by Maia Chance
“I’m thinking Clifford was planning on using that money to fund his new life wherever he was going in that van,” Albright said. “Start over fresh. Make himself a new home.”
“But now Belinda is going to get the inheritance money.”
Albright’s fingers paused in the popcorn carton.
“What?” I said.
“Well, no, she isn’t going to get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Agnes, I shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
Feminine wiles, Agnes. Feminine wiles!
“I’m just curious,” I said in what I hoped was a sultry voice. “All this stuff is as minding-bending as, I don’t know, an episode of Battlestar Galactica or something.”
Battlestar Galatica is the equivalent of Open Sesame to a nerd.
Albright sighed. “Okay. Clifford had recently opened a bank account with the entire inheritance—about fifty thousand dollars.”
“A joint account with his wife?”
“No. She knew nothing of the account. He used a chunk of the inheritance to buy that Volkswagen two weeks ago, and then he turned right around and cashed out the remainder of the account on Wednesday morning. He was murdered Wednesday night. But no one knows what happened to the remaining forty-odd grand in cash.”
Whoa. This was big. This meant the killer wanted money in both cases. The motive was never personal. It was all about the ka-ching.
“No one knows where Clifford’s keys are, either,” Albright said. “He had driven himself and Belinda to the Lake Club Masquerade, but the keys weren’t on his body.”
“Belinda didn’t have them?”
“No.”
“Have you considered Belinda Prentiss as a murder suspect?” I asked.
“Belinda? Why?”
“I happen to know that she hated Mikey and thought he was ruining her B and B business, and, also, she can’t keep up with her bills.”
Albright was peering at me closely.
I kept my eyes glued to the silent advertisements on the movie screen.
“How do you know about Belinda’s bills?” Albright asked.
I shrugged. “People gossip. And then there’s Randy Rice. Have you talked to him?”
“No. Who’s he?”
“The guy who owns Naneda Orchards. He was really close to Mikey. It sounds like they had a pretty … intense relationship.” I stopped there. Revealing more about Randy would mean revealing how I had spied on Karen’s text messages and eavesdropped at the orchard storeroom.
Holding back like this was starting to feel slippery.
“Otis Hatch was aware of Clifford’s van and, very likely, his secret money,” Albright said, “since that’s what Clifford used to pay for the van. As far as I can tell, Otis is the only person who knew about those things. And … I’m sorry Agnes, I know you were attached to the guy…”
“What.” I swear my heart stopped.
“Well, the thing is, we found Clifford Prentiss’s wallet in the storage compartment of Otis’s motorcycle.”
Omigosh.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said, my voice shrill. “It could’ve been planted.”
“Okay, then how do you explain how no one can account for Otis’s whereabouts at the Lake Club dance around the time Clifford was killed in the bathroom—”
“Really?”
“—or how he doesn’t have an alibi for when Mikey Brown was killed?”
“He told me he did. He said he was at the mall in Lucerne with his Grandma Bee.”
“I talked to Bee.”
“And?”
“She backed him up—”
“See?”
“—but I have reason to believe that Bee isn’t … I’ll put it this way, she isn’t as sharp as she might’ve once been.”
Karen. Karen Brown had told him that.
“You’re bending over backward to keep believing in Otis, Agnes.” Albright shook his head. “Why do nice girls like you always go after the bad ones?”
The lights went down, and the Coming Attractions started in a gush of sound and rapid-fire imagery. More people shuffled in and scooched into seats.
I plotted how to get Albright’s condescending sluglike arm off my shoulders. Should I pretend to drop something on the floor and then bend to pick it up? Yeah. That could work. I’d drop a Junior Mint.
As soon as the final credits were rolling, I extricated myself from Albright’s offer of ice cream or coffee and made a beeline to the Dustbuster.
*
“Do you realize what all this means?” I exclaimed to Aunt Effie and Chester in the inn’s kitchen a while later. I had told them everything, pacing back and forth. Tiger Boy watched me from a chair, tail flicking. “It means all this stuff we’ve learned, this personal stuff, is completely meaningless. The murderer wants money. That’s it. Not revenge. Not to shut somebody up or because they’re jealous about an affair or whatever. We’ve been totally wasting our time! All along it was about money. You said it yourself, Aunt Effie—follow the money. Why did we let ourselves get sidetracked?”
“Live and learn,” Effie said. She was standing at the kitchen sink with another cigarette.
“Next time, you guys should make a spreadsheet or something,” Chester said. He was unwrapping a bodybuilder’s cookies ’n’ cream protein bar. “Maybe use a whiteboard?” He bit into the bar.
“We’ve been blind,” I said. “And there will be no next time! I am never, ever, ever, ever getting mixed up with murder again.”
“We’ve been figuring things out,” Effie said. “And now you’ve figured this out. Thanks to your feminine wiles. Did you end up speaking Klingon at all?”
“No. But I did mention Battlestar Galactica.”
“You wanton, you,” Chester said.
I was suddenly exhausted. It was as if I’d hit a brick wall. I sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I just … I just can’t bear it that Albright is still investigating Otis. That he’s assembling a case against Otis. It’s not right. And Clifford’s wallet in Otis’s motorcycle can only mean one thing: the killer is trying to frame him.”
“We’re going to crack this thing, Agnes,” Effie said. “You’re going to save Otis.”
I snapped my fingers. “The Dude! Darrell Dvorak!”
“Go on,” Effie said.
“He’s been looking for someone in town, right?”
“Mm.”
“Well, what if he has something to do with all this money stuff? Like, what if he works for, I don’t know, a mob boss or something, and he’s in town to collect?”
“A mob boss?” Effie said. “In Naneda? Darling.”
“Yeah.” My shoulders slumped. “Never mind.”
“You have Darrell’s address, right?” Chester asked around a mouthful of protein bar. “From his driver’s license?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s in Rochester. One-oh-two Meigs Street, number two.”
“I’ll go stake him out. Figure out what his deal is. I’ll go tonight.”
“But don’t you have to go to work?”
Chester shrugged. “I’ll go in late. And anyway, it’s not like the middle school will cease to exist if I don’t empty the wastebins for one day.”
“Maybe not, but you could get fired.”
“Fired? No way. They love me there. I write lines from famous poems on the chalkboards every night.”
Okaaay.
“I’m doing it,” Chester said. “I want to help. And man, I feel pumped.” He threw the balled-up protein bar wrapper at the garbage can, and missed.
*
At seven o’clock that evening, Dorothea and Hank announced that they were going out to dinner. Alone.
When they drove off in a taxi, I was pretty sure they were holding hands in the back seat.
“Whew,” Myron said, watching with me from the front porch. “My Lo may not be a good matchmaker, but that cat of yours sure is.”
I concentrated on
watering the hanging pots of chrysanthemums. “What do you mean?”
“C’mon. The cat thrust them together. Sure, he had a little help from his fleas and your flea powder—”
“You know about that?”
“We all do. But you know what I think? I think that cat of yours is a cupid.” Chuckling, Myron went back inside.
Cupid? Tiger Boy?
The rest of us went out for Mexican food at Mariachi. I texted Lauren, and she met us there. Myron and Lo both hit the margaritas pretty hard, but I limited myself to hitting the chips and salsa hard. I needed to keep my wits about me for the night ahead.
Chester was halfway through his combo plate when he let slip to Myron that he was going to stake out Darrell the Dude’s apartment in Rochester.
“Sounds dangerous,” Myron said. “Didn’t Agnes say that man is armed? I’ll come with you.”
I clapped a hand on my forehead.
“Myron was in the Navy,” Lo said, flushed from tequila. “He’s still got some moves.”
“Sure,” Chester said. “You’re welcome to come.”
“I’ll come too,” Lo said.
“No,” Myron said. “Too dangerous.”
“I’m coming, Myron,” Lo said with a steely smile.
“Okay, okay,” Myron said.
I guess Lo still had some moves, too.
“What’s this about a stakeout?” Lauren asked.
Lo and Myron filled her in. Chester blushed and forklifted enchilada into his mouth.
“Oooh, I want to come,” Lauren said. “Is there room in the car?”
“Yeah,” Chester said in a slightly choked voice. “We’ll be taking my Datsun.”
“Cool,” Lauren said.
“I thought you were meeting Jake tonight,” I whispered to Lauren.
She shrugged. “I’ll cancel. This sounds way more fun.”
After dinner, Chester, Lauren, Lo, and Myron got into Chester’s Datsun hatchback, which sagged to the pavement under their combined weight.
“Good luck,” I said, bending to see them through the open window.
“We don’t need luck,” Myron said. “We’ve got skills.”
They puttered away into the night.
*
Effie and I went back to the inn and got to work on our disguises. Then, with our hats in our laps, I drove the Dustbuster to a side road abutting Naneda Orchards. The sky had clouded over and a brisk wind had kicked up. When I turned off the headlights and switched off the engine, the night seemed too big.
Also, our plan seemed crazy, but I was getting used to that.
Because there was no place to hide in the vicinity of Randy’s garage, we had disguised ourselves as scarecrows in floppy-brimmed hats from Effie’s closet, plaid shirts from Carson’s Outdoor Emporium, and alfalfa hay purchased at the feed store. The hay had come in a bag with a picture of a guinea pig on it.
“Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?” I whispered.
“The hay is giving me a rash.”
“Yeah, the hay under our shirts may have been sort of overkill.”
“You already said that Agnes, but what if someone comes up close for some reason?”
“Um, they’re probably going to wonder why one of the scarecrows is wearing sweatpants”—that would be me—“and why one of the scarecrows is wearing pointy high-heeled boots.”
Effie was opening her door. “For the tenth time, Agnes, I don’t own flat shoes.”
“By the way,” I said, “do me a favor and don’t light up until you’re out of your disguise, okay? This hay is flammable.”
Chapter 26
We hobbled across the ditch, through the barbed wire fence, and then we were in the stubble field. We picked our way along. Fields always look smooth from a distance. You picture yourself running through them in full The Sound of Music mode. But in my experience, walking through fields is actually hard. They’re rutted. There are dirt clods. There are rustling rodents and, worse, snakes.
Below us, rustling lines of apple trees sprawled to the lake. There was the dark farm stand, the empty parking lot, the cider house, and the main house, in which a single upstairs window glowed.
And there was the garage, a silhouette hulked at the edge of the stubble field.
We were out in the open, just a stone’s throw away from the garage, when light a blinked on, filtered by apple trees.
Effie and I froze in our tracks.
A door slammed.
“He’s early,” I whispered.
I heard a man saying something, his voice garbled by the wind. Then—Arf! Arf!
Crud. A dog.
I stood still as a statue. Okay, still as a scarecrow.
Effie did the same.
And then a short dog bounded out from the apple trees, its white ruffly neck fur glinting in the sparse moonlight. The corgi.
It was barking and running straight at me.
I stopped breathing.
Now here was Randy, loping out from the apple trees. “Grace!” he shouted. “Come!”
Grace ignored him. She was squiggling right up to me, snorfling and wagging her tail. I held my breath as she reached me and started sniffing my sneakers and whining.
Oh crud oh crud oh crud.
But Randy wasn’t paying attention. He had gone up to the garage, taken a key out of his pocket, and was unlocking the door. He pushed the door open, then turned around and shouted, “Grace! Come, you stupid dog. Come.”
Grace had abandoned me to go and sniff Effie’s feet. Ever so gently, Effie tried to nudge Grace away with her boot. Apparently, that got Grace in the mood to play, because she went into downward dog pose, wagging her tail.
“Dammit,” Randy shouted, peering in our direction. “Grace, come!”
I channeled scarecrowness.
Then I heard a small trickling sound. Grace was peeing on Effie’s foot.
“Grace!” Randy roared.
Grace finished up and bounded over to Randy.
“You damn dog! Forget it. You’re going back to the house.” Randy bent, grabbed Grace’s collar, and ushered her into the orchard.
He’d left the garage unlocked.
“Psst!” I whispered to Effie. “Let’s go have a look. We have maybe a minute or two.”
“That dog ruined my boot!” Effie half whispered, half sobbed.
“You can wash it off.”
“It’s suede.”
“We don’t have much time!” I did the G.I. Joe hunker-run to the garage. Alfalfa hay dribbled in my wake.
Effie was right behind me. “These are handmade boots, one of a kind,” she whispered.
We stepped through the open door into the garage. I squinted around in the pitch darkness. “Well, why did you wear them on a spying mission?”
“They go with the slacks.”
“It’s too dark in here.” I reached into my sweatpants pocket and pulled out my phone. “We’re going to have to risk it.”
“Agnes, no! He’ll be back any second!”
“Then we have a couple of seconds.” I switched on the flashlight app on my phone. A narrow, bluish-white beam shot out onto a concrete floor. I swung it around. The beam bounced off the shiny, candy-apple-red wheel well of the antique pickup I had seen earlier in the parking lot. Its bed was piled with hay bales, a blue plastic tarp tied over them.
I squeezed around the pickup. There was the tractor with the hayride wagon hitched to it. And on the other side of that, a low, lollipop-yellow sports car.
“Look,” I whispered. “A Camaro.”
“So Randy owns a frivolous boy toy,” Effie whispered back. “No surprise there. All of my husbands had sports cars that they lavished with affection—oh, wait, all except Narid.” Narid, Effie’s—what was it? third? sixth?—husband, had been a nuclear physics professor. “But,” Effie continued, “he had his atom smasher, which really amounts to the same thing, don’t you think?”
“Don’t you remember? The text message from Kare
n to her son Scootch about meeting at Randy’s garage? Now I get it! Karen said Mikey mentioned buying a Chevrolet Camaro, but she thought he was just bragging to impress Scootch. Then Alexa mentioned that Randy bought a midlife-crisis sports car that he never even drives. Don’t you see? Mikey was going to buy Randy’s Camaro. This Camaro. That’s why they were setting up that meeting. That’s why Mikey invited Scootch along—to impress him. Only, Karen wouldn’t let Scootch go, so he went camping in Canada instead, and … Mikey never made it here to buy the Camaro. He was killed before he got here. And you know what? If he stopped at Hatch Automotive with the plan to continue on here and purchase the Camaro, he might’ve had cash for the car on him.”
“Oh, my. That does make sense—although, why would Randy be secretive about it?”
“Because he’s embarrassed about needing the money, maybe. He didn’t want to sell the sports car. He had to sell it. What I don’t get is, why is Karen meeting up with Randy, now? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe she wants to purchase the sports car. For Scootch.”
“Doubtful.”
“He’s coming!”
I tapped off the flashlight app.
“Quick!” Effie whispered. “Up here!”
“Where?” I whispered back. I couldn’t see a darned thing, but I heard rustling and crunching. Then I realized Effie was climbing into the back of the flatbed pickup and getting underneath the tarp.
Sounded good to me.
I climbed up and collapsed onto the pickup bed. Effie was crouched beside me. The tarp clung to the top of my head.
Good thing I wasn’t super claustrophobic.
The garage door thunked open and someone was coming in. And … there were voices.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh please oh please oh please don’t get anything out of the back of the pickup.
Randy didn’t. And he didn’t switch on the garage light, either.
Effie and I had gone to Randy’s garage that night with the expectation that he was going to meet up with Karen Brown. Except that wasn’t Karen he was talking to.
It was Belinda Prentiss.
Belinda was whispering, but I heard the words time and hurry. Randy’s response was unintelligible, but he sounded annoyed.
In slo-mo, I inched to the edge of the flatbed and, veeeerrrry slowly, lifted a piece of the tarp to make a one-inch crack. I peeked out.
