Wall-To-Wall Dead

by Jennie Bentley

  After a few seconds of heavy breathing through the nose, he pulled himself together. “Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t,” I said. And added, “Not necessarily. For all I know, she just had an attack of some kind. Would you happen to know if she suffered from any kind of illness?”

  He shook his head. “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that when we found her, she was in a full systemic shutdown. My fiancé has a medical degree, and he kept her alive until she got to the hospital. Last I spoke to him, he said she’s on a ventilator and drip, and nobody knows what happened, just that she almost died.”

  This time I definitely wasn’t imagining it; he had turned paler. “What hospital?”

  I told him. There’s only one, after all. He must be fairly new in town if he didn’t know where the hospital was. “If you call them, they might give you her status. If you don’t want to go down there yourself.” And he might not, just in case he didn’t want his wife to know what was going on.

  And then there was a tense little moment while we stared at each other. He looked like he was contemplating doing something to me, something I wouldn’t necessarily like. Like bashing me over the head with one of the marble statues of old Etruscans decorating the mantel, or tying me up and stuffing me in the closet until he had time to deal with me.

  “I’ll…um…” I slipped out of the chair and sideways. “I just wanted to tell you what happened. I thought you should know. So I’ll go now. Let you deal with this.”

  “Not so fast.” His hand shot out and grasped my arm again, fingers digging in. I winced. “Who else knows you’re here?”

  “A lot of people,” I said, twisting. I’d probably have bruises. Derek wouldn’t be happy when he saw them. “My fiancé. A couple of Candy’s neighbors. You’re hurting me.” And while he was at it, making me seriously consider whether he might not be capable of hurting Candy, too. Not to mention Miss Shaw.

  His hand tightened for a second, as if he knew what I was thinking, but then he shifted his grip and pushed me away. More or less flung me in the direction of the door. “Get the hell outta here.”

  His voice was rough.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I scurried to the front door. It took my shaking fingers a few seconds to unlock it, and every moment I stood there, I expected to get hit over the back of the head with a bust of Julius Caesar.

  But nothing happened. I got the lock turned and the bolt slid back, and then I yanked the door open and headed out, not concerned with closing it behind me. Once in the car and behind the wheel, I made sure the car was securely locked before I peeled rubber out of Wellhaven. I don’t think I drew a deep breath until I was outside the gated entrance and waiting to join the traffic in the direction of downtown.

  I had every intention of going straight to Cora and Dr. Ben’s house, to meet Derek and his family for dinner. I’d already kept him waiting, and I knew he wanted me there. But as I sat there waiting for a gap in traffic so I could swing my Beetle onto the road, a small blue Honda zoomed by in the opposite direction, a whole lot faster than it should have been going. Josh was lucky none of his dad’s deputies were out looking for speeders this afternoon.

  He drove like he had the hounds of hell on his tail, and I couldn’t help wondering if something else had happened, something I didn’t know about. So at the first opportunity, when there was a gap in traffic, I swung the Beetle out, and instead of going east, toward Waterfield, I headed west, into the sun and in the direction of Barnham College, trailing the Honda.

  He was way up ahead, and gaining ground fast, but I was pretty sure I knew where he was headed. When I reached the entrance to Barnham, I turned the Beetle into the parking lot and wasn’t surprised when I saw Josh’s Honda parked in a corner of the lot. As I slotted the Beetle into a parking space, a couple of cars down, the Honda’s door opened and Josh swung his long legs out. By the time I’d gotten out of my own car and slammed the door, he was on his way across the parking lot toward the computer building, a manila envelope in his hand.

  “Hey!” I called.

  He turned, and for a second I swear I saw a flash of fear cross his face. “Avery.” He stopped to wait for me as I trotted toward him, his smile looking a little forced.

  “Something wrong?” I wanted to know when I stopped in front of him. “You passed me up on the main road a minute or two ago, driving like a bat out of hell.” I gestured with my thumb toward the road.

  “I just heard about Candy,” Josh said.

  I could feel myself turn paler. “Is she…”

  “In the hospital.”

  Oh. I started breathing again. “I already knew that. I thought maybe something more had happened.” It had been a half hour or so since I’d spoken to Derek and gotten his assurance that Candy was still among the living. The situation could have changed.

  “Nothing that I know of,” Josh said, shifting from foot to foot. He looked guilty, and he’d put both hands—and the envelope—behind his back as if he hoped I might not notice it.

  “Are you two close?” I wanted to know.

  He shook his head. “Not really. Neighbors. And I see her at school sometimes. But she’s a couple years older than I am. I know Jamie better than I know Candy.”

  For some inexplicable reason, he flushed.

  “I see,” I said. That was interesting, considering that Candy was a native Waterfielder and Jamie had only been here for a year or so. But if she’d lived across the hall from Josh for that year, maybe it wasn’t so surprising after all. I could see where he might like the quiet Jamie more than the vapid Candy. “What’s in the envelope?”

  His shoulders slumped. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t mine,” Josh said.

  “Whose is it? Jamie’s?”

  He shot me a surprised look, and that was all the answer I needed. “Does it have anything to do with the Pompeii Gentleman’s Club in Portland?”

  This time the look wasn’t just surprised, it was somewhere between floored and respectful. “How do you know about that?”

  “Derek was there on Friday,” I said. “Bachelor party. He recognized her.”

  “Damn.” Josh glanced past me out across the parking lot and the Barnham quad, brown eyes serious behind the glasses.

  “I think she has more important things to worry about right now,” I said.

  Josh shook his head. “You don’t understand. Her family will have all kinds of fits if they find out. They’re religious. Fundamentalist. Some small sect where the women wear dresses and aprons and bonnets.”

  “Amish? Or Mennonite?”

  “Something,” Josh said with a vague wave of his hand. “Somewhere in Mississippi. The Bible Belt.”

  “She’s a long way from home.”

  “As far as she could get,” Josh said grimly. “Her folks didn’t want her to go. Something about someone else leaving and never coming back. They wanted her to stay home and get married and start having babies instead.”

  I could feel my eyes widen. “Straight out of high school?” What kind of parents actually want their daughters pregnant at seventeen or eighteen these days?

  Josh shrugged. “I guess it’s one of those groups that think women aren’t good for anything but cooking and having babies.”

  So it seemed. “Stripping seems a strange career choice for someone who grew up like that.”

  “She got a scholarship,” Josh explained. “That was how she convinced her parents to let her come here. It pays for her tuition and her books, and for her dorm room. But once she actually got here, she decided she wanted to live off-campus instead, and the scholarship didn’t cover off-campus housing, so she got a job. If her parents find out what she does, or even if they just realize she’s not living in the dorm anymore, they’ll drag her home. By the hair, most likely.”

  “They can’t do that,” I protested.

  “Yes, they can,” Josh a
nswered. “Jamie’s twenty. The age of majority in Mississippi is twenty-one.”

  “You’re kidding.” In New York it was eighteen. As far as I knew, it was eighteen in Maine as well. To be honest, I’d assumed the age of majority was eighteen pretty much across the board, and across the country.

  “There are only a few states where it’s higher,” Josh explained when I voiced this thought. “Mississippi is one of them.”

  “Wow.”

  He nodded. “She’s terrified that her parents will make her move back home. When Miss Shaw…”

  He snapped his lips shut, but it was too late. “What?” I said.

  Josh shook his head, his cheeks pink.

  “Don’t give me that. You can’t mention Miss Shaw and then refuse to say anything else. When Miss Shaw what? Died?” Or had she, per chance, threatened to call Jamie’s parents?

  Josh made a sound that was somewhere between an exasperated sigh and a raspberry. “When Miss Shaw died, Jamie was afraid Dad was gonna call her parents.”

  “Why would he do that? She didn’t have anything to do with Miss Shaw dying, did she?”

  “Of course not,” Josh said, sounding offended. “I told her he wouldn’t care. Stripping isn’t illegal. And it wasn’t like Miss Shaw was murdered. But she—” He stopped again, and once again pressed his lips together.

  “What?”

  He sighed, and this time it was a sigh. “She came knocking on my door that night, after Brandon had gone home. Late. Or early morning, really. Four o’clock or so.”

  No wonder he’d looked tired when I’d seen him around nine that morning. “What did she want?”

  “She wanted me to let her into Miss Shaw’s condo,” Josh said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shrugged. Obviously not.

  “Why didn’t you tell her no?” Frankly, I was more than a little surprised, not to say shocked, to hear this. I mean, he was the son of the chief of police; how could he even consider letting a civilian into a crime scene?

  “It was one of those offers I couldn’t refuse,” Josh said. When I looked at him, brows arched, I saw that he was squirming in a very guilty way. His cheeks were flushed and he avoided looking at me, quite determinedly.

  “Oh my God,” I said, putting two and two together, “you slept with her, didn’t you?”

  —14—

  Josh’s shoulders hunched, and he pulled his head down, like a turtle.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, full of righteous indignation. “I thought you and Shannon were getting serious. How could you sleep with someone else?”

  I’d assumed he’d been pining for Shannon forever, and here it turned out he’d been getting it on with an exotic dancer instead.

  His head snapped up. “I didn’t! For God’s sake, Avery!”

  I blinked. “But if you didn’t…”

  “Not then!” He took a breath, and when he spoke again, his voice was a little calmer. “It was last year sometime. November, maybe December.”

  Almost a year ago. Long before Shannon had given his long-standing crush on her any encouragement. That made it a little better.

  He added, “It was back when Shannon was spending all her free time with Gerard. I was frustrated. Jealous, even. I didn’t know at first that Gerard was Shannon’s dad. Jamie was nice. She’d just moved in across the hall, and the new job was making her feel”—he hesitated—“dirty, I guess. Like nobody decent would want her.”

  I nodded, and bit back the several snide comments I could have made.

  “It only happened once. She’s busy with school and work, and I”—he blushed again—“I’m in love with Shannon. I don’t want a relationship with anyone else.”

  “Does Shannon know?”

  He shook his head. “And I don’t want her to.”

  Small wonder. I wouldn’t like to hear that my boyfriend had had a fling with a stripper, either. Might make me feel just a little inferior, yeah? As far as I was concerned, Melissa was bad enough.

  “So Jamie knocked on the door and wanted you to let her into Miss Shaw’s condo. And made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  An offer which obviously didn’t include another session between the sheets. I was pretty sure I could trust Josh on that.

  “She said if I didn’t do it, she’d tell Shannon about us,” Josh said.

  Ah. That kind of offer he couldn’t refuse.

  “That wasn’t very nice of Jamie.”

  Josh shrugged.

  “So you let her in. And left her there?”

  “Of course not.” He sounded offended again. “I stayed with her. And I didn’t give her the stuff. I kept it.”

  “What stuff?”

  He ran a hand through his curls. They were in disarray, so it obviously wasn’t the first time. “Miss Shaw had information she’d dug up on people. Everyone in the building. People who used to live there but don’t anymore. Even people who never did, but who just know someone in the building. Like Kate and Shannon.”

  “Miss Shaw had information about Kate and Shannon?” I don’t know why that should strike me as worse than Miss Shaw having information about her own neighbors, but it did.

  Josh nodded. “And you and Derek. And me. And Jamie. And Candy—” He broke off.

  “Let me guess. Miss Shaw found out that Candy was sleeping with what’s-his-name.”

  “David Rossini,” Josh said, nodding. “Her boss. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know about that, too.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to take that, so I decided to let it pass without comment, even as I suppressed a quick shudder as I remembered the look in those cold, black eyes. David Rossini probably hadn’t been thinking about killing me and fitting me for concrete shoes before tossing me off the cliffs into the Atlantic, but it had felt that way.

  “Did Miss Shaw blackmail them? Candy and Jamie?”

  “For money? I don’t think so. Jamie was just worried about her parents finding out. And she told me that Rossini’s married, so…”

  Candy had been worried about his wife finding out. Naturally. “Did Jamie know about Candy and Mr. Rossini?”

  “Before we found the pictures?” Josh said. “I don’t think so. She seemed pretty surprised.”

  “Really?”

  Josh nodded. “She kept saying she couldn’t believe Candy would be so stupid. And that Francesca was going to hit the ceiling.”

  “What about the rest of the neighbors?”

  “What about them?”

  “Did Miss Shaw blackmail anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so,” Josh said. “None of us have any money. Besides, what does it matter?”

  I sighed, exasperated. “It matters because I’m trying to figure out why someone would go to the trouble of killing her.”

  “Someone killed her?” Josh said. “I thought Dad said it was an accident.”

  “He could be wrong. I’m sure it happens.”

  “Not often,” Josh said.

  “Well, what about David Rossini? If Miss Shaw had been blackmailing him—he does have money, quite a lot of it, plus a wife who probably wouldn’t be very happy to find out he’s cheating—then maybe he would kill Miss Shaw to shut her up.”

  “She did have pictures,” Josh said slowly. “Of Candy and Rossini. Fairly explicit pictures.”

  He blushed, the sweet thing.

  “Those are in the envelope?” I glanced at it.

  Josh nodded and took a tighter grip on his prize. “We looked everywhere we could think of for the stuff. It was Jamie who found it, behind the books in the living room.”

  “Why didn’t you put the books back on the shelves? If you had, maybe Brandon wouldn’t have noticed that someone had been there.”

  “No time,” Josh said. “By then it was morning, and Brandon was already on his way. He called and told me to meet him with the key. We got out of there as fast as we could.”

  Understandable. Brandon would realize that someone had
been there, but he wouldn’t know who or why.

  Something struck me. “You didn’t take her EpiPen, did you?”

  “Of course not,” Josh said. “We took the envelope, that’s all. Just the information she’d gathered on all the residents.”

  “Did you say that Miss Shaw had information about me and Derek?”

  Josh nodded.

  “Show me.” I held out my hand.

  Josh hesitated, clutching the envelope close to his chest. “Not here.”

  “Where, then?” Because if Miss Shaw had dug into my life, and Derek’s, I wanted to know what she’d found. Not because I had anything to hide—my life is an open book—but because it’s hard to resist something like that.

  “Lab,” Josh said with a quick glance around.

  Fine with me. I followed him across the parking lot and the grass into the building that held the computer lab, and up the stairs to the second floor. When we were seated—him in front of his computer, me on another rolling chair I’d pulled up beside it—I held out my hand again. “Let me see.”

  Josh blew out a breath, but he dug into the envelope and brought out a couple of snapshots. Digital photos, computer-printed. I fanned them out in my hand and caught my breath harshly when I got a better look. “That nasty old witch!”

  Miss Shaw must have shot the pictures through her kitchen window with a telephoto lens. And although they certainly weren’t indecent or in any way criminal, they were personal. The first showed me and Derek outside the condo building, next to the Beetle, and we were wearing the clothes we’d worn the very first time we’d come there to see the Antoninis’ condo. I remembered telling Derek she’d been watching us, and he’d grinned and asked if I’d be up for giving her a thrill. Apparently we had. In later photos, she’d caught Derek with his hand on my butt—a fact I’d forgotten until now—and also a close-up where I had my hands fisted in his hair. I blushed looking at it.

  “They’re not so bad,” Josh said as he watched my expression. “You should see the ones of Candy and Mr. Rossini.”

  “I’ll pass, thanks.” I’d already seen all I cared to of David Rossini. I especially had no need to see him and Candy naked, which was what I assumed Josh was intimating. “What else is in there?”