My Review
Bad Neighbors An Agnes and Effie Mystery by Maia Chance
Bad Neighbors An Agnes and Effie Mystery by Maia Chance is the second book in this small town cozy mystery series.
Aunt Effie and Agnes are at it again. These two adorable sleuths have managed to get into another murder investigation. This installment finds Effie and Agnes hosting a group of seniors (the gaggle, Agnes's nickname for them) at The Stagecoach Inn, who are stranded because their bus has broken down and there is no available place for them to stay. As Agnes is driving the gaggle to the Inn she has to make a pit stop and stumbles right into a murder and this time Agnes has to prove that her would be boyfriend Otis is not the murderer.
With the fall setting, quirky characters and romantic tension between Otis and Agnes I slipped into this delightful but fast paced and sometimes dangerous investigation right along with Effie and Agnes. I laughed out loud when Agnes got her eyebrows butchered by a jealous spa worker! There are so many red herrings that this author cleverly slipped into this book and I had no idea who the culprit would be. I was a bit frustrated with Otis, he seemed a bit of a dunce about women this time around, more to follow with this romance I am sure in the third book.
With the body count growing and Otis's freedom seemingly at stake Agnes ramps up her investigation and finds herself in a precarious spot. Lots of action and drama kept the pace going and before I knew it the murderer was revealed. The murderer was a big surprise to me.
This cozy mystery delivered with the autumn setting, quirky characters, fun but fast paced plot and of course the romantic tension between Agnes and Otis.
Read an excerpt:
My name is Agnes Blythe, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’m not going to lie: I’m a nerd.
We nerds do our research. We think outside the box. We know how to buck up and keep going,
even when the popular kids are calling us eraser breath and using us as a dodge ball target.
So, I don’t know. I guess I was just thinking that somehow Aunt Effie, Cousin Chester, and
I were going to restore the Stagecoach Inn all by ourselves. Using nerd superpowers.
YouTube toilet installation tutorials POW! HGTV house-flipping marathon ZING! This
Old House Essential Home Repair SLAM! Maybe a little gold-and-red spandex?
Or something.
But on that sunny, mid-October afternoon when Quinn Jones, architect, stood with Chester
and me outside the inn, showing us the proposal he’d drawn up, I realized that the whole process
was going to be more elaborate, expensive, and time-consuming than I’d thought. This meant a) the
dozens of hours I had spent worshipping Bob Vila had possibly been wasted, and b) I was going to
be living in my hometown of Naneda, New York waaaaaaaaay longer than I’d planned.
Which was fine. I mean, I was dating (I think?) the guy I’d been in love with forever, I had a
free place to live (yes, in the inn’s attic with the spiders, but FREE), and I had a job helping restore
the inn, a job that, unlike my post-college gigs as barista, hotel receptionist, and library barcode
drudge, I actually cared about.
And I belonged in Naneda, even though I had spent the last decade away. Of course I
belonged. I mean, what kind of weirdo doesn’t feel totally awesome, at ease, and not-like-anoutsider
in their own hometown? Snort.
“Picture it,” Quinn Jones was saying, tucking his binder of plans under his arm and
spreading his hands like a frame around the inn. “Stabilize the foundations. Completely rebuild the
porch—rot has set in pretty bad, and I saw some carpenter ants over on the far side. New front
door, maybe a glossy black with brass hardware. Paint the shutters—well, first replace the shutters,
and then paint them. All new windows, of course—you can get some stunning historic replicas with
multi panes and real working sashes, just like the originals, except that, well, they won’t be broken.
Oh—and you’ll need a new roof, and one of the chimneys looks like it’s about to topple over.”
“Yeah,” I said, furiously trying to add up the time and cost to basically rebuild the entire inn,
piecemeal. “New roof. New chimney. Check and check.”
Quinn, dapper and plump, gave me a hard look. “You guys want to do this right, don’t
you?”
“Of course!”
Chester nodded, flipped a Cheezy Puff into his mouth, and crunched.
“Just checking,” Quinn said. “You’re looking a little sick, Agnes.”
“Me? Sick? Pftt.”
“She always looks like that,” Chester said.
I shot Chester a glare.
A warm smile wreathed his round, pleasant face (well, pleasant minus the creepy little
smudge of a mustache he was growing).
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Because your aunt—”
“Great aunt.” Chester crunched another Cheezy Puff.
“—she said that your budget is more than adequate.”
“It is,” I said. This was the truth. Aunt Effie had finagled her wealthy elderly boyfriend
Paul Duncan into underwriting the entire renovation. I wasn’t sure why he had agreed to do it,
especially since he lived in Florida, but I wasn’t going to argue. No Paul, no renovation. Case
closed.
“The Stagecoach Inn, as you must be aware,” Quinn said, “is a historic landmark—”
“Treasure.” Chester was rummaging noisily in the Cheezy Puff bag. “It’s a historic treasure.”
Quinn gave a stiff smile. “Then you know how important it is not to cut corners or—” He
made one-handed air quotes. “—‘do it yourself.’”
Was the inn a landmark and a treasure? Well sure. You just wouldn’t be able to tell by
looking at it.
My Great Uncle Herman had recently left the inn to Aunt Effie in his will. It had been
condemned, but now it had brand-spankin’ new wiring and was off the Naneda code compliance
officer’s hit list. Built in 1848 on the site of the burned-down Chester Stagecoach Company
headquarters, it had flourished as a hotel even as stagecoaches were supplanted by the railroads, and
the railroads by automobiles. Why? Because it’s in the prettiest spot imaginable, on the shores of
gentle Lake Naneda in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.
Offering wholesome family fun like canoeing, fishing, and swimming, the Stagecoach Inn
became a summer holiday destination for generations of families. Then something happened in the
1960s (someone told me that’s when the ghost showed up, but I don’t buy it), and it slipped into a
decline. It was a boarding house for a while, and then sometime in the late 80s Great Uncle Herman
and his wife gave up on it. The place fell vacant.
If, that is, you don’t count the mice, squirrels, spiders, and, apparently, carpenter ants who
called the place home.
“Of course we know how important it is to do it right,” I said to Quinn. “This building has
been in our family for one hundred and seventy-odd years, and the land way longer than that. This
is our heritage. That’s actually why we’re looking for an architect who understands that we want to
help with the restoration—”
“You?” Quinn said. “Help?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Do you have any experience restoring old buildings?”
“Well, no, but we want to learn.”
“We’ve been reading up on the subject,” Chester said. “And we watch a lot of HGTV.”
“Reading?” Quinn’s eyelids drooped with disdain. “HGTV? That’s not going to cut it. If
you decide to hire me as your architect, I’m afraid I’m going to insist upon a professionals-only
policy. This property is too special to be destroyed by dabblers.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure.” I’m pretty sure Quinn missed my We hire this guy as our architect when
hell freezes tone. Because I was going to help restore the inn. Why? Well, I still hadn’t worked out
that part.
“Allrighty, then I’ll keep going,” Quinn said. “The garage? I was thinking we could tear it
down and rebuild it with two additional guest rooms above—”
“Tear it down?” I said.
“Didn’t you notice the way it’s sagging? The foundations are shot, and anyway, it was
probably built in the 1930s or 40s. It’s not really a ‘heritage’—” More air quotes. “—building.
What’s in there, anyway? It’s so crammed full of junk, it looks like a fire hazard.”
“Junk?” Chester said. “Hardly.” He stuffed four Cheezy Puffs in his mouth at once. He’s a
stress-eater like me.
As if on cue, a U-Haul truck came growling down the inn’s drive, overgrown bushes
scratching along its sides, potholes making it jounce. Some burly guy I didn’t recognize was behind
the wheel, and Aunt Effie sat in the passenger seat. She saw us and made twiddly fingers.
“More?” Chester whispered to me. “Seriously?”
“More what?” Quinn asked, looking back and forth between Chester and me.
“You’ll see,” I said.
Chester, Quinn, and I watched as the burly guy maneuvered the truck, with lots of bumps
and back-up beeping, so that the rear cargo door was lined up with the garage doors. Then he
parked, and he and tall, thin, silver-bobbed Aunt Effie climbed out.
“Hello-o!” Effie cried merrily to us. “Come and see what Auntie-Claus has brought,
children! You’ll just drool.”
Quinn, Chester, and I walked across the leaf-covered lawn towards the U-Haul. The cargo
door rumbled as the burly guy shoved it open.
“Happy birthday to me!” Effie said.
By the way, her birthday wasn’t for three more months. By my calculations, she was going
to be turning seventy-two for the fourth or fifth time.
The U-Haul was crammed full of what I knew to be furniture—expensive, antique
furniture—all wrapped up in quilted moving pads.
“What did you get?” I asked. “Dining room set for thirty-five?”
“Better. Two armoires for the guest rooms, and—you’re not going to believe this—they’re
Chippendale—”
Chester opened his mouth.
“—no need for crass jokes, Chester—”
Chester shut his mouth.
“—and I got them for an absolute song because the estate sale was almost impossible to
find—the address practically made Google Maps go up in flames—and hardly anyone showed. I
also found two pristine claw foot bathtubs that’ll look perfect in the en suite bathrooms we’ll be
putting in. Those will arrive tomorrow.” Aunt Effie beamed her white, symmetrical, youthful,
100% porcelain veneered smile at Quinn. “But how rude of me—hello, Quinn. I adore those
brogues you’re wearing!—so very autumnal. I’m simply dying to see your proposal—” Effie’s
phone chirruped inside her orange suede purse. “Hang on, darlings—I’m expecting a call from
Paul—boring old money things, you know—Chester, why don’t you use those big muscles of yours
to help Boyd start unloading the goodies?” Digging her phone out of her bag, she wandered away.
“Big muscles, huh?” I said to Chester.
He popped one last Cheezy Puff in his mouth and tossed the bag on a rusty lawn chair.
“Just call me Beefcake of the Year.”
Chester and I wage half-hearted battle with the same doughy Blythe genes. The genes are
winning. It’s not that we’re bad looking, but there will be no bouncing dimes off of our biceps.
“Whelp,” burly Boyd said, “let’s get to it.”
I dragged open the double garage doors. Golden sunbeams illuminated the interior, which
was crammed, Jenga-style, with furniture in protective coverings.
“Wow,” Quinn said, lifting his eyebrows.
“Someone has a hoarding problem,” Chester said.
“Someone also gets really competitive at estate sales,” I said.
“But if that’s all Chippendale and the like,” Quinn said, his eyes glowing, “then someone’s
inn is going to be gorgeous when it’s furnished.”
“Is there even room for this new stuff?” I said. “Wait—” I walked into the garage. “I’ll
scooch this table over to the side, and then stack those two armchairs on top. . . .”
Quinn put down his binder and helped me scooch and stack, and then Boyd and Chester
started unloading.
Aunt Effie, meanwhile, was over on the lawn talking on the phone. The orange-striped cat
who lived on the premises—he had grown too sleek with the organic free-range cat food Aunt Effie
fed him to be called a “stray”—twined around her ankles.
Boyd and Chester were nudging one of the armoires down the U-Haul ramp when—
“Yoo-hoo!” came Aunt Effie’s voice. She was mincing towards us in her too-high-for-aseventy-something
heels. The cat—I called him Tiger Boy—strode away into the bushes.
I was thinking, Crud. Because Aunt Effie’s yoo-hooing never bodes well.
She came over, phone pressed facedown against her shoulder, bottle-glass blue eyes
glittering.
Double crud. When her eyes glittered like that. . . .
“Who’s on the phone?” I whispered.
“Potential guests.”
“Great—for, like, next July?”
“No, for tonight.”
“Oh, my,” Quinn murmured.
Boyd said, “You guys have any Gatorade?”
“What?” I yelped. “Tonight? Are you insane, Aunt Effie?”
Chester and Boyd, panting for breath, eased the armoire the rest of the way down the ramp
and parked it. Chester grabbed his Cheezy Puffs.
“I feel perfectly sane,” Effie said, “but so many people have suggested otherwise that I
suppose I should—”
“Let me get this straight,” Chester said. “On the phone, right now, waiting for your
response, are guests for this place—” He swept a hand toward the inn, which suddenly looked extradilapidated.
“—for tonight? Aunt Effie, they might as well check into Castle Dracula.”
“Or a dog kennel,” I said.
Chester laughed. “Or the dumpster behind the Chinese restaurant.”
“Or—”
“Children,” Effie whispered, massaging her temple with short, black-lacquered fingernails.
“Please focus. It’s a bit of an emergency, you see. A motor coach carrying a leaf-peeping tour group
broke down, and the guests are stranded here in Naneda until the bus is fixed. Most of them will be
situated at other inns and hotels in town that just happened to have cancellations, but other than
that, because of the Harvest Festival the entire area is booked solid. They’re desperate. They’re
senior citizens, too. We can make do.”
The person on the line must’ve heard, because a faint squawking erupted from Effie’s
phone.
“How many guests?” I whispered.
“Only four.”
“Um, four guests plus one—one!—guest bathroom equals—”
“Don’t panic, Agnes. We have a dozen brand-new mattresses right up there in the garage
loft—” Mattress Barn had had a going out of business sale last week. “—and I could pop over to
Bella’s Bedding Boutique to purchase sheets and blankets and pillows. The place is spotless.”
This was actually true. The entire rambling inn was spic and span and smelled, literally, like
Spic-n-Span. Maybe a touch of Windex.
But that didn’t negate the empty rooms, the expanses of hardwood floors yearning to be
refinished, the crackly gray, stained plaster walls stripped of their layers of antique wallpaper, the
saggy linoleum in the kitchen and bathrooms, and the gross purplish mahogany-effect stain (circa
1975-ish?) on every last bit of intricate millwork.
“It should be only one night,” Effie said. “It turns out that the driver—it’s Golden Vistas
Motor coach Tours—managed to drive the last few miles to Hatch Automotive before breaking
down entirely—”
“Hatch Automotive?” I said.
“Oooh,” Chester said. “Otis.”
“Please,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Better get gussied up, kiddo.”
“Give me those!” I snatched the bag of Cheezy Puffs from Chester and stress-ate a handful.
Hatch Automotive is owned and run by Otis Hatch—the guy I may or may not have been
dating—and his grandpa Harlan. Otis didn’t usually work on Sundays, but if the motor coach was
being deposited there, that meant he had likely been called in. He’s the head mechanic. His grandpa
is mostly retired, and I happened to know he was away deep sea fishing in Key West with an old
buddy from Nam.
Oh—and after I told Otis I was in love with him weeks ago, he NEVER SAID I LOVE
YOU TOO. Hence the stress-eating.
“Agnes?” Effie said. “What do you say?”
“Okay,” I said with a weird sense of doom. “Sure. Let’s bring ‘em on in.”
“Chester?”
“Why not?” Chester said, snatching back the Cheezy Puffs from me. “What could possibly
go wrong