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The Case Of The Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend
Mabel Maney
“The Funniest Damn titles in gay Fiction” - InstinctIf you travel with the Nurses' Guide to Snakes or can get a raisin pie stain out of a pink poplin frock, you’ll fit right in with Nancy Clue and her gay chums on a road trip from sleepy Pleasantville, Idaho, to sparkling River Depths, Illinois, where Hannah, Nancy’s beloved housekeeper, stands wrongfully accused of murder! Nurse Cherry Aimless, who fell head-over-penny-loafers for the world-famous girl detective in The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, must help her new sweetheart clear Hannah’s name—and her own—and restore her sterling reputation. But does Nancy deserve her devotion? Troubling discoveries force Cherry to do some sleuthing of her own. Is Nancy really the sweet, upstanding girl she seems to be? Like her beloved camp classics The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse and A Ghost in the Closet, Mabel Maney’s The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend brilliantly parodies 1950s boys’ and girls’ adventure series.From the author of The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse and A Ghost in the Closet.Praise for Mabel Maney“For those adults who are just big and twisted kids underneath” San Francisco Weekly“Tongue-in-cheek homoerotic hilarity that’s fun, nostalgic, and completely contemporary” Los Angeles Reader“Maney flawlessly lampoons the torpid style of both children’s books and lesbian mysteries where similarly nothing happens without at least three changes of clothing and a good, hot meal” SF Weekly“America’s two greatest girl detectives as lovers? Could anything in the history of pop culture be more irreverent?” Newsday“Maney has penned a mystery with tongue-in-cheek homoerotic hilarity that’s simultaneously fun, nostalgic and completely contemporary” Los Angeles Reader
Praise for Mabel Maney’s Nancy Clue Mysteries! (#ulink_144ff22a-2ff9-5ac2-8de7-633142c3f858)
“Maney has penned a mystery with tongue-in-cheek homo-erotic hilarity that’s simultaneously fun, nostalgic, and completely contemporary.”—Los Angeles Reader
“In a gem of a book-length parody, the author faithfully hews to the narrative and plotting style of juvenile series fiction, her remarkably straight face making the goings on all the funnier. I loved this book …”—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine
“Maney, who evidently grew up bent in a straighter-than-thou environment, has had a field day with our conventions. Wittily, subversively, she has exposed the underbelly of America: it’s softly rounded, and warm.”—Toronto Globe and Mail
“Utter kitsch, done with class and distinction. Mabel tools the pages like an expert, in the process bringing up a lot of dialogue about the role of lesbianism in the ‘gay’ 90s, albeit subtly.”—Your Flesh Magazine
“Girl-detective fiction fashioned with a gusto and much self-parody … Maney delivers a strange tale of missing nuns, lesbian romance and much hapless do-gooding detective work. Fun at its most Sapphic, this is one mystery that you should get to the bottom of!”—The Pink Paper
“Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend is definitely a hoot; you’ll laugh until your dress gets mussed … Maney knows ‘50s America like she majored in Ozzie and Harriet.”—Lambda Book Report
“The sequel to The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse is another hoot, a lampooning of girls’ fiction of the past full of hapless, do-gooding detectives with ‘keen sleuthing abilities, up-to-the-minute fashion sense, and gracious finishing-school manners.’ With a honey like Cherry, who is always careful to keep an ample supply of freshly starched, white linen handkerchiefs in her seasonally appropriate handbag, we know Nancy can’t miss.” —Booklist
Nancy swiftly and expertly roped Cherry in.
About the Author (#ulink_8f297663-2472-5177-94aa-3b8538db32c8)
MABEL MANEY was born at All Saint’s Hospital in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Marge Muldoon Maney, a former beauty queen whose titles include Miss Muskie Queen 1949 and Miss Cheese Log 1951, and Milton Maney, a traveling footwear salesman specializing in sensible shoes.
After her parents were lost at sea, Mabel’s spinster aunt, Miss Maude Maney, a successful women’s undergarments buyer for a local department store, enrolled Mabel at St. Agatha’s School for Girls in nearby Bear Lake, where she excelled in Conversational Skills and Table Manners. After an idyllic four years spent in the highest academic pursuits, Mabel was expelled for behavior too unpleasant to mention here.
Mabel enjoyed a short stint at the Appleton Home for Wayward Girls, after which she made her way west where she found employment in the film industry, training miniature collies to jump through hoops. Following many years devoted to canine education, Mabel retired to San Francisco, where she now resides.
Her key to success? “Never mix plaids with stripes!”
Mabel Maney is the author of The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse, The Case of the Good-For-Nothing Girlfriend, and Nancy Clue and the Hardly Boys in A Ghost in the Closet (Cleis Press). Her short stories have appeared in Best American Mystery Stories (Houghton Mifflin) and San Francisco Thrillers (Chronicle Books). Her new girl spy adventure series is forthcoming from Avon.
Maney’s installation art and handmade books, self-published under the World O’Girls Books imprint, have earned her fellowships from the San Francisco Foundation and San Francisco State University, where she received her MFA in 1991. Her art has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States. Artspace wrote of her handmade World O’Girls edition of The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse: “In Maney’s refigured narrative, gay heroine Cherry Ames moves unhampered through a world populated by lesbian nuns and adventuresses, even engaging in a one-nighter with Nancy Drew. Entertainment aside, by appropriating and redefining the sexual orientation and cultural limits placed upon her fictional female characters, Maney provides a powerful reminder of the exclusionary nature of the ruling (in this case, straight) culture, with its power to define specific roles and acts as ‘natural’ while denying or marginalizing others.”
A Nancy Clue Mystery
The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend
Mabel Maney
www.spice-books.co.uk (http://www.spice-books.co.uk)
For Miss Lillian Bee of the Milwaukee Bees, and for M. P. K.
Special thanks to the nurses of Cleis Press—Deborah Barkun, Leasa Burton, Frédérique Delacoste, Maura Farrell, Lisa Frank, Pete Ivey, and Felice Newman—for their keen editing abilities, unflagging good humor, and eternal patience.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u7aad88ad-11bb-5ea8-b13c-640e4388d2ef)
Praise (#u646ba694-b3f5-5064-bdae-61c074bbc256)
About the Author (#u7a849a66-aec7-5002-9ed1-59d5c91cce65)
Title Page (#uc832c264-73d1-51c0-b03a-805bdae105fe)
Dedication (#u0ca278cf-a288-57ff-ac04-d0fd12dd50a1)
1 A Maddening Mishap (#ufd594b0a-9134-5025-9040-5a6b2fdf8b32)
2 To the Rescue! (#uef54d3dc-065c-5958-9d8c-1641b489c79d)
3 Oops! (#ua2c9f83e-2f1a-543a-b3bb-467ac0485653)
4 Pocatello Bound (#ub2b77f77-cb79-599f-8c91-e67bf4171baa)
5 That Special Something (#u38c73b45-27f5-5d32-a657-306c18aa63ab)
6 A Chance Encounter (#u8e7a22f4-584e-5154-b0e3-d2c3eccf2039)
7 Mysterious Strangers (#u286d5aba-438f-5ff4-9ca8-ad483918ba7c)
8 An Important Assignment (#u8047f986-a3f8-5511-a9f1-5fada5bd645c)
9 A Horrible Mix-up! (#u1a98f29b-ff7f-5cc1-8278-daa871787b8f)
10 What a Coincidence! (#ufe582356-366c-5dc9-9d59-03968923f6cf)
11 “Adieu, Idaho” (#uffac5b7b-960b-5ad8-a583-f7ddc31566fe)
12 Shocking News (#u6d2fce21-d48e-5c13-80be-0e8077094340)
13 A Cheery Hello (#ubb375c8d-a3ae-560c-8e45-8263e50fdb9c)
14 A Sudden Crash (#u947e17de-819c-59f9-b33d-3679d85922fe)
15 A Cunning Career Gal (#u02918b90-454d-57a2-ae76-625552e28144)
16 “Look Out!” (#litres_trial_promo)
17 A Startling Confession (#litres_trial_promo)
18 Eureka! (#litres_trial_promo)
19 Unexpected Guests (#litres_trial_promo)
20 A Frantic Phone Call (#litres_trial_promo)
21 “O, Nebraska!” (#litres_trial_promo)
22 At Long Last, Iowa (#litres_trial_promo)
23 A Surprising Encounter (#litres_trial_promo)
24 Eager Anticipation (#litres_trial_promo)
25 A Queer Quiz (#litres_trial_promo)
26 Crossing the Mississippi (#litres_trial_promo)
27 A Delightful Surprise (#litres_trial_promo)
28 A Creepy Tale (#litres_trial_promo)
29 “Bess? Bees?” (#litres_trial_promo)
30 Purloined Letters (#litres_trial_promo)
31 The Search for Nancy (#litres_trial_promo)
32 Conflicting Reports (#litres_trial_promo)
33 A Frightful Encounter (#litres_trial_promo)
34 A Meddling Matron (#litres_trial_promo)
35 Nancy’s Return (#litres_trial_promo)
36 A Sudden Cry (#litres_trial_promo)
37 A Rocky Romance? (#litres_trial_promo)
38 A Scandalous Story (#litres_trial_promo)
39 A Fabulous Fellow (#litres_trial_promo)
40 A Sudden Awakening (#litres_trial_promo)
41 A Warning (#litres_trial_promo)
42 A Delightful Discovery (#litres_trial_promo)
43 Follow That Car! (#litres_trial_promo)
44 An Exhaustive Search (#litres_trial_promo)
45 A Sudden Realization (#litres_trial_promo)
46 A Shocking Rumor (#litres_trial_promo)
47 The Stateof Illinois v. Hannah P. Gruel (#litres_trial_promo)
48 Drop That Moose! (#litres_trial_promo)
49 The Secret Revealed (#litres_trial_promo)
50 Trouble! (#litres_trial_promo)
51 An Agonizing Decision (#litres_trial_promo)
Thrilling Chapters from Your Favorite Nancy Clue Mysteries!
The Case of the Not-So-Nice Nurse (#litres_trial_promo)
Nancy Clue and the Hardly Boys in A Ghost in the Closet (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_d5dd0770-e5e2-51a2-9a97-0060115e1cf1)
A Maddening Mishap (#ulink_d5dd0770-e5e2-51a2-9a97-0060115e1cf1)
Pretty, titian-haired detective Nancy Clue, known to all for her keen sleuthing abilities, up-to-the-minute fashion sense, and gracious finishing-school manners, kicked the right front tire of her modern convertible in frustration and burst into tears.
“I can’t believe it! This is the second time today something has happened to this automobile! First that tire blew in Boise, and now this! Oh, it’s maddening!” Nancy sobbed.
The attractive girl, clad in a simple powder blue summer skirt and crisp white blouse with a Peter Pan collar that gave her a charmingly innocent air, flung herself over the front of the snappy automobile and gave way to a fervent fit of wailing that made her traveling companions jump back in alarm.
The four girls accompanying her on the trip looked at each other in bewilderment. Just minutes before, Nancy had been leading the group in a merry sing-along, and now she was writhing on the hood of her 1959 canary yellow Chrysler convertible, tears streaming down her pretty face.
They had just finished a rousing round of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” when the car had hit a rather large rock and made the most awful clanking noise before rolling to a dead stop at the side of the road. And just when they had almost reached Pocatello, Idaho, where they’d planned to stop for a nice supper before driving across the border to the majestic mountain state of Wyoming.
Nurse Cherry Aimless, Nancy’s close chum and a native Idahoan, had warned them to use caution while traversing the roadways of eastern Idaho, but the five girls had been so engrossed in their own amusements, they had become careless. Cherry scolded herself for not paying closer attention. She knew from her many experiences during family car trips to keep an eye out for the rocky road ahead. Now, just hours into their trip, their automobile was damaged, perhaps beyond repair!
“And Nancy’s on the verge of hysteria,” Cherry noted with her keen nurse’s eye. “Not only that, she’s in danger of becoming downright mussed,” she thought in alarm.
Under normal circumstances, Nancy Clue, who had solved enough baffling mysteries to earn a well-deserved reputation as a first-rate sleuth, was the model of feminine decorum. She was accustomed to keeping a cool head while solving cases that baffled even the professionals, and emerged from every escapade with nary a hair out of place. For Nancy was as well known for her attractive hairstyles as she was for her ability to remain unruffled during the most trying circumstances.
But now the young sleuth was facing one of the most hair-raising experiences of her life.
Nancy was headed home to River Depths, Illinois, to confess to the murder of her father, prominent attorney Carson Clue, who had been found shot to death eleven days earlier in the tidy kitchen of his comfortable, three-story suburban brick house!
“I must get home and expose the terrible truth about my father, and free Hannah!” Nancy cried through her tears. She pummeled the hood of the fancy car with her small fists. “I … simply … must … get … home!”
The Clues’ longtime housekeeper, Hannah Gruel, had insisted on selflessly shouldering the blame for the death of Mr. Clue in order that Nancy might remain free, and so had confessed to shooting the popular attorney during a domestic dispute.
