the way home?” Vince asked. “Pretty please? And some milk? I’m going to use the last of it to make pancakes.”

  I set the addresses aside and skimmed the next list. The players had given their spare glow-in-the-dark sweats to nearly 30 people. Any of these recipients who were white, over six feet, and capable of sprinting had to be considered suspects.

  “I’ll save some batter for you,” Vince cooed. “What do you say?”

  I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was stare at Anne’s name. My ex had received a pair of sweats from the entire team, probably as a thank you to the Women’s Center for the moral support and the pepper spray. But the gift would not serve Anne well, not well at all.

  Chapter Nine

  As the women scrimmaged in the empty arena, the ball slapped against their hands and boomed against the floor. Win found a space in the lane and made an easy layup. When these women were on the court, they were so graceful and purposeful—it was easy to forget they were just kids. But off the court, you saw their braces and their acne. You felt their pain as they tried to use words like rape and murder to describe their own world.

  I hoped Jessie March would be more forthcoming than her teammates. From the back row of the arena, I watched as she passed the ball to Hennah Jennings, and I started down the concrete stairs. When I’d asked Hennah whether there was any racial tension on the men’s team, she said that DeVoster was an equal opportunity asshole. Her honesty was refreshing, but it didn’t help me narrow my gargantuan circle of suspects. And she’d clammed up when I asked how she and the rest of the team felt about Jessie.

  Shelly emerged from the tunnel to the locker room area, pushing a cart with a water container. I paused near the bottom of the stairs and checked my watch. Just half an hour until the men’s practice. I’d need to make my time with Jessie count.

  The ball flew out of bounds on a bad pass, and I called her name. Focused on the court, she bounced up and down on her toes, but Shelly waved to her and pointed at me. Jessie said something to one of her teammates, grabbed her warmups and water, and jogged toward me. As she bounded up the stairs, I lowered myself into one of the seats, deciding not to waste time taking her back to the office.

  She wiped her hand on the side of her shorts and extended it to me, her grasp sticky and painfully firm. “Thanks for trying to help V and our team.”

  So far, Jessie was the only player who’d treated me as anything other than an intruder.

  She slipped into her jacket and sat on the concrete steps. Resting her elbows on her knees, she seemed at home in her body and unaware of her beauty—her dark coffee eyes and creamy cheekbones. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Let’s start with how the rape has impacted the team.”

  Jessie uncapped her water and took a long swallow. “We keep the focus on our game.”

  “That must be hard,” I prompted.

  “We’re a team despite our differences.”

  Here was something promising. “What kind of differences?”

  Jessie gazed at her teammates. A few practiced jump shots, and the rest stretched nearby. On the other side of the court, near the top of the key, Shelly removed some tape.

  “Behind V’s back, a lot of the girls are like ‘let’s not pick sides,’ or ‘we don’t know what happened in the room that night.’” She shook her head in disgust. “Please, give me a break.”

  “Some of your teammates don’t believe her?”

  “They can’t deal. They’re babies.”

  That attitude no doubt endeared her to the team’s veterans.

  “Who knows,” Jessie said, “maybe they do believe her, but they don’t wan
t to make waves with the men’s team.” Jessie sealed her drink. “But somebody made waves—big time waves.” She smiled faintly.

  “You think DeVoster got what he deserved?”

  “He deserved worse.” Her smile vanished. “Now the media will turn him into some martyred saint struck down at the beginning of his brilliant career, blah, blah, blah.”

  Jessie sure wasn’t worried about being a suspect. “You were home sleeping the night he was murdered,” I said. “Alone?”

  “That’s right, no alibi for me.” She zipped up her jacket. “But I didn’t do it. Trust me, if I had, he would have suffered more.”

  There was no bravado in her statement. She meant every word.

  “I’m just saying.” She met my eyes. “You wanted me to be honest, right?”

  “Do you think Varenka had anything to do with his death?”

  Jessie stared across the arena at the empty stands and sighed. “She’s barely been able to make it to class and practice.”

  A ball hit the back of the rim and arced through the air, landing with a sharp bang near a player who was doing a lunge.

  “What about her close friends?” I asked.

  The ball kept bouncing, a fading drum roll. I was about to repeat my question when Tyler Bennet and three of his teammates strolled into the arena. Jessie glared at them. “Talk to Bennet,” she said. “He and V had a thing.”

  Wow. That gave him two motives. “Were they serious?”

  Jessie shrugged, her glare growing more intense.

  I watched Bennet myself. He picked up a stray ball, palming it. I thought about those huge hands around DeVoster’s neck. “Did you ever hear him threaten DeVoster?” I asked.

  She finally looked away from the court. “I don’t hang with the man.”

  “Why’d they break up?”

  “No idea.” Jessie reopened her water.

  “Do you know when they split?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  As Coach Eldon Bly entered the arena, some of the female players left. Win bounced a ball to Shelly, who lodged it in a cart.