by Maia Chance
“Because we just love Naneda!” Lo said, squeezing between Effie and me.
“And because I need to use your restroom,” Hank added in a dismal voice.
“And,” Effie added, “because we, as fellow Chamber of Commerce members, have something we would like to discuss with you in private.”
Clifford had his hand on the edge of the door. He clenched it so hard his fingernails turned white. “The … Chamber?”
“Yeah,” I said. Why was he freaked out about the Chamber?
Clifford glanced over his shoulder, then lowered his voice. “Okay, fine. But not in front of our guests. I’ll give everyone a quick tour, and then your guests can stay for the midmorning tea in the solarium, ten dollars a head. There isn’t enough”—he glared at Effie and me in turn—“for you two.”
“My treat, darlings,” Effie said over her shoulder.
Clifford opened the door wider, and we all trooped inside.
The entry hall was admittedly gorgeous, all high ceilings and stunning trim, although badly lit and lightly cobwebbed. The smell of musty potpourri made my nose itch.
Oh—and on a ledge built around the perimeter of the hall, about eight feet up, an electric train was buzzing by. It made a tinny choo-choo before disappearing through a little hole in the wall.
We were all gawking.
Effie spoke first. “Clifford! How cute. I didn’t know you were an electric train aficionado.”
“I have been for years.” Clifford gave us all a stern look. “And please, if you feel the need to touch the trains—don’t. Okay? They’re not toys.”
“Sure look like toys,” Myron said.
“They are highly detailed and fully functioning miniature vehicles.”
“Otherwise known as toys,” Myron stage-whispered to Lo.
“Where is the restroom, for heaven’s sake?” Hank said.
Clifford directed Hank to the restroom and then led the rest of us to a set of open pocket doors. “This is the front parlor,” he droned in a tour-guide voice. Way too many dried flowers, dusty thrift store knickknacks, and framed photographs of dead people for my taste. Not to mention the three-foot-high model mountain with—here it came—another electric train whirring along.
An older couple sat side by side on a high-backed Victorian sofa, both reading copies of the same Tom Clancy novel. They both looked up.
“Myron! Lo!” the woman exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be!”
“Tilly Grace!” Lo cried. “Patrick! I wondered where you two were staying. In all that awful commotion at the auto shop yesterday, I never thought to ask.”
Myron and Lo went into the parlor to visit with their friends from, evidently, the motor coach tour.
Clifford heaved an annoyed sigh. “What about showing you the inn?”
“The customer is always right,” Effie said to him.
“What do you know about customers?”
“Oh, lots,” Effie said with a warm smile. “My very first job was cigarette girl in a nightclub.”
Clifford led us through a formal dining room—featuring miniature train trestle bridges and the dustiest chandelier I’d ever seen—into a large kitchen with circa-1980s relief tiles of fruits and vegetables all over the place.
And yes, in case you were wondering, I did itch to knock them out with a chisel. The eighties were not a happy era for décor.
“Hello,” said Belinda Prentiss, standing at the work island, chopping cantaloupe. She was birdlike, with a narrow, pale face, a thick, long, henna-red braid, and a gauzy dress with beadwork and fringes and a vaguely Indian print. She was one of those people I knew by sight—in a town as small as Naneda, there are a lot of those—but we had never been introduced. “What do you want?” Her voice was as wispy as the rest of her, but her glance was sharp.
Clifford said, “They said they needed to discuss something about the Chamber—”
“Ouch!” Belinda’s knife clattered to the floor, and she held out a delicate finger. Bright blood seeped from a tiny cut.
“Darling, are you all right?” Clifford asked—I thought a little halfheartedly.
“Do I look like I’m all right?” Belinda shrieked.
“Please.” Clifford fluttered his eyelids. “Not with guests in the house, Belinda.”
“Just get me a Band-Aid,” Belinda said. She tore a paper towel from a roll and squeezed it around her finger.
Clifford scurried out of the kitchen.
“Useless,” Belinda snarled under her breath.
All righty then. I guess you don’t need to be BFFs to run a B and B.
“Not Flour Girl Bakery?” Effie asked Belinda, eyeing the jumbo boxes of scones and muffins from the wholesale warehouse club in Rochester.
“With their prices?” Belinda said. “No way. These guests would eat us out of house and home if we let them. Sometimes I feel like my house has been infested by huge, voracious rats. Rats that love to carbo-load. Anyway, what about the Chamber?”
“Oh. It’s not really a big deal,” I said, watching the little red spot blooming on Belinda’s paper towel. “It’s just that, with there having been a murder in town, Naneda’s shot at winning the Peeper Prize is possibly in jeopardy. Tourism and murder don’t really mix.”
“Your point?”
“Well, those of us in the Chamber of Commerce really need to step up our game to win this thing,” I said.
“And how do you propose to do that? Cheat?”
“Of course not.”
Effie said to Belinda, “Agnes and I could personally escort the judge—what is the judge’s name?”
“Hugh Simonian.”
“We could personally escort Mr. Simonian to the highlights of the Harvest Festival,” Effie said.
“And downplay the murder,” I said.
“There are a million problems with this little scheme of yours,” Belinda said, “foremost that it’s breaking the contest rules to try to interfere with, bribe, consort with, or fraternize with a Peeper Prize judge.”
“No consorting or fraternizing?” Effie said. “Those poor dears don’t have a bit of fun, do they?”
“So there’s nothing we can do to make sure the judge doesn’t hold the murder against us?” I said. “Just sit back and relax?”
“What we do is strive for excellence,” Belinda said. “Obviously.”
I stole a peek around the messy kitchen. If that was excellence, I’d pass.
Belinda caught me looking. “Our maid quit suddenly last month,” she said, “and we haven’t found a suitable replacement, so I’ve been doing all the cleaning myself. It’s running me into the ground. Where is that idiot with my Band-Aid?”
“Speaking of cleaning,” I said, “whew, Mikey’s place next door sure is a pit.”
“A dump like that next door can’t be good for business,” Effie said, ruining my attempt at subtlety. “Too bad you couldn’t just buy it yourself and tear it down. Then you could put in a swimming pool.”
“Buy it?” Belinda snapped. “Swimming pool? I don’t have that kind of money. Every time I turn around, I have someone trying to get me to pay for something! If it isn’t the roofer, it’s Clifford—just this morning he said he wants to travel to California to see the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. Can you believe that? I married a five-year-old.”
“I suppose, in a way, you’re a bit glad Mikey is gone,” Effie said, studying her manicure. “I know I would be.”
“What is this?” Belinda’s voice sank to an I’m-possessed-by-demons hiss. “Are you suggesting that I—”
“Goodness, no.” Effie pressed a hand to her heart.
“If you want to know how to make Naneda look better in the eyes of the Peeper Prize judge, then I suggest you quit trying to stir up—” Belinda was interrupted by a peeping choo-chooooo. An electric train burst from a hole in the wall and proceeded to chug along a shelf near the ceiling. Belinda’s eyes fell shut and her lips pinched to a razor slash. She sucked a few noisy breaths in through h
er nose and out through her mouth. Then her eyes flew open. “God, I hate those things. Charming—he calls them charming! Honestly, I’m just waiting for him to die.”
Whoa.
“You know what?” I said. “We have to—um, do something—and don’t worry, we can find the door.”
“And I think our guests will probably skip tea in the solarium,” Effie said as she and I hurried to the door. “It sounds lovely, but we have lunch plans—”
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Belinda said. Then she yelled, “Cliffie!”
Chapter 8
Aunt Effie and I found Hank and the Bermans in the front parlor just as my phone chimed. I fished it out of my bag and looked at the unfamiliar number on the screen, with an area code I didn’t recognize.
“I’m going to take this,” I said to Effie, and went out to the front porch and down the steps. “Hello?” I said into the phone. I wandered onto a narrow paved walk leading around the side of the house.
“Agnes?” a woman chirped. “Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking! You sounded like a disgruntled postal worker for a second there.”
“That’s funny, Delilah, because for a second I thought you were a squeaky dog toy.”
“Now, now. No need to get icky. I get it. You do the wry, adorkable thing really well, but you need to learn when to turn it off. No one likes a Debbie Downer.”
I unclamped my teeth just enough to say, “To what do I owe the infinite pleasure of your call, Delilah?”
“I’m calling to ask if you wanted to share leads on the case.”
“Leads?”
“Unless, of course, you don’t have any leads—”
“I have leads. Tons.” Why did I sound so defensive? Argh.
“Okay, well, I thought it would be fun if we traded.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, maybe because you care about Otis?”
“Of course I care about him.” I paused, running through the stuff Aunt Effie and I had learned so far. It wasn’t a shabby list—Karen, Clifford, and Belinda all seemed pretty sketchy—although I couldn’t make heads or tails of their behavior. “What do you have?”
“Check out the negative reviews of Birch Grove B and B on countryinns.net.”
“Wait—Birch Grove B and B? How do you know where I am?” I looked up and down the street, seeing nothing but a few unoccupied parked cars and a terrier sniffing a rosebush. Still, a chill slithered through me. Was Delilah following me?
“You’re at Birch Grove right now?” she said. “Wow, what a coinkidink! I guess great minds think alike. I’m obviously at my shop, baking up a batch of German chocolate cupcakes. Okay, now give me something.”
“How about … how about that Mikey Brown was seeing someone?”
“Mikey? Seeing a woman? No way.”
“Yes way.”
“I think someone’s pulling your leg on that one, Agnes, but okay. Sure. Stellar tip. This was great! We should do it again. Oh, and want me to say hi to Otis for you when he comes over to help me move some shelving? He is so strong.”
“Uh—”
“Bye!” Delilah hung up.
I stared at the phone screen, my belly churning. I’d figured out the real reason for Delilah’s call: she wanted my man, and she was out to crush my confidence, one little dig at a time. It’s called psychological warfare, kids.
Oh, and you know what kind of cake is Otis’s favorite? German chocolate.
While talking to Delilah, I had wandered along the paved walk to the side of the house, ending up next to the garbage can and recycling bins.
A breeze stirred papers in one of the bins, catching my eye. Most of them were newspapers, but there were several white envelopes in there, too.
I looked closer.
Those were unmistakably bills. And they were unopened.
Huh.
If you pay your bills online, you don’t need to open your paper copies, of course. But here were a bunch of bills—credit cards, electric company, dentist, cable. Unless Clifford and Belinda had signed up for paperless billing for everything, and all at once, this didn’t make sense.
Or they simply couldn’t pay their bills.
Maybe I should just take a peek and— No. I couldn’t take any chances opening the bills. The last thing I needed was Clifford and Belinda reporting me to the cops.
*
I went back inside the B and B. After the Bermans made plans to meet their friends for dinner later, we all left.
“Clifford and Belinda’s maid quit last month and they still haven’t found a replacement?” Effie said to me as we drove away. “Either they’re holding out for Mr. Clean, or Clifford was lying. Maids aren’t that hard to come by.”
Hank said, “The bathroom was not clean. I found a hair on the soap. And who uses bar soap, anyway? You might as well wash your hands with raw chicken.”
“Well, I thought the place was just darling,” Lo said. “I just loved all the little tchotchkes! It was like being in a museum.”
“A museum?” Myron said. “Of what? Kitsch?”
“Of allergens,” Hank said with a sniffle.
“Clifford was definitely lying,” I said to Effie. “I saw a bunch of unopened bills in their recycling bin. They’re broke.”
“I can tell your mind is whirring, Agnes dear.”
“Do you have your phone handy?”
“Always.”
“Pull up countryinns.net—it’s one of those inn booking and review websites—and check out the reviews for Birch Grove.”
“I’m on it.”
While I drove toward Main Street, Effie fiddled with her smartphone. After a few minutes she said, “Oh-ho. What have we here, darlings? Listen to this review, from just last month: ‘I wish I could give this place zero stars! The next-door neighbor was practicing the drum set in the middle of the night, and we could see and hear this same Neanderthal clearly from our bedroom window, picking his belly button lint while he argued with a credit collector. Our twentieth wedding anniversary was ruined.’”
“Whoa,” I said.
“Here’s another: ‘Dust, dust everywhere, bad-tempered host, everything they served for breakfast tasted stale. What is up with all the potpourri? It smells like a funeral home. And then there’s the neighbor next door who was blaring Green Day on his front porch. I do NOT recommend this place.’ There are good reviews too, of course—because evidently some people really do like dusty little soaps shaped like roses—but there are enough terrible reviews to bring their star rating, at least on this website, down to a two point five.”
“Dang,” I said. “That’s an awful average. I guess Clifford and Belinda really do have a plausible motive, just like Karen was hinting: get rid of Mikey before he ruins their B and B business. There’s a lot on the line for them.”
“Enough to kill?” Lo asked.
“If they’re desperate enough, sure,” I said.
Yes, I realize it was probably inappropriate to be discussing this stuff with the gaggle. Heck, it was inappropriate to be discussing it period.
“The question is,” I said, “can I figure out just how desperate Clifford and Belinda really are without doing anything drastic?”
“You could go back when it’s dark and get those bills you’re talking about,” Myron said.
“Like I said, without doing anything drastic.”
“Where are we going now?” Hank whined from the third row.
“How about a little lunch?” Effie asked. “There’s a wonderful sandwich-and-salad shop on Oak—everything is locally sourced—and then after that we should go back to the inn and relax for a bit so we’re all fresh as daisies for the Harvest Festival Kick-Off. Oh—and I must be at the inn to meet Boyd when he delivers the bathtubs—”
“I almost forgot about those,” I said.
“—and the billiards table.”
“The—? No, never mind. Fine. Why no
t? The billiards table.”
*
Counting out money to pay for my turkey-and-Swiss in the sandwich shop, I noticed something on one of the quarters I had dug out of my wallet. Along the edge of the quarter, gray stringy material clung, sort of like the stuff that’s produced when you erase pencil, only a little stickier.
What was it? I mean, sure, coins get funky. But the thing was, I was one hundred percent sure this quarter had come from the till at Crumble + Fluff. The zippered coin pouch in my wallet had been empty until I’d put my change for that coconut lemon cupcake in there yesterday.
“Miss?” the cashier said.
“Oh. Sorry. Here.” I slid my money across the counter.
Whatever. It was probably nothing. And jeez, it wasn’t like Delilah was required to wash the money that passed through her till.
*
Back at the inn, Chester was cracking open a Diet Coke when I walked into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said.
“Need some caffeine?” he asked.
“I need a nap. In an isolation tank.”
“Okay, well, I have some good news for you, and I have some bad news.”
“What?” I sank into a chair.
“The floorboards up in the attic bathroom are original—”
“I knew it!”
“—but they’re rotten. Wet rot, not dry rot, which is good.”
“How is that good?”
“Well, both types are fungus—”
“Gross.”
“Yeah. But if it was dry rot, the entire building could be in jeopardy. Wet rot will just be concentrated around where there’s been some water leakage. Which there was. The floor is completely rotten all around the bathtub and toilet. The leaking happened a while ago, of course. The boards are dry, now, but the damage is done.”
“So what does that mean? Can we sand the floors down or something?”
Chester snorted. “No way. They have to be ripped out.”
“Ripped out?”
“Uh-huh. Serious grunt work. Trust me, Agnes, save it until our guests are gone and this stuff with Otis and the murder has blown over. You don’t want to be knee-deep in wood fungus at a time like this.”
I blinked away the hot sting of moisture in my eyes. What, now I was going to cry? About floorboards? What the heck was wrong with me?
