Helen Mudgett, 63, widowed, jobless, and bankrupt, is forced to move to Cooper's Paradise Hotel, a dilapidated pile of wood catering to indigent senior citizens who thought they could live their lives on the two hundred year plan. Within hours of her arrival she is set upon by Ethel Mae Tibbets, a beer swilling, handicapped resident, and her ward, Sarah Brewster, a ten year old refugee from a broken home. They want Helen to help Sarah search for a 1936 Packard Limousine that went missing twenty years ago, along with its owner, Sonny Zervas. Helen tells them that looking for the car is an exercise in futility and refuses. But after several days of relentless badgering by Sarah, she gives up and agrees to spend one week looking for the car. In the week before Christmas they set out. They find and talk to several people who lusted after the Packard, Sarah makes a rash wager with an ex-Marine, encounters her old nemesis, Betty Worthen, a policewomen not adverse to wine and bribery, and annoys Helen to distraction with her observations and comments about people who are well into the 'damn old' time of their lives. Fortified by Merlot, Helen tries to adjust to her new life of poverty and deprivtion while becoming reluctantly involved with the hunt for the missing Packard, coping with Miss Em, the hotel's persistent canine, and hard labor on the snow covered veranda roof. As their quest pulls them ever closer to finding the Packard, they discover the back woods version of a chop shop, have a horrific encounter on a snow swept mountain, engage in some astute Christmas shopping, and, carried on the words of an old man with no hands, head toward a rendezvous with terror and death.

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• Mystery, Thriller & SuspenseMysteryCozyAnimals

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