Wall-To-Wall Dead by Jennie Bentley

Author:Jennie Bentley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780425255568
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2012-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

I hadn’t been kidding when I told Derek I enjoy doing laundry. There’s something very peaceful, almost hypnotic, about watching clothes agitate through a front loader’s window. And folding clothes is one of those mindless activities, like washing dishes, that keeps your hands busy but leaves your mind free to wander. Great for puzzling over solutions to mysteries. These days I have other activities that serve that same purpose—removing wallpaper and scraping paint come to mind—but as I folded Candy’s tight jeans and cropped tops and silky little bits of underwear, I found myself going back to what had happened.

For a second, when we’d first walked into the community room and had seen her on the floor, I’d been sure she was dead. She’d been so still, so pale, her back hardly rising or falling at all. And in the ambulance, with all the tubes and machines hooked up to her…not to mention the look in Derek’s eyes. He wasn’t one to worry overmuch, my boyfriend—when Melissa had gotten shot, he’d acted like it was no big deal—so when he did, I tended to take it seriously. Candy was in a bad way.

And Brandon was right: Girls her age didn’t just drop dead—or almost dead—from natural causes. Not unless they had some kind of hidden medical issue. Which she might well have, but if so, no one had mentioned it. People knew that Miss Shaw had had severe allergies, and several of them had said so. But no one—not even Jamie—had said anything about Candy having health problems. Chances were she didn’t, that she was just as healthy as she looked. Or as healthy as she had looked, up until today.

That was something the doctors would figure out anyway, and while I could keep my fingers crossed, mentally, for a simple solution, I was pretty sure this would turn out to be something more sinister than a hidden case of, say, diabetes. Wayne must agree, since he’d determined that the wine and glasses and chocolate needed to go to the lab. To be tested for poison, I assumed.

Did she have any family? She grew up in Waterfield—I knew she’d gone to school with Brandon—so she probably did. Although if she’d chosen to live with Jamie instead of saving money by staying at home, they might have problems.

Either way, Wayne or Brandon—or the hospital—would notify them. And if they’d had anything to do with this, the police would find out.

Would anyone notify Mr. Guido?

Not likely, I thought. Jamie probably knew what was going on, but if Candy was trying to keep it secret—and judging from where she’d parked the other night, in the far corner of Guido’s parking lot, almost out of sight under the branches of a tree, she wasn’t eager to broadcast her relationship to the world—Jamie might not mention it. Or could be too rattled to think of it.

Maybe I should make a quick trip out to Wellhaven to tell the guy what was going on. It would be a kindness.

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