Dying to Retire

by Jessica Fletcher

  Gabby chuckled. “You’re not so easy to hoodwink, Doc.”

  “Right you are,” Truman said, patting the pockets on his shorts. “I don’t have any cash on me. Stop by the dispensary on Monday and Sunshine will pay you.”

  “I’ll be there. You got any of that tonic left? Did me a world of good last time.”

  “If I don’t, I’ll make some up for you.”

  “Gotta keep the ladies happy,” he said, winking at me. To Truman: “I’ll leave the claws right here by the door. You can pick ’em up after the ceremony.”

  The “ceremony” on the dock wasn’t so much a rite as it was a party. Enterprising saloonkeepers had set up outdoor bars and sold rainbow-colored cocktails to those of drinking age. Jugglers and tumblers, good enough to be circus acts, entertained for small change and dollar bills tossed into hats that lay on the wooden planks. Parents hoisted children onto their shoulders, and people sat on the side of the dock facing west—some in folding chairs they’d brought for the occasion—as if waiting for a parade. There was an air of excitement at the “event” to come.

  “Is it always like this?” I asked Truman.

  “Every night. Don’t know how it got started. It’s been a tradition for as long as I’ve been here, a real tourist attraction. But I can’t begrudge them what I get to see every day.” He smiled at me. “Wait till the sun goes down and the last color comes up,” he said. “See if it doesn’t remind you of something.”

  “You certainly get a crowd down here,” Seth said, turning in a circle to take in the whole panorama of entertainment.

  “Yes, and keep track of your wallet,” Truman said. “They’re all friendly, but they’re not all honest.”

  We watched a young man in a top hat twist long balloons into fanciful animals, and bought ice-cream sandwiches from a tap-dancing vendor holding her wares on a wooden tray.

  “They say if you come to the sunset every day, you’ll eventually meet everyone you know,” Truman said, waving at a young family eating dinner from a bag of fried chicken. “I’ve had that experience several times.” He turned to Seth. “Remember Johnson Werbel?”

  “The big blond who fainted in our first autopsy lab?”

  “The very same. He’s a pathologist up in St. Louis. Used to be a medical examiner, but now he confines his exposure to death to what he can see under a microscope. Came here with his third wife and three towheaded kids.”

  “No kidding. Haven’t seen him since med school.”

  “Yoo-hoo, Jessica.”

  I heard my name and turned to see Maureen and Mort Metzger squeezing through the crowd to get to us. Maureen, a big smile on her face, had gotten into the spirit of Key West and was wearing a long paisley skirt, sandals, and a T-shirt tied at the hip. Her hair was tied back with a colorful bandanna. Mort was in matching shorts and shirt with a pattern of large yellow leaves on a turquoise background. He also wore a black fanny pack wrapped around his waist, and looked decidedly uncomfortable. I guessed he wasn’t pleased for friends to see him in his new attire.

  “That’s quite the outfit,” Seth said, raising his brows.

  “Maureen bought this for me,” Mort said, color rising to his cheeks, “but I told her she’ll never catch me wearing it at home.”

  “Honey, you look terrific in that color,” Maureen said. “Doesn’t he look terrific, Jessica?”

  “You look like you belong here,” I said to Mort.

  We introduced Mort and Maureen to Truman, who promptly extended an invitation for them to join us for dinner, and it began to feel as if we’d started a party of our own on the dock.

  “We were hoping to meet you down here,” Maureen said. “We’ve come for the ceremony every night.”

  The “ceremony” didn’t disappoint. With the help of rolls of scudding gray clouds edged in limey yellow, the sky turned all the colors of a prism as the sun slowly melted into the horizon, the water providing a wavering reflection of its path. A drummer kept the beat while two dancers in Native American dress performed, drawing scant attention away from the real star of the moment. When only a sliver of brilliant light hovered over the water, there was a momentary hush; then, when the last beam of red slipped away, the crowd burst into applause. But the color show wasn’t over. Streaks of peach and saffron painted the sky and gradually dissolved into a vibrant violet that I’d seen before.

  “That’s the color of your house,” I said to Truman.

  He smiled. “I wanted to be reminded of the sunset when I don’t get down here,” he said. “I try not to get complacent about what inspired me to live in Key West in the first place.”

  “It’s easy to forget to appreciate familiar blessings,” I said. “It’s when you lose them that you become most conscious of their value.”

  We left to collect our dinner and walk back to Truman’s home. The party on the dock was still in full swing, with competing music, both live and recorded, rising into the air like thick smoke. During our absence, the throngs on Duval Street had increased, but there were fewer young children and more teenagers. Some of them waved to Truman, who returned their greetings.

  “You’re certainly a popular fellow,” Seth said.

  “Some of them are runaways I’ve treated from time to time,” Truman said. “I try to move them off drugs and into a healthier lifestyle.”

  “Are you successful?” I asked.

  “Only occasionally. But you’ve met one of my successes.”

  “Who’s that?” Seth said, looking at me.

  “Benny,” I said. “Am I right, Truman?”

  “You are, Jessica. And Sunshine, who manages my dispensary and handles my mail-order business. I don’t think you’ve met her yet.”

  “Was she the young woman napping on your patio this afternoon?”

  “What an observant lady you are! Yes, I believe so. I have several outbuildings on the property. If one of the youngsters needs a place to crash, they know they can come to me. My only rule is no drugs unless I prescribe something. Plus, they have to work for their keep and comport themselves in an appropriate manner. Sometimes it takes them a while to figure out what that is.”

  “Is Benny that fellow with all the metal sticking out of his face?” Seth asked.

  Truman laughed. “Hard to look at that, isn’t it? I think he considers it part of his charm. Doesn’t seem to turn off the young ladies.”

  “Do you help them reconnect with their families?” I asked.

  “If they want to. Often the relationships that pushed them out of the nest are not ones they’re eager to reestablish. I encourage them, but I don’t make an issue of it. I’m more interested in helping them be healthy. But the telephone is always available.”

  The bag of ice and crab claws was waiting for us, as promised, along with a second bag containing fish fillets.

  “Gabby must’ve had leftovers,” Truman said, picking up both bags. “We’re going to have a feast tonight.”

  “Here, let me help you carry them,” Mort said, relieving Truman of one of the bags.

  “Be careful of your shirt, honey,” Maureen said to Mort. “Don’t hold the fish so close.”

  “I’m bein’ careful,” he said, but I noticed that as soon as Maureen turned away, he tucked the bag a little closer to his side.

  “You’re going to end up smelling like Mara’s kitchen on a fish-fry night,” I said to him as the others filed down the alley at the side of the building and back onto the main street. “Why don’t you just tell Maureen the truth?”

  “Gee, Mrs. F, I can’t tell her I hate these clothes. She picked them out for me special.”

  “I think your wife will understand. Disagreeing about taste in clothing doesn’t mean you don’t love her.”

  “Yeah, but she’s real sensitive.”

  “You’ll end up with a closetful of clothes you don’t wear.”

  “It’s lucky I wear a uniform to work.”

  We both laughed. At the end of the alley Maureen turned aroun
d, a quizzical look on her face.

  “Say, Mrs. F,” Mort said as we hastened to follow our host, “you learn anything from that autopsy report I asked Doc to drop off at your place before we left?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already suspect,” I said. “Portia died from a heart attack, in all likelihood brought on by diet pills.”

  There must have been something in my tone of voice, because Mort said, “But you’re not buying it, huh?”

  “I don’t know why someone would want to kill Portia,” I said, “but the people who knew her best are convinced she would never knowingly have taken diet pills. That means she took them unknowingly.”

  “By accident?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  We reached the street and saw Truman, Seth, and Maureen cross at the corner a block away. I waved when Maureen looked around to see where we were.

  “So you figure Sam was right?” Mort asked.

  “Sam thinks Portia was killed by a mob hit man,” I said. “That doesn’t ring true.”

  “Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, too. Did you discuss it with that cop we met, Shippee?”

  “I did, but he dismissed the idea. I think he suspects something’s not quite right, but he’s still looking for proof.”

  “And you are too, huh?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mort cocked his head and squinted at me. “I was trying to figure out how the doc managed to lure you down to Key West. If you suspect murder, I would have thought wild horses couldn’t get you away from Foreverglades and an investigation. Unless there’s something to investigate here in Key West.”

  “I’m afraid you know me too well, Mort,” I said, smiling. “There is someone in this city I want to talk to.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “DeWitt Wainscott.”

  “No kidding! I saw the man this morning.”

  “You did?”

  “Maureen and I went to look at an apartment in his new development—Wainscott Manor, it’s called. It’s right on the water. We knew it was going to be too rich for our blood, but she likes to pretend we’re interested.”

  “And Wainscott was there?”

  “Well, not in the apartment, but we stopped by his office to pick up some brochures, and he was showing plans he has for another construction project to a couple of men. He was throwing around some big numbers.”

  “Maybe he’s looking for investors,” I said.

  “Sounded that way to me.”

  “Do you think he got them?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. When the men said they had to think about it, Wainscott told them not to waste too much time. Said he has a lot of people coming in Sunday to check the place out.”

  “You mean like an open house?”

  “I guess. Maureen and I plan to go. Why don’t you join us? They’re opening up the first building to show off the model apartments.”

  “But I thought you already saw them.”

  “We did, but we don’t mind seeing them again. Besides, tomorrow they’re serving refreshments.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was early Sunday morning. Truman and Seth were scheduled to tee off at eleven, and I planned to ask them to drop me at the Wainscott development on their way to the golf course. I would be early for the festivities, but that would give me time to look around before I tried to beard the lion developer in his den.

  Over breakfast, Truman had offered to take us on a tour of his property.

  “Not that there’s that much to show you, but you might like to take a look at the restoration work I did on the house,” he said as he sliced fruit and put it in a juicer. “The kitchen, as you can see, is completely new, all the appliances, even the cabinets, although I had the carpenter finish them to look old. Here, try this.” He handed me a glass of juice and I took a sip.

  “Delicious,” I said. “I’ve never tasted such sweet orange juice.”

  “A tangelo isn’t exactly an orange, but I guess it’s close enough.”

  “What exactly is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a hybrid, a cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine.”

  Seth reached for his glass. “Is this something new?”

  “Just the opposite,” Truman said. “The first tangelos came from Asia a couple of thousand years ago. Then, it was a cross between a Mandarin orange and a pomelo. That was the ancestor of the grapefruit. You’d be amazed at how many oranges on the market are mixes of particular varieties. These are the Honeybell tangelos. You can only get them three months out of the year, December, January, and February.”

  “Aren’t we lucky we’re here at the right time?” I said.

  “You are.”

  “How big is the house?” I asked as he squeezed more juice.

  “Six bedrooms, two sitting rooms—I guess you’d call one of them a family room these days—dining room, front hall, library, kitchen. There’s maid’s quarters in the attic, but I just use that for storage at the moment. I’m not sure of the square footage. I put in extra bathrooms for each bedroom when I decided to go forward with the renovation.”

  “It would make a great bed-and-breakfast,” Seth said, buttering a piece of warm seven-grain bread Truman had baked in his bread machine. “Ever consider that?”

  “Actually, I had an offer once from a group that wanted to turn it into a hotel. They promised to name it Buckley Inn, after me, if I agreed to sell. Offered me over a million to move.”

  “Dollars?” Seth said, almost choking on his bread.

  “And that was a couple of years ago,” he replied. “Probably worth even more now.”

  “Why didn’t you take it?”

  “And go where? Real estate is crazy down here. Besides, after all the work and money I’d put into this place, I didn’t see any point in selling. I’d like to get a few years out of it, anyway. Enjoy all the improvements for a while before I put it on the market. But it costs a bundle to keep up. That’s why I went back into medicine.”

  Truman walked us around the four buildings on his lot, which was larger than it had initially appeared. The garden behind the main house stretched to what once had been the house next door and was now part of Truman’s property, and which he rented out. In addition, there was a two-room guest cottage—currently Benny’s residence.

  “And this is the dispensary. I opened it about five years ago when I became interested in the whole supplement field.” Truman unlocked the blue door of what had once been a garage and pushed it open. “I’d been reading about ancient healing arts and I thought those early doctors and healers and medicine men might have been onto something. After all, medicine didn’t just sprout full-grown in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

  His dispensary was a combination doctor’s office and herbal pharmacy. In addition to multiple cupboards, their glass doors revealing shelves stacked high with plastic bottles, there was a lineup of window boxes set beneath pink fluorescent bulbs and containing an array of homegrown herbs. Tubular skylights, ten inches in diameter, let in abundant natural light, and there were several long vines and trees in two corners. I wasn’t sure if they were meant to be decorative, or were medicinal plants as well.

  “You never learned about this in medical school,” Seth said, eyeing the rows of bottles with a scowl.

  “Yes, and it’s a shame that conventional medical education in this country is so ignorant about complementary medicine.”

  “Seems to me that a conventional medical education stood you in good stead for a lot of years,” Seth said.

  “But there was so much more to learn that we never touched upon, Seth. In Europe, doctors routinely prescribe herbs and minerals in place of artificially manufactured pharmaceuticals.”

  “Might be. But you can’t tell me their patients get better treatment than they do here.”

  “Well, I tend to disagree with that—”

  “Uh, Truman,” I interrupted, trying to head off an argument. “Yesterday yo
u said DeWitt Wainscott was one of your patients.”

  “What? Oh, yes, Jessica. He is.”

  “I’m going to see him today. Shall I send him your regards?”

  “By all means.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what did you treat him for?” I heard Seth harrumph behind me.

  “I don’t mind,” Truman said. “He came to me complaining of fatigue. He said he knew he was overweight, said he thought if he took off a few pounds, the fatigue might abate. I complimented him on his insight—it’s not everyone who realizes the link between weight and fatigue.”

  There was more coughing and throat clearing from Seth. I knew he was likely to be horrified at the breach of patient confidentiality I so blatantly requested and Truman so blithely provided. I would have been understanding had Truman declined to answer my question. But since he hadn’t, I persevered.

  “And were you able to help him?” I asked.

  “Of course. I suggested a strict fat-free diet, and gave him some E-z-waytoff tablets to help him get started.”

  “Never heard of that drug,” Seth said, his curiosity as well as his temper piqued. “What is it?”

  “A popular brand of diet pill.”

  “What’s the active ingredient? Don’t tell me. I already know. Ephedra, right?” Seth was working himself up.

  Truman nodded.

  “Don’t you know people have died from that?” Seth said.

  “You’re thinking of those athletes a while back. You can’t control people who abuse dosage or take medications without consulting a physician. But for someone under medical care, ephedra can be safe and effective. I took a very detailed history of Wainscott, stressed that if he had ever had a stroke or a heart condition, this was not the drug for him. He assured me he was in perfect health except for the paunch. I gave him a limited supply and was very specific about when to take them and for how long, told him all the potential side effects. He seems to be doing well. When I called him to see if he could help arrange our tee time, he told me he’s taken off several pounds following my recommendations.” Truman tucked his hands in his shorts pockets and rocked back on the heels of his sandals, certain he’d satisfied Seth’s objections.