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Chapter One
Helen Rogers stood on the small balcony of her condo and smiled. Yes, leaving her high pressure job as an insurance investigator in Atlanta to come to Peachtree Valley was a good idea. Though not that far from Atlanta, it was, in many respects, a world away. She looked down at Sherlock, her three-year-old Corgi, and knew he must be happier being with her all the time instead of doggie daycare. He eased over, closer to her as if he read her thoughts. Sometimes she was almost convinced he could.
“Look out there, Sherlock. Birds, squirrels, a little pond with real fish. It’s so quiet, but I can hear it whispering to us, Come closer, we have stories to tell.”
The doorbell interrupted her thoughts. “Ah, Sherlock, it’s Carol. I don’t think she’ll be thrilled that we will soon be involved in a case—and a murder case at that. She’s already complaining that one case from last year has turned into a business.”
Carol Adams stood at the door holding flowers and the newspaper. “These were in front of your door.”
Helen reached for the flowers. “Oh, is there a card?”
Carol followed Helen into the apartment, stopping to give Sherlock a pat. “Well, is there a card?”
Helen, knowing it must be a little thank-you from Donna, shook her head. “Not that I can see. A mystery. That reminds me, I accepted a case today from Donna.”
“Donna as in our friend here, Donna Delco? What could she possibly need help with?”
“Read it for yourself. I found this note under my door when I came back from walking Sherlock.”
Carol took the note and shrugged. “So, she thinks her husband is cheating. Not much of a case. And seriously, Helen, this amateur detective stuff could backfire. It’s not a safe line of work.”
“Let me remind you that it was you who got us into this line of work—such as it is, my friend. I was helping you out with your house and pet sitting, and you sent me down to the wine cellar. I found the body, helped solve the crime, and now everyone thinks I am a detective.”
“Really, Helen, this rebuttal is wearing thin. You’re turning what was a horrible and disturbing event into a business!”
Helen hid a smile as she reread the note from Donna. “Well, hardly a business. I don’t have a PI license, yet anyway, and all we’ve done so far is follow a couple of suspected cheating spouses and found a couple of missing relatives. It’s not like I go out looking for trouble.”
“No, it finds you well enough.”
“Oh, come on, this is just a quick job, an easy one, for our mutual friend and neighbor, Donna,” Helen said, patting the note in her pocket.
“So, yes, at the risk of revisiting your favorite tale, it was my fault you were in that wine cellar. I did get you involved, but I didn’t mean for it to become a second career option—for either of us. Why do you want to continue to be involved in all this cloak and dagger stuff? You are supposed to be traveling, pursuing new interests.”
Helen shook her head and laughed at Carol’s serious face. “I would have thought you would have liked catching a cheating husband, considering…”
“Yeah, yeah, considering I had one. But what is it really, Helen? Are you bored?”
Helen walked over to the window and didn’t reply for a full minute. “It’s more than that. I miss being needed, being good at something, and doing something that engages all of me. Catching a cheating husband will at least keep me occupied while I figure out what I really want to do. It’s hardly great detecting that is required here. We just follow Ralph and confirm that he is cheating on Donna.”
Carol looked at Helen and raised her eyebrows. “Oh, maybe you retired too early and you miss your insurance investigator job more than you thought you would, but I think it is this … you like doing this, don’t you? Come on, be honest. Even these little jobs—you like it.”
“I guess I do, Carol. I do—heaven help me. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just bored, but I promised Donna I’d find out about Ralph, and I will, uh, we will. Further analysis of my motives can wait.”
“We will—I heard the we part, and I like how you automatically assume I will join you in all your craziness.”
Helen grinned and batted her eyelashes at Carol. “Oh, come on, you know you wouldn’t let me do this without you. Think of it this way—how bad would you feel if something happened to me, and you had not been there to help?”
Carol pursed her lips trying not to grin back at her. “Stop grining at me and batting your eyelashes, you look like an escapee from the funny farm. Okay, so you’re going to take this latest case,” she said, using air quotes, “and that’s not the end of all this, is it?”
“Oh, Carol, my dear friend, I would like to tell you that it was the end, but I can’t. Like I said, I don’t look for these things, they just find me.” Helen ran her hands through her new, shorter haircut. “Why not do it if we can help people? Seriously, if you’d give it a chance, I think you might see that you like it, too. And stop putting the word case in air quotes. It is a case if we are getting paid for it.”
Carol frowned and tucked her auburn hair behind her ears. “Speak for yourself; and you know as well as I do that Donna thinks Ralph is cheating if he even smiles at another woman of any age.”
Helen got up to go to her computer. “Yeah, that’s true, but she seems to have put more thought into this one. She’s got times and dates documented. If she wants to pay us, and she can well afford it, why not do it and set her mind at ease, or help her settle this once and for all? You know, Peachtree Valley, Georgia is turning out to be a hotbed of crime and passion.”
“I wouldn’t call one murder in the last year a hot bed of crime. If you hadn’t gotten involved in that one last year and solved the case, the residents here at Sunny Days wouldn’t be bothering you with all this.”
Helen sat down in front of her computer and entered Donna’s email address and then turned to look at her friend. “Yeah, I know, but I kinda like it. Miss Marple was cool. And there’s Columbo, so smart. Besides, if you hadn’t asked me to go down to the wine cellar that evening, it would be you who discovered the body.”
“Well, yeah, yeah, this again, and oh, wait, yet again. You are ripping that guilt trip to shreds, Helen. Okay, I give up. So, what do we do for Donna, exactly?”
“Operation Ralph-the-Cheater begins tomorrow morning at nine sharp. We will be in our car waiting to follow him when he comes down to the parking deck. I’m letting Donna know now.” Helen smiled at Carol and hit send on her e-mail to Donna. “Who would think that our little condo community could be so exciting?”
Carol rolled her eyes. “Exciting is not the word I’d use. Okay, so we are off again, me taking pictures and slinking about. Don’t forget to wear your wig. What is going on with your hair? It’s like a multicolored beacon, but I must say your new haircut is very becoming. With your delicate facial features and those big blue-green eyes of yours, it makes you look ten years younger.”
“Thanks, but back up a second, a beacon? It’s called watching my natural strawberry-blonde fading to white. I gave up the coloring fight some years ago. No more hair coloring. This new haircut is a little shorter than my usual, but Sherlock insists on a walk at seven in the morning and I was getting tired of hiding my messy hair—aka my beacon—under a baseball cap. Sherlock rules the roost when it comes to my schedule. This shorter cut is literally a run-the-brush-through-it-and-it-looks-fine situation. I’m out the door and looking great—well, if not great, I can pass for someone who has her act together most days.”
Carol looked down at the tricolored Corgi and smiled. “And speaking of color beacons, you spoil this dog, Helen. He is kinda cute though.”
Helen reached down to give Sherlock a pat on the head. “Cute, smart, and he can be a bossy one, but we usually come to an understanding. You should get a dog, Carol. They’re good company. And how much time do you spend on that mane of yours every morning?”
“I’d get a shorter haircut If I didn’t have this big Irish head and facial structure that goes with it, but no dog, thank you. Unfortunately, with a short haircut I would look like a big face with a wee bit of hair on top,” Carol retucked her hair behind her ears with a sigh. “Well, I’m off to the gym. I’ll see you in the morning for Operation Ralph-the-Cheater.”
“I was just teasing you. Your hair is lovely, and I wouldn’t call it a wee bit of hair. You have a ton of hair, and maybe I’m a little jealous. Now back to my original comment. If you had a dog, you’d not have to go to the gym. You’d get plenty of exercise from walking it.”
“Give it up, Helen.”
Helen shrugged and picked up Sherlock, giving him a cuddle. “Oh, I forgot to mention, that our mildly hunky friends, ex-detective David Gordan and current detective cousin, Sam McGee have now bought a boat in addition to that old gym downtown. They seem to believe it will eventually make them rich. We’re supposed to go see both soon, per the text I received from David last night. Did Sam already tell you?”
“Sam did mention they were off to see it again the other day. He’s been talking about going into partnership with David ever since David retired from the NYPD. I wondered if they would do it. It’s a lot of money. But on the upside for us, a boat ride around the lake sounds nice. I guess one retired ex-detective from New York City, and one soon to be retired detective from here in Peachtree Valley, deserve to have something to do that is not so stressful. But someone keeps dragging them back into that detective world, don’t they?”
“Don’t look at me. It’s their choice to help when I need it. I don’t twist their arms.”
Carol shook her head. “No, you just appeal to their vanity. A trick as old as we are, or maybe as old as time. You’re going to get Sam in trouble for helping you.”
“Men like to come to the rescue, you know that. I just let them think they are doing that when I need it. But they do have skills, and Sam has his contacts at the police department, so they’re not useless. He never does anything that would get him fired.”
“They are going to catch on to your methods one day, Helen.”
They walked to the front door, Sherlock pulling on the leash. “Oh, I’m sure they already did, but haven’t figured out how to turn me down yet. Have a good workout, Carol. Sherlock and I will take the stairs, part of our special exercise routine.”
After her walk with Sherlock, Helen stepped out onto her balcony again and looked at the little pond visible from her apartment inside the Sunny Days Village. Yes, Peachtree Valley was far from Atlanta’s traffic, and rushing around, and Helen preferred it that way. There was a huge lake in the distance, and she was just beginning to see its shimmer. Now, as the trees continued to drop their leaves, her view was changing. Autumn was her favorite time of the year. Though she appreciated that Georgia had mild winters, the summers could be long and uncomfortable. She could picture herself and Carol on David and Sam’s boat if she really tried.
Helen stroked Sherlock’s back as he too seemed to be appreciating the view. “The sun is setting, and we are youngish and beautiful, Sherlock. Well, we’re not too old and not too ugly.” Sherlock, who seemed to agree, stood beside her looking at the view, trying to spot the squirrel that appeared about this time every day. But soon, bored with looking at the sunset and watching for the squirrel, Sherlock strolled over to the balcony door, his signal that he had reached his comfort level for balcony nature-watching and was tired from his walk. He was ready to move on to something else, like a comfy pillow for a nap.
“Back to business then, boss,” Helen said as they returned inside. “Okay, Sherlock, let’s go inventory my closet to see what I may need to buy for autumn.” Soon, bored with her closet job, she made her way to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Ignoring the cookies, her thoughts turned to the job of following Ralph for Donna, and she found herself hoping he wasn’t cheating.
Helen stirred a bit of artificial sweetener in her tea and opened her laptop. Instead of more daydreaming about new clothes or a fall trip, she kept seeing her name and Carol’s on a door followed by PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS. Though she didn’t go in for that whole power of manifestation thinking, as she called it, believing it pure hokum, that door was becoming more real every day. She wasn’t quite ready to share that daydream with Carol or anyone else just yet. It was all still a bit of a nebulous concept.
Putting her daydreams aside, she made herself a bit of dinner and focused on her job for the following day, finding out if Ralph Delco was cheating on Donna should prove to be quick and easy. After clearing up in the kitchen, she got out her brown wig, big sunglasses, and her navy-blue jogging outfit, her disguise of choice. Since Ralph knew her, and since her strawberry blonde-white hair stood out, as Carol so kindly put it, the wig was necessary. Sherlock barked at her every time she wore it, but she thought she looked rather good in it.
Unlike Sherlock, Carol approved of her outfit and wig as they plotted their stakeout over breakfast the next morning. “Okay, let’s get going,” Helen looked at her watch. “He keeps a tight schedule according to Donna.”
They made their way to the elevators that would take them to the underground parking garage, but Helen stopped at the elevator and turned to Carol. “Hey, can you pick me up out front? I’d like to go talk to Teddy for a minute.”
Carol shook her head. “You are out of luck. Teddy is still on vacation. I think he is back tomorrow.”
Helen looked at her watch. “Oh, I got my days mixed up. Just as well, it’s getting late, and I guess we’d better get to the car.”
“Ah, you miss Ted, how sweet. He’d be excited to hear that.”
“Carol, don’t you dare tell him that, but yes, I do kind of miss seeing him. I’m sure he is off on some exciting trip in some unique spot. There will be pictures.”
“Well, at least some of us know how to enjoy retirement.” Carol punched the down elevator button.
“Oh, come on. How many retirees can say they spent their morning on a stakeout?”
“Not many, and yeah, there’s a reason for that!”
“You know you love our little adventures, Carol. Don’t deny it.”
Carol rolled her eyes and followed Helen to her car. “And before you ask, yes, I brought my real camera with a zoom lens.”
“Excellent. First rule of stakeout, make sure your observation equipment is appropriate. We don’t know how far we will have to be from our target. As a side note, if you don’t stop rolling your eyes at me, they are going to stick that way.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s hard to think of Ralph as a target.”
Helen hit the button to unlock the car doors. “Oh, I think I heard the elevator bell, get in the car.”
Carol got into the car and began to rummage around in her oversized bag. She put the camera beside her on the seat and began her search for mints. “Well, false alarm, no Ralph. But here we are as promised, sitting in the car in the Sunny Days’ parking deck waiting on fellow resident, Ralph Delco to appear. My exciting life just gets better and better.”
Helen sighed. “Patience, patience. Geez, you’re not fun on a stakeout, are you? Listen for that elevator bell.”
Carol popped a mint into her mouth. “I never claimed to be a fan of stakeouts, you know. It’s past nine, where is the cheater?”
At six minutes past nine, Ralph appeared, fancy cane and all, dressed in tan slacks and a bright blue polo shirt. His designer sunglasses sat on top of his shining bald head like high-beam headlights. He got into his silver Mercedes and headed for the garage gate. Helen eased her car out behind him. There was little traffic, and his silver Mercedes was easy to spot.
Helen smiled at Carol. “Relax, this is going to be a piece of cake!”
End of Excerpt
