by Maia Chance
“How wonderful to see you.” Bitsy’s tone suggested that seeing Aunt Effie was about as wonderful as an ingrown nostril hair.
“Likewise.”
“How are things at the old deathtrap?”
“If you are referring to the beautiful, historic Stagecoach Inn, Bitsy, the answer is fabulously.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“And what did you hear?”
“That you have a rodent problem.”
“Only when my niece wears her Minnie Mouse bedroom slippers.”
“Isn’t it great-niece?”
“You only feel as old as your oldest pantsuit, darling.”
Bitsy flushed. “If you want my professional opinion—”
“Not especially.”
“—I suggest you sell that place before you dig yourself too far into the hole. All of the value is in the land, and you know it. Let me take it off your hands, and you’ll have a nice chunk of change to buy yourself a brand-new condo.”
“I’d rather die.”
“Why are you Blythes so stubborn?”
“Just good genes, I suppose.”
“The real estate inventory in the town is stagnating because people like you are holding on to worthless properties.”
“Oh? I heard there’s a property on D Street that’ll hit the market soon.”
Bitsy pinched the key a little harder with her thumb. “Another property where all the value is in the land. That one’s going to be a nightmare to clean up, too.”
“Maybe you could make a game of it,” Effie said.
Bitsy scoffed. “What are you talking about?”
“Like that television show Trading Spaces.” As Effie said Trading Spaces, she caught my eye, then bugged her own eyes at Bitsy’s key. “You know, where next-door neighbors renovate each other’s homes? I think Trading Spaces”—more buggy eyes at the key—“would be such fun. Nothing like the old switcheroo.”
What the hey? Trading Spaces? The old switcheroo? Oh. Wait. Switcheroo. As in, key switcheroo.
Um, how did Effie think I was going to pull that off? I’m no magician. My all-time best magic trick was hiding broccoli under a napkin and then feeding it to my dog under the table when I was a kid.
On the other hand, getting our hands on that key, sneaking into Mikey’s house … Whoa. This could be the break in the case we so desperately needed.
“Back in a second,” I mumbled to Effie and Bitsy. They didn’t respond, because Effie was still gushing about Trading Spaces and Bitsy was glazing over.
Chapter 21
Was I really going to do this?
Yes. Yes, I was.
I edged through the funeral reception crowd, pulled my keys out of my bag, selected one that was the same size and brass color as Bitsy’s key, and pried it off the ring. I wasn’t even sure what this key was for. Possibly the door to the apartment I’d shared with my ex-fiancé Roger. Whatever it was, it was out of circulation and expendable.
I put my keys back in my bag and approached Effie and Bitsy.
I felt bad about this. I really did.
I bumped my arm into Bitsy’s back and gave an extra little shove.
She squealed and stumbled forward, and her folder and key flew out of her grasp. Papers billowed. The key hit the carpet.
I hit the carpet, on hands and knees.
Bystanders gasped, and two people rushed forward to help steady Bitsy.
With feet and legs churning all around me, I dropped my key on the floor, snatched up Bitsy’s key, and slid it into my cardigan pocket. Then I gathered up the flurry of papers, the folder, and the other key, and got to my feet.
“Well if it isn’t Princess Grace,” Bitsy said, dusting off her sleeve. “What did you do that for?”
“Sorry,” I said, stuffing papers into the folder. “I tripped.”
Bitsy grabbed the folder from me.
“Oh, and there’s this,” I said. I held out the key.
“For Pete’s sake.” Bitsy snatched the key, wheeled around, and was gone.
Effie was hovering a step back. “Well?” she whispered.
“Score,” I whispered back.
“Then let’s round up the gaggle and get out of here.”
“Okay—but first I have to use the restroom. Back in a second.” Too much funeral home coffee.
I waded through the cookie eaters and coffee drinkers—giving Karen Brown, who was watching me closely, a wide berth—and made my way down the hallway toward the restroom.
The Dude loped out of the single-occupancy restroom and, without really looking at me, passed in a smog of cheap cologne.
I went into the restroom.
A black Adidas track jacket hung on a hook beside the sink.
The Dude’s track jacket.
I stole a look over my shoulder. He was entering the reception room.
I shut the restroom door. I felt in the track jacket’s right pocket.
Empty.
Left pocket.
Also empty.
My heart was hammering like Jessica Fletcher’s typewriter.
I twisted the jacket around. There was an inner zippered pocket with something weighty inside. I unzipped it and pulled out a worn leather wallet.
My fingers shook as I flipped it open and … bingo. The Dude’s driver’s license was right on top. I slid it out.
Darrell Dvorak. Height 6’3, weight 175. Address: 102 Meigs Street #2, Rochester, New York.
The door swung open.
I jumped.
“What the eff are you doing?” someone said.
I looked up to see the Dude—Darrell—standing in the doorway. His shoulders were hunched, his jaw was thrust forward, and he held a small black gun tight to his side. Aimed at me.
My brain short-circuited.
“I said, what the eff are you doing?” Darrell growled.
I commanded my mouth to say something really, really convincing, but all that came out was “Uhhhhh.” I couldn’t take my eyes off that gun. It had mesmerized me, like a snake.
“Okay.” Darrel’s voice had gone from angry to menacing. “Then I guess I’ll have to make you talk.” He took a step forward.
“No!” I yelped. I darted back, hitting the sink hard with the back of my hip.
Ow. Right on my pumpkin-slipping bruise.
“Tell me what you’re doing going through my wallet, or you’re gonna be sorry.” He adjusted his grip on the gun. “You plainclothes?”
“Police? Me? No.”
Why doesn’t anyone need to use the restroom right now? HELP.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. You don’t look like you’ve done a sit-up in your life.”
“What?” I said. I forgot all about the fact that Darrell was aiming his creepy gun at me. “Like you should talk, Darrell. And I know we all have a ‘driver’s license weight’”—I made air quotes—“but come on. A buck seventy-five?”
“Work has been real stressful lately. Quit trying to sidetrack me. I wanna know what you were doing in my wallet.”
“And I want to know who you’re looking for in Naneda.”
“Not gonna tell you.”
“So you are looking for someone.” Score.
Darrell stepped closer.
Instinct kicked in. Sadly, not the instinct of a superhero ninja warrior. The instinct of a hamster.
I dropped the wallet, shoved past him, and took off jogging down the hallway.
“Hey!” Darrell shouted. Footsteps pounded behind me.
At the doorway to the reception room, I hesitated.
The footsteps were almost upon me.
There was Effie, with Lo and Myron beside the cookie table. I zigzagged through the crowd toward them with the garbled idea that I’d scoop them up and we’d all head to the minivan and zoom off and leave this armed weirdo in the dust.
Then I stumbled against someone—Karen Brown—and her coffee went spraying everywhere. People cried out.
“What in the heck, Agnes Blythe?�
� Karen shrieked. “Don’t you have even a drop of respect? Running at a funeral?”
“It’s the Dude—”
Karen’s eyes slitted. “The Dude.”
“—and he has a gun—”
“Gun?” Karen craned her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know that I want you and your ragtag pals to get. The heck. Out.”
“But he’s—”
“Now. Or I’m calling the police.” Karen was pulling a phone out of her purse.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Sorry. It’s just … if you see a guy in a black Adidas tracksuit, he has a gun, okay?”
Karen rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Okay. Sure, Agnes.”
I collected the gaggle, Aunt Effie, and Chester, whispering that we had been banned from the reception and that I’d explain later. I didn’t see Darrell anywhere. Had he left, or was he hiding?
We went out into the bright parking lot.
“So,” Myron said, “what’s the big deal? I was enjoying those pecan sandies.”
“Oh, it’s—um, Karen Brown said we were no longer welcome,” I said.
“But why?” Myron asked.
“I think it’s because she’s jealous of our Agnes,” Lo said. “Agnes is looking so glamorous with her new eyebrows.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Something like that. Anyway, it’s lunchtime. Who’s hungry?”
As we drew closer to the Dustbuster, I vaguely wondered why the hood and windshield looked lumpy and orange …
Then I froze.
“That’s pumpkin,” Myron said. “I have carved my share of jack-o’-lanterns. Three kids and seven grandkids.”
“I’m getting sick of this,” I said.
“That’s going to wreck your windshield wipers,” Hank said, sliding the side door open. He climbed in.
“Oh, my,” Effie said, rooting through her purse. She pulled out her Benson and Hedges and her lighter.
Lo, Myron, and I clustered around the hood.
“Looks like two or three pumpkins,” Myron said. “I’ll go get a garbage bag from the funeral home.”
While we waited for Myron, Lo got into the minivan with Hank, and I stood on the pavement with Effie. I kept scanning the parking lot for Darrell, Karen, and, yes, the police.
“I’m going to assume this wasn’t a coincidence,” I said.
“That sounds reasonable.” Effie billowed smoke.
“And I’m going to assume that the murderer did it.”
“Also reasonable.”
“Which means that the murderer is keeping track of our whereabouts.”
“Evidently.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Well, that’s absolutely creepy!”
A few minutes later, Myron returned with a black garbage bag, into which we tossed the larger chunks of pumpkin. He had also brought a newspaper, and I used this to wipe away the stringy, seedy pumpkin goo. The end result was orange smears and a few random seeds. Myron went to the dumpster behind the funeral home and disposed of the garbage bag and newspaper.
We drove the few blocks to Main Street in silence. I think we were all pretty rattled, except for Hank.
“Can’t you drive faster?” he whined. “Didn’t you hear me when I said I was hungry?”
“Pass him a sippy cup and some Cheerios,” I muttered.
“I heard that!”
The Bermans snickered.
I parked, and we all got out and headed down the sidewalk.
Tourists strolled past with ice cream cones, coffees, and shopping bags. However, Crumble + Fluff was dark, and the curlicued pink-and-white CLOSED sign hung in the door. In the display window, the tiered trays were empty.
“That’s weird,” I said. “Delilah’s missing out on some serious trade today.”
The nasty little voice in the back of my head said, Gee, maybe Delilah didn’t come in to work today for the same reason Otis didn’t show up to Mikey’s funeral.
“Shut up,” I muttered.
“What was that, dear?’ Lo said.
“Nothing.”
*
I didn’t tell Effie that I had seen the Dude’s driver’s license until we were in the sandwich shop. Lo, Myron, and Hank were still up at the counter, driving the employees nuts with persnickety requests. Effie, of course, hadn’t gotten anything, and I was in no mood to eat after being chased by a dude with a gun. Go figure.
“Isn’t it weird that Darrell’s first suspicion was that I was a plainclothes cop?” I said softly. “I mean, wouldn’t most people automatically assume I was just a thief?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I think he’s a criminal. He’s had run-ins with plainclothes police before, or at the very least, he’s up to something that makes him think a plainclothes cop might search his things. And let’s not forget he had a gun. Wait. I should Google him.” I dug my phone out of my bag, poked the Internet icon, and typed in DARRELL DVORAK ROCHESTER.
Nothing. I tried Facebook. Still nothing.
“Do you remember the address on his driver’s license?”
“Yes. One-oh-two Meigs Street number two, in Rochester.”
“Well, Google that.”
I did. It was one of the floors of a dumpy converted Victorian on the edge of downtown.
“I don’t know where to go with this,” I said. “What do we do? Drive to Rochester and break into his apartment?”
“That sounds a little rash. You’ll think of something.”
“Why do you always say that?” I wailed.
“Because it’s true. Ooh! I nearly forgot.” Effie got out her own phone. “Remember Lally Douglass, the receptionist at that snotty architectural firm?”
“Yeah.”
“She emailed me a portfolio of some of her past interior design work, and it is gorgeous.” Effie tapped something on her phone, then slid it across the table to me.
I studied an image of a stunning kitchen with dove-gray cabinetry and marble countertops. “Wow,” I said. I checked out another image of a restored historic staircase, one of a library with rich-toned furnishings and built-in bookcases, and another of a sweet, vintage-style bathroom, complete with authentic claw-foot tub and black and white hexagonal tiles. “This is what we want, Aunt Effie.” I looked up. “This is exactly what we want.”
“But is Lally up to the task? She may be a talented interior decorator, but she’s untried as an architect and we have remodeling that must be done.”
“Maybe that’s just a risk we’ll have to take—I mean, that you’ll have to take. Since it’s your inn.”
Why did it hurt just a smidge to say that? Weird.
Just as we were leaving the sandwich shop, Hugh Simonian, the Peeper Prize judge, strolled in with a messenger bag strapped over his thin shoulder.
“Hi,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Agnes, but I’m here to judge the sandwich shop,” he said with a flutter of the eyelids. “I really can’t consort with townsfolk.”
“Okay, then,” I said.
After that, I ran into the drugstore while the others waited in the Dustbuster. First, I selected a box of size-medium disposable latex exam gloves. In an attempt to make the purchase look less suspicious than it actually was, I threw a bag of gummy worms into my shopping basket. Passing the pet section, I remembered the fiasco with Tiger Boy possibly getting fleas in Hank’s bed. I picked out a canister of lavender-scented flea-and-tick carpet powder that claimed to kill all four life stages of the flea.
The thrills just never stop.
Effie and I drove the gaggle (minus Dorothea, who was still back at the inn and, she told Effie on the phone, now printing out letters of apology to her stranded motor coach customers) up to Naneda Lake State Park to see the falls, and then we cruised around the glowy golden landscape to let them peep at some prime leaves.
Was that Peeper Prize Judge Hugh Simonian blind? Couldn’t he tell that Naneda blew every other leaf-peeping town out of the water when it came to quaint, cute, and p
icturesque? Jeez.
As we drove past Naneda Orchards, the rows of apple trees were alive with moving bodies. A tractor-drawn hayride was just pulling out of the gravel parking lot. Families with wheelbarrows roamed the pumpkin patch, and scarecrows studded a golden-stubbled slope. The big white farmhouse overlooked the lake, and several outbuildings—barn, garage, sheds—were scattered amid lawns and brassy-leafed trees.
“Oooh,” Lo said, “let’s go there tomorrow! It looks just like a postcard.”
Effie and I exchanged a look. I was thinking, We do need another shot at talking with Randy about his planned meeting at the garage with Mikey, and I was sure Effie was, too.
“Yeah,” I said over my shoulder to Lo. “We should.”
*
We arrived back at the inn just in time for predinner drinkie-poos in the library. The entire gaggle was going out that evening to celebrate Lo and Myron’s anniversary.
Which, of course, would leave Effie and me free to commit crimes with our stolen key.
After putting in a load of laundry, I tiptoed upstairs with the lavender-scented flea-and-tick powder. The coast was clear. I sneaked into Hank’s room and lightly sprinkled the powder on his pillow, blanket, and folded bath towels. I sprinkled a little more on the floor for good measure.
Skulking away down the hallway, I ran into Tiger Boy. He was walking purposefully in the direction of Hank’s room.
“Hi,” I said.
Tiger Boy gave his tail an extra swish, but he didn’t slow down.
*
I spent the evening installing the plywood subfloor in the attic bathroom. It was not easy wielding those boards alone, and I came close to punching my foot through the ceiling below. Following the instructions I found on an online tutorial, I glued the plywood pieces to the floor joists with stinky construction adhesive and nailed them down tight. And then … I had a floor! I took a celebratory stroll around the bathroom.
Tears sprang to my eyes as I inspected my handiwork. Tears I didn’t understand, because at first I thought I was crying—finally—about how Otis had asked for a break, only to turn around and start dating Delilah the Sprinkles Succubus. But I also felt like I was, well, crying about the floor.
Construction adhesive fumes. That had to be it. I opened the bathroom window wider.
Chapter 22
