Murder in a Basket (An India Hayes Mystery) by Amanda Flower Page A

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