by Noreen Wald
Knowing Marlene once had a crush on Joe—she’d had a crush on almost every man she’d ever met—but now couldn’t stand him, Kate said, “Right. Her husbands were only the hors d’oeuvres.”
With perfect timing, Ballou did his business. Kate used the pooper-scooper, regretting that he’d missed Joe’s left foot by less than an inch. She pulled on the little dog’s leash. “Come on, Ballou. We’re finished here.”
Claude Jensen, perched high in his lifeguard seat, waved as she walked by. “Keep your dog outta the water, ma’am. Them sharks they saw up in Boca might be down here by now. One bite and that little hair ball’s gone.”
Marlene, emboldened by two gin and tonics, spotted Katharine, dressed as Britney Spears, all bare midriff and shoulders, and decided to ask the girl just exactly what she knew about her Auntie Marlene’s checkered past before Kate and Ballou returned from their walk.
It took Marlene a few minutes to navigate around the three-deep crowd at the picnic table. By the time she reached Katharine, the girl had company: Jon Michael and an attractive older woman whom Marlene presumed was his grandmother.
The shoeless surfer wore white cutoff shorts and a purple hibiscus lei around his neck. His bare chest glistened as if he’d smothered it in grease. He smelled like lanolin, baby oil, and tea—one of Marlene’s own favorite homemade tanning lotions—flowers, and pot. After fifty years, Marlene still recognized the aroma of marijuana.
“Auntie Marlene, you’ve already met Jon Michael.” Katharine, her voice brimming with pride, turned toward the older woman. “And this is his grandmother, the famous Florita Flannigan.”
Florita’s flowers were on her head, a crown of lilies almost as white as her thick, well-styled, chin-length hair. A slim woman, her lightly tanned, heart-shaped face was sweet, albeit lined. She’d dressed in a white peasant blouse with a rose-colored drawstring and a ruffled rose ankle-length skirt. She was barefoot; her toenail polish matched her skirt. Marlene felt certain this wasn’t a costume, that Florita had worn her work clothes.
Marlene extended her hand. “Welcome to Ocean Vista, Florita. Happy Halloween. Did you bring the skull?” Florita laughed, a tinkling laugh, like a schoolgirl’s. “No, he doesn’t make house calls.”
Marlene liked her, but curbed her enthusiasm; the woman was, after all, Jon Michael’s grandmother.
“We like Katharine very much.” Florita’s blue eyes sparkled.
Marlene figured that hadn’t been a royal we, that Florita had been referring to herself and her grandson…and maybe to the talking skull. Had Katharine made his acquaintance?
“Can I make an appointment?” Marlene asked, hearing a hint of desperation in her voice. Meeting Jon Michael’s grandmother’s skull could lead to all kinds of inside information about the surfer. Kate would be so jealous.
Florita whipped a small spiral notebook out of her pocket and flipped it open. “You’re in luck, Marlene. Our ten o’clock tomorrow morning canceled.” Florita smiled. “Joe Sajak’s next in line. He’s been waiting for an appointment for weeks; I thought I’d surprise him tonight with this cancellation. They’re so rare, you know. The lady who canceled has been arrested. I know Mandrake’s advice could have prevented that unpleasantness. Anyway, Marlene, since you’re Katharine’s kin, you can have the appointment.” Florita smiled again. “It’s two hundred dollars for the hour.”
Humph. Up from fifty-five dollars just a few days ago, Marlene thought but said, “Great!”
“Got beer?” Jon Michael headed toward the bar.
Katharine yelled over her bare shoulder as she followed Jon Michael. “Auntie Marlene, I’ll be back in a flash. I can’t wait to hear what you plan to discuss with the skull.”
Marlene felt a flash of panic. Could the skull—or Florita Flannigan—have revealed her secrets to Katharine?
Eleven
Kate sipped a wine cooler that tasted like sour grapes. Or maybe Katharine’s costume had turned her stomach. She dumped the wine in the sand and reached into her pocket for a Pepcid AC.
When would she hear from Nick? She’d left a detailed message asking the detective to check out Jon Michael Tyler and Roberto Romero, then for good measure, had thrown in Claude Jensen and Sam Meyers, even though she hadn’t met Sam yet and knew almost nothing about him, other than that he, too, had a grandmother.
Jon Michael’s grandmother, Florita Flannigan, was holding court under a palm tree in the pool area. Several Ocean Vista residents were her clients and devoted fans of the talking skull.
Down at the shoreline, Katharine and Jon Michael strolled arm in arm.
Kate stood, gulped, and headed toward the pool area. Gassy or not, she needed to have a word with Mrs. Flannigan, who, Kate figured, must be Jon Michael’s maternal grandmother. Where were his parents?
Florita sat in a blue and white plastic armchair at a round, glass table near the deep end of the pool. With all the chairs taken, some of the more agile Ocean Vista residents were sitting, legs dangling, on the diving board. Others stood, almost reverentially, waiting to catch Florita’s eye. God, only in South Florida, Kate thought, but then she remembered how much a grilled cheese sandwich depicting the “face of the Virgin Mary” had sold for on eBay.
As Kate vied with Joe Sajak for Florita’s attention, Katharine and Jon Michael returned from the ocean and sat on their heels near his grandmother’s table. Ah, youth. Kate knew too well the spasms her back would have to weather if she even tried to get into a position like that. A few minutes later, Mary Frances arrived and, to Kate’s annoyance, managed to fold herself down on her heels, establishing squatter’s rights between Jon Michael and his grandmother.
Ex-nuns don’t sweat, but Mary Frances certainly glowed. Tossing her long red hair, she broke into the conversation, interrupting Florita who was quoting the skull’s position on recent world politics.
“Guess what?” Mary Frances asked, addressing no one, yet everyone. “I spent two hours this afternoon at the elimination round for this year’s Broward County dance contest. Much to my surprise, Roberto Romero and I will be partners in the couples’ competition for tango champions. We danced like Ginger and Fred in Flying Down to Rio.” She sighed. “It’s as if we were fated to dance together.”
“Just how did you and that surfer get together?” Joe Sajak sounded like a man in pain.
“Fate, blessed fate. We both drew the same number.”
“Hey, Mary Frances, I thought you already were Broward County’s reigning tango queen,” a short, chubby lady, who lived in the north wing, said.
“I am, indeed.” Mary Frances smiled. “But this year they’ll be choosing a king and a queen. A royal couple. Roberto’s considered the best Latin dancer in Broward. Maybe Dade too.” Balancing on one hand, she used the other to push stray curls out of her eyes. The wind had picked up. “His posture alone will make him a winner. Will make us both winners.” Mary Frances sounded coy.
Kate’s stomach jumped. Damn. Did she have another Pepcid AC in one of her pockets? What a hypocrite Mary Frances was, tangoing with the enemy. She deserved Joe Sajak…if he didn’t die first of apoplexy.
“Look,” the lady from the north wing shouted, pointing toward the beach. “The lifeguard just raised the shark-warning flag.”
The antique mahogany grandmother clock in the foyer—one of Charlie’s prized possessions that he’d insisted on moving down from Rockville Centre, though it didn’t go with anything in the off-white and beige condo that Edmund, their son Peter’s partner, had decorated—chimed eleven times. Kate sat wide awake on the balcony, sipping decaf tea and wondering where her granddaughter was.
A spurt of anger, red and hot, shot through Kate. She’d be damned if she reined her granddaughter in, and damned if she didn’t.
How would Charlie have handled Katharine’s metamorphosis? Even that world-weary, yet surp
risingly optimistic New York City homicide detective might have been stumped.
Debating whether or not to have another cup of tea, Kate stood, disturbing the Westie who’d been dozing by her side. “Sorry, Ballou. We should both be in bed.” The difference between should and could never seemed clearer.
Exhausted, knowing she had to drive up to Palm Beach for Jane’s funeral in the morning, she couldn’t force herself to go to bed.
The moon hung like a huge ball of burnished gold, lighting up the sky. Kate crossed to the railing and looked north toward Fort Lauderdale. Sure enough, Katharine and Jon Michael were on the beach. Had she heard them before she saw them? No matter, their voices were raised now, not loud enough for Kate to make out the words, but the tone sounded angry. It appeared as if they were quarreling, Katharine gesturing like the New Yorker she was.
Kate, in her nightgown, wondered if she should get dressed and go down and drag her grandchild off the beach. Instead, she waited and watched, praying Katharine wouldn’t venture into an ocean on shark alert. If her granddaughter stuck as much as a toe in the water, Kate would scream.
Jon Michael staggered. His goddamn reached the balcony loud and clear. Had Katharine shoved him? Recovering his balance, he grabbed his surfboard and ran into the ocean. Kate watched him ride a wave until he became a tiny speck on the horizon and then disappeared.
Once again, Kate wondered why Jon Michael surfed in the dark. And where was Roberto tonight?
When she glanced back at the beach, there was no sign of Katharine.
Kate decided to go to bed; she couldn’t deal with her granddaughter now. And as Scarlett O’Hara said, tomorrow was another day.
A few minutes later, Kate heard Katharine come in. She thought the girl might be crying.
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Kate closed her eyes as the clock chimed midnight.
Twelve
Monday morning, October 30
The skull resided with his owner in a pink bungalow with a white picket fence. A calligraphy-scripted shingle, hanging on a lamppost in the well-tended yard, read TANNING SALON & SPIRITUAL COUNSELING.
Marlene had spent the morning on the internet researching the skull’s history and success story or, maybe more accurately, Florita Flannigan’s success story.
Forty years ago, Florita, a native of Rhode Island, had fled to Florida as a young divorcee to escape New England’s “wicked winters and rigid morality,” and settled in Palmetto Beach, then a small fishing village, to raise her toddler as a “sea nymph.” When the nymph turned nineteen she’d fled Palmetto Beach, leaving behind her two-year-old son, Jon Michael, to be raised by his grandmother.
While divorcing her third husband—a gal Marlene could relate to—Florita enrolled in beauty school, graduated with honors, then opened a beauty shop in her front parlor.
When Florita had discovered that Floridians, surrounded by sunshine, would pay big money for artificial rays’ instant gratification, she turned her beauty shop into Palmetto Beach’s first tanning salon. The operation was an overnight success. Raising Jon Michael had proved more difficult. Still, from Florita’s profile in Parade magazine, Marlene gathered the grandmother and grandson had a close, if often contentious, relationship.
For the crystal skull and Florita, it had been love at first sight They’d met in Mexico. An East Indian mystic, who owned a souvenir store in Acapulco—Marlene found it odd how Acapulco kept popping up and even odder how an East Indian had been living there—swore that the skull he’d found in an Incan temple’s ruins had magical powers to heal both body and soul. Florita, entranced with the four-thousand-year-old skull’s mesmerizing features, had paid the East Indian mystic one dollar for every year the skull had been around. She named him Mandrake, after the magician in her favorite comic strip.
Parade had quoted Florita: “I figured buying a healing relic with a proven history of curing folks for four thousand dollars was a real bargain.”
The article pointed out that the skull, one of several traveling the New Age circuit, didn’t actually talk; he communicated via telepathy. Some believers heard more during their private sessions than others. And Florita often acted as interpreter. The photo, credited to Jon Michael Tyler, showed a twenty-pound piece of crystal, crafted to look like a human skull, complete with sunken eye sockets and missing teeth.
True believers, including Donald Trump’s butler and a former First Lady, who’d met with several of the world’s best-known talking skulls, testified that Mandrake was the most impressive, citing conversations ranging from clairvoyant to miraculous.
One self-proclaimed psychic from Cincinnati had reported that Florita’s skull had acted as a medium, translating a message in Romanian from an ancestor on her mother’s side who’d been a warlock during the Middle Ages.
Marlene had absorbed all this information with no prejudice and concluded that Florita was a con artist, her clients were crazy, and her grandson was a snake.
She pushed open the white, wooden gate, walked up the primrose-lined path, and rang the doorbell. It chimed to the tune of “What Kind of Fool Am I?”
Florita’s smile seemed forced and, though she wore a pretty caftan with long, flowing sleeves, her hair lacked last evening’s perfection and her face was drawn and wan. “Do come in, Marlene. I’m so glad to see you.” She sounded anything but.
The South Florida bungalow, furnished like a New England cottage, oozed cozy charm. Cabbage roses and chintz abounded. A carafe of tea and a plate of oatmeal cookies were on a small mahogany table in front of a pink and lime green plaid loveseat.
Florita gestured toward the loveseat. “Please sit down, Marlene. Mandrake and I have had a difficult morning.”
Marlene sat. The cookies looked homemade.
“It pains me when he gets upset over my problems.” Florita, a perfect hostess, held out the plate. Marlene took two cookies and said nothing, just waited, a trick she’d learned from Kate.
“We both sense disaster.” Florita’s hand shook as she poured the tea. She fussed a bit, passing sugar and milk, and then sat on a cabbage rose-covered club chair catty-corner to the loveseat.
Marlene sipped in silence, still waiting.
“Jon Michael didn’t come home last night.” A tear rolled down his grandmother’s cheek.
“Well, that’s not so unusual for a boy his age, is it?”
Marlene worked to put warmth and empathy into her voice.
“Well, as Mandrake pointed out, Jon Michael always calls when he’s not coming home.” She gave Marlene a sly smirk. “I withhold his allowance when he doesn’t.”
“Allowance? Just how old is he, anyway?” Damn. She’d blown her fake concern with a blast of sharp criticism.
“He’ll be twenty-one on Halloween.” Florita fiddled with a huge diamond ring on her right hand. It sparkled in the sunlight and Marlene figured it had be at least ten carats. “I assure you my grandson earns his allowance, Marlene. Jon Michael does a great deal of promotional work for Mandrake and me.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.” Her words were warmer than the tea. Marlene felt relieved. She knew Katharine had come home; she’d spotted her this morning.
“It’s just that…” Florita began, and then paused. Marlene considered patting her hostess’s hand, but settled for an encouraging nod.
“I don’t like my grandson hanging out with those lowlife surfers. I keep telling him they’re not our sort of people.” Anger distorted Florita’s features. “Especially Claude Jensen. The boy comes from a long line of white trash. The father’s a sociopath, serving a life sentence; he killed a girl in Dade. Claude’s a regular chip off the old block. He’s served time in jail too, and he’s awaiting trial now. Mandrake and I believe Claude’s leading Jon Michael astray. Sam Meyers seems okay, but why he’s hanging out with the surfers is a mystery to me.
What’s in it for him?” Marlene found herself believing Florita. But then she remembered that telling great stories was how cons sucked their marks in.
The owner of the best tanning salon and skull-reading operation in South Florida frowned. “There’s another serious concern, Marlene.”
What now? Marlene placed her now tepid tea on the table and met Florita’s eyes. They’d turned cold.
“Mandrake says you’re not a true believer. He doesn’t wish to meet you.” Florita stood. “There’ll be no charge for today’s visit. No hard feelings. I’ll pack up the rest of these cookies for you.”
Marlene was about to tell her what she could do with her cookies when Florita shoved aside her flowing sleeve to glance at her watch. A diamond bracelet Rolex.
Hot damn! Could Florita be Diamond Lil?