Retirement Can Be Murder
Page 23
“What about planting the Enalapril in your medicine cabinet?”
Jenny answered that one. “Linda gave me a ride home when I couldn’t get my car started the other day. When she dropped me off, she asked to use the bathroom to wash her hands. Mom and I both remember that she used the bathroom upstairs, not the one downstairs. She could have planted the medicine bottle then.
“Maybe Linda even did something to my car so she’d have an excuse to take me home.”
I interrupted to add that Linda’s dog had been on Enalapril before it passed away three years ago. Fact Number Five. Or Six. I’d lost count by this time.
“Way to go, Mom,” said Jenny. “I was wondering how Linda could have gotten hold of the drug.”
“This is the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. Why would Linda want to incriminate me?” My Beloved demanded.
“I think you were just convenient, honey,” I answered. “She knew you were doing some work for Rhodes. So there was already a handy connection between you two that she could exploit to her advantage.”
“You’ve made some interesting points, Mrs. Andrews. But I’m still not convinced,” Mark said. “This information is all hypothetical and circum-stantial. There’s no proof that Linda Burns and Davis Rhodes knew each other in college, or that they saw each other after he moved to the area and set up the Retirement Survival Center. Or that he recognized her. Or that she had the opportunity to plant the drug that killed him.
“I need a concrete reason to question her. You haven’t given me one.”
I slumped back in my chair. I’d given it my best shot. Sadly, it wasn’t enough.
“Oh, my God,” Jim said suddenly. “Maybe there’s no proof connecting Rhodes and Linda, but I referred Bruce Burns to Rhodes for counseling. And I know Bruce went, because I saw him coming out of the Center a few weeks ago. ”
Jim looked at me. “You remember, Carol, that he’s been out of work for the last six months.”
“What are you talking about?” I exclaimed. “Bruce takes the train into the city with you every morning.”
“I know I told you about Bruce’s situation months ago, and asked you to keep it to yourself,” Jim insisted firmly. “He’s still commuting into New York every day. But he’s not going to a job. He’s going to his outplacement agency.”
“You never told me!” I retorted.
Jim sighed patiently. “I did tell you,” he repeated. “And you say I never hear what you say to me. You never listen to me either. ”
“Ok, ok,” I admitted. “Maybe you did tell me and I forgot. This bickering isn’t getting us anywhere. Go on.”
“Bruce kept his job loss as quiet as possible,” Jim continued. “I’m sure he and Linda expected he’d land another job right away, so nobody would ever have to know he’d been out of work. I always thought Bruce was a pompous bore, but he certainly has my sympathy for what he’s been going through. I imagine their income has taken a pretty severe hit, with Bruce being unemployed for so long.”
I looked at Mark and continued my scenario. “I’ll bet Bruce saw the diploma from Papermill University on Rhodes’s office wall when he went to the Center for counseling. He recognized the connection with Linda and her phony diploma.”
“He must have been pretty desperate by that time,” Jenny speculated.
“He couldn’t afford to take the chance that Linda’s fake credentials would be discovered and she’d lose her job.”
“Bruce switched Rhodes’s blood pressure pills for the Enalapril, knowing that it would be fatal to Rhodes. And Linda’s been covering up for her husband’s crime by implicating Jim,” I finished triumphantly. It all fit, didn’t it?
“How would either of them know what drug to use to poison Rhodes?” Mark objected.
I smiled at him sweetly. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Mark. But I know you and the rest of the police will figure that part out. And until you do, arresting someone else would certainly be premature, wouldn’t it?”
I immediately switched from being Carol Andrews Super Sleuth into my Perfect Hostess role. “Now that we’ve figured all that out, anyone for ice cream bread?”
* * *
* * *
Chapter 30
The guy who can’t figure out what to do with a Sunday afternoon is usually the same one who can’t wait to retire.
After laborious police work to confirm my wild theory, Linda Burns and her husband Bruce were arrested and charged with the murder of Davis Rhodes. I heard an unconfirmed rumor that Linda was taken out of her classroom in handcuffs, and she was so angry she tried to bite one of the policemen.
Naturally, Mark wasn’t able to tell us much about the hard evidence the police had accumulated against Linda and Bruce, despite all my pleading, but he did say that Rhodes had suffered all his life from very low blood pressure, a condition confirmed by both Grace and Sheila. The police theory is that Linda knew about this condition from their college days, when she and Rhodes dated briefly, and Bruce (with Linda egging him on) switched the pills Rhodes was on to treat his low blood pressure with Enalapril, which is prescribed to control high blood pressure. Then, they sat back and waited for Rhodes to have a heart attack.
One brilliant reporter got the idea of dubbing Linda and Bruce “Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth,” after the Shakespeare play. Get it? They’ll be standing trial in November.
My crack investigative team, of course, got absolutely no credit whatsoever for solving the case, which was just fine with me. The less that people in town knew about our contributions, the better.
Mary Alice’s retirement shower was a huge success, largely thanks to Maria Lesco, whose obvious flair for putting on private parties is certain to give her a whole new list of clients.
Mark and Jenny see each other regularly. They seem to be quite en-amored of each other, and I am doing my best not to nurture (that is, interfere in) the budding romance.
Jenny never went back to California to pick up the rest of her things.
As she pointed out to me, she was starting a whole new chapter in her life.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Nancy is up to her ears in real estate transactions. If the housing bubble has burst, nobody’s told her.
Mary Alice is happily adjusting to her new life as a nursing instructor and private duty nurse. She has given the word “retirement” a whole new meaning.
Claire and Larry are thinking of becoming “snowbirds” and buying a condo in Florida. They’ve assured us they would only use the condo during the winter months, so they won’t be moving away for good. And, of course, they would be near Mike, so they could keep an eye on him for Jim and me. Not that I would ever admit that to Mike, of course.
As for Jim and me, My Beloved did decide to retire. He was offered an excellent package from Gibson Gillespie, and he took it.
It’s funny, but when he told me his decision, I wasn’t as upset about it as I thought I’d be. After all, the man almost went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Having him around on a regular basis is a blessing, compared to what could have happened.
But Jim wasn’t one to sit at home for very long. Just when I started to wave travel brochures in his face, he announced he’d taken a part-time job as a columnist on our local paper. He’s dubbed himself the paper’s “curmudgeon-in-residence.” He writes a weekly opinion piece, “State of the Town,” in which he gets to criticize and comment on anything and everything. It’s absolutely perfect for Jim since he thinks he’s an expert on everything, and it also gets him out of the house.
Life was good. Maybe, too good.
And then one morning, over a leisurely second cup of coffee (which Jim had made), My Beloved said, “Carol, I think we should consider downsizing. Maybe selling this house and moving to one of those active adult communities. What do you think?”
I could think of a million come-back responses to that idea, all of them negative.
But that’s another story.
&n
bsp; Questions For Discussion
Carol Andrews would have saved herself and her family a lot of trouble if she’d been honest with Her Beloved about her fears. Don’t make the same mistake she did. If Your Beloved is facing retirement, here are some questions Davis Rhodes suggests couples use to start a discussion about the next phase of your life.
1.How do you adjust to change?
2.How do you measure self-worth?
3.What is your idea of time well-spent?
4.What is your definition of success?
5.How/where do you see yourself in the next ten years?
6.On a scale of one-to-ten, with one being the highest, rank the following as being important in your life: financial security, a solid family life, social interaction, giving back to the community, professional satisfaction, living independently, good health, spousal interaction, being in charge of a situation, positive feedback.
7.If you could choose one thing to do every day, what would it be? Why?
8.What are your relationship expectations post-retirement? Do you visualize doing more things as a couple? Less? The same amount?
Which activities, and why?
Good Luck!
Ice Cream Bread Recipe
From Agnes Seiwell
Prep time: 5 minutes.
Ingredients:
1 pint (2 cups) ice cream, softened. Flavor: your choice.
1 ½ cups self-rising flour.
Stir together ice cream and flour just enough so that flour is thoroughly moistened. Spoon batter into a greased and floured 8x4 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in center of bread comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool on a wire rack.
This two-ingredient bread is great any time of day. It can be served as a dessert topped with some whipped cream and chocolate or other flavored sauce, or toasted and used as a side dish to a meal.
Enjoy!
To Learn More About Retirement Can Be Murder
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About the Author
An early member of the baby boomer generation, Susan Santangelo has been a feature writer, drama critic and editor for daily and weekly newspapers and magazines in the New York metropolitan area, including a stint at Cosmopolitan. A seasoned public relations and marketing professional, she produced special events for Carnegie Hall’s centennial. Susan is a member of Sisters in Crime and The Cape Cod Writers’ Center, and divides her time between the Connecticut shoreline and Cape Cod, MA. She shares her life with Her Personal Beloved, husband Joe, and three English Cockers: Tillie, Tucker and Lucy.
A portion of the sales from Retirement Can Be Murder will be donated to the Breast Cancer Survival Center (breastcancersurvival.org), a non-profit organization Susan founded in 1999 after being diagnosed with cancer herself.
Susan loves to hear from readers. Contact her at ssantangelo@aol.com.
E-mail her and share your retirement stories.
Moving Can Be Murder
A Carol and Jim Andrews Baby Boomer Mystery
By Susan Santangelo
My Beloved had finally worn me down. I’d agreed to sell our beautiful antique home in Fairport, Connecticut, and downsize to a nearby “active adult” community.
The moving truck had come today, and all of our cherished possessions had gone into storage. Our new home wouldn’t be ready to move into for two more months. I wanted to postpone the closing, but Jim, not wanting to lose the buyer—God forbid—opted to move us and our two English cocker spaniels, Lucy and Ethel, into a furnished one-bedroom apartment temporarily. It was quite a comedown—trading a five-bedroom home for a space smaller than our old master bedroom suite.
Within a month after his retirement, Jim had signed on as a columnist for our weekly newspaper, which kept him busy and out of my hair most of the time.
That is, he was out of my hair in a five-bedroom house. How that would translate to our temporary cramped digs remained to be seen.
I’d tried to put a brave face on when we walked out the kitchen door and locked it for the last time. But I felt like something I truly loved had died.
Coming in 2010
Every wife has a story.
Retirement Can Be Murder is the story of Carol Andrews and her Beloved Husband, Jim, members of the fastest growing demographic in history, the Baby Boomer generation.
Carol dreads her husband Jim’s upcoming retirement more than a root canal without Novocain. She can’t imagine anything worse than having an at-home husband with time on his hands and nothing to fill it -- except interfering in the day-to-day activities of their household and driving her crazy.
Until her plans to stall Jim’s retirement result in her husband being suspected of murdering his retirement coach.
“Susan Santangelo uses great characters, humor, and sort of a ‘Desperate Housewives’ backdrop to create a hilarious mystery….An entertaining and light-hearted read from a real pro.
The Baby Boomer mysteries promise to be as germane as ‘Murder She Wrote.’
It would make a great television series.”
–Midwest Book Review (five-star review)
“Santangelo has come up with an intriguing premise, drawing on the much-publicized fact that the baby-boomer generation will soon be facing retirement, and she develops it cleverly….
Especially enjoyable features of this debut are the little humorous headings that begin each chapter. We’ll look forward to more Boomer mysteries in the years to come….
Pure fun—and don’t be surprised if retired sleuths become the next big trend.”
–www.Booklist.com
“Susan Santangelo captures the everyday lives of Baby Boomers in Retirement Can Be Murder….Be prepared to feel at home.”
–Dotsie Bregel, Founder, National Association of Baby Boomer Women www.NABBW.com, www.BoomerWomenSpeak.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter
27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30