Maid of Murder aihm-1

by Amanda Flower

  Maid of Murder

  ( An India Hayes Mystery - 1 )

  Amanda Flower

  Flower's breezy debut introduces a quirky heroine—India Hayes, a librarian at Martin College in Stripling, Ohio, who's also an artist. India agrees, yet again, to be a bridesmaid, this time for her childhood friend, Olivia Blocken, for whom her brother, Mark, an assistant professor at Martin, still carries a torch. After Olivia left Stripling for college elsewhere, Mark suffered a breakdown and buried himself in mathematics. Not wanting to upset Mark, India doesn't tell him she's a bridesmaid in his lost love's wedding. When someone pushes Olivia to her death in the college fountain and Mark becomes the most likely murder suspect, India turns amateur sleuth in an effort to prove her brother's innocence. Warring cats and distinctive characters, like India's everything Irish landlady and her bizarre '60s activist parents, will appeal to cozy fans.

  Amanda Flower

  Maid of Murder

  Dedication

  For my parents

  Rev. Pamela Flower and Thomas Flower

  and

  in memory of

  Calvin

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Rosalind Greenberg for plucking my manuscript out of the thousands, and to my editor Jerri Corgiat for helping it shine.

  Thanks to my Sisters in Crime, Maria Hudgins and Sarah Parrott, for their critiques and support, and to my dear friends, Melody Steiner, Jen Pula, and Melissa Williamson, who read and commented on the manuscript.

  Hugs to Mariellyn Dunlap for her edits, friendship, and willingness to always accompany me on a road trip, be it near or far.

  Love and gratitude to my mother, Rev. Pamela Flower, who read every word ten times over and was there every step of the way.

  Finally, to my Father in Heaven, thank you.

  Chapter One

  As a child, I dreaded the Fourth of July despite the fireworks, the barbecue, and the general flag flapping. The holiday signaled that summer was half over. And though my mother chided me about my attitude, called me her pint-sized pessimist, and told me to see the “glass half full,” I moped through the holiday. I knew—come the next day—the discount store and supercenters would have fresh back-to-school displays of yellow number two pencils and college-ruled notebook paper. I was a fair student and mid-list popular, but I never wanted to go back to school. As an adult, when I actually had to work every day, my attitude toward Independence Day changed. To me, any day that starts as a paid holiday is a good one.

  But that Independence Day morning, my brother called.

  When the telephone jangled near my sleeping head, I sat bolt upright and sent my cat Templeton flying across the room in a hissing cloud of black fur.

  Who died? was my first thought, followed closely by, who’s about to die? for waking me.

  I groped for my glasses, shoved them on my face, and looked at the clock. It read four minutes after six in electric blue numerals. The phone rang again. I snatched it up.

  “India?” My brother’s voice, hyped up on caffeinated pop and mathematical theorems, zipped out over the line “Could you look up Yang-Mills Theory for me at the library today? I think I’m really onto something. I’d do it myself, you know, but I’m hitting a wall here with work. And the library’s slow, right, because it’s summer—”

  “Mark.” I interrupted.

  “Huh?”

  “The library’s closed today.” I swatted a hank of long, dark hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear.

  “It’s closed? But why?” He sounded shocked.

  “It’s the Fourth of July. You know, Happy Independence Day and all that.” I glared at the clock. “It’s also six-oh-five in the morning on a day I don’t have to work,” I added in case he was having trouble grasping the point, which Mark often did.

  “It is?”

  “Where are you?” I asked while rubbing my gray eyes, which were gritty from sleep.

  “In my office?”

  “You don’t sound very sure of that.”

  There was a pause. “Definitely my office. I’m working on this really great theorem. I think I have it now, India. My dissertation—”

  “I understand,” I stepped in before he could enter another long-winded explanation about The Dissertation. He’d worked on it for half a decade. It’d become a bit of a swear word in my parents’ house.

  “Well, Mark, I better let you get back to it. Call me at the library tomorrow, and I’ll see if I have time to look up that Yohoo-Miller thing for you.”

  “Yang-Mills. It’s a partial differential equation that—”

  “Whatever.” I moved to hang up, but his lingering silence was palpable. I sighed. “Was that all?”

  Mark swallowed hard. “I know she’s getting married.”

  Geez. I knew he’d eventually find out one way or another, but I wished it had been after the ceremony.

  “Mark, I—”

  “Don’t lie to me; I saw it in the paper. She’s getting married next weekend. You knew. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

  “Uh.” What could I say? I did know. Mark would be devastated when he found out how well I knew. I tucked that thought away to deal with later.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? It’s not like I’d care or anything.”

  Sure, I thought, and my watercolors would make me millions of dollars someday. I took a deep breath. “I didn’t know how to tell you, and Olivia didn’t want to hurt you, either.”

  “Thanks, anyway,” he whispered and hung up.

  I stared at the receiver, then knocked it against my forehead a few times before dropping it back in its cradle.

  After fifteen minutes, I threw off the sheet and stomped to the bathroom. “Next time he has a day off, I’m calling at three in the morning. That little . . .”

  After a shower and breakfast, I no longer felt so hateful toward Mark. I knew I should have told him that Olivia was getting married. I should have told him months ago when I learned about it, but there never seemed to be a good time. And the way marriages go these days, I thought, it would be much easier to announce that Olivia was getting a divorce in a couple of years.

  I clicked on the TV.

  “It’s going to be a beautiful Independence Day, folks,” the weather girl from the Cleveland station said. “We might break some records. Temperatures in the upper nineties and ninety percent humidity, Remember, don’t mow your lawn until after sundown. There’s an Ozone alert—”

  I clicked off the screen.

  By nine that morning, I was sprawled across a sheet I used to cover my poorly chosen couch in order to avoid touching the hot, itchy fabric. It was beautifully upholstered in royal purple velvet. I had found it at an estate sale in Chicago. It had cost a mint to have it shipped to Stripling, and, not until it was safely stowed in my apartment did I learn that it was uncomfortable in the summertime and a magnet for black cat hair. My long legs hung over its end, and Templeton lay in the same position next to me on the floor. I periodically spritzed him, then myself, with ice water from a spray bottle that I normally used to wet down my unruly hair. Templeton shook his head like a dog every time he was hit with a spray of water but didn’t move out of its reach. Even an aquaphobic feline welcomed the cool mist in my air conditioning–deprived apartment. While Templeton shook his head for a fourth time, I tried to build up the courage to call my brother back and tell him the truth—that I did know that Olivia was to be married this weekend in Stripling and that I, India Hayes, who had sworn after the last wedding that I would never be in a bridal party again, am to be one of Olivia’s doting bridesmaids.

  The phone rang.

  I told Templeton, “I’ll get it, but tomorrow I’m teaching you to answer the
phone.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “India?” It was a voice easily as perky as the weathergirl’s.

  I swallowed hard. I knew that voice. “Hi, Olivia. You aren’t in town, are you?”

  Templeton gave me a look that to me said, “Spritz me, baby.” I obliged.

  “Just arrived. We’re at my mother’s now. Stripling is just how I remember it. It’s so cute. The perfect place for a wedding, don’t you think?”

  “Really darling.”

  She missed the sarcasm. “As you know, it’s a holiday.”

  “I heard something about that.” I spritzed myself in the face.

  “Very funny. Anyway, my mother is having a little Independence Day gathering at two in honor of my return, and I am inviting you to come.”

  “Well, I was planning—”

  “Please, India? I haven’t seen you in forever, and I want you to meet Kirk. You can bring a date if you want.”

  I snorted, but after ten more minutes of listening to Olivia’s pleas, I finally agreed. As bridesmaid-in-waiting, I had an obligation.

  After she hung up, I pulled the sheet over my head with a moan and asked Templeton to put me out of my misery. I peeked out from the sheet when he didn’t respond. He looked like an overbroiled chicken splayed on the hardwood floor. “If you are not going to help me out, I’ll just have to call Bobby, won’t I?”

  Templeton blinked at me. I picked up the phone and hit speed dial. When Bobby McNally answered, I said, “I need a favor.”

  “It’ll cost you,” a churlish and groggy Bobby answered.

  “How much?”

  “How do you like children?”

  I groaned.

  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 desperatel
y 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.”