The Nancys Read online

  ‘Funny, dark and, above all, heart-warming, The Nancys is a murder mystery set in small-town New Zealand. Eleven-year-old Tippy Chan investigates and, in typical Nancy Drew fashion, tries to work out who did it. But it’s not only murder she must grapple with; Tippy must also come to terms with the death of her father.

  ‘The Nancys is a celebration of what’s important in life—which is family, friendship and also: makeovers. R.W.R. McDonald’s novel is face-paced, clever and full of wit and repartee. McDonald pays homage to the novel’s namesake Nancy Drew, but adds elements of RuPaul and Shirley Barrett’s The Bus on Thursday. The result is a work of fiction that is smart, darkly comic and, in the very best of ways, completely bizarre.’

  KATHERINE COLLETTE, author of The Helpline

  First published in 2019

  Copyright © R.W.R. McDonald 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 733 4

  eISBN 978 1 76087 141 3

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Cover design: Alissa Dinallo

  To Ali and Grier—without you there is no colour

  And Grace, the fourth Nancy

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Uncle Pike’s plane was late, and my hair was a sweaty mess thanks to the crimson anti-kidnapping jacket and hateful Santa hat Mum had made me wear. She thought the hat was hilarious. So far I’d been lucky not to run into anyone from my school, but Dunedin Airport was massive, with heaps of people—way bigger than the new supermarket at Riverstone, and that was huge. I felt the opposite of undercover; Nancy Drew would have ditched me in the carpark.

  My phone buzzed and I flipped it open. Todd had sent me and Sam a text: Tits 4 real!!!! The old phone froze, which meant a pic was on its way. I’d tried saving for a smartphone once and I wished I had one now. Mum worried I’d get groomed online, but I really wanted one for Christmas.

  On my screen a tiny square appeared with a pair of boobs inside. I checked if anyone had seen, then texted back: Prebert. I hit send and snapped the phone shut. Pretty sure my friends were sexist.

  The phone buzzed again. Todd had sent emojis, but on my phone they came up as three blank rectangles. No doubt he’d sent squirty water, eggplant and cherries.

  I was about to text back when Mum rang.

  ‘Fuck you!’ she said, car horns blasting in the background. ‘Sorry, honey, not you, the taxi behind me. Is he here yet?’

  For the twelve-hundreth time I checked the arrival screen for the Sydney flight. Finally. ‘Just landed.’ I reached for my hat, searching for the nearest bin.

  ‘Don’t take off the hat.’ She hung up.

  I pulled it off. I’d put it back on when I got to the car. Or not. I scanned the crowd, not sure about taking off the anti-kidnapping jacket. I hopped from one foot to the other, waiting. After forever the first arrivals came through the automatic doors from customs.

  Across from me, a little girl in pigtails suddenly put her hands to her mouth and started jumping up and down. ‘Santa!’ She tugged on the sleeve of an old woman who looked like she had just licked a lemon. ‘Granny, it’s Santa.’

  Towering above the other passengers was Uncle Pike with his shaggy snowy hair and bushy beard. He wore a black singlet and shorts, with a bag slung across his big muscled shoulders. One hand held duty-free bags, while the other towed a huge red plastic suitcase. He hadn’t changed a bit since the funeral.

  The little girl stood on her tiptoes. ‘Santa, over here!’ She waved and her whole body moved like an overexcited dog wagging its tail.

  My uncle spotted her and smiled. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’

  She froze like a rabbit. ‘How come Santa’s got so many tattoos?’

  Uncle Pike walked over and crouched down to her eye level. ‘What a good question. That’s because the elves normally photo-shop them out.’

  She nodded. ‘Like Mummy does with Daddy.’

  ‘Exactly. Daddy’s been naughty, hasn’t he?’ My uncle winked at the girl.

  The woman glared at him and grabbed the girl’s hand. ‘Say goodbye to Santa.’

  ‘Bye, Santa!’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, in his best North Pole voice.

  I waved to him and he gave me a huge grin. He pushed himself back up and came over. His eyes looked red from the flight. ‘Tippy Chan!’ he said, startling the arrival-hall crowd. He swallowed me up in a huge bear hug and swung me around. ‘How’s my most favourite niece in the world?’

  ‘I’m your only niece,’ I said, muffled in his stinky singlet.

  ‘Lucky you’re his favourite then,’ said a man beside us, smiling. He looked a lot like Action Man but in Barbie’s clothes. His thick black hair was cut short at the sides and he had bluey-green eyes. He seemed to sparkle.

  ‘Tippy Chan, please meet Devon.’

  My uncle’s boyfriend held out a big hand, which I shook. His tight camo T-shirt had ‘Beef Cake’ scrawled across it in gold glitter, and his black pant things were like a dress. They didn’t go all the way to his feet.

  ‘Great to meet you, Tippy. Your uncle’s told me a lot about you.’

  ‘You too,’ I lied. We’d only found out yesterday he was coming. Mum had said it must be serious as Uncle Pike had never brought a boyfriend home before, plus three months was a long time in gay years. Mum and I had googled Devon. He came up in ‘Watch list: Australia’s top ten designers under 30’ and we’d seen one of his collections, with models in large square dresses made of bright white knotted and slashed fabric. Mum hated it but I kind of liked it.

  Later I had sneaked onto Mum’s Facebook and seen pictures of Uncle Pike, Devon and their friends dancing—all with their shirts off, beaming. In one photo my uncle had such a big smile I could even see his chewing gum in the back of his mouth; his hair was half wet with sweat and sticking out like a mad professor’s in a sauna. Sam had said big pupils meant someone was on drugs; his mum was a doctor so he should know. Uncle Pike’s blue eyes had been completely black.

  ‘Where is that dreadful woman?’ he said.

  ‘She’s double-parked out the front.’

  ‘And left you here alone?’ Devon asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I’m wearing the jacket.’

  ‘My sister’s so cheap. I blame Tippy’s grandparents.’

  Devon looked confused.

  ‘Our parents said if you wore bright red you’d be repellent to strangers.’

  I nodded. Devon was frowning.

  ‘True story—Tippy’s living proof.’

  Devon checked out my jacket. ‘It does have a certain Schindler chic …’

  ‘Come on,’ my uncle said.‘Let’s go see if she’s been in a punch-up.’

  The airport doors opened to car horns blasting from all directions. Mum had parked diagonally in a taxi drop-off zone. She yelled out her window at the taxis wanting to pull over in her spot. Another one behind her was trying to leave but seemed wedged in by our car.

  ‘Good to see your mother has her road rage under control,’ Uncle Pike said.

  Mum did get cranky with other drivers. Anything to do with cars, really. I guessed that was why Dad used to do a lot of the driving. Well that, and he’d been much better at it.

  Uncle Pike threw himself on the windscreen. ‘Home sweet as home.’

  Mum was glaring at him. ‘About bloody time.’

  He gave the window a massive raspberry then lifted up his singlet and rubbed his chest around on it.

  ‘Yuck!’ Mum blared the horn and popped the boot. We threw Devon’s three bags in, and Uncle Pike somehow managed to shove the massive red suitcase in as well.

  ‘Welcome to New Zealand.’ He grabbed Devon and gave him a big kiss on the lips, before squashing in to the front seat and smooching Mum, who laughed and pushed him away.

  Devo
n clambered into the back seat with me and leaned over to Mum. ‘Hi, I’m Devon. Thanks for picking us up. So sorry to hear about—’

  ‘Helen Chan.’ Mum smacked the horn again, wrenched the wheel and sped off, leaving the yelling and tooting behind us. ‘Do you have a last name, Devon?’

  ‘Just Devon.’

  ‘Like Madonna or Cher,’ Uncle Pike said. ‘Or Kylie.’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘Oh my God, Lennie, what’ve you been doing to this child?’ Lennie was my uncle’s nickname for Mum; when she was born he was little and couldn’t say Helen. He craned his neck around to look at me. ‘Whitney? Mariah?’

  I shrugged. I’d heard of them.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tippy,’ he said. ‘We have two weeks to make a gay man out of you.’

  Mum wound down her window and stuck out her head. ‘Jesus, Pike, you smell like Tippy’s birthday present. Seriously, how many bourbons have you had?’

  ‘On the plane? Or in the past twenty-four hours? And I put a lot of effort into choosing the perfect single malt for Tippy, thank you very much.’ He turned back around. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

  I nodded. In my birthday card he had written ‘to the best-looking kid in that fucking dump’ then had scribbled out ‘that fucking dump’ and put in ‘town’ but you could still see it. Mum had taken the card and Dad had drunk the whisky.

  ‘Of course she did,’ Mum said. ‘It’s what every eleven-year-old girl dreams of, a bottle of Glenlivet.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad,’ my uncle said, smiling at me.

  Mum left the airport and turned onto the main road. I felt myself being pressed into the back of the seat as she floored it.

  ‘Great to see your driving’s improved,’ Uncle Pike said.

  Devon’s eyes widened and he gripped the armrest. He turned to his window, where farmland whipped past. Herds of black-and-white cows, and some brown ones, hung out together on the flat paddocks of the Taieri Plains. ‘It’s very green. I feel like I’m looking through a filter.’

  ‘Not his favourite colour,’ Uncle Pike said. ‘In fact, you told me you hate it.’

  ‘You hate New Zealand?’ Mum asked.

  ‘No, no!’ Devon looked alarmed.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re implying,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all. I haven’t been here before. It looks lovely.’

  ‘She’s very sensitive to colour.’ Uncle Pike reached back and patted Devon’s leg. ‘A colour savant.’

  ‘Don’t you have green in Sydney?’ I said.

  Mum winked at me in the rear-view mirror.

  I wondered how Devon would get on in South Otago. People said it reminded them of England’s countryside with its rolling green hills and hedgerows. I wouldn’t know. I’d never travelled any further than Dunedin. Flat dairy farms around us began to change to paddocks of sheep as we headed further south.

  Mum’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel tighter. ‘I think I should stay. Going away for two weeks—what was I thinking?’

  Uncle Pike snorted. ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘I’ll be fine, Mum.’

  ‘And I promise to take good care of them,’ Devon said.

  ‘Who are you again?’ Mum said.

  ‘Loosen up, Lennie. It’s Christmas!’

  ‘That’s the problem with you, Pike. It’s always Christmas.’

  ∼

  It was still light when we reached Riverstone. From the top of the hill you could see across the valley to the faraway ridges, which turned purple just before sunset. The town flowed down to the banks of the Clutha River, which ran slow and deep, then on the other side it spread outwards over the flat and up a hill. Connecting it was Riverstone Bridge, made up of six massive concrete arches and taking nine breath-holding seconds to cross in a car. Just off the bridge on Main Street and around a tight corner was the town hall and its founding tree, a giant bushy macrocarpa. It was planted in 1854 when Riverstone was first settled, which was weird since Māori were already living here. Every December it was decorated with huge shiny red balls on its branches and a large gold star at the very top. Past the town hall and tree, Main Street continued with a pub, the medical centre where Mum worked, and shops for a couple of blocks, then houses as the road headed uphill, snaking past the old hospital on the other side of the valley. I loved how the evening sun made the coiling green river sparkle. Dad had loved it too.

  Devon leaned forward in his seat. ‘So this is where the magic happens?’

  ‘Welcome to Riverstone,’ Mum said as we passed the town sign. ‘Population 3687.’

  ‘Eighty-nine now,’ I said.

  Uncle Pike peered out his window. ‘This is it.’

  ‘This is where your boyfriend spent the ’70s and ’80s,’ she said.

  ‘Until I escaped,’ he said. ‘Lennie spent most of the ’80s on her back.’

  I tried to picture Mum as a teenager lying on the grass reading or watching clouds drift across a big blue sky. All I could manage was her yelling about clean clothes and washing.

  We turned left just before the bridge and drove alongside the willow-lined riverbank, passing Duncan Nunn’s billboard. He was Riverstone’s number one real estate salesman—according to his sign, his poster in the supermarket, and his ad in the local paper.

  Devon craned his neck out the window. ‘Is that his real hair?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Speaking of,’ Uncle Pike said. ‘Lennie, I’m fixing that grey mess on your head before you leave, unless you plan on wearing your nurse’s cap on the boat?’ He wound down his window.

  ‘Thanks.’ She put on the indicator. ‘Hey, aren’t hairdressers supposed to have cool hair?’

  We turned left again, just before a blind corner, and drove up towards the golf course. Our street was a cul-de-sac on the top of ‘Snob’s Hill’—well that’s the name people across the river called it. We had views across the whole town. Our white wooden house had a red corrugated-iron roof and grey garage roller door. The garage was big enough to fit the car, but once inside you couldn’t fully open the doors to get out.

  Mum pulled into our driveway and yanked on the handbrake. Devon bolted out of the car before the engine stopped.

  ‘What’s his hurry?’ Mum said to Uncle Pike.

  ‘Be nice,’ he said as we all got out.

  Devon stretched his arms above his head like a cat. ‘Is this where you grew up?’

  Mum nodded.

  My uncle shuddered. ‘A period of my life I choose not to re-enact.’

  ‘I love it. Your garden is beautiful, so organic.’ Devon crouched and then sprang up in the air. ‘I need to do five of these.’

  Mum raised her eyebrows. ‘Thanks … I think. We share the garden with the Browns. Saves paying for a fence.’

  Roses and Dad’s dahlias the colours of jelly beans competed for space among the Browns’ creeping bushes.

  Uncle Pike grabbed his red suitcase out of the boot.

  ‘You know they’re dying to see you,’ Mum said.

  ‘Literally,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ Devon asked.

  A loud screeching came from next door.

  With a groan, Uncle Pike rubbed his face. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘Is that a bird?’ Devon said.

  ‘More like an old bat.’ My uncle opened a bottle of duty-free bourbon and took a large swig.‘I’m surprised it’s taken her this long.’

  Mrs Brown opened her living-room window and frantically flapped a tea towel at us.

  I waved. ‘Hi, Mrs Brown.’

  She kept shouting something, and it sounded like she was laughing as well.

  ‘She’s pretty yelly,’ Devon said.

  ‘That old bastard must have his hearing aid out,’ Uncle Pike said. ‘Or he’s dead.’

  ‘Pike!’ Mum said.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Tippy, can you please shut her up? She’s ruining my fantasy.’

  ‘What fantasy is that?’ Mum asked.

  ‘That I’m currently somewhere else.’

  ‘We couldn’t have that.’ She nodded for me to go next door.

  I wandered over and knocked on the Browns’ door. Their house was like a brown-brick shoebox with brown aluminium windows. Everything about them was brown: their furniture was dark wood and brown fabric; they even had oatmeal carpet and brown velvet curtains. I tried not to giggle as I pictured my uncle’s horror when he saw inside.