Kick the Bucket — Judith Arnold

Summertime, and the living should be easy. School's out, and fourth-grade teacher Lainie Lovett is on vacation, spending her mornings running sports clinics for children and her evenings playing with the Rockettes, her recreation-league soccer team. But things get a whole lot less easy when one of Lainie's teammates urges her to visit Sunrise Village, an assisted-living residence for the elderly, where various items have gone missing: a ring, a jewelry box, a bottle of prescription medicine…and George Vandercloop's considerable fortune, which he'd kept stuffed inside his mattress and which disappeared the night he died. Plenty of people at Sunrise Village had access to his apartment -- his neighbors, the staff, his relatives, and the newly hired director of maintenance, who may just be the long-lost son of the Rockettes' distinctly un-motherly coach. Who stole George's money? And if he didn't die of natural causes, who killed him?

Lainie doesn't need another mystery to solve, but Sunrise Village needs Lainie. The place teems with romantic intrigue, rivalries, gossip, raptures over the dining room's chocolate cake -- and possible crimes. Lainie will do her best to uncover the truth. But will she still be among the living when the assisted-living establishment is done with her?