Logline -
Six months from retirement, a homicide detective drives twelve miles up a dead-end road to find a missing plumber and finds four charming residents who tell him exactly who they are and what they have done from the moment he arrives — in a village that has already decided he is never leaving.
Bart Nowicki, plumber, fifty-four, comes out to Sunset Village to fix a tap, eats three bowls of Clara Montague's soup, and doesn't leave. His truck sits in the lot for four days with the keys in it. Nobody makes a phone call, because Sunset Village is six weeks from a state review and everyone here has a reason to keep the week quiet.
Enter Detective Frank Mills — tired, decent, thirty-one years in, and looking for one missing man. He is handed a brochure, a guest cottage, and a bowl of stew, and he cheerfully surrenders his car keys. Everyone he interviews tells him the truth. Clara says she killed eight people. Jenny says she poisoned the critics. Julio confesses to sixteen murders in a crowded room. Frank hears all of it as charm, eccentricity, and metaphor, because the alternative is unthinkable, and because nobody has been this kind to him since his wife died eleven years ago.
He is a good detective. He is right about nearly everything. But the line goes down, the road is twelve miles long, and there is a gate — and somewhere behind a pair of gaudy floral curtains, someone has already decided how his case ends.
Runtime: 1 hr 45 min with intermission
Casting: 4M 4W
CHARACTERS
JENNY WHITMORE — (60 - 72.) A best-selling mystery novelist. Elegant, literary, endlessly amused. Narrates her own life in selected chapters; their numbers are hers, not the scene numbers. Poisoned eight critics and publishers over a long and celebrated career, and was caught only because she did the ninth on live television. Believes she is still being read.
CLARA MONTAGUE — (65 - 75.) A French-trained chef. Theatrical, generous, absolutely certain of her own genius. Removed eight rude patrons and rival chefs from the profession. Treats a meal as a sacrament and a kitchen as a stage. Her mother kept a butcher's shop.
MELISSA GRAVES — (60 - 70.) A forensic accountant and champion fencer. Cold, precise, allergic to theater. Killed eight clients who threatened her books. Keeps a ledger of everything, including this.
JULIO CALDERON — (58 - 68.) A landscaper. Suave, delusional, permanently on stage. The Rose Petal Strangler — sixteen women, each left holding a flower. The newspapers spelled it Peddle. He has never got over it.
DETECTIVE FRANK MILLS — (54 - 64.) Homicide. Six months from a pension. Widowed eleven years. Dry, decent, thorough, and tired. The only sane person on stage, which will not help him.
STAFF MEMBER 1 — 30s. Relentlessly cheerful, and has been frightened for eleven years. Runs the program. Prepares the reports for an offstage clinical director who trusts her summaries.
STAFF MEMBER 2 — 30s. Nervous, decent, extremely good at his job, and about to find out what that's worth.
BART NOWICKI — (54 – 64). A plumber. Speaks only in Scene 1, then lies face-down in a bowl of soup for the whole of Scene 3. Has a daughter called Katie who is never seen and never told.
DETECTIVE SERGEANT RUIZ — Never appears and is never heard. Frank trained him. Ruiz now signs his overtime. Two telephone conversations with Frank, one side only; later communications are reported.
Casting: eight onstage roles, playable by seven or eight performers. Bart may double Staff Member 2 if the scene changes allow a full costume change; their appearances do not overlap. Bart appears alive in Act One Scene 1 and as the body in Scene 3. No body is required after Scene 3.
SETTING AND PERFORMANCE
The present. Four playing areas, which may share a single unit set with dressing changes:
1. The street and garden — rosebushes, a picket fence, a crooked scarecrow, a coiled hose, and a cheerfully ominous painted arch: "Sunset Village: A Resort-Style Retirement Community." Clara's back porch upstage, with a screen door. Beyond and above everything, a plain concrete perimeter wall.
2. Clara's kitchen and dining room — scrubbed, warm, immaculate. The knife board is on the wall from the first moment of the play.
3. The community center — a desk, a beige house telephone, a rack of brochures, a barred window behind gaudy floral curtains, and a laminated sign reading OUR COMMUNITY HAS BEEN INCIDENT-FREE FOR ____
DAYS with a chalk panel. Doubles as the hall in Act Two.
4. A resident's room — white, bare, a metal bed, a barred window with the same floral curtains.
The bars are visible to the audience from Frank's first entrance. They are not visible to Frank.