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

by Noreen Wald

  Billy and Ballou sat between them, the former very concerned about Kate’s sore head, the latter seeming to sense his mistress needed the comfort of a close encounter with his white fur.

  Late-afternoon sun streamed in through the balcony doors; its rays, like a washed-out rainbow, reflected in the coffee table’s glass top.

  Kale counted her blessings. Despite several sunbathers being startled out of their prone positions, no one, including the Chevy’s three passengers, had been hurt.

  As scantily clad teenagers gaped, one little blonde beauty had offered ice wrapped in a yellow polka-dot towel that matched her bikini. Then, smelling of suntan lotion and salt, she’d held the ice against Kate’s head, her quick act of kindness preventing Kate’s forehead from being even more swollen and black and blue.

  Considering the careening car could have killed some of the sunbathers, the spring breakers had responded like angels of mercy. The Fort Lauderdale police hadn’t been nearly as accommodating, asking lots of rude questions and giving an indignant Marlene a sobriety test. Kate giggled nervously, wondering if they’d ask Marlene to walk a line drawn in the sand. Instead, Marlene had to bring her index finger to her nose and keep her balance while standing on one foot.

  The police had given Marlene a citation for reckless driving, but as they were still nosing around, Marlene’s mechanic from her gas station at the corner of A1A and Oakland Park Boulevard arrived and insisted that someone, maybe a vandal, had jimmied around with the brakes.

  Not a vandal, Kate thought as she petted Ballou. A killer. A killer who drove an old-model maroon car and who, bold as brass, had done his dirty work in the Broward General Hospital’s parking lot. A killer who’d stalked them, then returned and seized the day while Marlene and Billy were off playing hide and seek.

  A killer she would catch if—well, if it killed her.

  “You’re not going to the police station. I’m calling Nick Carbone now and canceling.” Marlene stood.

  “It’s not a dentist appointment, you know, it’s a command performance.” Kate wondered what being fingerprinted would be like. Would she be treated like a criminal? She wasn’t frightened. Not really. Just curious.

  “I want to see the police cars.” Billy made a screech-like siren sound, causing Ballou’s ears to perk up. “Let’s go, please, let’s go.”

  Marlene had whipped out her cell phone. “Kate, your stomach must be in a knot. And forget about a goose egg, that bump on your forehead is the size of an ostrich egg. You should be in bed.” She pressed some numbers. “Information, I need the Palmetto Beach Police Department’s number, please.”

  Kate stood too, hoping she wouldn’t wobble. “You listen to me, Marlene. My decision is made. I’m going to take two Tylenol and a Pepcid AC, then I’m going to the police station to have my fingerprints taken. So now you decide. Do you want to stay here and watch Billy? Or do you both want to come with me?”

  No contest. Marlene snapped her cell phone shut.

  Kate sank down in the front passenger seat, trying to get comfortable and feeling grateful she wasn’t behind the wheel. Since Marlene’s car had been towed to the gas station for a complete overhaul, she’d offered to drive Kate’s bland Chevy—a much newer model, but not nearly as much fun as Marlene’s now laid-up vintage convertible.

  In the backseat, Billy chattered about his favorite detective show. He knew all the main characters by name.

  How late did Donna let the boy stay up? Kate checked her inner critic to make certain her judgment call hadn’t been based on either elitism or class consciousness. Life as a recovering snob wasn’t going to be easy.

  The Neptune Boulevard Bridge was down, so in less than ten minutes they were turning north on Federal Highway.

  The box-shaped, beige stucco, really ugly Palmetto Beach Police Department building shared a parking lot with Town Hall, another homely edifice. An edgy Kate found herself checking the lot for a maroon car. Someone had tried to kill them this afternoon. A totally cruel someone who’d been aware a small boy was in the car.

  This wasn’t Kate and Marlene’s first visit to police headquarters. Nothing had changed. The grimy, gritty waiting room with its pale green walls and cheap rattan furniture still looked like a low-rent dentist’s office, and the same handsome, young African-American policeman still manned the metal desk.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Kennedy.” He smiled, briefly. “And I see you have your sister with you.”

  “Sister-in-law, Officer.” Kate smiled back.

  “And the young man?”

  “I’m Billy. Can I ride in a police car with a siren?”

  “Well, I think we can arrange that.” The policeman met Kate’s eyes. She saw no warmth. “Mrs. Kennedy, I know Detective Carbone wants to see you alone.” He nodded at Marlene, then picked up the phone on his desk. “I’m calling our community relations director. She’ll be happy to give this young man and your sister-in-law a nice, long ride in a patrol car.”

  “With a siren?” Billy’s smile, the only genuine one in the waiting room, sparkled.

  “Yes, a really loud siren.” The policeman hit three numbers on his phone.

  “Isn’t that special?” Marlene didn’t even attempt a smile. Her sneer said it all.

  A curt Carbone greeted Kate. “Sit down, you look ill.” She bristled, but laughter quickly replaced anger. “Well, coming from a man who looks like death, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  He laughed with her.

  “Listen, Nick, I admit I picked up the pieces of that negative in Donna’s apartment. I’m guilty. Do I still have to be fingerprinted?” She could picture Charlie up in heaven, shaking his head and groaning.

  “You confess to tampering with evidence.” Did she only imagine a hint of amusement in his voice?

  “I didn’t tamper, I only touched, then left the pieces for the police to find.”

  “As a homicide detective’s widow, you know better, Kate.”

  “Did you find the Times editorial?” She decided to tell all. Be up front. God, could she be in real trouble here? Did she need a lawyer? Her head hurt. Suddenly, a gentle breeze seemed to caress her lips. Charlie sending her a message to seal them?

  “Anything else you’d like to confess to, Kate?”

  “Look, I snooped, but that’s all I found, and I left everything there for you.”

  “The Palmetto Beach Homicide Department will be eternally grateful.” Nick sounded really angry.

  “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”

  He stood, leaning heavily on his cane. “You’re in danger, too.”

  She bit her lip, afraid she’d cry. “You know about Marlene’s car.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me everything that’s happened since you gals went to work at the flea market?” He phrased it as a question, but Kate recognized an order when she heard one.

  She’d talk. But terrified as she felt, she realized—and resented—that Nick wouldn’t share what he’d found out with her.

  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.” Marlen
e, 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 spraw
ling, 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.