Wall-To-Wall Dead (5 page)

“Tomorrow.” Derek looked trapped, like a deer in the headlights, too polite to cut and run.

My mother did her best to instill politeness into me, but I am, after all, a New Yorker. We tend to be direct. “I’m sorry, Miss Shaw,” I said, grabbing Derek’s arm. “We really have to go. We have a lot to do before tomorrow morning.”

“Of course.” Hilda Shaw sounded conciliatory, but the look in her eyes was avid, as if she really wanted us to stay longer so she could finish turning our brains inside out and shaking them to see if anything of value was left.

“We’ll be back in the morning,” Derek said, unable to help himself. I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes. “We’ll see you then.”

Miss Shaw nodded and withdrew into her apartment. By the time we got downstairs and were getting into the Beetle, she was back behind the lace curtains again. I could see them flutter.

“You were much too nice to her,” I chastised Derek after the car doors were closed and I was plugging the key in the ignition. “Now she’ll never leave us alone.”

“She’s a lonely old lady,” Derek answered. “I feel sorry for her.”

“She treated us like we were suspects in a crime.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Derek said, buckling his seat belt. When we’re working, we pretty consistently use Derek’s truck for everything—it’s a Ford F-150 with plenty of room in the back for all our supplies and tools, quite unlike the Beetle—and when we’re not working, I enjoy driving my zippy little car. It was a gift from my mother and her husband last Christmas, since I hadn’t had a car when I first arrived in Waterfield. In New York City, there’s not much point in owning one. Having to drive to get anywhere was a new experience for me, but I’d found I was enjoying it.

“Yes, it was.” The engine caught, and I put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space, narrowly avoiding a collision with a Jeep coming in the opposite direction. It slid into a parking space a few slots down. After a moment, the door opened and a young man got out. He was in his early or mid-twenties and olive-skinned, with
black hair and a strong nose, dressed in black pants and a white shirt. He headed for the front door at a good clip, without even looking our way. The lace curtains went into a frenzy of flutters.

“Who do you suppose that is?” I said. “Bruce, Gregg, Mariano, or William Maurits?”

“It isn’t Maurits. He’s quite a bit older. And I think I’ve met Gregg once. My money’s on Mariano.”

“Or Bruce maybe?”

“It could be Bruce. Do you want me to stop him and ask?”

He was being sarcastic. I chose to ignore it.

“Of course not. He looks like he’s in a hurry. I don’t want to interrupt him. I’m just curious. These are our new neighbors, after all.”

“You’re as bad as Miss Shaw,” Derek said. “Nosy old spinster.”

I shot him an offended look as I concentrated on turning the Beetle out of the parking lot and onto the Augusta Road in the direction of Guido’s. “Am not.”

“Are, too. Or you will be if you don’t look out. You already live alone with three cats.”

“I’m getting married!” I said.

My boyfriend grinned. “Yes, you are. And your future husband is just giving you a hard time. You won’t ever turn into Hilda Shaw. You have too many friends and too many interests to end up sitting behind your kitchen curtains petting Mischa and watching the neighbors.”

Jemmy and Inky loved my aunt, but they merely tolerated me. They wouldn’t let me pet them, so if I were to sit behind the kitchen curtains petting a cat, it’d definitely be Mischa. I wouldn’t be watching the neighbors, however; the kitchen faces the back of the house, and all I can see from there is the backyard, with what’s left of the garden shed, and the trees.

“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”

“My pleasure,” Derek answered and stretched his legs out.

Five minutes later we pulled into the parking lot outside Guido’s Pizzeria.

It was barely five o’clock, but already the place was hopping. The parking lot was more than half-full—a few trucks, plus a whole army of small economy cars with out-of-state license plates—and although I’ve seen the inside more tightly packed than it was right now, there was someone at almost every table. We made our way through the crowd, ducking and weaving, until we got to a small table for two near the swinging door to the kitchen. Candy, in her customary tight jeans and cropped pink top, was wending her way between the patrons, ponytail bopping and bubble gum snapping.

“Hi!” she said when she got around to noticing us—or rather, Derek. “What can I get you to drink?”

Derek ordered a beer for himself, and since he had Candy’s attention and I didn’t, he added a Diet Coke for me.

She popped a pink bubble. “Be right back.”

“See?” I told Derek when she’d sauntered off, tail swinging, “It’s like I’m not even here.”

He grinned. “Don’t worry about it, Tink.
I
know you’re here. Who cares what Candy thinks?”

He reached across the table and took my hand, looking deeply into my eyes. I leaned forward, irresistibly drawn, while tucking a strand of yellow hair behind my ear. That’s the reason he calls me Tinkerbell: lots of kinky, Mello Yello hair I often pile on top of my head when I work, like Peter Pan’s little fairy friend. That, and the fact that when he came up with the nickname, last summer when we first met, I was pouting a lot, because I wasn’t getting my way. Oh yes, and he thinks I’m cute, or “cunning,” as they say in Maine. For Halloween last year, we dressed up as Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. Derek looks quite fetching in tights.

“Who do you want to be for Halloween this year?” I asked dreamily. Those blue, blue eyes never fail to have an effect on me.

Derek straightened and let go of my hand. “Don’t you
have enough to worry about without making Halloween costumes? We’re getting married in October, aren’t we?”

I sat back myself. Obviously the hand-holding was over. “We could combine the two. How would you feel about getting married in costume?”

“Not good,” Derek said.

“People do it, you know. Themed weddings. And it would be fun. We could be Peter Pan and Tinkerbell again. Or you could be Robin Hood and I could be Maid Marian. You already have the green tights and the tunic from last year, and the hat with the jaunty feather. All you’d need is a bow and arrows.”

“And then for Halloween I suppose you’re gonna repurpose the bow and arrow and turn me into Cupid? With little angel wings and a diaper? No thanks.”

“But I really wanted to be Maid Marian,” I said, pouting.

“You can still be Maid Marian,” Derek said. “I’ll be Friar Tuck.”

“You look nothing like Friar Tuck.” Tuck—at least the stereotypical Tuck—is short and fat and bald. Derek is tall and lean and still has all his hair. It’s dirty blond bordering on light brown, with streaks through the front and crown in the summer from time spent in the sun, and it’s almost always just a touch too long. I’m rather fond of it, and I’d hate to have to shave a bald spot to make him look the part. It would grow back in, I know, but still…not something I’d want to remember from the happiest day of my life. Just imagine the wedding photos.

“Fine,” Derek said. “I’ll be the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

“Maid Marian can’t marry the Sheriff of Nottingham. And besides, he wore tights, too. They all wore tights back then. Friar Tuck probably had tights under the cassock.”

Derek huffed. “I’m not getting married in tights. In fact, I’m not getting married in costume at all. No themed wedding. A monkey suit is as far as I’ll go.”

“Tuxedo?”

“If you insist,” Derek said. “Now can we
please
talk about something else?”

“I suppose. What?”

“The condo. Talk to me about the condo.”

Fine. “We start by tearing out, the way we usually do. Get rid of everything we don’t plan to keep. The old kitchen cabinets and sink, the avocado green appliances, the vanity cabinet and commode.”

“Not the commode,” Derek said. “It’s the only bathroom in the apartment, and I’d hate to have to knock on Miss Shaw’s door to ask her if I can use the facility. She’d probably watch me through the keyhole.”

I shuddered. “Lord, yes. No, let’s make sure we won’t have to do that. That should take us most of the first day, don’t you think?”

At that point, just as Derek was nodding agreement, Candy came back with our drinks and derailed the conversation for the moment. She pulled her order pad out of her back pocket. “What’ll you have?”

Derek ordered a pizza with everything except pineapple and anchovies, and Candy turned away. She was just about to slip through the door to the kitchen when a man grabbed her arm and held her back. He looked to be a few years older than Derek, late thirties, and was good-looking, in a slick sort of way. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, he reminded me of the late and mostly unlamented Tony “the Tiger” Micelli, former reporter for Channel Eight News.

Candy smiled when she saw the man, but whatever words he muttered in her ear made the happiness slip right off her face. When he walked away a few seconds later, without a backward glance, she stood watching him, for once chewing on her bottom lip instead of her bubble gum.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Who is he?” Derek grew up in Waterfield; if anyone knew, he would.

“Who?” He glanced over his shoulder. I indicated the man, now on his way into the hallway in the back, where the bathrooms were. Derek shook his head. “No idea. He’s not from around here. Or if he is, he’s new.”

Over the past five or six years—since Melissa dumped Derek and started selling real estate, extolling Waterfield’s
virtues as a sleeper community for Portland and Augusta—our little town’s population has practically doubled. There have been new subdivisions cropping up like toadstools all over the place, many of them built by my now out-of-business cousins, the Stenham twins. This guy must be one of the newcomers.

“He’s too old for her,” I said.

“It’s none of your business,” Derek answered. And since he was right, I left it at that.

“I can’t imagine living under this kind of scrutiny every day of my life,” Derek muttered under his breath the next morning as we stood in the parking lot under the watchful eye of Miss Hilda Shaw, unloading tools from the back of the truck. “No wonder the Antoninis left.”

I grinned. “Guilty conscience?”

He shook his head. “No. But I don’t have to have done something wrong not to want someone watching my every move.”

Too true. We had only been here twice, and Miss Shaw was already getting on both of our nerves. Didn’t she have something better to do than sit behind her curtains watching everyone else? Couldn’t she go read a book or something? Or watch a soap opera?

“Maybe she’ll get used to us,” I said optimistically. “Maybe she’s just interested in us because we’re new.”

“She’s not.”

It wasn’t Derek who said it. I looked up to meet the gray eyes of a short and slender man in a charcoal gray suit, who
had stopped beside the sedan in the next parking space. He stuck out a hand. “I’m William Maurits, 1B.”

“Avery Baker,” I said, shaking the hand, “2A.”

Derek reached past me to shake Maurits’s hand as well. “Derek Ellis. We’ve met before. What’s that you said?”

“It’s not because you’re new,” William said, and switched the briefcase back into his right hand now that the handshaking was over. He lifted his chin, perhaps in an effort to appear taller, since he wasn’t much bigger than me. “I’ve been here for ten years, and she still watches my every move.” He shot something akin to a glare at the lace curtains. “Nosy old biddy. Always has to have her beak in everyone’s business.”

“Maybe she doesn’t have much of a life of her own,” I suggested.

William glanced at me. “She doesn’t. Never married, never had children.” He chuckled. “Not that I have room to talk. I never married or had children, either. Married to the job, I suppose.”

“So maybe she’s lonely.”

William shrugged. “Possibly. All I know is, she spends all her time sitting at that window. I’ve never seen her come outside the building. She even has groceries delivered.”

“Is she ill? Or disabled?” Some sort of mental illness maybe? Agoraphobia, like Kate had suggested. That’s what it’s called when people are afraid to go outside, right?

“No idea,” William said. “All I know is, she’s a nuisance.” He nodded politely before disarming his car alarm and getting in.

“Cheerful fellow,” Derek remarked when William had pulled out of the parking space and was waiting to join traffic on the Augusta Road. “You got what you need?”

He ran an experienced eye over the tools I had assembled.

“I think so. If you’ll take the big toolbox, I’ll take this little one. And if we need anything else, the truck will be right downstairs; it’s not like it’s a long walk to get something.”

“I don’t want to parade in front of Miss Shaw any more than I have to,” Derek said, and hoisted the big toolbox. “C’mon, Avery. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Let’s.” I grabbed the small toolbox and followed him toward the front door, twiddling my fingers to Miss Shaw on the way.

Just as we reached the front door, it opened from the inside, and Candy tumbled out, followed by another young woman. She was shorter by an inch or two and, unlike Candy, seemed determined to make as little of herself as possible. Like Candy, she had a blond ponytail—baby-fine hair scraped straight back—but it looked less jaunty, just sort of hung there. Candy was polished to a high sheen, with iridescent blue eye shadow, a thick layer of mascara, and pink lip gloss, while her friend looked like Plain Jane, with not a stitch of makeup on her face. I had wondered whether Candy’s faded jeans and cropped top were a uniform of sorts, clothes she wore to Guido’s to maximize her earnings, but it must be her usual mode of dress, because she was wearing the same tight jeans and the same short and tight sort of top now, when I assumed she was on her way to school. Both girls had bags over their shoulders, and Jamie was jingling a set of car keys in her hand. Unlike Candy, she was dressed in leggings and an oversized and baggy sweater that hung almost to her knees and hid any hint of a figure. The color was a dark navy blue bordering on black that overwhelmed her pale complexion and delicate features.