I've gone round and round with this thought, myself. And I keep coming back to the furniture store clerk. I have to think she would have noticed a severe illness, she certainly seemed observant about everything else.
That's true-however Sepsis can kill in a short period of time, The furniture store woman saw Zahra Sept. 25th and she was reported missing oct. 9th.
That's 2 weeks from when she was reported missing.
Sepsis can strike, kill shockingly fast
snip-
Brazilian model Mariana Bridi da Costa was a healthy 20-year-old when doctors told her she had a urinary tract infection, her family says. The infection spread, and after amputating her feet, doctors thought they had the situation under control, according to a blog run by a family friend.
"She's alive, [she] will survive," Renato Lindgren wrote on the blog on January 20, before da Costa also had to have her hands amputated, and part of her stomach and both kidneys extracted. "She can eat well, visit the sea, swim, travel, talk with her friends and family, marry and have a baby. She has a full and beautiful life ahead."
Four days later, da Costa was dead.
Sepsis -- the body's inflammatory response to an infection -- really can kill that quickly, according to Dr. Kevin Tracey, author of a book about sepsis called "Fatal Sequence: The Killer Within
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/29/ep.sepsis.infection/