Wall-To-Wall Dead

by Jennie Bentley

  We got back to the condo complex just after two o’clock, with our paint samples and measurements for the kitchen cabinets. The parking lot was just as deserted as it had been earlier. More so, in fact, since the Taurus station wagon was also gone now. Our truck was the only vehicle in the lot after we’d pulled in and parked. And Miss Shaw’s lace curtains still hung unmoving in the kitchen window.

  “You know, that’s freaking me out a little,” I confided to Derek as we moved toward the front door. “Every time we’ve been here, she’s been sitting at that window, watching us. I thought it’d be a relief when she wasn’t, but instead it’s weirdly strange.”

  “She’s probably just gone out,” Derek answered. “We haven’t been here but a few times, Avery. You can’t really judge by that. Just because she hasn’t left her condo in those couple of days doesn’t mean she never does.”

  “I guess not.” Even though Kate and Shannon had both said she never left. It simply couldn’t be accurate. Sometimes, surely she had to leave? “She could be at the doctor’s. Or the hairdresser’s. Or shopping.” Her hair and wardrobe could both use some attention, frankly.

  “She could have hopped a bus to the Penobscot High Stakes Bingo with fifty other seniors,” Derek said. “Or maybe she has a secret life we know nothing about, and she’s in Monte Carlo, sipping champagne on a hotel terrace overlooking the Mediterranean.”

  I laughed, which was probably the purpose of the suggestion, since no one in their right mind would seriously consider Hilda Shaw a candidate for a jaunt to Monte Carlo. The gambling trip to the Native American casino was somewhat more likely. Most likely of all was that she had a daughter, or maybe an octogenarian mother or a niece, somewhere in Waterfield, and they were spending the day together.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m being silly. We should enjoy it while it lasts. She’ll probably be home by the time we leave tonight. And when we get here tomorrow morning, I’ll be complaining that she’s watching us through the curtains again.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Derek said, and let me precede him up the stairs.

  We spent the next few hours on our various tasks. I’d brought my laptop, and while Derek stayed busy scraping paint and capping pipes, I settled on the porch with my feet up on the railing and the computer in my lap. There are several programs available for interior design, and I’d downloaded one last winter when we were working on Kate’s carriage house. Now I plugged the dimensions of the kitchen into the program, added its various electrical outlets and water pipes—when you renovate, it’s so much easier, not to mention cheaper, to leave those things where they are and work around them—and then I started adding virtual cabinets and drawer bases.

  It took the rest of the afternoon to come up with a working design, one where I felt I had made the absolute most of every square inch of the kitchen. It wasn’t big, just eight feet to a side: more like a galley, really, once I’d measured for cabinets along each wall. There was no room for an island, or even a peninsula, but I did manage to squeeze in the minimum of necessities: a lazy Susan, a couple of drawer bases, a fridge and stove, apartment-sized dishwasher, mounted microwave…there was even room for a small, built-in wine rack between two cabinet bases where nothing else would fit.

  “Wine rack?” Derek said, looking over my shoulder. “We’re buying a wine rack?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let me guess. I’m making a wine rack?”

  “Not at all. I’m making it.”

  He arched his brows. “You know how to make a wine rack?”

  “Sure. It’s easy. I did it once in New York, for a friend. You buy a bunch of mailing tubes—”

  “A bunch of what?”

  “Mailing tubes. You know, the cardboard tubes you mail posters and blueprints in? Like paper towel rolls, only a lot bigger?” Big enough to accommodate a bottle of wine, in fact.

  “OK,” Derek said slowly, as if trying to picture it.

  “You build a frame—or I do. Then you cut the mailing tubes to the length of a bottle of wine, glue them together inside the frame, and voila, wine rack.” I smiled.

  “Only you, Avery,” Derek said and dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I’m sure it’ll look great. Your ideas always turn out great.” He straightened and lifted both arms above his head, stretching. The bottom of the T-shirt separated from the low-hanging top of the jeans, baring a stripe of tanned skin, lightly dusted with fair hair. “You about ready to call it a day? All this talk of wine is making me hungry.”

  Me, too. “Italian?”

  “Whatever,” Derek said, which coincided rather nicely with my own feelings. We gathered our things, the ones we didn’t plan to leave in the condo overnight, and locked the door behind us. Only to stop a floor below, when we got to Miss Shaw’s door. A woman I’d never met stood in front of it, knocking. When she heard our steps on the stairs, she turned around, and then—I guess upon realizing she didn’t know us—her face registered disappointment.

  “Oh.”

  “Something wrong?” Derek asked.

  “I’m not sure,” the woman answered. She was short and thin, just an inch or maybe two taller than me, with light brown hair and eyes the color of whiskey, dressed in a navy blue business suit and black patent leather heels. “It’s not like Miss Shaw not to be sitting at the window.”

  “I thought the same thing.” I introduced myself and Derek, and found out that this was our upstairs neighbor, Barnham professor Amelia Easton. “We just bought the Antoninis’ condo and started renovating it. Miss Shaw has been sitting at the window every time we’ve been in and out so far. Except for today. We thought maybe she’d gone out.”

  Professor Easton shook her head. “She never goes out. I’ve lived here over a year, and I’ve never seen her leave the building.”

  “She wasn’t at the window when we got here this morning. We left for lunch, and when we came back, we still didn’t see her. Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “It isn’t like her,” Amelia said.

  “I don’t suppose you have a key? Or know of anyone else in the building who does?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Amelia said.

  “If she never goes outside the door,” Derek contributed, “there’s not much need to hide a key. There’s no chance she’ll lock herself out.”

  “We could go upstairs and get a screwdriver and take the lock off the door.”

  “We could,” Derek agreed. “But that’s a little drastic, don’t you think?”

  “That depends. If the place is empty, it won’t take long to put it back on. But what if something’s happened to her? What if she’s fallen and can’t get up? What if she’s broken her hip? Or she’s flat on her back in bed with measles? She’ll die if no one takes care of her!”

  “Not from the measles,” Derek said, but he sighed. “You’ve knocked, right?”

  This was addressed to Amelia Easton, who nodded. “For at least five minutes. There’s no answer.”

  “Does she have a phone?”

  “I’ll get the number,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. It was a quick minute before I had Hilda Shaw’s number and was dialing it. We could hear the ringing start behind the locked door, but there was no answer. Eventually I gave up and disconnected. “I guess she doesn’t have an answering machine.”

  “She doesn’t need one,” Derek said, “if she never leaves the apartment.”

  “Well,” I shot back, “if she never leaves the apartment, then she’s in there right now. And if she’s not answering the phone or coming to the door, then that sounds to me like something’s wrong.”

  Derek sighed. “I’ll go get the screwdriver.” He headed up the stairs.

  I turned to Amelia. “He can be a little slow to get behind things sometimes, but he’s good with power tools.”

  She smiled politely, so maybe it wasn’t as funny as I thought.

  Derek is good with
power tools, though, so by the time he got back—with the battery-driven screwdriver—it was quick work to take the lock off the door. Derek put the lock and screwdriver aside before pushing the door open and peering into the dark hallway. “Miss Shaw? Hello?”

  I added my voice to his. “It’s Derek and Avery from upstairs. Are you OK?”

  There was no answer.

  “Smells bad in here,” I muttered as a combination of odors assaulted my nostrils. The sour stench of bodily functions, along with a hint of something sickly sweet, all of it overlaid by the fresh scent of a Glade Plug-In. Tropical Breeze.

  Derek nodded, his mouth tight. “Stay out here, Avery. You, too, Professor Easton.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’ll be happy to come inside with you.” For moral support, or whatever. And yes, saying that I’d be happy to do it might have been overstating the case just a little, but if he wanted me to, I’d go inside with him.

  He shook his head. “Better not. If I’m right, the fewer people who traipse through here, the better.”

  I swallowed. “She doesn’t have the measles, does she?”

  His eyes were gentle. “I don’t think so. But until I make sure, just stay out here. And keep anyone else from going inside.”

  I nodded. “Should I call Wayne?”

  “Better wait until we know for sure.”

  He gave me a quick smile before squaring his shoulders and plunging into the dark hallway, leaving Amelia and myself cooling our heels on the landing.

  —5—

  “What does he think happened?” Amelia asked.

  I turned to her. “I’m sorry. But I think Miss Shaw might be dead.”

  Amelia blinked. “How would he know that?”

  “He doesn’t. But she’s not answering the door or the phone, and there’s a certain smell…”

  And frankly, once you’ve smelled the odor of death, it never leaves you. I’d once spent the best part of a night and a day locked in a tunnel underneath an old house on the cliffs outside Waterfield with my ex-boyfriend Philippe and a rotting corpse, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get the smell out of my nose. It lingered for weeks, and even now, more than a year later, it took very little to bring me back there. I shivered.

  “What?” Amelia said.

  “Nothing. Just remembering something I wish I didn’t.”

  “Oh,” Amelia said, biting her lip. She looked nervous.

  “Don’t worry. Even if she turns out to be dead, it won’t be a big deal. Wayne is nice. The chief of police. He’s Josh Rasmussen’s dad.”

  Amelia nodded. “I met him once or twice when I first moved in. He left shortly after that.”

  That’s right. Wayne had lived here until Derek and I finished renovating Kate’s carriage house, and she and Wayne got married New Year’s Eve. Amelia would have met him last fall.

  “Looks like some kind of food poisoning,” Derek said when he came back outside. “Something she ingested didn’t agree with her. Her body tried to rid itself of it, but it didn’t seem to have worked.”

  That explained the sour smell.

  “I’ll call Wayne,” I said.

  Derek nodded. “The medical examiner’s office will want to do an autopsy.”

  “For food poisoning?” Amelia exclaimed, and then looked like she wished she hadn’t.

  Derek turned to her. “Unattended, unnatural death. An autopsy is pretty standard.”

  “She had allergies,” Amelia said as I dialed Wayne’s cell number. “Severe allergies. That’s why she never went outside. She was allergic to bees, and pollen, and things in the air…”

  She sounded a little bit desperate to get us to believe her. It’s not an uncommon reaction when someone has died. There’s this need to convince everyone, including oneself, that it was an accident, it was natural, nothing is wrong.

  “Avery?” Wayne’s voice said in my ear. He sounded just a little worried, I thought. “Is everything all right?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re at the apartment, and there’s been an accident—”

  His voice went from worried to tight. “Is Josh OK?”

  Oh God. “Of course. I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with Josh. I should have said so right off. I haven’t seen Josh all day, but the last time I saw him, this morning, he was just fine.”

  “Oh,” Wayne said. I could hear him draw a breath. “Good. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” I should have realized he might expect the worst, when he knew Derek and I were working here in Josh’s building. “We do need your help with something else, though.”

  The worry was gone from his voice, and now he sounded merely resigned. “What is it this time?”

  “One of the neighbors has died,” I said. “Miss Hilda Shaw. She lives…lived on the first floor.”

  “I remember Miss Shaw,” Wayne said. “How do you know she’s dead?”

  I explained about the lace curtains, and how Miss Shaw was always sitting there watching people come and go.

  “Yes?” Wayne said.

  “When she wasn’t there this morning, we thought maybe she’d gone out. To the doctor, or something. I mean, she’d have to leave sometime, right? To go shopping at least?”

  “Shaw’s Supermarket delivers,” Amelia muttered.

  I glanced at her, but talked to Wayne. “But when we went to lunch, she still wasn’t there, and then she wasn’t there by the time we got back from lunch, and when it was time to leave, Professor Easton, who lives on the fourth floor, had come home from work and tried to get hold of her, and Miss Shaw wasn’t answering her phone and her door.”

  “Uh-huh,” Wayne said. “What did you do, Avery?”

  I took a breath. He probably wouldn’t be happy about this next little bit, and I was preparing myself. To make it easier, I got it all out in a rush. “Derek went upstairs and got a screwdriver and then we took the lock off the door.”

  There was a slight pause. “I see,” Wayne said.

  “It’s not a problem to put it back on again.”

  “I’m not worried about the lock. Did you go inside?”

  I said I hadn’t.

  “Did Derek?”

  I said he had.

  “Put him on,” Wayne ordered.

  I did, and stood there listening to the singularly unhelpful half of the conversation that came out of Derek’s mouth. It went something like this: “Uh-huh…. Uh-huh…. Yes, I know…. That’s right…. Uh-huh…. Yes…. Yes…. Probably not…. No idea…. Of course…. We’ll be here.”

  He gave the phone back to me. “He’s on his way.”

  I stuck it in my pocket. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” Derek said, which seemed a rather blatant disregard of the truth. Wayne had said a lot. But it was possible he’d said nothing I needed to know right now. Or nothing Derek thought Amelia Easton needed to know.

  He turned to her. “You don’t have to stand here. It smells bad, I know.”

  Amelia nodded, biting her lip, but she seemed reluctant to leave. “I’d be happy to wait with you if you want.”

  Derek shook his head. “That’s not necessary. You didn’t go inside, and I’m sure you’d be happier upstairs. If Wayne wants to talk to you, he knows where to find you.”

  “OK,” Amelia said, but she was dragging her feet reluctantly up the stairs, and just before she disappeared, she looked back at us over her shoulder, still gnawing on her bottom lip.

  We kept silent until we’d heard the door on the top floor close behind her. Then I turned to Derek.

  “What did Wayne say?”

  “Nothing,” Derek said, looking surprised. “I told you.”

  “I thought maybe you said that because Amelia was standing here.”

  He shook his head. “What was there to say, Avery? He called the ME’s office and he’s on his way. With Brandon.”

  Brandon Thomas is Wayne’s youngest and most gung-ho deputy. He’d like to spend all of his time fiddling with fore
nsic evidence and crime scene investigations, but Waterfield has a minuscule police department, and everyone has to do their share of patrolling and directing traffic. Whenever he gets the chance to gather hairs and fibers and spread fingerprint dust, he’s like a kid in a candy store, though.

  “He said to stay out,” Derek added, “and make sure no one else went in, and not to do anything to disturb the scene. You know the drill.”

  I did. “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it. He’s on his way. We wait.”

  “Fine.” I put my back to the wall and slid down until my butt was on the cold concrete of the floor. Derek followed suit, and there we sat, side by side, until I broke the silence again.

  “I knew something was wrong.”

  Derek turned to look at me, and I clarified, “This morning. When she wasn’t at the kitchen window. She was always there. Every morning when we got here, and every night when we left.”

  “It’s only been a few days, Avery.”

  “I know that. But if I’d made you open the door this morning, maybe…”

  Derek shook his head. “It wouldn’t have made a difference. She was dead before we got here today.”

  I sniffed, and then wished I hadn’t, as the smell permeated my nostrils. Better to breathe through my mouth for a while. “How do you know?”

  “Do you really want me to explain rigor mortis and all the other things that happen to a body after death?”

  Not really, no. “So she died last night?”

  “The medical examiner will be able to make that determination better than I can,” Derek said. “I was just a general practitioner, and not for very long, and I dealt mostly with patients who were still alive. We lost one every once in a while, especially when I rotated in and out of the ER, but I’ve never had to do much on the forensic side. But if I had to guess, I’d say she probably died around nine o’clock last night.”

  I swallowed. At nine o’clock, we’d been at Aunt Inga’s house, curled up on the sofa enjoying each other’s company.