Wall-To-Wall Dead

by Jennie Bentley

  Derek reached out and took my hand. “Don’t blame yourself, Avery. It has nothing to do with us.”

  “I know that.” I turned my hand around and curled my fingers through his. “I guess I feel bad because I didn’t really like her.”

  Derek nodded. “It’s worse when it’s someone you don’t like. When someone you like dies, you’re sad and you mourn. But when it’s someone you don’t like, you feel guilty.”

  He had that right. Not that I’d had a whole lot of experience with people dying. My dad when I was thirteen, but I’d been too young to really reflect on the deeper issues of what had happened, I think. My dad was gone, and I missed him, but I don’t know that I thought much beyond the immediate grief. Aunt Inga died last year, but I hadn’t really known her, and besides, I’d been in New York when it happened. And although there’s been a fair few deaths here in Waterfield since that time, I hadn’t known many of the victims well, either.

  There was a sound downstairs—the front door unlocking, I realized—then footsteps in the hall below and up the stairs.

  “That was fast,” Derek remarked.

  “Maybe it’s someone else.”

  The footsteps didn’t sound like Wayne. They were quicker, lighter. A moment later, the top of a sandy blond head appeared on the stairs, followed by a narrow face with a prominent nose, and a male body dressed in pale green surgical scrubs with the words “Waterfield Hospital” stamped on the chest. I didn’t need Derek’s greeting to know I was looking at Gregg Brewer, the resident from the second floor.

  Gregg blinked for a second, as if unsure, and then his face cleared. “Derek, right? Dr. Ellis’s son?”

  Derek nodded. “This is Avery, my fiancée.”

  I managed a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise.” Gregg nodded politely. “What’s going on?”

  “She wasn’t at the window this morning.”

  “I noticed.”

  “She wasn’t at the window this afternoon, either. Amelia Easton, from the fourth floor, thought something was wrong. So we took the lock off to see.”

  Gregg looked around. “Where’s Professor Easton?”

  “I sent her upstairs,” Derek said.

  “And no offense, but what are you doing here?”

  “We bought the Antoninis’ condo a couple days ago. We’re renovating it.”

  “Ah.” Gregg’s face cleared again. “Mariano mentioned that someone was working on it. Guess he didn’t realize I’d know you.” He shot another glance at Miss Shaw’s door. “So what’s going on?”

  “She’s dead,” Derek said.

  Gregg blinked pale eyelashes. “Dead?”

  “Last night. Looks like something she ate.”

  Gregg didn’t speak for a second. “Have you seen Mariano?” he asked.

  It was my turn to blink, this time at the abrupt change of subject. “Sorry. No.”

  “Do you need any help?”

  Derek shook his head. “She’s way past the point where a doctor can help her. The police are on their way.”

  “Police?”

  “Unattended death,” Derek said. “Standard procedure. We’re just waiting until they get here and can secure the place.”

  “Right.” Gregg glanced up the stairs in the direction of his own condo. “If you’ve got it covered, guess I’ll just go upstairs.”

  “They’ll come find you if they need you.”

  Gregg nodded. “See you later, then.”

  He continued up the stairs, two steps at a time. By the time he reached the next landing, he was whistling. It took me a second to place the song, and then it hit me: Ding-Dong! The Witch is dead…

  Derek glanced at me, but didn’t speak. I shrugged. Upstairs, we heard the key jingle and then the door open. The whistling stopped and Gregg’s voice called out, “Mariano? You here, babe? Did you hear the news?”

  The closing of the door cut off the rest of the statement, if there was more, and we couldn’t hear Mariano’s answer.

  “He’s not feeling guilty,” Derek said.

  I shook my head.

  “He was upstairs last night, and he’s a doctor. If he doesn’t feel guilty, you shouldn’t, either.”

  I nodded. “I think maybe I should go downstairs and wait for Wayne. It takes a key to get inside.”

  “He used to live here,” Derek answered, “and his son still does. In an apartment I’m sure Wayne still owns. He’ll have a key.”

  “I could use some fresh air.”

  “That’s a different story,” Derek said. “Go ahead. I’ll just sit here and make sure no one goes inside.”

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I got to my feet. “It’s the smell. It reminds me of that night in the tunnel under Cliff House. I’m feeling claustrophobic.”

  The hallway felt too narrow, as if the walls were closing in. And although maybe we couldn’t really smell the odor through the door that Derek had pulled mostly shut, it was there in my nose.

  “You don’t have to come back. I’ll do this.” He dug in his pocket. “Take the truck.”

  “I don’t want to abandon you here—” I began.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Derek said. “I’ll get a ride home with Wayne. Or Brandon. Or Shannon. She’ll probably be by at some point to see Josh.”

  “Maybe I’ll go visit Kate. If Wayne won’t be home for dinner, she might like some company.” Not for dinner, though. The thought of food wasn’t appealing at the moment. But the thought of company was.

  “I’ll call you,” Derek said. “If I can’t work it out any other way, you’ll just have to come back for me.”

  No problem. I just needed to get away for a while. I took the keys and headed down the stairs to the parking lot.

  I was on my way out of the lot when Wayne’s police car came down the Augusta Road and turned in. He lingered for a second next to me, and we both rolled down our windows. “Leaving?” he said by way of greeting.

  I nodded. “The smell is bothering me.”

  Wayne wrinkled his nose. “Is it bad?”

  “No, actually. But ever since that night I spent under Cliff House, it’s bothered me more. You don’t need me for anything, do you?”

  “Know where to find you if I do,” Wayne grunted.

  “I was thinking of heading over to the B and B to see Kate. Is she busy?”

  “No more than usual. Tell her I’m sorry I won’t be home for dinner.” He put the police car back into gear and rolled into the parking lot. I turned the truck onto the Augusta Road in the direction of Waterfield Village.

  The Waterfield Inn started life in the late 1890s as the home of the fabulously wealthy Ritter family, and is a gorgeous three-story Queen Anne construction in the heart of Waterfield’s historic district. It’s painted yellow with white trim, and has towers and turrets and porches and bay windows: every architectural excess imaginable, the very hallmark of the Queen Anne style.

  By the time Kate got her hands on it, it had been turned into three apartments with three skuzzy little kitchens and three marginal bathrooms. She and Derek spent the better part of a year restoring the place to its former glory, and then last winter, Derek and I spent a few months turning the old carriage house on the back of the property into a love nest for Kate and Wayne. The chief of police, it turned out, didn’t want to live in the main house, where the guests might come across him wandering down the hall to the bathroom in his boxer shorts in the middle of the night.

  Kate was in the carriage house when I got there. It was the middle of the week, so business was slow, and at dinnertime she doesn’t usually have much to do anyway, since a bed and breakfast is only licensed to serve breakfast and cold, boxed lunches. Most of the work happens early in the day: cooking and serving breakfast, cleaning up, changing sheets and towels…By the time the end of the day rolls around, there isn’t a whole lot left to do except hang out and be available for questions. And with a mostly empty house, Kate had gone home—across the gra
ss to the carriage house—and started cooking dinner for herself and the husband she expected to arrive soon.

  She wasn’t thrilled when I told her he would be a while yet.

  “Another one? You found another body?”

  “I couldn’t help it. When we didn’t see Miss Shaw, we got worried. It just wasn’t like her not to sit at the window and watch everyone.”

  “She was a nosy old bat,” Kate said, “God bless her soul.” She turned down the heat simmering under the homemade spaghetti sauce.

  I nodded, grateful that the bubbling sauce—redolent of garlic, sundried tomatoes, and oregano—was helping to remove the sickly sweet stench in my nose. “One of the guys on the second floor was whistling ‘Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead’ when he went to tell his partner the news.”

  “Most people don’t like a busybody,” Kate said. “I doubt she’ll be missed, poor thing. You want some dinner?”

  “I could eat,” I said, surprised that I meant it. The delicious smell of the simmering sauce must have chased any lingering nausea out of my system. “But what about Wayne?”

  “What about him?” Kate turned to pull flatware and glasses out of the kitchen cabinet. “If he can’t make it home for dinner, he can’t complain if someone else eats it instead.”

  She took one look at my face and started laughing. “I’m joking, Avery. There’s plenty of sauce for all of us, and when he gets home, it’s a matter of ten minutes to toss a handful of noodles in a pot. Don’t worry about it; you’re not taking food out of my husband’s mouth.”

  “Oh. OK.” I started breathing again. “In that case…sure, I’d love some dinner.”

  “Make yourself comfortable.” She filled the plates with droopy strands of angel hair pasta before ladling chunky sweet-smelling sauce over top. My stomach rumbled.

  “Smells good.”

  “Hopefully it’ll taste good, too.” She put a plate in front of me. “Dig in.”

  I dug.

  Kate is a half-dozen years older than me, and a year or two older than Derek. They went out once or twice when she first moved to town and he’d just gotten dumped by Melissa, but things didn’t work out, for which I can only be grateful. She and I became friends as soon as I drove into Waterfield.

  She’s taller than me—most people are—with a head full of bouncy copper-colored curls, framing a friendly face with freckles and warm hazel eyes. And although she’s not pretty in the conventional sense, the vivid coloring and Jane Russell figure make her a knockout. It’s no wonder at all that Derek liked her. She’s extremely likable. And it was obvious that marriage to Wayne agreed with her, because she was practically glowing with happiness.

  “You look good,” I said.

  She glanced at me across the table. “I feel good.”

  “The house working out for you?” I glanced around at it. It was too small for a designated dining room, so we were sitting in the eat-in portion of the kitchen, at a small round café table for two, looking out at the yard behind the bed and breakfast. The kitchen cabinets were white, the counter marble, and the floors dark-stained wood. I’d done my best to make the whole carriage house look like a Parisian apartment, because Paris was where Kate and Wayne spent their honeymoon, and I wanted them to remember it every time they looked around.

  “The house is great,” Kate said. “Why?”

  “No reason. I’m just thinking about the condo.” Another fairly compact space I needed to spruce up.

  She tilted her head. “You had a small apartment in New York, didn’t you? What did you do there?”

  I thought back. It had been a rental, like most apartments in New York. Two bedrooms, like the condo, but on a much smaller scale. No dining room, nor any eating area in the living room. Just a small space for a small table and two chairs in the kitchen.

  “We couldn’t do much to the space itself. We didn’t own it, even if we lived in it my whole life. Until my mom married Noel and moved to California three years ago.”

  “And then you lived there alone?”

  I nodded. “Until Aunt Inga died and I came here. A friend of a friend sublet it, and then ended up taking over the lease when I stayed in Waterfield. We made sure the furniture was small—both Mom and I are little people; small scale furniture was fine for both of us—and we used a lot of mirrors to open the space up visually. And Mom liked landscapes, since she thought they made up for not having a lot of windows.”

  “Bringing the outside in?” Kate suggested.

  “That, plus visually extending the space. Pictures of landscapes give the perception of depth. And there’s not a lot of green space in New York, so the landscapes made up for some of the concrete, too.”

  Kate nodded. “So what do you plan to do about the condo? You won’t be decorating it, after all. No pictures, no mirrors, no furniture.”

  “Not sure,” I admitted. She was right about that; furnishings and decorations have a lot to do with making a place look bigger or smaller, and without them, I’d have to come up with other ways to do the job. “Play with paint colors, maybe. Horizontal lines make a room look bigger. We talked about going with the warehouse look for some architectural interest; Derek thinks the space is too bland and boring—”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Kate grinned. “I suppose vertical lines makes the space look smaller?”

  “Taller, anyway,” I said. “Smaller…that depends on the width of the stripes. Wide stripes make the wall look longer than skinny stripes. It’s all about tricking the eye.” I thought for a second. “It’s possible I could talk John Nickerson into letting me borrow some furniture from his store to decorate the place. He lent me a few things I used to stage the house on Becklea Drive.”

  John Nickerson owns an antique store on Main Street, down the street from Derek’s loft, and the house on Becklea Drive was a midcentury ranch we’d renovated last fall. The previous owner had worked for John some years before, so he’d felt a certain proprietary interest in the place, and since his store specializes in midcentury furnishings and art, all of his merchandise looked great in the house. The sleek midcentury lines would probably look equally good in the condo.

  “Can’t hurt to ask,” Kate said, and got up to put her plate in the extra narrow dishwasher we’d squeezed into the pint-sized kitchen. I’d fitted one into the design plans for the condo’s kitchen as well. “Do you have to run, or can you stay and visit?”

  “I can stay for a while.” I brought my plate and utensils over to the counter.

  “Not going crazy with the wedding prep yet?”

  “The church is booked, the minister is hired, and the hall is rented, but that was no big deal. There was never a question about it. Derek and I both want Barry Norton to marry us, and we’ll have the reception in the church hall. It was just a question of picking the date. I finally got the invitations out.”

  “I got mine in the mail.” Kate nodded, pointing to the front of the stainless steel refrigerator where the invitation hung, fastened with a magnet in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. “How’s everything else going?”

  “The only two things left to decide on now are the food and the clothes.”

  “I’ll do the food.”

  “You can’t do the food. You’re the matron of honor.”

  “Shannon will help,” Kate said. “And if I ask Cora and Beatrice, I’m sure they’ll help as well. And Jill, if she’s up and about again after the baby. And your mom will be in town by then, too. Between us we’ll get it done.”

  “You don’t have to cater my wedding. I can hire a caterer.”

  “I want to,” Kate said. “Except the wedding cake. I don’t do cakes.”

  “I’ll get one of the bakeries to do the cake.” Wonder if there was such a thing as a whoopie pie wedding cake to be had? If it existed anywhere, it would exist here in Maine.

  “Let’s turn on the TV,” Kate said, “and watch the Cooking Channel. Start making a list of what you want.”

  “Works for me.”
I snagged a pen and notepad off the counter and settled into the sofa in the living room while Kate reached for the television remote.

  —6—

  Wayne came home after another hour, with Derek in tow.

  “Saw the truck,” my boyfriend said when I raised an inquiring brow. “I was gonna walk home”—everything in downtown Waterfield is just a few minutes from everything else—“but then I realized you were still here.”

  “Hungry?” Kate asked. “There’s plenty of sauce left. I’ll make more spaghetti.”

  “I could eat,” Derek said, while Wayne nodded.

  “I’ll go take a shower while the pasta cooks.”

  “If you want to wash up,” Kate said to Derek as she got up from the sofa to start boiling water for more angel hair pasta, “you know where the bathroom is.”

  He nodded, and disappeared in the direction of the first-floor half bath, while Wayne headed upstairs to the master bath and shower.

  “How did it go?” I asked a few minutes later, when Derek came back out to the living room with water stains on his T-shirt and wet strands of hair around his face.

  He blew out a breath as he sat down next to me on the sofa and put an arm along the back of it, and behind my shoulders. “About as could be expected. She’s still dead.”

  “I didn’t think she wouldn’t be. Any idea what happened?”

  He shook his head. “Not until the medical examiner has had a go. But if I’m guessing, and if Amelia Easton is right and Miss Shaw had food allergies, I’m gonna say she died of anaphylactic shock, from eating something she was allergic to.”

  “Don’t people with food allergies usually keep medicines around that they can take in an emergency? You know, the same way someone with asthma keeps an inhaler?”

  “It’s called an EpiPen,” Derek said, “and yes, they do. Usually.”

  “Did you find one?”

  “I didn’t look,” Derek said. “I waited for Wayne and Brandon to get there, then I showed them the body and told them what happened. They looked around while I reinstalled the lock on the front door. The van from the medical examiner’s office came and took the body away, and then Wayne and I left and came here.”