by Maia Chance
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Officer Torres finished filling out his report, the tow truck showed up, and then Effie and I started walking the half mile to the Stagecoach Inn.
“I’m going to miss that car,” Effie said. “What should I buy next?”
“I don’t know, an armored tank?”
As we walked down the inn’s rutted drive, I had an idea.
“Let’s drive to Grandma Bee’s house in the Dustbuster,” I said.
“Surely we shouldn’t confront the poor woman.”
“No, I just want to see if her car is there or not.”
“Oh, all right.”
So, without even going into the inn first, I drove us in the Dustbuster through the dark town. My fingers quivered with after-jitters.
As we approached Grandma Bee’s house, I saw her white Buick LeSabre in the driveway where it always was.
“Maybe Pumpkinhead wasn’t using her car,” I said, driving slowly past.
“Stop,” Effie said.
“What?”
“Just stop.”
I braked.
Effie got out, trotted over to the Buick, and laid a hand on the hood. Then she got back in the Dustbuster. “The hood is warm.”
Crud.
Chapter 23
Back at the inn once again, laughter and The Beatles emanated from somewhere inside. We found Chester glugging liquor into a cocktail shaker in the library and Myron and Lo dancing. Lo’s face was shining, and Myron was surprisingly nimble in his loafers. They smiled and waved when they saw us but kept dancing.
I went over to the bar. “Private dance party?” I said to Chester.
“Yup. They’re loving it. They said this is the best anniversary they’ve had in at least a decade.”
“Where are Hank and Dorothea?” I asked, thinking of the flea issue. “Hank didn’t—”
“Hank came down with a terrible migraine. He said his room reeks of lavender all of a sudden—”
That would be the lavender-scented flea-and-tick powder.
“—and lavender is a migraine trigger for him.”
“Did he … leave?”
“Nope. It gets better. He’s sleeping in Dorothea’s room. With Dorothea. Apparently, she gives really good migraine-relieving head massages or something.”
“Are you serious?”
“Would I joke about Hank and Dorothea cuddling it up? Anyway, what happened to you and Aunt Effie?” Chester put the lid on the cocktail shaker. “You look like you just got back from a rave.”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Stalked by a psycho in a pumpkinhead mask. Brief car chase. Totaled the Caddy.”
“Whoa.” Chester clacked the shaker and then winced.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Oh, just a little sore.” He puffed out his chest. “You know, from my workout.”
“Should I ask?”
“I downloaded a strength-training app on my phone. It’s awesome. All you do is crank out a few dozen pushups and sit-ups and stuff, and before long you look like a Navy SEAL.” Chester poured an icy pink concoction into two waiting glasses.
Effie sidled up to the bar. “You look like you need a double vodka, Agnes.”
“I should, after what just happened. What are we going to do? Pumpkinhead…” I shivered. “It has to be the murderer.” Driving Grandma Bee’s Buick.
“I actually have to take off for my shift at the middle school,” Chester said. “I’ll see you guys bright and early.”
“Okay,” I said. “Stay away from any and all pumpkins and Buicks.”
“Good night, Chester,” Effie said.
We watched Chester carry the pink drinks to a table near the stereo so Lo and Myron could sip between dances. He appeared to be limping slightly as he walked out of the library.
“The poor fellow,” Effie said to me. “I don’t know how he gets any sleep between working here and at the middle school. And did you see? He’s limping!”
“That’s from his workout.”
“Oh.” Effie poured vodka into two glasses and nudged one over to me.
I’m not much of a drinker, but I needed something to calm me down, and an aromatherapy candle wasn’t going to cut it. I clinked glasses with Effie, and we both took long sips. Effie sighed. I coughed.
The Beatles’ “I’ve Got a Feeling” came on.
“As for what to do next,” Effie said, “well, what can we do? We’ve already lied to the police about our little accident—I shudder to think what that’s going to do to my insurance premiums, by the way.”
“Plus, Pumpkinhead apparently now has a key with my fingerprints all over it.”
“Look on the bright side. That means the police don’t have it.”
Paul McCartney crooned, “Everybody had a good year, everybody let their hair down…”
“Everybody let their hair down,” I blurted.
“Mm,” Effie said, swirling her drink, “1970, I believe. Everybody’s hair was down. Head hair, underarm hair—”
“Ew. No. I mean, I totally forgot that I found what is possibly a clue. In Mikey’s medicine cabinet.”
“Let’s see it.”
“I didn’t take it. But I found a hair elastic behind some toothpaste. Maybe the police missed it. I mean, the Naneda police can’t be used to doing meticulous crime scene investigations.”
“A hair elastic?”
“A black one. With a long blonde hair snarled in it.” I lifted my eyebrows, waiting for Effie to connect the dots and say Delilah Fortune.
But she didn’t. “Alexa Rice,” she said.
I frowned. “Alexa?”
“You’ve seen her roots, darling. Under that blonde hair, she’s a natural brunette.”
“But why would Alexa’s hair elastic be in Mikey’s medicine cabinet? Delilah is the one who went on a date with him, remember, and if her hair elastic was in his medicine cabinet, then she was doing more than just dining with him, if you know what I mean.”
Effie was shaking her head. “I’d bet a sizable sum of money that it’s Alexa’s.”
“How can you be so sure?
“Two reasons. First of all, it’s a black hair elastic. Blondes buy beige hair elastics.”
“Not always. Black ones are way more common.”
“Yes, but a vain woman like Delilah Fortune would buy hair elastics that match her hair.”
“Alexa is vain, too.”
“Oh, I know. But since her natural hair color is dark, she might own black hair elastics, left over from a time when her hair was darker.”
“I’m not buying it.”
“No? Well, I have more. You never asked me if I came across any clues in Mikey’s house.”
“Did you?”
“Mm. The only books on the bookshelf—if you aren’t counting electronics user’s manuals, I mean—were his high school yearbooks.”
“Yeah, I saw his high school athletics trophies in his closet. Evidently a good stretch for Mikey.”
“The good stretch. His yearbooks suggest that he was Mr. Popularity. Not only that, but in the prom section of his senior yearbook, he was depicted in a white tuxedo with none other than Alexa—with brunette mall bangs, by the way—on his arm.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. And she’d scrawled a profession of her undying love in pink marker next to the picture. She’d dotted her I’s with hearts, too.”
“Always a reliable indicator of true love,” I said. “So you think, what? That Alexa and Mikey secretly stayed together all these years, despite the fact that Alexa married Randy?”
“Think about Alexa. Her rebel-chick outfits. Her devotion to the day spa. The tears in her eyes when she remembers she’s about to turn forty. She wants to be young again. And what did she do in the glory days of her youth?”
“Head the cheerleading squad and get drunk at keggers in the woods?”
“Yes, that. And, she slept with Mikey Brown. I don
’t have proof of this—call it a flash of intuition—but mark my words, she took up an affair with him—who knows when—as just another method of trying not to feel forty.”
Portia at the day spa had hinted at this.
“Here’s my theory,” Effie said. “Randy, whose relationship with Mikey we know was always strained, learned of the affair. He tipped over the brink. He set up the appointment at the garage with Mikey under some pretense or other. Then, fueled by jealous rage, he killed him.”
“Okay. And what about Clifford?”
“Clifford knew too much. Maybe he was even hidden in his Volkswagen van at the garage and witnessed the murder, and somehow Randy found out.”
“Hey, that’s actually a pretty good idea. But wait—what about Mikey’s missing money?”
“Stolen to mislead the police. Or perhaps Randy stole it because it happened to be there and, well, why not?”
“Huh.” I had to admit that Aunt Effie’s theory possibly added up. “So what do we do next?”
“We speak with Alexa, tell her we know about her affair, ask her if she’d like to say anything in her defense, and try to get more information about Randy’s movements at the time of both murders.”
“Sounds safe.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Wait. What about Randy? Did you see him in the yearbooks?”
“Oh, yes. Puny, pimply little fellow with Coke-bottle glasses and braces. He seemed to be quite active in marching band and drama club.”
“The refuges of high school nerds,” I said.
*
In the morning, I woke up with a medium-grade hangover and two text messages from Aunt Effie on my phone. The first one was to inform me that she’d made us both chiropractic appointments for nine thirty in the morning and that she was texting me because she didn’t feel like walking all the way up to the attic. The second one—from 9:10 AM—was to tell me that she had taken care of the gaggle’s breakfast, done a quick housekeeping check, and it was time to leave for our appointments.
It was 9:15.
“No,” I moaned into my pillow. I forced myself out of bed.
The good news was, neither of us had whiplash, and we got great adjustments. The bad news was, my hastily penciled on eyebrows got fifty percent smeared off on the sanitary tissue while I was lying facedown on the chiropractor’s table.
“Better?” Effie asked me. I was steering us out of the chiropractor’s parking lot in the Dustbuster.
“My neck feels amazing, but I need coffee desperately. Why did you give me three vodkas last night?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Agnes. You only drank two and a half. And, give you? You sound like some sort of rodent in a cage at MIT, not a woman with her own free will.”
“I’m not talking to anyone until I’ve had coffee.” I aimed the Dustbuster in the direction of the Black Drop.
A little later, I had a jumbo to-go coffee in my cup caddy. Usually, caffeine means an uptick of optimism. Today, however, each sip only brought a more focused sense of doom.
Pumpkinhead.
In Grandma Bee’s Buick.
Running us off the road.
Otis, the love of my life … gone.
On the other hand, Effie and I were inching closer to solving this thing. Maybe. We had Alexa’s hair elastic from Mikey’s medicine cabinet, right? Maybe if we confirmed that affair, I could tell Detective Albright that angry Randy had an excellent murder motive.
It kind of felt as if I was clinging to that hair elastic for dear life.
*
Effie and I swung by the inn to pick up the gaggle, and then we were on our way to Naneda Orchards.
“Say, what happened to your Cadillac?” Myron asked. “I didn’t see it at the inn.”
“It’s in the shop,” Effie said breezily.
“Not Hatch Automotive, I hope,” Lo said.
“No, another one.” Effie was the master of being convincingly vague.
When we pulled into the gravel parking lot of Naneda Orchards, the festivities were already in full swing. Morning sunlight washed the landscape with a Hallmark-special haze.
“Is that Karen Brown on the hayride?” Effie said, peering over the tops of her sunglasses.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. With her husband and her son.”
“Quality family time,” Effie said.
“Except that Scootch is slouched so low on that hay bale he looks like he’s in danger of falling off.”
“Mm. And Mark looks as though he’s already planning to wash their clothes with color-safe bleach when they get back home.”
I parked, switched off the engine, and turned to the gaggle. “What first?”
“I want to press apple cider,” Lo said. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
“I wouldn’t mind trying the corn maze,” Myron said.
“Oh, honey, you’ll get lost in there,” Lo said.
“Maybe I want to get lost.”
“The pumpkin patch might be enjoyable,” Dorothea said.
Privately, I wanted nothing to do with pumpkins.
“I may have worn the wrong shoes,” Effie said, peering out onto the vista of gravel, dirt, and hayfield.
“You always wear the wrong shoes,” I said.
“These shoes may look frivolous,” Effie said, “but I’ll have you know they’re keeping my ankles as strong as a Russian gymnast’s. Use it or lose it.”
We all unloaded from the minivan and went straight to the rust-red wooden building with a sign that said FARMSTAND. Plump apples and pears were heaped high in crates, and rustic wooden tables held big glass jugs of apple cider.
Randy Rice was straightening the jugs, scowling.
“Look,” I whispered to Effie, “there’s Randy.”
“He looks as though he’d like to throttle those jugs of cider.”
“And there’s Alexa.”
“Where?”
“Behind the counter.”
Alexa was working the till like a pro. She’d swapped out her usual rebel-chick attire for jeans and a white T-shirt printed with a huge red apple.
“Why don’t you have a look around?” Effie said to Lo and Myron. Hank had already disappeared, presumably to the restroom. “Agnes and I will purchase apple-picking passes, m-kay?”
“Sure,” Lo said. “Myron’s eyeing those caramel apples. I’ve got to stop him before he pries his dentures out.”
Effie and I got in line. There was only one person ahead of us.
“What’s the plan?” I whispered.
“Ask her about the hair elastic, darling.”
“In front of everyone? It’s pretty crowded in here—”
We were up.
“Hello, Alexa,” Effie said, sliding a platinum credit card across the countertop. “Six day passes, please.”
“Hi.” Alexa took the credit card, her eyes cast down.
“I have to compliment you on how well you’re holding up despite … everything,” Effie said. “Even your hair looks perky.”
Alexa’s hand froze mid–credit card swipe. She looked up. Her eyes flicked over to Randy with his cider jugs, then back to us. “What do you mean, despite everything?”
Effie smiled kindly. “I lost a lover once—an absolutely scrumptious Scotsman with these big burly Outlander-type muscles and an accent to die for. I couldn’t understand a word he said, honestly. Not that we did much talking.”
Alexa looked confused. “What happened to him?”
“Freak bagpipe accident,” I cut in. “Look, Alexa, could we talk in private?”
Another eye-flick to Randy. “No. Can’t you see I’m busy? You’re holding up the line.”
“I’m waiting for you to swipe my card, darling,” Effie said.
“Oh.” Alexa swiped the card. The machine starting spitting out receipts.
“We want to discuss the matter of lovers,” Effie said softly.
Alexa tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m marri
ed to the love of my life. Randy is all the man I could ever want.”
The three of us looked over at Randy. He was rooting around in his ear with a pinky.
Effie reached out and patted Alexa’s hand. “Of course he is, darling.”
I was in a throw-caution-to-the-wind mood. I was sick and tired of liars, sneaks, and that goldarn Pumpkinhead creep, and I was done with being subtle. “I found a hair elastic of yours,” I said. “In Mikey Brown’s bathroom.”
Alexa blanched beneath her sparkly bronzing powder. “What.” Her voice was flat.
“Which is why we need to talk,” I said. “In private.”
“Okay.” Alexa’s hands shook as she shoved the credit card, receipts, and a pen at Effie. “Okay, fine. In fifteen minutes. Up on the porch at the house.”
“What’s the holdup?” A man behind us complained.
Effie signed, took her receipt and credit card, and we stepped away from the counter.
Chapter 24
The plan was to pick apples (“a bushel,” Lo said, but I don’t think any of us knew how much a bushel was) and then take them to the cider-press room.
We set out into the sweetly fragrant orchard, beneath deep red apples against a bright blue sky. The lake sparkled. The distant vineyards glowed. The rolling forests were knock-your-socks-off orange and pink today, and the fields glinted like twenty-four-karat gold.
We found a tree laden with fruit and got the gaggle started with picking.
I noticed that Hank held a bucket for Dorothea.
“We’ll be back in a bit,” Effie said to them.
“What, do you have a lead in the murder case?” Myron asked loudly. “We saw you grilling that Alexa gal like a bratwurst.”
“Shh,” I said. “And no, we’re, um, we’re looking into planting a few fruit trees at the inn and we’re getting advice from her. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” Myron said, reaching for an apple.
Effie and I made our way back through the orchard, across the crowded parking lot, and up the sloped lawn to the farmhouse. Alexa was pacing on the wraparound porch, hugging her elbows. When she saw us, she stopped.
Effie and I went up the porch steps. Inside the house, a dog barked.
“Let’s be quick,” Alexa snapped. “What were you saying about a hair elastic?”