Wall-To-Wall Dead (13 page)

There was another long pause, during which I imagined I could hear the wind rustling through the grass on the lonesome prairie. Obviously nobody felt the need for a memorial service, and no one wanted to confess to being in possession of a set of Miss Shaw’s keys. In the back of the room, the door to the hallway opened, and Candy slipped through. After a quick look around, she dropped onto the last seat in the last row of chairs. She didn’t sit down with Jamie and Amelia Easton, and although Jamie glanced over her shoulder, she didn’t acknowledge Candy in any way, nor did Candy acknowledge Jamie. Maybe they’d had
a tiff. I’d never had a roommate other than my mother—I lived at home during the time I went to Parsons School of Design—but I could imagine it might sometimes be grating to be on top of one another, especially when there was a lot of added stress in the situation. Such as when one of the neighbors dies suddenly and the police are all over everything.

“I’m going to need all of your fingerprints,” Wayne added, “as well as a statement from each of you regarding where you were last night between the hours of ten
P.M.
and eight
A.M
. today.”

Another pause ensued, this one fairly humming with tension.

“Why?” Bruce asked eventually, with a glance at Robin.

Wayne turned to him. “To match with fingerprints found in Miss Shaw’s apartment. Someone was there overnight, after we sealed the place and locked up. We’d like to know who, and what that person was looking for.” He took in the rest of the room with a glance. “I don’t suppose any of you would like to tell me?”

No one did.

After a few moments, William Maurits raised his hand. “Are you still investigating, or is the case closed?”

“The case is open,” Wayne said. “But we’re finished with the apartment. I’ll make sure it’s locked up and leave it for Mrs. Carroll to deal with. If you’ll all go to your apartments, I’ll be by to get your fingerprints in the next few minutes, as well as a record of your whereabouts last night. And any keys you may have. If there’s anything else you’d like to confess, you can do it at the same time. Dismissed.”

There was a scraping of chairs and quiet whispers as everyone got up and filed toward the door. Robin helped Benjamin close his coloring book and gather his crayons while Bruce watched, the look on his face somewhere between doting and fierce. When she straightened and gave him a smile, he smiled back, and put his hand on the small of her back as they walked out. Mariano and Gregg had
their heads together, whispering. Candy and Jamie, on the other hand, each seemed to be taking great pains to pretend the other wasn’t there. They departed separately, without looking at one another.

I turned to Wayne. “I don’t suppose you need my prints, do you?” He’d taken them before, last summer, when everything was happening in and around Aunt Inga’s house.

He shook his head. “I already have yours. And Josh’s and Shannon’s. You’re free to go.”

Not until I’d gotten a little more information. And shared some. “Is the medical examiner sure it was an accident? When I told John Nickerson that Miss Shaw was dead, he thought she’d been murdered. Said he’d wanted to kill her himself.”

Wayne’s eyes sharpened, and I added, “It was a long time ago. I think he said he was thirteen. Hilda Shaw found out that he liked this girl named Susie Lawrence, and she threatened to spill the beans to Susie unless John gave her his dessert every day.”

“What happened?”

“His mom sent pecan sandies instead of chocolate chip cookies one day. Miss Shaw ate them and had a bad reaction. Her mother found out what was going on and made it stop.”

Wayne tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile.

“He said,” I added, “that she was the kind of person who liked to know things about people. And who liked holding them over people’s heads.”

“Blackmail?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she just felt unimportant, and knowing things about people made her feel better about herself. Both Kate and Shannon told me that she knows everything there is to know about everything in the building. Maybe she found out something that someone didn’t want her to know.”

“Huh,” Wayne said. “I’ll look into it. But I doubt anyone
will admit it if she was holding something over their heads, Avery.”

Likely not.

“It’s a reason why someone might have broken into her apartment last night, though. If Miss Shaw knew something, and had proof, maybe in writing, someone would have wanted to make sure the police didn’t find it, wouldn’t they?”

“I imagine they might,” Wayne agreed. “But it’s gone now. And they’re not going to tell me what it was. Especially if they killed Miss Shaw over it.”

“I guess we’ll just have to find out what it was on our own,” I said.

He gave me a beady stare. “You mean that I’ll just have to find out on my own, don’t you? Since this is a police matter, after all.”

“Of course,” I said. “That’s exactly what I meant.”

“Humph,” Wayne said, and made no effort to make it sound like he believed me.

Wayne headed upstairs, and so did I—to our condo to have a look around without Derek’s distracting presence.

I love him, but he can be loud, with his sawing and banging and swearing, and apart from that, I’m usually pretty aware of his presence anyway. It can be hard to concentrate on anything else when he’s around. So I welcomed the opportunity to take a look at the space by myself, and to get some thinking done on what I might do to make it look fabulous.

The hallway was small and dark, since it opened on an interior staircase and had no windows. We’d paint the walls a light color to make it appear bigger. Not white, though. White is blah, and it gets dirty quickly. And not eggshell, either. Every unimaginative renovator in the universe paints the walls eggshell white, because it is supposed to appeal to the greatest number of people. I hate eggshell white. Much better to make a statement, and if that alienates a few potential buyers, then those were probably people you wouldn’t want to do business with in the first place.

So light walls, pale blue or pale green maybe, or yellow.
Pale gray if Derek wanted bland—and sometimes he does. A big mirror on the wall to reflect what little light there was, and to make the space appear bigger. Maybe we could mount it right on the sliding door to the bathroom. It’s nice to have a full-length mirror you can look in right before you walk out the door. Most of us like to make sure we look OK before we take on the world. And from that location, it would catch any light coming in both from the living room and the kitchen. Maybe I could do something fun with it, instead of just buying one at the store. Glue seashells or beads or glass tiles around the frame, maybe. Or etch it. Something unique. It’d look great.

I’d already designed the kitchen—on paper—and it would look fantastic, too. Painted cabinets that’d look lacquered after copious amounts of shellac. Maybe some white subway tile on the backsplash; it’s classic, all-purpose, and goes with any style, from cottage to industrial. Concrete counter, or maybe a bright and colorful Formica?

The possibilities were endless…and for another day. I moved on.

The bedrooms would be simple: carpeted floors maybe, to cut down on noise, and painted walls, light and airy. And the living room/dining room combo…

I stopped in the middle of the floor, hands on my hips, to look around.

It wasn’t a bad-sized room for a small apartment. Fairly generous for a living room. Not quite so big when you took into account that you’d need to fit in a dining room area as well. But sufficient for both.

Pivoting slowly, I did a visual 360-degree of the space. There should be wood floors; an unbroken expanse of the same flooring throughout the condo would make the space flow better and appear larger. Derek could hang a chair rail around the part of the room that would serve as the dining area, from the hallway door to the door to the back bedroom. The vertical line would visually extend the space. The wall on the right was unbroken, so we’d probably have
to leave that wall bare, since we couldn’t very well stop the chair rail in the middle.

Or could we?

Maybe we could do something funky. Like extend the chair rail through the dining area and then turn it in a different direction. Down. End the rail at the baseboard instead. And then perhaps fill in with something. Like a pattern of other rails. A fake paneling of sorts, something almost like a half-timbered look. Or—here was a thought!—aluminum. Corrugated. Industrial.

Head spinning with the possibilities, I made another half turn. If we painted the ceiling the same color as the top of the wall, that would serve to open the space up even more. Metallic paint, possibly. And outside on the balcony—I pushed the door open and walked out—maybe a bench. There really wasn’t enough room out here for a table as well as chairs; someone would have to be really thin or else a contortionist to make it past any table I put out. But a bench would fit perfectly. One of my recently acquired DIY magazines had instructions for a slender bench with metal legs and an upholstered lid for seating with a shallow compartment underneath for storage.

Making a mental note to dig out the magazine and take a look when I got back to Aunt Inga’s house, I sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs that populated the porch currently, and looked out onto the darkening lawn. A few stars were starting to appear overhead, along with a slim sliver of a moon. I put my feet up on the railing and inspected my toes. It was still warm enough to wear sandals to tomorrow’s wedding, and I might have to touch up my polish after wearing sneakers to work all week.

My toes were watermelon red. And in spite of the rough treatment of the past few days, they didn’t look bad at all. I might just want to give them a quick coat of extra polish when I got home, but other than that, I was good to go.

The dulcet tones of “Saturday Night Fever” cut through the air, and took my attention away from my toes. Moving my feet down and leaning forward, I peered over the railing.
I’d thought I was alone out here, but maybe I was wrong.

Or not. There was still no sign of anyone below, so unless the unknown cell phone owner was downstairs on Hilda Shaw’s porch, where he or she had no business being, I was still alone.

“What took you so long?” a female voice said, and I leaned back on my chair as I realized the truth. The person with the cell phone was above me, not below. Over my head, where Candy must be sitting on her own porch. It was her voice I was hearing. “I called you hours ago!”

“Yes,” she added a second later, “I know I’m not supposed to call you at home, but this is important!”

That sounded like my cue to leave. I leaned down, soundlessly, and grabbed my shoes.

“Yeah, it’s over,” was the next thing I heard. “The chief of police said it was an accident. That’s not the problem here.”

I wiggled my toes into a shoe while I tried not to make any noise. It was a tricky situation to be in. I didn’t want to eavesdrop on Candy’s conversation. She probably had no idea I was here, or she’d have gone inside when her phone rang, to speak in private.

Or maybe she did know I was here, and it wasn’t a confidential conversation. Maybe she had heard me come outside and she didn’t care whether I overheard or not. After all, I hadn’t heard the door upstairs open or close, so she must have been here before me.

Nonetheless, I started fussing with my second shoe. Other people’s conversations, whether personal or not, are not something I feel I need to overhear.

That was until I heard Candy say, “Not on the phone. I want to meet in person.”

There was a pause while the caller spoke, and then Candy’s voice came back, petulant. “What do you mean, we decided?
We
didn’t decide.
You
did.”

If I concentrated hard, I thought I could hear a faint quacking noise that must be the other person in the conversation. Or maybe I was just imagining things.

“I know that’s what you said,” Candy continued. “But you’ll get in more trouble than I will. And don’t you forget it!”

Another pause ensued, longer this time. I waited, holding my breath.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Candy said. “And if you know what’s good for you, so will you!”

And that salvo must have been the end of the conversation, because the next thing I heard was the balcony door closing upstairs. Hurriedly, I finished slipping my foot into my other shoe and followed suit: ducked through the door into the living room and closed and locked the balcony door behind me. Then I scurried across the condo to the front door, snagging my bag from the floor of the hall along the way.

I opened the front door and listened for a second. There were no sounds of steps on the stairs, neither above nor below me. Candy must have either been super fast, and was already down and out, past my floor and outside in the parking lot, or she was still upstairs, preparing to leave.

I took a chance that it was the latter and headed down myself, after quickly locking the door behind me. Every second I spent standing there, and every step I took down the stairs, I expected to hear Candy coming, but she didn’t, and by the time I reached the parking lot, I fully expected to see her car already gone.