Bad Housekeeping Read online

  Also by Maia Chance

  Fairy Tale Fatal Mysteries

  Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna

  Cinderella Six Feet Under

  Snow White Red-Handed

  Discreet Retrieval Agency Mysteries

  Teetotaled

  Come Hell or Highball

  Bad Housekeeping

  AN AGNES AND EFFIE MYSTERY

  Maia Chance

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Maia Chance.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-167-6

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-168-3

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-68331-169-0

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-170-6

  Cover design by Louis Malcangi

  Cover illustration by Teresa Fasolino

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First edition: June 2017

  For my father, David Haydn Chance

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 1

  My name is Agnes Blythe, and sure, I may have neglected to do any exercise since I completed my high school PE requirement, but I’m in the prime of life. I’m twenty-eight years old. I have a college degree. I am in perfect health if you don’t count cellulite as a medical affliction (I don’t). I can take care of myself. Okay, maybe not in like a bar brawl in Honduras, but every day I pull on the big girl pants.

  Which is why after moving back to my hometown, the idea of starting over basically from scratch was alarming. To say the least.

  Let’s set the scene. My hometown of Naneda (population 13,721) in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York is a picture-perfect college town. Trees arch over big lawns and lovely homes. Think prize-winning roses, picket fences, porch swings, and lifetime subscriptions to This Old House magazine for every mailbox, and you’re on the right track. Main Street is like a television sitcom set thanks to the Naneda Historical Society and its draconian ordinances. In leaf-peeping season, the entire region blazes with Technicolor nostalgia, inspiring even the grimmest city slickers to buy pounds of maple fudge and drool over the real estate listings in the Naneda Realty window.

  Honestly, Naneda is too perfect. Creepily perfect. It’s just asking for trouble.

  That’s what I was thinking as I hurried along Main Street the day before I found the dead body. That, and something along the lines of, Coming back here was a massive mistake. This town is going to smother me like a nursing home pillow.

  I was breathless and a little sweaty by the time I reached the Cup n’ Clatter Diner on Main Street, where I was late for lunch with Dad and my long-lost great-aunt Effie. I paused outside, trying to slow my breathing, making sure all traces of murderous rage and/or panic were hidden behind my thick glasses. I hadn’t bothered with my contacts that day because I’d been cleaning the new apartment—our new apartment—when Roger broke the news that he’s through with me. Cheating weenie. I smoothed my yellow T-shirt over my jeans, tucked my shoulder-length, straight brown hair behind my ears, and pushed open the door.

  Inside, fry oil hazed the air, and the lunch crowd babbled. I heard Great-Aunt Effie before I saw her.

  “Darling,” she shrilled from one of the booths in the back. “You’re an absolute riot!”

  And off we go.

  I threaded my way through crowded tables heaped with burgers and fries, tuna melts, biscuits and gravy, and chicken-fried steaks. I was ready to plow through any and all of it because I’m a Blythe, and when we’re upset, we don’t cry if we can eat.

  “Agnes,” Dad boomed. “Here’s Agnes, Aunt Effie.” He patted the red vinyl seat next to him. “Take a load off. Did you walk all the way here?”

  “It was only four blocks, Dad.”

  “Say, why do you look so down?” he asked.

  Dad is the mayor of Naneda and has been for longer than I’ve been alive. He always wears a suit, and his gray hair is trimmed each Friday at Eddie’s Barber Shop. Everybody loves Mayor Gary Blythe. He’s like Perry Mason crossed with a teddy bear.

  “Down?” I said. I took off the stupid minibackpack I’d grabbed because I couldn’t find my purse when fleeing Roger and the apartment. I slid into the booth. “Not me.”

  “Just look at you, Agnes,” Great-Aunt Effie—short for Euphemia—said.

  I sent her a cool stare across the table. “Ditto.”

  “Pretty as ever.”

  I held my tongue.

  If Barbie were allowed to achieve the age of seventy-something, she’d look like Great-Aunt Effie. And, well, wow. Kinda scary. Effie’s sleek, platinum-silver bob fell at a chic angle. A dazzling sunflower print saturated her silk blouse, but it was saved from seeming clown-like by wafting the distinct smell of money. Effie had been a fashion model a gazillion years ago, and she still had the good bones underneath only slightly wrinkled and undoubtedly nip-and-tucked, Botoxed, fillered, lasered, and Retin-A slathered skin. After the modeling gigs wound down, Aunt Effie had subsequently worked as a serial trophy wife and alimony recipient. Nice work if you can get it.

  “What brings you to town, Aunt Effie?” I asked. I picked up my greasy laminated menu and pretended to study it, even though I already knew what I’d be ordering: cheeseburger, extra cheese, extra mayo, hold the green stuff. Oh, and extra fries. Why? Because Roger is a cheating weenie who had just ruined my life, that’s why.

  “I am here to stay,” Effie said.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “Remember how we were scrambling to find Great-Uncle Herman’s will last month?” Dad asked me.

  I nodded. Great-Uncle Herman, a fragile fossil stored on the shelf at Honeybee Hollow Retirement Home, had finally passed away in his sleep last month. Effie was Dad’s aunt on his mother’s side, and Herman was Effie’s cousin. This actually made Herman my third cousin twice removed (I think), but I’d always called him great-uncle.

  “Cousin Herman willed me the Stagecoach Inn,” Effie said. She took a tiny sip of ice water.

  “Oh, so you’re here to sell it,” I said. I turned back to my menu.

  “No, I mean to restore it and open it up again in all its former glory.”

  I snorted. “Okay, first of all, that place may have been glorious in, what, 1856?”

  “It has potential,” Effie said. “Glorious potential.”

  “And
second of all, isn’t it a condemned building?”

  “We were just talking about that,” Dad said. “It is condemned. It has been deemed unfit for human habitation.”

  “I am going to restore it,” Effie said. “I don’t care if it kills me. I’ll fix whatever is wrong with it, have it reinspected, and get a new certificate of occupancy issued. It’ll be a snap.”

  Dad and I exchanged sidelong looks: This is weird. Because the thing is, Effie just doesn’t fit into Naneda. Granted, I don’t either—at least, not anymore. I feel like Jane Goodall every time I go to the post office. But Effie really doesn’t fit in. It’s like sticking a designer cocktail dress on the clearance rack at Walmart.

  “Why do you want to restore the inn?” I asked, mainly to make Effie stop inspecting my face. She had shrewd eyes, a sharp bottle-glass blue. I’d never noticed that about her before, but of course, the last time I saw her, I was thirteen years old.

  “Why?” Effie said. “Because I adore that show about the Vermont inn—what was it called?”

  “Newhart?” I said. “You adore Newhart?”

  “Yes. Hilarious.”

  I didn’t buy it; Effie looked like she only watched black-and-white art-house films.

  The waitress arrived, took our orders, and left.

  “Did you know the Stagecoach Inn is supposed to be haunted?” I asked Effie.

  “Agnes,” Dad said, “I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear about that.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Effie said. “Do tell. Ghosts? Goblins?”

  I shrugged. “Lights and weird noises and things.”

  “Teenagers,” Dad said firmly.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said, “but I thought you should know.” The waitress dipped over the table long enough to deposit my Diet Coke. I took a long sip. Ah. Maybe everything was going to be okay. Just as soon as I toilet-papered Roger’s office.

  “Of course you don’t believe in ghosts,” Effie said, “because you have a college degree—archaeology, was it? King Tut and so forth?”

  “No. Anthropology. The study of human culture.”

  “Oh! That’s what I study too, darling.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Dad shifted in his seat. The vinyl made a farty noise beneath his substantial frame. “Agnes, I was hoping you and Aunt Effie could put that business behind you. It’s been ten years now.”

  “Sixteen years,” I snapped, and stuck the straw in my mouth. “I was only a kid.”

  “I have apologized about all that,” Effie said, “and anyway, you took it entirely the wrong way, Agnes.”

  “Don’t think so,” I said.

  Here’s the thing. When I was thirteen years old, Effie took me on a trip to New York City—Central Park! Art museums! Broadway shows! Oh, and a trip to a modeling agency where she pitched me as a husky teen model. I had never been particularly confident about my looks. This was the final nail in the coffin. Effie—gorgeous, willowy Effie—just couldn’t see how much being labeled husky had hurt. Even if it was more or less accurate. There are some things you just don’t say, right?

  I felt that bug-crawly sensation of someone watching and slid my eyes to the side. Sure enough, the Realty Sisters—that’s what everyone in Naneda called Bitsy and Lily Horton of Naneda Realty—were staring at Effie.

  “I already had a bit of a run-in with those two,” Effie said softly. “They asked me if I would like to sell the inn. I’d forgotten how quickly word travels in this town. When I said no, the one in the terribly snug pantsuit looked like she wanted to bite me. I suppose they would just sell the property to a condo developer. The piece of land it sits on is gorgeous, and the deed says it’s one and a half acres. In-town lakeshore property like that just isn’t available anymore.”

  “It is nice,” I said, “and I’m sure if it wasn’t a total pit, you’d be booked solid with tourists all year round.” The inn had been sagging there, gray and empty, for years. It was the sort of place kids dared each other to sneak into on Halloween.

  Effie gave me another penetrating look. “Agnes, have you been crying?”

  I hadn’t, actually, but my eyes had felt hot and squinchy when Roger had dropped his nuclear bomb. “Allergies,” I said.

  “I didn’t know you had allergies,” Dad said.

  “I do. It’s, um, pollen.”

  “In September?” he said.

  Effie tipped her head. “No. You look a bit—not weepy—more like, well, like you’d enjoy throttling someone.”

  I could start with her.

  “Everything all right with Roger?” Dad asked.

  “What?” I slurped Diet Coke. Where the freak was my cheeseburger?

  “He seemed a little jumpy at Sunday dinner,” Dad said. Roger and I hadn’t missed a Sunday dinner at Dad’s house since we’d moved to Naneda a month ago, after Roger had landed a job at the university.

  “Look, she’s shredding her paper napkin,” Effie said to Dad.

  I threw the napkin down.

  “Agnes?” Dad said.

  “Fine!” I yipped. I took a couple deep breaths. My upper lip perspired. “Roger and I, well—he said he wants to break up—there’s this . . . this person, Shelby—”

  “Oh, dear God,” Effie said. “You’re engaged to be married, aren’t you?”

  “We are—were—engaged.”

  “Where’s the ring?” Effie asked.

  “There is no ring,” I said.

  “What?” Effie looked disgusted. “He’s a young professor, your father tells me. I know the type—I’ll bet he’s a pompous, pontificating ass.”

  “He’s not a type,” I said. But you know what? Roger kind of was. Or at least he aspired to be a type, which was probably worse. He had a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, for goodness sake.

  “What is she?” Effie said. “Makeup counter girl? Cocktail waitress? Undergraduate student?”

  I swallowed hard. “Pilates instructor.”

  “Hideous!” Effie shrieked.

  Half the diner swiveled to gape at Effie. She ignored them all, and for the first time in my life, I warmed a little to the taxidermied old swan. Not, of course, that I forgave her for the husky teen model episode.

  “There, there,” Dad said awkwardly, patting my hand. My mom died when I was little, but Dad never got very good at dealing with the waterworks.

  “So Roger dumped you for a fitness bimbo,” Effie said. “He’s moving in with her, I suppose?”

  “I think he’ll come around,” I said. “We’ve been together since we were twenty! What will he talk about with a Pilates instructor?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t want to talk with her, darling.”

  My eyes felt hot and squinchy again. I removed my glasses, even though without them, I felt like a mole in a Velma Dinkley wig.

  “Aunt Effie, she’s um . . .” Dad said.

  I blotted my eyes with the shredded napkin. Luckily, I never wear makeup, so it wasn’t the sludgy mess it could’ve been. “He kicked me out. He’s keeping the Prius—it’s in his name. And he said that things had been shuffled around at the university so he’s going to be my graduate advisor.” Roger had also accused me of being “not very adventurous,” but somehow I couldn’t admit that aloud.

  “Putrid,” Effie said. “Simply putrid. Couldn’t you simply ask for a new advisor?”

  “I guess so.” It suddenly hit me. “I’ll have to defer my enrollment. I can’t face him at school every day.”

  “But you’ve been planning on going to graduate school for years, honey,” Dad said. “That was your plan with Roger, right? You helped get him through school, and then he’d help you.” Dad looked at Effie. “Agnes basically put Roger through grad school, working as a barista and a hotel clerk in Boston so that they didn’t have to take out too many loans.”

  “He’s slime,” Effie said.

  “Stay in school, honey,” Dad said to me.

  “No. I’m taking the semester off.” I had only just decided
on this, but it made me feel less panicky, so I was going with it. I’d figure out the rest later. Suddenly, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted a graduate degree in anthropology. What do you do with that?

  “At least you have your library job,” Dad said.

  “That ended yesterday,” I said. “It was only a temp job.” I had spent the last month entering book bar codes into the library’s new computer catalog. “I was supposed to be starting school next week.”

  “Oh.” Dad looked worried. It wasn’t a financial thing, I knew; Dad comes from a fairly well-to-do family, and I know he’d always be capable and willing to help me out. I’m his only child. No, the worry I saw in his eyes had something to do with fears for my sanity. I get bored. “You can come stay with me,” Dad said, patting my arm.

  “Only for a few weeks. I’ve got to get out of this town.”

  “I know!” Effie crowed. “You can come work for me. At the inn.”

  Dad and I both stared at her.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  * * *

  By the time I’d wolfed down my lunch, I had realized that, number one, I needed to go to the Naneda Public Library and beg to keep my temp job a little longer, at least until I figured out how I was going to get the heck out of Naneda. No way could I work as a barista again; I was all frothed out.

  I said good-bye to Dad and Aunt Effie—mumbling to Dad that he should expect me at his house later—and left the Cup n’ Clatter. I passed the Flour Girl Bakery and my best friend Lauren’s vintage clothing shop, Retro Rags. I considered going in to talk to her. She’d definitely be able to cheer me up with her wry wit, perennially upbeat attitude, and hilarious talent for impressions. But I saw she was busy with customers, so I kept going. I’d call her later.

  “Watch out, lady!” someone shouted as I stepped onto the crosswalk. A motorcycle screeched to a stop, its rear tire skidding sideways. Numbed by greasy carbs and by being dumped, I hadn’t noticed it coming.

  I stepped backward onto the curb. “I was on a crosswalk. Are you blind in that helmet?”

  The guy’s legs were splayed—muscular, long legs in faded jeans—to keep his balance, and he wore a white short-sleeved undershirt. He flipped up his helmet’s visor. “Wait,” he said. “Agnes?”