Retirement Can Be Murder

by Susan Santangelo

  “Do you remember what the argument was about? I can’t imagine Rhodes losing his temper. When Jim and I went to him, he seemed so easy-going. This doesn’t sound like the man we knew.”

  “Hah,” retorted Maria. “He had an awful temper. I don’t remember specifically what they argued about that time, but you can bet that if he brought someone here for dinner, they’d end up in an argument about something. We used to joke that he’d provoke an argument with the person he was with so he wouldn’t have to pay for their food.”

  A random question popped into my head, and I asked it. “Did he bring in any other women besides Sheila?”

  “Well, his wife, of course.”

  “His wife? What wife?” Now, this was news.

  “Well, maybe I should say his ex-wife,” Maria said. “I talked to her briefly while she was waiting for him to arrive. She seemed very sweet.

  And she had gorgeous white hair. Some people go white when they’re still young, and it looks fabulous on them, you know?”

  I nodded my head encouragingly. Forget the hair. Let’s move along here.

  “They were apparently in the process of divorcing,” Maria said. “You could tell they’d been married a long time. She knew just how to handle him. Wasn’t the type to put up with any of his nonsense. That’s probably why they were getting divorced.”

  I hoped my eyes weren’t popping out of my head, but I wondered if the police had this information. I decided to probe a little further. I ra-tionalized my nosiness by telling myself I could pass on whatever I found out to Mark Anderson.

  “Did you happen to overhear anything they talked about?”

  Maria thought for a minute. “They seemed to talk about money quite a bit. I got the feeling that she thought he had hidden some assets so she wouldn’t get them as part of her divorce settlement.”

  “Wow. That could get really nasty.”

  “It did once or twice during their meal,” said Maria. “He only brought her in that one time, about three weeks ago.”

  She paused for a minute.

  “There was one odd thing, though. She didn’t call him Davis. She called him Dick. We all had a good laugh in the kitchen about what a perfect name that was for him.”

  Hmmm.

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter 17

  Q: What’s the first big shock of retirement?

  A: When you realize there are no days off.

  As soon as I got home, I e-mailed Nancy and Claire about my retirement shower brainstorm. I was pretty sure Claire would think the shower was a fabulous idea and want to help, and Nancy would be annoyed with me for not including her in the preliminary planning. But she’d get over her snit. She always did.

  Once I sent the two e-mails, I sat down with my trusty pad and jotted down Maria’s comments about Davis Rhodes while they were still fresh in my mind.

  I still couldn’t get over what she had told me.

  At the top of my notes, I wrote: Find Rhodes’s wife. I underlined it several times. Then, I realized I had no idea what her name was. Perhaps Maria remembered. But I had to come up with a plausible excuse for my curiosity.

  How about if I told her I wanted the name so Jim and I could send a sympathy note to the family? Sounded believable to me. But Maria was no help when I called for the information. “It was several weeks ago,” she said in the voice she must have used to strike terror into her students.

  “You can’t expect me to remember back that far with all the customers we’ve had since then.”

  Ok. Dead end, pardon the pun.

  I remembered that the other curious thing Maria had mentioned was Rhodes’s first name. The wife had called him Dick. Was “Davis” not his real name? I had never heard “Dick” used as a nickname for “Davis.” And how the heck could I find that out?

  Sheila Carney might know the answer. She might also know the wife’s name, but I doubted she’d share either one with me.

  She might share that information with My Beloved, though. Unless he already knew and hadn’t bothered to tell me.

  I made another note to myself: Suggest Jim get name of Rhodes’s wife from Sheila to invite to memorial service. Ask Jim if the name “Davis Rhodes” could be a pseudonym.

  Maria’s description of Rhodes’s abrasive personality was worth checking out, too. The man she described bore no resemblance to the charis-matic retirement counselor Jim and I had met.

  If Rhodes had such a short fuse, I thought, it was probably for the best that Jim and he never had a confrontation. Who knows what would have happened?

  Then I chided myself for my incredible stupidity. Jim’d found the guy dead, for God’s sake. How much worse could a confrontation between the two of them have been than that?

  I thought briefly about calling Mark Anderson at police headquarters and giving him the new information I’d gotten from Maria. But I dreaded any conversation with him, and especially his partner, that could lead to their asking me more questions about our involvement with Rhodes.

  Besides, maybe I could find out some things on my own.

  All of a sudden, I had another brilliant idea. Who knew what was going on in town better than real estate agents? They were incredibly connected, and Rhodes must have used an agent to either lease or buy the building where the Retirement Survival Center was located.

  And my own very best friend Nancy was a real estate agent.

  Quickly, I dialed her cell phone number. She answered on the second ring.

  “Nancy, it’s Carol. Where are you right now? Can we get together? I really need your help.”

  “I got your e-mail about the shower for Mary Alice,” Nancy said, sounding slightly peeved at me. “I can’t believe you started making plans without including Claire and me. I’ve decided to forgive you, because you’ll need our help to pull it off. But the party’s not until Labor Day.

  That’s weeks away. What’s the emergency about it this afternoon?”

  “It’s not about Mary Alice’s party,” I said excitedly. “I found out some information about Davis Rhodes today from Maria Lesco. I need your help tracking down some more information. Can you come over right away?”

  Nancy, predictably, rose to the bait. “I just finished showing a house to a new client, and I have to take her back to my office. Can you meet me there? I can close the conference room door so we’ll have privacy.”

  “I’ll see you there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Perfect.” She clicked off.

  I checked the clock. It was almost 4:00 now. Who knew what time Jim would be home? I hadn’t heard from him all day. Unless, of course, he’d left a message on my cell phone, which I still hadn’t tried to find.

  I decided to take a chance and call him at the office. Better to let him know in advance that dinner might be a little late, not that I’d tell him why.

  “Oh, hello, Mrs. Andrews,” said Jim’s assistant, Deb Brownell. Deb was a sweet young thing, slightly overweight, who read too many romance novels at her desk. We had a good phone relationship, as long as she remembered to give Jim my messages. In between chapters. “Mr. Andrews tried to reach you a little earlier to let you know he’s going to be late tonight. Mack asked him to be the agency point man for the Davis Rhodes memorial service, and he’s just left for a meeting with Sheila Carney at the Retirement Survival Center.” She sighed. “What a terrible thing about Dr. Rhodes.”

  I could tell Deb was dying to get into an in-depth discussion about what had happened, and though she often was a good source of agency gossip that Jim never bothered to share with me, I didn’t have time for chit-chat now. I prayed that she didn’t know that her dear boss was the one who found the body. It’d be all over the office in five minutes. But Deb had inadvertently given me an important piece of news: the Retirement Survival Center was now considered an official agency client, and Jim was the official agency staff person for the account.

  “Yes, it was terrible about Davis Rhodes, Deb,” I agreed. �
�I don’t want to cut you short, but I’m late for an important appointment now. Thanks for your help. Talk to you soon.”

  Then I was off to Nancy’s office to continue my snooping. I mean, sleuthing.

  I needn’t have rushed. Nancy was still with her client in the office conference room when I got to Dream Homes Realty (“Where We Make Your Dreams A Reality”), so I had to cool my heels in the frigid reception area for about 45 minutes. After aimlessly flipping through current agency listing sheets, I started to pace back and forth in front of the conference room’s glass door and make faces through the glass. Nancy was sitting facing the door, and tried not to laugh at me while her client droned on and on about what houses she’d seen today, which ones she liked, which ones she didn’t like, and why. Blah blah blah. Honestly, I don’t know how Nancy puts up with some of the people she has to deal with.

  Finally, the woman stood up and adjusted her shocking pink Lilly Pulitzer sweater, which she had artfully draped around her shoulders.

  “I’ll expect to hear from you in the next two days with more houses for me to see, Nancy,” she said as she left the office.

  Nancy smiled and waved her out the door, then came back and col-lapsed into a chair beside me. “Boy, she’s a difficult client. I thought she’d never leave. I think she’s one of those people who has no intention of ever buying a new house, but just likes to go around and look at what’s on the market, especially the expensive ones. What a pain.”

  She took a good look at my face. “You look like you’re about to explode with news. Let’s go into the conference room. Just about everybody is gone for the day, but I’ll close the door just in case.”

  When we were comfortably seated, Nancy demanded, “All right, what gives?”

  I tried to be as concise as possible with what I’d found out from Maria, but as usual, Nancy kept interrupting me with questions.

  “But what about Mary Alice’s shower?” she asked. “Are we definitely going to do it at Maria’s Trattoria on Labor Day?”, zeroing in on what was, beyond any question, a secondary issue.

  “Nancy, focus,” I said impatiently. “Forget about the shower for just a minute. What do you think about this new Davis Rhodes information?

  Never mind the fact that he was so rude to the restaurant staff. Apparently his real first name wasn’t Davis at all. If this mystery woman was his wife, why would she call him Dick instead of Dave or Davis? Maybe his last name isn’t even Rhodes.”

  “Carol, you focus,” replied Nancy crossly. “Why do we care what his name was? Or even if he was married? The guy is dead.”

  “But Nancy,” I said, “Jim found Rhodes’s body. The police have termed the death ‘suspicious.’ They’ve already questioned Jim, and they even came to the house to question me. Don’t you think the more we can find out about Rhodes and his past, the better we can protect Jim? My God, what if they suspect Rhodes was murdered and Jim is accused?

  Won’t you do a little digging to help me?”

  “You’re letting your imagination run away with you, like you always do. If you’re this worried, you should give this information to Larry and let him track it down. He’s Jim’s lawyer, after all. Or better yet, Mark Anderson.”

  I started to protest, but she held up her hand to silence me.

  “Having said that, we’ve been best friends forever and you know there’s nothing I won’t do for you. No matter how crazy. So, what do you want me to do?”

  “I know you’re right about telling Larry or the police what I found out today,” I said slowly. “But everything I just told you is pure unsubstantiated gossip. The kind of thing women know instinctively is true, even if it’s not proved yet. So, I thought we could start by finding out if Davis Rhodes was his real name. I also wondered about the Survival Center building. He must have either bought it or leased it, right? And to do any kind of real estate transaction, he had to sign official papers, and he probably had a real estate agent. That’s where you come in.”

  Nancy’s eyes widened. “Brilliant, Carol. Absolutely brilliant. I’m glad we’re here at the office, because there’s computer software here that I don’t have at home.”

  Nancy plugged in the name of “Rhodes” and did a quick search of all real estate transactions over the past year. Nothing came up.

  “Let’s try this,” Nancy said. “We have a huge database of all the local real estate agents. I’ll send out a blitz e-mail to everybody and find out if anyone handled the transaction. What’s the exact address? And do you have any idea if it’s a business property or a residential property? There are agents who specialize in each.”

  To be on the safe side, Nancy finally decided to e-mail everyone on the database for the property information. “I’m going to ask agents to e-mail me either here or at home, as quickly as possible. I’ve stressed that this is extremely urgent and highly confidential.” She pressed the “Send” icon.

  “You know, I have another idea,” she said. “It’s just possible that Rhodes’s wife also saw a real estate agent while she was here about either renting or buying property. It would certainly help if we at least had a first name, though.”

  “Maria didn’t remember,” I answered. “And she was kind of annoyed that I called her about it.”

  “So what?” Nancy shrugged her shoulders. “You’re her client now.

  She needs to be nice to you because she wants your business. Call her again.” She held out the phone to me.

  “Oh, no,” I protested. “I’m not calling her.”

  “Stop being a jerk, Carol. This is just like the first day of school when you made me go into the classroom first.”

  Seeing the nervous expression on my face, she relented. “Ok. Give me the phone. I’ll call her.”

  Five minutes later, through the intercession of I don’t know what saint, Nancy had a first name for Rhodes’s wife.

  “Maria actually apologized for being abrupt with you before. I guess she felt bad about that, so she asked the servers who came in to work the dinner shift if anyone remembered the wife’s name. Apparently, even though the dinner-in-question happened several weeks ago, Rhodes and his mystery woman made quite an impression on the staff. The waitress who took care of them said Rhodes called the woman Gracie. That made the woman very angry. She kept insisting he call her Grace. Maria also mentioned one other thing which could be important. She said the waitress remembered Rhodes telling the woman that she couldn’t stay with him. He was very adamant about it. So she must have just arrived in town.

  Want me to send another e-mail and see if any of the agents had any business with her? Who knows? Maybe she looked at some property around here.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I exclaimed. “Sure, send another e-mail. Let’s find out as much as we can. At last I feel like I’m doing something positive, instead of just sitting around waiting. Be sure to mention that she had beautiful white hair.”

  “Done,” said Nancy. She quickly composed another e-mail query and sent it off into cyberspace. Then, she started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You know those ads on television, when a person signs up for a wire-less phone plan, and the announcer says, ‘No matter where you go, you’ve got the network’? You, my friend, have the power of the real estate network behind you now. And believe me, there’s nothing this network can’t find out. Now, let’s get out of here. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

  When I got home a few minutes later, Jenny was already there. I walked into the kitchen and she was sitting at the kitchen table. She jumped up when she saw me. Her face was white.

  “Mom, where have you been? Is Daddy with you? I’ve been so worried!”

  “I was with Nancy. And your father is meeting with Sheila Carney about the Davis Rhodes memorial service. What’s the matter? You look terrible.”

  “I had coffee with Mark Anderson today, remember?”

  “Yes, I certainly do. How did it go? Did you have fun?”<
br />
  Jenny smiled, just a little. “We had a great time, Mom. In the beginning. We talked about school, and old friends. I’d forgotten how easy he is to be with.

  “But then he got a call on his cell phone from his partner.”

  She paused, and her voice got very shaky.

  “Mom, a preliminary toxicology report on Davis Rhodes’s death came in today. Some sort of drug interaction killed him. The police think he could have been poisoned. I was afraid when I didn’t know where you were that Dad had been arrested.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter 18

  Q: Why are retirees so slow to clean out the basement, attic, and garage?

  A: They know that as soon as they do, one of their adult kids will want to store stuff there.

  I’ve read in all my mysteries that poison is a woman’s favorite murder weapon. Less messy than guns or knives. Yuck. There was a least one person in Rhodes’s life who had a dandy motive to bump him off. No, make that two: his wife, and dear Sheila. But not My Beloved. No way.

  “I don’t know if anyone else knows about this yet,” Jenny said. “Mark wouldn’t have told me anything except, of course, I was sitting right there when he got the call. He reacted so strongly I just knew it was about Rhodes. But he warned me to keep the new information to myself.

  “Mark admitted Dad would be questioned again. The police have to examine all the possibilities since it looks like Rhodes was poisoned.”

  I noticed that Jenny shied away from using the word “murdered.” But I knew she was thinking it. Me too.

  I decided to share my afternoon’s adventure with Jenny. She’s tolerated my insatiable curiosity for years, unless I’m snooping into her personal life, of course. “We’ll have to tell Dad about this when he gets home.

  “In the meantime, let’s talk about something else. I’ve decided to plan a retirement shower for Mary Alice at Maria’s Trattoria….”