Jamie shook her head, her eyes teary. “I just want to get there.”
“There’ll be coffee at the hospital,” Wayne assured Professor Easton at the same time as he passed the bag in his hand off to Brandon. It contained the bottle of wine along with the glasses from last night, I gathered, when I heard them clink together. “Put this in the car, please.”
Brandon nodded and headed back out to the parking lot.
“I’ll be there myself in just a few minutes,” Wayne continued, addressing Jamie and Amelia Easton, “to see what, if anything, the medical team can tell me.”
They both nodded, and Amelia Easton supported Jamie toward the door, held open for them by Brandon. They passed through into the parking lot, and Brandon came back inside the building.
“Anything else?”
Wayne shook his head. “She swore up and down they just drank the one bottle. I’ve got it, empty now, as well as the glasses and also a box of chocolates. Have a quick look around here, for anything out of the ordinary, and then drive it down to the lab in Portland. I know they won’t get started on it until tomorrow, but at least it’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
Brandon nodded.
“Avery can show you where she and Derek found Candy. I’m going to the hospital.” He headed for the door.
“If you see Derek,” I called after him, “tell him to call me when he’s ready to get picked up.”
Wayne didn’t turn, just waved a hand to signal that he’d heard me.
As soon as he was out of sight, I took Brandon into the laundry room, where he picked up Candy’s paperback romance to add to the bag in the car, and then into the community room, where I pointed to the place on the floor where Candy had lain. Brandon looked around. “Nothing here that I can see.”
I shook my head. “No blood. She wasn’t shot or stabbed. Unless there’s something wrong with the wine, it looks like natural causes.”
“Girls her age don’t die from natural causes,” Brandon said grimly. “Thanks, Avery.”
“Sure.” But I couldn’t quite bring myself to walk out.
Brandon looked at me. “Something on your mind?”
I hesitated. I knew something he didn’t—or at least something I assumed he didn’t. About Mr. Guido and what I thought was Candy’s affair with a married man and what had looked like an argument between them on Friday night…as they got together to discuss something that had to do with Miss Shaw’s death.
If what had happened to Candy wasn’t natural, Mr. Guido was at the top of my suspect list. Or perhaps Mrs. Guido, if she knew her husband was diddling Candy on the side.
Always assuming he was diddling Candy on the side, of course. And assuming he and his wife didn’t have one of those “open” relationships where he was allowed to.
It was information I felt like the police should probably know. Except it was all pretty much supposition on my part. I assumed they were having an affair, but they may not be. I assumed they’d had an argument Friday night, but they may not have. And I’d assumed the conversation I’d overheard had had something to do with Miss Shaw—it had sounded like it might—but I hadn’t heard the other side of it, so I couldn’t actually be sure of that, either.
And if I was wrong, and they weren’t having an affair, and Mr. Guido hadn’t done anything to Candy, did I want to be responsible for siccing the police on him? What if he was just a concerned boss wanting to make sure his employee was all right after the sudden death of her neighbor? The police would interrogate him, and maybe interrogate his wife, and upset those two pretty little girls I’d seen—and it would all be for nothing.
Brandon was still looking at me, waiting for my answer. I shook my head. “I’m just a little shook up, that’s all. I think I’ll spend a couple minutes folding the laundry and throw the rest of it in the dryers, and then I’ll head down to the hospital.”
“I’m gonna get the stuff to the lab,” Brandon said.
I nodded and headed back to the laundry room.
I hadn’t been kidding when I told Derek I enjoy doing laundry. There’s something very peaceful, almost hypnotic, about watching clothes agitate through a front loader’s window. And folding clothes is one of those mindless activities, like washing dishes, that keeps your hands busy but leaves your mind free to wander. Great for puzzling over solutions to mysteries. These days I have other activities that serve that same purpose—removing wallpaper and scraping paint come to mind—but as I folded Candy’s tight jeans and cropped tops and silky little bits of underwear, I found myself going back to what had happened.
For a second, when we’d first walked into the community room and had seen her on the floor, I’d been sure she was dead. She’d been so still, so pale, her back hardly rising or falling at all. And in the ambulance, with all the tubes and machines hooked up to her…not to mention the look in Derek’s eyes. He wasn’t one to worry overmuch, my boyfriend—when Melissa had gotten shot, he’d acted like it was no big deal—so when he did, I tended to take it seriously. Candy was in a bad way.
And Brandon was right: Girls her age didn’t just drop dead—or almost dead—from natural causes. Not unless they had some kind of hidden medical issue. Which she might well have, but if so, no one had mentioned it. People knew that Miss Shaw had had severe allergies, and several of them had said so. But no one—not even Jamie—had said anything about Candy having health problems. Chances were she didn’t, that she was just as healthy as she looked. Or as healthy as she had looked, up until today.
That was something the doctors would figure out anyway, and while I could keep my fingers crossed, mentally, for a simple solution, I was pretty sure this would turn out to be something more sinister than a hidden case of, say, diabetes. Wayne must agree, since he’d determined that the wine and glasses and chocolate needed to go to the lab. To be tested for poison, I assumed.
Did she have any family? She grew up in Waterfield—I knew she’d gone to school with Brandon—so she probably did. Although if she’d chosen to live with Jamie instead of saving money by staying at home, they might have problems.
Either way, Wayne or Brandon—or the hospital—would notify them. And if they’d had anything to do with this, the police would find out.
Would anyone notify Mr. Guido?
Not likely, I thought. Jamie probably knew what was going on, but if Candy was trying to keep it secret—and judging from where she’d parked the other night, in the far corner of Guido’s parking lot, almost out of sight under the branches of a tree, she wasn’t eager to broadcast her relationship to the world—Jamie might not mention it. Or could be too rattled to think of it.
Maybe I should make a quick trip out to Wellhaven to tell the guy what was going on. It would be a kindness. If he and Candy were carrying on, he must feel something for her. Even if he didn’t, if she were just a fun diversion, he should know that she was in the hospital, that she’d almost died. That sometime soon, the police might stop by to talk to him.
—13—
I ran up the two flights of stairs and into our condo, where I grabbed my bag and headed back out. I was on my way down the stairs again when the phone rang. I fished it out.
“Yes?”
“Where the hell have you been?” Derek asked, without so much as a by-your-leave.
“What do you mean, where have I been? Downstairs, with Brandon.”
“You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“It was upstairs, remember? In my bag? That’s why I used yours to call nine-one-one.”
“Oh,” Derek said, and it sounded like he took a deep breath. “Right.”
“I didn’t even think about it until just now. So are you ready for me to pick you up?” I crossed my fingers that he’d say no.
“No,” Derek said. “Dad’s here, visiting a patient. He’ll give me a ride.”
“Oh.” Well, that was convenient. For both of us.
“They want us to come over for dinner. Cora’s making lasag
na.”
Yum. Dr. Ben’s second wife, Derek’s stepmom, is a wonderful cook. “I’ll be there,” I said, mouth watering. “What time?”
He told me six o’clock. “Beatrice and Steve will be there, too.” Cora’s younger daughter was back in Waterfield with her husband after a few years of living in Boston. “Why can’t you come right now?”
“I want to run an errand first,” I explained. “It might take me a half hour or so.”
“Oh. OK. Fine. I’ll see you later.”
He moved to hang up, and stopped when I yelped. I could hear him put the phone back to his ear. “What?”
“What about Candy? She made it to the hospital, right?”
“She’s hanging on,” Derek said grimly. “No news yet on what’s wrong. She came in in a full systemic shutdown, but no one knows why. They’ve managed to stabilize her for now. She’s getting oxygen to help her breathe, and an IV to keep her hydrated, and they’ve pumped her full of medications. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed. And pray.”
“I will,” I said.
“I’ll see you over at Dad’s.” He hung up. I stuffed the phone back into my bag and continued down the stairs.
Two minutes later, I was in the car and on my way to Wellhaven. The gate was still hanging open, and now that I knew exactly where this guy lived, I drove straight to his house, and it wasn’t long at all before I was parked at the curb outside the McMansion.
The wife’s SUV was still missing from the driveway, and now so was the BMW. It had looked to me like the little girls were going to a birthday party, so maybe the wife had stayed there with them. The husband must have gone off on his own after they left. Maybe he was at Guido’s, ready to open the restaurant for the night.
It looked like I wouldn’t be able to talk to him after all. At least not there. Although I could stop by Guido’s on my way back to town and see if he was there.
On the other hand, if the house was empty, maybe I should take the opportunity to do a little bit of snooping. Carefully, of course, since there were neighbors all around. But if nothing else, maybe I could at least come up with a name for this guy.
I turned the Beetle off and got out, pocketing the key. A quick look around assured me that none of the neighbors were out on their front lawns, watching me as I moseyed innocently toward the mailbox at the curb.
It was red and ornately engraved, with a slot at the top where the mailman could deliver the mail, and a drawer on the bottom, with a keyhole, where the owner could retrieve it. In between the two were the words Cassetta per le Lettere and Regie Poste. Italian. It’s not a language I speak, but I know enough about it to recognize it when I see it written.
The mailbox was the perfect accompaniment to the house, with its Mediterranean look. However, because of that pesky keyhole, I couldn’t open it to see whether there might be mail inside listing the names of the owners. It was Sunday anyway, with no mail delivery, so it had been a long shot, but I’d thought it was worth a try.
All righty, then. I turned to the house. Maybe there was a name on the doorbell. Or on the door itself.
Squaring my shoulders, I started up the shallow steps to the front door.
It seemed to take forever to get there, as I counted each step—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen; there were a lot of them—and felt the skin between my shoulder blades prickle. It felt like someone was watching me, but another look over my shoulder, more thorough this time, showed me no one. Just my Beetle, sitting forlorn at the curb, looking jazzily bohemian and out of place in these refined surroundings.
The front door—or doors, since they were double—were twice my height and made of heavy, carved wood, polished to a high gloss. There was no doorbell that I could see, but an ornate brass knocker hung in the middle of the door on the left. It was almost the size of my head, and consisted of two mermaids clutching at the feet of a guy I assumed was Neptune, their tails curving down to form the handle of the knocker. Before I realized what I was doing, I found myself casting one mermaid with Candy’s features and blond ponytail, and the other with the strong exotic beauty of the woman I had seen herding the little girls into the SUV earlier today. When I realized what I was doing, I shook my head to dislodge the image, but it was stuck.
Each side of the door had etched glass sidelights, and I stepped over to one and pressed my nose against it. If I squinted just right, maybe I’d be able to see some of the interior through one of the designs.
“Can I help you?” a voice said behind me.
I jumped, and accidentally banged my forehead against the glass. “Ow!”
Swinging around on my heel, I slapped a hand to my brow. And lowered it again when I met a pair of cold, dark eyes.
Oops.
I’d thought it’d be one of the neighbors, someone who had noticed me sneaking around where I had no business being. I hadn’t expected it to be the homeowner. I’d been confidently sure he’d left a couple of hours ago. Obviously I’d been wrong.
“Oh,” I said lamely.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. “That your car?”
He gestured to the Beetle. I nodded.
“I’ve seen it before.”
I swallowed. “Lots of green Beetles around.”
He shook his head. “Not in Waterfield. You were here earlier. And I saw you a couple nights ago, too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Sure.” He tilted his head and looked at me.
Up close, he must be a just a couple of years shy of forty. And I suppose he was good-looking in an overly macho, Neanderthal way, if one likes the type. Slicked-back black hair, hooded eyes, olive skin. Unfriendly expression.
“Why don’t we go inside,” he said, taking my elbow. Note the lack of a question mark. That’s because it wasn’t a question.
“No…” I tried.
But resistance was futile. I’m five two; he was almost a foot taller, and outweighed me by at least sixty pounds. Before I knew it—certainly before I had time to weigh the pros and cons of screaming for help to try to attract attention—I was through the door and into the house, with the door closed and, for good measure, locked and bolted behind me.
“Now.” He steered me into a small antechamber off the hall to the right, his hand tight on my arm. “Sit.”
I sat, rubbing my arm, and in spite of the way my heart thudded and my palms were sweaty, I couldn’t help looking around. The interiors of people’s houses are interesting to me, both as a renovator and a designer, and besides, I didn’t want to look at him.
I was in a little sitting room with reproduction furniture of the same quality—and monetary value—as the stuff my former boyfriend Philippe Aubert used to make. The same stuff I used to design textiles for. Expensive, in other words.
(And in case you wondered: No, Philippe had not received an invitation to the wedding. When I’d told Kate I still had friends in New York, friends I’d invited, I hadn’t included Philippe in that description. We had parted on fairly amicable terms the second time, since I’d met Derek by then and had realized I didn’t care quite so much that Philippe had cheated on me. But he had lost the right to partake in the happiest day of my life when I’d learned that he hadn’t been able to keep Little Phil zipped in his pants for the forty-eight hours I spent in Waterfield, and he had gone to get his needs met by Tara, the receptionist, instead. She was twenty-two, vapid, and blond, and now that I thought about it, very similar to Candy in appearance. What is it with middle-aged men and young blondes?)
“Who are you?” this particular middle-aged man asked.
I pulled my attention from the room—a little too presumptuous, not quite lived in enough, like a photo spread in a home and garden magazine—to the man standing in front of me. “I’m Avery Baker. You?”
He didn’t answer, but his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “D’you work for my wife?”
I shook my head. “What kind of business does your wife have?�
��
He muttered something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I’m pretty sure it was the Italian equivalent of “stupid idiot,” so I didn’t ask him to clarify. The more time I spent with him, the less I understood what Candy saw in this guy.
“What are you?” he asked next. “A private detective?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I’m a designer.”
He blinked. “Francesca wants to redesign the place? After all the money she spent decorating it in the first place?”
“I have no idea what your wife wants to do. I came to talk to you about Candy.”
At the sound of that, his eyes narrowed again. “You were following me the other night.”
“I was following her,” I said. “From home to Guido’s. And then I followed you from there.”
“Why?”
I hesitated. It was probably best, and smartest, not to tell him that I’d overheard Candy’s phone conversation and suspected that he—or they—might have had a hand in killing Hilda Shaw. My situation was precarious enough right now, without telling him that I suspected him of murder.
“Just curious, I guess. That’s not the point.”
He put both hands on his hips, a very girly gesture for such a masculine man. “What’s the point?”
I glanced around the room. “Have you been here all day?”
“At home, you mean? Why?”
“Something happened,” I said.
“What?”
I watched him carefully. “Candy almost died this afternoon.”
I think he may have turned a shade paler, but it’s hard to be sure, since he flushed a deep red almost immediately. A vein beat in his temple. “And you think I had something to do with that?”
“You argued with her on Friday night, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer, just looked at me. It wasn’t a nice look, and it went on much too long for comfort.
“Sorry,” I said eventually, pressing my back into the chair in an effort to get farther away from him. He looked ready to pop. Either a blood vessel or me.
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