Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 by Getting Old Is Murder Read Free Book Online Page A

apartment, cleaning up. The plate and fork were washed
and put away. The remains of the cake dropped into a plastic carry-away
bag. The note crushed and put in a pocket. The crumbs wiped off the
counter into the sink.
    Her body was dragged along the floor until she was
positioned lying near the phone. Her hand was placed as if she had been
reaching for it and failed. Her eyes looked into the eyes of her killer
and she realized begging was useless. What she saw reflected was a
coldness beyond compassion.

    F
rancie's last thought was that she would
never see
her children and grandchildren again. And that was
more unbearable than the pain.
----
12

    Getting Old Is Murder
    I t's Saturday morning. The day
is beautiful. Nothing is wrong, so why am I depressed? Must have been a
bad dream brought on by something I ate at the deli last night.
    I'm down at the mailbox as are a lot of my neighbors.
It's a favorite meeting place, located to the left of the parking lot
on the side of our building facing the elevator. Get the mail, see
what's new on the bulletin board, touch base with the people who are
about to get into their cars and out to do errands. And of course, take
a copy of our free newspaper from the newly arrived stacks.
    Everyone reads Evvie's review first.

    KNISHES OR KNOCKS
GOING TO THE MOVIES WITH EVVIE
BY
EVELYN MARKOWITZ

    Exclusive to:
    THE LANAI GARDENS FREE PRESS

    AFTER LIFE

    OK, so it's a Japanese movie and who knows from
Japanese? I love going to movies from other countries. You always see
how the other half lives. Especially the French, ooh la
la. My pet peeve against foreign movies is that they always put
the subtitles on white backgrounds. So it isn't bad enough you miss
most of what's going on in the movie while you're reading the long
titles, but your head keeps jumping around trying to find them through
all the white. Result: You haven't a clue what it was all about in the
first place and end up needing an Alka-Seltzer.
    When the video of this movie comes out, buy
one--you'll be able to throw out your sleeping pills. Such a sleeper!
    I liked the idea. When you die you come to this
place and remember your favorite memory and you take it with you
wherever it is you're going. But let me tell you, if where you're going
is as dark and depressing as the place you're in in this movie, you
shouldn't go anywhere with this crowd.
    All that agonizing for two hours, and what memories
do they come up with? Flying in a cloud. Reciting a really nothing
poem. Sitting on a bench. It's bad enough they have to eat all that raw
fish, do they have to live such boring lives? They should make the
director fall on a sword like they do in those other movies.
    Now if my heroine, Barbra Streisand, was in this
movie, she would have made them use the fluorescent lights like we have
in the clubhouse so you wouldn't go blind trying to see what's on the
screen. And she would have come up with a great memory, like finding
this gorgeous hunk, James Brolin, for a husband after all those movies
never getting the guy, and always being left alone, sad, but brave. And
would that gorgeous Omar Sharif have been so bad? Too bad she couldn't
keep both of them.

    QUOTH THE MAVEN:
    Enough already. I give it 11/2 knishes. If this is
all we have to look forward to after life, then as Hy Binder, in our
phase, always says--I'm not going!
    The End

    Thank you, Evvie for another memorable movie
interpretation. I shake my head. Just what I needed--an article about
death in the mood I'm in.
    Evvie's timing is always perfect. The celebrated
editor-reporter-reviewer arrives downstairs for a round of kudos from
everybody. And as always, she graciously takes the applause as her due.
    "Loved it, just loved it," Mary Mueller gushes at her as
she and her husband, John, get into their Buick on their way to the
mall. John looks away, unable to face us these days because of what
Kronk wrote on their door.
    "Well, that's a movie we can miss, thanks for the
warning,"