TWO TO DIE FOR

by Allison Brennan

  “Nothing, Mrs. Riley. I assure you.”

  Flo eyed the croissant critically, then took a dainty bite. “Next time, Lois, we need to be here early so we don’t settle for leftovers.”

  “Thank you, Debra,” Lois said because Flo hadn’t. “Do you have Maxine’s overnight pass ready? I told the office she was coming in today.”

  “Yes, all the paperwork is in order, with her parking pass and a complimentary golf cart. We prefer only golf carts on our interior roads,” Debra explained to Max. “We have covered parking and you can retrieve your car at any time. We also provide a valet service at no charge to overnight guests, one of the services we also provide to our residents.”

  “Thank you,” Max said.

  She waited until Debra left. “Is she always so ... perky?”

  “Everyone is,” Flo muttered. “Enough to drive us all crazy. Maybe that’s what happened to Dotty and the others. They were driven to their graves by perky blondes with big boobs.”

  “Debra’s boobs are normal,” Lois said.

  “They’re perky. Just like her.”

  “Because they haven’t sagged yet.”

  “She probably had one of those boob jobs. Where they pop bags of silicon under the skin to make you look like a porn star.” Flo eyed Max’s breasts. “Are those natural? I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t appreciate what God gave them.”

  “Yes, they’re natural.” Max couldn’t believe she answered the question.

  Flo raised an eyebrow. “What size? Because they seem a bit too perky to be natural.”

  “That’s enough, Florence!” Lois said.

  Flo poked Max’s breasts and Lois slapped her hand. “I will cut you out of this if you don’t stop this nonsense right now.”

  “The perkiness comes with being twenty-eight,” Max said dryly.

  “Twenty-eight?” Flo shook her head. “You look older. Doesn’t she look older, Lois?”

  Now Lois eyed Max suspiciously. “You don’t look twenty-eight. Are you sure you’re only twenty-eight?”

  Max didn’t know whether to be insulted. “I’m quite certain.”

  They rose and helped themselves to the buffet. Max noted that the food was fresh and there were many healthy selections. And plenty of coffee, which Max needed. They sat back down and ate.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Max saw a gentleman approach. He, like Lois and Flo, was in his eighties. Maybe older.

  “Ladies,” he said with a big grin, flashing teeth so perfect they couldn’t possibly be natural.

  “Thomas, this is my granddaughter, Maxine,” Lois said. By her slightly regal tone, she didn’t care much for this man. She sounded more like Max’s real grandmother in that moment.

  He took Max’s hand and kissed it. “It’s my pleasure,” he said. She raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

  “Where are you from, Maxine?” he asked and sat without being invited.

  “Most recently, Los Angeles.”

  “Aw, the west coast. Lovely out there. I was stationed in San Diego back in the day.”

  “How long did you serve?”

  “Five years in the Navy. 1956 through 1961. Stayed west for a bit, but ended up coming back east to New York to work for my brother. Banking. Ever been to New York?”

  “Yes,” she said. Though she was working with a fake identity, it was always better to stick as close to the truth as possible. She’d been living in New York for the last nine years—at least, New York had been her home base. She spent so much time in different places working on cold cases that she doubted she had spent half of those nine years in the Big Apple.

  “Thomas, Maxine just arrived,” Lois said. “We’re catching up.”

  He didn’t pick up on the subtle hunt.

  “I love New York,” he said. “Miss it, except for the weather. I was born in Minnesota, my brother and I, and both of us couldn’t wait to get out of there. New York can be just as brutal, though. Retired down here, never looked back.”

  “Thomas, go away,” Flo said bluntly. “Lois and her granddaughter are having a private conversation about family matters.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” he said and stood with a smile. “I hope to see you around later, pretty lady.” He said his good-byes, and walked away grinning and chatting with everyone he passed.

  Flo rolled her eyes. “He’s a regular goodwill ambassador.”

  Lois sighed through pursed lips. “Thomas is a horn dog.”

  “A horn dog.” Max hadn’t heard that phrase ... ever. But she certainly knew what it meant.

  “Hits on everyone in a skirt. Biggest flirt at Del Sol. Probably needs two little blue pills just to get it up.”

  Max did not need that image in her head.

  Flo glanced over to where Thomas was talking to two men. He said something and everyone laughed. She whispered, “I heard Bobbie went to his place last week.”

  Lois shook her head. “She never had any sense, that woman.”

  “This isn’t helping,” Max said.

  “Actually,” Lois said, “Thomas was doing the horizontal shuffle with Dotty for a while.”

  Flo nodded in agreement.

  Max was never moving into a retirement community. Ever.

  Lois continued. “Before I moved here. She told me about it, I just didn’t put the information together until later, and then Dotty died.”

  “They were very secretive about it,” Flo said, “but we knew.”

  “Thomas doesn’t usually keep his sexual conquests a secret,” Lois said.

  “Or maybe he talks about it so much because he can’t perform. My ex-husband was like that. He was also named Tom. Should have been called Tom Cat. You’d have thought he laid every woman in Fort Myers the way he talked. But it only took one before I took him to the poorhouse.”

  “Your second husband wasn’t much better, Flo.”

  “My third was a good man.”

  Lois snorted. “He was gay.”

  “Was not!”

  “He cleaned and cooked and had soft hands.”

  “He was not gay. He was my only husband who liked to—”

  “Stop!” Max said. She cleared her throat. Thomas had left, so hopefully he hadn’t heard them talking about him. “Enough. Thomas Hart. He was involved with Dotty exactly when?”

  Lois thought. “Well ... let’s see. Dotty started talking to me about moving here two years ago, and she was sleeping with ...”

  “Earl.”

  “Right. That didn’t last long. She was celibate for a while, said there were no good ones left.”

  “That lasted what, three, four weeks?”

  “Six,” Lois said. “Then Thomas. Talk about a torrid affair.”

  “Johnny saw them making out in the pool house. That was the first time they broke up.”

  “I think he really loved her,” Lois said, her voice surprisingly thoughtful. “He came to her funeral and seemed ... sad. Maybe they were still involved. I’m not sure at this point.”

  “Did she have family?” Max asked. If she could access Dotty’s medical records, it would help. There may not have been an autopsy if she was under a doctor’s care or had a pre-existing condition. A basic autopsy was generally non-invasive and used to rule out external trauma. Any report should be public. However, if she was going to maintain her cover as Lois’s granddaughter, she couldn’t request it. She couldn’t be certain that the medical examiner was one hundred percent honest. She’d investigated one case early in her career where the M.E. was a drunk and took bribes to falsify death records.

  “No,” Lois said. “She’d been married only once, he died. No children. Dotty was an only child, and her husband’s family didn’t want anything to do with her after he passed. Never approved of her or some such nonsense. But back then, people weren’t very accepting of inter-racial marriages.”

  “My fourth husband was Cuban,” Flo said.

  Max had to ask. “How many times have you been married?”

&nb
sp; “Six. But I don’t really count the fifth husband. It lasted three months before he died. He lied to me. Told me he was 68. He was 78. I should have known when he couldn’t keep up with me.”

  “And you married again?” Why was she asking questions about this?

  “Oliver.” Flo sighed. “Best five years of my life.” She sounded like she meant it. “We saw the world. None of my other husbands took me anywhere, but Oliver was in remission for prostate cancer and said he’d always wanted to travel, but his first wife never did. Homebody. Good woman, he said, just never wanted to do anything, then she died quietly in her sleep. Quiet life, quiet death. I would have liked her, I think. Oliver and I went on a cruise to Alaska, a cruise to the Caribbean, spent three months in Europe, went to New Zealand. New Zealand! It was the most wonderful place I’d ever been. The cancer came back and he died like that,” she snapped her fingers, “but he told me I kept him alive five extra years. Then I moved here.”

  Six husbands. Max wasn’t even sure she wanted one. Who would have her? She was stubborn, opinionated, independent, and she wasn’t ready to change her life to accommodate the needs and whims of anyone else.

  Though Flo Riley certainly seemed stubborn and opinionated. Maybe there was hope for Max after all. Though she didn’t want to go through six husbands to find the one.

  “Lois, I’d like to talk to Thomas. Casually, not as a reporter. Where can we run into him today? Something that isn’t obvious.”

  “That’s easy. He golfs every damn day.”

  Max blinked. She had never once heard her grandmother swear. She didn’t expect it of a petite, educated woman in her eighties.

  She was going to have to adjust the way she viewed the world—and the people in it. They never ceased to surprise her.

  “And you golf?”

  “Bite your tongue, child. I detest the sport. Pace is like molasses. But he plays every morning, so he’ll be at the club house at one in the afternoon for lunch. After lunch he starts drinking.”

  “That’s probably why he can’t keep it up,” Flo said. “Alcohol adversely affects sexual performance. My second husband started drinking the minute he came home from work until he went to bed. How does that song go? Wham, bam, thank you ma’am? That was Theo.”

  Max felt like she was in the Twilight Zone. This conversation was out of control.

  She asked Lois, “Is it natural for you to be in the clubhouse? Or will people think it odd that you show up since you detest golf?”

  “I go in a couple times a week. The food is off the meal plan, but it’s so much better.”

  “I thought the buffet was good,” Max said. She’d eaten everything she’d served herself. The coffee was watery, but the food was fresh.

  “Breakfast always seems to be the best meal. Maybe because most old folks like the morning meal best, but I’ve never been much into breakfast. Now? I love waffles.” Lois sighed.

  “If I talk to Thomas, you can’t interfere, okay?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I just want to learn what he knows, particularly about his relationship with Dotty. I don’t want him to get nervous. I’m pretty good at getting people to talk to me, especially one-on-one.”

  Lois dismissed her concern. “Thomas is the biggest gossip at Del Sol. Well,” Lois said as she leaned forward and whispered, “Margery is worse. At least Thomas isn’t a mean person. Margery is downright juvenile.”

  Chapter Four

  Flo parted ways with them after breakfast. Lois took Max to the office where she picked up her visitor pass, then to her house which had a view of the lake. It had to be one of the more pricey lots in the community. Two bedrooms each with their own bathroom, and a small yard. For her two Maltese pups.

  After the initial bout of barking that small dogs often engaged in, they settled down and Max could focus on her work. Lois played solitaire—with real cards, not on a computer—at the dining table and let Max spread out on her desk, which was in a small, open den off the living room. Max had a few questions, Lois answered them, and didn’t ask any of her own. Max suspected her abrupt attitude at breakfast might have hurt Lois’s feelings, but Max had explicitly told Lois not to tell anyone who she was and why she was really here at Del Sol. The fewer people who were privy to Max being an investigative reporter, the better.

  Max tried to let the disclosure slide—there was nothing she could do about it now—but she hoped Lois and Flo and Beau all kept their mouths shut.

  Dotty Holcomb was Lois’s friend from before, as Lois said. Before retirement, before either of them lost their husbands. More than fifty years, according to Lois. Lois had retired from teaching when she was fifty, but Dotty had continued to run a restaurant that she and her husband opened after they married. The restaurant had been a favorite spot for Lois and her husband, and the four had become friends. After Dotty’s husband died, she was always invited to Lois’s for special occasions.

  Dotty, and others who bought into Del Sol during the initial special offering, had no house expenses. They paid the flat monthly fees which were standardized throughout the community and covered food, maintenance, electricity, cable, and the like. The fees weren’t unreasonable. Max made a list of services and realized that other than emergencies, health care costs, personal items, or vacations, the resident could live comfortably on what the fees covered. They certainly wouldn’t starve or be kicked out of their homes.

  Lois explained that she’d paid far more than Dotty to buy into the place, and her monthly fees were higher. She’d waited until her husband died before she bought in and got on the waiting list. Still, it had taken nearly a year before a spot was available. Del Sol had become the premiere place to retire.

  “Lois?” Max looked up from her laptop, “is there anyone who held a grudge against Dotty, or anyone else who had lower expenses for essentially the same services?”

  “The average age here is over seventy-five. People gripe about anything and everything.”

  “General griping is not restricted to the Silent Generation.”

  “Trust me, Maxine, there is nothing silent about my generation!”

  Max smiled and looked back at her notes.

  The community had been developed by Premiere, who outsourced the day-to-day management. The mission statement was to create a “healthy, vibrant community of senior citizens.” While the costs weren’t outrageously expensive, they weren’t cheap, either. Lois explained that some of the people who bought in couldn’t afford the monthly fees, but their children paid for them because, as Lois said, “Paying money makes these kids feel less guilty about not wanting to take care of their parents.”

  “What happens,” Max asked, “if someone can’t pay the fees?”

  “Doesn’t happen. Whoever is responsible has to sign an agreement. The company runs a financial and credit check on everyone before they are even put on the waiting list, then again before they sign the sales agreement. There were a lot of non-refundable fees before I even moved in, and a hefty deposit. Most of us here are wealthy. Dotty was different—the restaurant provided for her, but it didn’t give her a savings account. She bought into Del Sol by selling her house, then living in a tiny studio down the street from the restaurant for five years. But she didn’t mind—she was happy.”

  Lois didn’t sound happy.

  “Are you okay?” Max asked.

  “Sorry—yes, I’m fine. Dotty was truly one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. Never once did I hear her say a bad word about someone. Never. There were customers who were simply awful to her or her husband over the years, but she took everything in stride. She was thrilled when I finally moved in. It was revitalizing. Dotty was right—after Bob died, I started fading away. Moving here and having a community of people to talk to and play card games—I’m part of a bridge group now, haven’t been since Bob died—is wonderful. To lose Dotty … it was unexpected.”

  Max began to wonder—not for the first time—if Lois’s loss had manifested int
o this wild idea that Dotty had been murdered.

  Max had done extensive preliminary research. Dorothea “Dotty” Holcomb was a Cuban-American who had been raised in a Cuban neighborhood by an aunt after her parents died. It was a bit sketchy exactly what happened, but her father died in Cuba and her mother, who had brought Dotty to Florida when she was a child, had died a few years later. Her husband, Sam, had been upper middle class. They’d met in college and married as soon as they graduated.

  They’d owned a restaurant in Miami, a mom and pop, Cuban-infused American restaurant that catered both to locals because of the quality and tourists because of the location. Sam had been the chef, Dotty had been the business head. They’d done well, but never branched out. They owned their house for fifty years, a small post-WWII house in a neighborhood that had grown affluent around them.

  Max investigated both Sam and Dotty to find out if there was someone from Dotty’s past who might want her dead—either for an inheritance or revenge. There was nothing. Lois was right—everyone liked Dotty, and while Lois said that her husband’s family hadn’t been happy that Sam had married Dotty, they’d never made any public threats.

  Who would kill an eighty-two-year-old woman in a retirement community? It didn’t make any sense.

  A knock on the door had the two dogs barking. Lois rose from the table and told Misty and Skippy to calm down. The dogs ignored her, ran to the door, then ran in circles, wagging their little tails and yelping.

  Lois answered the door, pushing the dogs back with her foot. “Beau,” she said in an almost breathless tone that had Max rising from her chair and assessing the visitor.

  “I heard from half the community that your granddaughter was here.”

  “Come in,” she said with a smile. As Max watched, Lois straightened her spine and walked elegantly into the living room. The dogs jumped at Beau’s ankles. “Beau Pomeroy, this is Maxine. Maxine, Beau is a longtime resident of Del Sol and a dear friend to both Dotty and me.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Beau said and extended his hand. “I sincerely appreciate your attention in this matter.”