Bloody Bonsai — Peter Abresch

James P. Dandy -- yes, that would make him Jim Dandy -- couldn't believe he'd said yes to going on an Elderhostel down on the New Jersey coast in the cold, ugly, gray days of waning winter. His wife had died a couple of years before, and Jim didn't really feel up to meeting new people and being thrust into new situations without her.

But go he did, grumbling and pessimistically, and only half-heartedly interested in learning how to design, cut, sculpt, mold, trim, water and grow bonsai trees.

Little did he know that the "new people" he was concerned with would include the lovely, blue-eyed artist Dodee Swisher; or the gruff, chain-smoking ex-army man assigned as his roommate at the motel; or the slick Hispanic motel manager; or the raven-haired gymnast who exercised on her balcony every morning; or the liquid-eyed East Indian woman; or the couple from Philadelphia who were taking a break from the garbage business...

Well, really; anyone of them could have rammed that bonsai tree into the chest of the obsequesious little motel employee who Dodee and Jim discovered on the second day of the Elderhostel.

But the police focus their attention on Dodee and Jim -- they did have that argument with the boy the night before, hadn't they? -- getting Dodee all worked up into a swivet about having to find the real killer before they were jailed for the deed.

When another body turns up, again it's Jim & Dodee who discover it. The situation rapidly heats up and Dodee is kidnapped, presumably to shut her up about what she's already learned...