Retirement Plan

Synopsis

What do you do when you fall through the loopholes in the system and all you have to rely on are your own wits?

Lois and Sophie have scrambled and saved for years, planning for their retirement in Florida. But now they've lost it all, and Lois's sniper training from her long-ago service as an Army nurse leads to a desperate career choice.

When Detective Morgan Holiday is assigned to investigate a spate of sniper killings, it's just one more stress point in her already overburdened life. But as she grows increasingly solitary—coping with an Alzheimer’s-plagued mother who refuses to be confined to a nursing home, and a police partner counting the days to retirement—she comes to realize that these murders may cut close to home.

A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible.

Retirement Plan

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Retirement Plan

© 2011 By Martha Miller. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-519-2

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: May 2011

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editor: Shelley Thrasher

Production Design: Susan Ramundo

Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

By the Author

Skin to Skin: Erotic Lesbian Love Stories
Nine Nights on the Windy Tree
Dispatch to Death
Tales From The Levee
Retirement Plan: A Crime Novel

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the members of my writing groups and other local writers who supported me and suffered through several versions of this book. Thanks for not saying (even though some thought it) that the premise would never work.

Also thanks to my mom for reading to me when I was a little girl and for teaching me to love books, and to Jackie Jackson who taught me how to write my own books.

Special thanks to my BSB editor Shelley Thrasher who helped me finally get it right.

Dedication

In memory of Jean Hutchison and Carol Manley, voices silenced far too soon.

Chapter One

Detective Morgan Holiday believed that Satan, herself, invented blazers. She owned a dozen of them. Originally, she’d planned to have two for each season. As it turned out, her weight tended to go up and down depending on her case-clearance rate, and her clearance rate hadn’t been good lately, so she needed one for each season in three different sizes. At eight a.m., June 4, when the call came in, her slightly snug-in-the-shoulders black linen was hanging on the back of her chair. She was sipping strong coffee from the shop on the corner and chewing on a plain whole-grain bagel. Her partner, Henry Zimmerman, was in the building but not at his desk. He’d stopped pretending he was ready to work before ten o’clock a month ago when he announced that he was retiring soon.

The light on the phone flashed, and she hurriedly swallowed a partially chewed bit of bagel. “Homicide. Detective Holiday.”

The uniform on the other end identified himself, then dispensed with formality.  “We got somethin’ here that don’t look good.”

Holiday picked up a pen and took down the details. Then she grabbed her blazer and headed toward the break room to find Henry.

A few minutes later she was making a trip across town in the usual manner. She drove, Henry complained. She didn’t use the lights or siren; according to the uniform, the victim had been dead for a while. She crossed through downtown, fighting the tail end of morning traffic. Then she took a side street and drove through an established, high-end neighborhood. The houses, probably built in the 1940s or ’50s, were large two-story Cape Cods centered on half-acre lots where mature trees often hid them from view. She didn’t see the black-and-white on the first pass.

“I’m getting so I hate every call,” Henry said. “The excitement’s gone. This job feels like I’m thirty years into a bad marriage. I look at other guys my age. Nice cars.  Grandchildren…” Henry had three divorces behind him. Morgan had one.

“Christ, Henry,” Morgan said, “you’d complain if you were hung with a new rope.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Morgan shrugged. “Just something my ex-husband used to say. I think new ropes give a little. So if you’re hung with a new one, your toes might touch the ground.”

“Did he say that about you?” Henry asked. After a few seconds he added, “Did he think you complained a lot?”

Morgan glanced in Henry’s direction. He was surveying his side of the street although the even house number told them the address was on the driver’s side. All she could see was the back of his head. He’d had more hair when they first partnered up. She considered his question. Did she complain a lot? Not back then, she hadn’t. Her marriage had been a good one. Foolishly, she’d walked away from it because of her neighbor’s wife, which sounded like a goddamn cliché.

Henry turned toward her. His face was flushed and he sounded winded, though he hadn’t exerted himself. “Look, hon,” he said. (She hated it when he called her “hon” and he knew it.) “Old folks got a right to complain.”

Morgan spotted the black-and-white up near the house and swung the unmarked car onto the wide driveway. As they got out, a young uniform came around from the side yard.

“It’s in back.”

“You or anybody move anything?” He probably hadn’t, but it was important to ask.   

“No. Trash collectors called it in a little over an hour ago. They’re waiting for you back there.”

With long strides, she rounded the corner of the house and the crime-scene tape stopped her. She took everything in. A Ralph’s Garbage truck was parked, still idling, in the alley, which was easily 200 feet from the back of the house. Three men sat next to the garage on a wooden bench. The older one looked purposefully at his watch.

The body lay in the sun. Holiday and Zimmerman ducked under the yellow tape and carefully approached the patio.

“Blood spatter fifteen feet or so.” The uniform pointed at the back of the house.

Henry went toward it and he glanced back at the body. “Jeez. We got some brain matter here too.”

The late spring morning was heating up, and Morgan was starting to sweat beneath her blazer. She pulled it off and draped it over her left arm.

“You okay?” Henry asked. He did this at every grisly crime scene. Blood and brains had stopped bothering her a long time ago, but Henry had been with her on the first call. He’d held her head while she puked and never let her forget it.

“I’ll miss your coddling,” Morgan said. She turned to the uniform. “You canvassed the neighborhood yet?”

The uniform dug a notepad from his back pocket and studied it. “Neighbors to the east are gone. House on the other side, I asked a woman,” he checked his pad, “Leona Pratt, if she saw or heard anyone, and she said that last night during
Seinfeld,
she heard something that might have been a shot. She’d assumed it was her teenage son,” he checked his notes again, “Joby, upstairs with his TV too loud. She said this guy, Zach Ingram, lived alone. Wife and kids moved out over two years ago. Worked long hours and rarely had company.”

Morgan pulled out her notebook and wrote the victim’s name. “Did she say where he worked these long hours?”

“She wasn’t sure what he did, but it had something to do with nursing homes.”

“Anything else?”

“After eight when my backup got here. Aside from a maid in the house across the street, the rest of the houses were already empty. Everyone probably gone to work.”

“Did you talk to the kid?”

“What kid?”

“Teenager with the loud TV.”

The uniform shook his head. “Mrs. Pratt was alone. The kid had left for school already. She said he has a seven thirty calculus class.”

“Talk to her again. See what you can find out about this guy’s inner circle.”

“Right.” The uniform made some notes and walked away.

Moments later Morgan stood next to the body, staring down. Almost half the head was gone. The bloody wound, coagulated to black and crimson in spots, was alive with insects. Even the street gangs on the other end of town didn’t use weapons that would make this kind of mess. It had to have been an assault rifle or something military.           “This guy had his shoes blown off.” Henry pointed. “One over there beneath the picnic table. The other next to his left foot.”