THE GRANDMOTHER PLOT

Murder at a memory-care facility leads the drifting but doting grandson of a resident to poke around.

After his mother passed away, Freddy Bell moved to Connecticut to take care of his grandmother, Cordelia Chase. Technically, Middletown Memory Care is doing the heavy lifting, since Cordelia is best off being cared for by those who have the specialized training to do so. Freddy is perfectly happy with his regular visits, charming the otherwise unappreciated female caregivers. It’s hard to believe that this is the same Freddy who’s motivated the powerful drug dealer Doc to come all the way to Connecticut, or as Doc calls it, the land of trees, to get Freddy to do his bidding. Even though his main occupation is making glass pipes, Freddy doesn’t want to be a dealer. Besides, a little pot isn’t coke. But Freddy’s wrong when he thinks the biggest problem in his life is Doc’s demands, because the death of a longtime resident at the care center is way bigger. Sure, Freddy barely knew Maude Yardley, but when it turns out her death isn’t the progress of her disease but murder, Freddy’s afraid for his grandmother’s safety. What he should be afraid of, though, are the concerns of his sisters, whose overachieving lives mean they’re usually out of the picture but who are now threatening to descend on Freddy and get involved. To ensure his grandmother’s safety and his own, Freddy scrambles to figure out what happened to Maude while trying to stay under Doc’s all-seeing radar.

Difficult to dig into, but the characters are so richly detailed that they feel real.