Flirting with Murder

Chapter 1

I saw my first dead body when I was nine years old.

Dead-ish. Somewhat lifeless. Lightly deceased. He was doing his best, but it’s hard to fake being a corpse. The breathing is a dead giveaway.

No pun intended.

That day’s victim was Mr. Gutierrez, one of my grandmother’s neighbors.

“What do you notice, Virginia?” Grandma Lainey asked me as we surveyed the scene.

My heart pounded with the pure adrenaline of performance anxiety. “The desk drawers are open. Somebody was looking for something.”

“Excellent. What else?”

“His hands.”

“What about them?”

After a few more blinks, I puzzled out what had caught my eye.

“The pen is in his right hand, but it looks weird. How he’s holding it.

And he has ink blotches on his other hand.

” Lessons in penmanship were fresh in my mind that summer, thanks to a third-grade teacher who still believed in the power of cursive.

“Good girl. You’re a natural!” She stroked the back of my head. “Murder is in your blood. You get that from me.”

I should clarify that my grandmother is not a serial killer.

First off, she would never stoop so low.

Serial killers are a total cop-out. Who did it?

The person who does all the murders. Surprise!

Not a lot to sink your teeth into, storywise.

A satisfying mystery needs twists and turns, complicated backstory, psychological insights.

The other thing to note is that death is what Grandma Lainey and her friends do for a living.

Or rather did, before they hit retirement age.

It was a whole production, with lights and sets and sound effects, musical interludes, and a buffet dinner.

They’ve kept it going as a hobby, which means most of the bodies scattered around their Florida condo are only pretending to be less than alive.

Did you catch the subtle emphasis on “most”? If so, you’re quicker on the uptake than some people I could mention. (Cough, Felix, cough.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As my grandmother always says, you can’t just plunge a trick knife into someone’s side and hope the blood bag spurts on cue. It would be like dropping a chandelier on stage before the curtain opens. You have to set the scene first.

Here’s a little foreshadowing: This summer, there will be a lot of death at Grandma Lainey’s condo.

One I already know about.

Others will be more theatrical, with costumes and props.

And finally—emphasis on final, as in resting place—there’s a murder brewing behind the scenes, like a tropical storm gathering force, systems of pressure building … or however that works. I’m not a meteorologist.

What I do know are crime scenes, usually of the make-believe variety.

But at some point very soon, yours truly will stumble upon her first real corpse—the kind that stays dead.