by Maia Chance
“Like … a doomsday device?” I gave a nervous laugh.
“It’s not funny!”
“Well, actually—”
“I could make sure every last business in Naneda has a one-star review average or—yeah, I like this one even better—I could just not even have Naneda on the app at all. It’ll be like Naneda never even existed as a tourist destination. Got it?” Hugh stood. “I’m not messing around. Any of this gets out, Naneda is done for.” He stalked away, shoved out the bakery door, and disappeared.
I sat there, stunned. The espresso machine hissed and gurgled in the background.
This could mean only one thing. Whoever had picked up my phone in Randy’s garage last night had sent Hugh a text message. About the recording I had made of the bribe conspiracy.
That person was blackmailing Hugh for cash.
And who committed crimes because they were desperate for cash?
The murderer.
*
“It’s obvious what must be done,” Aunt Effie said, once I had returned to the inn and told her about my conversation with Hugh. “A sting operation. With the police.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Yeah, I think it’s finally time to bring in the police.”
“Here.” Effie passed me her phone. “You call Detective Albright. I’ve got to finish putting out breakfast. I hear stirring upstairs.”
Even though it was still really early, Albright picked up on the first ring, and he listened in silence as I explained my conversation with Hugh. Then that entailed backing up and explaining how Effie and I had just so happened to record the bribe conspirators’ conversation the night before.
“Where was that?” Albright asked.
“Oh, um … in Randy Rice’s garage.”
“Why were you there?”
“It’s not important. What I was thinking was that if we intercept Hugh and the blackmailer at the community pool at nine fifty and catch them in the act of exchanging the phone for the money, we will have the murderer. Piece of cake.”
A long pause.
“Hello?” I said, checking the phone’s screen to make sure I still had a connection.
“Agnes,” Albright said, “this sounds crazy. Are you mostly using logic? Yes. But you have this—this chain of inferences and, let’s face it, straight-up guesses that are pretty darn shaky. It’s like a house of cards.”
“This could be your chance to nab the killer!”
“If everything adds up the way you claim it does. Which is … unlikely. Could it be that you’re just nervy about being in the parade? Because you’ll do great—”
“Please.” I hated the desperation in my voice.
“And then there’s the problem of how you’ve been shamelessly meddling in a police investigation. I’m starting to think maybe you did trespass in Mikey Brown’s house—”
“Please. I think this could be our big chance.”
A heavy sigh. “Okay, Agnes. You got me. I’ll be there at the pool with an officer or two at nine fifty. But I don’t have high hopes, and the department has a lot on its plate what with the parade detail, so we won’t be able to stick around for long.”
“Thanks.”
“But I want you to stay out of it, understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I punched END CALL.
*
By nine fifteen, Effie had applied enough makeup and hairspray on me to coat the entire cast of Dancing With the Stars.
“Whoa,” Chester said, eating his third cinnamon roll. “I didn’t recognize you, Agnes. You look like a high-end call girl.”
“Shut up,” I said, but I didn’t frown, for fear of cracking the layers of primer, foundation, blush, bronzer, and pearlescent highlighter on my face.
“Call girl?” Effie said, tipping her head to study her handiwork. “Mm. Yes, I suppose I can see that.” She rearranged one of the bouncy curls on my shoulder. Because I was too tired to fight it, I’d allowed her to clip temporary hair extensions under my own hair, so now I had flowing chestnut waves worthy of a Pantene commercial. I had even put in contact lenses for the first time in days. Fancy schmancy.
We drove to the community center, where the parade was slated to start. I planned to change there, since that’s where my Gourd Queen gown was.
We slid into the last available spot in the parking lot, which was teeming with people getting out of cars and carrying stuff around. The adjacent street was blocked off and lined with parked floats and parade vehicles—an old-time Model T, a truck carrying one monstrously huge pumpkin that was definitely going to give me nightmares, a vintage convertible, and—there it was—the Gourd Queen’s float. It resembled Cinderella’s pumpkin coach, except it was open on four sides, had a golden flag flapping on top, and was hitched to a Dodge Ram pickup.
Inside, the wardrobe room was blessedly unoccupied. While Aunt Effie fidgeted, I went behind the divider screen and boogied myself into my orange polyester tube of dress. I managed to zip it up, and the hem just covered the toes of my sneakers. In a full-length mirror, I crowned myself with the faux-gold crown.
I went around the screen. “I look like a twenty-something sweet-sixteen impersonator.”
“You look marvelous, Agnes. Truly.”
I stuffed my regular clothes in one of the lockers in the costume room and checked the clock.
Nine thirty-nine.
“Time to roll,” I said.
“I need to smoke.”
“And miss all the action? Smoke after the murderer is busted.”
We walked through the community center toward the aquatic center. With each step, the odor of chlorine intensified, and so did the butterfly bonanza in my stomach.
We reached the stairs leading up to the observation balcony over the pool. At the top, we paused in the shadows. Down below us, the turquoise surface of the water was as smooth as glass. The only light came from high windows on one wall.
“No one’s here,” I whispered.
“Surely the police are hiding,” Effie whispered back.
We waited. And waited. The second hand on some unseen clock started to sound like a snare drum.
Nine fifty came and went.
My heart was sinking slowly, slowly.
“The parade starts in two minutes,” Effie finally whispered. “And it looks as though we’ve failed.”
Down below, two men emerged from one of the locker rooms: Detective Albright and a uniformed police officer.
Albright was not going to be happy with me. To make matters worse, in order to set up this failed sting operation, I had filled him in about much of Aunt Effie’s and my potentially unlawful snooping.
We’d have puh-lenty to discuss at the police station later.
“Did Hugh trick me?” I asked Effie as we walked down the stairs. “Or is there some other community pool I’m not aware of?”
Effie shook her head. “I don’t know what happened.”
I had missed the Big Chance, and now … what? The killer had made off with a bunch of blackmail money and Hugh was going to go on his merry way to Montpelier?
It didn’t seem right.
Chapter 29
I split up with Effie outside the community center, since she was hankering for a nicotine wand. In my orange dress, I minced across the parking lot to the parade staging area, which by this time was a swarming mass of an oompah band in lederhosen, fire trucks, preschoolers in owl and apple costumes, flags, and Chihuahuas in hats. Silver clouds had come rolling in from the hills beyond the lake. I shivered. It wasn’t exactly weather for a strapless gown.
“Look, Daddy, the Gourd Queen!” a little girl cried, pointing.
I smiled and waved at her.
“That can’t be the Gourd Queen, sweetie,” the dad said gently. “She’s too old.”
My smile slipped off.
I wended my way to the pumpkin float. Delilah was already up there on one of the thrones, peering into a compact and patting powder on her nose.
“Hi,”
I said to her, trying to hoist a foot onto the lowest rung of the ladder on the side of the float.
She snapped her compact shut. “Oh, hey. You know, you look just like a walking ad for the mother-of-the-bride outfits at Bargain Bridal Barn. Wow, with hair extensions and everything.”
“Better the Bargain Bridal Barn than the 1982 Mrs. Bulgaria Pageant.”
Delilah’s eyes slitted.
One point for me. I guess. Scoring points against Delilah had lost its luster.
I managed to winch myself onto the float by yanking my skirt up to my knees and then going up the ladder sideways. At the top, I settled my skirt back around my ankles, shuffled over to my throne, and sank into it.
“You’re out of breath,” Delilah said. “Maybe you should start working out. I had the best workout this morning.” She flashed her dimple. “With Otis.”
My heart did a somersault. “At the gym?” Otis didn’t belong to a gym. He had some mismatched weights in his garage.
“Something like that.”
“You ladies ready?” a guy in a baseball cap asked, looking up at us from the side of the float.
“I guess,” I said.
“Sure am!” Delilah said. “And thank you so much for pulling the float, Allan. You’re such a sweetie.”
Allan, who appeared to be pushing eighty, gave his cap a wiggle. “Anytime, Delilah. Maybe you can pay me back with one of those maple cupcakes later. I had a dream about those last night.”
“Deal.” Delilah giggled.
Allan got in the truck. Up ahead, the high school marching band was assembling.
“Daddy, Daddy!” This was the little girl who had pointed me out minutes earlier, except now she was pointing at Delilah. “Is that the Gourd Queen?”
“Sure looks like it, honey,” the dad said.
Allan started the engine, and we were off.
Just like every parade in Naneda for as long as I could remember, this year’s Harvest Festival parade would go two blocks from the community center and then turn onto Main Street. It would traverse the length of the business district and then make a right on Maple, go two more blocks, and end at City Park. There, at the band shell, would be the closing ceremonies, including Hugh’s speech.
And then, apparently Hugh was going to use his leaf-peeping app to make certain Naneda was toast.
We turned onto Main Street. Cheering crowds lined the sidewalks on either side. The marching band honked out a jaunty rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
“It’s show time, Agnes!” Delilah said. “Wave!”
“Oh. Right.” I waved at the crowd. And waved some more. It felt insincere.
I saw people I knew in the crowd, people I had known for my whole life. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Neely. The librarian from the public library, Chris McCavity. Lauren, standing in the crowd next to—wow—next to Chester. Alexa Rice, in dark sunglasses, holding the leash of her corgi, who was eating something off the sidewalk. The gaggle. Other people, whom I had seen a million and one times, at the supermarket, the post office, the farmer’s market, but had never officially met. Everyone looked so happy. So relaxed.
That I’d failed to catch the murderer, and that Hugh Simonian might destroy our town’s popularity with his leaf-peeping app, made my throat ache.
The whole parade came to a wobbly halt.
“What’s the problem?” Delilah said with a princessy frown.
I craned my neck around the side of our float. “It’s just that the front of the parade is starting its turn onto Maple. That’s always a little rocky.”
“‘Naneda is always this, Naneda is always that,’” Delilah said in a mocking, singsong tone, smiling and waving to the crowd all the while. “You don’t own the town just because your daddy happens to be mayor, Agnes.”
“Um, where is this coming from?” I asked.
Delilah didn’t answer because a man approached the float, pushing a tiny, pig-tailed girl in a stroller. He looked familiar. Oh, right. He was the clerk from the all-night minimart at the gas station.
He looked up at Delilah. “Hello,” he called up to her over the noise of the marching band and the crowd. “Did you win?”
Delilah recoiled, steadying her tiara with one hand. “What?”
“The Wild Cash. Did you win? I thought you might have a good shot with those fifty cards you bought.”
“I don’t know you,” Delilah said. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Then the parade was rolling again, and we left the guy behind.
“What was that all about?” I asked. An idea was stirring in the back of my brain, but I had slept for only a few hours …
“I get approached by crazy guys all the time.”
“So you say.”
We rode along for a bit, smiling and waving.
Then my tired brain spit out the idea. And man, it was a doozy.
“Scratch cards,” I whispered. “Wild Cash cards are lottery scratch cards.”
Delilah kept on smiling and waving, but she said out of the corner of her mouth, “What?”
“You play the scratch cards. Like, big-time. Fifty Wild Cash cards from the minimart? And at the Kick-Off, you entered the raffle for those binoculars, and I saw you going nuts when you won. Oh—and you go to Charlie Morel’s weekly poker game. You’re a gambler…” My heart pumped hard. My palms started to sweat. “You’re the murderer.”
Delilah didn’t look at me. She just kept waving to the crowd. But her smile suddenly looked petrified.
“You desperately needed money—money to give to your loan shark—so when Mikey told you about the cash he’d found in a ziplock bag at the automotive shop, you killed him for it. And Clifford—Clifford stupidly confided in you about his inheritance money and his plans to leave town. Did he tell you he’d hidden his cash in his Vanagon? You kept telling me how people confide in you. I should’ve listened. You killed Clifford, stole his keys, let yourself into the Vanagon, and took the cash. Oh—and you also stole his wallet and planted it in Otis’s motorcycle.”
“Bless your soul, Agnes, making up stories. Why, you could give Nora Roberts a run for her money, couldn’t you?” Delilah giggled as a man in the crowd blew her a kiss.
“And your alibi…” I shook my head. “How could I have been so dumb? You and Alexa had a deal of mutually assured destruction. She lied for you, saying you were with her at her grandpa’s nursing home, and in return … in return, you didn’t tell anyone about Alexa and Mikey’s affair.”
I realized all of a sudden how Alexa had tricked me about their alibi. She had brought her corgi to the nursing home. Not Delilah. She had mentioned “a friend” when she called the nursing home in front of Aunt Effie and me. The receptionist had said the friend—the corgi—was as cute as a button, and Alexa had bluffed and said the corgi was named Delilah.
Risky, but pretty clever.
“Did Mikey tell you about his affair with Alexa?” I asked. “You suck people in with your cupcakes and your cutesy routine, don’t you? I know about you blackmailing Hugh Simonian with that audio file, by the way. I almost had you. But you changed the meeting time.”
“It’s the first rule of blackmail, sweetie. Always change up the meeting time and place.”
“So you’ve done it before.”
“Maybe.” Delilah kept on smiling and waving with her right hand, but her left-hand fingers pinched hard around the gold satin clutch purse in her lap.
“One thing I can’t figure out,” I said, “is how come Darrell, the loan shark’s twister, was having a hard time finding you in Naneda.”
“That’s easy. Because I avoid him. When I see him coming, I turn off the shop lights, lock the door, and flip the sign to CLOSED.”
“Is that what happened when you dunked me in the apple-bobbing tub?”
“Maybe.”
“Who are you, anyway? Where did you come from? I thought you were like a character out of some romantic comedy movie, but really you’
re just … creepy. Is Delilah Fortune even your real name?”
“Don’t you see what’s happened here, Agnes? Look around. This town loves me. I can do no wrong. I make them cupcakes, for goodness’ sake.” Smile. Wave. Dimples and a hair toss. “What have you ever done for them? Look at you. You won’t even smile and wave at them. I keep trying to tell you: nobody likes a Debbie Downer. This is my town, now, Agnes, and Otis is my boyfriend. By the way, Grandma Bee thinks I’m great, too, even though I beat her at Clue the other night.”
“You went to Grandma Bee’s house? Is that when you stole the keys to her Buick LeSabre so you could go cruising around town in that freaky pumpkinhead mask?”
Delilah ignored that. “Heck, even your dad and his housekeeper just love me.” A nasty giggle. “Maybe I can be their daughter when you’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Oh, didn’t you realize? I’m going to kill you, too.”
Fear sizzled down my spine. “You’re crazy.”
“Am I? The talk around town is that you’re the crazy one, Agnes. You and your weird old aunt. Yeah, I think getting rid of both of you is definitely the way to go. I won’t say exactly how or when, but you’re dead.”
“You won’t get away with it.”
“I’m on a winning streak. And you’ll never be able to pin anything on me.”
We rumbled along Main Street. I felt as if I might puke.
I loved this town. Omigosh, I loved it. No way was I going to let some psycho murderer like Delilah move in like a hermit crab and call it her own.
I eyed the clutch purse in Delilah’s lap. “How is the town going to feel about you when they find out you’re a compulsive gambler, a blackmailer, and a murderer?”
“They aren’t going to find out.”
“Oh, no? Not even up here on this float, with everyone watching and taking pictures—and oh, look, there’s the camera crew from Shore 7 News.” I leaned over, snatched Delilah’s clutch purse from her hands, and stood up shakily on the float. “Look, everyone!” I shouted, waving the purse in the air.
Gasps and shouts from the crowd.
“You know what’s here in Delilah Fortune’s purse?” I cried. “I’m guessing seven thousand bucks of blackmail money!”