Bad Housekeeping

by Maia Chance

  “And exactly what sort of wrong idea did you give him, darling? Oh, never mind. I suppose there’s really only one idea when it all boils down.”

  “Men and women can be just friends, you know,” I said, maybe too loudly.

  “No, they can’t!” Chester said, his voice cracking. He lurched to his feet and stumped across the kitchen. “Going to work on the dining room wiring.”

  Effie gazed after him. “Those with English degrees do suffer more poetically than the rest of us.”

  “I assume Lauren told him she only wants to be friends?”

  “Mmm.”

  Smart move. Chester’s longest relationship to date was, I believe, two weeks long, and that was an online relationship with someone in Norway.

  Effie stood. “I’m going to sort through the hallway coat closet. There are things in there that probably need to be burned.”

  “I’ll be there in a second.” I sat down at the kitchen table to finish my coffee. I petted the cat until he got bored of me and hopped down.

  The four issues of Kathleen Todd’s Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens that Effie had stolen from the library stared up at me. I paged through one. Garish ads and articles suggested that a woman could make her husband happy with pot roast, nice living room drapes, and by using the right brand of cold cream. Kinda offensive. Although, what did I know? I was a twenty-eight year old dumpy dumpee. Maybe I should’ve paid more attention to all that happy housewife stuff. Maybe Roger would’ve liked it.

  Thinking about Roger got me thinking about Otis. Which may seem strange, but in a way, my relationship with Roger was, at least at its beginning, deeply influenced by what had gone wrong with Otis in high school. Roger—who even back in college had had pleated jeans and stooped shoulders—had seemed like a safe alternative to guys like Otis. Roger had seemed like someone who would appreciate me for my brains and wit and overlook my butt and other girls’ butts too, you know?

  I’d sure gotten that one wrong.

  But oddly, now I was wondering about Otis. It truly seemed like he, well, like he liked me. Even that he thought I was . . . attractive. But how the heck could I ever forget the Hagness Blimp disaster? That had broken my heart.

  Shut up, Agnes, the rational little bug voice in my head scolded. Remember that you decided this whole Otis fascination was a reliving of the sensation of first love? It’ll pass.

  I was swallowing my last sip of coffee when I happened to notice that all four of the mailing labels had been ripped off. Actually, in the way of those really sticky labels, they had only been partially ripped off, and fragments of the printed address remained. It looked like it was the same address on all the labels, because I saw the same letters and numbers repeating. Why would someone rip off the labels? Somehow, this felt important.

  I arrayed the magazines in front of me, and in only a couple minutes, I had mentally pieced together the address:

  Earlene Roy

  19 Scump Pond Road

  Scump, NY

  This was too weird. I had no clue who Earlene Roy was, but . . . Roy? As in Gracelyn Roy? And where in the world was Scump, New York?

  I found Effie, smoking in the hallway and staring into the closet, and told her what I had discovered. “Do you think these magazines belong to Gracelyn Roy’s family?” I asked.

  “But she’s new to town, and I don’t know any other Roys in Naneda. Do you?”

  I shook my head. “Let me check the white pages.” I searched on my phone. No Roys.

  “Anyway, didn’t you say Kathleen Todd donated the magazines to the library?”

  “Hey!” Chester shouted from somewhere. “Aunt Effie! Come quick! We’ve got a serious problem.”

  * * *

  We found Chester standing with his arms folded and scowling at the fireplace in the dining room.

  “Is it asbestos?” I asked.

  “Is it the ghost?” Effie asked.

  Chester pointed to the floor in front of the hearth. A puddle of water glimmered.

  Effie gasped.

  “Hel-lo money pit,” I said.

  Next, Chester pointed to the elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece. It was blotched with water.

  “Is it ruined?” Effie clutched her chest. “That can’t be replaced! What happened here? I didn’t see any water last night.”

  Chester shrugged. “It’s been raining. There’s a leak somewhere.”

  “Well it’s still raining!” Effie cried. “We’ve got to find the leak!”

  “Yes, we do,” Chester said grimly. “I can’t move forward with the wiring if there’s an active leak. This is a major setback, and I’m running out of time.”

  We climbed the grand staircase to the second floor and then up a smaller staircase to the attic. We found the dormer window closest to the chimney, and Chester wrestled it open and leaned out.

  “Oh, crap,” he said. He ducked back inside.

  “What?” I said.

  “There’s no flashing around the chimney.”

  “What’s flashing?” Effie said, toying with her chunky gold necklace.

  “The strips of stuff—usually copper or tin—around the roof where the chimney comes out, to keep the rain off,” Chester said. “And the flashing is just . . . gone. Which is really strange.”

  “Why?” Effie’s voice sounded a little shrill.

  “Because if there’s no flashing, there would be old signs of a leak—water damage—in the dining room already. On the floor. On the mantelpiece. Probably on the walls and ceiling. But there isn’t.”

  “Are you saying that the flashing was removed recently?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I am,” Chester said. “As in, since the last time it rained.”

  “That was like a week ago,” I said.

  Effie marched over to the open window and thrust her head out. She craned her neck to see the chimney. Then she looked down. “Oh, dear lord,” she said. “There are copper strips down there.”

  The three of us poked our heads out the window. Strips of greenish metal lay curled and bent on the porch roof.

  “I guess that’s what your ghost has been up to,” I said to Effie.

  We went downstairs. Effie and I got to work on sopping up the puddle in the sitting room, and Chester went off to the hardware store to buy supplies to fix the flashing.

  “I have to admit, I’m pretty creeped out,” I said to Effie. I swabbed the floorboards with an old towel. “Someone’s been coming into the inn while you’ve been sleeping. Come and stay at Dad’s. Please. At least until you can install some sort of security system or buy a guard dog or something. There’s plenty of room.”

  “No,” Effie said. “I’m staying put. Whoever it is, they’re obviously just trying to drive me out, not harm me. They climbed on my goddam roof in the middle of the night when I was sleeping, when they could have easily killed me in my bed—”

  “But what’ll they do when they can’t drive you out? Is that when they come and kill you?”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Agnes.” Effie was poking her phone. “I’m calling Karl Knudsen at City Hall,” she said. “I’ve got to make him reconsider the demolition date. Chester will never get the wiring done in time, now that—Hello? Is this the public works department? Wonderful. I’d like to speak with Mr. Knudson.” Waa-waa-waaing on the other end. Effie frowned. “Home sick? The poor man. All right, thank you.” She hung up. “Knudson is home sick. We’ll stop by.”

  “He’s sick!”

  “That’s right. Sick and vulnerable. I’ve got to make him change the date. Come on. We’ve cleaned up all the water here, and there’s nothing else we can do until Chester gets back.”

  Chapter 20

  I looked up Karl Knudsen’s home address on my phone. He lived a few blocks outside of the central historic district on Madison Street. Effie and I set off in the Caddy.

  As we drove down Third Street, I noticed Gracelyn Roy’s antique pickup parked in front of her house. “Hey,” I said, “let’
s stop by and talk to Gracelyn. We can ask her about the mailing labels on those magazines, okay?”

  Effie parked. We climbed out of the car and picked our way up the front walk, steering well clear of the rusty saw blades and tractor parts. Tall sunflowers swayed in the breeze. Goldfish flicked in a pool set inside a monster truck tire.

  Effie eyed the pool. “Ingenious,” she said dryly.

  I knocked on the front door. We waited. No answer. I peered through the window. “I can see right down the hallway to the back of the house,” I said, “and the back door is open. Maybe she’s in the backyard.”

  We circled around the house, following a flagstone path, and found ourselves in a small backyard billowing with tomatoes, squash, and pole beans. A fence separated the yard from Dorrie Tucker’s next door. Dorrie’s lace curtains were drawn. She’d be at Kathleen Todd’s funeral.

  Gracelyn squatted beside a raised garden bed, picking tomatoes. She wore a bathrobe, and her back was to us.

  “Excuse me,” I called. “Ms. Roy?”

  Gracelyn swiveled. Her eyes squinched. “Who the hell are you?” The hick accent was dialed up to strong.

  “I’m Agnes Blythe, and this is Euphemia Winters.”

  “That’s right.” Gracelyn stood. “The murderers. I met you, granny”—she pointed at Effie—“when you interrogated me at my book signing.” She popped a cherry tomato in her mouth. “What do you want?”

  “I have a couple questions for you,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah? And this is what you do? Trespass in folks’ yards?”

  “First off,” I said, “is it true that you were with Roland Pascal at midnight the night Kathleen Todd was killed?”

  “He tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stinker. No privacy in this town.”

  “Then you were together.”

  “I guess, but what’s it to you?”

  “Just curious. Another thing: while I was cleaning out the porch at the Stagecoach Inn—we’re renovating it, you know—”

  “Renovating it?” Gracelyn snorted. “I heard it was gettin’ razed to kingdom come in a few days.”

  “Hopefully not,” I said. “Anyway, I found these old magazines from the sixties with mailing labels addressed to someone named Earlene Roy in Scump, New York. Any relation to you, Ms. Roy?”

  Gracelyn’s jaw jutted. “Roy’s a pretty common name.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Sure it is.” Gracelyn was moving toward the back porch.

  “You haven’t lived in Naneda long, have you?” I asked.

  “Nope.” Gracelyn mounted the porch steps.

  “Have you ever been to Scump, New York?” I asked.

  Gracelyn swung open the screen door, grabbed something, and twirled around. She braced a shotgun against her arm, and her mouth was squared off in that chimp-at-war way, teeth bared. “Get the hell off my property, or Annie here is gonna take a chunk out of you.”

  I backed up, stepping on Aunt Effie’s toe. “Is that Annie as in Little Orphan or Oakley?”

  “Enough with your lip, four-eyes,” Gracelyn snarled. “Now git.”

  “Okeydokey,” I said. Effie and I turned, hurried back around the house, and jumped into the car. “Well that was a little aggressive.” I wrestled with my seat belt, hands shaking.

  “I’m amazed how many citizens of this town are packing heat,” Effie said, fumbling for a cigarette.

  “Drive,” I said.

  “To Karl Knudsen’s?”

  I thought about it. “In a minute. First, let’s go see Roland Pascal and ask him about prison—and about Gracelyn Roy.”

  * * *

  When Effie switched off the engine in front of the McGrundell Mansion, we heard piano music coming from a radio somewhere inside.

  “You go speak with Roland,” Effie said. “I’ll just pop into his trailer and see if the crumpled-up list of references is still in there. If I find it, I’ll photograph it.”

  “Do you know how to work your camera phone?”

  “No. Show me.”

  I showed her.

  Effie stole into the trailer, and I went up to the mansion’s front porch.

  The front door was off its hinges and leaning on a porch pillar, so I took that as an invitation to go in. I found Roland on a ladder in the library, rubbing wood varnish on a high bookshelf.

  “Ah, a lady,” he said without stopping his work. “Good morning. How lovely you look.”

  “Don’t lie,” I said. “Roland, what were you in prison for? Was it drug related?”

  Roland’s hand slowed in its rubbing only briefly and then resumed its earlier brisk pace. “Prison? Drugs? Dear lilylike Agnes, what can you mean?”

  “The tattoo on your hand—it’s a convict’s tattoo.”

  “Ah, that? Youthful folly. Not prison. In my adolescence, I and the other village boys desired to look like, how do you call it, toughs. To impress the girls.” He smiled. “Does it impress you, Agnes?”

  “Actually, no. Sorry.” I wasn’t sure if Roland was bluffing about the tattoo or not, but I was sure that I wasn’t going to squeeze anything else out of him about it. I switched gears. “I was just speaking with your girlfriend, Gracelyn Roy. Quite the charmer. She pulled a shotgun on me.”

  Roland smiled as he dipped his rag into a can of varnish. “Ah, yes, she has the feisty temperament, little Gracelyn.”

  “I think she’s hiding something,” I said. “Her accent is fake.”

  “Is it? I am a foreigner, so I cannot differentiate American accents. You all sound like you are from Baywatch to me.”

  That was just sad. “You’re positive you and Gracelyn were together at midnight the night Kathleen was killed?”

  “Did Gracelyn say we were together?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well then, we were together.”

  “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Why are you asking such questions, fair Agnes? Perhaps I should telephone the police and tell them you are conducting your own murder investigation?”

  “Have a great day!” I said quickly and went outside. Effie was already in the car.

  “Any luck?” she asked me.

  “Not really. You?”

  “I found the references page and photographed it. There are three people listed. Look.”

  “Awesome.” I took out my own phone and dialed the first name, Herbert Thoreau in Cambridge, Massachusetts. No answer. I left a message, wheeling out the line that I was an investigative reporter from the Boston Herald. I dialed the second name, Valerie Rose in Caraway, Vermont. Again, no answer. I left the same message. The third number was no longer in service. “I hope someone calls back,” I said. “Roland really rubs me the wrong way.”

  Next stop, Karl Knudsen’s house.

  * * *

  Karl’s house was a one-story blue Cape Cod in a neighborhood of modest midcentury homes. The front curtains were drawn. The yard was well kept yet blah—clipped lawn, clipped boxwoods, squeaky-clean garbage and recycling bins. A Toyota pickup and a Porsche SUV stood in the driveway.

  “A Porsche?” I said as Effie parked across the street. “On a public works salary?”

  “Maybe he has a visitor,” Effie said.

  We got out. As we turned up the front walk, we heard voices. “He has a visitor, all right,” I whispered. “And she sounds pissed.” A woman’s anger-spiked voice bulldozed over a man’s placating whine.

  “I suppose we should come back later,” Effie said, turning.

  “Wait.” I touched Effie’s arm. “What if this is . . . relevant?”

  “How could it possibly be relevant?”

  “Well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if we eavesdropped, maybe we’d learn something that we could”—I licked my dry lips—“that you could, ah, leverage.”

  “Agnes Blythe!” Effie whispered. “Are you suggesting that I blackmail Mr. Knudson into stopping the inn’s demolition?”
/>   “Blackmail isn’t exactly—”

  “I love it.” Effie crossed the lawn, her sharp heels sinking into the turf, and disappeared into the shrubs at the side of the house.

  What could I do but follow her? After all, eavesdropping had been my idea. Why did I say these things? I guess I kept thinking that Effie, as a responsible senior citizen, would object. Yeah, right. I jogged after her.

  In the shrubs, Effie and I elbowed through branches to position ourselves under a window. Twigs knocked my glasses askew and raked across my arms and scalp. Ow. And I had my fingers crossed that no one was watching from across the street, because even if they hadn’t seen us disappear into the bushes, they might see the bushes shaking.

  “—and I swear to God, Karl, I’m going to call the police if you don’t stop this—this craziness!” the woman shrieked inside the house.

  “Don’t call me crazy, Ashley. I love you and—”

  “Don’t you dare talk about love! Love? Hah! Where was the love when we were married? When you’d go bird-watching every goddam weekend instead of spending time with Benny and me?”

  Effie and I slowly rose to peek through a window. We had a decent view of Karl’s living room. Karl sat cocooned in a blanket in a recliner, feet propped up and a snowfall of used Kleenexes on the carpet. A tall, pretty brunette, maybe fifty years old, paced near the front window. She swung on Karl. “You know what it’s called, don’t you, Karl? It’s called stalking. I could get a restraining order! Everyone in town would know about it. You’d have a real fun time walking into work every day with everyone knowing you’re a stalking psycho, now wouldn’t you?”

  “Don’t threaten me, Ashley. It’s not stalking.” Karl blew his nose. “It’s just that I haven’t gotten over you yet—”

  “Our divorce was finalized three years ago! I’m married to Matt! And yes, following me around town in your truck and taking pictures of me at the antique store is stalking, and you, Karl, are sick. This is your last warning—and I’m giving you one more chance only for Benny’s sake. Cut it out, or I’m getting a restraining order.” Ashley stormed out of the living room, and a second later, the front door banged. A few seconds after that, the roar of an engine and the squeal of tires let me know that Ashley had zoomed away in her Porsche.