Bad Neighbors

by Maia Chance

  “That woman who just came in,” Effie said. “Belinda Prentiss. What class is she taking?”

  “Excuse me?” Beefcake said. “We don’t talk about our clients.”

  Effie twiddled her fingers. “That’s what everyone says.”

  “No, we really don’t talk about our clients. Now, I could help you with something else, except you really look like you should be taking the seniors’ aquarobics class at the community center.”

  Effie recoiled. “Seniors’ … aquarobics?” she said delicately, as though trying out a new phrase in Swahili.

  I took her arm and steered her away from Beefcake. I could tell it wouldn’t end well.

  Someone chirped, “Hey! Over here!”

  Avi Gupta, D.D.S., was dismounting a stair-climbing machine. He came over and he and Effie did the double air-smooch thing. They had met soon after Effie had arrived in town the month before and, discovering their shared interests in snarkiness and fashion, had become fast friends.

  “I haven’t seen you in ages, sweetie,” Avi gushed. “You look as stunning as ever.”

  “So do you,” Effie told him. “Where did you get this marvelous ensemble?”

  “This old thing?” Avi glanced with feigned modesty down at his slim, seemingly boneless body, clad in small orange shorts, a tank top with a graphic of shooting stars, and electric turquoise sneakers. “Are you going to the Lake Club Masquerade tonight?”

  “Are we going,” Effie said. “We’re going to own it.”

  “We?” Avi said. His luminous brown eyes swiveled to me, or, rather, to my eyebrows. He gasped, and touched a hand to his throat. “Oh. Agnes. I didn’t even see you there. Wow. You look … different.”

  “Avi,” I said, “Do you know who Belinda Prentiss is?” This was a rhetorical question. Avi Gupta is a dentist whose not-so-secret superpower is being a bottomless font of gossip.

  “Sure. In fact, I saw her come in a minute ago.”

  “So she works out a lot?” I asked.

  “All the time.”

  “Is it restorative yoga?” Effie asked.

  “Yoga, yes, but not restorative. Level-five power yoga.”

  “Goodness,” Effie said.

  “She can do the Wounded Peacock pose,” Avi said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The one where you balance your entire body on one arm while the rest of your body basically looks like it’s doing a swan dive.”

  “How terrifying,” Effie said.

  If this was true, then Belinda was surely much stronger than she looked. Strong enough to kill a man and load his body into the back of a minivan. Strong enough to have held me underwater without much effort. And all this time, I had written off Belinda as a suspect, assuming she was too frail to have pulled it off.

  Avi sidled closer. “That’s only one of the ways Belinda wears the pants in that marriage.”

  “Mm,” Effie said. “I did get the impression that her husband, Clifford, is a little, shall we say, downtrodden.”

  “That’s not the half of it.” Avi’s eyes glowed. “Our little train engineer in chinos signed a prenup.”

  Effie made a disgusted noise. “The kiss of death.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked.

  “Because Belinda made him, that’s why,” Avi said. “She was the one with the bucks when they got married, not him. She inherited that big old house and a bunch of cash from her parents—before the marriage—and I heard that Belinda and Clifford have just about drained the well keeping that B and B running. I’d bet, since Clifford obviously married Belinda for her money and she won’t be able to keep him in plaid shirts and choo-choo trains any longer, he wants out.”

  “You mean a divorce?” I whispered.

  “What else?”

  It crossed my mind that Clifford could simply murder Belinda. Yeah, that’s where my head was.

  “Couldn’t Clifford get a job?” Effie asked.

  “He could, but he doesn’t want to. He’s basically a kept husband. All he’s done for the last ten years is work at the B and B, and since we all know they have, like, one guest a month and no one ever comes back because they either have an asthma attack from all the dust or they get creeped out by the electric trains, that means Clifford has been living a life of leisure. It would be hard to go back to work after loafing for a decade. Besides, he has no skills. When Clifford and Belinda got married, he was working in a hobby shop, but that went out of business.”

  At that moment, I caught sight of a green-and-blonde blob out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see Delilah Fortune in a matchy-matchy green Spandex workout outfit, complete with a tank top that said WILL WORK OUT FOR LUCKY CHARMS accompanied by the breakfast cereal’s leprechaun logo.

  Vomit.

  “Look at those eyebrows,” Delilah cooed to me, flashing her dimple. “I didn’t know they were having a two-for-one special at the bait-and-tackle shop.”

  “And I didn’t know that Mattel made Fitness Barbie clothes in grown-up sizes,” I said.

  “Come on, Agnes, don’t be bitter. It’ll give you jowls.”

  “Don’t you have to run your shop?”

  “It is so worth it to close for a half hour to get some cardio in. Hey, fun fact—did you know that cardio makes people look way less like crabby librarians?”

  “Ladies, ladies,” Avi said, “what’s the problem?” He looked avidly between Delilah and me, and I knew his Juicy Gossip Radar was dialed up to maximum.

  “You know what?” I said, bugging my eyes meaningfully at Aunt Effie. “We’ve got to go. See you guys at the dance tonight.” I headed for the door, leaving Effie and Avi to air-smooch bye-bye.

  As I stepped onto the sidewalk, my phone buzzed inside the hot-pink bag. I pulled it out to see its screen glowing with an unfamiliar local number. I punched ANSWER.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Agnes?” a woman said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Elaine Cruz. You left me a message about the Gourd Queen the day before yesterday? I’m so sorry I took so long to get back to you—parade preparation is just hectic and now we’re behind schedule—which reminds me, we’ve got to get you in for a gown fitting.”

  “Oh.” I cleared my throat. “I was actually calling about possibly … withdrawing.”

  Stony silence. Then, “We haven’t had a Gourd Queen withdraw from the parade since 2001, and that was only because Becky Halpert’s triplets were born a week early. But I certainly can’t force you to ride in the float. What will happen is, the Pumpkin Princess will be promoted to Gourd Queen—”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Delilah Fortune, the Pumpkin Princess, will fill your shoes.”

  No. No, no, no. I was not going to let that unpleasant carton of cupcakes take this away from me, too.

  “You know what, Elaine?” I said. “Never mind. I would love to be Gourd Queen. I was just struggling with a little stage fright, but that’s nothing a little Xanax can’t fix, right?”

  “Wonderful. Will you be able to come in for the gown fitting tomorrow morning at, say, ten o’clock? The gowns are stored backstage at the Community Theater.”

  “That should work, yeah.” I’ll be done with scrubbing the toilet by then.

  “Excellent. Meet me in the wardrobe room.”

  *

  Effie and I drove to the Green Apple Supermarket and stocked up on “clean cotton”–scented air freshener spray, coffee, tea, half-and-half, maraschino cherries, and cocktail olives. The bare necessities, people.

  Next, we stopped by Tiles ’n’ More. They happened to have the perfect mini hexagons in stock and—get this—on sale, because someone had returned a special order.

  “See?” Effie said. “It was meant to be.”

  Then we drove to the downtown offices of Patricia P. Montagu, Architect, and walked upstairs to her suite overlooking Fountain Square. The brick pavement had been cleared of all traces of the Harvest Festival Kick-Off. No stag
e. No sound equipment. No potentially lethal apple-bobbing equipment.

  Ugh.

  “Good afternoon,” the receptionist said with a big smile. “You’re Mrs. Winters and Ms. Blythe, right?” She was a pretty, forty-something woman of very considerable proportions, with chocolate-brown skin and abundant glossy-black curls, wearing a floral blouse and tasteful makeup.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m Lally. Ms. Montagu is ready to see you.” Lally leaned forward. “I have to say, I am so excited that you guys are renovating the Stagecoach Inn. I just love that place. When I was a little girl, back when that place was a boarding house, my uncle lived there for a while when he was going through a divorce. My brothers and I would jump at the chance to visit him there with Mom, just so we could run wild in the back stairs and attic and cellar, looking for a secret passageway.” Lally laughed. “Someone told us the inn might’ve been a stop on the Underground Railroad back in the eighteen hundreds, so we were convinced there were secret rooms and tunnels somewhere. Never did find any, though. Bringing that place back to life, my oh my, that will be an accomplishment! And it would be good for Naneda, too. Good for you, girls. Good for you.”

  I liked Lally already, if for no other reason than she hadn’t commented on my mangled eyebrows.

  However, despite Lally’s enthusiasm, twenty minutes later I emerged from Patricia P. Montagu’s office completely deflated and disgusted.

  “How’d it go?” Lally asked brightly, looking up from her computer.

  “We’ll have to think about it,” Effie said.

  “Oh.” Lally’s face fell.

  “I can’t believe Ms. Montagu, too, has a problem with us pitching in with the renovations,” I whispered to Effie as we pushed out of the suite.

  “She went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, darling.”

  “So?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps she’s simply a purist.”

  We were starting down the stairs when Lally emerged from the suite door behind us.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  Effie and I stopped on the stairs and turned.

  Lally’s cheeks were flushed, and she spoke in a whisper. “I, um, I just wanted to say, I overheard a little of your conversation with Ms. Montagu—how she isn’t into you guys helping out with the renovations—and I’m completely on your side.”

  “Thank you,” Effie said, sliding on her sunglasses and turning to go.

  “Wait.” Lally glanced over her shoulder. “I’ve been doing some interior decorating on the side for a while—mostly stuff for friends of friends and whatnot—but I’ve been going to night school to pick up my architect’s degree. It’s not gonna be from Harvard, obviously, and I don’t have tons of experience, but, well … I could take on your project. I’d let you guys help as much as you want. It should be a labor of love.”

  “We’ll think about it,” Effie said.

  “That’s what you just said about Ms. Montagu.”

  “We have one more candidate’s proposal to review,” Effie said.

  “Do you have a portfolio we could take a look at?” I asked Lally.

  “Just my web portfolio that I made for my design coursework, but … Okay. I get it.” Lally’s hopeful expression evaporated. “Well, best of luck.” She turned and went back into the suite.

  “We could at least consider someone who doesn’t have a fancy Ivy League degree,” I said to Effie as we got back in the Dustbuster. “And Lally seemed … she seemed like she cared. Like she gets it.”

  “Gets what?”

  “That the inn is more than just a building. That it means something to our family.”

  *

  The next stop would be Pet Junction at the minimall on the edge of town. As we drove, Effie and I tried to list everything we knew about our suspects. This basically boiled down to:

  •  Delilah Fortune is a hideous, cupcake-baking demon who is stealing my man. (Motive: unclear. Plus, possible alibi.)

  •  Karen is hurting for $$. (Motive: protect son from Mikey’s bad influence?? A dicey motive at best. Alibi?? Husband and son supposedly camping in Canada that weekend.)

  •  Clifford and Belinda are also hurting for $$. (Motive: get rid of Mikey because he’s ruining their B and B’s online reviews. Alibi:??)

  •  Plus, Clifford allegedly signed a prenup, but what would that have to do with Mikey’s death?

  •  Randy is a bad-tempered jerk. (Motive:?? But he of all the suspects appears to have the temperament to bludgeon someone to death with a wrench.)

  In a nutshell: We knew diddly-squat.

  Chapter 16

  At the minimall, I ran into the dry cleaner’s to drop off the dress Lauren had lent me for the speech a couple of days before. It was still damp with apple-bobbing water, and the dank smell made my skin crawl all over again.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” the guy behind the counter asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re angry or surprised about something.”

  “I’m not angry or surprised. It’s just my eyebrows.”

  “Oh.”

  In Pet Junction, Effie selected a pink collar with a bell and rhinestones for Tiger Boy.

  “Isn’t that kind of froufrou?” I said. “Tiger Boy is macho. Is that collar even big enough for him?”

  “Hank is going to object to the cat. We can count on that. We need to disguise the fact that Tiger Boy is feral with the most domestic-looking collar we can find.”

  I eyed the sparkly collar. “It might just enhance his wildness by contrast.”

  Effie picked out some cans of organic cat food and a couple of cat toys.

  “A turquoise plush mouse?” I said. “Tiger Boy isn’t going to go for that. He looks like he plays with nunchakus.”

  “I know, Agnes. This is all for show.”

  “To trick Hank into thinking the cat is sweet and cuddly while said cat secretly goes all ninja on the mice?”

  “Exactly.”

  Effie paid, and we walked back to the Dustbuster.

  I was buckling my seat belt when I caught sight of Clifford. I froze. He was coming out of the UPS store.

  “Look,” I said to Effie. “Clifford.”

  We watched as he got into his Subaru station wagon, which was piled with bags and boxes.

  “What is all that?” I said.

  “I can’t tell from here.”

  Clifford backed out of his parking spot.

  I switched on the Dustbuster’s engine.

  “We’re following him?” Effie asked.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  *

  We followed Clifford two cars back. He didn’t go back toward the town center but out to Route 14B.

  Seven miles of foliage and farmland later, we entered the town of Lucerne. At the first intersection, he turned right, drove a few blocks, and then pulled into the parking lot of another minimall.

  It was midday, and the minimall parking lot was buzzing with cars going in and out, so we decided it was safe to follow. We parked at a discreet distance from Clifford and watched.

  He got out, beeped his car locked, walked along the minimall sidewalk to White Glove Dry Cleaning, and went inside.

  “Dry cleaning?” I said. “But there was a dry cleaner’s at the minimall in Naneda.”

  Effie lit up a Benson & Hedges.

  I scrounged around the console and, finding nothing but a container of orange Tic Tacs, stress-ate some. “You said you were going to switch to electronic cigarettes,” I said. “What happened to that?”

  “I’m working up to it.”

  “How?”

  “Okay, fine, I’m not working up to it. I’m simply indulging myself in the real thing until the inn is actually licensed and I have to switch.”

  “Listen, if you want to destroy yourself, be my guest. This is just a friendly reminder that those things will kill you.”

  “We’re all killing o
urselves, Agnes. Our personalities contain the seeds of our own destruction.”

  I crunched on Tic Tacs, wondering what the seeds of my own destruction were. Insecurities, maybe. But aren’t we all totally insecure?

  After a few minutes, Clifford came out of the dry cleaner’s with a few garments on hangers and sheathed in plastic.

  “Clifford is picking up dry cleaning miles away from home, even though there is a perfectly good dry cleaner’s near his house,” Effie said, puffing smoke. “Are you thinking bloodstains?”

  “Yep.”

  “Should we keep following him?”

  “Heck, yeah.”

  We followed Clifford on Route 14B back in the direction of Naneda. But he passed the exit that would take us closest to downtown and Birch Grove B and B and, a mile later, exited onto one of the back roads.

  “This is the road that passes by Hatch Automotive,” I said. My belly was twisting.

  “You look like you’re considering ducking down,” Effie said.

  “Well, yeah. If Otis sees me driving by, he’ll think I’m stalking him.”

  “Could I make a request? Please don’t duck down while you have your foot on the gas, m-kay? Anyway, it’s lunchtime. Otis may not be there.”

  This was true. Otis usually went into town for lunch.

  As we drew closer to the shop, I noticed his motorcycle wasn’t parked in its usual spot. “Phew. Otis isn’t there.”

  “Oh, my,” Effie said. “Lookee here.”

  Clifford was turning into the Hatch Automotive parking lot.

  “I’m going to have to keep driving,” I said. “If I stop now, he’ll know we’ve been following him.”

  We rolled past the shop, and then I twisted my neck to see Clifford’s Subaru stop perpendicular to the row of parked cars waiting to be serviced. Then I had to look at the road in front of me.

  “He’s getting out,” Effie said. “Slow down a little—he’s taking the dry cleaning out of his car—he’s opening the back of another vehicle—a beige van, one of those Volkswagen camping things—a Vanagon—he’s putting the dry cleaning inside—diddle. I can’t see him anymore—those trees are blocking my view.”