The Dollar-a-Year Detective

Retired Chicago homicide detective Jack Starkey is living what he calls every cop's retirement dream by owning a successful bar, the Drunken Parrot, and residing on a houseboat in Fort Myers Beach on Florida's Southwest Gulf Coast. Mostly, it's been working out just fine. Starkey's drink of choice these days is diet root beer and not the hard stuff that ended his marriage and sent him into rehab. He's dating the lovely Marisa Fernandez, who owns a real estate agency and supplements his usual diet of Pop-Tarts and diner food with gourmet Cuban cooking. But long-term serenity has never been Jack Starkey's destiny. One evening, Starkey's pal Cubby Cullen, the Fort Myers Beach police chief, comes into the Drunken Parrot to ask a favor. The Coast Guard found a sailboat drifting in Pine Island Sound with two dead bodies aboard, a bank president and his wife, both shot once in the forehead execution style. Murders are rare in town; Cubby asks Jack, who has more homicide experience than any