Death is a Bargain (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 3) (11 page)

Twenty-Three

Kate felt deliciously wicked. She’d left Nick Carbone in the emergency room at Broward General waiting to have his old “trick” knee X-rayed. With six far more seriously injured patients ahead of him, Carbone wouldn’t be arresting anyone for a while. Though to be fair, between yelps of pain—men can be such big babies—he explained that he’d only dropped by the hospital to ask Donna a few more questions. Well, those questions would just have to wait, wouldn’t they?

The detective’s tumble had given Kate a head start. She had places to go and people to see if she wanted to prove Billy’s mother wasn’t a double murderer.

She’d left Nick in midsentence, sputtering, “I’m warning you, Kate, don’t get…”

Waving good-bye, she’d dashed out of the emergency room, not feeling the least bit sorry that Detective Carbone would be out of action, at least for a couple of hours. As soon as she hit the lobby, she called Jeff Stein at the
Palmetto Beach Gazette
and made a date with him for lunch at one o’clock.

Maybe she’d accept Jeff’s freelance job offer and try her hand at a feature article. Certainly, they could discuss that. But her real mission was to see if Donna had ever called him about his animal-abuse article, and to find out what Jeff knew about Sean Cunningham’s and Whitey Ford’s past lives. Kate had a hunch they’d been intertwined.

As she pulled into Ocean Vista’s parking lot, her gloating over Carbone and her suspicions about Cunningham came to an abrupt halt, replaced by a paradox: Donna’s overzealous prodding of an elephant, and Billy, so proud of his mother, gleefully recounting riding on one.

Act as if, Kate. Prove Donna’s innocence for Billy’s sake. Now that challenge could be a real paradox. She stepped out of the car and into a warm breeze, laughing at herself.

“Miss Costello and that child,” Miss Mitford managed to turn
child
into an obscenity, “have gone up to her apartment. She’d like you to join them there.”

“Thanks.”

Kate crossed the lobby and rang for the south elevator, wondering if she could take the
child
and Ballou on her appointed rounds and, if not, would Marlene be back in time to mind Billy and walk the Westie.

Mary Frances lived in 730, a one-bedroom apartment with a southern exposure and a nice view of the ocean.

The former nun had transformed her only bedroom into a dance studio, complete with a raised parquet floor, ballet bane, and sound system. Three of the walls were mirrored. The fourth was covered with clothes racks, filled with colorful costumes, baskets brimming with castanets, and open shoe boxes, lined up like soldiers, holding sexy high-heel pumps matching both the costumes and the castanets. Even more amazing, somehow Mary Frances had charmed the previous condo board into approving the changes.

Kate rapped sharply. No answer. She tried the door, and it opened. A Latin beat emanated from the former bedroom, literally filling the wall-to-wall-dolls living room. She crossed the room, went down a small hall, its bookcases housing Mary Frances’s Henry the VIII and his wives collection, and peered into the dance studio.

Billy, standing tall and straight and grinning from ear to ear, had one arm thrust forward, leading Mary Frances in what appeared to be a smooth, well-rehearsed tango.

Feeling a bit jealous, Kate applauded their performance.

“Hi, Mrs. K.” Billy danced over to her. “Can I go with Mary Frances to her tango lesson? Please! She wants to take me.” His blue eyes sparkled. A sparkle missing since his mother had been injured. A sparkle that the dancing ex-nun rather amazingly had restored.

Well, Mary Frances’s tango lesson might solve Kate’s babysitting problem. Marlene could be stuck at Whitey’s memorial or, putting a more positive spin on her absence, be busy gathering information from the mourners after the service.

Kate hugged Billy, then locked eyes with Mary Frances. “Are you sure?”

“Sure?” Mary Frances removed the rose from her teeth. “You bet I’m sure. I’ve had more fun today teaching Billy to tango than I ever had during my thirty-year career as a nun.”

With some unexpected time on her hands, but not wanting to get sand in her shoes, Kate took Ballou for a quick walk on A1A. The Westie turned north toward Neptune Boulevard, and she followed his lead.

As he strutted ahead, Kate’s cell phone rang. Her granddaughter and namesake, Katharine. Drat. Not that she wasn’t thrilled to hear from her favorite person in the entire world—now that Charlie had moved on—but she disliked chatting on the phone in public.

She’d overheard far too many private, intimate, or even angry conversations between taxi drivers and their significant others, while a virtual prisoner in a cab’s backseat. Trapped, seat belt buckled, waiting for the plane to take off, she’d been forced to listen as total strangers across the aisle spilled out their guts or their sex lives. And, on the beach, teenagers shouted vulgar words and crude jokes into their cell phones, seemingly unaware that they were loud enough to be heard in Fort Lauderdale.

“Hi, Katharine,” Kate said.

“How you doing, Nana?”

“Fine, I guess. Keeping busy.”

With her red hair and freckles, and short, solid body, her younger granddaughter reminded Kate so much of Charlie. She had her grandfather’s spark too. Lauren, the Harvard pre-med student, was more like her mother’s family, the Lowell’s. Tall, rangy, blonde and, for Kate’s taste, a bit bland.

Charlie had nicknamed their family the Boston Bores.

“Well, get the guest room ready, Nana. I’m flying down Saturday morning. Just for the weekend. I’ll play hooky on Monday. All the discount airlines are having a price war. At forty-nine dollars each way, how could I resist?”

“Er.”

“Nana?” Kate heard the hurt in Katharine’s voice. “That would be grand, darling. Come on down!”

She’d figure out the sleeping arrangements later. Maybe either Katharine or Billy could stay at Marlene’s.

“Is your sister coming too?”

“Hell no, Nana. Lauren’s in lust. Again. This time with a Nob Hill Brahmin. Daddy says he’s a stuffed shirt. Lauren says Daddy has no appreciation for the finer things in life. Mom says Daddy does so, he married her, didn’t he?” Kate laughed. Score one for Jennifer. She and Kevin, despite their very different backgrounds and very different careers—he a firefighter, she a stockbroker—were still madly in love after twenty-three years of marriage.

“Okay, darling, I’ll see you Saturday.” She fleetingly thought of telling Katharine about Billy, but decided to wait. “Email your flight information, and Auntie Marlene and I will pick you up.” Kate sighed. “Or it might just be me and a little surprise package, if the flea market corridor reopens before Saturday.”

“I’m sure there’s some sense in what you just said, Nana, but you can explain it to me when I get there. Love you a bunch. Bye.”

On Neptune Boulevard, Ballou veered west toward the bridge. He probably wanted to stop at Dinah’s, the last coffee shop in South Florida that permitted small pets to accompany their mostly senior masters.

“Sorry, Ballou, this is a business trip.” She waved the pooper-scooper and small baggie under his nose. “So do yours, I have to get going.”

“Kate, is that you?”

She spun around and saw MonaLisa and Tippi approaching them from the east. Tippi once again dropped to her stomach and eyed Ballou, who sniffed, straining to reach Tippi’s nose and other body parts.

MonaLisa ran her hand through her hair. “Oh, God, Kate, have you heard the news?” She sounded harried and, in the bright midday light, looked drawn.

“What?” Kate reached out and touched the younger woman’s arm. “What’s wrong, MonaLisa?”

“The police found Freddie Ducksworth’s body, apparently last night, but they just announced it now. I just heard it on the news.
”

Kate shivered in the sunshine. “Where?”

“At the circus. In the elephant area, stuffed into a crate where they keep the feed.” MonaLisa gulped. “It looks like a big coffin.”

“Shot.” Not a question. Kate was certain.

“Through the head. Just like Carl.”

Twenty-Four

Sean Cunningham proved to be a cheapskate as well as a snake. No reception for poor Whitey. Not even an invitation to stop for a good-bye toast at one of the many bars or restaurants within walking distance on Las Olas.

“You’d think that tightwad would treat us to a round of drinks, but no such luck,” Linda said, gesturing to a small yellow sports car. “Follow me home, Marlene. I live on Harborage Isle. We need to have a little chat, don’t we? I’ll have my houseboy scrape up some lunch, then you and I can have a couple of champagne cocktails out on the terrace and give poor Whitey a proper sendoff.”

Harborage Isle? Probably the priciest real estate in Fort Lauderdale. A houseboy serving lunch? Champagne cocktails on the terrace? Linda would have to sell a hell of a lot of Queen Annes to afford that lifestyle. The doll lady must have another source of really big bucks.

Marlene called Kate, leaving messages on both her home and cell phones, saying she wouldn’t be home for lunch, but she hoped Kate would make Mary Frances’s noon deadline.

She followed Linda’s yellow convertible—Italian, she thought, maybe a Ferrari, but without her reading glasses, she couldn’t be sure—east on Las Olas toward the ocean, then south on A1A.

The beach—so close to the road along the Fort Lauderdale strip, Marlene felt as if she could reach out the window and touch the ocean—was packed with college students, celebrating an annual rite of passage: spring break.

Beautiful bodies lay supine on colorful towels spread across the sand, soaking up the sun. Young women in bikinis and tankinis dipped painted toenails into the surf. Young men with pumped-up muscles played volleyball. The surfers, always ready, stood with their boards erect, keeping one eye on the waves and the other on the girls.

As she drove past the t-shirt shops, the old seedy bars, and the new upscale boutiques, she decided that Fort Lauderdale was now, and always had been, more than just a tourist trap. The city, like the state, represented growth and change, sleaze and style and, even hidden under its glamour and grit, Southern charm.

“Where the Boys Are,” Marlene sang aloud, remembering all the words to the theme song from the quintessential spring break movie. What a mad crush she’d had on George Hamilton. One of many youthful crushes that now made her cringe and wonder, what was she thinking?

She laughed…as if lust had anything to do with logic.

It would have been easy to miss the turn off A1A leading to the bridges to Harborage Isle. The residents of that exclusive area didn’t encourage either tourists or local gawkers. If Marlene hadn’t been tailing Linda, she’d have sailed right by.

After crossing several bridges with isles off each, Linda drove through tall black gates, instructing the uniformed guard to allow Marlene to follow her into the enclave.
Awesome,
like
amazing,
had become an overused adjective, mostly uttered by dithering contestants on reality shows like
The Bachelor,
but with no exaggeration, the stunning homes on Harborage Isle truly awed and amazed Marlene.

Her hostess pulled into the circular Moroccan tile driveway of what Marlene decided might be best described as a mansion. Old money had built this baby. Not much property, but then its backyard abutted the Intracoastal. A good-sized, bright green front lawn, surrounded by a wall of hydrangea bushes and graced with two royal palm trees, led to a porch with white double doors.

An Arab butler, complete with turban, opened the front door before Linda had time to either fumble for a key or knock. The foyer with its twelve-foot ceiling housed bookcases filled with Linda’s
Gone With the Wind
doll collection, including a lifelike Scarlett O’Hara in her mother’s green velvet drapes. The Arab butler came as a surprise; Rhett Butler did not.

“Good morning, Omar. It is still morning, isn’t it?”

“It is, indeed, madam.” A slight accent and a deep sexy voice. He nodded at Marlene.

“Ms. Friedman will be joining us for lunch. On the terrace. Lemon sole, I think. And a goat cheese salad.”

Us? Marlene pondered the meanings of “us.”

“Very good, madam.” The butler turned and smiled at Marlene, his teeth gleaming like a toothpaste ad. “Welcome to Xanadu, Ms. Friedman.”

So the modest mansion had a name. How
tres
South of France for South Florida.

“And we’ll start with champagne cocktails, just as quickly as you can pop the cork.” Linda swept into the sunken living room, bathed in sunlight and furnished with Middle Eastern treasures.

By the second round, served in crystal flutes on a silver tray, Linda was Marlene’s new best friend.

A motor yacht sailed by, the captain waving at them from the helm.

The multilevel terrace—with an Olympic-size pool on one level—sloped down to the Intracoastal. From their table, Marlene could almost reach out and shake the captain’s hand.

Where had all this money come from? The lady of the house didn’t strike Marlene as being to the manor born. Just how much could she get out of Linda? In South Florida, polite people didn’t pry into acquaintances’ previous lives. Former drug lords and white-collar criminals had too often morphed into knights in shining armor, endowing libraries and building opera houses. Should she start by confiding in Linda, establishing trust? Rapport? Hell, she didn’t have time for subtleties.

She chuckled, like she’d ever been subtle.

“Something strike your funny bone, Marlene?”

“Just reflecting on my checkered past.” Not bad for openers.

Linda gazed at her, long and hard. Her hostess had changed into a gauzy white caftan, pulled her hair back in a ponytail and wiped off her makeup, saying she wanted to work on her tan. Even in the bright sunlight, the doll lady appeared years younger.

“You do remind me a bit of my old mum.”

Not exactly what Marlene had expected—or wanted—to hear. Well, of course, Linda was young enough to be her daughter, but she had trouble picturing herself as anyone’s “mum.”

“Really?” Marlene tried to sound flattered.

“Drove me away from home, the old tart did.”

“Oh…”

“Slept her way through Liverpool, didn’t she?” Linda winked. “The twig doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?” Again Marlene merely nodded. “I quit school at sixteen, ran away from that ugly counsel house, and married a strung-out rocker—thought he looked like the reincarnation of John Lennon. Came over here to the States with him. But he left me for the drummer, who, oddly enough, looked uncannily like Ringo Starr.” Linda paused, then drained and refilled her flute. “Another?”

Knowing she had to drive home, Marlene said, “Yes, please.” What the hell, she’d drink a lot of coffee.

“So there I was, stranded in Sarasota.”

Marlene started, thinking of the midget. “I…er…once had a fling in Sarasota.”

“Not much else to do there, is there?” Linda twirled the ends of her ponytail. “Lunch should be ready soon.”

“What did you do after he left you?” To her surprise, Marlene was genuinely interested.

“Got a job in the circus, then bounced around Florida, and moved to Fort Lauderdale about fifteen years ago. I got a job at a club and became their hottest lap dancer.” Linda shrugged. “Long story short—I landed in the lap of luxury. Married a Texas oilman. I adored George. We had a wonderful life, like the movie, only we were bloody rich, didn’t need an angel. He bought this house for me. A Saudi prince had lived here. Try the bathroom off the living room. Mirrored walls. Mirrored floors. Mirrored ceiling. Absolutely decadent. You’ll see parts of your body you never knew you had. Anyway, the butler was part of the deal. I didn’t ask any questions. My dearest love died five years ago. Heart attack. I met Sean at Ireland’s Inn shortly after George’s death. I loved dolls, and I desperately needed something to do. The flea market and Precious saved my life.”

“Where is Precious?”

“Out having her weekly shampoo and pedicure. Omar will bring her home later.”

“I guess the flea market will never be the same.” Marlene’s venture wasn’t the smoothest segue, but she felt tipsy herself and hoped the champagne would keep Linda talking.

“Whitey Ford, charming toad that he was, set the flea market on its heels long before this mess.”

According to Sean, Whitey had dumped
Linda.
Her judgment might be skewed.

Damn this tiptoeing around. Full speed ahead. “Do you think Whitey was murdered because he discovered that Suzanna’s car crash hadn’t been an accident?”

“That could be one of several motives. Maybe a motive for Olivia. You know, given the right opportunity, I might have killed my mum.”

Why had Linda singled out Olivia? And what other motives did the doll lady have in mind? “Strange how Olivia lashed out at Sean in church this morning. Yesterday, he told Kate and me the girl had a crush on Whitey.”

“More than a crush. Ask Freddie, he has the photographs to prove it.” Linda smirked. “But he has other incriminating pictures, as well, hasn’t he?”

The butler, silent as a cat, appeared at Linda’s side.

“Madam, I just heard on the telly in the kitchen that Mr. Ducksworth is dead.” He paused. “And I gather not from natural causes.”

Good God! Suddenly, Mary Frances’s earlier theory about all the vendors being targets no longer seemed so bizarre. Maybe there really was a serial killer in the flea market.