designer sundress. The image of Mark’s tortured face, even in my imagination, was more than I could stand.
“Hey, you okay?” Mutt asked, halfway concerned. The third chocolate bar was long gone. He patted the fourth as if to say, “I’ve got something special in mind for you.”
“I’m fine.” I pushed the image deeper into the recesses of my mind to fuel future nightmares. “Did you catch the mur—the accident on video?”
“Of course that Mains hotshot asked me the same thing the morning it happened. If I had, this case would be an open-and-shut deal, but we don’t have any security cameras on that side of campus. Low traffic.”
“Aren’t low traffic areas the most attractive to crime?”
“Don’t preach to the choir. I bring the same point up at my annual budget hearing. I have a feeling the board’ll spring for it this year.” He paused. “We do have one camera, the Dexler lot, that shows your brother walking toward the fountain at about eight-thirty, back to Dexler, and then again to the fountain forty-five minutes later.”
“He’s already explained that. He went to the fountain, heard Olivia talking to someone, and left to wait for her in his office where he asked her to meet him. He got tired of waiting and walked back to the fountain, again, and found her.”
“Why’d he go to the fountain in the first place?”
“I—he probably was pacing around campus. He walks when he’s nervous, and I know he was nervous about seeing Olivia again.”
Mutt looked doubtful.
I changed the subject. “What happened to Olivia’s car?”
“What car?”
“Well, she’d have to have a car to drive to campus from her parents’ house, and she certainly didn’t drive it out of here.”
“There wasn’t any unknown car on campus for any extended period that I know of, and trust me, I would know. I offered a free personal day off work to the officer that writes the most tickets this summer.”
“Can you do that?” I asked, thinking of the campus’ strict attendance policy. You had to have your mother’s fresh death certificate in hand or be in intensive care before the college would give you an extra day off.
“No, but they don’t know that. I’d watch those yellow lines if I were you.”
“There’s no way that Olivia walked to campus. Her parents live over ten miles away, and she’d rather die than take public transportation.” I blanched at my poor choice of words.
Mutt ignored the
“But, a car could have been here for a shorter period, not giving your boys and girls time to whip out their ticket pads and pencils. Just enough time to shove Olivia in the fountain and leave.”
Mutt inched the last chocolate bar closer, but did not open it. “All I know is that your brother’s car was in the lot the whole time.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I stopped at Lula’s Flowers on the town square and bought the most expensive arrangement that my meager budget could bear. I might not eat for a few weeks, but the arrangement was worth its price. It was a cluster of yellow roses, orange lilies, and fragrant herbs in a blown glass vase. No carnations or baby’s breath. I signed the card simply “India.”
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I drove the ten minutes to the Blocken home. I hadn’t seen a member of the family since they chased me out of the hospital on Saturday afternoon. I knew that I wouldn’t be welcome, not as long as they suspected my brother, but visiting them was the only way I could think of to find out how that photograph got into my brother’s office. Logic told me that one of the Blockens must have been involved because they were so certain that Mark attacked Olivia. Nostalgia told me that the family would never do such a horrible thing despite how they felt about Mark. Spite told me that Lepcheck planted the photos. As the three points of view fought for dominance, I found myself directly in front of the Blocken home.
I knocked on the door several times, but there was no answer. Either no one was home, or they saw me and refused to answer. I stepped off the Victorian’s elaborate porch and returned to my car with the flowers. I hesitated on the stone walk, then I meandered around the house to the wooden gate between the garage and house. I peered over the gate and saw O.M. sitting alone on a picnic table butted up to the side of the garage, smoking a slim cigarette and rifling through a box of chocolates. Her short hair was the startling neon blue hue that I’d seen at the hospital.
I tapped on the gate. Chocolate flew out of the box and onto the chemically treated lawn. She stubbed her cigarette on the underside of the tabletop. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you. Can I come inside the gate?” I asked.
She shrugged.
I hung my arm over the gate to unlatch it. The gate was tricky, it had to be jiggled and jerked to cooperate. Although I hadn’t opened it in several years, I had no trouble. The gate saddened me.
Seeing that I was alone, O.M. picked up her half-smoked cigarette and fished a lighter out of her oversized dark denim jeans.
I set the flowers on one of the umbrella tables, remnants of the Blocken Fourth of July picnic that seemed so long ago. “Care if I sit beside you?” I asked.
She shrugged. I climbed onto the picnic table next to her and leaned against the garage. We didn’t speak for a few minutes. O.M. smoked, and I secondhand smoked. Her pixie-like face was devoid of makeup and expression.
“Want a cigarette?” She held the pack out to me.
“No thanks.”
She shoved it back in her pocket and turned her face away. I wished I smoked.
“Those chocolates look good.”
She handed me the box. Moon-shaped thumbnail prints indicated ninety percent of them had been investigated and passed over. Chocolate encrusted O.M.’s right thumbnail, creating a muddy swamp color with her poison-green nail polish.
I chose a piece that was free of nail marks. I popped it in my mouth. Apricot. Yuck. “You know there’s a guide on the box lid, so you don’t have to mutilate all the candies.”
“When they get all mixed up, the guide’s shot to hell.”
She had a point. I swallowed the apricot candy. At least she was talking to me, even if belligerently.
I tried to soften her further. “I like your hair.”
She ran her hand, the one free of chocolate, thankfully, through it. After a full minute of silence, she whispered, “I dyed it for the wedding to make Mom mad. She hasn’t noticed yet.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“When is the funeral?”
“How would I know? They don’t tell me anything.” She took one last drag of her cigarette and stubbed it under the picnic table. She carefully placed the butt in her pocket. “My parents and Kirk are fighting over the arrangements and stuff. He wants her to be buried in Virginia. If he thinks that Mom’s going to let that happen, he really is psycho.”
“He did lose his fiancée,” I said in Kirk’s defense.
“I lost my sister, and I didn’t go crazy. He was so angry yesterday. I thought he was going to hit my dad.”
“Over the funeral?”
“Yeah, I guess. I was upstairs in my room with music on when he came over. I couldn’t really hear them until Kirk started yelling at Mom and Dad. By the time I got to the stairs and could see them, Kirk was so bonkers, I couldn’t understand what he was saying with that Southern accent of his. After Kirk left, I asked what happened,
