She loved Florida, and that surprised her. She loved the sun and the palm trees, the blue of the sky and the water. As she studied the view from her hotel suite—why not splurge?—and took pictures to send home, she imagined living there.

She might consider it, if it wasn’t for all the old people.

And Jews.

She’d consider it anyway.

In any case, she found it ridiculously simple to stalk Hilda and case the two-bedroom bungalow she lived in—on the same block as her daughter’s family.

Within three days, she concluded she had Hilda’s daily routine down pat. The old bat lived a simple life. She liked to garden, had several bird feeders she kept stocked, and rode a three-wheeled bike around the neighborhood like some wrinkled toddler.

On the fourth day, with ideas of tragic gardening or biking accidents in the hopper, Patricia cruised by as Hilda filled a bird feeder built to replicate a restaurant—complete with flower-boxed windows and a sign proclaiming FOOD FOR FEATHERS.

She pulled over, patted her short black wig, adjusted her amber-lensed sunglasses, then got out of the car.

“Excuse me? Ma’am?”

Hilda, spry and wiry in her floppy-brimmed hat, turned. “Can I help you?”

“I hope this isn’t too odd, but can you tell me where you got that adorable birdhouse? My mother would just love it.”

“Oh.” With a laugh, Hilda gestured Patricia closer. “Is she a bird lover?”

“Big-time. Gosh, it’s even cuter up close. Is it one of a kind?”

“It’s local work, but the shop that carries them has others like it. The Bird House.”

She proceeded to give Patricia detailed directions, which Patricia dutifully tapped into her phone. “This is great.”

“I think I saw you drive by yesterday.”

Patricia’s smile froze for a bare instant. “You probably did. My parents are just getting settled into a house a few blocks away. I’m running errands for them. They just couldn’t take the winters in Saint Paul anymore.”

“I hear that. I escaped the winters in Maine.”

“Then you’d know,” Patricia said with a laugh. “If I can find something like this, it would be a great housewarming gift for Mom.”

“My favorite is in the back, so I can see it from the kitchen window. It’s an English cottage.”

“You’re kidding me!” Inspired, Patricia lifted her hands. “My mother was raised in an English cottage in the Lake District. She moved to the States as a young teenager. An English cottage bird feeder—she’d just love that.”

“They can nest in it, too. Come on back, I’ll show you.”

“Oh, you’re so kind. If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Happy to.” As they walked, Hilda waved to a man who came out of the house next door. “Hi there, Pete.”

“Morning, Hilda. I’m heading out on a grocery run. You need anything?”

“I’m good, thanks. Your parents will love it here,” she added as they rounded the side of the house.

“I hope so. I’m going to miss them like crazy, but I hope so.”

Can’t kill her now, Patricia thought. Car’s out front, stupid neighbor. “Oh, what a beautiful lanai. I bet you can swim year-round.”

“And do,” Hilda confirmed. “Every morning before breakfast.”

Patricia smiled. “That’s why you’re in such wonderful shape.”

She oohed and aahed over the ridiculous bird feeder, complimented the garden, the lanai plants and pots, and thanked the soon-to-be dead woman profusely.

She didn’t follow the directions to the Bird House, but hit a Walmart for a toaster and an extension cord.

Promptly at seven-fifteen the next morning, Hilda walked out of the house, onto the lanai, shed a blue terry-cloth robe, and slipped into the pool in her simple chocolate-brown tank suit.

While she did her smooth, easy laps, Patricia stepped onto the lanai through its unlocked screen door, plugged the extension cord into the wall socket on the back of the house, and tossed the toaster into the pool.

She watched Hilda’s body flop as the water flashed. Watched it float, facedown, as she unplugged the cord, used the pool net to scoop out the toaster.

They’d figure it out—probably—but why give them any help? She stuck the murder weapons into her backpack and, dressed in her running capris, a tank, and a ball cap, jogged three blocks to her rental car.

She tossed the toaster in a Dumpster behind a restaurant, dumped the extension cord a couple miles away in the parking lot of a strip mall.

That done, she stuffed her auburn wig back in her pack, went back to her hotel to enjoy a hearty room-service breakfast of a spinach omelette, turkey bacon, berries, and fresh orange juice.

She wondered who’d find Hilda floating. Her daughter? One of the grandkids? Good neighbor Pete?

Maybe she’d keep an eye on the local papers.

But for the moment, she decided—without irony—to spend the rest of the day by the hotel pool.

*

Her grandparents failed to accommodate her by dying in their sleep. She settled for indulging herself with dreams of various methods of killing them. Actually killing them had to wait, but her father obliged her by getting hammered before getting behind the wheel of his Ford pickup.

He took a mother of two and her teenage son with him when he crossed the center line and plowed into their compact, but those were the breaks to Patricia’s mind.

Now she could cross another off her list.

She’d crossed Frederick Mosebly off the list on a balmy summer night—pre-Hilda—with an explosive device she’d stuck under the driver’s seat of his unlocked car.

That check mark especially pleased her as Mosebly had some minor local success with a self-published book he’d written about the DownEast Mall. And more, it was the first time she’d built a bomb.

She thought she had a knack for it.

She checked off her third for the year—had to spread them out awhile longer—by bumping into him in a crowded bar and jabbing him with a sy ringe of botulinum toxin. It seemed poetic as Dr. David Wu—who’d been having predinner drinks with his wife and another couple at the upscale restaurant and had been credited with having saved lives on that fateful night—was a cosmetic surgeon.

Patricia figured since he made a living (a rich one) injecting people with Botox, he could die being injected with the same basic substance.

She disposed of the syringe on the way home, and slipped quietly into the house.

For a moment, a sweet, sweet moment, she thought her prayers had been answered.

Her grandmother lay on the floor of the foyer. Moaning, so … still breathing, but that could be remedied.

On another moan, her grandmother turned her head. “Patti, Patti. (God, she hated that nickname.) Thank God. I—I fell. I hit my head. I think, oh, oh, I think I broke my hip.”

Could be finished, Patricia thought. She just had to put a hand over the old bitch’s mouth, pinch her nose closed, and—

“Agnes! I can’t find the remote! Where did you…”

Her grandfather shuffled out of the first-floor master suite, brow furrowed in annoyance over his bifocals.

He saw his wife, let out a cry, and Patricia acted fast.

“Oh my God, Gram!” She lunged forward, dropped to her knees, gripped her grandmother’s hand.

“I fell. I fell.”

“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.” She yanked her phone out of her purse, hit nine-one-one. “I need an ambulance!” She rattled off the address, careful to put a good shake into her voice. “My grandmother fell. Hurry, please hurry. Grandpa, get Gram a blanket. She’s shivering. Get the throw off the sofa. I think she’s in shock. Hold on, Gram. I’m right here.”

So the night wouldn’t be a lucky twofer, Patricia thought as she gently, so gently, stroked her grandmother’s cheek. But a broken hip (hopefully!) and an eighty-three-year-old woman had lots of potential.

Patricia hid her bitter disappointment when Agnes recovered. And she earned the admiration of the medical staff, the aides, and the neighbors with every performance of devoted caregiving.

She used the time to persuade her grandparents to not only give her power of attorney—the lawyers agreed—but to put her name on every account—checking, investments, the main residence, and the vacation home/investment property they owned on Cape May.

As she’d inherit her grandmother’s jewelry anyway, she took some pieces now and again and converted them into cash on drives to Augusta or Bangor—and once on a weekend holiday (at the urging of the doctors)—to Bar Harbor.

She converted some of the cash into good fake identification, and used that to open a small bank account—and to rent a safe-deposit box in a bank in Rochester, New Hampshire.

Between the jewelry, the regular skimming, the sale of the vacation home her grandparents were too stupid to know they signed off on, she had more than three million dollars in the box, along with four fake IDs, including passports and credit cards.

She kept a cool hundred thousand in cash with other essentials in a run-for-the-hills bag in the top of her closet, and had started a second bag.