On my first day, dear friends and I met for a tradition that’s lasted about twenty years. We had evening dirty martinis at the Bensen. 

I’m staying at my favorite hotel in the whole world, The Inn at Northrup Station. Did Fred Flintone and Salvadore Dali design it? It’s filled with 1950s colors. Ever hear of chartreuse? Ever hear of pink? There are odd, endearing objects that might have fallen out of a surreal painting. 

I spent early Sunday morning at the Portland Japanese Garden It’s quiet and  in full bloom. The iridescent Koi, goldfish to you, light up the stream. Some live to seventy years old.

From the serene and elegant we went to The Shape of Speed, the bustling and elegant car show at the Portland Art Museum. It features 19 vintage cars from the 1930s and 1940s. The red Chrysler Thunderbolt is mine.

Happy Hour is a Portland tradition. We met at Bartini, a gorgeous bar for nibbles and, you guessed it, dirty martinis. 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned a murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

Graphic Lessons: What do a teacher, a nine-year-old and an eighteen year old have in common? Murder. Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a  dying man in the school kitchen, deals with a troubled nine-year-old, the only witness to the stabbing and with the eighteen-year-old niece of the murdered man..

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Mary Jo Robertiello

http://www.nymysteries.com