Knute glared at my sister. I think she just overthrew my throne on his loathsome list.
“Now if you will excuse me, I have some calls to make.” Carmen walked away. I hurried after her, but not before I saw the crowd gathered around Knute. I didn’t feel a bit sorry for him.
I caught up with Carmen at the concessions area. Still walking at a fast pace, she plucked her cell phone from her purse pocket and speed-dialed. “Chip. Call a babysitter. I need all hands at the festival to move everything on time.”
Knowing my brother-in-law would be there soon, I left my sister to her damage control.
The food booths were already cooking. I inhaled the artery-clogging but simply delicious smells of fair food, and I realized that I was hungry. Unfortunately, most of the concession booths were empty as their owners tried to sneak a peek at the crime scene.
While I knew I should move my booth, the subtle growling in my stomach distracted me enough that I took a detour toward the parking lot. I might have a granola bar somewhere in my car. The age of the granola bar was debatable, but my quest for breakfast gave me an excuse to avoid the scene of the crime.
In the parking lot, Jerry was unloading his truck. My appetite left me.
What was he doing here? Didn’t he know of Tess’s murder? Wasn’t it Mains’s job to tell family members these things? Where was Mains?
“Good morning,” he said in a cheerful voice. He didn’t know yet, that much was obvious. He shut the pickup’s door and walked toward the practice field. I hurried over to him.
“Jerry, wait.”
He stopped. “Need help with something?”
“Can you wait here for a few minutes?”
His forehead wrinkled. “Why? I need to set up.”
I bit my lip.
“Is something wrong?”
“Well . . . Tess . . . I . . .”
“Tess? This has to do with Tess? Is she here?”
“What time did Tess leave last night?” I glanced behind me, looking for Mains, for any cop, even Knute.
“I don’t know. I left around seven and headed over to my forge. She was still here then . . .” He trailed off. “What’s this about?”
“You mean you haven’t seen your wife since yesterday?”
Jerry’s eyes flashed in annoyance. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m in the middle of working on a huge custom gate order. That means long hours and lots of noise.” His face softened. “I called the house around midnight to tell her I’d sleep on my cot over there, but she must already have gone to bed. She didn’t answer the phone. Why? Are you looking for her?”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Jerry, I’m so sorry . . .”
He froze. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“Uh—”
“I’ll take it from here, India.” Mains’s voice came from behind me, and I jumped.
Jerry looked from Mains to me and back again. “Who are you?”
“I’m Detective Richmond Mains of the Stripling Police Department. Mr. Ross, I need to speak with you for a minute.”
Despite the chill in the air, beads of sweat appeared on Jerry’s brow. “Wh-what’s this about?”
I didn’t move.
Mains touched my arm. “You need to give us some privacy.”
I jogged back to the practice field, the granola bar forgotten.
In my haste to get away, I ran directly into Derek. His eyes were bloodshot. He knew.
“Derek, I’m so sorry.” It was the best I could do, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
He blinked at me.
Officer Habash stood a foot away and cocked her eyebrow at me.
I smiled at her. “I know him. He’s one of my students. Derek, let’s go over to that picnic table.”
We sat on the bench. “Are you okay?”
“No.”
I smiled sadly at the honest answer. Most people were too polite to tell you how they really feel, but not Derek.
My shoulder began to ache as it always did when I tensed up. “Who told you?”
“Detective Mains. Last night. He found me at the dorm.”
“I don’t know if you should be here.”
“I had to come. I had to see where it happened. Not that I actually saw anything. The police wouldn’t let me get close.”
“That’s good. You don’t need to see that.”
“I brought these for you.” For the first time, I noticed the white bakery bag in his hand. I took the bag. Two fresh jelly donuts sat at the bottom. “I know they’re your favorite. I brought them to apologize about yesterday.”
“That was very thoughtful,” I stammered. How could he think of bringing me donuts the morning after he learned his mother was murdered? Under the circumstances, it seemed rude not to take the bakery bag, so I decided to forgive the no-gifts rule this once. I doubted I’d be able to eat them.
“I just don’t understand. The detective said she was murdered. That doesn’t make any sense. No one had anything against my mom. Everyone loved her. She was so easygoing.” A tear slid out of the corner of his eye, and he gruffly wiped it away.
“It doesn’t look like she left last night. Her cart wasn’t even packed. When did you last see her?”
“Six-thirty,” he said firmly. “I offered to help her pack up, and she said I didn’t have to. She was meeting someone, and it would give her something to do while she waited. I didn’t argue with her. You don’t know how many times I’ve packed her booth after a craft fair. I was happy for the excuse to leave. I should have insisted. That’s what a good son would’ve done.” He blinked at the ground.
I put what I hoped was a reassuring hand on his arm.
He looked up. “You have to find out who did this.”
I removed my hand as if burned. “What?”
“Everyone knows you solved that murder last summer.”
“That was different,” I said quickly, panic racing through me as my mind listed all the reasons I shouldn’t get involved. Lepcheck was the victim’s brother. Martin College would hate it. Mains would hate it. And the list went on.
“Please?” His voice broke.
I’ve heard people say it’s hard to lose a parent at any age. I don’t doubt that to be true, but I also believed the younger the child was the harder it must be. The child didn’t have a chance to prove himself before his parent was snatched away. The child didn’t have a chance to become whomever he was going to be.
I looked into Derek’s bloodshot eyes. At eighteen, he was on the cusp of proving himself to Tess, and he had lost his chance. Someone stole his opportunity, someone selfish who didn’t consider or care about the ramifications of his or her actions. It would be a selfish person in the end who would commit murder, wouldn’t it? Wasn’t that what all killing amounted to? Putting one’s own goals, desires, and agendas above another’s?
I thought of myself at eighteen, attending art school in Chicago. When I was Derek’s age, my father made a foolhardy attempt to trim a sycamore tree solo on church grounds. He fell from the tree, and we almost lost him. Dad survived, even if his ability to walk did not, but the nearness of losing him almost broke my heart in two. There was no almost for Derek. Tess was gone, at least from this earth, and Derek would never have the chance to show Tess the man he would be. He had yet to even choose his major.
“Okay,” I said.
His eyes widened. “Okay?”
“Okay.” My jaw was set.
Chapter Eight
Officer Habash approached us. “India, the detective wants to talk to you.” She glanced at Derek. “He’s over by your booth.”
I stood up.
“What should I do?” Derek asked.
“Jerry is here somewhere. Detective Mains was talking to him. Do you want me to find him for you?”
Derek shook his head with a frown. “Jerry’s probably as freaked out as I am. It would only make me feel worse.”
I looked down at him. He looked so young. “You sh
ould go back to your dorm room. Is your roommate there?”
Derek shook his head. “He went home for the weekend, and I don’t want to go back to my mom’s house.”
I knew he was right. Bobby was going to kill me for what I said next, but that was just too bad. “Go to the library. It should open soon. Bobby will be there this morning.”
“Bobby hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“Yes, he does.” There was a pout in his voice. “He called me a pest.”
“I’m sure he was joking.”
Derek looked skeptical.
“I’ll walk him over to the library. Come on, Derek,” Officer Habash said.
“I’ll talk to you later, Derek,” I said.
He nodded numbly. The hope that had flickered in his eyes when I agreed to take the case was already extinguished. No matter what I discovered, Tess was never coming back.
When I reached the booth, Mains and his team were surveying the ground for clues, hoping to find something in the light of day that they’d overlooked the night before. If someone handed Mains a magnifying glass and a pipe, he’d look just like Sherlock Holmes. Much to my relief, Tess’s body was long gone, as was the cat’s head basket mold. However, when I closed my eyes, it was night again, and I could see her there face down in the grass with her head bashed in. I opened my eyes wide.
Mutt, the director of campus security, and a couple of his college cops, stood off to the side of the crime scene. I sidled over to Mutt and said hello. He was a big man who wheezed ever so slightly from walking from his office in the safety and security modular building. I rarely saw him out and about on campus.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I heard you found the body.”
I nodded. “Know anything about it?”
“Nothing. The city police only tell me what they absolutely have to.” He pulled a piece of candy out of his breast pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “The admin is choking on this one. The summer was different. There weren’t that many students on campus, and the incident could be hushed up.” He shook his head. “But this happened right smack dab in the middle of the fall semester.”
“Are any of the VPs coming down here?”
“Eventually. They are having an emergency powwow in the president’s office.”
“Do they know who the victim is?” I asked. Lepcheck would be at that meeting discussing how they would handle his sister’s death.
“Not sure. They know her name. Tess Ross.”
So, Lepcheck knew it was his sister by now, but by Mutt’s reaction, he didn’t know Tess was related to Lepcheck. I wasn’t going to tell him.
Knute spotted me. “Hayes is here.”
It could have been my imagination, but I thought I detected a glint of amusement in Mains’s eyes when they fell on me. “Follow me, India.”
I did. Mains led me a few feet away. The crafters hastily tore down their booths to move farther down the field. If I didn’t start doing the same soon, Carmen would come looking for me, pitchfork in hand.
“Tell me again what happened last night. Don’t leave anything out. Did you see anyone on campus? Did anything strike you as odd?” he asked.
“Other than finding Tess’s body? That was pretty odd.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, other than that.”
There wasn’t much to tell, so my recitation took all of four minutes.
“I suppose I should be relieved you thought to call the police before your sister.”
“You know how Carmen is. If I hadn’t called her immediately, she would’ve had my head.”
“Point taken.” He had a faraway look on his face, and I wondered if he’d remembered something about Carmen. His look made my stomach knot. As quickly as the expression came, it cleared. “Did you notice anything suspicious while you waited for the police?”
“Like a masked man stalking about twirling his mustache?”
Mains sighed. “Just anything that seemed out of the ordinary.”
“The first odd thing I noticed was Tess’s booth, which was still set up like when the festival was open.” I swallowed, too vividly remembering the image of the back of Tess’s head. “Before I left, I asked her why she wasn’t packing up her booth. All the other crafters were.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she would when Jerry, her husband, finished packing.”
He made a note in his tiny notepad.
I cleared my throat.
He looked up. “Is there something else?”
“In my estimation, Tess was killed between seven and eight-thirty last night.” I looked at him like an overachiever, hoping to impress my teacher.
“Why’s that?”
I took that as encouragement. “Well, I left the festival around six-twenty, Derek said he left at six-thirty, and Jerry said he left at seven. He might have been the last person to see her alive. Besides her killer, I mean.” I paused. “Then I discovered I brought the wrong crate home from the festival at eight-fifteen. I was back on campus by eight-twenty and called the police at eight thirty-one. I know the exact time because I saw the time on my phone when I called.” I shivered as I realized the killer could have still been on campus when I got there. I tried to remember if there were any other cars in the practice field lot. I couldn’t. I’d been too focused on retrieving the face-painting money from my booth to notice.
Mains scowled. “Why do I get the idea you’ve been investigating?”
“Well, I’m right, aren’t I?”
“It corroborates what the medical examiner said last night.”
I smiled.
“India, I don’t want—”
“There’s something else you might not know.”
“I might not know?” His tone was sarcastic. “Please enlighten me.”
“Tess is . . . was Samuel Lepcheck’s sister.”
Mains blinked at me. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Tess told me herself yesterday.” I debated telling Mains about the argument I’d overheard between Tess and Lepcheck. In truth, I didn’t know what gave me pause. I had no reason to protect the provost. He barely tolerated me as it was, and I knew if my tenured library director, Lasha Lint, wouldn’t make a huge stink out of it, he would happily not renew my faculty contract for the next school year. Maybe I wanted to keep that tidbit to myself to protect Derek from more scandal. Everyone on campus knew Lepcheck, and soon enough, everyone would know that Lepcheck was his uncle.
Mains swore and massaged his temples. Any time the Stripling Police Department had a run-in with a member of the Martin College community, it was headache for Mains. The college’s policy of dealing with crime was Deny, Deflect, Defend.
In the case of Tess’s death, Martin would be locked up tighter than the U.S. Declaration of Independence. So Mains, knowing what he was about to go up against, certainly had ample justification to swear.
“What do you know about their relationship?”
“Nothing,” I said, which was pretty much true. I changed the subject. “Derek Welch, Tess’s son, is one of my students.”
Mains peered at me. “So?”
“Just thought you’d like to know for the sake of full disclosure. He’s a little attached to me.”
“How so?”
I bit my lip.
Mains’s hazel-green eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not planning to get involved.”
“Who, me?”
“Ricky!” Carmen snapped, saving me from finishing our conversation. “The festival starts in forty-five minutes. Can some of your officers help us move the booths?” She spotted me. “India, why does it look like your booth hasn’t been touched?”
Mains looked heavenward as he slipped his tiny notepad into his jacket pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
My brother-in-law, Chip, stood behind Carmen and shifted from foot to foot. Chip, whose baptismal name is Cristiano, was an attractive Italian-American with dar
k hair and eyes.
“Good.” She marched away. As she walked by her husband, she said, “Chip, find my bullhorn.”
Chip jogged ahead of her.
Mains looked at me. “What were you saying about Derek Welch?”
Drat, I hoped that he’d forgotten. “It’s nothing.”
Over the bullhorn—apparently Chip had found it—we heard Carmen’s voice. “Crafters! Listen up! We need to move, move, move! Every able body, please, pitch in to help.”
“Well, I better start moving my stuff,” I said relieved.
As I walked away, I looked back at Mains against my better judgment. Our gazes met. He looked confused, and I imagine my expression was much the same.
Chapter Nine
By some miracle, or Carmen’s sheer force of will, the festival opened on time. All the booths were up, and the vendors and crafters were ready to start the day.
As I painted faces, the visitors seemed unaware of the early morning events. At Carmen’s insistence, the police cruisers relocated to another parking lot to avoid attracting attention. Knute and Habash were stationed at the far end of the food vendors to stop any overzealous tourists from straying too far.
I was just putting the finishing touches on a purple elephant adorning a little girl’s cheek when my cell phone chirped, telling me I had a new text message. I waited until the family left before reaching into my shoulder bag for the phone.
The message was from Bobby. He and Erin, my student assistant, would be stopping by the festival later that afternoon.
I put the phone back in my bag. Great, that was all I needed, I thought. And what was he doing with Erin?
Because the crafters were in tighter quarters on this side of the field, my small booth was wedged between the beaders and Lynette’s tea cozies. When there was a lull in the crowd, I pulled my folding chair closer to the beaders. There were three of them. As they hunkered over their intricate work in full pioneer garb, they brought to mind the Wild West version of the three witches of Macbeth. The oldest of the group, a gray-haired lady with a pair of mother-of-pearl reading glasses perched on her pug nose, grunted. “There goes my last piece of jade.”
Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) Page 5