Murder by Mascot

by Mary Vermillion

  Tyler kept staring at Vince. Finally, two plus two equaled four. “Hey,” he said. “You’re the pizza guy.”

  Vince gave a tiny bow.

  Tyler cracked his knuckles again. “Were you thinking your friend needed protection while she questioned me?”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was angry because we’d deemed him dangerous or because we’d deemed Vince adequate protection.

  A tailless gray cat crept into the room and studied us with her one good eye. Then she dashed to her scratching post and began blissfully clawing at its carpet. When she stopped, the room fell silent until she started slurping at her front leg. As she began attending to a less seemly place, Tyler spoke up. “Neither one of us killed DeVoster. We were together that night. Right here.”

  Lexie interrupted him. “We didn’t tell you because we want to keep our relationship quiet.” Her brow furrowed. “For obvious reasons.”

  I’ve always appreciated irony, and this irony was particularly fine. Lexie Roth, eternally scrambling for scoop on the Hawkeyes, was herself such scoop. I could see the headline: DeVoster’s Feminist Nemesis Boffing His Backup.

  “After all I’ve written about DeVoster and men’s athletics,” she said, “Tyler would have a rough time if his coaches and team knew he was with me.”

  Not to mention, I thought, that Lexie’s crowd would be far from impressed if they learned that she was getting it on with one of DeVoster’s teammates.

  “How long have you been together?” Vince asked.

  “Pretty near six months.” The lamplight shone on Tyler’s red hair as he smiled at Lexie.

  One more closeted relationship and I’d scream. “So you’re each other’s alibi,” I said. “That’s convenient. How do we know you were here instead of with DeVoster?”

  Lexie tilted her head defiantly. “The cops believe us.”

  “Do they?” I said. “Or are they too gutless to go after Eldon Bly’s new starter?”

  Tyler extracted his hand from Lexie’s and glowered at me.

  “You both hated him.” Even as I peppered Tyler and Lexie with accusations, my heart sank. If the cops believed these two, I had no idea how to help Anne.

  The cat strutted toward them and rubbed herself against their legs.

  I decided to try a gentler approach. “Please,” I said, “you two must know something that can help Anne.”

  “Sorry,” Tyler mumbled.

  Lexie reached down to stroke her cat, but it darted away.

  “You said that Varenka White wasn’t the first woman DeVoster raped. What did you mean by that?”

  “Nothing.” She started picking at a cuticle, and Tyler shot her a puzzled look.

  Lying, Vince mouthed.

  “Come on,” I said. “You must have meant something.”

  “I was just guessing. Really.” Her eyes flicked from me to Tyler.

  He stood and jerked his head toward the door. “You’ve bothered us long enough.”

  As Vince and I made our way in the cold darkness, I tallied my losses. I had no suspects, no leads, and—as it turned out—no reliable transportation. My battery was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sheepish didn’t begin to describe my feelings as we headed back to the house for a jump, but much to my surprise, Lexie was quite gracious. “Tyler, why don’t you and Mara’s friend go find the cables, and we girls can stay here where it’s warm.”

  We girls. Lexie Roth had never struck me as a fan of traditional gender roles.

  She shut the door behind the guys and leaned against it. “Tyler doesn’t know what I’m going to tell you,” she whispered, “and he can’t find out.” Her forehead creased and her eyes filled with pleading. “You can’t tell anyone. If you do, I’ll deny it.”

  I felt trapped with her towering over me in the cramped entryway, but I didn’t want to waste time suggesting that we sit.

  “I never meant for Anne to get in trouble,” she said.

  Outside, her garage door moaned open.

  “Just tell me,” I said. “It doesn’t take forever to jump a car.”

  She gathered her hair in one hand and pulled it over the basketball on her sweatshirt. “I had a friend at the Women’s Center. Another volunteer. We used to work on the mailings together.” Lexie paused. I was afraid that she’d changed her mind about telling me, but she took a deep breath and continued. “Last spring, we were working on a mailing—just the two of us—and she started crying. I asked what was wrong. She wouldn’t tell me at first, but then she said that she’d been at a party after the men made it into the tournament. DeVoster got her really drunk and they started messing around.”

  Just like Varenka White, I thought.

  “When she told him to stop, he wouldn’t.” Lexie’s eyes blazed with anger.

  “Who was it?”

  “She trusted me.”

  An engine roared to life.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Please. Tell me.”

  Lexie looked past me at the door.

  “I’ll just ask Anne who you did the mailings with.”

  “Ryesha Anderson.”

  Anderson. “Is she related to Roshaun?”

  “His little sister. That’s why Tyler can’t know. He’d tell Roshaun—I know he would.”

  “Was she a cheerleader?”

  Lexie nodded.

  I thought about my visit with Roshaun’s mother and about the photo of her lovely daughter. My intuition had been right—I had seen her somewhere else. She was in the group shot in Varenka’s room, all smiles, braids, and pom-poms. Ryesha Anderson probably knew all the basketball players—women and men.

  “She wouldn’t come forward because of her brother. She didn’t want him doing anything that would make him lose his position as manager. He needed the scholarship, she said. So when DeVoster was bragging about how he had her—” Lexie shook her head in disgust. “She made Roshaun think it was consensual. She teased him about being overprotective and told him to stay out of her business.”

  “Did he believe her?”

  “I never heard about any big blowups between him and DeVoster.”

  I thought about Roshaun’s mother saying that all the managers disliked DeVoster because he treated them like servants. But what if Roshaun’s antipathy ran deeper? What if he’d learned the truth about Ryesha? For that matter, what if Tyler had?

  “Roshaun doesn’t fit the witness’s description,” Lexie said.

  “Where can I find Ryesha?” I asked. “I need to know if she told anyone else.” Please, I thought, let it be someone tall and white, someone with access to the incriminating sweats. But not Tyler. Someone the cops would be willing to go after.

  “You won’t—”

  I interrupted her. “I won’t tip my hand. She’ll never know we spoke.”

  Lexie picked at a cuticle. “You’ll have to ask Roshaun where she is. She didn’t come back this year.”

  “Because of what happened?” I asked.

  Lexie nodded. “She said it was a race thing—she didn’t like being the only black cheerleader, the campus was too white, that kind of thing.”

  A believable story, I thought, one that let her keep her shame to herself. DeVoster must have counted on her shame and silence. “You didn’t stay in touch?”

  “We talked a few times, and then right after Varenka…” Lexie trailed off. “I called Ryesha to get her to come forward. She told me to leave her alone.”

  Vince’s laughter floated toward us as Lexie rushed through her story. “I phoned a couple days later to say I was sorry—that I wouldn’t pressure her again—but her line had been disconnected and her new number was unlisted. I tried to get it from Roshaun, but he wouldn’t talk to me because of my coverage of the men’s team.” Lexie paused at the sound of a car hood banging shut. “I wanted to help her,” Lexie said. “She was so happy her first semester—on the Dean’s list, pledging a sorority—but DeVoster took all of that away.”

  The more
I believed in Lexie’s good intentions, the less I believed in her and Tyler’s alibi. Even if Tyler didn’t know about Ryesha, he knew about Varenka. He and Lexie both had a personal score to settle with DeVoster—a friend to avenge. I could imagine the secretive couple plotting together, but what I couldn’t imagine was a way to prove their guilt.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Roshaun’s roommate was in desperate need of coffee, manners, and an expanded vocabulary. His eyes half-shut, he met my polite inquiry about Roshaun with two grunts—“not here.” Then he tried to shut the door in my face.

  “Please,” I said. “Do you know where he is?”

  The roomie scratched his shaved head. His pasty face—some two feet above mine—was dotted with acne that flamed red like his robe. “Mom’s,” he finally managed.

  “When will he be back?”

  A shrug and another attempt to shut the door.

  “Are you on the basketball team?”

  He looked at me as if I were a moron.

  I took that as a yes. “How well do you know Tyler Bennet?”

  “Still dark.”

  “He has a dark side?” I asked.

  “Need sleep,” the roomie growled.

  My watch read 5:10. “It is early,” I acknowledged, “but this is important. Did he ever say anything to you about—”

  “We’re done.” He shut the door and turned the deadbolt.

  “I’m still here, and I’m not leaving until you tell me what you know about Tyler Bennet.”

  “Leave now.” The door muffled his voice.

  “I want to ask you about Roshaun’s sister too.”

  At that, the door opened a few inches, and a pale blue eye peered at me over a chain lock. “I’ll call the cops,” he said, “and tell Coach. This is harassment.”

  Harassment. He’d finally waxed multi-syllabic, but I thought it best to leave. The last thing Orchid needed was another phone call from Eldon Bly.

  * * *

  When I got back to my car, there was good news and bad news. The good news was Labrys thumping her tail in the backseat, happy to see me. The bad news—a ticket. I yanked it off my window and tossed it on the passenger seat next to my phone. As Labrys poked her head in between the two front seats to investigate, I flipped on my interior light and searched through my backpack. Underneath a bag of donuts was the list of phone numbers Shelly had given me, and on the third page was the listing for Roshaun’s mother, Francine Anderson. I punched in her number, trying to think of a subtle way to inquire about the tall white people in her daughter’s life, but I got a machine. When its garbled static morphed into a feeble beep, I asked her and Roshaun to call me ASAP, and I reviewed my morning. Before Vince and I left Lexie’s, I’d persuaded her to write a feature about the fund-raiser for Anne’s defense, but in the time since I’d dropped Vince at home, all I had to show for my efforts were the donuts and a so-called coffee from the Kum & Go. I sipped the bitter brew and started my car.

  Labrys barked at a shaggy mutt straining against its leash on the sidewalk next to us. The canine’s less energetic human companion huddled against the cold, clutching a sack of poop. The reflector stripe across his chest flashed under a streetlight as he vanished into the darkness. I steered out of my costly parking spot, pondering my next step. Whatever it was, I needed to be more alert. I’d missed a lot of clues about Lexie and Tyler’s relationship. Each of them had been quick to dismiss the other as a suspect. Lexie had been watching Tyler at the memorial service, not because she was planning to write about him, but because she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. For all I knew, she’d been at his apartment when I’d first talked to him, and that’s why the reputedly polite hoopster refused to let me in.

  On Clinton Street, I drove by a brightly lit sign that advertised a vegetarian harvest dinner at Old Brick Church and Community Center. I recalled Tyler’s sudden conversion to vegetarianism, his retreat from Roshaun and the team. Chalk up both to the vegan Lexie and her rural love shack. What other connections had I failed to make? What other details had I overlooked? “What am I missing?” I asked Labrys. But she simply panted in my ear.

  Glancing at Old Capitol’s gold dome, I turned left on Iowa Avenue and cruised past Darth Herky, Herkules Herky, and Patriot Herky. As Orchid would say, too much male energy. At the moment, I would have been happy with any energy. Where was Perky Herky when you needed him?

  I rested my eyes during a red light. What next? Who next? I needed someone who could tell me about Ryesha. I needed to know if she’d told any of her friends about DeVoster raping her. If any of them might have guessed. If any of them were tall, white, and vengeful. A horn behind me alerted me to the green light, and I headed toward Varenka and Shelly’s. Hopefully one of them would know something about Ryesha. If they didn’t, the only good news I’d have for Anne and Orchid would be Lexie’s forthcoming story about the fund-raiser. That and my own efforts to keep Labrys company.

  Who was I kidding? I’d brought the dog along to keep me company. She wasn’t much of a talker, so I turned on the radio.

  “Who’s telling the truth about the economy? Next on KICI, but first your local news.”

  I recognized the voice of the announcer, Gary Altimore, an intense guy who always brought miniature quiches to our office parties. As he detailed our unseasonably cold weather, I had one hand on the wheel, and one in my backpack, fishing around for a donut. The one I extracted was covered with white frosting. It was also stale. I’d gotten up too early for fresh donuts. That was a first. I sighed and offered the offending pastry to Labrys.

  “A recent development in the Dave DeVoster murder.”

  I turned up the volume.

  “Last evening Darren DeVoster, father of the slain basketball star, held a press conference hours after Anne Golding, Director of the University of Iowa’s Women’s Center, was arrested and charged with his son’s murder.”

  Bile rose in my throat, but I forced myself to listen. With a voice more sonorous than Gary’s, the senior DeVoster thanked the police for their efficient work and offered his sincere hopes that the courts would be just as diligent in bringing the perpetrator to justice.

  Anne, a perpetrator! I wrenched my steering wheel to the right and zoomed down Dodge Street. Labrys whined softly in the backseat.

  “On behalf of my wife and family and on behalf of Dave’s basketball family, I’d like to issue a statement about the cassette tape that the police received.”

  Gary stopped the press conference replay and continued with his own summary. “Darren DeVoster claims that someone created the cassette in an attempt to blacken his son’s reputation.”

  “As if he needed help,” I said.

  Labrys barked.

  Gary continued, “The cassette in question features Dave DeVoster saying ‘I won’t take no for an answer, not from some—’” Gary paused and spelled the C-word. “During the question and answer session of the press conference, several reporters asked what Darren DeVoster made of the fact that the police had verified the voice on the cassette as his son’s. DeVoster Senior had this to say.”

  Here, I was once again treated to Darren DeVoster’s voice. “Tapes can be spliced and manipulated. The woman who murdered my son has close friends in radio.”

  What? Was he implying I made that tape? Or Orchid? If we had, wouldn’t we have wiped off Anne’s fingerprints? Darren DeVoster wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted to avenge his son’s death, but he didn’t want the police to use any evidence that made his son look bad.

  “According to a Police Department source,” Gary said, “experts are testing the tape for signs of splicing.”

  I fumed and pressed harder on the gas.

  The intersection? The pickup crossing it? I didn’t see them until it was too late.

  I swerved hard. Hit my brakes. Squeezed my eyes shut.

  A quick bump, metal on metal.

  And I was on the other side of the intersection.

  The stree
t was lined with parked cars, so I double-parked under a streetlight. My heart racing and my palms clammy, I peered into the backseat.

  Labrys gazed at me balefully. Then she barked and licked my face. Thank God—she didn’t seem hurt or in pain. I didn’t either. But my heart was pounding so fast that I could barely breathe.

  Headlights flashed behind me and went off. Seconds later, there was a loud wham on the hood of my car. The front of my car dipped and rose as if handling a bumpy road. There was someone strong out there. Someone strong and mad.

  Fortunately, my doors were locked, and I kept them that way.

  “You stupid bitch, you ran a red light.” A man pounded on my side window, inches from my face.

  I leaned away, hoping the window would hold. He was fogging it up with his breath.

  “You smashed my bumper.” He pounded the window again. “Open up.”

  The nearby houses were all dark. I reached for my phone, ready to call 911. But did I really want an encounter with the police? Would the officer who showed up arrest me for phony cassette making?

  The Neanderthal outside began maligning my entire gender.

  I opened my window the tiniest crack and waited for some silence. “Look,” I said. “I admit the accident was my fault, and I’ll pay for your bumper. I’ll give you all my information. You can take down my license plate. But let’s leave the police and the insurance companies out of it.”

  He remained silent.

  “Please,” I said, “I don’t want my premiums to go up.” That was the truth. The partial truth but still the truth.

  He responded with a colorful rant about insurance companies, which I interpreted as agreement. Keeping my face averted, I scribbled my information. I didn’t want him to get a good look at me in case he was a DeVoster fan who’d seen my newspaper photo with Lexie. My hand shook when I slid the piece of paper through the open crack in my window.

  He grabbed it and tromped away.

  I didn’t move until his pickup truck vanished into the darkness. Then I became dimly aware that my car was still running, my radio still on.