by Noreen Wald
Several shop owners were taking down the wooden boards and masking tape they’d swathed across their doors and windows the evening before. Looked like tough going, but the beauty salon was already open for business.
Kate nodded to the owner of Dinah’s, her favorite coffee shop, one of the few restaurants in Broward County where a small dog could sit at his mistress’s feet while she enjoyed poached eggs and whole-wheat toast slathered with homemade strawberry jam.
“Come on, Ballou,” Kate said, pulling him in the opposite direction, aiming east toward the beach. “Let’s go see how the pier and the Neptune Inn weathered the storm.”
If the Inn was open, she’d bring a couple of cheeseburgers home for her and Marlene’s lunch.
“Psst! Kate.”
Her mind on the upcoming homicide interrogation, she wasn’t sure that someone had spoken. Ballou’s yelp convinced her. She spun around.
Standing in Mancini’s doorway—the restaurant was still boarded up—Bob grabbed her arm. “Kate,” his voice cracked, “you have to help me. I know who murdered Uncle Weatherwise.”
“Who?”
“Rosie O’Grady.
Seven
“Are you going to tell Detective Parker what Bob Seeley said?”
The top of Marlene’s white ’57 Chevy convertible was down, and a mild summer breeze, a lingering residue from last night’s hurricane, rippled through Kate’s hair, but didn’t make a dent in her sister-in-law’s French twist. The sun shone bright and beautiful above a landscape marred with bags of trash and mounds of debris. They were on Neptune Boulevard heading west to the Coral Reef Police Department.
“Why do you suppose they named the town Coral Reef? It’s more than twenty miles away from the Atlantic.”
Marlene huffed. “Like Oceanside, Long Island, is on the ocean? Don’t change the subject, Kate.” She went through a yellow light starting to turn red. “You don’t want to conceal evidence in a murder investigation, do you?”
Kate, stumped, sighed.
“You have to tell Parker.”
“I don’t know if I believe Bob. Think about it, Marlene.” Kate counted on her fingers, starting with the pinkie. “One—Bob tells me he saw a weather vane sticking out of Rosie’s tote bag the night before the murder. Last night. Somehow it seems like ages ago.” Kate moved to her index finger. “Two—the weather vane had gone missing when Bob rummaged through her bag on the bus ride home; the first opportunity he’d had to check it out after hearing about the murder.”
“Well, of course the weather vane went missing from the bag, Kate. It was stuck in Weatherwise’s heart.”
Kate, on a roll, tapped her middle finger. “Three—even if Bob’s telling the truth, why would Rosie have left the murder weapon sticking out of her own tote bag for all the evacuees to see?”
“But why would dear, dull old Bob lie like that?” Marlene jerked her head around to face Kate. “You don’t think Bob murdered Uncle Weatherwise, do you?”
“Maybe.” Kate shrugged. “Or maybe the killer planted the weapon in Rosie’s bag, hoping someone, anyone, would notice it. And remember it. Maybe the killer—and, yes, it might be Bob—then removed the weather vane before dawn.” Kate started. “Marlene, you just ran a red light right in front of the police station.”
The young cop who issued the moving violation ticket appeared hot and unhappy. When Marlene tried to fob off her offense, explaining they’d been running late for Kate’s appointment with Lee Parker, the cop flushed scarlet. “The courthouse is right around the comer, ma’am. You can follow me over there now and pay your fine while your friend here chats with Detective Parker.”
So Kate, standing as tall as her sixty-three inches would stretch, went solo into the pastel pink stucco Coral Reef Police Department. The courthouse was a deeper shade, almost quartz. Lots of pink and coral going on in this town, a wannabe Boca.
The lobby had a Spanish flair too. Dark wood furniture and terracotta tiles—the flow would look great in her condo. Taxpayers’ dollars had provided a warm welcome for the good, the bad, and the ugly—plus their attorneys—who sat waiting to be called. Coral Reef citizens could afford to be cavalier; they had the second highest income per capita in Broward County.
A young, pretty woman in a well-pressed uniform took Kate’s name and entered it in a log. “Please have a seat, Mrs. Kennedy. Detective Parker will be with you soon.” Kate sat, pulled out her blue notebook, and mused over motives. Lucy Diamond and Uncle Weatherwise had quarreled over the planting of medicinal marijuana, but their nasty exchange at the shelter led Kate to believe that Lucy and Walt must have crossed paths prior to Ocean Vista. Maybe years ago in Miami, long before Kate, or even Marlene, had moved to South Florida. Could Walt have been in trouble with the Feds? Could Lucy have prosecuted him? Easy enough to check. Kate starred an entry.
Fifteen minutes passed. “Soon”—iffy at best. The good, the bad, and the ugly—and their attorneys—had all been called. Where was Marlene? Had they put her in jail?
“Detective Parker shouldn’t be much longer, ma’am.” The young policewoman spoke without conviction.
Kate returned to her notes. Uncle Weatherwise had threatened docile Bob Seeley, even more mild-mannered than Clark Kent, over some mysterious missing money. A business deal gone sour? Or something more sinister? A motive for murder?
Rosie O’Grady filled an entire page. The dancer’s leg wrapped around Weatherwise’s neck under the basket remained a vivid image, defying description. The Albert Anastasia connection rang true. Rosie might be misinformed, but Kate was convinced that the former Rockette really believed Uncle Weatherwise had mob ties. Could Rosie have stabbed Weatherwise in a decades-delayed revenge for Anastasia’s hit in the Park Sheraton’s barbershop?
Walt Weatherwise had raised his arm in a threatening gesture on the bridge. Kate wrote in caps: WHO’D CROSSED BEHIND HIM?
A memory stirred, almost surfaced, then receded. What? Damn it. What? Something Rosie said? Weatherwise on the bridge? The Park Sheraton Hotel? Images whirled in her head. Her notebook slid to the floor, its blue cover clashing with the terracotta tile.
“Kate, are you okay? Let me pick that up for you.” Lucy Diamond sounded annoyingly solicitous.
What the devil was she doing here? Kate hadn’t answered her phone and Marlene had ducked out Ocean Vista’s back door, checked out the parking lot, then picked Kate up in front of the lobby to keep Lucy from finding out that they’d left for Coral Reef.
She fell to her knees, grabbing the notebook just as Lucy reached for it, but missed.
“Is that your diary, Kate? I swear I had no intention of peeking. You’ve made it clear you don’t want me involved.” Lucy straightened up and laughed.
Kate resented Lucy’s superior snicker. She probably always had, but never more than at this moment.
“Why are you here, Lucy?” She stood, clutching the notebook.
“Reviewing the case with Detective Parker. Coral Reef isn’t Miami, you know. I offered my expertise.” Lucy’s tone indicated her offer had been refused.
“Mrs. Kennedy,” the policewoman called out. “Detective Parker is ready for you.”
Parker’s office, filled with framed pictures of himself and laminated Sun-Sentinel stories featuring his name above the lead, resembled a non-thinking man’s den. Nary a book in sight. And this guy had a master’s in art history? The four bookcases were being used as file cabinets. Detective Parker must be a paper person. She’d bet those folders held every scrap of information on every case he’d ever worked.
The walls, or what Kate could see of them—since all four were brag walls—were institutional green that, like her notebook, clashed with the terracotta tile. His desk stood in the center of the room; its phone, computer, fax, and printer wires running like eels across the floor to scatter
ed baseboard outlets.
Parker didn’t stand. He gestured to a club chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, Mrs. Kennedy.”
She did, primly, her back straight, keeping her knees together like the Catholic schoolgirl she’d once been.
His eyes, dark and angry, met hers. Then he picked up a sheet of paper and waved it in her direction. “Out of the past, Mrs. Kennedy.” Parker sounded angry. And something more. Cruel. “We’re all the sum total of our past lives, aren’t we?”
Whatever she’d expected, it hadn’t been anything like this. Had Parker gone mad?
She held his gaze, saying nothing.
Parker pushed back his heavy oak chair, walked to the front of his desk, then stood, towering over her. He shifted the piece of paper from one large hand to the other. “Tell me about the summer the year you turned thirteen, Mrs. Kennedy.”
She shivered and, though she tried not to, she looked away, staring down at the terracotta tile.
Kate had few secrets. Her life was an open book...except for a brief chapter in the summer of that year.
Eight
Thursday, June 29, Fifty-Six Years Ago
“Come on, Mom, please. I’ll be the only girl at Marlene’s house without a bra. You can’t do this to me. I’ll die of mortification.”
Her mother smiled. Kate hoped that was a twinkle in Maggie Norton’s blue eyes. Though she could wheedle almost anything out of her mother, this would be a tough sell. Maggie had been a flapper and prided herself on never having worn—or needed—a bra. And even worse, her mother still thought of Kate as a child.
“Mortification, huh? That would be an awful way to go.” Maggie sipped her chocolate ice-cream soda, then dipped her long spoon into the tall glass, scooping up the last of the foam.
They were finishing lunch at the counter in the restaurant on the seventh floor of Bloomingdale’s, Kate’s favorite department store. She hated it when her mother shopped downtown at Orbach’s or Klein’s, embarrassed that they had to carry the lower-priced stores’ shopping bags onto the subway.
She’d overheard her mother telling her grandmother, Etta, that Kate was a snob. Her grandmother had just laughed, the way grandmothers, easier-going than mothers, often seemed to do.
“Etta thinks I’m ready for a bra,” Kate whispered to her mother in the crowded elevator. Thank God her father, really strict and almost never easygoing, would not be consulted about anything so intimate as a bra.
“Maybe, maybe not,” her mother said as they rode down, passing the fourth and third floors with none of the passengers getting off.
“Second Floor: Ladies Lingerie,” the elevator operator announced, sounding a lot like the announcer on her favorite radio show. He opened the brass gate. A woman in a blue straw hat with a white feather, standing in front of Kate, stepped out.
Her mother poked her in the back. “Get off, Kate, before the gate closes and I change my mind.”
Marlene and Kate had been forever friends since they were six. And Marlene, always the more daring, had been wearing bras for at least three months. She now owned a collection of five, including a pointy black lace-and-nylon concoction. No wonder Pete Blake, Kate’s new neighbor and current crush, seemed so interested in Marlene. If she kept flirting with Pete, Marlene might be in danger of losing her forever friend.
After ten minutes of browsing with her mother, Kate figured she didn’t have a prayer of bringing home an exciting or even a pretty bra, but anything would be better than her undershirt. Even the plain white cotton triple-A bra her mother was inspecting.
Her father had ordered an oil burner to replace their coal stove. To celebrate the last heat to emanate from the old furnace, Kate would love to have a bonfire of undershirts. She’d throw in her seven-days-of-the-week underpants too. Not to mention her scapular.
On this, her thirteenth birthday, to her amazement and delight, Kate got to pick out her own presents. Very much a woman of the world, like her namesake, Katharine Hepburn, in Adam’s Rib.
Kate went home with three bras—one pink and edged with embroidery, two white, trimmed with lace—and six pairs of darling pastel panties, all wrapped in tissue paper, then folded neatly into her very own Bloomingdale’s shopping bag.
She felt very New York City riding out to Queens. But what a tragedy: no one but her mother and grandmother would ever get to see her pretty new underwear.
“Surprise!” Marlene yelled, the loudest of the crowd in her finished basement
They’d fooled her. No one, not Mom, Dad, Etta, or Marlene had slipped. Kate stood on the top step of the staircase, staring down, feeling more tricked than pleased. A little voice scolded her. Great, her conscience sounded like her grandmother.
She descended the stairs, smiling, not a bright smile, but probably okay in the dim light of the finished basement.
“A den,” Marlene’s mother had dubbed it years ago, pointing to the fireplace they built when they’d redone the cellar. “A place for our family and friends to gather.”
Mrs. Friedman wore a satin sheath and a black boa. Kate would bet her bra screamed “exciting.”
Kate couldn’t look at the deer head imminently displayed on the pine wall behind Mr. Friedman’s bar. The one time she had, its eyes had held hers and wouldn’t let go. Had Marlene’s father shot the deer? She’d been afraid to ask.
“What a pretty dress, Kate. You’re lovely tonight. Quite the young lady.” Mrs. Friedman had a throaty voice, like Lizbeth Scott, the blonde B-movie star, a pale imitation of Lauren Bacall. Kate wondered if Mrs. Friedman, a fashion maven, had noticed her new-and-improved profile.
Fussing over Kate’s chestnut curls, her mother had insisted that Kate wear the blue sundress. “The color turns your eyes turquoise, Kate.”
Her mom sounded devious. Were all women devious? Would it be better to stay a girl?
Maggie had encouraged Kate to put on a light coat of Cherries in the Snow lipstick, then rubbed some rouge on her cheeks. So why wasn’t Kate happy? She had on her pink bra and matching underpants. Her sandals had a low wedge that made her appear a little taller, and even her father had said she looked nice. High praise from him.
Could thirteen be a turning point? Maybe she’d never be happy again.
“Kate,” Mrs. Friedman said, embracing her. “Welcome to womanhood.”
Over Marlene’s mother’s shoulder, Kate met the deer’s left eye. She’d swear he was winking at her.
She slow danced with Robby Carruthers—one of Marlene’s discards—who would be starting his freshman year at Regis High School in the fall. Too old and too tall for Kate, Robby didn’t even try to hide his boredom.
Mrs. Friedman put out the food on two side-by-side metal card tables covered with pink cloths and decorated with HAPPY BIRTHDAY balloons. Each crystal plate and bowl had a small, printed sign—like a place card—propped up in front of it: “Chicken Salad.” “Macaroni Salad.” And something called ‘Tomato Surprise.” Lots of good breads, including marble rye, one of Kate’s favorites. And a huge platter of homemade “Chocolate and Walnut Brownies.”
“Eat!” Mrs. Friedman ordered. “Birthday cake and ice cream will be served later.”
The Friedmans filled their plates, then went upstairs to the living room to watch TV. The television show could be heard loud and clear in the basement.
Marlene winked, and ran up the stairs, shouting, “I’m closing the door, Mom. That music’s too loud.”
The games began.
The spinning bottle missed Kate three times in a row. When it finally pointed her way, she had to kiss bad-breath Barry. The crowd moved on to “Let’s Play Post Office.”
By the time Marlene’s mother reappeared and switched the overhead light back on, she found several couples necking in dark corners.
Pete Blake and Marlene,
unseen by Kate, had squeezed into the broom closet. When an angry Mrs. Freidman jerked the door open, Marlene’s black bra was draped around Pete’s neck.
How could Marlene have betrayed her? She knew how much Kate liked Pete Blake. And Marlene had tons of boys after her and her 38C bra. Kate’s forever friend had behaved like a traitor. Like Alger Hiss. Kate vowed to never speak to her again.
Nine
Monday, July 3, Fifty-Six Years Ago
Over the next few days, Pete moved on to blonder pastures and Kate met Marlene’s possible replacement in Miss Ida’s bookstore.
Jackson Heights, though in Queens—one of the five boroughs that made up New York City—suffered, in Kate’s opinion, from small-town syndrome. Yes, riding the E or F train she could get to Times Square in under a half hour, faster than many Manhattan residents living down in Little Italy or up in Harlem could, but a real Manhattanite didn’t have to cross a bridge or tunnel to arrive at Forty-second Street. And nothing exciting ever happened in Jackson Heights.