Hope Callaghan - Garden Girls 06 - Magnolia Mansion Mysteries by Hope Callaghan

in the kitchen chair.  She wasn’t in the mood to cook.  She wasn’t in the mood for Dot’s, either.  She thought about her sister, Liz, whom she hadn’t seen her in quite some time.  She picked her cell phone off the table and dialed Liz’s number. 
    The phone rang and rang.  Gloria was almost ready to hang up when a breathless Liz answered.  “Hello?”
    “Hey Liz.  Everything okay?  You sound like you just ran around the block,” Gloria told her.
    “I wish that was all it was,” Liz moaned.  “Frances is driving me crazy.”  Frances was Liz’s closest friend. They both lived in Dreamwood Retirement Community in nearby Green Springs. 
    Jill had been trying to talk her mother into moving there for a couple years now.  Something that Gloria was bound and determined not to do. 
    There was way too much drama at that place.  Not only that, her sister, Liz, was almost always right in the thick of it!
    “What’s wrong with Frances?”  Hard telling with Frances.  She and Liz were a lot alike.  Maybe that was why they were so close.  From one drama queen to another…
    “Milt is missing,” Liz told her.
    Milt was Frances’s love interest.  Frances had been chasing poor Milt for years now.  He was one of only a handful of eligible bachelors that lived in Dreamwood.  He had at least a dozen women at any given time waiting on his beck and call.  “Maybe he ran off with one of his girlfriends.”
    “Yeah. We should be so lucky,” Liz muttered.  She changed the subject.  “So what’s new with you?”
    Gloria scratched a small speck off the kitchen counter with her fingernail.  She wiped it into the sink.  “I was trying to decide what to do for dinner and thought of you.  Are you free?”
    That seemed to cheer Liz up.  “Yeah!  I need something to take my mind off Milt,” she said wryly.
    Before she hung up, Gloria agreed to meet Liz at her apartment and then they would run over to the community cafeteria for dinner.  Gloria made a quick trip to the bathroom to freshen up before she grabbed her purse and car keys. 
    Mally pulled herself from her doggy bed.  She wagged her tail at Gloria, who paused for a fraction of a second.  The residents at Dreamwood loved Mally and were always so excited when Gloria brought her by.  “Okay, girl.  You can come too!” Mally darted to the door, a one-eyed teddy bear firmly clenched in her jaw. 
    Mally climbed in the passenger side, riding shotgun, which was her normal place in the car if Gloria didn’t have someone else tagging along.
    The evening air was warm.  Gloria rolled down the front windows to let the fresh air in.  Mally hung her head out the passenger door for most of the ride.
    Gloria grinned when she noticed her tongue hanging out of her mouth, a smile on her face.
    She pulled the car into a visitor parking spot, directly across from Liz’s shiny new four-door sedan.  The two of them climbed out of the car and headed to the slider out front. 
    Liz was waiting for them.  She flung the door open before she reached down and patted Mally’s head.  “Look who we have here – my favorite super dog!”
    She rubbed Mally’s ears.  “I have something for you,” she told her.  Ever since Mally had saved the girls’ lives up in the mountains, Mally held a special place in Liz’s heart. 
    She trotted off to the kitchen and came back moments later with a surprise, which Mally gratefully accepted. She licked Liz’s hand in a show of appreciation before grabbing the doggie treat in her mouth and wandering over to the corner to devour the tasty morsel. 
    Gloria watched the exchange.  “So what’s this about Milt being missing?”
    Liz looked up.  “He disappeared a couple days ago.  No one has seen hide nor hair of him.  Frances is freaking out.”
    The three of them stepped onto the sidewalk. Liz locked the door behind them. 
    It was a short walk to Dreamwood’s main restaurant, “Dreamwood Eats.”  There was