Need inspiration for your murder mystery? Try houseguests

It's no wonder Agatha Christie did so many in

Eight years ago, shortly after we closed on the Colorado cabin, we made plans with six friends to drive up from Texas and camp out on our new property.

I enjoy throwing parties, but I never want them to be too formal, so a rustic cabin in the woods seemed like the perfect setting. I also thought camping parties might be the solution to my ambivalence about overnight guests: I love them in the evening, when we’re wrapping up a long, conversation-fueled dinner. In the morning, I do not want to see them.

(Naturally, the main character in my murder mystery Up to Her Neck is restoring an old hot-springs resort.)

I’d rather friends who come to visit stay at a hotel, but I think I hide it well. Their bedroom will look like a spread from Grand American Hotels (or Cabin Porn, at least) and the kitchen will be stocked with local goodies, like Bird & Mouse English muffins, or Deerhammer’s bourbon.

I come from people who wouldn’t think of flying 900 miles if they have a car, and will happily sleep in that corner of your office that hasn’t been vacuumed since the pandemic ended, but I believe in the magic of great hospitality. I believe being a good hostess is as high a calling as medicine or religion.

Deep inside, though, I am a person who doesn’t want to make coffee for you. I need time after I wake up in the morning, to remember who I am, what I’m doing here, and why. I don’t make coffee for anyone, except my husband because he happens to be there and the Bialetti Moka pot I use at the cabin brews two perfect cups.

That’s why the few houseguests I do enjoy having without any caveats (you know who you are) are also experienced campers. They already have their morning routine figured out, without assistance.

I was studying Italian on the Pimsleur app at the time of this adventure, walking around the house repeating, “No, you must not do the laundry. Not the sheets, not the blanket, nor the towels,” while I packed compostable toilet paper and dry goods.

Why must you not do these things? “Perché sei mio ospite.” Because you are my guest.

Off-grid at 10,000 feet, though? Hospitality falls into a gray area. We always have extra backpacks, hats, and sunscreen on hand. But when there isn’t a flushing toilet, much less a washing machine, you must bring your own sleeping bag, you must bring ice. You must bring coffee, because running out of coffee at the cabin is like running out of water. Worse, actually, because we have a filter that makes drinking water.

We’d planned the guest list accordingly. One couple had helped us scout the place the previous fall, so they knew what they were getting into. The second couple prefer a funky motel to a faceless hotel chain any day. We knew they’d dig it.

Ned*, our fifth guest, is a natural entertainer with a gift for finding the most interesting people in a 50-mile radius. You might get a text inviting you for dinner because he met some kids with an online cooking show and helped them capture a wild hog to prepare on camera. Ned is how we ended up watching Apocalypse Now Final Cut in David Caruso’s condo, where the entrance to the bedroom contained a larger-than-life portrait of him as Horatio Caine, doing that thing with his sunglasses.

Like this, but much bigger, and with more Miami Vice energy.

He’s also my husband’s former brother-in-law and our kids’ uncle, so he’s family.

We were expecting five guests, but Ned is infamous for showing up with a stealth plus-one, someone you would never have thought to invite, often because you’ve never met them. The more the merrier is his philosophy, and it’s a beautiful philosophy until you’re struggling to recall the name of the person sobbing on your porch at 4 in the morning, hours after everyone else – including Ned – has left.

He called a couple of weeks before we were scheduled to meet up in the mountains. Michael answered, listened for a moment, tapped the mute button, and looked at me with mild dread.

“No,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’s a bad idea.”

Michael sighed. “He wants to bring Mitch.”

“To Colorado?!”

Mitch is a lovely man, an arts patron, a South Texas style icon, and a diplomat — and usually the last person to leave the dance floor. He was also in his seventies at the time, with the bone density of a barn swallow. He had negative body fat and not much hair, either.

The Claim is at ten-thousand feet, I said. It freezes at night. The cabin is uninhabitable. There would be no hot water. No. Hot. Water. (Except for coffee, of course.)

“I know.” Michael looked miserable. He’d had years of practice at this and it hadn’t gotten any easier. “But how do we say no?”

I suggested he remind him that Mitch lived in an un-airconditioned house in South Texas. “He rides a bike in the summer,” I added. “In a suit. That is the exact and total environmental opposite of this trip.”

“I know, I know.”

But we always cave to Ned. He can be so fun and generous. And he’s family. And he’d asked ahead of time, which was so unusual I went out and bought a lottery ticket later that afternoon. My displeasure over the interminable porch night must have filtered through the grapevine.

A few minutes later, I heard Michael wrapping up. “Make sure you break in your hiking boots beforehand,” he said, “and bring plenty of water.”

“And coffee,” I shouted across the room.

We arrived a few days early and spruced up the outhouses, rebuilt the fire ring, and hung hammocks on the deck. Our friends began arriving and pitching their tents. We set up an old table behind the cabin for the Coleman stove and the water station.

The sun was sinking into the pines at the far end of the canyon when Ned turned into the drive.

“We stopped at Dwight’s place last night,” he announced as they pulled a couple of worrisomely small packs out of the car. Dwight owns a San Antonio restaurant known for its eclectic, Mexico-influenced menu, but his family ranch is in West Texas.

“He wasn’t home,” Mitch added, shivering in the evening chill. “But they had cocktails and a hot casserole waiting for us.”

Guests who brought coffee and good hiking shoes.

I decided there was no way this was an implied criticism. Dwight’s ranch had electricity and plumbing. And staff, apparently. We had pine martens and mice. Michael offered to make margaritas while they unpacked. I went to check on dinner.

By the time I returned, Ned had pitched their tent in the middle of the path from the driveway to the cabin.

“Check out Mitch’s bedroll.” He pulled open the flap to reveal Mitch unfurling a bundle of textiles that looked like it had been swiped from Antiques Roadshow. Mitch placed an oval of embroidered felted wool on one half of the floor, and topped it with a Turkish towel and what looked like a Guatemalan huipil.

“You don’t have a sleeping bag?” I asked. “It’s going to be in the twenties tonight.”

He looked at me with pity and said something about cowboys and trail rides.

I stepped away from the tent and expressed my concern to Ned.

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” Ned replied, pulling a copy of How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan’s book on psychedelic micro-dosing, out of his pack. “Mitch was roughing it before we were born.”

I started walking away — I wanted a margarita now — and tripped over a box. The lid popped open. Hiking boots, still wrapped in tissue.

But the first night is always fun. We stayed up talking until the fire burned down to embers.

The following morning, on my way to the outhouse, I spotted a figure in the driveway. He was huddled in a lone ray of sunshine on one of the banged-up red folding chairs the previous owner had left behind. A small woolen cap clung to the silver stubble on his head.

Against my better judgment, I walked over.

“Good morning.” I tried to load my voice with a contagious amount of enthusiasm and warmth.

Mitch was scrunched up so tightly, his eyes were even with his shoulders. I don’t have to tell you what he said.

“Do you have any coffee?”

That’s the hardest part about being a host, isn’t it? Even when you know it’s not your fault that a guest isn’t having a good time, you want to fix it. Well, I didn’t want to. I wanted to stomp over to their tent and kick Ned out of bed. But my chance to duck responsibility had passed the day we said, yes, come to the cabin instead of, “Absolutely not.”

You must not be cold. You must not be un-caffeinated. You must not be miserable. Perché sei mio ospite.

“Of course,” I said. “Give me ten minutes. Let’s start a fire.”

It got worse before it got better. Ned wore such a nasty blister in his heel on the first hike, he spent the rest of the trip sitting cross-legged on the ground, reading his Pollan book. He still has the scar. The red-carpet treatment they’d received at Dwight’s grew more elegiac with each retelling … about 17 times, by my count.

A few days into their stay, I caught Ned and Mitch whispering to some of the other guests by the cooking area. “What is it?” I sighed.

“Mitch was wondering if we could take up a collection to hire a plumber.”

It was not lost on me in this moment, that Dame Agatha offed quite a few hosts as well, but I wanted to yell, Has anyone been paying attention? Even if we could get a plumber to bounce his van up the Worst Road in North America on short notice, even if the water heater didn’t look like this …

It’s wild, isn’t it, that the basic water-heater design hasn’t changed since Roman times?

… it was still too cold at night to run water in the pipes.

I suggested we all go into town and tour the distillery.

In the end, it was all right, of course. We hung out at a local festival and sunned ourselves by the creek. I bought a case of Palisade peaches, and Mitch used some of them to make a pie that he baked on the grill. It was delicious, like something they might have served at Dwight’s ranch.

Tell me about your best or worst hosting experience. What’s your favorite mystery or thriller set in a hotel or a houseful of guests?

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I knew I’d found the perfect match for my debut, Up to Her Neck, when I saw Empress Editions “Absolutely Not” ball cap. My MC says it often (although not often enough, or she wouldn’t be in hot water all the time). They also have some extremely cool swag for Heather J. Robertson’s midlife rallying cry, Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause, like this t-shirt: “I Must. I Must. I Must … Not Slap Anyone Today.”

Next time: A partial guide to getting rescued in the wilderness.

*As usual, names changed for plausible deniability.