No doubt. Jamie had barely managed to lift her hand to close the door; bumping and grinding with a pole would be far, far beyond her.
We continued down to the basement, which looked just as it had when we arrived earlier. There was no sign of life, except for the sound of the dryers from the utility room.
I twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. “Candy?”
We both stuck our heads in.
The utility room looked just as it had when I’d looked at it a week ago. Three washers, three dryers, a utility sink, and two uncomfortable metal chairs. Unlike then, when everything had been quiet, now two of the dryers were turning while the third had just finished, and one of the front-loading washers was going through the final spin cycle. A couple of wet shirts were drip-drying on a small rack in the corner, and a paperback novel was sitting on one of the chairs, spine up. The cover showed a scantily clad female swooning in the arms of a brawny, half-naked male.
Beyond that, the room was empty.
“Huh.” I looked around.
“Maybe she went outside for some fresh air,” Derek suggested. “It’s a bit stuffy in here.”
It was. Or maybe not stuffy so much as clammy. Steam from the hot water and heat from the dryers had combined into the sort of humidity that was almost solid. And if Candy was suffering from the same ailment as Jamie, she might have thought some fresh air would feel good.
I closed the utility room door behind me, muffling the sounds of washer and dryers and sealing in that awful humidity, and headed toward the front of the building, where the grass was, with Derek on my heels.
“What exactly is it you want to talk to her about?” he wanted to know as I pushed open the door to the outside and we passed into the cool temperature of autumn.
I opened my mouth to answer, but closed it again when a roar sounded from over to my left. We both whipped around, in time to see Robin and little Benjamin come hurtling across the grass with Bruce in hot pursuit. He was the one who was roaring. Benjamin’s little legs pumped as fast as he could manage, and his mother was right next to him, pulling him along. They were both laughing. At least until Bruce made a mighty leap, and tackled both of them and they ended up in a heap on the ground. Benjamin rolled, shrieking with delight. Robin, on the other hand, curled up like a hedgehog, cowering on the ground. When Bruce prepared to fling himself at her, she squirmed backward, her voice too high-pitched for me to understand. The grin slid right off his face. After a moment, he reached out and hauled her into his arms, and folded her in a bear hug. When Benjamin trailed back to ask why Daddy had stopped playing, Bruce stroked the boy’s head, but without loosening his hold on Robin. His voice was low, just barely high enough for us to hear.
“I’ll be right there, Benjamin. Mommy needs a minute.”
“I don’t see Candy,” I said softly.
Derek shook his head. “Nobody out here but the Mellons. And I don’t think this is the time to ask them if they’ve seen her.”
Definitely not. Bruce had let go of Robin, who was squatting to give Benjamin a hug. There were tears on her cheeks. Bruce, meanwhile, was looking around, his face fierce. Before he could turn in our direction, I ducked back into the building, and pulled Derek with me.
“What was that all about?” I said when we were on our way back toward the utility room.
He shot me a look. “How would I know?”
“She looked afraid, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “I think she’s probably got some abuse in her background.”
“Surely not by Bruce?”
Derek shook his head. “Wayne was living a floor down from them for a while. If there was something going on, he’d have noticed. Police officers are trained to look for signs of domestic abuse, same as doctors. Besides, she didn’t look afraid of Bruce.”
She hadn’t. She had turned to him for comfort, and he’d immediately stopped doing what was making her uncomfortable. Whatever her problem was, it didn’t seem to be with him.
And it was none of our business. I pushed open the door to the utility room again, and stuck my head in, just in case Candy had appeared in the couple of minutes we’d been gone. “Still empty.”
“Maybe she’s across the hall,” Derek said, and headed for the door to the community room and storage units. He pushed it open and let me go in first, and then he followed me.
The storage space was just as deserted as the laundry room across the way. There was no sign of Candy.
“Should we check the community room?”
“We’re here. We may as well.” He moved past the doors to the storage units and pulled open the heavy door to the community room. And froze in the doorway, as if he’d walked into an invisible wall. “Shit.”
“What?” I moved to join him, looking past his shoulder. “God.”
Candy was on the floor, curled in a fetal position, and she didn’t react at all when we came through the door.
—12—
“She’s still alive,” Derek said.
Unlike me, who was still standing there petrified, staring, my heart beating so hard I thought it might knock a hole right through my chest, Derek had shaken off the shock and inertia and had fallen to his knees next to Candy. When I didn’t answer, he raised his voice. “Avery!”
The word cut through the rushing in my ears, and I blinked. “What?”
“She’s still alive. There’s a pulse.”
“There is? God. I mean, good. I mean…what do you want me to do?”
My voice was jittery and uneven. Derek’s was level and perfectly calm. “We have to keep her alive until the paramedics get here. I need you to call them.”
“Sure. Um…My phone’s upstairs.”
“Use mine.” He dug into his pocket and pulled it out.
“What do I tell them?” I took the phone from his hand and watched the display, searching for a connection. There wasn’t one, down here in the bowels of the building.
“Female,” Derek recited, “early twenties, full systemic shutdown.”
I looked up from the phone. “You don’t know what’s wrong with her?” How could that be? He was a doctor, wasn’t he?
“I know she’ll die,” Derek said tightly, “if we don’t get help.”
Right. “There’s no connection. I’ll have to go outside, to make sure I can get a signal.”
“Hurry,” Derek said.
I scrambled through the door and out.
Two minutes later I was back, feeling a little calmer and a bit more like I could breathe again. “They’re on their way. How is she?”
“Still breathing,” Derek said. “Barely.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Do you know CPR?” He had flipped Candy over on her back and was on his knees beside her, pushing on her chest.
“Um…” Theoretically, yes. In practice, not so much. I’d gone through the training at some point, trying to breathe life back into a rubber doll, but I’d never had occasion to use what I’d learned on anything living. And it was years ago, so I was afraid I’d probably forgotten everything but the basics.
“Never mind,” Derek said. “I can keep going for a few minutes on my own. When will the paramedics be here?”
“They said about five minutes.”
I hadn’t taken my eyes off Candy. She was breathing, but so shallowly I could barely see her chest rise and fall. And she was deathly pale, even paler than Jamie.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Not sure. But it isn’t a hangover. Alcohol poisoning maybe.” He kept the heart massage going. When he straightened, he added, his voice still calm but tighter now, “You’re not doing anyone any good standing there. Run upstairs and see if Gregg’s home. I could use another pair of hands. A pair that knows what they’re doing. It’s been a while since I did this.”
I nodded and took off. Two minutes later I was back. “No answer.”
“Damn,” Derek said. He had turned paler, too, in the time I�
��d been gone, probably from the exertion and the worry. “Any sign of the ambulance?”
“I’ll go look.” But I didn’t. I couldn’t look away from Candy. She was so still, and so pale that she looked dead already, and coupled with Derek’s obvious worry, it froze my feet in place. I felt light-headed, and as I reached out a hand to brace myself against the wall, a couple of splinters embedded themselves in my palm. While I usually don’t enjoy splinters, I welcomed these, since the pain gave me something to focus on rather than the dizziness that was making my head spin.
Derek looked up at me over his shoulder. “Go outside, Avery.”
“What?” I managed.
He raised his voice, put some sharpness into it. “Go outside. Now! Make sure the paramedics don’t waste time getting in here. And get some fresh air before you pass out. I can’t deal with more than one body at a time, and right now, she’s the priority.”
I nodded and stumbled out, catching myself on the walls along the way. The banging of the dryers rolled in my ears until I was outside.
The fresh air did help a little, and so did the sight of the ambulance shrieking up the Augusta Road, lights flashing and sirens screaming. It took the turn into the parking lot on two wheels, tires protesting loudly. I waved both arms above my head.
The next couple of minutes were frantic, disjointed. The paramedics grabbed their gurney and hustled inside while I held the door. They loaded Candy up with Derek still pushing on her chest, and wheeled her back out to the ambulance, where they started hooking her up to various IVs and monitors. Meanwhile, the sound of the siren and the appearance of the ambulance had summoned all the residents currently in the building, who had clattered down the stairs to gather in the downstairs hallway, gabbling and rubbernecking and trying to get a bead on what was going on. Poor Jamie was almost as pale as Candy, weaving back and forth, being supported by Amelia Easton and William Maurits, while Bruce still had an arm around Robin, who kept Benjamin’s hand in a tight grip. In the middle of it all, another siren sliced the air, louder and louder until it cut off with an electronic wail as a police car came to a stop in the lot. Wayne popped out and raked the assembly with a comprehensive look.
“What the hell happened here?”
“Avery can tell you,” Derek said from inside the ambulance. “I’m riding in with her.”
One of the paramedics glanced at him. “Sir, you can’t—”
The other shook his head. “Shut up and drive the bus, Coleman. Dr. Ellis and I’ve got this.”
Paramedic number one snapped his mouth closed and hopped in the front seat, his cheeks pink.
“I’m not actually Dr. Ellis anymore,” Derek said mildly as the doors shut, and that was the last thing I heard.
As the ambulance headed out of the lot, sirens and lights going, Wayne turned to me. “Explain what happened.”
“I have no idea,” I said. “We came out here this afternoon to talk about what we wanted to do to the condo. I wanted to ask Candy a question, so we knocked on her door. Jamie said she was downstairs doing laundry. When we didn’t find her in the laundry room, we went into the community room and found her lying on the floor. I called nine-one-one while Derek did what he could for her. That’s all I know.”
“What happened to her?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Whatever it was, it happened before we got here.”
“Did Derek say anything about it? Did he notice any injuries or anything?”
I shook my head. “If he did, he didn’t mention it. He didn’t say much at all. Too busy trying to keep her alive.”
He had mentioned alcohol poisoning, but I found that explanation hard to believe, in the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday. Jamie had mentioned drinking wine the night before, yes, but from everything I knew about alcohol poisoning, it didn’t work like that. People who die from alcohol poison have been drinking pretty steadily for a long time; they didn’t share a bottle of wine at night and suddenly collapse twelve hours later.
“Jamie?” Wayne said.
Jamie looked up. She was wedged between Amelia Easton and William Maurits, who were more or less keeping her upright, and she’d been crying. There were tear tracks on her cheeks, but she made no attempt to reach up and wipe them away. With the tears, and in her extra pale face, her eyes looked a bright emerald green. “Yes?”
“Do you know anything about this?”
Jamie shook her head.
“Can you tell me what Candy did this morning?”
Jamie sniffed. “We slept late,” she said, her voice rasping. “It must have been eleven by the time we got up. Neither of us felt great. We had some wine last night.”
She looked guilty. I couldn’t imagine why, since she and Candy were both into their twenties and legally allowed to get as drunk as they wanted in the privacy of their own apartment. It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong.
“Candy always does her laundry on Sundays. We have school the rest of the week, and on Saturdays she likes to do other things.” Her eyes brimmed over again, and big, fat tears rolled down her pale cheeks. “She felt awful, and so did I, so I wanted to wait to do laundry until I felt better. But she was out of clean clothes, and she said she could be hungover in the basement as well as upstairs.”
“When did she go down?” Wayne wanted to know.
It had been just after noon, when the laundry room opened. “We put our names on the schedule from week to week,” Jamie explained.
“And then?”
“She stayed downstairs. She had a book. And it’s nice not to be right on top of each other every minute. I went back to bed until Avery knocked on the door.” She glanced at me.
So that was why it had taken her so long to answer the summons when we knocked.
“You didn’t see Candy again after she went downstairs?”
Jamie shook her head. She seemed a little disoriented, almost as if she wasn’t just hungover, but still a little intoxicated. It must have been quite the celebration, if the alcohol stayed in her system this long.
Wayne must have noticed the same thing, because he asked, “How much did you have to drink last night? Between the two of you.”
“Just a bottle of wine,” Jamie said. “Red.”
“Have you had anything to drink since last night? Hair of the dog to chase the hangover this morning maybe?”
Jamie shook her head, as her pale face took on a green tinge. “No.”
Wayne looked around. “Did anyone else see Candy this morning?”
Nobody answered.
“I want to go to the hospital to see her,” Jamie whispered.
“I’ll take you.” This was Amelia Easton’s contribution. She had her arm around Jamie’s waist, holding her up. “We can go right now.”
“I need to change first.” Jamie glanced down at her duckie pajama pants, and wobbled.
Amelia guided her toward the stairs. “We’ll go upstairs first. Maybe get some food into you. It might help to settle your stomach.”
“I don’t think so…” Jamie muttered, but she allowed herself to be herded up the stairs nonetheless.
William Maurits gave me a polite little nod before he followed, his step springy and his posture ramrod straight, as if to make up for his lack of inches. Last were the Mellons: Bruce with his arm around Robin’s shoulders, Benjamin clinging to his mother’s hand. With Candy on her way to the hospital, Derek riding with her, and Miss Shaw in the morgue, the group of neighbors was severely diminished.
“Avery?” Wayne said. I turned to look at him. “Everything OK?”
I nodded. “I’m just a little shook up. But I’ll be all right.”
“Do me a favor. I want to go upstairs, to pick up that bottle of wine the girls shared last night. Brandon’s on his way. Will you wait for him and let him in if he arrives while I’m upstairs?”
“Sure,” I said. “You think there was something wrong with the wine?”
“It’s hard to say. A young, healthy girl shou
ldn’t have this kind of reaction to half a bottle of red wine. I want the bottle and glasses tested, along with anything else the girls ate or drank last night. If Brandon gets here while I’m upstairs, tell him to have a look around the laundry room and the community room for anything unusual.”
I told him I would, and he headed up to the third floor. I sat down on the ground with my back against the building, wondering what the hell had just taken place and how it was that this peaceful, quiet condo complex had turned into such a bloody battlefield.
Brandon pulled into the lot a few minutes later. I was feeling better out in the crisp air and silence, and by the time he’d pulled his forensic kit out of the trunk of the police cruiser and was coming toward the door, I was on my feet and ready to do my duty.
“What happened?” Brandon wanted to know, blue eyes a little wild in his pale face.
“I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. “She was on the floor of the community room. Unconscious. Barely breathing.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, was she shot? Beaten? Was there something wrong with her?”
“Nothing I could see. Nothing Derek mentioned. She was hungover, or so her roommate said. They’d had some wine last night and woke up late, feeling sick. Jamie’s in pretty bad shape, too, although nowhere near as bad as Candy.”
Brandon furrowed his brows. “How much wine did they have?”
“Not enough to account for this. Unless there was something wrong with the wine. Wayne is upstairs picking it up, along with anything else they ate or drank. He said to take it to the lab and have it tested when you’re done here.”
Brandon nodded.
“He said to get started in the laundry room and community room, to look for anything unusual.”
Brandon nodded and pushed open the door. No sooner had he stepped through into the hallway than Wayne was there, along with Jamie—looking pale and wan—and Amelia Easton, looking motherly and solicitous with a hand under Jamie’s arm.
“We’ll stop for a cup of coffee along the way,” she told the girl, “and see if that won’t make you feel better.”
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