Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 (2 page)

1

Gladdy Gets Going

H
ello. Let me introduce
myself. I'm Gladdy Gold. Actually, Gladys. I'm a self-proclaimed P.I.
That's right, a private eye. Operating out of Fort Lauderdale. When did
I get into the P.I. biz? As we speak. My credentials? More than thirty
years of reading mysteries. Miss Marple and Miss Silver are my heroines.

In case you were expecting someone like what's-her-name
with her "A" is for this, "B" is for that--you know who I mean, working
her way all the way to Z--well, that's not me. I'll be lucky if I make
it to the end of this book. After all, I
am
seventy-five.

You think seventy-five is old? Maybe, if you're twenty,
it's ancient, but if you're fifty, it doesn't seem as old as it used
to. And if you're ninety, well, seventy-five seems like a kid. You
ought to see those spry ninety-year-old
alter kuckers
trying
to
hit on me for a date. When I look in the mirror, I don't see that
older, faded, wrinkled stranger who barely resembles someone I once
knew. I see a gangly, pretty, eager seventeen-year-old, marvelously
alert and alive with glistening brown hair and hazel eyes.

Did you know that when you get older, and the brain cells
start to turn on you, the nouns are the first to go?

For example, "what's-her-name" I just threw at you. I
meant Sue Grafton, and this time it only took about two minutes for my
brain synapses to make the connection and pull her name out of the
cobwebs of my mind. Sometimes it takes days. All the while, it was on
the tip of my tongue. My poor tongue must be exhausted from all the
information I keep stored there.

Hey, you young ones--laugh. Wait 'til you get to be my
age. Then the laugh will be on you. You'll ask the same questions we
all ask: Where did the years go? How did they go by so fast? And even
worse--where did all the money go?

Enough with all the philosophy. The question for now is
how did I get into this private-eye racket? Before I retired, I was a
librarian, so if you say this is a strange career move, I would
certainly agree.

I was minding my own business in Lanai Gardens, Phase
Two, building Q, apartment 317 on West Oakland Park Boulevard,
Lauderdale Lakes, when a few of my neighbors died suddenly. Considering
that the youngest of us is seventy-one and the oldest eighty-six, this
is not something unexpected. I mean,
everybody
is on the
checkout line. For example, we used to have five tables of canasta: now
we're down to one. The Men's Sports Club used to fill four cars on
Sunday for their trip out to Hialeah: now the only members left are
Irving Weiss and his pal, Sol, from Phase Three. Even the nags that
broke the guys' wallets have gone to thoroughbred heaven.

As I started to say--I was beginning to suspect foul play.

I am convinced that these deaths to which I am referring
are not natural. There is a killer stalking Lanai Gardens. Nobody
believes me, certainly not the police, but I intend to prove it. But
first you need to meet the rest of the gang.

2

Walking

I
t's seven
A.M.
on a beautiful, very typical Friday morning in paradise. As usual I
wake up a minute before the alarm goes off. I start my coffee perking--a
vice I will not give up. I take out my one slice of whole wheat bread,
pop it in the toaster. Get out my one teaspoon of sugar and my
one-percent low-fat milk and I am ready to "seize the day."

I allow myself twenty minutes to work on the unfinished
Sunday crossword that never leaves my kitchen table. I used to do the
puzzle, in ink, on the morning it arrived. Now, it can take as long as
a week to dredge up answers from my disobedient brain. Frustrating, but
you do not give up
anything
that affords you pleasure at this
time in life.

Lanai Gardens is situated in one of the many sprawling
apartment complexes in this part of southeast Florida. A lot of people
think of Fort Lauderdale as this ritzy community on the water, or the
place made famous by all those college kids who take their clothes off
on Spring Break--but that's not where we live.

Our condo isn't fancy, but it's pretty nice with its
peach stucco buildings (just beginning to peel), swaying palm trees
(look out for the falling coconuts), well-tended lawns (when the
gardener shows up), pools and Jacuzzis, shuffleboard courts, duck ponds
(watch your step!), and recreation rooms.

Now, into a pair of sweats, and I'm ready to begin the
morning workout, such as it is. It's eight
A.M.
and my fellow residents are coming to life.

We used to go to the air-conditioned malls for our
morning stroll, but not after reading those articles in the newspapers
about older women being killed. Now we've decided to exercise at home.
Exercise? Fast walking, slow walking, shuffling, barely moving at all;
whatever the body will endure.

I'm the first one out on the third-floor walkway to warm
up. And that's the signal for all the others to rush out.

My sister, Evvie Markowitz, is always the next one out.
While I am in the Q building (Q for Quinsana), she lives across the way
in apartment 215 in P building (P for Petunia. The builders were big on
flowers). She refers to herself as my kid sister. Seventy-three to my
seventy-five. We don't look anything like each other. I am taller. She
is heavier. (We're both shorter than we used to be.) Before we turned
gray, she was a redhead; I, a brunette. I was the scholarly one; she
the dynamic, dramatic one. I was the plain one; she was the beauty.
This dictum came down from our well-meaning but unsophisticated
immigrant mother who didn't understand what damage such labels could
cause. It set the course for both our lives. We never really became
friends until I moved down here.

Evvie starts her own warm-ups. She always says the same
thing every morning, calling out to me over the tops of the cars parked
between our buildings. "Glad, how did you sleep?"

"Pretty good," I call back.

"I only had to get up three times last night," she says.

"Don't complain. Five times for me!" This from Ida Franz,
our whirling dervish, who pops out of apartment 319 in my building and
fairly leaps into pace with me. Ida is seventy-one, with a body that's
compact and wiry. Her salt-and-pepper hair is always in a tight bun
which threatens to pull her face off her head. Her back is ramrod
straight, which Evvie says is so she won't drop the chip on each
shoulder. "And the last time was at three
A.M.
It didn't pay to go back to bed after that."

"So what did you do?" Evvie calls out from across the
way, knowing full well what Ida will say.

"I called my son in L.A. He's still up at midnight."

Evvie makes a familiar disgusted gesture, flapping her
arms. We are all used to Ida trying to make her children love her, a
lost cause. She's the one who calls them; they never call her. And
because her children make her crazy, Ida makes us crazy.

I hear what I hear every morning: Sophie, calling from
her kitchen window. "Yoo-hoo, I'm coming. I'm coming. Wait for me!"
Trust me. She'll be last one out.

Routine is very important to us. Ida, the perpetual wet
blanket, says it's because we're all in our second childhood. Except
for Sophie, who she insists never grew out of her first one.

Now the door to apartment 216 opens across the way in
Evvie's building. Bella Fox, who is eighty-three, gingerly steps out.

"Good morning," she whispers.

The girls call Bella "the shadow" because she's forever
trailing one step behind us. We are always afraid of losing her,
because she is so forgettable. She's tiny, not even five feet, and she
wears pale colors that add to her seeming invisibility. But I'm on to
Bella. She may seem shy, but in her own timid little way she's not
afraid to speak her piece. She says what she wants and she gets what
she wants. "Hi, gang! Your personal trainer is here! Everybody ready?"
This is from Francie Charles, calling up to us as she rounds the corner
from her building.

Her arrival is the signal for all of us to go downstairs
and meet on the ground floor. Then we walk together along a shady path
that winds around the building.

Francie, who will be seventy-eight tomorrow, was a real
beauty when she was young. Tall, elegant, and classy, a model in her
younger New York days, she is still beautiful. She's our real athlete,
the one who got us all started in this somewhat anemic form of
exercise. "Something is better than nothing," she is always telling us.
She is also our health nut, lecturing on the right way to eat, although
no one really can, or wants to, change the bad habits of a lifetime.
Francie's only weakness is advertised by her favorite sweatshirt,
"Death by Chocolate," given to her by her adoring grandchildren. She is
wearing it today.

"How is everyone?" she chirps. "Isn't it a glorious day?
Aren't we all glad to be alive!" As grumpy as Ida is, that's how
cheerful Francie is. The perpetual optimist. She makes every day a
gift. If it wasn't for Francie, I'd have left Florida years ago.

Bella begins taking slow, mincing steps--her version of
exercise--along the path, apologizing every time anyone passes her.

"Stop apologizing for living," Evvie is constantly
telling her. But Bella, who is fairly deaf, either doesn't hear or
chooses not to. We all love her, but she doesn't believe it.

We walk and talk. With plenty to say, as if we don't see
one another every single day and night. Not to mention phoning one
another a dozen or more times a day.

Our half-hour workout is just about over when Sophie
Meyerbeer, our roly-poly eighty-year-old, finally steps out of the
elevator, bandbox-perfect in her pink, color-coordinated, extra-tight
jogging ensemble. Pink sweats, pink sneakers with matching pom-poms,
and a pink flowered sun hat. I might mention that this month's hairdo
is also pink. Champagne Pink.

When she finally catches up to us, Ida mock-applauds her
arrival. "So happy you could make it, Princess."

Clueless, Sophie takes her sarcasm as a compliment. Being
incapable of spontaneity, Sophie has to get all dressed up, including
makeup (
fahputzed,
Evvie calls it), before she'll walk out her
door. Her third husband, Stanley, who made a fortune in notions and
novelties, spoiled her rotten. He babied her, never let her lift a
finger. Insisted she dress like a Kewpie doll for him. (Boy, did we
speculate on
their
sex life!) He left her well-off and
impossible.

"We're just about finished," says Ida, cooling down by
walking slower.

"Oh," Sophie says, pouting girlishly. "Well, I couldn't
help it. I didn't sleep a wink last night. I had such a terrible
nightmare."

Bella stops, glad for any excuse not to move. "Ooh, tell
us." She sits down on a bench, fanning herself.

Sophie shudders. "I dreamed I had a heart attack!"

Bella gasps, fluttering her hands nervously. "Oy . . .
just like Selma."

"Change the subject," Ida snaps. She is never comfortable
talking about death.

"No, it's my dream," Sophie insists.

"Just because Selma had a heart attack doesn't mean you
will," Francie says gently as she continues her stretches.

Evvie adds judgmentally, "Besides, she was overweight and
never exercised."

"Yeah," Ida adds with a satisfied smirk, "she and her pal
Tessie were both thrown out of Weight Watchers."

"Maybe something caused that heart attack," I say. "For
example, you know how Selma waxed those floors?"

"Yeah," Sophie chirps, "you coulda gone ice skating on
them."

"Maybe she slipped and fell. Or maybe something
frightened her . . ." I continue.

"She was so scared of spiders," Bella chimes in, happy to
be able to contribute. "Remember that time she fainted when a teensie
one crawled on her chair . . . ?"

Ida puts her hands on her hips defiantly and glares at
me. "So? Dead is dead. What difference does it make?"

"The point is nobody bothered to investigate," I say.
"Nobody cared to find out what really happened. Maybe if she hadn't
been alone, maybe if Tessie hadn't had company that weekend, maybe she
wouldn't have died."

This gives everyone pause.

Ida's had enough, and starts for the elevator. "Well, I'm
going to get my bathing suit on."

"Good idea," I say, sorry I even brought it up. What's
the point in depressing them?

Francie puts a reassuring arm around me. "Hey, Ida called
it." Mimicking her: "Dead is dead." She giggles and I join in.

The group disbands, each to her own building, to get
ready for part two of the morning routine--the pool.