Dying to Retire

Table of Contents

 

 

The sun’s rays were blinding even with the protection of my new sunglasses, and I shaded my eyes with my hand, peering out at Foreverglades, visible beyond the expanse of tall grasses and tangled vines. A movement in the undergrowth next to the boardwalk caught my eye. I looked down. Two yellow eyes with black vertical pupils stared back at me. The head of the creature was huge, its broad, flat snout rounded at the end, its eyes twin bulges in the bumpy black hide. For a few seconds, we stared at each other, both frozen at the unsuspected intrusion into a private moment. Then it opened its jaws and hissed.

I glanced around quickly to see if a baby alligator was nearby, but from the size of the creature in front of me, I was guessing that this was no mother, but a bull alligator, and one that was close to twelve feet long. I shivered, my breath coming in short spurts. So I wasn’t between a mother and a calf, but I was between the alligator and the water.

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eISBN : 978-1-101-01068-6

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Warm, humid air washed over me as I stepped from the airplane onto the steel steps leading to the tarmac. I squinted against the glare of the sun and shifted my coat to my left arm. I knew I should have bought new sunglasses. My old pair had broken when Seth Hazlitt had sat on them. It wasn’t his fault. I’d come in the door and carelessly flung my coat on the chair to answer a ringing telephone. Later, when I went to hang the coat in the closet, I didn’t see that the glasses had slipped out of my pocket. The armchair is Seth’s favorite, and when he sat down after dinner—I’d baked a lobster casserole—we heard the snap of the plastic. He was up like a shot, but it was too late. One earpiece had broken off and both lenses were cracked. I’d told him it was no matter at all, and it wasn’t. But I’d been remiss in not replacing them, and now here I was, my hand shading my eyes from the intense Florida sun.

“Would you like me to hold that coat for you, Mrs. F?”

“No, thanks, Mort,” I said. “I can manage.” The stairs had been sitting in the sun and the handrail was hot. I used the sleeve of my coat as a pot holder, stepped quickly down the portable staircase, and waited for the others at the bottom.

There were four of us who had come to Florida to attend the funeral of a former neighbor. Traveling with me were my dear friends Dr. Seth Hazlitt and Mort and Maureen Metzger. Mort is our sheriff back in Cabot Cove, Maine, and the funeral coincided with the week he and his wife had planned for vacation. “We’ll pay our respects to Portia, and then me and the missus will go on down to Key West.”

We’d been lucky to get a flight—this was Presidents’ Day weekend—and the airport in Miami was so busy, there hadn’t been a jetway available for our plane. Instead, the pilot had pulled the 767 to a stop away from the traffic of the terminal and we were instructed to deplane and climb aboard one of the fleet of buses waiting to take passengers to a doorway near the baggage area.

I unbuttoned the tweed jacket of my suit. It had been fourteen degrees and snowing when we’d left Boston’s Logan International Airport. Most of the people boarding the flight carried winter coats, scarves, and gloves, there being little room in their suitcases to accommodate the heavy winter clothing. I would be happy to put away mine as soon as we arrived at Portia’s condominium complex, where several unoccupied units would serve as accommodations for our stay, a suggestion from Portia’s neighbor Helen Davison that had proved a good one. She’d given me the telephone number of Mark Rosner, the manager, who’d assured me that the apartments were nicer and more convenient than the local hotels, and besides, the hotels were all full. We’d agreed on a rate, and Mr. Rosner had arranged for a car from the airport and three furnished apartments in the same building, across the courtyard from the one Portia had shared with her husband of two years, Clarence Shelby.

“I’m surprised they had any units available,” Maureen had commented when I’d called with the news. “Mort and I had to make our reservations for Key West a year in advance.”

“Perhaps this part of Florida isn’t as popular as the Keys,” I’d said.

“Portia said it was beautiful, although she did complain about the bugs. Poor thing. She finally finds a nice guy and settles down, and then her heart gives out. There’s just no justice.”

“I wish she’d had a longer time to enjoy her life there, too,” I said. “The warm weather was much better for her arthritis. In her last e-mail, she told me that instead of being locked in her house for weeks during the winter in Cabot Cove, she was out strolling along the boardwalk every day. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?”

We filed into the air-conditioned baggage area and followed our fellow passengers to the carousel that had been designated for our flight.

“Any chance you can join us for a few days in Key West, Mrs. F?” Mort asked.

“We’ll have to see,” I said. “If Portia’s husband needs a hand packing up her things, I’d like to offer to help.”

“What about you, Doc?”

“I might, I might. Got a colleague of mine from medical school lives there. Been invitin’ me for years. Could practice up on my golfin’.”

“How’s that going, Doc?”

Seth shook his head. “Wasn’t too good, last summah. But I still have hopes to improve, that is if Dr. Jenny’s still willin’ ta see my patients in my absence.”

After years of resisting anything close to retirement, Seth had taken a young physician into his practice. Dr. Jennifer Countryman—Dr. Jenny, as she soon was dubbed—was perfectly suited to Cabot Cove. Her parents lived nearby. She’d already had her fill of big-city hospital work. And she loved the mix of medical cases a small-town practice provided, everything from a child with a splinter to an old man with senility, and all life’s myriad woes and wonders between.

“I’m sure Dr. Jenny will manage just fine,” I said. “She’s always encouraging you to get out more.”

“She’s always harping on me to exercise, you mean.” He frowned. “Don’t think I don’t know she’s pulled you into this campaign.”

“Oh, look,” Maureen said, pointing to sign that read JESSICA FLETCHER PARTY. “That must be our ride.”