by Maia Chance
Bad Neighbors
AN AGNES AND EFFIE MYSTERY
Maia Chance
For my inventive, steadfast Zach.
Chapter 1
My name is Agnes Blythe, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’m not going to lie: I’m a nerd. We nerds do our research. We think outside the box. We know how to buck up and keep going, even when the popular kids are calling us eraser breath and using us as a dodgeball target.
So, I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking that somehow Aunt Effie, Cousin Chester, and I were going to restore the Stagecoach Inn all by ourselves. Using nerd superpowers.
YouTube toilet installation tutorials, POW! HGTV house-flipping marathon, ZING! This Old House Essential Home Repair, SLAM! Maybe a little gold-and-red spandex?
Or something.
But on that sunny, mid-October afternoon when Quinn Jones, architect, stood with Chester and me outside the inn, showing us the proposal he’d drawn up, I realized that the whole process was going to be more elaborate, expensive, and time-consuming than I’d thought. This meant (a) the dozens of hours I had spent worshipping Bob Vila had possibly been wasted, and (b) I was going to be living in my hometown of Naneda, New York, waaaaaaaaay longer than I’d planned.
Which was fine. I mean, I was dating (I think?) the guy I’d been in love with forever, I had a free place to live (yes, in the inn’s attic with the spiders, but FREE), and I had a job helping restore the inn—a job that, unlike my post-college gigs as barista, hotel receptionist, and library barcode drudge, I actually cared about.
And I belonged in Naneda, even though I had spent the last decade away. Of course I belonged. I mean, what kind of weirdo doesn’t feel totally awesome, at ease, and not-like-an-outsider in their own hometown? Snort.
“Picture it,” Quinn Jones was saying, tucking his binder of plans under his arm and spreading his hands like a frame around the inn. “Stabilize the foundations. Completely rebuild the porch—rot has set in pretty bad, and I saw some carpenter ants over on the far side. New front door, maybe a glossy black with brass hardware. Paint the shutters—well, first replace the shutters, and then paint them. All new windows, of course—you can get some stunning historic replicas with multipanes and real working sashes, just like the originals, except that, well, they won’t be broken. Oh—and you’ll need a new roof, and one of the chimneys looks like it’s about to topple over.”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to add up the time and cost of basically rebuilding the entire inn piecemeal. “New roof. New chimney. Check and check.”
Quinn, dapper and plump, gave me a hard look. “You guys want to do this the right way, don’t you?”
“Of course!”
Chester nodded, flipped a Cheezy Puff into his mouth, and crunched.
“Just checking,” Quinn said. “You’re looking a little sick, Agnes.”
“Me? Sick? Pfft.”
“She always looks like that,” Chester said.
I shot Chester a glare.
A warm smile wreathed his round, pleasant face (well, pleasant minus the creepy little smudge of a mustache he was growing).
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Because your aunt—”
“Great aunt.” Chester crunched another Cheezy Puff.
“—she said that your budget is more than adequate.”
“It is,” I said. This was the truth. Aunt Effie had finagled her wealthy elderly boyfriend Paul Duncan into underwriting the entire renovation. I wasn’t sure why he had agreed to do it, especially since he lived in Florida, but I wasn’t going to argue. No Paul, no renovation. Case closed.
“The Stagecoach Inn, as you must be aware,” Quinn said, “is a historic landmark—”
“Treasure.” Chester was rummaging noisily in the Cheezy Puff bag. “It’s a historic treasure.”
Quinn gave a stiff smile. “Then you know how important it is not to cut corners or”—he made one-handed air quotes—“‘do it yourself.’”
Was the inn a landmark and a treasure? Well, sure. You just couldn’t tell by looking at it.
My Great Uncle Herman had recently left the inn to Aunt Effie, his cousin, in his will. It had been condemned, but now it had brand-spankin’-new wiring and was off the Naneda code compliance officer’s hit list. Built in 1848 on the site of the burned-down Chester Stagecoach Company headquarters, it had flourished as a hotel even as stagecoaches were supplanted by the railroads and the railroads by automobiles. Why? Because it was in the prettiest spot imaginable, on the shores of gentle Lake Naneda in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.
Offering wholesome family fun like canoeing, fishing, and swimming, the Stagecoach Inn became a summer holiday destination for generations of families. Then something happened in the 1960s (someone told me that’s when the ghost showed up, but I don’t buy it), and it slipped into a decline. It was a boarding house for a while, and then sometime in the late eighties Great Uncle Herman and his wife gave up on it. The place fell vacant.
If, that is, you don’t count the mice, squirrels, spiders, and, apparently, carpenter ants who called the place home.
“Of course we know how important it is to do it right,” I said to Quinn. “This building has been in our family for a hundred and seventy-odd years, and the land way longer than that. This is our heritage. That’s actually why we’re looking for an architect who understands that we want to help with the restoration—”
“You?” Quinn said. “Help?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Do you have any experience restoring old buildings?”
“Well, no, but we want to learn.”
“We’ve been reading up on the subject,” Chester said. “And we watch a lot of HGTV.”
“Reading?” Quinn’s eyelids drooped with disdain. “HGTV? That’s not going to cut it. If you decide to hire me as your architect, I’m afraid I’m going to insist upon a professionals-only policy. This property is too special to be destroyed by dabblers.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.” I’m pretty sure Quinn missed my “We hire this guy as our architect when hell freezes” tone.
Also, there was the little matter of how Chester and I had already started demolition on the attic bathroom. We’d gotten all pumped up watching This Old House reruns the previous week and plunged right in. The toilet had been removed and the claw-foot bathtub sat in the hallway. Next up was removing the sink. But no way was I sharing this with Quinn.
“All righty then, I’ll keep going,” Quinn said. “The garage? I was thinking we could tear it down and rebuild it with two additional guest rooms above—”
“Tear it down?” I said.
“Didn’t you notice the way it’s sagging? The foundations are shot, and anyway, it was probably built in the 1930s or ’40s. It’s not really a ‘heritage’”—more air quotes—“building. What’s in there, anyway? It’s so crammed full of junk, it looks like a fire hazard.”
“Junk?” Chester said. “Hardly.” He stuffed four Cheezy Puffs in his mouth at once.
As if on cue, a U-Haul truck came growling down the inn’s drive, overgrown bushes scratching along its sides, potholes making it jounce. Some burly guy I didn’t recognize was behind the wheel, and Aunt Effie sat in the passenger seat. She saw us and made twiddly fingers.
“More?” Chester whispered to me. “Seriously?”
“More what?” Quinn asked, looking back and forth between Chester and me.
“You’ll see,” I said.
Chester, Quinn, and I watched as the burly guy maneuvered the truck, with lots of bumps and back-up beeping, so that the rear cargo door was lined up with the garage doors. Then he parked, and he and tall, thin, silver-bobbed Aunt Effie climbed out.
“Hello-o!” Effie cried merrily to us. “Come and
see what Auntie-Claus has brought, children! You’ll just drool.”
Quinn, Chester, and I walked across the leaf-covered lawn toward the U-Haul. The cargo door rumbled as the burly guy shoved it open.
“Happy birthday to me!” Effie said.
Her birthday wasn’t for three more months. By my calculations, she was going to be turning seventy-two for the fourth or fifth time.
The U-Haul was crammed full of what I knew to be furniture—expensive, antique furniture—all wrapped up in quilted moving pads.
“What did you get?” I asked. “Dining room set for thirty-five?”
“Better. Two armoires for the guest rooms, and—you’re not going to believe this—they’re Chippendale—”
Chester opened his mouth.
“—no need for crass jokes, Chester—”
Chester shut his mouth.
“—and I got them for an absolute song because the estate sale was almost impossible to find—the address practically made Google Maps go up in flames—and hardly anyone showed. I also found two pristine claw-foot bathtubs that’ll look perfect in the en suite bathrooms we’ll be putting in. Those will arrive tomorrow.” Aunt Effie beamed her white, youthful, one hundred percent porcelain–veneered smile at Quinn. “But how rude of me—hello, Quinn. I adore those brogues you’re wearing!—so very autumnal. I’m simply dying to see your proposal—” Effie’s phone chirruped inside her orange suede purse. “Hang on, darlings—I’m expecting a call from Paul—boring old money things, you know—Chester, why don’t you use those big muscles of yours to help Boyd start unloading the goodies?” Digging her phone out of her purse, she wandered away.
“Big muscles, huh?” I said to Chester.
He popped one last Cheezy Puff in his mouth and tossed the bag on a rusty lawn chair. “Just call me Beefcake of the Year.”
Chester and I wage halfhearted battle with the same doughy Blythe genes. The genes are winning. It’s not that we’re bad-looking, but there will be no bouncing dimes off our biceps. Chester is short and thick, with a mop of curly brown hair, intelligent hazel eyes, and great skin. I’m five foot five and no gazelle, but I’ve also been blessed with good skin, and I have shiny, straightish, shoulder-length brown hair and hazel eyes. I have been called “really pretty.” I have also been called a clone of Velma Dinkley in Scooby-Doo. I figure the reality falls somewhere in between.
“Welp,” burly Boyd said, “let’s get to it.”
I dragged open the double garage doors. Golden sunbeams illuminated the interior, which was crammed, Jenga-style, with furniture in protective coverings.
“Wow,” Quinn said, lifting his eyebrows.
“Someone has a hoarding problem,” Chester said.
“Someone also gets really competitive at estate sales,” I said.
“But if that’s all Chippendale and the like,” Quinn said, his eyes glowing, “then someone’s inn is going to be gorgeous when it’s furnished.”
“Is there even room for this new stuff?” I said. “Wait—” I walked into the garage. “I’ll scooch this table over to the side, and then stack those two armchairs on top…”
Quinn put down his binder and helped me scooch and stack, and then Boyd and Chester started unloading.
Aunt Effie, meanwhile, was over on the lawn talking on the phone. The orange-striped cat who lived on the premises—he had grown too sleek with the organic free-range cat food Aunt Effie fed him to be called a stray—twined around her ankles.
Boyd and Chester were nudging one of the armoires down the U-Haul ramp when—
“Yoo-hoo!” came Aunt Effie’s voice. She was mincing toward us in her too-high-for-a-seventy-something heels. The cat—I called him Tiger Boy—strode away into the bushes.
I was thinking, Crud. Because Aunt Effie’s yoo-hooing never bodes well.
She came over, phone pressed facedown against her shoulder, bottle-glass blue eyes glittering.
Double crud. When her eyes glittered like that …
“Who’s on the phone?” I whispered.
“Potential guests.”
“Great—for, like, next July?”
“No, for tonight.”
“Oh, my,” Quinn murmured.
Boyd said, “You guys have any Gatorade?”
“What?” I yelped. “Tonight? Are you insane, Aunt Effie?”
Chester and Boyd, panting for breath, eased the armoire the rest of the way down the ramp and parked it. Chester grabbed his Cheezy Puffs.
“I feel perfectly sane,” Effie said, “but so many people have suggested otherwise that I suppose I should—”
“Let me get this straight,” Chester said. “On the phone, right now, waiting for your response, are guests for this place”—he swept a hand toward the inn, which suddenly looked extra-dilapidated—“for tonight? Aunt Effie, they might as well check into Castle Dracula.”
“Or a dog kennel,” I said.
Chester laughed. “Or the dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant.”
“Or—”
“Children,” Effie whispered, massaging her temple with short, black-lacquered fingernails. “Please focus. It’s a bit of an emergency, you see. A motor coach carrying a leaf-peeping tour group broke down, and the guests are stranded here in Naneda until the bus is fixed. Most of them will be situated at other inns and hotels in town that just happened to have cancellations, but other than that, because of the Harvest Festival, the entire area is booked solid. They’re desperate. They’re senior citizens. We can make do.”
The person on the line must’ve heard, because a faint squawking seeped from Effie’s phone.
“How many guests?” I whispered.
“Only four.”
“Um, four guests plus one—one!—guest bathroom equals—”
“Don’t panic, Agnes. We have a dozen brand-new mattresses right up there in the garage loft”—Mattress Barn had had a going-out-of-business sale the previous week—“and I could pop over to Bella’s Bedding Boutique to purchase sheets and blankets and pillows. The place is spotless.”
This was actually true. The entire rambling inn was spick-and-span and smelled, literally, like Spic and Span. Maybe a touch of Windex.
But that didn’t negate the empty rooms, the expanses of hardwood floors yearning to be refinished, the crackly gray, stained plaster walls stripped of their layers of antique wallpaper, the saggy linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms, and the gross purplish mahogany-effect stain (circa 1975?) on every last bit of intricate millwork.
“It should be only one night,” Effie said. “It turns out that the driver—it’s Golden Vistas Motor Coach Tours—managed to drive the last few miles to Hatch Automotive before breaking down entirely—”
“Hatch Automotive?” I said.
“Oooh,” Chester said. “Otis.”
“Please,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Better get gussied up, kiddo.”
“Give me those!” I snatched the bag of Cheezy Puffs from Chester and stress-ate a handful.
Hatch Automotive is owned and run by Otis Hatch—the guy I may or may not have been dating—and his grandpa Harlan. Otis didn’t usually work on Sundays, but if the motor coach was being deposited there, that meant he had likely been called in. He’s the head mechanic. His grandpa is mostly retired, and I happened to know he was away deep-sea fishing with an old buddy from Nam.
Oh—and after I had told Otis I was in love with him weeks earlier, he had NEVER SAID I LOVE YOU TOO. Hence the stress-eating.
“Agnes?” Effie said. “What do you say?”
“Okay,” I said with a weird sense of doom. “Sure. Let’s bring ’em on in.”
“Chester?”
“Why not?” Chester said, snatching back the Cheezy Puffs from me. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter 2
Fifteen minutes later I was hairbrushed, tinted lipbalmed, lightly eyelinered, and driving toward Hatch Automotive in my “new” car. This was a fifteen-year-old whitish mini
van that looked like a cross between a handheld Dustbuster and the Space Shuttle. Its undercarriage was about two inches from the ground and bumped and scraped on every last pebble. At speeds over forty-five miles per hour, it felt in danger of disintegration. I had bought it off a high school student for five hundred bucks—easy on my savings account but no boon to my ego.
Hatch Automotive was about four miles from the inn, out on a crossroads a mile from the main highway. It was one of those retro concrete boxes from the 1950s with an auto shop on one side and a small office on the other. Autumn-gold fields sprawled around it. On the far edge of the rear field stood an old white farmhouse that belonged to Otis’s Grandpa Harlan. Otis lived in his own little bungalow in town.
As I rolled closer to Hatch Automotive, my heart kicked up. Something was going on over there, and it didn’t look good. Two police cruisers flashed their disco-in-hell blue and red lights. Milling people, a huge glossy motor coach, and—oh, no—an ambulance.
Maybe one of the motor coach passengers had had a minor accident …
Because Otis, my beautiful Otis, could not be hurt.
The entire lot around the automotive shop was in chaos—omigosh, was that a body under that white sheet, being loaded into the ambulance?—so I slammed the Dustbuster into park at the side of the road, scrambled out, and jogged over.
I stopped at the first person I came to, a small, wizened man in a travel vest. “What’s going on?” I asked, sounding a little shrill.
“A mechanic has been murdered. Head smashed in.”
My heart shriveled to a raisin. Otis. Otis was a mechanic.
“What? Who…? Where is—?”
“And the other mechanic’s being taken in by the police. I guess he did it.”
I looked to where the man was pointing. My mouth fell open.
Otis wasn’t dead. Otis was stepping into the back of a police car, with a cop holding the door.
A gargling noise escaped my mouth.
“This is awful,” the wizened guy said. “Our tour is going to be hopelessly behind schedule now.”
I commanded my feet to move. Nothing.
