Dying to Retire

by Jessica Fletcher

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “I said he gave her to me on my first anniversary of being off drugs.” She busied herself with the dishes in the sink, obviously worried about my reaction.

  Mort had come into the kitchen and left a stack of plates on the island. I picked them up and brought them to the sink. “That was quite an accomplishment,” I said, “and worthy of such a precious gift.”

  She smiled, relieved. “She was really mine anyway. I rescued her from the pound. But Truman wouldn’t let me keep her.”

  “No?”

  “He took her away and said he’d give her back when I was clean. Harriet will go with anyone. She’s very friendly.”

  As if she knew she was the topic of conversation, Harriet pranced into the kitchen, her claws tapping the floor. Tail wagging, she gave a sharp bark.

  “You ate enough, you little devil,” Sunshine said fondly. She filled a plastic cup with water and put it on the floor near the door. “Truman told me I had to take care of myself before I could take care of another living thing.”

  “That was good advice, don’t you think?”

  She nodded. “Having a dog is a little like having a baby. You know, you have to feed them and clean up after them. That was part of our agreement. Harriet’s not allowed to mess the yard.”

  “Owning an animal is a great responsibility. They rely on you for everything, but it’s worth it, don’t you think? They also give you a lot of love.”

  “Do you have a dog?”

  “No,” I said. “I travel a lot. It wouldn’t be fair to have an animal if I couldn’t be home to care for it. But I do love dogs—and cats.”

  “You can borrow Harriet, if you like. She loves everybody.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” I bent to scratch Harriet’s neck and pet her head.

  Mort brought in the serving dishes, and with Sunshine’s direction we packed up the leftovers and put them in Truman’s refrigerator.

  I retrieved a handful of silverware from the island and handed it to her. “I think we might want to do these by hand,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “Truman throws everything in the dishwasher. He says if he has to take special care of it, he won’t use it.”

  A phone rang, and Sunshine picked up the one on the wall. “Healthy Stuff,” she said. “May I help you?” She clapped her free hand over her ear to hear better as Seth and Truman came into the kitchen, followed by Maureen and Benny with the last of the dishes.

  “Anyone for coffee?” Seth asked.

  “I’ll put up a pot,” Truman said, pulling the coffeemaker forward on the counter. “You guys did enough.” He looked from Sunshine to Mort to me. “I’ll take over from here.”

  “Do you have any decent decaf?” Seth asked.

  “Are you going to criticize my coffee, too, Boomer?”

  “Benny, get the pie out of the fridge, please,” Maureen said. “I’ll put out the plates.”

  The party had moved to the kitchen, as it always seems to manage to do in my home.

  I cocked my head at Mort and we slipped out the back door into the garden. I didn’t want to talk about yesterday in front of Sunshine, although I suspected Truman might have told her what happened, at least what he thought might have happened.

  It was hot, but the trees shielded the yard from the intensity of the rays. I walked to the little patio where I’d first seen Sunshine napping in the hammock and took one of the wrought-iron chairs. Mort sat in another.

  “It’s so pleasant here,” I said, tilting my head back to look up into the canopy of leaves.

  “Yeah, but I miss being home. I think we’re going to start back up in a day or two.”

  “Why don’t you turn in your car and drive back up with us? We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Yeah? I’ll check with Maureen. I like that idea.” He looked at me closely. “How are you really feeling? Are you up to a long car ride?”

  “I’m a little sore,” I said, “but I don’t feel nearly as bad as I would have expected after being hit by that cart.”

  “You weren’t hit by the cart. Or if you were, it just knocked you to the side. When I found you on the floor, it looked like you’d fallen between the studs and tumbled over a pile of two-by-fours.”

  “You mean I tripped?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure, but you weren’t in the hallway; you were one room over.”

  “And the cart?”

  “I had to duck out of the way when it rolled past the stairwell. Those things are so wobbly, they’re always dangerous, especially if the weight of the load is uneven. It hit some bump and spilled its trash all over the floor. Made a heck of a racket.”

  “How did you know where to find me in the first place?”

  “You left me a clue.”

  “I did?”

  “I saw your hat lying on the ground inside the fence, and figured you must’ve gone into the building.”

  “And I had. Why don’t I remember what happened?” I said, shaking my head.

  “You got knocked on your noggin, that’s why. You gave me quite a scare.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the building?”

  “No. Was someone else there?”

  “I thought so.”

  “I didn’t see or hear anyone until I yelled for assistance. Then some guy shouted up to me from the first floor and I told him to call for help.”

  “And you didn’t see who it was?”

  “Nope. He was just a voice. I wasn’t surprised. I figured the loud crash made when the cart tipped over might bring someone in to investigate. What’s going on, Mrs. F?”

  “I had a long talk with Gabby yesterday morning.”

  “The guy Truman buys his fish from?”

  “Yes. He used to work for Wainscott, but left when another man was killed on the job.”

  “Construction can be very dangerous.”

  “Yes, it can. But in this case Gabby thought the man’s death was no accident. He had been complaining about shoddy materials being used in Wainscott’s building. I just find it interesting that two people who objected to what Wainscott was doing both end up dead.”

  “But what’s this guy you were chasing yesterday got to do with it?”

  “Mark Rosner? I can’t figure out his part in this. Back in Foreverglades, he gave me the impression that he was opposed to Wainscott Towers. That would put him on Portia’s side.”

  “If someone did kill Mrs. Shelby, it might have nothing to do with the development, Mrs. F. After all, whoever did it would have to be pretty close to her to put something in her pillbox without her knowing.”

  “I know. I may be following the wrong scent.”

  “What about her husband? He could’ve done it.”

  “I haven’t forgotten about Clarence.”

  “And that chatterbox who joined us for breakfast the other day said a lot of women in Foreverglades had their eyes on him. Maybe one of them wanted Mrs. Shelby out of the way.”

  “You see the problem? I’m no closer to finding the murderer than I was in Foreverglades. And there’s another strange thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When I was in Wainscott’s office, I saw a framed photograph of Wainscott and the governor, and in the crowd in the background was a man I could swear was Tony Colombo.”

  “The guy Sam has been following?”

  “Yes.” I looked at Mort. “What do you make of that?”

  Mort stood and stretched. “No idea. We can ask when we get back, but there’s nothing you can do about it here,” he said. “Let’s go in. They must have dessert and coffee on the table by now.”

  “What are we having?” I asked.

  “It’s going to be great. Maureen and I found this neat little place in town. They make the only original, authentic key lime pie in all the Keys.”

  I’d started to stand, but fell back in chair.

  “What are you laughing at?” he said.
/>   Later that day, after Mort and Maureen had left, Sunshine and Truman had reopened the dispensary, and Seth and Benny had gone off to see the Spanish doubloons at Mel Fisher’s Treasure Exhibit, I climbed the steps to my bedroom intending to rest. The events of the day before had taken more out of me than I’d first thought. Maureen had left my shoulder bag on the bed along with a plastic sack containing my canvas cap, a bit ragged for having spent some time in the mud at the Wainscott construction site. The bag, too, had a long scrape on one side and a small tear on the strap where it had been hooked by the nail. Since it was the only pocketbook I’d brought, it would have to do till I got home to Cabot Cove, unless Truman had shoe polish I could use to cover the scratch in the leather—an unlikely expectation.

  I put the bag and hat aside, and pulled down the coverlet on the bed. A piece of paper I hadn’t seen earlier fluttered to the floor. I picked it up and tried to decipher Truman’s handwriting, feeling sorry for the pharmacists who must have struggled to read his prescriptions for so many years. I finally discerned that Sam Lewis had called, but the message was illegible. At least the numbers were fairly clear. I sat at the desk and dialed the Lewises’ apartment in Foreverglades. How had Sam known where to find me?

  There was no one home to answer, and after four rings a machine picked up. I left a message that we’d be returning to Foreverglades tomorrow and I would call again when we got back. Then, achy and weary, I slid under the covers and was immediately asleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We pulled into Foreverglades the following afternoon. The midweek traffic flowing north from Key West had been blessedly light along the way. Oddly, although we were still in Florida, in the tropics and close to the water, there was a difference in the air when we crossed the Jewfish Creek drawbridge from Key Largo. The island ambiance, with its water borders, was gone, the fresh marine breeze missing. We were back on the mainland. The air was heavier, hotter, and more humid.

  Seth pulled in front of the Foreverglades rec hall and sat in the idling car with Mort, while Maureen and I went upstairs to get the keys for our apartments. I’d called ahead and left a message on Mark Rosner’s answering machine that we’d need a place for the Metzgers, who planned to stay a few extra days before continuing north to Miami, and from there home. I had no illusions that I’d find him at his desk. But if I had, there wouldn’t have been time for that earnest chat that I was determined to have with him.

  The rooms on the second floor, so busy at my last visit, were quiet, the library empty, the art studios dark.

  “I wonder where everyone is,” Maureen said.

  “Perhaps there’s some event we don’t know about,” I said.

  “It’s a little eerie with no one around.”

  “I was surprised when I saw the tennis courts empty,” I said. “I’d gotten the impression the residents battle for court time.”

  “I hope everything’s all right.”

  “I’m sure it is,” I said, not sure at all.

  Rosner’s office door was locked, but a manila envelope taped to it said, Mrs. Fletcher. Inside were keys to the three units, their numbers printed on tags dangling from the key rings.

  We rejoined Seth and drove to the building we’d occupied the previous week, across the courtyard from Clarence’s unit, and dragged our luggage upstairs. Once in my room, I unpacked swiftly and placed a call to the Lewises. If something was going on, Sam and Minnie would certainly know about it. They weren’t home. I left a message that we had returned, hung up, and tried Helen’s beauty parlor. The number was busy. After several fruitless attempts to get through—if Amelia was on the phone, it might be a long time until the line was free—I gave up and called Seth.

  “I’m going to take a walk into town,” I said. “Would you like to join me?”

  “Can you wait fifteen minutes? I was just about to call Truman to let him know we arrived, and to thank him for his hospitality.”

  Seth and Truman had made peace with each other on the golf course, and had agreed to steer away from discussions about medicine, despite the fact that both were doctors. Fortunately they’d found an abundance of topics on which they were not in conflict, and their friendship seemed to have been not only sustained, but also deepened. I’d even seen Seth leafing through one of Truman’s complementary medicine journals.

  While waiting for Seth to meet me, I used the time to check with my agent in New York, Matt Miller, about an upcoming publicity tour. My latest novel had made the Barnes & Noble top-fifty list, and Matt thought a round of radio and TV interviews would help boost it into the top ten. I promised to call again when I was back in Cabot Cove.

  Restless and impatient to walk into town to find out what was going on, I went downstairs to the courtyard, sat on a bench, and rummaged through my shoulder bag, taking inventory. I needed to buy a new flashlight since leaving mine behind in Wainscott’s unfinished building, and a new sun hat would come in handy, now that my canvas cap would have to be relegated to the pile of fishing hats I kept in a bin in my kitchen back home. I’d tried to wash it, but the water had left an ugly stain on the peak.

  I pulled my new sunglasses from their case and put them on as Seth finally came through the door, and we started down the hill.

  “What do you think is going on?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I have a feeling it has something to do with Wainscott.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “When we were in Key West, I heard him on the telephone threatening to close the beach and fill it with alligators to get rid of the demonstrators.”

  “Nice fellow.”

  “Not even close.”

  As we approached the intersection, we saw groups of three, four, and five people walking toward the beach. Many of them carried signs, although I couldn’t read them from my vantage point. Cars lined both sides of the road coming into the village from Foreverglades, and all the way up the hill as far as the chapel and Weinstein’s Pharmacy. It reminded me of the Fourth of July at home when everyone in town congregates at the beach for the annual fireworks display. There was an atmosphere of excitement.

  “Do I hear singing?” Seth asked.

  “It sounds like the civil rights anthem, ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ”

  “What do you think they mean?”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  Seth and I walked faster, following the crowd walking down the unpaved road leading to the shore.

  “This looks like a senior citizen convention,” he said.

  It was true. Every person we saw was over sixtyfive. There were a few people in wheelchairs, some others with walkers or canes, but the majority were able-bodied, in robust health, tanned from the Florida sun. But all showed the years in their features if not their gaits.

  As we got closer to the beach, we heard loud voices, including one blaring through what sounded like a bullhorn. We passed police cars, four of them, pulled over on an angle, as if the drivers didn’t have time to park properly before leaping from their vehicles.

  We trooped down the sidewalk and rounded a curve that led down into the gravel parking lot to the right of the beach and in front of the small dock. From our perspective, which was slightly higher than the parking lot, we could see that the beach had been blocked off with a hastily constructed fence about ten feet high, on which a huge sign had been posted, reading, PRIVATE PROPERTY, KEEP OUT. It was now evident why hundreds of people had assembled. They were protesting the closure of the beach.

  Wainscott had posted three security guards in front of the fence. They were big men with sullen faces. Their presence, I was sure, discouraged anyone who might have had the urge to rush the fence and topple it. The wooden stockade didn’t look particularly sturdy, anchored as it was in the sand.

  Standing to the side of the guards and looking distinctly uncomfortable were the Simmons twins in their orange caps and matching suspenders, their arms around each other’s shoulders, looking like Twe
edledum and Tweedledee. As employees of Foreverglades, I imagine they’d been expected to side with Wainscott or lose their jobs. But the brothers were not happy facing off against the residents they usually served, and who were much more a part of their lives than the callous developer.

  Uniformed policemen stood off to the side, monitoring the situation but not interfering.

  In the thick of the crowd in the parking lot was Sam’s pink Cadillac with the top down. Sam stood on the backseat, a bullhorn in his hands.

  “Where’d he get hold of one of those?” Seth muttered.

  “Leave it to Sam,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it belongs to the Dade County Police Department.”

  We headed for Sam’s car. He spotted us, waved, brought the bullhorn to his mouth again, and shouted into it: “Two, four, six, eight, who don’t we appreciate? Wainscott! Wainscott!”

  A group of seniors gathered near his car and, carrying crudely made signs, picked up his chant. “Two, four, six, eight . . .”

  I suppressed a smile. It was like a high school pep rally, except that the “cheerleaders” were in their seventies and eighties, the men’s bald heads glistening in the sun, the women’s carefully coiffed gray and blue hair waving in the stiff breeze off the water.

  “What brought this on?” Seth shouted up at Sam.

  “What?” he yelled.

  “This rally,” I said in as loud a voice as I could muster. “What triggered it?”

  “Oh.” Sam leaned over, picked up a sheet of paper from the seat, climbed out of the car, and handed it to me. “What do you think of this?”

  It was a letter from a law firm, addressed to Residents of Foreverglades.

  This is to advise you that effective this date, your access to the beach heretofore open and available to residents of Foreverglades through the generosity of the owner of said beach, Mr. DeWitt Wainscott and Wainscott Associates, Inc., will no longer be accessible to you, pursuant to applicable laws of the State of Florida and Dade County. Trespassing on private property is a criminal offense, and anyone failing to heed this warning shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.