I nodded. “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” However, it was also a lot more enlightening. I turned to Jamie. “I had no idea you and Professor Easton knew each other from before.”
“We didn’t,” Jamie said and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’d never seen her before I came here last year. She left Mississippi when she was eighteen, and she never came back.”
“Is that why you applied to Barnham? Because you knew she’d be here?”
Jamie shook her head, carefully navigating the stairs. Josh kept a hand under her elbow to steady her. “Professor Easton only got this job because the history professor that was here died unexpectedly. I’d applied to Barnham long before that happened. It was one of a handful of schools my parents approved of. Small college, small town, conservative values, no more than a three-hour plane ride away.”
“But you knew who she was, right? You’d heard of her.”
“Of course,” Jamie said. If she had added you idiot to the end of the sentence, she couldn’t have made her feelings any plainer. “It was one of those horror stories parents tell their children, about what can happen if you aren’t careful and don’t do as you’re told.”
“You die?”
Jamie shrugged. “My mother knew Nan. And Amelia. Whenever I behaved badly as a child, my mom always said, ‘Don’t do that. You don’t want to end up like Nan Barbour.’”
Fantastic. Nanette had become the local bogeyman. Probably not what she’d hoped for when she went off to college full of hopes and dreams.
By now we’d reached the third-floor landing, and Jamie glanced at her own door.
“Maybe you should go rest,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
Jamie hesitated. She was clearly exhausted, but I guess maybe she didn’t want to leave the rest of us in the lurch.
“It’s OK,” Josh said, and put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to take care of yourself. We can do the rest of this on our own.”
“You sure?” She glanced up at him.
“Positive.” He nodded. “Go ahead. We’ve got this.”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind.” Jamie fumbled in her purse for her key. “I really am tired.” When she got it out, Josh had to help her get the key into the lock.
“Would you like some help?” I asked when she pushed the door open. I was honestly concerned that she wouldn’t make it to the bed, but would simply collapse on the living room floor.
She hesitated a moment, and glanced at Josh, then at Derek, then back at Josh again, before she shook her head. “I’m fine, thank you.”
That was clearly a lie, but we had other things to do, so if she said she was fine, I was willing to take her word for it.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, then. Sleep well.”
Jamie nodded. The last thing I saw before she closed the door were her eyes fastened on Josh’s face.
“When we finish here,” Derek said, his voice low, as we made our way down to the next floor, “find somewhere else to spend the night.”
“Huh?” Josh glanced at him.
“Go stay with Shannon. Or sleep in your car. Hell, you can come home with us if you want. But don’t go back upstairs.”
Josh blinked. “Why?”
“Because in an hour or so, your doorbell’s gonna ring, and it’s gonna be Jamie, and she’s gonna tell you that she can’t sleep, that she just can’t stop thinking about Candy, that the apartment feels so empty, that she’s afraid to be alone…and because you’re a nice guy, you’ll offer to stay with her—on the sofa, of course—and thirty minutes after that, you’ll hear her crying, so you’ll go check on her, and then one thing will lead to another, and before you know it—”
“OK,” Josh said, his cheeks flushed. “I got it. You can stop now.”
Derek nodded. “Do yourself a favor, and just spend the night somewhere else. Problem solved.”
“Right.” Josh’s ears were a bright red. When he knocked on Mariano and Gregg’s door, it was with the expression of a man who feels wolves snapping at his heels. Derek grinned but didn’t comment.
For a minute I wasn’t sure we’d get an answer from 2B. Gregg, presumably, was still at the hospital, maybe pulling a twenty-four-hour shift—Derek had told me how he’d done that, too, as a resident—and I didn’t know where Mariano was. But after waiting, and knocking again, the door was opened a crack and Mariano peered out.
“Yes?” He looked from Josh to me to Derek and back.
“Can we come in for a minute?” Josh asked. “Something we want to talk about.”
Mariano hesitated, but I guess he couldn’t really in good conscience say no. He stepped aside and we filed past.
Like Amelia, he was in jeans and T-shirt, with his feet bare. His nails weren’t painted, but he had a silver ring on his big toe, which matched the one he wore on his thumb. His hair was damp, curling at the neck and around the ears, and he smelled clean and musky. I deduced he’d just come out of the shower.
The apartment looked like Amelia’s, but it was decorated in shades of sand, brown, and black, and everything looked a bit less expensive. I guess a medical resident and a waiter weren’t quite at the point where they could afford arrangements of calla lilies and hand-blown glass yet.
The sofa was overstuffed and looked comfy, but there was only one, facing a big screen TV, so we ended up at the round dining room table.
“You missed all the excitement earlier,” I said in an effort to start the conversation on a light note.
So much for that. Mariano’s face darkened. “I heard.”
“Gregg called you?” Josh asked.
Mariano nodded. “I was hiking. Thinking.” He glanced at me and Derek, and then just as quickly away. “Fretting. I like to hike when Gregg’s working double shifts. It’s something to pass the time.”
This was the first time I’d heard him say more than a few words, and he had a light tenor voice with a slight Hispanic accent. A bit like Antonio Banderas.
“What were you fretting about?” I accompanied the question with a sweet smile, hoping it might make it seem less like I was interrogating him, but no such luck. His eyes—pretty and brown with long lashes—narrowed.
“Things.”
Right. “I thought maybe you were worried about us seeing you at the Tremont the other night. Because of the name tag and all.”
Mariano threw his hands up. “Why do you ask, if you already know the answer? Dios mio! We thought, when that old bruja Miss Shaw died—”
“Witch,” Derek told me out of the corner of his mouth. I nodded.
Mariano shot us both a jaundiced look. “—we wouldn’t have any more problems. And then you came along!”
“We haven’t caused any problems for you,” I protested.
“Yet.”
He had a point there. Especially as we were here for the express purpose of causing those problems.
I glanced at Josh, who took over the conversation. Mariano knew him better; maybe it would help. “You said Gregg called you from the hospital?”
Mariano nodded.
“Then you know about Candy.”
Mariano nodded again, those big, dark eyes limpid with sadness.
Josh leaned forward, elbows on the table. “We—my dad—is pretty sure someone did it on purpose. Just like someone might have killed Miss Shaw on purpose.”
Mariano blinked.
“We have to give Dad all the information Miss Shaw had dug up on all the neighbors. There might be something in there that can help him figure out what’s going on.”
Mariano opened his mouth, thought better of what he was going to say, and closed it again. “I’ll get deported,” he said.
He was actually more likely to go to jail, I thought—Social Security fraud is a crime, after all—but like Mariano, I thought better than to voice what I was thinking. That little wrinkle wasn’t likely to make him feel any better at the moment.
“Sorry,” Josh said. “But people
are dead. If we don’t figure out why, someone else might die. I don’t want it to be me. And I’m sure you don’t want it to be you. Or Gregg.”
Mariano shook his head.
“I’ll talk to Dad, try to convince him that it’s not his job to police the borders. That’s what the ICE does. And he did live here with you for a while. I imagine it might not come as a total surprise.”
Mariano shook his head again, but he did look a little bit better.
“Just hang tight,” Josh said. “And if things get really bad, you can always run away to Massachusetts and get married.”
“We plan to. After Gregg finishes his residency.” Mariano tapped his lips with a well-manicured finger. “But if we have to, I guess we could do it sooner. Set up residence in Massachusetts. Get married. Gregg could commute to Waterfield for five days and come home for two. It would be difficult, but we could probably make it work.”
He looked across the table at Josh, happy again, and looking for reassurance that his plan was a good one. Josh nodded and got to his feet.
“We appreciate your time. We just wanted to tell you about Candy, if you hadn’t heard already, and to let you know that I’ll be passing the information from Miss Shaw on to my dad in the morning.”
Mariano got to his feet, too. “I’ll let Gregg know when he comes home. Tomorrow.”
Derek and I followed suit. “Thank you for your time,” I said as we headed for the door. Mariano didn’t answer. I suppose it was possible that he didn’t hear me, but I got the impression that he just didn’t like me much and might have preferred to ignore my presence.
“He had reason to kill Miss Shaw,” I said when we were outside in the stairwell and our footsteps were masking the sound of my voice. “She knew that he’s an illegal alien. If she threatened to call ICE, he could have killed her.”
Derek murmured something. It wasn’t an objection, so I ignored it.
“He works in food service; putting something in her food probably seemed like the logical thing to do. And Gregg’s a doctor. He would have realized the need to take her EpiPen so she couldn’t give herself the antidote. He could have taken it to work with him and disposed of it there. I’m sure there’s all sorts of medical waste sitting around the hospital. And he could have arranged for whatever killed Candy, too. It might not have been the ethyl…whatever.”
“Ethylene glycol,” Derek said.
“It could have been something else. I’m sure there are lots of substances that would cause those same symptoms. Right?”
Derek nodded. “Plenty of things could cause those symptoms. Some of them things that would only be available to a doctor.”
“He even worked on her. If he did want her dead, he was in a perfect position to make sure she died.”
“Yes, Avery,” Derek said, “but why would he want her dead? Why would either of them want Candy dead? Miss Shaw maybe. But why Candy?”
I shrugged. “Maybe she knew they’d killed Miss Shaw. Maybe she threatened them.”
“Wouldn’t they just have threatened her back?” Josh said. “She was sleeping with Rossini and trying to keep it a secret.”
“They may not have known that. She actually managed to keep it pretty quiet. Jamie didn’t even know, and she and Candy were roommates.”
“How do you know that?” Josh wanted to know.
I turned to him. “She told me. Earlier tonight, in Candy’s hospital room.”
“You didn’t tell me this,” Derek said.
“I guess I didn’t think it was important. And we were busy looking at Pepper Cortino.”
I turned back to Josh. “When the two of you found the envelope the other morning, that was the first time Jamie realized Candy was sleeping with David Rossini. She may have known that Candy was involved with somebody, but if she did, she didn’t know who. And she was upset when she found out. She works for Francesca Rossini, and she told me she likes Francesca. She thought Candy put her in a bad position. And then, when she confronted Candy about it, Candy threatened to call Jamie’s parents and tell them about the Pompeii if Jamie told Francesca about Candy and her husband carrying on.”
There was a beat of silence.
“As far as I can tell,” Derek said, “that gives Jamie a better motive than Gregg and Mariano. Miss Shaw threatens to call Jamie’s parents, and Miss Shaw ends up dead. Then Candy threatens to call Jamie’s parents, and Candy ends up dead.”
Josh was shaking his head, but Derek kept going.
“None of the neighbors would have had too hard a time getting into Miss Shaw’s apartment, and Jamie especially looks young and harmless. She could have poisoned Miss Shaw. Peanuts are easy to come by. They serve them at the Pompeii too, so if she didn’t want to risk buying her own, she could have just pocketed a few. And she had every opportunity to doctor the wine and chocolates. For all we know, she uncorked the bottle and poured the glasses. Hell, she even made sure she only drank enough to make herself a little bit sick, while leaving enough for Candy to make sure Candy died. And didn’t you say she was in the room with Candy when it happened? Alone?”
I nodded. She had been. Completely alone, with no supervision.
Josh shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not Jamie.”
Derek turned to him. “Why not? Because you slept with her?”
Josh blushed, but was adamant. “I know her.”
“Maybe not as well as you think you do. People can do crazy things when their status quo is threatened. Just look at Professor Easton and her roommate. The girl committed suicide rather than go back home.”
“Suicide is one thing,” Josh said, “murder another.”
Now it was Derek shaking his head. “Two sides of the same coin. Fight-or-flight response. Something happens, someone gets backed into a corner, and they either run away or hit back. Professor Easton’s roommate—”
“Nan Barbour,” I shot in.
“—chose to run away. That’s what suicide is. Running away. But someone else, with a different personality, might have chosen to fight. To do whatever they had to to win. Including killing the threat. That’s why blackmailers so often end up dead. Their victims turn on them.”
Josh shook his head. But his voice lacked conviction when he said, “I don’t…” And then he stopped before he even completed the sentence.
“It’s just one possibility,” I said, trying to be comforting. “We don’t know that that’s what happened. Mariano and Gregg could be guilty, or even Robin and Bruce. Mothers will do anything to protect their children, and it sounds like Robin was afraid she’d lose Benjamin. And Bruce was afraid he’d lose both of them.”
Derek nodded. “Maybe Nan didn’t kill herself all those years ago,” he said. “Maybe Professor Easton killed her, and Miss Shaw figured it out, and so Professor Easton had to silence her, too. Nobody’s off the hook yet. And we’re not even done talking to everyone.” He nodded to William Maurits’s door, across the landing from Miss Shaw’s empty apartment. “He’s her closest neighbor. Maybe they were carrying on an illicit affair, and when Miss Shaw wanted more, wanted marriage, Maurits got rid of her the only way he knew how.”
The picture of the small and spare, nattily clad William Maurits and the oversized, somewhat slovenly Hilda Shaw, was irresistibly funny. I giggled. Derek winked at me, and even Josh was fighting a smile when he lifted a hand and rapped on Maurits’s door with his knuckles.
“Let’s get this over with. The sooner we’re done, the sooner I can run out to Barnham and pick up the stuff and take it to Dad. And then all of this will be off my shoulders.”
I nodded. My thoughts exactly.
It was getting late, so I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that William Maurits had turned in already, with tomorrow being a workday and all, but he opened the door after just a few seconds, dressed in the same knife-pleat pants and starched shirt as every other time I’d seen him. The only difference between these clothes and his work suits was that the pants were khakis, the shirt wa
s unbuttoned at the neck, and he was wearing slippers.
“Oh!” he said when he saw us. “What a surprise!”
And then, no more than a second later, “Oh no. What’s happened?”
We glanced at each other, to determine who would take the lead this time. Since Maurits was looking straight at me—we were about the same height—I took it upon myself. “It’s Candy. I’m sorry. May we come in?”
“Of course. Of course.” He stepped back and gestured us in, into an apartment just like Amelia Easton’s and Mariano and Gregg’s. However, there were no flowers here, no vases, and no little glass animals. What there was, was expensive furniture: postmodern, influenced by the 1950s and ’60s, sleek and elegant. That, and modern art. Strange little sculptures on the shelves, paintings on the walls. Everything was painted white, like in a gallery: the better to display the art, I guess.
“Sit, sit.” He gestured us to the living room, where we sank—at least in my case—gingerly onto the ivory-colored suede sofa. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Wine? Something stronger?”
We declined, leaving Maurits to nurse his glass of what looked like cognac. He sat back on the sofa, folding one leg over the other, and jerked his chin up in that little way he had. “Tell me what happened.”
He was still looking at me, so I answered.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Candy passed. In the hospital about an hour ago. We drove Jamie home afterwards, and then thought we might just let everyone know. I’m sure Josh’s dad will be by tomorrow, to talk to everyone about anything they may have noticed, but we didn’t feel right about not sharing the news when we knew everyone would want to know.”
Maurits nodded, twirling his glass. “What do you mean, Chief Rasmussen will want to talk to everyone about anything they may have noticed?”
“Well”—I shrugged apologetically—“it probably wasn’t natural causes. Someone did something to her. He’ll have to figure out who. And why.”
“I see,” Maurits said, looking past me to the wall. “She was murdered?”
“So we assume. Probably has something to do with Miss Shaw’s murder.”
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