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If you loved Paco and Molly in Locks and Cream Cheese, Hot Grudge Sunday, and Boston Scream Pie—You’re sure to love The Moaning Lisa even more. Their fourth thrilling murder mystery with a smidgen of humor. Paco and Molly have reached that certain age and have moved into Next to Heaven, an assisted living facility. If you think everything is just peaches and cream there, you are dead wrong. Fellow residents are going missing and no one seems to know what is happening to them. One of the residents is a sleepwalker and claims to have heard mysterious moaning during his night walking, but he can’t seem to remember where he heard them. The residents are getting nervous and want to know why this is happening. Even though he is retired head of the Black Rain Corners police force, Inspector Paco LeSoto is asked by a few residents to look into the matter. And naturally, Molly has her nose into the mystery as well.

ISBN 979-8-9863864-1-6 Magic Island Literary Works (Spring 2024)

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	Enjoy a sample chapter of The Moaning Lisa, A Paco and Molly Mystery

On this brisk February day, there should have been nothing scary about the weekly chore of grocery shopping. Ever since their marriage, Paco and Molly LeSoto had driven the twenty-five miles up to the city of Annapolis, Maryland, from their home in Black Rain Corners. They never expected this day at the supermarket to turn out any differently than the hundreds of past Thursday mornings-Seniors Day, when popular items were on sale to those sixty-five and over.

The parking lot at Marabel's Market was crowded, but they found a spot midrow not too far from the entrance. Molly left her two canes in the car and, instead, hooked her hand into the crook of Paco's strong left arm, content that he would keep her steady and upright until they got through the door. Inside, Molly wedged herself onto one of the store's electric scooters, Paco grabbed a grocery cart, and they headed into the produce department. He began to pick oranges from a bin and drop them in a plastic bag.

Molly shook her frizzled mass of gray curls. "No, not those squeezers. We get the peelers with the belly buttons." She picked one out of the adjacent bin to show him.

"Ah, of course, a navel orange," he acknowledged as his bushy brows shot up and down. "The fruit designed especially for me." His lips made a smacking sound.

She knew Paco liked to peel an orange and pull the sections apart before eating, and he did the same with his grapefruits.

Molly beamed. "I'll get some of those nice nextorines over there beside the peaches." She loved catering to her husband's ev-ery need, sometimes overdoing it, and Paco had to gently remind her to stop mothering him so much. After all, he'd lived alone for almost seven decades before he met her.

Maybe she enjoyed fussing over him because they married so late in life, a marriage she never saw coming. What had Molly seen in this five-foot-ten, 160-pound man in his late sixties with the bony-plain face? She liked the natty way he dressed, his expres-sive eyebrows. His cute tush, too. But especially the kindly way he talked and really listened to her.

And what did Detective Paco see in this five-foot-one older woman with glassy blue eyes, a face round as a full moon, and a beach ball body? Her sugar cookies. Yes, the warm bagful she hand-ed him on the day he came to Dr. Avi Kepple's house to investigate a suspicious death. From then on, Paco simply inhaled her gour-met cooking, respected her shrewd insights, and loved the way she talked-the sound-alike, humorous misuse of words that somehow had other meanings. These choice malaprops became known as Mollyprops among her family and friends. Nobody, not even Dr. Avi, knew whether they were intentional or not.

"Hey, Molly, don't forget Fumble and Bobble."

"I won't," she replied. "I got it right here on my list, a ten-pound bag of Kaytee Gourmet Macaw Food. It's got all the fruits and nuts and seeds they need."

Paco came to their marriage with his two trained macaws. He had bought them after he retired as a detective from the Baltimore Police Department in 1978. In Black Rain Corners, he served part-time on the two-man police force with the honorary title of Inspector. As a fervent Washington Redskins fan, Paco's hobby was teach-ing the birds football terms. If he happened to praise Molly effusively for one of her keen observations, Bobble would squawk "Touchdown!"

An hour later they exited the store with Paco pushing the cart down a line of parked cars and Molly following on a store scooter. As supermarket parking lots went, Marabel's was peculiar. Each row was separated by a long island of concrete and grass. Sudden-ly, Molly braked. "Paco, we're in the wrong row! There's our blue Shovelay in the next row, nosed into the curb." Her voice turned shrill. "You'll have to mosey 'round the corner to the next row to get to our car. You can't get across this island with that heavy cart so full of food and stuff."

"I sure can get over it," Paco retorted. "I'm not that old and weak, Mol."

She helplessly watched as Paco pushed the cart into a space until he bumped against the concrete barrier. Leaning down on the cart's handle with all his weight, he tilted the front wheels up onto the island. Next, he bent down, and, with a flushed face, lifted the cart's rear wheels up onto the island. Across the three feet of island grass, he lowered the front and rear wheels back down to the row next to their own car, using his weight to restrain the cart's mo-tion. With the cart safely in an empty stall next to their blue Chevy Malibu, Paco took a deep, painful breath. Both hands flew to his chest as he stood up. Slowly his legs gave way under him, and he sank down to the asphalt surface.

Meanwhile, Molly had scootered all the way around the island to safely reach their car. She let out a screech when she saw her hus-band lying on the ground in the empty stall beside their car. She wedged herself off the scooter, and knelt at her husband's side. He was writhing in pain.

"Another heart attack," he whispered. His eyelids fluttered. "My TracFone…Call an ambulance."

Molly unlocked and opened the car door. She saw the Motor-ola TracFone hooked on the dashboard. He'd used it for his occa-sional police work in Black Rain Corners. She unhooked it, turned it on, and called 9-1-1. "My husband is serially hurting. It's his ticker. He's already had two hearty attacks. Hurry please. We're at Marabel's Market, corner of Rowe Boulevard and Baylor Avenue."

She sat down on the asphalt pavement beside Paco and slid his head onto her lap while they waited for the ambulance. As she silently prayed, tears puddled on her cheeks. She tried to wipe at them with her chubby fingers. Meanwhile, onlookers began to gather around. One young man offered to put all her groceries in their car and she accepted. She fumbled around in Paco's left pants pocket for his car key, found it, and held it up. The nice man took it, unlocked the trunk, and handed the key back to her, then ef-ficiently loaded their groceries into the trunk.

"You're a goodly gentleman," she told him.

Molly heard the siren, getting louder as it approached-in just six minutes. The Emergency Medical Technicians did a quick ex-amination and transferred Paco to a gurney. To the EMTs' surprise, he sat up. "I'm okay," he mumbled. "Maybe I don't need to go to the hospital." His voice faded as he spoke. He fell back and lost consciousness.

The EMTs whisked him into the back of the ambulance, hooked up a saline solution IV, and sped off to the Anne Arundel Medical Centerl. Molly couldn't reach the high steps to get in the ambulance and ride along, so she drove to the hospital in their car, following along to the emergency room parking lot. Inside, she was relegated to a waiting room.

Paco woke up on an operating table and was informed that the cardiologists had managed to get his heart rhythm under control, but their attempt to insert a stent had failed. One artery had col-lapsed; another seemed to be taking over for it. He was out of dan-ger for the time being, but his doctors needed to know how suscep-tible he would be to future attacks. He agreed to an unusual test, where a chemically induced arrhythmia would determine whether his heart was underfunctioning in a manner known as ventricular tachycardia. The doctors ran the test and proved that, yes, his heart was actually underfunctioning. They applied an external electric defibrillator. It brought him out of that arrhythmia with such a painful shock that he felt-as he told Molly later-like he'd left the operating table by several inches. "You mean they practically murdered you on purpose?" she asked.

"Something like that," he replied from his hospital bed. "But I'm going to be okay. They tell me I'll be able to go home in three days. I have an appointment with an electrophysiologist next week."

"What's an electrosilliologist, anyway, hon?" asked Molly. "The way the doctor explained it to me, the cardiologist is the heart's plumber, while the electrophysiologist is the heart's electrician."

"Does the heart have a carpenter, too?" she asked.

"I don't believe it does, sweetie," he answered. "The doctors need to put my own personal defibrillator inside my chest. When my heart misbehaves, it'll shock me back to normal again." "That doesn't seem right-to punish a part of yourself like that." said Molly.

Paco was discharged from the hospital three days later with a regi-men of exercise, a heart-friendly diet, a pack of pills, and a raft of behavioral warnings. It took a few days before he felt like himself again. He kept his appointment with the electrophysiologist. Two weeks later, back in the hospital, that doctor performed outpatient surgery. With Paco under anesthesia, he implanted the prepro-grammed defibrillator in the left side of Paco's chest. The device was silver-gray titanium metal, two inches square and a half-inch thick, weighing about two and a half ounces, and containing a tiny lithium battery. Two electrical wires from the device were inserted directly into the ventrical portion of the heart.

While he lay in the hospital bed, Molly asked him, "What will it feel like if the device "gooses" you?"

Paco winced, remembering the shock with which the doctors had brought him back the first time. "I don't want to know," he muttered. He was sent home with instructions not to lift his arm over his shoulder for a month. Now Molly wasn't exactly the picture of health either. In 1997 she was diagnosed with type two diabetes. Her doctor explained. "In type two diabetes, the pancreas does not produce enough in-sulin. It's the hormone that regulates how sugar enters the cells to produce energy for the body." Molly half-listened. She already knew she was in big trouble. Her legs were continually swollen, her toes had a burning sensation, and her fingers were always cold. She could walk with two canes, but not far, and stand in place, but not for long.

It was all life-changing. She had to rely on her Rollator, a three-wheeled walker, to get around in and out of the house. She called it "Roly." Her gourmet meals were reduced to plain grub. No more of her rich sauces and cupcakes with buttercream frosting. And the dust bunnies propagated much faster than they used to. Around their charming Cape Cod cottage, it became a matter of who would be today's caregiver. The LeSotos loved where they lived and put off the inevitable, but a decision was slowly being forced upon them. The care they gave each other consumed most of the effort needed to take care of their home and grounds. In short, it wasn't long before they realized they had to make a choice: constant out-side help or new living accommodations.

Molly suddenly remembered a quote by her favorite movie actress, Bette Davis: "Getting old is not for sissies."

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