Wall-To-Wall Dead (32 page)

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 was 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.”

Maurits blinked and came back to himself. “Dear me. Miss Shaw was murdered as well?”

“It’s leaning that way. What with the missing EpiPen and now Candy and, of course, the envelope of secrets.”

I waited. It didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to take the bait. “Envelope of secrets?”

“Miss Shaw kept tabs on everyone in the building,” Josh said. “You know that.”

“Remember,” I chirped before Maurits could think of denying it, “you told us about it the first morning we were here? What was it you called her? A nosy old biddy?”

Maurits didn’t answer, but his cheekbones got a little darker. “What envelope?”

“I found it in her apartment after she died,” Josh said. “Information about everyone in the building. Little stuff, mostly. I didn’t think anything of it at first, just that I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble over it. But then Dad started talking about how Miss Shaw’s EpiPen went missing, and now Candy’s dead—and I’m thinking I’d better give the stuff to my dad. Just in case there’s something in there that can help him.”

It didn’t take more than a few seconds this time, either. “What was in the envelope?”

“About you? Just a picture of one of the paintings your company settled on a long time ago. Something called
Madonna
. D’you remember it?”

“Of course,” Maurits said, his eyes stuck on the living room wall for a moment. I looked in that direction, but there was nothing to see. Just the wall between this room and the bedroom, and a different painting, one of—I thought—a field of flowers or possibly a view of outer
space. “It was a terrible loss. All the other paintings that were lost in the fire, too, of course, but I have to admit the
Madonna
was a personal favorite of mine. Perhaps that’s why Miss Shaw singled it out. She knew how devastating that particular loss was for me, not just on a professional level, because the company lost a lot of money on the claim, but because of such senseless loss of beauty.”

“It looked very nice,” I said politely. “I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“The
Madonna
…is that the religious figure, or the entertainer? It wasn’t clear from the picture.”

I’d sort of been able to visualize a face, with a slash of red lipstick, topped by a circle of gold that could either be a halo or blond hair—but beyond that, I couldn’t be sure. It seemed a reasonable question. Maurits obviously didn’t think so.

“The religious figure,” he said, his voice short.

“That’s what I thought.” I ignored Derek’s amusement and Josh’s not quite successful attempt to hide a smile. “The halo, you know? It could have been hair, but it really looked more like a corona.”

Maurits nodded, and looked like he thought I might be trying to make fun of him. I wasn’t, I swear. I just prefer art I understand.

“I’m sorry it was lost,” I said. “Anyway, there was a picture of it among Miss Shaw’s stuff. In the envelope Josh will be passing on to his dad in the morning. In case Wayne asks you about it.”

“If he asks,” William Maurits said, “I will tell him that it perished in a gallery fire five years ago, and that the company paid out on the claim, along with all the others. It’s a done deal, settled long ago. Everyone’s happy and no one’s suing anyone else. I have no idea why Hilda Shaw would take an interest.”

“We don’t, either,” I said. “We just thought you should know what’s happening. And now that that’s done, I guess we should get going.” I glanced at Derek and Josh, who
both got to their feet. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Maurits.”

“A pleasure,” Maurits said, without sounding like he meant it. He jerked his chin up in that little nervous tic that he had. “Thank you for letting me know about poor Candy. That’s terrible news.” He shook his head sadly as he herded us toward the front door. “It’s enough to make one seriously consider moving, isn’t it? Or at least take a vacation until things settle down.”

A vacation sounded lovely. Somewhere sunny and tropical where there were no dead bodies.

Ryan and Carla were probably on the beach in Saint Thomas by now. I wished I were there, too. Just Derek and me, in the honeymoon suite, with no dead bodies distracting us from the more important things.

“I’m glad that’s done,” Josh echoed my feelings when we were out on the landing with William Maurits’s door locked behind us. I nodded.

“Telling people that one of their neighbors has died is never any fun. I’m glad to be done, too.”

“So what now?” Josh wanted to know.

“You have your car keys on you?”

Josh shook his head.

“Run up and get them. Don’t look left or right, don’t get distracted. If you see Jamie, say ‘Excuse me’ and keep going.”

“She’s not going to—” Josh protested.

“Yes, she is. But if you’re lucky, she’ll wait a few minutes. You’ll have time to grab your keys and make it back down.”

Josh rolled his eyes, but all he said was, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Derek nodded. “We’ll be downstairs.”

“Any reason we wanted to be downstairs?” I asked a minute later, when we had left the landing outside Maurits’s door and were standing in the basement, outside the laundry room, waiting for Josh to return.

“We wanted to make sure nobody could hear us. I don’t trust these people.” Derek looped an arm around my shoulder and spoke into my ear.

I didn’t, either. “Did you get any vibes from William Maurits?”

“Other than that he didn’t appreciate your talking smack about his favorite painting?” He grinned. “He didn’t seem overly heartbroken about Candy. Although he was certainly more heartbroken than he was about Miss Shaw.”

I nodded. No doubt. “You really think Jamie’s going to try to waylay Josh?”

Derek looked at me. “Don’t you?”

I did. The scenario he’d outlined earlier was only too realistic, right down to Jamie’s excuses and Josh’s responses to them. “Sounds like you’ve had some experience with scheming women.”

“Melissa used to play games like that,” Derek said. “She still does. Remember how she tried to foist a murder weapon off on me back in July?”

Vividly. I still hadn’t quite forgiven her for that, although the fact that she’d gotten arrested and had to spend a few days in jail had gone a long way toward making me feel vindicated.

“You don’t think Jamie’s trying to frame Josh for anything, do you?”

“No,” Derek said, “I think she’s looking for comfort and reassurance and companionship, and he’s proven himself to be susceptible. She just doesn’t want to be alone, and I can’t blame her. But that doesn’t mean I want Josh to fall for it. For one thing, it would really upset Shannon. I like Shannon. And for another, he’ll kick himself later. But by then it’ll be too late.”

I nodded. “Hence your suggestion that he find somewhere else to spend the night.”

“Hence. You don’t disagree, do you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t trust Jamie, either. You made a good case for why she might be guilty of two murders. I don’t really think she is, but I don’t want her anywhere near Josh.”

He arched his brows. “You don’t still think it’s Mariano and Gregg, do you? I’ll give you Miss Shaw, if she threatened to turn Mariano in to the ICE, but they had no reason to do away with Candy.”

“Actually,” I said, “I think my money’s on David Rossini for all of it. And not just because he’s an outsider and I hate to think it’s one of the neighbors. I don’t like him. He’s a cheater, and cheaters are by nature dishonest. He had reason to get rid of Miss Shaw, if she threatened to tell his wife about him and Candy, and if he killed Miss Shaw, and Candy knew, she could have held it over his head to try to make him leave his wife and marry her instead.”