Wall-To-Wall Dead (4 page)

“Did you meet Miss Shaw?” Kate asked an hour or two later.

I was back home, at Aunt Inga’s house, and Kate had come over to help me with the invitations for the wedding. I was making my own paper, with pulp and water and small blue flowers—the same kind Derek had stuffed into the bud vase before he proposed. Because making paper takes a lot of time, Kate had volunteered to help, to make it go faster. I’d said yes, since I had something I wanted to ask her. But first I’d mentioned the trip out to Wayne’s old condo building to look at a possible renovation project.

I shook my head. “She was watching us from the window, but we didn’t meet her.”

“You will,” Kate said ominously, up to her elbows in pulp.

We were set up in the backyard, near the remains of the garden shed—Derek hadn’t had time to build a new one yet—and we were busy pulping old newspapers, both because it was quicker and easier and because I didn’t feel
like cutting down any trees. Jemmy and Inky, the two Maine coon cats I had inherited from Aunt Inga along with the house, were watching from a safe distance, while Mischa, the small Russian Blue kitten I had rescued from Rowanberry Island this spring, kept trying to play with the pulp.

“That’s what Shannon said, too.” While Kate was filling wooden frames with pulp, I was aiming my hair dryer at the ones that were already filled, in an attempt to make the paper dry faster.

“Oh, was she there?”

“With Josh. Looks like they’re working things out?” I aimed the dryer at Mischa, and sent him scurrying away from the pulp.

“They seem to be,” Kate said with a shrug. “She doesn’t talk to me about it.”

Shannon was an adult; it probably wasn’t so surprising that she didn’t discuss the progress of her love affair with her mother. Especially when her mother’s new husband was Shannon’s boyfriend’s father.

“Is Miss Shaw giving her a hard time?”

“No more than she’s giving anyone else,” Kate said. “Or so I assume. She was all over me when Wayne was still living there. She’s one of those people who has to know every little detail about everyone else’s life, probably because she doesn’t have one of her own.”

“A life?”

Kate nodded. “She just sits inside her apartment all the time. Never leaves. I’m not sure whether it’s agoraphobia or just that she’s allergic to everything on God’s green earth, but she lives vicariously through other people. If you end up renovating the place, just be prepared that at some point she’ll dig up every bit of information on you that she can. Who you are, where you live, why you moved here, what happened to your aunt…”

“Let her. I don’t have anything to hide.”

“In that case,” Kate said, “you have nothing to worry about. How’s it going?” She nodded at the still moist note cards.

“It’s getting there. I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot,” Kate said.

“I appreciate your help with the invitations. Can I ask you one more favor?”

“You want me to do the food for the reception?”

I lowered the hair dryer to stare at her. Mischa took the opportunity to reinstate his investigation of the pulp. “God, no. I’d never ask you to do that.”

“I’d be happy to,” Kate said.

“I appreciate it, but that wasn’t what I was going to ask.”

“What, then?” She shooed Mischa away gently.

“I thought you might want to be my maid of honor. Or matron of honor, I guess, since you’re married yourself.”

She blinked at me for a moment before she said, “Isn’t there someone else you’d rather have? A friend from New York? College roommate?”

I shook my head. “There isn’t anyone left in New York I’m that close to. I sent a couple of invitations to people down there, but I don’t want any of them to be my matron of honor. My mom and Noel are coming from California, but I can’t make my mother my matron of honor, either, no matter how well I get along with her.”

“No,” Kate agreed, “that probably wouldn’t look right.”

“I’d like you to do it. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Of course not. I’d be honored. If you’re sure…”

“I’m positive,” I said. “Please.”

Kate nodded. We worked in silence for a few minutes, both of us probably a bit more overwhelmed by emotion than we ought to be.

“So are you going to renovate the condo?” Kate asked finally. I accepted the change of subject without quibbling.

“I think so. Derek went to look at our finances and to talk to his dad. He likes to run these things by Dr. Ben.”

Kate nodded. “It’s nice that he has such a good relationship with his family.”

It certainly was. Especially since my own family, which
consisted of my mother and her new husband, was clear across the country on the California coast.

“Let me know what you decide,” Kate said. “I’ll be happy to help out with the work, if you want.”

“We never say no to extra hands. You know that. We’ll see what Mr. Antonini says.”

Kate nodded, and we went back to our pulp and our hair dryer.

“Still like it?” Derek asked two weeks later, standing in the hallway looking around. We’d closed on the place about an hour before, and had headed over to inspect our new purchase.

I glanced up at him. He’s over six feet, I’m five two. “Don’t you?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t like it much to begin with. But I figure I owe you one. I had to talk you into getting excited about the midcentury ranch on Becklea Drive, and I had to talk you into believing we could handle Kate’s carriage house, and I had to twist your arm to get you to agree to give the Colonial a try…I figure it’s your turn to choose, yeah?”

“I guess it is. But I’d be happier if you were happy, too.”

“I’m not unhappy,” Derek said, looking around. “I’d just like it more if it had some fun features I could play with.”

“I know. You like crown molding and arches and wide plank floors and tall ceilings. This has none of that. But it has a lot of other benefits. We can get in and out quickly
and probably sell it pretty fast, too. And I bet if we try, we can figure out ways to make it look more interesting.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Derek said, but he sounded a little more positive. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’m not entirely sure. But it’s such a blank slate that we could do almost anything to it. We could start by taking out the plain hollow-core doors and putting in solid wood doors with panels instead.”

“That’d help to make things look more solid. What else?”

“Depends. What would you say to putting in a pocket door to the bathroom? It would save space in the hallway. It’s a little cramped the way it is.”

“That’s a good idea,” Derek said. “Except instead of a pocket door, why don’t we make it a sliding door with a rail? It could rest here”—he put his hand against the wall between the two doors, the one to the hallway and the one next to it, to the bathroom—“when it’s open.”

“With the rail actually visible?” I squinted up, trying to picture it.

“Remember when we first met last summer?” Derek said. “You were enamored with the industrial look? Exposed ductwork, concrete kitchen counters, all that jazz?”

I nodded.

“Remember how I wouldn’t let you do any of it because we were renovating your aunt’s Victorian cottage and it just wouldn’t look right?”

I remembered it vividly.

“Here,” Derek said and threw out a hand to indicate the space we were standing in, “it would look great.”

“Really?”

“Sure. The ceilings are a little low for exposed ductwork, and besides, the ductwork is routed through the walls anyway, but we can give this place an industrial look if you want. It’s from the 1970s. Things were pretty streamlined back then.”

Huh. I looked around with new appreciation, visions of
steel beams and corrugated metal dancing in my head. “How do we go about it?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Derek said. “New tile in the bathroom. Something sleek and modern. And a new vanity cabinet. Maybe a floating one.”

“Floating?”

“Without feet. Mounted to the wall.”

Oooh. I nodded.

“Sliding door on the bathroom to maximize space in the hallway. New kitchen cabinets…”

“What kind of cabinets did you have in mind for here?”

Derek hesitated. “We could go to the lumber depot and buy new oak cabinets and stain or paint them.”

“With picture frame doors?” I could feel my nose wrinkling. “They’re so old-fashioned. How about we get the kind with smooth doors, if they have them, and then we give them a few coats of paint and a few coats of high-gloss polyurethane and make them look like they’re lacquered? I saw that once, in a DIY magazine. It looked great. Like high-end IKEA cabinets, but better quality.”

“What color did you have in mind?” His voice was resigned, even as his eyes registered interest.

“Turquoise?” I suggested, since that had been the color of the cabinets in the magazine article. “Concrete counter, like you suggested. Maybe a backsplash of those little clear glass tiles—or glossy subway tiles with just a band of glass tiles; it’d be cheaper—and we could even put those industrial floor tiles down, you know, the sort of hard plastic ones?”

“With the speckles? Sure. It would fit the style of the place.” He looked around. “Maybe this won’t be so bad, after all.”

“That’s the spirit. How about we go grab some dinner and celebrate? And plan what we’ll do tomorrow?”

“What did you have in mind? The Waymouth Tavern?”

“Guido’s Pizzeria,” I said, and watched his eyebrows rise. “It’s on the way home, and you can tell Candy that
you’ll be working downstairs from her for a month. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

“You can’t be jealous of Candy,” Derek said, leading me out and stopping to lock the door behind us.

“Of course not.” The only person I’m ever jealous of, and that only on rare occasions, is Derek’s ex-wife. And I’m even getting over that, since Derek has told me repeatedly that there’s nothing in the world that would induce him to go back to her. “They have good pizza.”

“Fine with me,” Derek said with a shrug, “I’m always up for pizza.” He headed down the stairs. I followed, only to bump into him when we got to the first floor. When I peered around him, I saw that he was facing Miss Hilda Shaw’s door, and that the door was open and Miss Shaw herself was standing there waiting for us.

This was the first time I’d seen her, other than as a pair of disembodied eyes peering out from between the folds of the lace curtains moved apart by an equally disembodied hand. Up close and in the flesh, I saw that she was younger than I’d expected. I’d envisioned some small and wrinkled Miss Marple lookalike, frail and white-haired. What I got was a sturdy women in her late fifties or early sixties, with frizzy ginger hair shot through with gray, wearing a flowery, faded housedress and fuzzy slippers. Her arms were pudgy, her ankles thick, and her cheeks doughy. When she spoke, it was in a raspy voice that hinted at what was either a pack-a-day habit or laryngitis.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Hilda Shaw.”

There was an expectant pause. The compulsion to answer was irresistible—and was obeyed.

“I’m Derek Ellis,” my fiancé answered. “This is Avery.”

He reached behind him and pulled me forward. Misery loves company and all that. I wiggled my fingers. “Hi.”

“A pleasure to meet you both,” Miss Shaw rasped. “I saw you here two weeks ago, too.” She fixed Derek with an unblinking stare out of dark eyes.

“We were looking at the Antoninis’ condo,” Derek said.

“Have they decided to rent it out?”

I shook my head. “They’ve decided to stay in Florida full time. We just bought the place.”

“Oh.” A shadow crossed Miss Shaw’s broad face. Then it cleared and she looked back at us. “Are you moving in?”

“We’ll be renovating the place,” Derek said at the same time as I answered, “We’ve already got somewhere to live.”

“Where do you live?” Hilda Shaw wanted to know.

I hesitated, but couldn’t think of a reason not to tell her. Waterfield is a small town; half of us already know where the other half lives. And besides, Shannon and Kate had both said Miss Shaw never left the building; the chances that she’d suddenly show up at the door wanting to be let in were slim.

“I inherited a house from my aunt last summer. It’s on Bayberry Lane in the Village. Derek lives on Main Street in downtown.” Because Waterfield is such a small place, especially the historic district and the downtown commercial area, we’re only four or five blocks apart. The condo complex was on the west side of town, a few miles from the historic district, near the new police station and about halfway between town and Barnham College.

“So is this a place for you to share?” Miss Shaw wanted to know.

Derek shook his head. “We’re just renovating it and putting it back on the market. And we may be making a bit of noise over the next few weeks. Sorry.”

“So you’re not married?” She looked from one to the other of us.

“Not yet,” Derek said.

“Engaged?”

He glanced at me and grinned. “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A few weeks.” I gave her a bright smile as I took a step toward the stairs. “It was nice to meet you, Miss Shaw.”

“You, too,” Hilda Shaw said. “So you’ll be starting your renovations soon?”