Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Out of Order (1988)

From the Publisher:
A lot of funny bets were made each year at the venerable Hybrid Club on the night of the big game, but none funnier than when Bill Potter's enemy, Harper Dixon, bet a hefty $50,000 that Asey Mayo couldn't solve his Aunt Eugenia's grocery order.

Asey, wintering in Jamaica, promptly returns to New England to get his friend Bill out of this jam. Approaching the Dixon home near the town of Blight, he rescues an odd assortment of characters from a blizzard. Then, once arrived, the group is locked in a powder room by a mysterious figure with red fingernails. Later released, they discover the body of Aunt Charlotte Babb, drowned in her wash basin while in the act of shampooing her hair. And Asey begins to suspect that there is more at stake here than a bet.

PHOEBE ATWOOD TAYLOR (1909-1976) lived in Boston and Cape Cod for most of her life. In addition to the Asey Mayo series, as "Alice Tilton" she wrote several Leonidas Witherall mysteries and, as "Freeman Dana," Murder at the New York World's Fair.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Out of Order. An Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery. Countryman Press / Foul Play Press, ISBN: 0881501050 (April, 1988), 280 p., $6.00.