by Noreen Wald
Mr. Moose, about thirty, slim, short, and perfectly turned out in Brooks Brothers, stood and greeted them with warmth. “I heard about Walt’s death. My condolences on your friend’s passing.”
“Wonderful man,” Marlene deadpanned. Kate had refused to utter that line.
“Do you ladies know Bob Seeley too?”
“We hear he moved north to the boonies,” Marlene improvised, not really lying. “We’re Walt’s neighbors here in South Beach. Er, we were, until his tragic passing.” Now she was lying.
“Really?” The amazed look on the young man’s face and the shock in his voice gratified Kate. If he bought into two old ladies living large in South Beach, they’d pull this charade off.
“I’m sorry, ladies, I didn’t catch your names.” Mr. Moose pulled out the two club chairs in front of his desk—as big as a New York studio—for them.
“I’m Barbara Stanwyck,” Marlene said, “and this,” she gestured to Kate, “is Marjorie Main.”
Kate bit her lip. If Mr. Moose happened to be a fan of old movies, Marlene’s ad lib would expose them. And leave it to her sister-in-law to grab star billing. She pictured the plain, erstwhile supporting actress, Marjorie Main—who’d played Ma Kettle back in the ’50s—and wanted to wring Marlene’s neck.
Moose remained clueless. “Please tell me how I can help you.”
The delivery of the next line would be crucial. Kate took the lead. “We want to invest our money in the exact same portfolio Walt Weatherwise had. And, since you’ve taken over Bob Seeley’s clients, we’d like you to be our financial planner.”
Mr. Moose grinned. “Let’s discuss that, ladies. For starters, I’m going to have Brittany serve you both a nice cup of tea while I pull up Walt’s records.”
While they sipped and smiled, an intense Mr. Moose reviewed Weatherwise’s portfolio. After what felt like an eternity, he turned away from his computer, his expression blank.
Kate wished she could pop a Pepcid AC.
“I would recommend a much less aggressive approach than Mr. Seeley’s for you ladies.”
“Why?” Kate ventured, not knowing what else to say.
Moose frowned. “Well, without revealing either the amounts or the exact nature of the investments—and there hasn’t been any trading over the last three years—I would advise you ladies to be more cautious, more diversified. Trading in options is risky business.”
Perplexed, Kate said, “But Walt Weatherwise is a millionaire many times over, and we want to invest the same way he did.”
“Ladies, please. When an investor agrees to take great risks, he can lose great amounts of money. Walt Weatherwise’s portfolio didn’t make a profit; in fact, it has sustained substantial losses.”
So that was why Walt had been threatening Bob at the shelter. But Walt had millions; someone, maybe a previous financial planner, had made his money grow.
“Did Walt have another account here?” Marlene asked.
Mr. Moose shook his head. “Regrettably, no. Perhaps with another firm; however, I’m delighted that Walt sent you to us.” He rubbed his palms together, and smiled. “Now, I’m going to custom design the perfect portfolio for you lovely ladies.”
Twenty-Two
“Options trading. I wonder what that is and if it can be manipulated?” Kate didn’t hide her frustration or disappointment.
Marlene had parked the car in a nearby garage and, though dejected, they were both starving, and searched along the boulevard for a reasonable restaurant.
“How about this place?” Marlene pointed to a cute cafe called Siesta.
Kate put on her glasses and read the menu posted next to the bright yellow door. “The price is right. Let’s eat.”
The Cuban-American waiter, better-looking than any of the current crop of hot movie stars, served the “señoras” chicken with yellow rice and beans. Kate couldn’t remember when she’d last enjoyed a meal as much as this one. And, having taken a prophylactic Pepcid AC, she could order the wonderful Cuban coffee and have the flan for dessert.
“You do have a financial planning expert in the family, you know; why don’t you call her?” Marlene buttered her third piece of bread, not that Kate had eaten any less of the loaf.
“Funny how often you read my mind.” Kate smiled. “I was just wondering if I should bother Jennifer at work.”
Marlene handed Kate her cell phone.
Kate’s firefighter son Kevin had married a Boston Brahmin. Jennifer Lowell. Blonde, beautiful, and brilliant. She’d just left Smith Barney to open her own investment firm on lower Park Avenue in New York City. Kate could live for a year on what Jennifer paid per month for her office space. She loved her daughter-in-law, who’d made her son happy and had given birth to Kate and Charlie’s two wonderful granddaughters, Lauren, and Kate’s namesake, Katharine. It was only that...well...Jennifer intimidated her...just a little.
“Press seven. That’s Jennifer’s new office number,” Marlene said. “I’ll order two coffees. Flan?”
Kate nodded, then followed Marlene’s instructions.
The receptionist sounded like Grace Kelly in High Society. “Yes, Mrs. Kennedy, I’ll tell Ms. Lowell you’re calling.” It bothered Kate—but just a little—that Jennifer didn’t use her married name.
“Hi, Kate.” Jennifer came across as warm, but busy. “How are you?”
“Fine. Look, I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I have a couple of quick financial questions, if you have the time.”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“If a broker or financial manager put most of a client’s money into buying and selling options, but that client’s portfolio now shows a loss, could there have been any way that the investor actually made a profit? Some way the broker might have manipulated the futures market or something?”
“A dishonest broker could,” Jennifer said.
“How?” Kate’s heart seemed to skip a beat. She should pass on the coffee, but she wouldn’t.
“Let me make this as simple as possible. The broker could report selling an option low, when he’d actually sold high. Option profits can be enormous if the broker and the client are big enough gamblers. The trick would be to falsify the portfolio records to indicate a loss. The broker would have to be both clever and careful, cooking the books to avoid an auditor discovering the scheme.”
How well do we really know our neighbors? Our friends? Our financial managers? Had fussy, refined Bob Seeley been a crook, who’d designed a complex stock fraud before he retired to Ocean Vista? “But where would the broker hide the money?”
Jennifer laughed. “Well, he could wire it to another account, say in a Swiss bank.”
“How?”
“Oh, any number of ways. Use a fake name. Who knows, maybe the broker and the investor were partners in crime? Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Good God. Wouldn’t this have been the exact information that Lucy Diamond had needed to indict Walt Weatherwise?
Ten minutes later, the matinee-idol waiter had served the coffee and dessert and Kate had caught Marlene up.
“So, you’re saying Bob’s smarter than Lucy? She’d have reviewed Weatherwise’s portfolio with the best tax guys on the federal government’s payroll, right?”
“What if she hadn’t brought the Feds in? And, if she hadn’t, why not? Because the auditors would have uncovered Bob’s scam?” Kate sipped her coffee. “Could Lucy, despite all her histrionics to the contrary, have been protecting her former lover?”
“You said she’d been carrying a torch for Weatherwise. Maybe the flame hadn’t gone out.”
“Marlene, you’re absolutely poetic.” Kate smiled. “Now drink up; we need to get some background information on Lucy, and we have to decide where to start.”
Marlene placed her empty demitasse cup
on its saucer. “Ready to roll. The courthouse or the condo?”
“Well, we could probably walk to the courthouse, but how forthcoming are a bunch of federal prosecutors and their minions going to be? I vote for the condo. One of Lucy’s former neighbors may be a chatterbox.”
Kate signed the American Express receipt, leaving the hunk a 22 percent tip, and keeping the copy for her income tax deductions. She could list the lunch under amateur sleuth investigation expenses.
“But Lucy lived in Coral Gables. That’s about fifteen minutes south of here. I thought we’d take I-95 home.”
Kate had no intention of driving back to Palmetto Beach on the interstate with her sister-in-law at the wheel. “No, I like A1A a lot better. And what’s another half-hour round-trip to Coral Gables in our unending quest for motive and murderer?”
Marlene laughed. “Now who’s waxing poetic? Okay, Kate, you win. We’ll get the car out of the garage, drive down to the condo, and hope we get to interview a nosy neighbor.”
On the way out of Siesta, Kate found herself sneaking one last look at the smiling waiter. She’d better behave or she might turn into Marlene.
Twenty-Three
Marlene was lying to the rent-a-cop stationed behind a window in the gatekeeper’s booth.
Lucy’s former residence had turned out to be in a condo community of bungalows, not unlike the old Hollywood bungalow colonies that Nathaniel West had immortalized. During the late thirties and early forties, many of the transplanted eastern writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker, who’d been brought to Los Angeles as script doctors, had lived in those small one-story houses with screened-in porches and casual charm.
“Sir, I assure you I have an appointment with a Realtor. The new owner in Lucy Diamond’s former condo wants to sell.” Marlene oozed charm.
“Mrs. Henratty? But she’s gone up north for the summer.”
A snowbird. They’d caught a break.
When the overweight, sixty-something guard could find no record of their names on his “to be admitted” list, Marlene blamed S. J. Corbin. “We’re supposed to meet her here. I guess she’s running late, but I’d really like to get in there and check out the grounds before she arrives.” Marlene actually batted her eyelashes.
Marlene’s boldfaced, if flawed, lies worked. Or maybe her flirting sealed the deal. The guard had heard of S. J. Corbin and, figuring there must have been a screw-up in communication, raised the bar and let them in. “Make a left off Rosebud Lane. It’s the second bungalow on the right.” Amazing. The poor guy was even giving them directions.
They drove through an enchanted garden-like setting. Bungalows in Easter-egg colors with kelly green lawns circled an impressive white wooden clubhouse in much the same way that the Hollywood bungalows often had surrounded large, glamorous hotels. Off to the right, a golf course sloped down toward the Intracoastal.
“Enough of the sightseeing,” Kate said. “The guard might wise up and come looking for us.”
“Nah. I told you if we dressed to kill, we’d get away with murder.” Marlene sounded annoyingly overconfident “And we have so far, haven’t we?”
“But...”
“Kate, in those pleated khakis and that white shirt you look like Katharine Hepburn—well, when she was much older, of course.”
What Marlene looked like defied description. A mango red silk caftan over skintight purple silk tights. Maybe a tomato topping an eggplant, Kate decided, rather uncharitably. However, they were designer duds and, sometimes, that was all it took to crash South Florida society. Or a SoBe mansion. Or Southern Trust’s inner sanctum. Or a bungalow colony.
“Besides,” Marlene said, giggling, “not to worry, I’ve besotted the guard.”
Shades of Pete Blake. God, what had dredged up that memory? That name? Kate hadn’t thought about Pete Blake in over fifty years. No, longer. Not since the summer she was thirteen. Sitting in the convertible, its top down and the warm afternoon sun on her face, she suddenly felt cold.
“What’s the matter, Kate? You’re shaking. Should I turn off the air conditioning?”
“Yes, along with the engine. Park the car, Marlene. We have detective work to do.”
Lucy’s former cottage was painted the exact same shade of lilac as the flowers growing in its pristine, white picket-fenced front yard. Upon closer inspection, Kate discovered the lilacs were plastic. What kind of a person would plant fake flowers? Obviously an owner who’d buy a bungalow in a condo community called End of the Rainbow.
“Yoo-hoo,” a sweet voice called. “Are y’all looking for Cordelia Henratty?”
A pretty blonde, youngish woman, maybe in her late forties, dressed in a crisply pressed pale pink organdy blouse and matching pants, stood in the doorway of the pastel pink bungalow next door. At least she didn’t have matching phony flowers in her garden. Those pink hibiscus were for real.
“We’re looking for our old, dear friend, Lucy Diamond,” Marlene said, sounding sweeter than the blonde neighbor. “Don’t tell me she doesn’t live here any longer.”
“She sure doesn’t.”
“And we’ve driven all the way down from New York.” Marlene segued from sweet to sad.
“Oh dear, Lucy moved out almost three years ago.” If the woman wondered how they’d gotten past the guard, or why they would have driven all that distance without double-checking where their old, dear friend currently resided, she showed no curiosity. “Went up north to Palmetto Beach. I have her contact information in my address book. Why don’t y’all come in for a glass of iced tea and I’ll give it to you?”
Like stealing candy from a baby. Still, Kate felt no guilt and almost no shame as she followed the woman into the bungalow.
Lots of Laura Ashley fabric, needlepoint pillows, and oak shelves filled with dolls dressed in couture gowns. Mary Frances would love this living room. Kate rather liked it herself.
“I’m Daphne DuBois.”
“I’m Stella and this is Blanche,” Marlene said, pointing to Kate.
Kate cringed.
“Like the sisters in A Streetcar Named Desire? Don’t tell me we share the same last name.” Daphne, no dope, had gotten the bad joke.
“This is my friend, Marlene Friedman, who thinks she’s funny. I’m Kate Kennedy,” she said, blowing their cover, but not their cover story.
“Did you know Lucy well?” Marlene asked.
Kate, not trusting Marlene to act as inquisitor, jumped in. “We’ve been worried about Lucy. Last we heard, she’d been dating a man who broke her heart.” Just enough truth to make them seem credible, Kate hoped.
“Oh, you mean Walt, the weatherman. A dirty hound dog. But he didn’t break Lucy’s heart.”
“He didn’t?” Kate didn’t have to feign surprise.
“She hated Walt; she only flirted to try and get the goods on him. She wanted him behind bars. Or worse. Y’all have to understand Lucy was obsessed, and her thirst for revenge seemed to go way back, though she never explained why. Or discussed what he’d done. How many times she’d say, over a scotch, ‘I’d sleep with the devil himself, if it would help me send him to hell.’”
Twenty-Four
“And everywhere that Nicky went, the snoops were sure to go.”
Kate and Marlene, full of iced tea and food for thought, had expressed gratitude to their hostess, closed the bungalow’s rose-colored front door, and were squinting in the bright sunshine.
Nick Carbone, yet again catching them playing detective, sounded fed up and furious. And unnecessarily snide, Kate thought, though she couldn’t come up with a response.
Marlene mumbled, “Sorry,” clearly not apologizing for snooping, but regretting she hadn’t gotten away with it
“I’ve been one step behind since your visit to Weatherwise’s place in S
oBe. You two old broads really snowed young Mr. Moose. He had no idea you’d graduated summa cum laude from Miss Marple’s campus in St. Whatever-the-hell-village she lived in. I’d have made it here before you, but I miscalculated your game plan and stopped by the courthouse first.”
“Bet we learned more by coming straight here. Always go with neighbors before coworkers,” Marlene said, in a smart-aleck tone that used to drive Charlie crazy.
Kate wanted to kick her, but couldn’t with Carbone watching their every move.
“Listen, Marlene,” Nick said, “you’re about one word away from being arrested for impeding a police investigation.” His face flushed scarlet and a vein bulged at his temple.
“We’re on our way home.” Kate grabbed Marlene’s arm. She considered adding “We were only trying to help,” but since he appeared ready to burst a blood vessel, she figured they should just get out of his sight. As quickly as possible.
The detective strode past them and knocked on Daphne’s door. Feeling guilty and, yes, sorry, Kate wondered if he’d ask the right questions.
“Are you mad at me?” Marlene asked.
They’d compromised and were driving home on Federal Highway. Not a smart decision. The traffic, with almost as many trucks as I-95, had come to a complete halt.
In the hot afternoon sun, they had the convertible’s top up and the air on full blast.
“Must be an accident ahead,” Kate said, ignoring Marlene’s question. She did feel angry. Marlene always chose the damnedest times to assert herself, with no regard for the consequences. “Maybe we should get off and take the beach road.”
“I’ll try to get in the right lane as soon as the traffic starts moving, and we’ll head east.” Marlene managed to sound both conciliatory and impatient. “Are you annoyed because I aggravated Nick Carbone?” Marlene wasn’t going to drop it.