Maid of Murder

before Olivia or Mrs. Blocken could make further comment.

I mouthed thank you to her.

Ten short minutes later, Bree floated down the stairs in an exact replica, be it a smaller one, of the bridesmaid dress of my nightmares. On Bree the gown was stunning. Her tanned skin and the shimmering fabric fit together perfectly. Appreciative murmurs swept the room. Bobby’s expression was comically enraptured.

Mrs. Blocken glided over to Bree’s side and circled her several times. “Perfect, perfect.” Olivia joined her. “I told you this color would be perfect, Olivia. The ladies will be like golden stars adorning you,” Mrs. Blocken said.

From my seat on the floral printed sofa, I gagged. O.M. straddled the threshold of the open French doors that led into the backyard. Her face encompassed all the horror I felt. It gave me small comfort.

“Olga,” her mother called. “Try on your gown.”

O.M. backed outside onto the patio.

Mrs. Blocken looked up in disgust. “Olga, now.”

O.M. shook her head.

Mrs. Blocken marched over to her daughter. “Young lady, you will do as you’re told.”

The doorbell rang, playing Für Elise. Happy for an excuse to exit the room, I offered to answer it. To my dismay, I opened the door to my brother’s eager face. His blond hair was sticking up in all directions, his beard was unruly and in desperate need of combing, and his T-shirt hung crookedly on his thin shoulders—sure signs that he’d been up at ungodly hours with mathematical equations, theorems, and other things I hoped never to understand. Mark looked just as startled to see me as I was to see him.

“India?” He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose. “What are you doing here?”

“Mark, this isn’t a good time. I’ll talk to you later.” I started to close the door.

He began nodding, then, “Hey, I didn’t come here to see you. I have to speak to Olivia. It’s urgent.”

“Not now. I’ll tell her you’d like to talk her. Now, please leave.”

The conversation from the living room moved closer.

“India, who’s at the door?” Olivia called.

Hearing her voice, he barreled past me, ramming the brass doorknob into my hip. I swore under my breath.

“Olivia, I have to talk to you.”

She froze. Her sunny party expression vanished.

“Olivia, dear, you shouldn’t abandon your guests,” Mrs. Blocken’s voice preceded her into the entry. “We weren’t—” She stopped suddenly seeing Mark, whose gaze never left her daughter’s face. “What’s he doing here?” Mrs. Blocken’s demand was laced with disgust. “Is this your idea of a joke, India?”

“I—”

The remaining party members materialized behind Mrs. Blocken.

“Olivia.” Mark said her name like a prayer. “I have to speak with you. Please.”

“Get him out of here this instant, India,” Mrs. Blocken ordered. “I’m holding you responsible for this. I didn’t want your family to have anything to do with the wedding, but Olivia insisted that you take part. I see now that my earlier judgment was correct.”

My face burned. I grabbed my brother’s arm more roughly than necessary and shoved him toward the door.

Bobby mumbled a hasty good-bye to Bree. As I was pushing my brother out the door, he grabbed the frame. “Mark,” I hissed.

He clung tight. “I really need to talk to you. I’ll be in my office at Martin all day tomorrow. Meet me, please!” He called over his shoulder.

I pried Mark’s right hand from the jam, and Bobby worked on his left. When Mark let go, I pushed him outside, Bobby on my heels. The door slammed behind us, and we heard the bolt slide home.

On the front lawn, Mark shook out of my grasp. “Let go.”

Hoping the Blockens wouldn’t overhear, I demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“I had to speak to her. She’s making a mistake,” he said, obviously unconcerned with eavesdropping.

His face was the color of the inside of a watermelon, and his thin chest heaved up and down so rapidly I thought he would hyperventilate.

A neighbor across the street glanced up from her faded azaleas. Bobby stood beside my car, suggesting we leave before the Blockens called the cops.

I ignored him. “She’s getting married in a week. Leave it alone.”

Mark rushed to his car and threw open the door. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s obvious where your loyalties lie.”

“Wait,” I called, running after him. He peeled away from the curb and down the normally quiet Kilbourne. I watched him drive away and silently prayed that he wouldn’t die in a horrific accident.

Bobby walked up behind me. “Thanks for inviting me. This was fun.”

Chapter Five

A gauze bandage was more likely to fix the ozone layer than a Martin student was to enter the Ryan Memorial Library on Saturday of the Fourth of July weekend. Regardless of this basic logic, I held my post behind the reference desk bright and early the next morning. I disliked the location of the reference desk. “Island” would be a more apt description of the area, which was a glorified high counter floating in the middle of the main floor. In it, I felt exposed and cut off from the safety of walls and back exits. After reading library management journals, the previous library director relocated the reference area directly in front of the library’s main entrance, hoping that after a patron ran into it, he’d ask a question. Although the undergrads had more bruises than before, the arrangement was not exactly working as planned—and wouldn’t, as long as Internet search engines dominated the average student’s research methods.

By ten o’clock, our only patron was an elderly journalism professor who sat in the back of the main floor cursing at the microfiche machine. Occasionally, a loud bang drifted from the professor’s general direction, but the library staff turned a deaf ear. The professor had a reputation for biting off heads. I was flipping through a new botany text to distract myself. Mark’s emotional drop-in visit to the Blockens’ yesterday reminded me of Olivia’s ill- fated high school graduation party. His two appearances were so similar that the thought of one always reminded me of the other, and I wished that I could forget them both.

The party had been half graduation party, half bon voyage. She had received a summer internship in Virginia, so she was heading south in mid-June as opposed to August. I’d snuck out of my house to go to the party. I didn’t want my brother to know where I was going. He was having a hard time accepting Olivia’s decision to move to Virginia. He had been constantly calling her and dropping in on the Blockens all spring hoping that he could change her mind with sheer persistence. The family became increasingly annoyed with Mark’s pursuit. Mrs. Blocken thought I was egging him as some kind of practical joke. “This isn’t funny, India,” she told me on numerous occasions.

The party was the highlight of the graduation season and held in the Blocken backyard. All of Mrs. Blocken’s friends were there, including the mayor and his wife and the president of Martin College and her husband.

Just when the party was at its height, Mark stumbled through the Blockens’ opened gate. Olivia sat on her boyfriend-of-the-moment’s lap, a baseball player from a rival high school. I stood with some classmates, only half listening to their chatter about summer jobs. Because I wasn’t paying attention to the group, I was the first one to notice my brother. I started to make my way to him, but there were too many partygoers between us for me to reach him before he called out.

“Olivia!”

Olivia, who was whispering something to her jock boyfriend, either didn’t hear him or pretended not to, but Mrs. Blocken certainly did. She had her gaze trained on Mark with a glare that could have melted iron. She started toward him. Mark saw her coming and backed up into the buffet table. Somehow he managed to kick out one of the legs from under it and the table fell. Cucumber sandwiches, olives, and cake toppled to the ground. The well-