The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford

for her business. But I still don't think it's just a coincidence that he moved in across from me."
    "It could be."
    "Not if you saw the house. The previous owner let it go to hell, and it's been vacant for more than a year. He's gonna have to spend a lot of dough just to get it back into livable shape."
    "He's -got- a lot of dough, Hoke. Look, I've got two guys waiting here to see me...."
    "Thanks, Blackie. I'll keep in touch."
    A few minutes later Gonzalez came into the office. He handed the garage opener to Hoke.
    "It opened the door okay," he said. "But when I pressed it again, and I was parked right there in front of the driveway, it wouldn't close again."
    "If it opened the door, it should've closed it."
    "What can I tell you?" Gonzalez shrugged.
    "Did anybody see you?"
    "Nobody was around. It's a quiet neighborhood. But I felt bad driving off leaving the door open. Somebody could conic along and steal the riding mower that's parked inside the garage."
    "That's Robbery's problem, not ours. Take the opener back down to Property, and turn it in. Bring back the receipt, and I'll put it in the file."
    Hoke hid his disappointment from Gonzalez. At least he had been half right.
    Until Ellita had phoned him, Hoke had forgotten all about the Donald Hutton case, but there were some interesting parallels between the Hutton case and the Dr. Russell case. When he had more time, maybe he would dig out the old Hutton file and compare the two to see if he could discover anything else that was similar. He needed a fresh idea. But that was the trouble with cold cases. They were cold because everything, or practically everything, had been checked out already before they were abandoned and filed away in pending. That's why they were called cold cases.
    Hoke decided to go out and eat lunch before Gonzalez came back from Property. He had to work with Gonzalez, but if he timed it right, he didn't have to eat with him.
    CHAPTER 5
    After lunch Hoke typed his notes about the opener, his speculations, and put them into the Russell file, together with the receipt Gonzalez brought back from Property. He slid the accordion file back into his pending drawer. He would let his subconscious mind work on the case for a couple of days before he took the file out and looked at it again.
    Hoke and Gonzalez sat across from each other at a glasscovered double desk in their small two-man cubicle. They shared a phone and a typewriter. A two-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock held the cases they were currently investigating. The other cold case they had been studying for the past week was equally baffling. Instead of two accidental deaths, or suicides, it had turned out to be two homicides, and there were no discernible leads.
    Miami has termites, just like every other city, but they breed quickly and eat a lot of wood in the subtropical climate. Once they are discovered in a house, a "tent job" is the only way to get rid of them. It isn't unusual for a homeowner, once termites have been discovered, to have a new tent job every two or three years. Termite swarms have an uncanny knack for finding their way back to an edible house, and exterminators in South Florida thrive on repeat business. The house is put under canvas, and the tenants must stay away for from thirty-six to seventy-two hours while the Vikane gas kills the termites and other insects inside the house. Food and other perishables are placed in plastic bags during the tenting, and homeowners either stay with friends or put up in a motel until it's safe to return home. Burglaries of tented houses occur frequently, and three or four times a year, and sometimes more often than that, dead burglars, overcome by the Vikane gas, are discovered together with the dead insects when the owners return home. Vikane is a powerful poison, and it kills people as easily as it does termites. Burglars who specialize in tent job invasions wear gas masks and get in and out quickly with their loot. But amateurs