Death is a Bargain (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 3) (14 page)

Twenty-Nine

“And that miserable bast—er…bum—Carbone took your fingerprints anyway?” Marlene sounded outraged.

“Well, not personally, but yes, one of his minions did.” Kate took another swipe with an antibacterial wipe at the ink staining her right thumb. “After I’d told him all—well, almost all—I knew, he told me my prints were needed for elimination. It seems that in addition to Donna’s and mine, the police found yet another print on a piece of the negative.”

“Freddie’s,” Marlene said. “He took the pictures, right?”

Kate shrugged. “But the police could easily get Freddie’s and Carl’s prints, they’re both in the m-o-r-g-u-e.” She spelled so Billy, the TV detective fan, wouldn’t understand.

“Okay, tell me the rest later.” Marlene, no doubt dying of curiosity, had gotten the message.

Billy tapped Kate’s shoulder. “You shoulda come with us, Mrs. K. We had the siren going and the big red light flashing.”

“Sounds like fun. Where did you go, darling?” Kate twisted her neck to face Billy in the backseat, her goose egg throbbing as she turned.

“Around and around and around in circles in the parking lot,” Billy said, then screeched out his siren sound. “Better than riding in a fire fruck, right, Marlene?”

“Better than any fruck.” Marlene giggled.

Kate spun back around, giving Marlene a dirty look, and herself a huge headache.

Mary Frances, dressed to kill in a pale-blue satin sheath with a trumpet flare at the hemline and matching blue satin pumps, greeted than in the lobby.

“Don’t you look lovely, Mary Frances,” Kate said.

The dancing ex-nun’s thirties movie star-style gown was—as Kate’s granddaughter, Katharine, would say—awesome, complementing Mary Frances’s red hair and creamy skin, not to mention her slim figure. But the Broward County tango champion’s striking appearance boded no good. Kate had hoped to con Mary Frances into babysitting while she and Marlene went to the wake. Obviously, Mary Frances had other plans.

“I’ve been stood up.”

Thank God!

Kate lowered her eyes, so Mary Frances couldn’t see the window to her wicked soul. “What a shame. Who’s the scoundrel? He doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

“The Senior Ms. South Florida talent coordinator. He invited me for dinner and dancing at the Breakers, and he just now called to cancel.” Mary Frances gestured with her tiny cell phone. “Had an attack of conscience. Said our dating would be a conflict of interest, and that he couldn’t possibly jeopardize his integrity or his position in the contest. After I’ve been waiting for him in the lobby for fifteen minutes.”

“Why?” Kate asked, thinking about how she could suggest Mary Frances spend the evening with a much younger man.

“Do tell all.” Marlene was smirking.

Great. In about three seconds, Mary Frances, mad at Marlene, would storm off, and Kate would lose a sitter.

She had to act fast. “Well, you look so beautiful, Mary Frances, why don’t you come up to my apartment and I’ll take some glam shots of you? Let’s seize this…er…adversity and turn it into a photo op. You can use the pictures in your press kit.” She hoped she had film in her camera.

Marlene opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Kate barked out an order. “You and Billy can take Ballou for a walk while I work with Mary Frances.”

As Mary Frances placed her cell phone into an antique handbag, struggling with its tortoiseshell clasp, Kate raised an eyebrow at Marlene and gestured toward Billy, who was running his fire truck across Aphrodite’s feet, splashing water all over the Ocean Vista lobby’s tile floor.

Sixty years of shared nonverbal communication—used in church during weddings and funerals, at sick beds in hospital rooms, in libraries, at Broadway shows and double features, and in front of Kate’s children—worked once again. Marlene, back in the game, nodded.

Mary Frances glanced into one of the lobby’s many mirrors. “You’re right, Kate. I look too good to just go home, wash off my face, and hang up my dancing shoes. Let’s get up to your balcony before the sun sets.”

“You should report that talent coordinator to the pageant committee and get him kicked out of his position.”
Marlene made “position” sound R-rated. “I’ll bet you’re not the only contestant he hit on.” Her sister-in-law’s smirk, now buried under the guise of sympathy, appeared more like a concerned grimace. Or at least Kate hoped Mary Frances interpreted it as concern. Marlene—even when in on the game plan—never quite knew when to cease and desist.

At seven thirty, with Billy bathed, fed, and dancing the tango with his babysitter—who after her glamour shots had gone up to her condo and changed into jeans and a t-shirt—Kate and Marlene were in the car on their way to Whitey’s wake.

Posing Mary Frances, under Billy and Marlene’s direction, had turned out to be a lot of fun. And if Mary Frances photographed half as good as she looked in the lens, she’d have some great shots.

Ballou had been walked and fed, too, and the humans had dined on pizza and an ice cream cake that Kate found in her freezer. She’d opened a bag of spinach greens, diced some celery, poured some vinaigrette on top, and served the salad to ease her conscience. Only Mary Frances had eaten any of it.

Kate’s head ached and her stomach rumbled, but she felt the thrill of the hunt as they crossed over the Neptune Boulevard Bridge, heading into an evening of intrigue and possibly danger.

There would be plenty of time to talk; they had a long ride ahead of them.

Sean Cunningham lived way out west in one of the new, very expensive developments that had sprung up so far from the ocean that east-siders sneered, saying those people, who’d paid millions for mansions abutting the Everglades, could just as well have been living in Kansas…only without the threat of alligators crawling into their backyards.

“So what else did you and Carbone talk about, Kate?”

“First I told him about the mysterious maroon car, and he said he’d look into it.” She rushed on, “I pretty much told him everything I know. Or, to be more accurate, suspect.” Kate felt an irrational sense of betrayal, admitting this to Marlene. “He kept reminding me that I’d tampered with evidence. I felt frightened and figured I’d better come clean.”

“What about him? Did the good detective share anything that you didn’t already know?”

Kate heard criticism and sarcasm—and a seeming lack of empathy—in Marlene’s question. “Actually, yes.”

“Sorry, I know I’m impossible.” Marlene reached over and patted Kate’s hand. “Chalk it up to being tense and tired, not to mention frustrated.”

“I told you I’d drive.” Kate’s tone returned to neutral. She related to tense and tired.

“With that throbbing headache?” Marlene laughed. “No, thanks. So, tell me what Carbone said.”

“When we discussed the four suspects—and Nick had zeroed in on the same quartet—he said they insisted all of them had been in Whitey’s bathroom together.”

“No!”

Kate nodded. “Yes. All of them swear they were squeezed into that tiny room, chatting away with Whitey, and when they left he was still alive, sipping his scotch. Of course, they’re probably covering for each other.”

Marlene giggled. “Rub a dub dub, four suspects in a tub.”

“Not quite.” Kate, picturing the scene, giggled too.

“But listen to this, it turns out Nick had interviewed Carl and heard about the photographs
before
Carl and Freddie were shot in the circus.”

“Then why were they murdered?” Marlene answered her own question. “Maybe the killer didn’t know the police had already spoken to Carl.”

“Or maybe we’re wrong. Maybe there’s a completely different motive tying these three murders together.”

Thirty

In South Florida, west was relative. Kate figured these differences of geographical opinions—as with real estate purchases—were all about location, location, location.

Shelf dwellers in condos with ocean views deemed anywhere west of Federal Highway to be hotter, buggier, and far less desirable turf. To those on the beach, Margate, Coconut Creek, and Wilton Manors were
out
west. The recent real estate development beyond Coral Springs and Plantation was considered to be
way out
west. And bizarre. Why would anyone
choose
to live so far inland?

After all, the beach snobs reasoned, hadn’t the Kennedy clan, Marjorie Merriweather Post, and Versace opted to overlook the sea?

Many A1A residents, including, on occasion, Marlene and Kate, sat in the sand and scoffed at the sprawling, yet confined, gated communities—especially the ones featuring golf courses, Olympic-size swimming pools, and clubhouses with social directors organizing 24/7 activities—categorizing them as regimented and parochial. Like summer camp for seniors.

Flying in the face of those east-siders’ opinions, dozens of less expensive communities, dating back to the sixties—eons ago in Florida’s history—had been home to happily retired New Yorkers for decades.

Today, western property—hot, buggy, and
really
far removed from the ocean—seemed to be in vogue. South Florida’s frontier once had boundaries. No more. Developers beckoned, “Westward Ho!” And buyers, driving Mercedes SUVs, kept coming.

Unincorporated Broward County stretched almost to the Everglades. What the county’s old-timers—part of that increasingly rare breed of South Florida natives—thought of as swampland had morphed into highly desirable communities, complete with man-made lakes, imported trees, and enormous homes, with prices starting at well over a million dollars.

In the spanking-new development of Westfield Pines, a filled-in marsh more than a forty-five-minute ride from the A1A, Kate and Marlene pulled into a winding, Royal Palm-lined driveway leading up to one of those
mini
-
mans
ions.

“Well, we sure as hell had enough time to plan our strategy, didn’t we?” Marlene put on the brake.

A smiling parking attendant opened her door. A second solicitous young man helped Kate out of the front passenger seat, grabbing hold of her elbow. “Watch your step, ma’am. These slates can be slippery.”

They stepped into a buzz of mosquitoes, swarming in the thick, muggy, jasmine-sweet air.

Tempted to yank her elbow out of the young man’s hand, Kate felt achy and ancient, sure she must look every bit as bad as she felt.

A smooth baritone voice, backed by a band and singing “When I Fall in Love,” jarred her. Decades ago, she and Charlie had co-opted those lyrics and turned them into their anthem.

She missed a step. Embarrassed, she mumbled, “Sorry,” then wondered if she was apologizing for being old.

Not a very promising start to an evening of detective work.

Kate straightened her back and lifted her chin, forcing a smile. She’d allowed herself twenty minutes and, despite her sore head, worked fast, putting on makeup and pressing her blue silk pantsuit. By God, she wasn’t about to let all that effort go to waste.

“Welcome to my
casa.
” Sean, in a Gatsby-era navy blazer and white lightweight wool trousers, loomed in the open front door. He held a highball glass in one hand and listed tipsily to the left. Sweat glistened on his brow, droplets dribbling down into the creases in his jowls.

Great. Greeted by a half-drunken host before the wake had gotten underway.

“What an interesting house, Sean.” Kate laced her voice with enthusiasm. Marlene, right behind her, gasped, no doubt to swallow a giggle.

The huge U-shaped ranch, purple with lavender trim, and covered in twinkling lights, had to be the ugliest house in South Florida. Given the competition, no small distinction.

“Follow me, girls.” Sean kissed Kate’s cheek then reached for Marlene’s. “Everyone’s out in the piazza.”

As he led them across a gilded foyer, its red velvet walls lined with portraits of circus clowns, to sliding glass doors, Kate yanked a wipe out of her purse and swiped her cheek.

They entered a festive courtyard, flanked on either side by the U-shaped building’s wings that stretched down to a teak dock abutting one of those much-maligned man-made lakes. A white yawl—Kate figured it had to be a thirty-six-footer—was moored there.

In the piazza—designed to look like a center ring, complete with a striped canvas top—buffet stations laden with ham, turkey, roast beef, and salads of every kind were manned by skilled waiters dressed like clowns. Kate spotted two very busy bars.

“‘It’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea.’” Jocko, in his clown suit and part of a six-piece band off to one side, couldn’t have chosen more appropriate lyrics. Who knew the clown could sing?

Holding a wake in this circuslike atmosphere repulsed Kate, but hers appeared to be a minority opinion. The other mourners acted as if they were having the time of their lives.

“Happy hunting,” Marlene said, then walked away.

They’d decided to divide and conquer. Since Marlene had already had a go at Linda, Kate would take on the doll lady tonight. Would Linda stick to her lies or change her tune and tell the truth? Unless she’d worked with an accomplice, Linda had Marlene herself as an alibi for Carl and Freddie’s murders. So why had she lied about her past?

Marlene would tackle Suzanna Jordan and her darling daughter, Olivia. She’d accepted that assignment with relish, saying, “I want to check out Olivia’s widely rumored romance with Whitey. If it was more than just a crush, the girl could have motives for all the murders, especially Freddie’s. Or her icy mother might have melted and murdered all three men to protect her daughter. God, Kate, don’t you love a mystery?”

Kate did, indeed, though she shuddered at the thought that tonight Sean Cunningham was all hers.

And her conversation with Nick continued to nag. Why would four people who didn’t even like each other lie for each other? Unless. Her stomach jumped. Could it be a conspiracy?

“A peanut for your thoughts, Kate.” Sean grabbed her wrist with a damp hand. “May I have this waltz?”

Dancing with the devil might be more than she’d bargained for, but Kate swallowed bile and stepped into Sean’s arms.

As they took their first spin, she realized the band was playing “The Merry Widow Waltz.”

Sean leaned in, his breath stale and smoky, and whispered, “I’m dying to know, have you figured out whodunit, Kate?”