NOTE FROM HAL: This is the excerpt I read aloud at bookstores and other public appearances. It’s a slightly condensed version of how The Nest begins. My protagonists Herman and Teddie alternate the narration in first-person voices, which are in separate type fonts. For this excerpt, Herman is in plain text; Teddie is in boldface.

Chapter 0

Detective Larson led us into an interrogation room and switched on a video camera. We figured the district attorney was watching.

“Grand Lake City, Hall of Justice, August 26th, 2018. The subjects of this interview have been advised of their Miranda rights, and have an attorney present. Counselor, your clients are here because they are persons of interest in a murder investigation. Have you explained the risk they face? That what he or she says here may be used in evidence, should either or both of them be charged with murder.”

“I have made that clear, Detective.”

“Good. Now, the two of you—do you understand the risks, and consent to be interviewed?”

“I understand, and I consent.”

“I do, too.”

“All right. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

Chapter 1

I wrote this book to explain what happened to Teddie and me, and the trouble we got into last August. For almost two years, she and I had been renting a studio in an apartment house that (we came to feel) was the cause of it all.

Wait!

When Herman told me he was going to work everything into a book, my first reaction was to kick him in the shins.

I didn’t do that. But I did tell him he had to let me put something of my own in the book. I didn’t want it to be only what he saw, what he said, and what he said I said.

But I agree that, if you’re reading this, you need to know that our trouble began in the Falk Pond Apartments, and that we might not have put our lives at risk if we had rented anywhere else in town.

The Falk Pond Apartments is a pair of mirror-image two-story buildings in a rustic style, like a lodge in the mountains. Every apartment has a balcony facing a wide atrium between the buildings that’s open to the sky, with tall grasses, trees, ferns and flowers along both sides of an artificial “mountain stream.”

You’ll want to know what we look like, too.

Herman’s in good shape for a guy who’ll be sixty-seven next January. He’s clean-shaven, with a lantern jaw like a cartoon hero. True, his brown hair is more than half gray, and it’s gone from the top of his head. But he dresses well, and has very good diction. Also he’s terrific in bed. A perfect “fit,” if you know what I mean.

Teddie’s what novelists used to call “lithe,” except for those high-definition muscles in her arms and legs from playing tennis. Her face is round, her eyes green, her nose just a little bigger and her mouth just a little smaller than you’d expect a good-looking woman to have. But I like her looks. And she’s uninhibited, which adds to her sex appeal.

Nobody except Herman is likely to consider me sexy. I’m too flat and skinny to be mistaken for a porn star. No hairdresser has ever been able to tame the thatch on my head, though mine does keep turning the gray black, which helps me seem a few years less than (shhh!) sixty-three.

Our trouble started on August 23rd when Ward Tyson, our landlord, came by. I didn’t know, at the time, how many units he owned, but ours and our next-door neighbor’s were two of them.

When he knocked, I opened the door. “Hi, Ward? What’s up?”

“Mind if I come in?”

“Okay.” I brought him out onto the balcony.

“I just want a word with you and Theodora.”

“I’ll tell her you stopped by. Any message?”

“Well, yes. You’ve had three six-month leases on this unit, and your current lease expires in December.” He opened his briefcase and handed me a printout on letterhead stationery. “I just want you to know: I will not be renewing your lease.”

“Have we done something wrong? What’s the prob—?”

“No, no, no! You are wonderful tenants. You’re quiet, you always pay on time—and in cash, which is—”

“Cash is easier for us.”

“Okay. Look. I want to take over your unit. And Josephine’s unit next door. Nobody’s buying studios anymore. I’m gonna bust through the wall and make these two units into a one-bedroom apartment.” He looked toward the next-door studio. “Is Josephine in?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s a good-looking woman, don’t you think?”

“I’m married. Thanks for the heads-up about the lease.” I led him back through our apartment and closed the door behind him.

When I got to the apartment that afternoon, Herman was on the balcony. He looked up and smiled. “Hello, Ducky!”

“Hello yourself, Drakey!”

We’d given each other nicknames the first week we had the apartment. Walking all the way around Falk Pond, pausing to watch the ducks, I’d called him “Ducky.” But being a guy, he wanted to be called “Drakey.” So I took “Ducky” for myself. And that led to calling our apartment “The Nest.”

August 23rd should have been like every other midweek day. But it wasn’t. We even got a sort of a warning that night, about what could happen, though of course we didn’t see it that way at the time.

We hadn’t been to a movie in weeks. So we took in a comedy-mystery called Look Out Below! A husband and wife get accused of murder, hide from the police, get chased by the killer, and wind up solving the crime themselves.

We were back in The Nest a little after eleven and climbed into bed.

I woke up in the dark, startled by a noise that sounded like a splash. I spooned behind Teddie again, slept again, and woke up just as the sun was rising.

I put on my robe and glasses, started the coffeemaker, went out onto the balcony, powered my phone on, and brought up the online edition of our local paper, the Herald.

Scanning the headlines, I set the phone down and let myself be distracted by the sunrise that glistened on tiny ripples in the stream that meandered through the atrium. I sipped a little more coffee and touched my phone again, intending to return to the news.

But I glanced into the atrium. There was a dark lump of something in the stream. I stood up. Leaned over the railing for a better look.

A man in a pale blue shirt and black pants lay face-down in the water. All I know about things like this is what I see on TV crime shows, but it could be a dead body.

Stepping inside, I nudged Teddie. “Wake up, Ducky. You need to see this.”

She tilted her head and frowned a silent rebuke; but she got up, pulled on her robe, and followed me onto the balcony. Looking over the rail she said—only a fraction of a second before I did—“We have to call 911.”

So I guess this is a good time for me to spill some beans.

We signed the lease as Herman and Theodora Korn. We both wear third-finger rings, and I always give the landlord’s family a big smile when they call me “Mrs. Korn.” But last night was special. We don’t usually get to spend a whole night together.

Most days, we have lunch, then we shed our clothes and climb into bed. We smoke half a joint, then cuddle and snuggle, touch and stroke, kiss and lick, meld and merge, quiver and bump . . . you get the picture. We have a little nap, wake up around four o’clock, shower together and towel each other off with a little more necking.

By five o’clock on a typical day, we’re out the door, waving to each other in the parking lot, as I head home to my husband, and Herman goes home to his wife.

Although the Friends with Benefits series takes place in the modern age, much of Hal Glatzer’s mystery fiction has been set in the past. His Katy Green novels—Too Dead to Swing, A Fugue in Hell’s Kitchen, and The Last Full Measure—are set in musical milieux in the years just before World War II. And his illustrated bildungsroman, Dead In His Tracks, chronicles the rise and fall of a family-owned streetcar line.

In the 1970s, Glatzer worked as a reporter and bureau chief for newspapers and TV news stations; but in 1978 he began to cover the emerging high-tech industries of Silicon Valley. He contributed to and/or edited several “computer magazines” for general readers, and had three non-fiction books published about computers and telecommunications.

He debuted as a mystery novelist in 1986 with The Trapdoor, about a hacker who gets in trouble with organized crime. He is a longtime member of Sisters In Crime; and of Mystery Writers of America, currently serving as vice-president of MWA’s New York chapter.

Glatzer also writes Sherlock Holmes pastiches, set authentically in the Victorian and Edwardian era, which have been published in U.K. and U.S. anthologies, and reprinted in his own anthology: The Sign of Five. He is active in several “scion societies.” And every year, he produces a Sherlock Holmes play in New York, performed in old-time-radio style.

When he is not working as an author, he’s working as a musician, playing guitar and singing the “Great American Songbook” from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway.

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