Match Point

At Pelican Point Estates, the pickleball courts are busy, the gossip is well organized, and the residents know better than to trust a schedule that suddenly needs its own committee.

Retired Treasury investigator Margot Sterling is trying to enjoy a visit from her daughter and grandchildren when a small irregularity catches her attention. A desk drawer left open. A grandson who notices too much. A security guard with gate logs that don't match the official story.

The problem begins with the Pelican Point Classic Invitational, a cheerful community pickleball tournament that has somehow become an investment opportunity. Preston Hale, the polished resident behind the event, promises sponsorship revenue, registration fees, and respectable returns. But the numbers are too clean. The sponsor visits never happened. The checks are being made out to something that is not quite the HOA. And Gloria Mast, a retired CFO with a sharper eye than most, has started asking the wrong questions.

Then Gloria is dead.

What first looked like committee confusion becomes something far more dangerous: a trail of fabricated sponsors, shell entities, missing money, and a tournament designed to exploit trust before anyone thinks to question it. As Margot follows the paper trail through Pelican Point's committees, friendships, and carefully maintained appearances, she discovers that the most dangerous con in a retirement community is not the one that looks criminal.

It is the one that looks respectable.

With help from Hank Ortiz, Tomás, and the residents who know more than they first admit, Margot must separate bad bookkeeping from deliberate fraud, accident from murder, and charm from calculation before another resident pays the price.

Smart, atmospheric, and quietly gripping, Match Point is a Pelican Point Senior Sleuth Mystery for readers who enjoy intelligent older heroines, coastal settings, financial crime, community secrets, and mysteries where the smallest inconsistency can expose the deepest lie.