by Maia Chance
Across the parking lot, the cop slammed the car door shut.
My feet stumbled into motion, and I zigged and zagged through milling senior citizens and paramedics and police with squawking walkie-talkies.
“Otis!” I cried. I knocked on his window. “Otis.”
“Hey!” someone yelled. “Get away from the car, miss!”
Inside the car, Otis turned his head. Through the hectic flashing lights bouncing off the window, I saw his wide eyes and hitched shoulders. He was surprised to see me, but also shocked and … afraid?
I’d never seen Otis afraid of anything before.
He mouthed “Agnes,” and then the police car turned onto the road, gravel crunching, and accelerated in the direction of town.
Well, in the direction of the police station and the town jail, to be more precise.
I stared after the squad car, the relief I’d felt at seeing Otis unharmed lost in a blizzard of confusion.
Then, a thought: Wait … then who died?
I swung around. A paramedic was latching the ambulance’s back doors shut. Over by one of the remaining police cars, a cop appeared to be taking a statement from a stout older woman in a tweed jacket. Three seniors were loading up, suitcases and all, into a van marked LAKESIDE MOTEL. Three more seniors were getting into the back seat of the Subaru station wagon I knew belonged to Clifford and Belinda Prentiss, the proprietors of Birch Grove Bed and Breakfast.
I hurried to the Subaru. “Clifford,” I said breathlessly, stopping beside him. “Hey.”
Clifford Prentiss is only an inch or two taller than me. He always wears a uniform of loafers, wrinkle-free khakis cinched with a braided leather belt, and a plaid shirt. In warm weather, it’s short sleeve cotton, and in cooler weather it’s long sleeve flannel or wool. But always plaid. He has neat, sandy hair and a bland, boyish face. He was probably pushing fifty. The bad kind of fifty that happens to some people when they start getting bitter about their crappy life choices. Calculation hardened his yellowish-green eyes, and his cheeks were sliding into a permanent scowl.
Okay, so sue me. I didn’t like Clifford.
He rammed a suitcase into place and straightened. “Hello, Agnes. Don’t tell me you and your crazy auntie are taking some of these stranded motor coach passengers into your rattrap?”
“It’s not a rattrap, but, well, yeah, actually—”
“Need I remind you that you don’t have your innkeeping license?”
“How do you know that?” I mean, we didn’t have our innkeeping license yet, but the way private info infiltrates Naneda—jeez. It’s like syrup on waffles.
“Everyone in the Chamber of Commerce knows,” Clifford said.
“Why are we even talking about this? Someone—who?—is dead, and Otis was just hauled off to the police station! Who is dead, Clifford? Omigosh—it isn’t Harlan Hatch, is it?” What an awful thought. Otis arrested for murdering his beloved grandpa? No. Wait. Grandpa Harlan was away fishing— “Mikey Brown,” Clifford said.
“Mikey! Mikey. Of course.”
Mikey Brown had been hired by Otis about a month back to help out in the garage. He was a bachelor, looked like he was about forty, and the one time I’d met him he’d told me allllll about some touchdown he’d made as the star quarterback on the Naneda High football team. He’d been eating a foot-long meatball sub, and each bite had sent tomato sauce squooshing and meatballs bouncing down his mechanic’s overalls.
“And good riddance to him.” Clifford slammed the Subaru’s hatchback shut.
“Good ridd—what? How can you say that?”
“Clearly you didn’t know Mikey if you have to ask.”
“Did you … see the body?” Body. My stomach went bloop. Why, oh, why had I stress-eaten those Cheezy Puffs?
“Good luck, Agnes. You’re going to need it.” Clifford circled around the Subaru, got into the driver’s seat, and, with his passengers gawking out at me, drove away.
*
Without really thinking it over, I walked closer to the garage.
Yellow crime scene tape hung across the open doors of the shop. Inside, police were taking photographs, their camera flashes blinding white. A blue Toyota Camry was parked on the repair lift. The cops, however, didn’t seem to care about the Camry. They were photographing dark splashes and a big wrench on the concrete floor. The wrench seemed cartoonishly outsized and too shiny … and I’d seen it more than once in Otis’s hands.
“Hey,” a policewoman barked at me. “Stay out.”
I backed away.
More tape fluttered on stakes around a maroon minivan parked about six yards from the garage, one of a row of vehicles waiting to be fixed. The minivan’s hatchback was up, and I glimpsed—urk—reddish-brown splotches on the gray carpeting.
Yeah. Blood.
I knew—I knew, with every cell in my body—that Otis would never hurt anyone. But was the ground swaying, or was I?
“Excuse me,” an imperious voice said behind me.
I started, and turned to find myself face-to-face with the stout older woman in the tweed coat who had been speaking with the police officer earlier.
“Are you from the Stagecoach Inn?” she asked. The accent was British, with the plummy tones I associated with BBC costume dramas. An upstairs voice. Not a downstairs one. She wore a silk scarf over her gray bun, and her face was long and makeup-free, with one of those puckered, judgy mouths.
“Yeah,” I said. “How did you know?”
“Because you are wearing a sweatshirt that says ‘The Stagecoach Inn.’”
“Oh. Right.”
“What are you waiting for? All of us are simply beaten down by this hideous experience—I saw the body, you realize—and we’d all very much like to have a nice cup of tea and put our feet up. Poor Dr. Li’s feet swell like Cornish game hens, and Mrs. Berman requires a nap. We all must take our pills. But where are my manners? I am Miss Bulstrode—call me Dorothea—the tour guide for Golden Vistas Motor Coach Tours. I spoke to someone on the telephone to arrange things, and she said she was sending her niece and assistant, Agnes. That is you, I presume?”
“Yes. Agnes Blythe.” Just the idea of showing this woman the wreck that was the inn was curdling my stomach. “The, uh, minivan is just across the road”—I pointed—“so just show me where your luggage is, and then you can go and get settled while I take care of the rest.” I had never played bellhop before, but Clifford had been loading his guests’ luggage into his car.
“Good,” Dorothea said. “The bags remaining beside the motor coach are ours. Mind that you brush off the dust.”
*
Once I’d finished stuffing the mountain of luggage into the back of the Dustbuster, four stranded leaf-peepers were buckled into my three rows of seats. In a daze, I sank into the driver’s seat, found my keys, and—even though my hands were shaking and my brain was blabbering Otis, Otis, what the heck?—stuck them in the ignition.
“Where’s the baby?” someone called from the third row.
“What?” I glanced in the rearview mirror. The dark eyes of a withered, gray-haired man peered back. He was the guy I’d spoken to first thing, the one with the travel vest with all the little zippered pockets.
“There’s a BABY ON BOARD sign on the rear window, but I don’t see a baby.”
“Oh. That.” How could I explain that Aunt Effie had put up that sign not for the safety of any child, actual or inner, but because she thought it kept people from tailgating? “I’m not sure. Ask my boss.”
I picked up my phone, which was sitting on the console between the front seats, and tapped out a quick text message to Otis: ARE YOU OK? WORRIED!
“I’m so glad you aren’t one of those young people who are always in a hurry,” Dorothea said in a sarcastic voice. “Mm, a nice hot cup of tea is just what we all need, isn’t it, my dears? Perhaps with just a splash of brandy for the shock.”
“I think we might have some brandy at the inn.” I dumped my phone on the consol
e and started the engine. “We definitely have vodka.” Aunt Effie loathes gin martinis.
I took the few miles back to the Stagecoach Inn slowly. Not because I was trying to impress my passengers with my ultrasafe driving (although I didn’t hear any complaints) but because of the quivery rippling inside my chest and stomach.
Otis. Otis, what the heck?
He had somehow embroiled himself in a really bizarre situation. That wasn’t like him. Otis is the wholesome, small-town, straight-shooting, superhot, corn-fed type.
“Would you mind speeding up?” the other male passenger said. I stole a peek. Heavyset, gray comb-over, no neck, black polyester track jacket zipped to triple chins. Big, alert, kind-looking brown eyes. “I gotta use the john.”
“Myron!” the woman beside him whispered, elbowing him. Her reprimanding tone and pink polyester track jacket clued me in that she was his wife. A sculptural cloud of baby-blonde hair was hairsprayed firmly around her plump, pretty, juicily lipsticked, slightly jowly face. She had one of those reassuring figures where nothing but a horizontal groove separates the belly from the bust, and big, gold-tone clip-on earrings.
“You oughta be happy I didn’t go on myself right then and there when I found that corpse, Lorraine,” Myron said.
Another elbow jab from his wife. “Sorry,” she said to me. “I can’t take him anywhere. And call me Lo—Myron only calls me Lorraine when he’s annoyed.”
“Wait,” I said. “You found the body, Myron?” I forced myself to keep my eyes on the road.
“Yup,” he said with relish. “Sure did.”
“In the back of that maroon minivan?” I said.
“Dodge Caravan, to be exact,” Myron said. “Yup.”
“Why was the hatchback open?” I asked.
“It wasn’t open,” Lo said in a scolding tone. It sounded like they’d already gone over this. “Myron was snooping. Oy vey, how I wish he would’ve just left it alone already! We could’ve been spared all that craziness, and someone else would’ve had to deal with the corpse!”
“It could’ve started to decay if I hadn’t found it,” Myron said. “It could’ve started stinking, and then that van would be ruined for good.”
“It’s already ruined for good!” Lo yelled. “It’ll be haunted forever!”
The man in the third row piped up. “Those bloodstains will come out easily with a little peroxide.”
“Dr. Li is a retired physician,” Dorothea said to me. “He goes by Hank.”
“So why were you looking in that minivan?” I asked Myron.
Lo answered for him. “Because we’re supposedly shopping for a minivan, and every last minivan we come across he’s gotta go and check out. He’s set off I don’t know how many car alarms in about six states—”
Myron said, “I believe in comparison shopping—”
“For two years?” Lo wailed.
“—and right now I’m comparing trunk sizes. So when I saw that maroon Caravan, I thought, heck, if it’s unlocked, I’ll just take a quick look. It was unlocked, all right. And when I lifted the door, I saw the guy in there, kinda stuffed in, and with blood just everywhere.”
“Head wound,” Hank said in his clinical, retired-physician’s voice.
“You can say that again,” Myron said. “Whoever killed him was one angry—”
“Do we have to talk about this?” Lo cried.
Myron continued as though he hadn’t heard her. Maybe he hadn’t. Lots of people tune out their spouses after a decade or five. “He was killed inside the garage, and then his body was dragged to the minivan. I saw the drag marks in the gravel, before the cops came and messed everything up.”
“Myron is a retired carpet salesman,” Dorothea said to me in a confiding voice. “He always notices what’s underfoot … I do hope the Stagecoach Inn’s floors are clean.”
“You could eat off of them.”
“Well, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Then that other mechanic came strolling out from the office, cool as a cucumber,” Myron said, “and said he’d like to take a look at the motor coach, and I said, ‘Motor coach? You wanna take a look at the motor coach when there’s a dead body on the premises?’ And that’s when I saw it.” He paused for dramatic effect.
“Saw what?” I noticed that my knuckles, clenching the steering wheel, were white.
“The blood on his shirt.”
“On Otis’s shirt?” I said.
“Goodness me,” Dorothea said. “That nice cup of tea with brandy won’t arrive soon enough.”
“That’s his name? Otis?” Myron asked.
“He looked more like a Bruiser to me,” Hank said.
Myron said, “The blood on his shirt, and the fact that the body was found in his own business—well, that was enough for the police to haul him in for questioning.”
“You mean he wasn’t arrested?” I asked. It was true that Otis hadn’t been handcuffed …
“Not yet,” Hank said in a sour voice.
Lo said, “I thought he looked suspicious the moment I clapped eyes on him. He’s just too handsome—you can’t trust handsome men. That’s why I married Myron here.”
“Hey,” Myron said.
Hank snickered.
“And,” Lo continued, “did you see those biceps on him? Only men who’ve been in prison have muscles like that.”
“Otis has never been in prison!” I cried.
“Wait a minute,” Myron said, “is that murderer your … you aren’t saying he’s your fella, are you?”
Smearing tears from my eyes, I rolled through a stop sign. “He’s not a murderer!”
“A nice, comfy, pretty girl like you, mixed up with a criminal?” Lo said.
Wait. What did comfy mean?
Lo leaned forward and patted my shoulder. “There, there, bubbeleh. You deserve better. I’ll have you know, I come from a long line of matchmakers. I’ll fix you up with some nice husband prospects in no time.”
“We’re only stopping here in Naneda for one night,” Hank called.
“Well…” Dorothea made a delicate cough. “The mechanic I enlisted to fix the motor coach has been taken in for questioning, so there could be a slight … delay.”
“We’ve got to stick to the schedule,” Hank cried. “I have to see everything on the schedule.”
“Simmer down, Hank,” Myron said over his shoulder. “You oughta be happy. This is a real adventure, not a pretend one planned out by a tour guide.”
“That’s precisely the problem,” Hank said. “Precisely.”
“We almost there?” Myron asked me.
I was braking at another stop sign. “Yes.”
My phone buzzed. Otis! I kept my foot on the brake and grabbed my phone.
“Goodness!” Dorothea cried, hand to heart.
I peered at my phone. It wasn’t Otis; it was a text from Aunt Effie: KEEP THEM BUSY UNTIL SIX O’CLOCK. ROOMS WILL BE READY THEN.
Great.
I tapped out a message to Effie: OK. FYI THERE WAS A MURDER AT THE AUTO SHOP.
I put away my phone and cleared my throat. “Um, okay, slight change of plans. Your rooms won’t be ready for a couple hours, so what I’m going to do—”
“We’re exhausted!” Dorothea cried.
“My feet are swelling up,” Hank said. “They need to be elevated.”
“I’m really sorry, you guys, but you know that our inn wasn’t officially open for business yet, right?”
“You’re supposed to be hospitality professionals,” Hank said, “and this is not hospitable.”
“Listen, it’s a beautiful afternoon,” I said. “Why don’t I show you downtown Naneda? We can go have a cup of tea or coffee—you can put your feet up, Dr. Li—and then we can have dinner—you’ll love the Cup ’n’ Clatter diner; it’s a classic—and then go to the inn.”
“It’s not really as though we have a choice in the matter,” Dorothea said through a tight smile. “Is it?”
Someone pu
lled up behind me at the stop sign and honked.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing the downtown, honey,” Lo said, patting my shoulder again. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 3
Our first stop would be Flour Girl Bakery, since Dorothea had been dropping hints about “nice cups of tea” and Flour Girl has an extensive inventory of loose leaf varieties from around the world. Hank could prop up his feet by the fireplace, they could all take their pills, and I could quietly freak out about Otis. Then at five o’clock, we’d mosey across the street to the Cup ’n’ Clatter for something chicken-fried, french-fried, and/or bathed in gravy.
“We haven’t done much leaf-peeping yet,” Lo said from the back seat as I drove. “Believe it or not, this is Myron’s and my first time upstate, even though we’ve lived in Jersey forever.”
“Our first stop was Lakewinds Casino,” Dorothea said to me.
“Had a great time at the Texas Hold’em tables,” Myron said.
“I stick to the Wild Cash scratch cards,” Lo told me in a confiding tone. “Forget the casinos. My cousin Frances won twenty grand with a Wild Cash scratch card from the corner store.”
“Not long after pulling out of the casino’s parking garage, the motor coach starting handling in a peculiar way,” Dorothea said to me.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Isn’t there quality foliage in Jersey?” Hank asked Lo from the third row.
“Well, sure,” Lo said. “But no leaf-peeping. Leaf-peeping is an art, honey. Haven’t you read any of the brochures?”
“It’s more like a sport,” Myron said. “The brochures go on and on about ‘bicycling along idyllic country lanes’—”
“Ha!” Lo laughed. “I’d like to see you idyllically bicycling, Myron!”
“—and hiking in state parks tinted with—how did they phrase it?—‘shades of copper and rose gold.’”
“I hope you packed supportive walking shoes,” Hank said. “I did. And my orthotic insoles.”
“There are also the winery tours,” Dorothea said. “Don’t forget those. We need plenty of arch support just to climb off and on those shuttle buses.”
“I don’t drink,” Hank said in a dismal voice.
“Not even wine?” Dorothea called back to him.