Wall-To-Wall Dead

by Jennie Bentley

  “So what will you be doing the rest of the day?” he asked now, looking from Derek to me and back.

  Derek glanced at me before answering. “Since it seems like things have settled back down, I guess we’ll just go back to work. Lots to do on the condo still. And a bit of wedding planning to do, too. And we might stop by the hospital to see Jill and little Pepper during visiting hours.”

  Wayne nodded. “I’m going to Portland to deal with Maurits. While I’m there, I’ll check in with the ME about the autopsy on Candy. Not that there’s much doubt what killed her. I’ll be back in Waterfield at one to talk to Francesca Rossini. Maybe I’ll just schedule a chat with Jamie after that. See if she can get me an alibi for noon on Saturday.”

  “I was in Portland with Derek,” I said. “Having lunch at the Tremont, before Ryan and Carla’s wedding at two.”

  “I didn’t really think I needed to ask you for an alibi,” Wayne answered, “but thank you.”

  I shrugged. “Fair’s fair. If you’re checking everyone else’s alibi, you should have mine, too.”

  Wayne nodded. “I’m off. If I need anything, I’ll give you a call. If anything else happens, you have my number.”

  We did. He went off in his police car toward Portland, pizza box in tow, and Derek and I headed back to Waterfield and the Antoninis’ condo.

  Going back to work felt sort of anticlimactic. I mean, two people were dead, probably murdered, and here we were, just going about our business as usual, stripping wallpaper and scraping paint and ripping out plumbing.

  Derek disagreed, of course.

  “Yesterday was plenty climactic,” he said, “and besides, I think it’s nice that for once, at the end of a case, I don’t have to worry about anyone holding you at gunpoint. You’re just upset because Wayne gets to solve this one without you being there.”

  He might have a point. So far I had managed to insert myself, usually quite unintentionally, into a lot of Wayne’s cases. I should be happy that I’d avoided having my life threatened this time around.

  “It just feels like there should be something more. A car chase or a burning building or a mad dash across a foggy island with a killer on our trail…”

  “No,” Derek said firmly. “This is the way it’s supposed to be. You and me safe and sound going about our business of renovating this condo, and Wayne taking care of the police work. That’s his job. This is yours.”

  I knew that. And I love my job. I do. I just felt like something was missing. But Derek was probably right. I was just subconsciously a little miffed at missing the big confession, when Francesca—or maybe Jamie—broke down and said, Yes, it was me. I did it. Lock me up and throw away the key. I’d always been there before. The murderer had always done something desperate—or something stupid—to give himself—or herself—away. But Derek was right. This was the way it was supposed to be. This was the way it usually was, when I wasn’t involved. The police gathered the evidence, the police weighed the evidence, and then the police decided who the guilty party was based on the evidence and arrested him or her. Entirely without my help.

  “You’re right. I just feel…unsettled, I guess.” I tore at a strip of wallpaper and let it drift to the floor.

  “Tell you what.” Derek put his wrench down on the floor. “It’s almost lunchtime anyway. Maybe you need a break and something else to think about. We’ll go grab something to eat, and then we’ll stop by the hospital and see Jill and the baby. Maybe that’ll make you feel better.”

  Maybe. At least it was worth a try.

  So we went to Guido’s, where everyone wore pink T-shirts in honor of Candy’s passing—and where David Rossini was nowhere to be seen. I hoped that meant something, but even if it didn’t, I was happy not to look at him. And then we went to the hospital, where I was vividly reminded of watching Candy’s pale face as the doctors worked on her…but where a beaming Jill and tiny Pepper Cortino reminded me of the power of life over death, or some such thing. Jill looked tired but thrilled that it was over, and she assured us, even as she looked dotingly down at Pepper, that she was done; this was the last baby. We didn’t see Gregg Brewer, but that wasn’t surprising; if he’d pulled a double shift yesterday, he was probably at home in bed. With or without Mariano.

  We were on our way back to the condo, full of food and feeling a bit more relaxed than earlier, when Wayne called. “I just wanted to update you,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Maurits confessed to the insurance fraud, but he swore he wasn’t in on it from the beginning. I’m not sure whether that makes it better or worse.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The paintings were on loan from a collector in Providence, Rhode Island. He had gotten into a little bit of financial difficulty. He could have just sold a painting, but I guess he just couldn’t bear to part with any of them. So between him and the gallery owners, they cooked up the story of the fire. They removed the paintings first, of course, and put other, much less valuable paintings up in their place, so the investigators would see that there had actually been paintings in the gallery when it went up in smoke. The collector got his paintings back, he and the gallery owner shared the insurance settlement, and everyone was happy.”

  “And Maurits?” Derek wanted to know. I had put Wayne on speaker, so we could both talk to him, even as Derek was driving.

  “He was the claims adjuster assigned to the case. And he figured out what they’d done. But he let them get away with it in exchange for the Madonna. He seems to have some kind of emotional attachment to it. The fact that he can’t take it to jail with him seems to upset him quite a bit.”

  “So he’s going to jail?”

  “He’ll be serving a few years, at least, for insurance fraud. But not for murder. He swears up and down he didn’t kill Miss Shaw, that he was paying her to keep her quiet. His bank accounts bear him out. A thousand dollars passed from his account into hers every month. Automatic draft.”

  “He could have killed her to stop her from bleeding him dry,” I said.

  “A thousand dollars a month didn’t even come close to doing that. He admitted he would have paid a lot more. And he had no reason to want to kill Candy. I put him on a lie detector just to make sure, and he passed. On both murders.”

  Fine. So it wasn’t William Maurits. I hadn’t really thought so, to be honest. At least not after I heard about the brunette.

  “What about Francesca Rossini?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her yet,” Wayne said. “I just finished interviewing her husband. He confessed to sleeping with Candy. Not much else he could do when we had the photographs to prove it. But he seemed sincerely distraught about her death, and very, very afraid we were going to try to pin it on him. He also said he’d never been inside Miss Shaw’s apartment, and hadn’t considered killing her.”

  “Maybe Candy killed her and then he killed Candy.”

  “He’s not smart enough,” Wayne said bluntly. “He married into a powerful family, with a wife who stood up to her father and insisted on marrying him, and then he put it all in jeopardy by getting involved with a college student, and one of his employees.”

  “But doesn’t that make it more likely that he’d be worried about Francesca finding out?”

  Wayne admitted that it did. “But it also makes him stupid. Too stupid to get away with murder. And whoever killed Miss Shaw has gotten away with it. If it hadn’t been for Josh and Jamie digging around for that envelope, and drawing attention to the fact that something more was going on, we’d never have realized it wasn’t an accidental death. David Rossini just isn’t that smart.”

  “So his wife is next?”

  She was. And after that, Wayne would be having a chat with Jamie. “She asked if she could bring a friend. I’m halfway worried she’ll show up with Josh.”

  “I think she got the point last night,” Derek said, “when she knocked on his door and he didn’t answer. If she brings someone, I don’t think it’ll be Jo
sh.”

  Probably not. And it wouldn’t be Candy. Another friend from school maybe. A college advisor. Or maybe Amelia Easton?

  “Let us know if you find out anything interesting,” I said.

  Wayne promised he would, and hung up. We continued driving.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon working on the condo. After Derek finished with the plumbing, he started tiling the shower walls. We had decided on a basic white subway tile, high gloss, with a decorative band of glass tiles about halfway up the wall, along with floating glass doors and a very streamlined, square sink simply set into a shiny chrome base with a lower shelf. It was modern, just a touch masculine, and a bit utilitarian in look if not design or function.

  I was in the kitchen, preparing the backsplash so we could start tiling that tomorrow, too, when I happened to glance out the window into the parking lot and saw a strange car pull into a space and park. It was a plain white Toyota, so in and of itself nothing strange at all, but I hadn’t seen it before. It was parked with its back to me, so I could see that it had Portland plates, and it also had an Enterprise sticker on the back bumper. A rental car. I stopped what I was doing to watch.

  After a moment, the driver’s side door opened and a woman came out. From two floors up, it wasn’t easy to get a good look—not when what I was looking at was the crown of her head—but I could tell she was a few years older than me, maybe around forty, and that she had soft, light brown hair, cut in a classic, if a little dowdy, Dutch pageboy. Other than that, she looked to be on the short side, and slightly plump, with ample breasts and a matching posterior. She was dressed in a classic—also a bit dowdy—A-line skirt that hit her just below the knees, a matching jacket, prim blouse, and a pair of sensible pumps. She stopped in the middle of the parking lot and looked around.

  “There’s someone outside,” I told Derek.

  He turned away from the tiling to look at me. “Who?”

  “Don’t know. Some woman. I’ve never seen her before. Maybe it’s Candy’s mother. The age looks right. Maybe I should go give her my condolences and see if she needs help.”

  “Sure,” Derek said and turned back to his tiling. “You know where to find me.”

  “I do, indeed.” I pulled open the door to the stairway and stepped through. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  If Derek answered, I didn’t hear him; I was already pulling the door to behind me and on my way down the stairs.

  By the time I got to the first floor, the woman had drifted over to the door, but hadn’t made a move to let herself into the building. Maybe she didn’t have a key. “Can I help you?” I asked when I’d pulled the door open.

  “Please.” She had a soft voice and soft blue eyes to go with it. “I’m looking for someone.”

  She also had an accent. Southern. I’ve never spent much time in the South, so I couldn’t place it more specifically, but it sounded the way both Jamie and Robin spoke, and to a lesser degree, Amelia Easton. Of course, she’d had more time to get rid of hers. This woman was about her age, and she still had the accent, so she must still be living in the South, I figured. Jamie’s mother? Or perhaps Guy’s mother, looking for Robin and Benjamin?

  “Who’s that?” I held my breath. If she said she was looking for Robin, would I be able to lie and tell her Robin didn’t live here? I didn’t want to be responsible for Robin and Bruce losing Benjamin. And I certainly didn’t want to be responsible for Bruce strangling this woman to keep his little family intact.

  “My daughter,” the woman said. “Jamie Livingston?”

  Oh. I started breathing again. It was still bad, but not as bad. “I haven’t seen her today. She’s probably at school.”

  The woman—Mrs. Livingston—shook her head. “I’ve been there. They said she wasn’t in class. When I tried to find her dorm room, they said she’d moved into an apartment almost a year ago. I had no idea.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, since she seemed genuinely distraught and not all that judgmental. Not so far. “I’m Avery Baker. My boyfriend and I are renovating 2A. A floor below Jamie and…”

  I stopped, no longer able to say “and Candy.”

  “The staff at the college told me her roommate passed away,” Mrs. Livingston said.

  I nodded. “Last night. We’re all a little distraught at the moment. I’m sure your daughter just needed some time away. Maybe she went to see a movie or something.”

  Mrs. Livingston didn’t answer, and I remembered, a second too late, that movies are surely the Devil’s work. However, the other option was that Jamie was at work, or at the police station talking to Wayne, and I didn’t think either of those suggestions would make Mrs. Livingston any happier. Entirely apart from the fact that I didn’t want to be the one to tell her—this very religious woman—that her daughter was a stripper. I wanted to tell her even less that her daughter was the prime suspect in two murders.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have a key to Jamie’s place. And I don’t have her cell phone number, either. You can come up and wait in our apartment, if you want, but there’s nothing to do there. No TV or…” But maybe she didn’t watch TV, either. That could also be the Devil’s work. Considering some of the programs on television these days, I could sort of relate to that opinion. “We’re renovating,” I added. “You’d be able to sit down, but I suppose you might as well do that in your car…”

  Mrs. Livingston glanced at it and nodded.

  “I can try to track her down for you, if you want.” If nothing else, I could call Wayne. He was supposed to talk to Jamie this afternoon. She might still be there. She might be sitting in a cell.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Mrs. Livingston said.

  “Of course. I’ll just run upstairs and get my phone. Do you want to come upstairs, or—”

  “I’ll wait down here,” Mrs. Livingston said, “in case she comes home.”

  Fine with me. I’d be able to speak a little more freely to Wayne if she wasn’t listening to me. “I’ll be right back. One minute. Maybe two.”

  “Take your time,” Mrs. Livingston said politely and backed out of the doorway. I let the door close behind her—she made no move to keep it open—and dashed up the stairs.

  “Uh-oh,” Derek said when I’d let myself into the condo and had told him who was downstairs. Not Candy’s mother, but Jamie’s. The one—if we were right—Jamie had killed two people to avoid seeing.

  “I know. She didn’t seem bad at all, actually. Maybe it’s the father Jamie’s afraid of.” I hauled the phone out of my bag.

  “You calling Wayne?” Derek said.

  I nodded, dialing. “With any luck, Jamie’s still there and he can tell me what to do. What to tell this poor woman. I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

  Derek opened his mouth to answer, but Wayne picked up the phone first, and I held up a finger to stall Derek. “Wayne? It’s Avery. Is Jamie still there?”

  “No,” Wayne said. “Why?”

  No? “You’ll never guess who showed up. Her mother.”

  “Jamie’s mother?”

  “Looking for Jamie. She’s down in the parking lot right now. I didn’t want to send her to you before I knew what was going on. Where’s Jamie?”

  “I had to let her go,” Wayne said. “She had an alibi for Saturday at noon. She and Candy had argued Friday morning, about David Rossini, and Jamie didn’t want to go home to more of the same. So she spent the night with another of the dancers and went right back to work on Saturday morning. She said several of the other girls can vouch for her being there.”

  “Did you check with them?”

  “Not yet,” Wayne said, “but if she says she was there, on stage, with people watching, I’m sure she was. She’d have to be stupid to lie about it, and I don’t think she is.”

  “So where is she now?”

  “No idea,” Wayne said. “Probably on her way home. Or maybe back to school. She brought Amelia Easton with her to the interview, by the way.
I thought maybe she’d arranged with Francesca Rossini to borrow a lawyer, but no. She seemed pretty rattled. Very young and scared. Maybe Professor Easton is the closest thing to family she could come up with on short notice.”

  Maybe. “Well, her mother is here now. What do I tell her?”

  “You’re asking me? It’s out of my hands, Avery. I’m the chief of police. My job is to arrest whoever killed Miss Shaw and Candy. I’m not a psychologist or a family counselor. Tell her anything you want. And let Jamie deal with it. It’s her problem.” He hung up. I stuck my tongue out at the phone.

  “Bad news?” Derek asked.

  “Yes and no. Jamie has an alibi for Saturday at noon. She didn’t buy the wine and chocolates. The bad news is that Wayne had to let her go. She isn’t at the police station anymore.”

  “So where is she?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “She could be on her way here. Or—if she did kill Miss Shaw and Candy, and she fudged that alibi somehow—she could be anywhere.” Once she dropped off Amelia Easton anyway. “I’d better go tell her mom that I can’t find her.”

  Derek nodded. “Want me to come with you?”

  “Of course not. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “I’ll be here,” Derek said, and went back to tiling.

  So down the stairs I went again, this time with my phone in my hand. Through the door and into the parking lot, and over to the rental car, where Mrs. Livingston was waiting. “I’m sorry. I called around, but I couldn’t find her. I found where she was just a few minutes ago, but she’s left now. I guess she’s probably on her way back, either here or back to Barnham.”

  Mrs. Livingston nodded.

  “I guess you can either go back there and see if she’s there, or wait here.”

  “I’ll wait here,” Mrs. Livingston said. “Sooner or later she’ll show up. If she lives here.”

  I nodded. “I’m in 2A. If you need anything, just…” Ring the bell, I was about to say. But just then, a pale blue nondescript compact came up the road and swung into the lot. “Here she is now.”