Free Wall-To-Wall Dead by Jennie Bentley

there’s a certain smell…”
    And frankly, once you’ve smelled the odor of death, it never leaves you. I’d once spent the best part of a night and a day locked in a tunnel underneath an old house on the cliffs outside Waterfield with my ex-boyfriend Philippe and a rotting corpse, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get the smell out of my nose. It lingered for weeks, and even now, more than a year later, it took very little to bring me back there. I shivered.
    “What?” Amelia said.
    “Nothing. Just remembering something I wish I didn’t.”
    “Oh,” Amelia said, biting her lip. She looked nervous.
    “Don’t worry. Even if she turns out to be dead, it won’t be a big deal. Wayne is nice. The chief of police. He’s Josh Rasmussen’s dad.”
    Amelia nodded. “I met him once or twice when I first moved in. He left shortly after that.”
    That’s right. Wayne had lived here until Derek and I finished renovating Kate’s carriage house, and she and Wayne got married New Year’s Eve. Amelia would have met him last fall.
    “Looks like some kind of food poisoning,” Derek said when he came back outside. “Something she ingested didn’t agree with her. Her body tried to rid itself of it, but it didn’t seem to have worked.”
    That explained the sour smell.
    “I’ll call Wayne,” I said.
    Derek nodded. “The medical examiner’s office will want to do an autopsy.”
    “For food poisoning?” Amelia exclaimed, and then looked like she wished she hadn’t.
    Derek turned to her. “Unattended, unnatural death. An autopsy is pretty standard.”
    “She had allergies,” Amelia said as I dialed Wayne’s cell number. “Severe allergies. That’s why she never went outside. She was allergic to bees, and pollen, and things in the air…”
    She sounded a little bit desperate to get us to believe her. It’s not an uncommon reaction when someone has died. There’s this need to convince everyone, including oneself, that it was an accident, it was natural, nothing is wrong.
    “Avery?” Wayne’s voice said in my ear. He sounded just a little worried, I thought. “Is everything all right?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re at the apartment, and there’s been an accident—”
    His voice went from worried to tight. “Is Josh OK?”
    Oh God
. “Of course. I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with Josh. I should have said so right off. I haven’t seen Josh all day, but the last time I saw him, this morning, he was just fine.”
    “Oh,” Wayne said. I could hear him draw a breath. “Good. Thank you.”
    “No problem.” I should have realized he might expectthe worst, when he knew Derek and I were working here in Josh’s building. “We do need your help with something else, though.”
    The worry was gone from his voice, and now he sounded merely resigned. “What is it this time?”
    “One of the neighbors has died,” I said. “Miss Hilda Shaw. She lives…lived on the first floor.”
    “I remember Miss Shaw,” Wayne said. “How do you know she’s dead?”
    I explained about the lace curtains, and how Miss Shaw was always sitting there watching people come and go.
    “Yes?” Wayne said.
    “When she wasn’t there this morning, we thought maybe she’d gone out. To the doctor, or something. I mean, she’d have to leave sometime, right? To go shopping at least?”
    “Shaw’s Supermarket delivers,” Amelia muttered.
    I glanced at her, but talked to Wayne. “But when we went to lunch, she still wasn’t there, and then she wasn’t there by the time we got back from lunch, and when it was time to leave, Professor Easton, who lives on the fourth floor, had come home from work and tried to get hold of her, and Miss Shaw wasn’t answering her phone and her door.”
    “Uh-huh,” Wayne said. “What did you do, Avery?”
    I took a breath. He probably wouldn’t be happy about this next little bit, and I was preparing myself. To make it easier, I got it all out in a rush. “Derek went