I folded my arm across my chest, waiting for the rest.
He didn’t disappoint. “According to Mrs. Blocken, Olivia is kindhearted and wanted to smooth things over between Mark and her before the wedding.”
With an unladylike snort, I held up my right hand to stop him. “Let me finish for you, Detective Mains. Mrs. Blocken is convinced that when Olivia arrived on campus, she tried to reason with Mark who waited until her back was turned and pushed her into the fountain. Am I close?”
“That was her estimation.”
I stood up, sending the rocking chair reeling on its rails. “In that case, I think we’re done here. I’m sorry that you wasted a trip.”
Mains stood as well. “Miss Hayes, the easiest way to end this is to prove whether or not your brother is responsible for the assault on Olivia Blocken. You’re making it difficult for me to do that.”
“I’m sorry, and if you wish to speak with my brother any further, I suggest you do so in the company of his attorney.”
“And who would that be?”
“Lewis Clive.”
“Have you thought of Olivia? Don’t you care what happened to your friend?”
I mentally staggered. “Of course I care about Olivia.” I held my voice level. “But Mark had nothing to do with her attack.”
I stomped to the door and opened it.
Mains placed his notebook back into his jacket pocket. “Thank you for your time.”
He smiled and stepped through the door. Black fur clung to his khaki-clad backside.
Ina waited on the edge of her chair. “Did India show you the studio?”
Mains glanced at me. “Not today.”
Or ever, I thought.
“Your leprechauns are really sharp,” Mains told Ina.
Ina preened. “Thank you. You wouldn’t be Irish, would you?” She pushed herself up to lean on the wrought iron railing.
“I’m afraid not. I’m more English than anything else.”
Ina jumped back as if she’d been stung by a yellow jacket. “Bloody English.”
Oh, geez, I thought. Before Ina could leap into a full-blown tirade, I ushered Mains down the step. “I think you’d better go.”
“Okay,” he said, eyeing Ina, whose face blazed molten purple. “I didn’t mean any harm.”
I wasn’t sure if he referred to his accusation of Mark or offending Ina.
After Mains’s sedan disappeared around the corner, I asked Ina if she was all right.
After spurting for a few minutes, she managed, “You’re dating an Englishman. Don’t you know what the English did to our people? The suffering. He didn’t give you any potatoes, did he?”
“I’m not dating Richmond Mains. He’s a police officer. He asked me some questions about a case.”
“A police officer to boot. The English are always looking for ways to bully,” Ina said.
I rubbed my throbbing shoulder and felt the sharp fingertips of a migraine tickle my brain.
“Why would a police officer speak with you? Have you done something wrong?”
“No, I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not feeling too well. I think I’ll go lie down.”
As I opened the door, Ina leaned further over the railing so that her feet no longer touched the stoop. “I prefer Bobby McNally. Now, he’s a fine-looking Irish lad.”
“Aye, that he is,” I remarked in a mock brogue.
Once inside, I looked longingly toward my shut bedroom door. All I wanted to do was go to bed and pretend the day had never happened, but I knew if I didn’t show up at the obligatory Hayes Fifth of July shindig, there’d be heck to pay later. For a brief minute, I contemplated skipping the whole thing, but if I didn’t appear, my mother would come looking for me or send Carmen to do the job. I headed toward my bedroom, not for a well-deserved rest, but to get ready for the inquisition at my parents’ house. I made a mental note to wear running shoes instead of my standard flip-flops, just in case I needed to make a quick exit.
Chapter Ten
My parents’ house was only five minutes from my duplex, the long way, and I found myself there much sooner than I liked. Once in my parents’ driveway, I sat for a few moments admiring my mother’s cosmos and snapdragons and gathering my strength.
The front door to the ranch sprang open, and my father flew down the ramp in his titanium wheelchair. “India, stop moping in that heap of metal and greet your poor old dad.”
I slipped out of the car. “Happy Belated Fourth, Dad.” I leaned down to kiss his cheek. “Are Carmen and Chip here already?”
“That they are, my girl. Don’t tell her I told you so, but your sister is as big as a triple-wide trailer.”
I laughed. “No promises.”
He made a three-point turn and sailed up the ramp with little effort. Before the accident, my father was an active man, an avid jogger and recreational athlete. His thin runner’s body was long gone, now replaced by the thick chest and broad shoulders of a wheelchair racer.
I trudged up the ramp, dreading with each step my mother’s unavoidable questions about Olivia. Her first concern would be how all this affected Mark. She would look to me for answers. I couldn’t blame her because I knew we were all wondering the same thing. “Will Mark have a relapse?”
After Olivia’s ill-fated graduation party and her subsequent departure for points south, Mark had fallen into a state of severe depression that had lasted months. My mother had been convinced that he would do something to himself. She’d sent him to counseling and had found a doctor to prescribe antidepressants. In the end, it wasn’t the hours of counseling, or the drugs, that had pulled Mark out of his self-made pit, but mathematics. During much of that time he’d retreated to his apartment to write new theorems, which was his idea of self-comfort. When he’d finally created a new one, he’d been so excited that he’d showed one of his math professors, who had helped him get it published in a prestigious math journal. While hiding away in his apartment with math books and his calculator, Mark had missed the first quarter of his junior year of college, but since he was such a genius, most of his professors had let him make up the missed classes with extra assignments. The following fall semester one of his professors had talked him into applying to graduate school. Since then, Mark had thrown himself into the study of math and little else.
The front door led directly into the family room. Atop the hardwood floors, the furnishings were tasteful, but inexpensive, and the only embellishment to the minimalist style was a wall of crosses that my mother had collected in every size, color, and medium, along with a few choice paintings by their favorite local artist.
As I stepped inside, a high-pitched voice exclaimed, “Dia!” and my four-year-old nephew Nicholas catapulted himself into my arms. My nephew was a miniature replica of his father, with dark hair and eyes, and tan, southern Italian skin. Nicholas rambled on about attending kindergarten in the fall and the other kids in his playgroup. Apparently, a little tyke named James was a real pill. When Nicholas first began to talk, he learned quickly in our family that you had to speak loud and fast or risk interruption.
“Okay, Nicky, let Aunt India sit.” My sister’s calm voice preceded her into the room.
Nicholas continued to talk and cling to my neck.
“It’s fine, Carmen,” I said.
I sat down on the couch, Nicholas on my lap. Carmen frowned at me. She hated it when anyone undermined her authority in any venue, especially in Nicholas’s case.
There was no mistaking Carmen as my sister. We both had fair skin and changeable gray eyes, gifts from our father. Although my dark hair was long and wild, Carmen had hers in a no-nonsense mom cut. My mother had been known to mix up our baby pictures.
As I sat, I noted that my sister was, as my father adeptly described, as big as a triple-wide trailer. Carmen was pregnant with twins, in accordance with her life plan. Nothing screwed up Carmen’s life plan: At thirty-one, she’d have three kids, a house, a guinea pig, and a loving husband. After graduating high school, she had attended one of the half-dozen Presbyterian colleges that cluster in western Pennsylvania, a choice that had thrilled my mother, a Presbyterian minister, to no end. As intended, Carmen had met her future husband, Chip Tuchelli, while there, and they’d married right after graduation. They had moved back to Stripling and established their careers as teachers: Carmen, high school, and Chip, elementary. They’d borne Nicholas, and now my blessed sister was pregnant with twin girls. It was all very disgusting.