Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) (18 page)

Chapter
Thirty-One

The scene at the high school was one I was all too familiar with—my parents in the middle of a media circus. Mom leaned out of the top windows of the tower, waving to the crowd below—a cluster of high school students, teachers, and police. Dad, restricted to his wheelchair, had chained himself to the tower’s entrance, barring anyone from entering and reaching Mom at the top.

Mains spotted me immediately. He stood among a cluster of amused police officers and livid school board members. He waved and hurried over.

“I wish I could say I can’t believe this. But then I’d be lying,” I said.

Mains shook his head.
“Do you think you can talk any sense into them?”

I laughed.
“I can try.”

Mains ran his hand through his dark hair.
“Your dad won’t let anyone inside the tower.”

I nodded, knowing my par
ents’ method of operation. “What brought this on? I thought they were happy with their petition.”

“
The school board moved up the wrecking date to this coming Saturday. A wrecking company offered to come in and demolish the tower at a substantial discount.”

“
What about the restraining order?”

“
The judge overruled it, saying the wrecking deal took precedence because it would save the city money.”

“
Great.” I squared my shoulders. “Wish me luck.”

Officer
Knute stood in front of Dad with his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“
Knute, can you give us a minute?”

“
I was told to stay here and watch the perp.” Knute eyed Dad.

Dad shook his fist.
“Perp? Perp? I’m not a perp. I am a concerned citizen trying to save our cultural heritage from cretins like you. If you had your way, the world would be one big mini-mall.”

Knute
grinned. “Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. Does the mini-mall have a smoothie shop? I love a good smoothie.”

I blinked. Did Knute crack a joke? Would wonders never cease?

Dad glowered. I guessed he didn’t find it quite as amusing as I.

Mains called from a few feet away.
“Knute, over here, please.”

I smiled at Knute as he slunk
off. Mains shot me a pleading look before returning to his group of cops and board members.

After he was out of
earshot, I said, “Daaaad.”

“
Don’t lecture me, India. The judge’s decision was a pure violation of the restraining order. He had no right to overturn it. Your mother and I had no choice.”

“
But . . .”

“
This bell tower was here when your grandfather went to high school, when I went to high school, when you went to high school. I will not let the board tear it down when it’s a town landmark. We’re trying to get it declared as a historical site, but do you know how long that takes? Years! We don’t have years. We don’t even have weeks. They’ll have the wrecking ball here in three days.”

“
But did you have to go to this extreme? Couldn’t Lew have handled this legally?”

“
Of course we have Lew on the case, but a bunch of lawyers jabbering back and forth isn’t going to bring the public’s attention to the problem. This will.”

It certainly did that.
A local news van pulled into the high school parking lot.

“
Where’s Zach?” I didn’t see any sign of the large labradoodle, which I’d put in my father’s care.

“
Oh, he’s fine. He’s at the church with the secretary. He’s a very nice dog. Reminds me of Riley.”

Riley was
Dad’s childhood pet, praised to mythical proportions by my father. Before he could wax nostalgic about Riley the super dog, I asked, “Can I go in and talk to Mom?”

“
Of course, honey.” He rolled his wheelchair away from the door and let me squeeze in behind him.

The inside of the bell tower was dark. The only light shone from the open-air windows at the top of the tower, where the bell and my mother waited. The
school board had long ago cut off electricity to the structure. Probably when that happened, the writing was already on the wall for the tower’s future.

“
Mom?” I called, looking up the three stories of winding wooden stairs. I had an eerie feeling I was looking at a scene out of a gothic novel.

“
Up here! Are you alone?” My mother’s head peeked over the top banister. Her gray pigtails flapped in the breeze.

“
Do you really think that Dad would have let anyone else pass?”

“
No. Your father is good at keeping back dissenters.”

“
I’m coming up.”

“
Okay.” Her head disappeared.

I started my way
up. The first step creaked and gave a little under my weight. This was going to be great, I thought sarcastically. Each step after that creaked with my slow progress. At the first landing, I looked up. My mother’s head appeared again. “What’s taking so long?”

I gritted my teeth.
“I’m almost there. I don’t want to crash through one of these steps and plummet to my death.”

“
You’re exaggerating. The staircase is perfectly safe. Hurry up, and we can have a snack.”

“
You packed a snack?”

“
Well, how am I to know how long I will be up here?”

I
doubled my speed, hoping the steps would hold. My mother may have food covered, but I wondered about other personal niceties. I doubted there was a bathroom up by the bell. Afraid of the answer, I didn’t ask.

When I reached the final landing,
Mom sat cross-legged to the right side of the bell. A backpack lay open beside her with her Bible, a half dozen mystery novels, a bag of organic mini-bagels, and a jar of peanut butter. She was committed to the long haul. She patted the wooden floor beside her. “Have a seat.”

I sat.

Mom handed me a peanut-butter-slathered bagel. I ate half of it before I began my argument. “Don’t you think it’s time to go down? The news crew is here. I think you’ve made your point.”

Mom
shook her head, and her gray braids flew back and forth. “Now is the time to hold firm,” she replied like any true revolutionary. “Some days I wonder if your father and I successfully instilled our values into our children. Mark is goodness knows where, Carmen is so provincial, and you . . .” She trailed off wistfully.

“
This has nothing to do with values. I agree the bell tower should be saved if it can be done safely. And think about it, what would happen if the tower fell on the marching band? Do you want that on your conscience?”

“
What are you saying?” My mother scowled. “That your father and I want to be responsible for the death of children?”

“
No, that’s not what I’m saying.” I grimaced. “Have you considered the issue from both sides?”

“
Of course we’ve looked at the problem from every angle.”

Uh-huh.

“You make it sound like we haven’t saved a building before. What about the old library that’s now a senior center? Or the old farmhouse on the county line? What about those?”

“
But the levy—”

“
We know the levy might not work, and we are in the process of applying for grants to restore the tower to ensure its safety. We brought licensed contractors in, four in fact, from different firms, and they all agree the bell tower isn’t in danger of falling down any time soon. We took those findings and the contractors to the school board, but they wouldn’t even listen. Instead, they were perfectly happy to rely on the opinion of their one-horse contractor—who partially owns the demolition firm, might I add. Well, is it any surprise he thinks it’s unsafe?”

I
shouldn’t have tried to argue. I shoved the rest of the bagel in my mouth.

Mom polished of
f her bagel and started another. She could eat and eat and never gain an ounce. It was disgusting and oh so unfair. “How’s the investigation coming?” She gave me a beady-eyed look.

I looked out the open-air window. I had a clear view over the
high school’s football stadium to the square in downtown Stripling, where my mother’s church quietly waited for Sunday morning. It probably wouldn’t be a great idea to leap through the window just to avoid my mother’s questions. I’m sure I’d regret it the minute I cleared the windowsill. “What investigation?”

“
Debra Wagtail gave me a call and told me about your birding expedition.”

Nothing in Stripling happened without my mother knowing about it.

I sighed. “It’s over.” I related the events of last evening.

“
Celeste didn’t do it.” She it said matter-of-factly.

I blinked.
“Do you know her?”

“
I think I’ve met her before, but no, I don’t know her well.”

“
Then why do you say she didn’t do it?”

“
Because, don’t you see, it’s too easy with her lying there holding the bloody spike. Come on.”

“
The scene was pretty convincing.”

“
Staged.”

“
Mains didn’t think so.”

“
What does he know? If he had his way, your brother would be in prison.” My parents might have forgiven Mains for arresting Mark last summer, but they certainly hadn’t forgotten. Another reason to forget whatever I thought Mains’s intentions were the night before on my doorstep.

I shifted uncomfortably, g
rinding splinters into my backside from the rough wooden floor.

“
Lana! It’s Lew! Come to the window!” Lew’s voice ricocheted off the bell, giving me an instant headache. Forgetting our quarrel, Mom and I hurried to the window and leaned out. The crowd was still there. Lew stood beside Dad. He waved a piece of white paper in the air. “I got another judge to turn over the ruling. The restraining order against the school board is back in place. Come on down.”

When we were back on ground level, r
eporters waited for my mother at the front door, eager for the evening news sound bite or quote for the local paper. While she was so engaged, I caught up with Lew, who was already heading back to his car. He didn’t have my parents’ taste for drama and had learned long ago it didn’t do any good to advise my parents as to what they should and should not say to the media.

“
Lew!” I called as he opened the door to his SUV.

He turned.
“I see you were called to the rescue.”

“
I didn’t make much progress reasoning with them.”

“
No one ever does.”

“
How true,” I paused. “Have you found a kennel?”

Lew
slid into his seat, but left the door open. “I’ve been a little busy, India. Jerry was killed last night.”

I swallowed.
“I know. I found him.”

“
You—” He closed his eyes and patted his jacket pocket for his pack of cigarettes. When he found the cigarettes, he lit one and took a long pull.

“
Actually, Ina and I found him. I thought the detective would have told you that.”

Lew narrowed his eyes in Mains
’s direction. Four school board members, waving their arms wildly, surrounded Mains.

“
You are looking for a kennel, aren’t you?”

“
It’s tricky. I told you about the four-hour limit in a kennel that’s written into the trust.”

I had a s
inking feeling. “How long do you think it will be before the trust is settled between Tess’s family members?”

“
Cases like this are tricky. They can be settled in a few hours if one of the parties bows out. If everyone holds their ground, it takes longer. Add a couple of murders on top of it, it could take years.”

“
Years! I can’t keep Zach for years!”

Lew
slammed the door. The driver side window was down.

“
What are you going to do with Zach? Mom will never agree to keep him indefinitely, and I can’t either. I’m sure my cat has it in for him. We are talking about dogicide here.”

He gunned the engine.
“You’ll figure something out.”

“
Me?” I cried, but he didn’t hear me because he had already pulled away.

Chapter
Thirty-Two

I headed back to my car, which was parked on the street. As I unlocked the door, I heard footsteps jog up from behind me. I turned to find Mains a foot away.

“
Thanks for coming down,” he said.

I smiled.
“No problem. You should thank Lew, though. There was no way she was leaving that tower for me.”

He laughed. It was his awful guffaw, which my sister had grumbled about when she and
Mains were high school sweethearts.

I found myself smiling.

“Are you hungry?”

“
What?”

“
I’m starved. Would you like to go to lunch”—he paused—“with me?”

I felt my eyes widen.
“I should get back to the library.”

“
You get a lunch hour, don’t you?”

“
Well, yes.”

“
Great. Knute can handle the clean up. Let’s go get a bite.”

My mind said
: Say no, say no.

My mouth said,
“Okay.”

I gave myself a mental
head slap.

He grinned.
“Great. How about Byron’s?”

I agreed but insisted on driving myself. Byron’s was a vegetarian restaurant just outside campus
grounds. It was midafternoon and most of the lunch crowd had been and gone. There were several students sitting at tables studying alongside monster mugs of free-trade coffee. The SOEC kids clustered around their favorite table in the back of the restaurant. I wondered if they were planning their next move since the festival was over.

Raka caught my eye and waved. I waved back.

Byron’s, which was not named after the Romantic poet but after the owner’s favorite dog, had pictures of the owners and Byron shaking hands with local celebrities, including my parents, on the walls. Since Halloween was only days away, the walls and their adornments were covered with a thin layer of cotton spider web, and tiny plastic black spiders marched up and down its length. Softball tournament trophies stood in the windows, and bumper stickers decorated worn table tops.

I sat at a table in the front window, so I could watch Mains appr
oach. I didn’t have to wait long. He expertly parallel parked his sedan on the curb into a spot between a Smart Car and a VW bug, a space that I would never even dream of attempting to park in. His floppy dark hair fell over his face as he reached across the car to get something from the passenger seat. I tried to look away. I didn’t want him to see me studying him, but I couldn’t resist. This wasn’t the time to try to sort out my conflicted feelings about Mains. I’d thought after the incident with my brother that maybe Mains and I would be, at the very least, friends. However, after everything was through and Mark drove off into the sunset, I didn’t see Mains again until we met over Tess’s body. Why then did I agree to have lunch with him? I groaned. The student studying at the next table looked up owl-eyed from his laptop.

Some twenty-first
-century woman I was. I could use a telephone just as well as Mains, but I figured it was his move. He knew where to find me. After last summer, he knew more about my family and my life than some of my closest friends, and he chose not to call. I wondered if the Hayes package, because we do come as one quirky set, was too much for him. In the end, it wasn’t because I was a girl. It was because I was a wimp that I hadn’t called him. So what was I doing here? I wasn’t sure what to make of it, if there was anything to make of it. Or maybe I should for once just see how it would turn out on its own without worrying about the outcome.

Mains came inside and sat across from me
. We chatted as we both perused the menu. I settled on the wild mushroom bisque, and Mains chose a veggie burger.

“
Separate checks, please,” I told the waitress. She nodded and took our orders back to the kitchen.

Mains grinned but didn’t say anything.

I started with the only topic I felt safe to speak with Mains about: Murder. “What did Celeste say after the arrest?”

Mains
sighed. “That she found Jerry lying there. The spike, which it turns out is part of a gate Jerry was making, was on the ground beside him. She picked up the spike and fainted.”

“
Who would be stupid enough to pick up the murder weapon? Doesn’t she have a television?”

“
You’d be surprised, but we are pretty sure it’s a story. She definitely still had feelings for Jerry. We found her journal in her station in the co-op. She wrote some pretty heated words in there about Tess.”

“
She might have just been venting.”

“
Is ‘I wish she were dead,’ venting?” He arched an eyebrow.

I rolled my eyes.
“Obviously, you’ve never seen a teenage girl’s journal. You would be scandalized with the number of threats found there.”

“
Celeste wasn’t a teenager.”

Point taken.
“I can see her going after Tess, but Jerry? Wouldn’t that defeat her agenda?”

The waitress brought our food and left.

Mains took a bite of his burger and chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe his rejection at the festival that afternoon was too much and she snapped. Who knows? People kill their lovers all the time.”

Remembering the scene a
t the festival, I conceded. “She was upset.” The soup was near scalding, and I blew on the spoon. “What about Victor’s money? Did you look at the case from that angle?”

“
Of course I did. It turned out to be pure coincidence,” he said.

“
Did you know Jerry was stealing from Victor’s house?”

“
Not until I read your statement.” He eyed me.

I swallowed hard.
“Well, was it true?”

Mains nodded.
“Jerry had several business loans called due because of the recession. He was selling antiques from Victor’s estate to settle his debt. We found some things he hadn’t been able to fence before he died in his forge. We do think that is unrelated to the murders.”

“
That’s an awfully convenient coincidence. I would think a desperate need for money would be a much more powerful motive than a broken engagement that was decades old.”

Mains shrugged.
The gesture was beginning to annoy me.

“
Do you think it’s fair that you seem to know everything about me, my family, my job, my landlady, and I know very little about you?” I blurted out, much to my own horror.

“
Do you see that as a problem?”

“
Not a problem, but a disadvantage.”

Mains grinned.
“What do you want to know?”

That was a scary question, and I didn’t know how to answer it.

The waitress came and set our bills on the table. Before I could reach for my check, Mains palmed it. He grinned at my look of dismay. “You go. I’ve got these.”

Rather than argue, I left.

When I got back to the library, Derek was shelving reference books. Bobby was behind the reference desk. “Your super fan has been waiting with bated breath for your return.”

I slid into my seat.
“I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

Bobby tapped his pencil’s eraser to the tip of my nose.
“He’s telling everyone you solved his mother’s murder. You’re quite a campus celebrity.”

I groaned.

When Bobby left, Derek came over to the desk. “I can’t thank you enough for everything.”

“
Derek, that’s not necessary.”

“
It is.” His eyes gleamed.

I decided
my best option was to change the subject. “Are you taking any time off from school? I’m sure your professors would understand, considering the circumstances.”

“
No, I’d much rather be here.”

“
I’m worried about you, Derek. Are you taking time to grieve?”

“
You’re worried about me?” He asked as if it was the best news he’d ever heard.

Well, that backfired, I thought.

Lasha called Derek to the checkout desk. I watched them as she spoke to him before sending him off with a full book cart. Who was I to say Derek wasn’t grieving? Just because he wasn’t curled up in a ball crying his eyes out didn’t mean the pain was any less for him. And how did I know I wouldn’t react that way when faced with the same amount of loss? It was wrong for anyone to judge another’s grief. It was wrong for me to judge Derek’s, and maybe he was crying his eyes out at night, and the rest was all a façade.