LITMIR.BIZ

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Her look conveyed this wasn’t a good idea and she wouldn’t have left Jane there if Paul hadn’t insisted. Regina handed over a brochure and a business card.

      “Who comes to the dining room?” Jane asked. “Every unit you showed me had a huge kitchen.”

      Regina laughed. “People think they’ll use those kitchens, but they never do. The single people like to have company for meals, and the married women. . . they’re just so thrilled not to have to come up with something for dinner for the millionth night of their lives. Everybody basically eats all their meals here at the clubhouse.”

      On some silent cue, a sound like a stampede of sensible shoes filled the hallway behind the door.

      “Gotta run!” Regina sprinted out the door that led to the golf course at the same moment a man dressed in white unlocked the main door and the hordes descended.

      * * *

      The dining hall was in chaos. All Walden Spring arrived at once, some aided by canes and some by walkers or wheelchairs. The first group through the main door was a gaggle of deeply tanned, hard-haired women. It looked as if they had looted a Lilly Pulitzer resort wear store and then dressed in everything they’d stolen. The similarity of cut and color in their clothes gave the effect of a uniform.

      At the same moment, three golf carts pulled up to the outside door. The men in the carts jumped out and entered the cafeteria, mixing with the Lilly Pulitzer group, plaid pants clashing with the signature bright pinks and greens of the Pulitzer dresses. Somehow, they all ended up at the front of the line, and the other residents queued behind them. The artists whom Jane had seen earlier came in chattering with the dancers in their neon spandex. The leather jacket crew followed on their heels.

      Jane stood for a few moments taking it all in, then dumped the brochure Regina had given her in the trash and got into the endless line.

      By the time she had lunch on her tray, everyone was seated. Jane stood in the center of the room, considering what to do. She could sit at a table by herself, but that wouldn’t help her find whatever it was Paul Peavey wanted her to discover. She was looking around when someone called “Yoo-hoo!” over the din. The lavender-ringleted woman from the art room. “Jane! Come sit with us,” she called.

      Evangeline Murray, that’s who the striking woman was. She and Irma Brittleson were great friends, and Jane had met Evangeline a few times in casual gatherings at Irma’s house. She must have been the person Irma was visiting when she’d recommended Jane to Paul Peavey.

      Jane made her way to the pushed-together tables in the corner of the cafeteria, where the be-smocked artists and the spandex-covered dancers were eating and laughing.

      “Are you considering Walden Spring?” Evangeline asked after Jane sat and introductions had been made.

      “I’m thinking about it,” Jane answered. “Do you like it here?”

      “Love it. Best thing I ever did.”

      “Was it hard giving up your home?” Jane’s question was genuine.

      “Horrible,” Evangeline answered. “I sorted and cried, cried and sorted. I cried an ocean of tears and threw out a boatload of stuff. Worst pain I ever went through. But now it’s gone, and I’ve never felt lighter. I have as much room as I need. I have great company, and I’m busy every day. I don’t have to mow grass or shovel snow or clean gutters. And I don’t have to worry about dropping dead somewhere and leaving my poor heirs to make head or tail of all that stuff.”

      “It’s the home equivalent of wearing clean underwear in case you wind up in the ER,” Jane said. “Your underdrawers and your desk drawers are clean in case of the unexpected.”

      “I couldn’t have put it better myself. You’ll love it here, too. I can tell.”

      “Just remember to keep your head down and stay out of the crossfire,” interjected a tall, skinny man wearing a black beret, black pants, a black polo shirt, and a black blazer. He sat next to Evangeline.

      “Keep my head down? What crossfire?”

      “Ignore Maurice. He always looks at the dark side,” Evangeline responded.

      “I do not!” Maurice was indignant. “I’m just saying.” He was craggy-faced, with large features—large, brown, expressive eyes; prominent nose; large mouth.

      “Who are they?” Jane nodded at the couple holding court at the center of the Lilly Pulitzer/plaid pants table. He was a bantam rooster of a man with a thick crop of dark hair. Jane had noticed him in the cafeteria line. He was short but moved like a much larger man with his chest puffed out and a bit of a swagger. The luxuriant hair must have been an asset when he was young, and now worked even more magic, surrounded as he was by the follicly challenged. She was petite and very tan. Her face was wrinkle-free and frozen, as if she were already embalmed. Her hair didn’t move when her head did. In fact, it didn’t move at all.

      Evangeline rolled her eyes. “Bill Finnerty and Doris Milner. Doris is a widow. Bill’s wife’s over in the long-term care facility.”

      “Alzheimer’s,” the pretty dancer sitting across from Jane whispered.

      “I hear she’s fakin’ it just to get a break from being married to that jerk,” Maurice added.

      “Maurice!” Evangeline colored. “What an awful thing to say.”

      “How sad for Mr. Finnerty,” Jane said.

      “Sad for us,” Maurice corrected. “He takes his aggression out on innocent golfers and anyone else who disturbs his sensibilities.”

      Jane looked around the dining hall and suddenly was overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu. The golf jocks sitting with the expensively dressed popular girls. The leather-jacketed bad boys with the greased-back hair. The tables full of couples. The lonely people sitting by themselves, staring at their trays. The dancers and the artists in the corner, Jane sitting among them. She had thought her corporate experience was what she brought to this assignment. But now it was obvious. Walden Spring was high school.

      “Who disturbs Bill’s sensibilities?” Jane asked.

      “Like Mike Witkowski over there.” Maurice gestured to the man in black who’d been smoking in the billiard room. He held court at the leather jacket table and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. “Bill hates Mike. And vice versa. So Bill rules the golf course and Mike runs the game room. Nobody can use either area unless they’re in the right crowd.”

      “That’s why I took up dancercise,” one of the men at the table said. “I haven’t been able to get a tee time all summer.”

      “None of us go in the game room. There are some great exercise games on those video players in there, and I’d love to use them, but that’s Mike’s territory,” the pretty woman who’d led the dance class added.

      “And Doris thinks someone died and made her Queen of Walden Spring,” Evangeline huffed.

      “They’re all making our lives miserable,” Maurice said.

      At that moment, Mike Witkowski stood and bussed his tray, walking close, very close, behind where Bill and Doris were seated. Mike’s tray tilted, ever so slightly, a devilish glint in his eye. A glass tipped to its side and rolled, sprinkling liquid on Bill’s beautiful head of hair.

      Bill jumped up and grabbed Mike by the T-shirt. Mike’s tray clattered to the floor. The next minute Bill and Mike were rolling on the ground. The other plaid-pants guys rushed toward them, while the leather-jackets stood on the perimeter, lobbing dessert items into the melee.

      “FOOD fight!” someone yelled.

      “Oh, Lord.” Maurice sighed. “Here we go again.”

      Outside, another golf cart pulled up, and four burley men in groundskeepers’ uniforms jumped out and ran toward the fight. Everyone else headed for the exits as fast as they could go, which in

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