Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) (6 page)

Office
r 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 should 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.

H
e 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, st
ood 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 sist
er 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 dete
cted 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 f
arther 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 dark 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—a
pparently 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.

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 need
ed, 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.”

“
Where’d you drop it?” a second beader, who wasn’t much older than Erin, asked. She had short purple hair peeking out from under her bonnet and a pronounced lisp.

“
In the grass, where do you think? I’ll never find it now,” Beader Number One said.

The third beader, a rail-thin Asian woman with iron-straight black hair, stood and peered at the grass around Number One’s feet.

“Forget it,” Number One snapped. “You’ll never find it. It’s green and the darned grass is green.” She looked up to find me watching them. She gave me a motherly smile. “Sorry about that. I just hate to lose a bead.”

“
I understand.” I returned her smile.

“
I’m Celeste. This is Beth,” she said. “And that’s Jendy.” She pointed at the beader with purple hair.

Beth smiled at me shyly.
“You’re Carmen’s sister, right?”

I nodded, steeling myself for another complaint about favoritism.

Jendy glanced up briefly from her pile of Czech glass beads. “You’re the one who found Tess.”

Beth opened a small tube filled with jung
le green beads the size of eyeglass screws and poured them on the foam mat in front of her. Using needle-nose pliers, she picked up one of the beads and slid a fine metal chain through it.

“
So what was it like? I mean, finding the body, was there a lot blood? Like on a cop show?” Jendy asked.

“
Jendy, please.” Beth looked like she might be sick. She shot a quick glance at Celeste, who was concentrating on her beads.

“
It’s not exactly like you see on TV,” I said as the image of the back of Tess’s head flashed in my mind.

Jendy’s eyes sparkled.
“Who do you think did it?”

“
I have no idea. Did any of you know Tess well?” I asked.

Celeste sniffed.
“I know Jerry, known him for years. If you ask me, Tess was all wrong for him. You should have heard them fight. We’re all members of the same crafter co-op. The co-op owns an old farm on Delia Road. Most of the crafters, myself included, have space inside the converted barn. Jerry has his own forge on the property.”

I knew where the co-op was. It was right on the Summit-Portage county
line and not far from Kent. The New Day Artists Cooperative was relatively new. It started while I was living in Chicago. I had meant to visit it after moving back to Stripling, but never got around to it.

“
You see,” Celeste said, interrupting my thoughts. She held up a beautiful teal and lavender glass bead. “I’m not just a beader. I make many of my own beads with glass flame work.”

Jendy and Beth rolled their eyes at each other. Apparently, they’d heard about Celeste’s bead
-making skills one too many times.

I nodded encouragement.

“Jerry’s the one who taught me how to use a blowtorch.”

“
Oh?” I said.

She nodded.
“We are very close. In fact, he told me six months ago he was going to break it off with Tess.”

I sat straighter in my chair.
“Break it off how?”

Celeste paled.
“I hope I’m not giving you the wrong idea. Jerry would never do anything to hurt Tess. He just wanted a divorce, or so I thought. He never said exactly what he planned to do.”

Beth shook her head.
“I still can’t believe someone was murdered. It’s so awful.”

“
Did you see anything out of the ordinary before you left yesterday?” I asked.

Jendy cocked her head.
“That’s a weird question. What are you, an undercover cop using face painting as a front?”

I laughed.
“Oh, no. I’m just curious. Since I was the one who found Tess, the police have been asking me a lot of questions like that.”

The
y shook their heads.

“
On second thought,” Beth said. “I left just before seven, and Tess was still here. She hadn’t even started packing up her booth. I should have stopped her and asked what was going on, but I was in a hurry to get home to my kids.” She bit her lip. “I remember thinking she looked like she was waiting for someone.”

“
Her son did mention that she planned to meet someone after the festival,” I said.

Jendy nodded.
“I thought that, too, when I left. I guess if the police find out who that was, they’ll find out who did it.”

As if it
were that easy, I thought.

“
Well, hello, ladies,” Bobby greeted us in his most charming voice. “Those are gorgeous creations.”

The three women fluttered under his gaze and compliment.
Erin stood behind Bobby and rolled her eyes at me. She was a tall, lithe, natural redhead, who had the body of a prima ballerina, but she wanted to be a college professor. Go figure.

I introduced them to the group. Jendy in particular took a shine to Bobby. She asked him if he could open one
of her jars of glass beads for her, saying it was on too tight. I nearly snorted.

Erin
peered at me. “Do you have time to take a break? We need to talk.”

I looked at my watch. It was after three, and I still hadn’t eaten anything besides a pack of questionable cracker sandwiches I’d found
at the bottom of my shoulder bag. There was a sizable crowd on the grounds, but no one seemed interested in getting their face painted.

I put up a cardstock
be back in ten minutes
sign. “Let’s go over to the food vendors. I’m starved.”

I gravitated toward the elephant ears.
“Extra powdered sugar, please,” I told the vendor.

“
No problem,” he said with a plastic straw clenched in his teeth.

Erin
wrinkled her pretty little nose. “Do you have any idea how many calories are in that?”

This concern must be why she was a size two, and I was, well, not.
“Nope,” I said. “What did you want to talk about?”

She waved her hand vaguely.
“Oh, just that you found a dead body. Nothing major.”

“
Oh, that.” The vendor handed me my heavenly elephant ear, and I paid him. “How’d you hear?”

“
I have friend who lives in Derek’s dorm.”

I took a bite of my
snack and noticed the elephant ear vendor was leaning toward us, straining to hear our conversation. I led Erin out of his earshot.

“
I can’t believe you are so calm about this,” she said.

“
I’m not, trust me. Does Bobby know?”

“
Oh, yeah. He found out when that lady police officer brought sniffling Derek into the library. The officer told Bobby you said he’d take care of Derek.”

“
How’d that go over?”

She gave me a look.

“Just great. Does your friend know Derek well?”

Erin
shook her head. It was like watching a shampoo commercial as her red-gold hair glistened in the fall sunlight. “No, he says no one in the dorm knows Derek that well. Not even his roommate. He’s a shy kid. A loner.”

“
You make him sound like the Unabomber.”

She shrugged.
“Maybe he is.”

“
He’s not.” I paused. “He asked me to help him.”

“
Help him how?”

“
To find out who killed his mother.”

“
You’re kidding.”

“
Nope.”

“
All I have to say is you might want to update your résumé, because Provost Lepcheck is not going to stand for you snooping around another mystery on campus.”

“
There’s something else. Derek is Lepcheck’s nephew. Tess Ross was his sister.”

Erin
eyes widened. “Whoa!”

“
Yeah. Well, we’d better get back.”

Back at the booth, Jendy was showing Bobby her jewelry, and he oohed and
aahed at all the appropriate times. When he saw me, he nodded his head to the right. I followed him to the other side of my booth. “I got your special delivery.”

“
Derek. Erin told me. Did you call him a pest?”

“
Well, that’s what he is. I can’t believe you sent him over to me to babysit.”

“
His mother was just murdered. He had nowhere else to go.”

“
Speaking of the murder, you could have called or texted me about it. Instead, I found out from a cop stopping by the reference desk.”

“
Texted you? You want me to text you something like, ‘Hey, found dead body. All good.’”

“
It would have been nice to have been told by you.” His eyes softened. “When I heard, I was worried. All I could think about was what happened last summer. You’re not planning to get involved, are you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You are, aren’t you? I appreciate what you did for me last summer, but this is different. You don’t know the people involved this time. You—”

“
Bobby, let’s go.” Erin came up from behind me.

I was grateful for the interruption.
“You’d better get back to the library, or Lasha is going to send out a search party for you.”

“
This conversation is not over,” Bobby said.

That much I knew.