Free Dying to Retire by Jessica Fletcher Page A

me—I strolled down the hill, intending to stop by Clarence’s apartment to talk with him. My visit was postponed, however, when I saw Sam getting into his pink Cadillac. He was wearing a black shirt, a cowboy hat, and silver reflective glasses, along with his usual khaki shorts and purple sneakers.
    “Hi, Sam,” I said when I came abreast of the car. “Where are you off to today?”
    “Shhh,” he replied, frowning. “How’d you know it was me?”
    “Oh, wasn’t I supposed to recognize you?”
    “I’m working undercover today,” he said, settling the hat low over his brow and checking himself in the rearview mirror. “Surveillance.”
    “Don’t you think the pink car is a bit of a giveaway?”
    “Nah. Lots of people in Miami have pink cars.”
    I didn’t say that Foreverglades was a far cry, not to mention a far piece, from Miami, and that his giant Cadillac stood out like an elephant on a fishing boat.
    “Wanna come along?” he asked.
    “Where to?”
    “Can’t tell you here. Someone might be listening.”
    I looked up and down the block. “We’re alone, Sam. I don’t see anyone nearby.”
    “They’ve got spies everywhere. There could be a camera on us right now, plus one of them loudspeaker telephones.”
    “Do you mean microphones?”
    “Yeah. Those. Well, get in if you’re coming. I know you mystery writers like to hang out with the cops and see how it’s done.”
    “I can’t resist an offer as good as that, now, can I?” I said, walking around to the passenger door.
    “You gotta be discreet, though,” he said through the open window.
    “Scout’s honor,” I said, raising my right hand.

Chapter Seven
    Sam made a U-turn on the street and drove by the main shopping area of Foreverglades, screeching to a halt at every red light. We passed through the outskirts of the village till we reached another residential section where private homes, a mix of Spanish-style ranches and stucco bungalows, sat on small pieces of property. Anywhere else, it might have been an ordinary neighborhood. But the tall palms and lush tropical plantings gave the place an exotic quality to my eyes, accustomed to winter’s leafless trees and the gabled architecture of New England.
    “Is this still Foreverglades?” I asked.
    “No. This is Bayview Heights,” he said. “But it was built around the same time as Foreverglades.”
    Whoever named Bayview Heights was either overly optimistic, or had an ironic sense of humor. Most of the houses didn’t have a view of the bay, and the land was as flat as the pancakes in Mara’s Luncheonette back home.
    Sam found the address he was looking for, a single-story, pink-roofed house with a double-car garage that took up most of the front of the property. He checked his watch and then slowly drove around the block, stopping two houses down from his surveillance target.
    “It’s almost ten-thirty. Watch this,” he said. “You can set your clock by this guy.”
    “Who are we waiting for?” I asked.
    “Shhh.”
    Sam adjusted the cowboy hat. It was too large, and kept slipping down to rest on the frame of his sunglasses.
    I glanced at my watch. At precisely half after the hour, the double garage doors lifted up, and a black BMW backed out of the garage, down the driveway, and onto the street. I couldn’t see the driver through the tinted windows of the sedan, but I was sure he’d seen us. Since we were the only car parked on the street, it was hard to keep from noticing a vintage pink Cadillac with chrome trim, driven by a short man in a cowboy hat whose head barely made it over the top of the steering wheel. Not to mention the crazy lady from Maine who’d agreed to accompany him.
    The black sedan backed down the street until the car was parallel to ours. Then the passenger-side window rolled down, revealing the driver, a chubby man in his thirties with a prematurely receding hairline, wearing a short-sleeved tan shirt. He leaned across the seat and said,