Death Rides the Surf (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 5)

by Noreen Wald

  “When I met him in Acapulco, he seemed so wonderful, so thoughtful. And so cool. Jon Michael made me laugh, tried to teach me to surf. I think I loved him from the moment I met him. But he didn’t love me back. Not even in the beginning. And when I left Acapulco, he never said good-bye and never called me. Do you know how I found out he was in Palmetto Beach, Nana?”

  Kate, afraid to say a word, afraid Katharine might shut down, just shook her head.

  “From Amanda Rowling’s mother on the Today show. Maybe I’m lucky I didn’t disappear too. Amanda arrived in Acapulco like three days after I’d left.”

  “If Jon Michael hurt you so, why did you follow him here?” She tried to keep her tone neutral and calm, but a hint of fear had crept in.

  “I loved him.”

  Kate had never heard three little words convey so much sadness.

  The wind had picked up, heralding rain. In South Florida, no one got too excited about a sudden storm; it often ended as quickly as it arrived.

  “Then Sunday night on the beach,” Katharine met Kate’s eyes, “were you watching us from the balcony, Nana?”

  As rain began to pelt her back and Ballou barked, Kate gulped and said, “Yes.”

  “You witnessed our final scene.” Spoken like the film student that Katharine was. Her red hair was soaked, strands of curls were plastered to her cheeks and flopping into her eyes. She didn’t seem to notice. “His last words were, ‘Take a hike, bitch.’”

  Kate’s cell phone rang. Thinking it might be Jennifer, she was surprised to see Nick Carbone’s number.

  “Hello.” She sounded impatient and stressed, but she didn’t care. She’d wondered why he hadn’t called; now she had neither the time nor the inclination to speak to him. The relentless rain kept falling, drenching her baseball cap and sweat suit.

  “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I was down in Key Largo following up a lead. But I’m calling about Jon Michael Tyler’s death. Another piece of his surfboard washed up on shore yesterday and the preliminary lab tests show some strange results. We’re doing more tests and we’re opening up a homicide investigation. I need to speak to Katharine.”

  Sixteen

  Marlene glanced at the clock. It was 8:20. Damn. She rolled over, knowing she’d never get back to sleep.

  Kate had called around eleven thirty last night to let her know Katharine had come home. So Marlene, relieved, had watched Laura until two thirty, glad she knew it by heart, because those three martinis had clouded her concentration. After she’d fallen asleep she kept waking up, almost every hour on the hour. Something had been nagging her. Something Florita Flannigan said about Sam Meyers, the fourth boardsman. The surfer they’d seen but never met. The only one, except for her grandson, Florita had seemed to respect. Maybe Sam would know why Roberto and Jon Michael went surfing at midnight. And, just maybe, Sam knew what had happened in Acapulco.

  She bolted out of bed. Why not let Kate and Katharine have some time alone? Marlene was not often selfless, but hell, she had other plans for today anyway. Truth be told, she could use another day away from Katharine, who was depressed and depressing. Not to mention that any minute the girl might drop a bombshell about her Auntie Marlene’s past. And a drive with the top down—of course, it would have to stop raining—might clear the cobwebs. Maybe last night she had downed four martinis, not three.

  Marlene had always believed the difference between a drinker and a drunk was how they performed the morning after. To prove her theory, she’d dragged herself through some major-league hangovers. This one was minor.

  She’d get herself dressed and head up to Palm Beach County to visit Sam in his granny’s trailer. Granny Meyers couldn’t be any less hospitable than Granny Flannigan, could she? Now what would Harriet Vane wear?

  The sun came out as Marlene hit Deerfield Beach. Bright, beautiful, comforting. She put the white ’57 Chevy’s top down, then sang along with Tony Bennett and lit a Virginia Slim. Still sneaking cigarettes at sixty-eight, she’d gotten more grief for smoking at sixty-six than she had at sixteen. So, a three-pack-a-day smoker for over fifty years, she’d lied when she swore she’d quit. She’d cut back, but what she did in the privacy of her home and car was nobody’s business.

  She figured Kate knew the truth and had decided to ignore Marlene’s dirty little habit as long as she didn’t flaunt it. Kate had overlooked most of Marlene’s faults for decades on end. A wave of guilt consumed her. Damn. Why hadn’t she filled her flask? Hair of the dog would be good about now. She wondered if Granny Meyers might be a drinking woman.

  As she crossed into Palm Beach County, the grass got greener and stood up straighter. The Boca Raton condo strip ranged from ornate to palatial. During the last four decades, some impressive and costly condominiums—the more French the name of the building, the more expensive its apartments—had been constructed along A1A in Boca. But that was BT. Before Trump. Some of his tower’s apartments went for twenty-seven million dollars. A world gone mad, though this season, there was a glut of condos; it was becoming a buyers’ market for the first time in years.

  The light traffic in the one-lane road going north made the drive a breeze. She savored the ocean to her right and the mansions to her left as she approached her destination. To say a trailer park located on A1A in Palm Beach County, minutes from the city of Palm Beach, was an oddity would be an understatement of the greatest magnitude. For years, tourists traveling to the Breakers or Worth Avenue would pass through the tiny hamlet of Rainbow Beach and marvel at its trailer park abutting the Atlantic Ocean, and just minutes away from Mar-a-Lago, the former Marjorie Merriweather Post mansion, now also owned by the ubiquitous Trump.

  Annette Meyers, a New York City transplant who’d lived in the Rainbow Beach trailer park for thirty-five years, wasn’t about to let her home be destroyed without a fight. She’d rallied the other residents and, twenty-nine strong, the trailer owners filed a class action suit against the city of Rainbow Beach. The problem here, as with other inland trailer parks in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, was that the parks’ residents owned their trailers, but not the land they were on. The city of Rainbow Beach owned the park and was executing its right of ownership. Six months ago, during a town meeting, Meyers had shouted the New York more graphic version of “horsefeathers,” and then hired the aging but still blustery attorney H. Lee Daley.

  Marlene and Kate wondered where Granny Meyers had gotten the money. H. Lee Daley didn’t come cheap.

  She turned right toward the sea into the quaint beach colony, its pastel trailers equipped with white picket fences and tiny green lawns. No trailer trash here, just a spectacular ocean view and the best trailer park in the universe.

  An elderly man—anyone who appeared to be five or more years older than Marlene qualified as elderly, though according to Medicare, so did she—tended a rose garden in front of his trailer, the first “house” on her left.

  “Hi,” she said, oozing charm. “Could you please tell me where Annette Meyers lives?”

  “Who wants to know?” His gray eyes were wary and his body language indicated distrust and, maybe, disdain. She wished she’d worn something sexy, instead of the most tailored pantsuit she owned, but she’d wanted to be low key. She could hear Kate laughing at her for even entertaining the notion of appearing low key. And it wouldn’t have made a difference if she were stark naked; this old guy wouldn’t have even noticed.

  “An old friend and a sister member of NOW,” she lied.

  “One of them, huh?” He pointed to the east. “Keep going. Ms. Meyers is in the first house off the beach on the left.”

  The trailer was pale aqua, the exact color of its owner’s eyes, Marlene noted as she opened the door. Annette Meyers had broad shoulders, a robust body, and stood straight and tall, taller than Marlene, which put her at almost six feet. She wore her gray-streaked black
hair like Gloria Steinem’s, only shorter and sleeker. Her plaid shirt was well pressed and her jeans stretched over ample hips, though not nearly as ample as Marlene’s. She was barefoot and her toenails were painted cherry red: a feminist with flare.

  “Come in, come in, I’ve been expecting you.” Granny Meyers’s voice was as robust as her body.

  Marlene, puzzled but pleased to be inside, looked around the comfortable living/dining area. Charming. And its to-scale picture window had a view of the sea.

  “You’re a little early. Can I get you a cold drink?” Annette Meyers walked over to a small bar. “Beer or soda?” Like Marlene, she added an “r” to soda.

  Since it was not yet eleven and she hated beer—a margarita might have been a different story—Marlene said, “Soda, please,” and went back to wondering who the hell Annette thought she was.

  Her hostess reached for a glass, and then peered at Marlene. “Aren’t you a bit overdressed? We’re forming a human chain on the ground; you might be dragged off to jail.”

  Seventeen

  It occurred to Kate, and not for the first time, that her daughter-in-law Jennifer could be a prissy pain. On Jennifer’s mother’s side, the family line went back to John Adams and any history buff knew what a prig he’d been.

  Kate, all too familiar with Nick Carbone’s tactics and how he ran a murder investigation, had offered her best advice, but instead of listening, Jennifer was speed-dialing her attorney in New York.

  The three generations of women sat in Kate’s kitchen, their tea growing cold as they waited for the detective to arrive.

  Katharine lost in a silence propelled by fear had said nothing since she’d heard Carbone wanted to question her. Ballou, his eyes closed, lay at the girl’s feet.

  And where had Marlene gone? Kate had tried both her home and cell phones. No answer. Maybe Marlene had forgotten to turn her cell on; that would be just like her, wouldn’t it? Kate’s impatience caught her attention: misplaced anger, Marlene wasn’t the problem here.

  The degree of Jennifer’s distress was evident in her lack of grooming. She’d awakened to the news that her daughter was about to be questioned in a homicide investigation and hadn’t even bothered to run a comb through her ash blonde hair. Her pale green eyes, minus shadow and mascara, appeared smaller and, without pencil extending them, her brows ended right after the arch.

  The cool stockbroker, paid all those high commissions for her advice, had panicked and called her New York attorney for his.

  “Mom,” Katharine said, breaking her silence, “why won’t you listen to Nana? She’s dating the detective.”

  Katharine’s presumptuous conclusion bandied about so cavalierly, and the resulting look of amazement on Jennifer’s face was worth Kate’s embarrassment. Even better, it worked. Jennifer said, “I’ll get back to you, Henry,” and hung up.

  Kate drained the last of her tepid tea.

  “Any suggestions, Kate?” Jennifer snapped, spilling her tea into the saucer.

  Still fretting about where Katharine had been all day yesterday, Kate succumbed to an urge to throw her daughter-in-law off guard and said, “Nick might be interested in why—and when—you flew down to Fort Lauderdale, Jennifer.”

  A flushed Katharine fidgeted in her chair, then stood—disturbing Ballou, who yelped and moved over to Kate’s foot—and put the kettle back on to boil.

  Jennifer waved her right hand as if swatting a mosquito. “Where the hell are you coming from, Kate?”

  Kate didn’t have a clue, but not for a New York minute did she buy into Jennifer’s story about meeting a client in Palm Beach. And neither would Nick. Like Katharine, Kate believed Jennifer had traveled from the city on a mission: to bring her daughter home. What lengths would Jennifer have gone to in order to achieve that goal? Kate laughed, nervous laughter. She really didn’t think her daughter-in-law had anything to do with Jon Michael’s death. It was a shark, wasn’t it? And a shark attack couldn’t be a homicide, could it?

  “What’s so damn funny, Kate?” Jennifer stood too, towering over Kate, her hands on hips, her body language shouting confrontation. “A detective—your boyfriend, I might add—is on his way to interrogate my daughter, and you’ve just accused me of God knows what, and now you’re laughing.”

  Katharine stared down at the kitchen floor as if entranced with those vapid beige tiles.

  The telephone rang, jarring the three women. Kate rose and answered it, saying, “Hello,” in a shaky voice.

  “It’s Nick, Kate.” Self-assured. Not the least bit shaky. “This Tyler investigation is mushrooming. I’d prefer Katharine come to my office.” He hesitated, then added, “Can you be here at twelve thirty?” Phrased as a request, but more like a command.

  “We’ll be there,” Kate said, then hung up, and whirled around to face her daughter-in-law and granddaughter. “Get dressed, Jennifer. Katharine’s due at the police station in an hour.” She glanced at the uneaten bagels. “We should try to eat something. And if we don’t want to be late we need to leave here by noon. It’s almost the off-season and the bridge is up more than it’s down.”

  Jennifer bit her lip. “Does Katharine need an alibi?”

  “Why, are you thinking about lying to protect me, Mom? Or would providing me with an alibi cover both our butts?”

  Kate sighed. It should be a fun ride across the Neptune Boulevard Bridge to Palmetto Beach Police headquarters.

  Eighteen

  Be careful what you lie about, Marlene thought, or your scenario might come true and bite you in the behind.

  Annette, the aging hippie, had planned a sit-in and, believing Marlene to be one of the NOW volunteers, expected her to lie down with all—well, most of the other trailer owners, a few had balked—to demonstrate civil disobedience and to be willing to go to jail for their cause.

  “You mean the demolition crew is arriving today?” Marlene asked, thinking of the old man tending his garden. No wonder he seemed so cranky.

  “Indeed. And none of the owners will leave. Even the most conservative among us, who refuse to actively engage in passive resistance, are holding firm. Didn’t Beth explain all this to you? And where are the other women? Beth promised support from our local chapter. One person hardly qualifies as support.” Annette put on her glasses and peered at Marlene. “Funny, I’ve never seen you at any of our meetings.”

  “I’m from the Fort Lauderdale chapter.” Marlene, lying yet again, hoped there was one. “You know, Annette, maybe I’ll have that beer.”

  “There you go.” She reached into the tiny refrigerator and handed Marlene a beer. “And there’s marijuana around here somewhere. Now where did I stash it? We deserve a toke today; that’s my motto.” Her hostess bustled off through a door into what Marlene assumed must be a bedroom.

  A moment later, the trailer’s front door flew open and Sam Meyers and his surfboard filled a good part of the living area. He wore stylishly long shorts in a dark print and no shirt. Great abs, though a tad on the skinny side for Marlene’s taste. Sam was tall, dark, and too geeky to be handsome, but still an attractive man, not a boy like the rest of the boardsmen. Would she ever sleep with a man that young again? Hell, would she ever sleep with any man again?

  “Hi.” He smiled, revealing straight teeth. “What’s going down?” He lovingly lowered the surfboard to the space behind the wall and the couch. Its ends stuck out on both sides. “I don’t want this baby injured in the scuffle. The cops might get tough.” Sam flashed another smile. “You must be one of Annette’s allies from NOW, right?”

  So he called his granny by her first name. How progressive. Now how much of the truth should Marlene reveal? Lying was much easier when mired in a few facts.

  “Right on,” Marlene said, sounding like a hippie cheerleader. Rah, rah, sis boom bah. Go, women! “I’m Marlene Friedman.”
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br />   “Have we met before?” Sam stared at her.

  He’d fed her an opening line. “Call me Marlene. You look familiar too. I’ve seen you on the beach, haven’t I? Palmetto Beach, that is. I live there.”

  Sam laughed. “I live there too. Or maybe it just feels like that while I’m waiting to catch a wave.” If he’d heard about his fellow boardsman’s death, he showed no emotion. And how could he not have heard?

  “Sammy, you bad boy, did you smoke all my pot? I even searched under the mattress.” Annette had emerged from behind the bedroom door.

  “No, no, Annette, you hid it under the cover of the air-conditioning unit in the kitchen.” Sam Meyers stroked his grandmother’s arm, his long fingers lingering on the inside of her elbow, then swooped down and kissed her on the lips.