by Noreen Wald
It took a lot to shock Marlene, but she gasped, involuntarily for sure, yet loud enough to catch Sam’s attention. He stopped kissing granny and grinned at Marlene. “Didn’t Beth tell you about Annette and me? All those other hot old broads in NOW think we’re a cool couple.”
For possibly the first time in her life, Marlene was speechless.
“Our trailer park has as many rules as any fancy condo, you know.” Sam sounded earnest, seeming to want Marlene to understand. “Only the owners’ kin can visit for more than a week. Lovers don’t qualify as kin. So for the record I’m Annette’s grandson.” Sam winked. “But we’re saving up to get married. Then we’ll be husband and wife and can live here legally. We don’t like to break the rules, but true love conquers all, right?” He squeezed Annette’s shoulder. “I can’t believe no one told you about us. Annette and I are going to be featured in the chapter’s newsletter.”
Marlene shrugged, trying to present a calm exterior while her mind whirled. “I just joined the Fort Lauderdale chapter, haven’t even gotten my membership card yet.” She could feel sweat forming in her armpits and across her back, her silk jacket clinging to her body.
“The locals are late,” Annette said. “Beth must have screwed up.” She slid out of Sam’s arms and walked around the long, narrow counter separating the tiny kitchen from the living/dining area. “You ready for another beer, Marlene?”
If she didn’t need another drink now, when would she? “Yes, thanks.”
“I’m smoking, with a beer chaser.” Annette lifted a plastic bag out from under the cover of an ancient air conditioner in the kitchen window. “The pigs may rough us up and the pot helps my arthritis.”
Marlene felt as if she had landed in a really bad movie circa 1969, where the hippie heroine had been transformed into an old lady.
Sam rolled the joints while Annette served the beers. Such a sweet domestic scene. Hell, somewhere the sun had to be over the yardarm. Marlene grabbed the can of Miller and drank with gusto. Maybe, while waiting for the protest to start, she could ask a few questions, like where did this odd couple meet and how Sam had hooked up with the surfers. He didn’t appear to be grieving Jon Michael’s death.
A very precise roller, not dropping a bit of weed, Sam worked on his second reefer. Annette had lighted hers and the sweet smell of marijuana filled the trailer. Marlene wondered if she could just say no. “I fell in love with Annette the first time I laid eyes on her,” Sam said, albeit unwittingly, feeding Marlene the right line once again.
“So, where did you two meet?” Marlene shook her head as Sam offered her a joint. She’d fretted for naught; he just stopped rolling and started smoking, seeming not to care that she wasn’t joining him. “Here in Florida?”
Sam patted Annette’s behind. “No. We met in Acapulco.” Marlene almost fell off the bar stool she’d just straddled.
“Recently?” She almost choked on the word.
“Just last summer, though we were old souls together in several past lives, so we know each other real well,” Sam said.
Humph. They’d probably shared company in previous incarnations with Mandrake the talking skull.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Marlene.” Annette inhaled. “This is good stuff. Imported.”
“From Acapulco?” Marlene asked, thinking about the missing Amanda Rowling and the pain etched on her mother’s face.
“No,” Sam said, “way closer than that.”
A loud crash rocked the trailer, followed by screaming and another ear-piercing blast. The old man Marlene had seen earlier came dashing through the front door. “They started early, Annette, drove a goddamn bulldozer right through the clubhouse, demolished it.”
“Rally the troops, we’ve been attacked by fascists,” Annette shouted over her shoulder as she ran out the door. “Come on, Sam! Move it Marlene! This is war!”
Nineteen
When the bridge went up for the second time since they’d pulled in line, and they were still on Neptune Boulevard behind a flatbed truck filled with rowdy teenagers, Kate knew they’d be late. She also knew Nick Carbone was not a patient man.
After eighteen months in Palmetto Beach, Kate found the view of the Intracoastal Waterway awesome. The wide expanse of blue water, its shores lined with mansions and palm trees on the mainland, restaurants and a marina on the island, and a sleek sailboat gliding by under the open bridge would have given her great pleasure if she weren’t so antsy. But today, even the smell of freshly baked bread wafting over the water from Dinah’s Restaurant didn’t improve her mood. Sometimes the only way to deal with worry was to worry. And sometimes the best way to deal with worry was to act. She opted for the latter.
“Katharine, I want you to tell me where you were and what you were doing all day yesterday. Even more importantly, I need to know why you and Jon Michael were fighting just before he went surfing on Sunday night.”
When Katharine squirmed in the front passenger seat of Kate’s new but secondhand white Beetle convertible and glared at her grandmother, Kate added, “If you don’t tell me, I assure you, you’ll have to tell Nick Carbone.”
In the backseat, Jennifer groaned.
Kate, deciding there was no time for tact, said, “You’ll get your turn, Jennifer.”
The bridge started to ease back down. Kate stepped on the gas pedal. “We’ll be at the police station in less than fifteen minutes. Start talking, Katharine.”
“I already told you, Nana. I wanted to kill Jon Michael.”
“Oh God, don’t say that,” Jennifer shouted.
Jennifer had dressed in ten minutes flat and still hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup, convincing Kate that her daughter-in-law was frantic. What did Jennifer know that Kate didn’t?
“Let Katharine talk.” Kate’s tone sounded kinder.
“There’s another girl. I overheard him and Roberto quarreling about her earlier Sunday evening on the pier. I couldn’t ask Jon Michael about her while Roberto was around, so Sunday night I snuck out of the apartment around eleven thirty and went down on the beach and waited for him.”
“Didn’t Roberto always surf with Jon Michael late at night?” Kate asked.
“Yes, but I’d heard Roberto say he wouldn’t be going on the run Sunday night, and I needed to talk to Jon Michael.”
“On the run.” Kate found that an odd way for Roberto to describe whatever the boys did on those midnight rides.
“Katharine, why did you throw yourself at that boy?” Jennifer asked in a teary voice.
“Quiet,” Kate said, shocking herself. “You’ll have your turn.” She heard Katharine stifle a giggle. Great, by the tune she finished this inquisition neither her daughter-in-law nor her granddaughter would be speaking to her. But she couldn’t stop now. “Go ahead, Katharine.”
“What do you want to hear, Nana? I told you this before. He said he never loved me and I shouldn’t have followed him here, and his last words were, ‘Take a hike, bitch.’”
Kate looked at Jennifer in the rearview mirror. “Okay, your turn. Where were you Sunday night? And don’t say you were with a client if you weren’t. Nick Carbone will know you’re lying.”
“How can this be a homicide investigation?” Jennifer whined. “That boy was killed by a shark.”
“Mom, tell Nana the truth. I know you weren’t with a client.”
A strangled moan escaped from Jennifer, but she said nothing.
Katharine spun around and faced her mother. “You were on the beach, Mom, hiding behind the lifeguard’s station. I saw you there when I started back to the condo. Jon Michael was standing in the surf. What happened after I left?”
“Are you accusing me of murder?” Jennifer shrieked, and then broke into sobs. Uncontrollable sobs filling the car, overpowering in their anguish.
Whatever reaction Kate had expected when she started asking questions, it hadn’t been this.
“No, Mom, just of spying. Please don’t cry. I know you could never kill anyone.” Katharine sounded on the verge of tears herself. “I’m sorry, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Jennifer said, still sobbing.
Kate smiled. If nothing else, her probing had brought her granddaughter and her daughter-in-law back together.
They would need a united front when facing Nick Carbone.
“Mom, I saw you leave the beach just as Jon Michael rode that big wave.”
Good Lord, maybe mother and daughter could alibi each other after all.
Twenty
Splayed, her arms and legs akimbo, Marlene lay flat on her back between Annette and Sam on the grass in front of what was left of the Rainbow Beach trailer park’s clubhouse.
The old man had exaggerated. Only the picture window wall facing the ocean was gone. The pool side and the clubhouse’s front and back walls were still intact. Out of the corner of her eye, Marlene watched an elderly lady in the pool floating on her back. “I can’t get down on the ground, so I’m protesting from here,” she’d said.
The woman wore an old-fashioned white bathing cap complete with a chin strap and trimmed in flowers made of pink rubber. Marlene recalled her mother had worn one just like that, only with turquoise flowers that matched her swimsuit.
The mayor and the builder paced at the rear of the clubhouse as the press and television anchors peppered them with questions.
Several of the elderly protesters were singing “God Bless America.” The grumpy old man, whose name was Mike, along with three other old men, had dressed in their uniforms from World War II: one from the Navy, one from the Air Force, and two from the Army, including Mike, who had been awarded the Purple Heart. The Air Force guy couldn’t zip up his bomber jacket. A good thing—the temperature at midday had to be over ninety. The former Navy officer was quite dashing in his summer dress whites.
Dozens of teenage volunteers, of varied ethnicity, all clean-cut and attractive, had been recruited by Annette from the local high school. Well trained, they were applying cold compresses to the protesters’ faces and giving them sips of water from small plastic glasses. The kids kept shouting, “Shame, shame, save Rainbow Beach,” as they went about their ministering. Jesse Jackson could take lessons from Annette Meyers.
The construction workers, stymied, sat near the bulldozers, except for two or three who were helping the teenagers serve the water.
The police stood around looking sheepish. None of them wanted to be the first to haul some old lady off to jail and have his picture, resembling a storm trooper, plastered on the front page of the Palm Beach Gazette.
On the other hand, if she lived through this, Marlene could look forward to seeing herself on all three networks, plus cable. Of course, she wasn’t being photographed from her best angle.
“Hang in there, Marlene,” Annette said. “I’m sweating so hard my hand may slip out of yours. We need to maintain a united front.” Annette had raised her voice, beseeching the other owners not to give up. “Please hold tight and hang in there, everyone.”
When the first ambulance, siren blaring, arrived five minutes later, the mayor caved.
The builder had left the premises. Heat exhaustion, someone said.
At an instantly arranged press conference, the mayor promised Annette Meyers and the trailer park board that he would call a special town council meeting and ask the council to vote to reverse the earlier legislation—all the council members were nodding like sycophants—and then he’d introduce a bill to protect the Rainbow Beach trailer park. Hell, he’d turn it into a landmark.
At the impromptu potluck victory party in the remnants of the clubhouse, miraculously the air-conditioning was still working—though with one wall missing, it wasn’t very effective—Marlene found herself dancing with Sam Meyers.
Mike, the former Army private first class Purple Heart winner, had brought a phonograph, circa 1950, and all his old 78 rpm records.
The old lady who’d been floating in the pool had brought homemade potato salad, and Annette was slicing a honey-baked ham. The owners must have counted on a victory; they just kept arriving bearing all sorts of great food and drink. The attractive former Navy lieutenant was making margaritas.
“I’ll be seeing you,” Sam crooned as he led Marlene in a well-executed fox-trot. Had Annette been giving him lessons?
Her partner seemed a little high and more than a little flirtatious. Marlene decided now would be the time to lob her questions.
She remained undecided about whether to flirt back. Would it get her anywhere? Or did Sam just have a thing for all old broads? Maybe taking a direct approach would be better. After all, this guy had been in Acapulco. Sam Meyers could have been involved in Amanda Rowling’s disappearance. And “Granny” could have been too.
“So, is it just a coincidence you and Annette have the same last name?” She asked as he led her out of a graceful dip. That sounded innocuous enough, didn’t it?
“You still think we’re related, don’t you?” Sam spun her out, more like a lindy movement than a foxtrot.
So much for innocuous. “God no, of course I don’t.” She didn’t, did she?
“My real name is Samuel Levin. I changed it when I decided to move in with Annette. Lots of people in South Florida change their names to hide their real identities; I changed mine to make Annette and me more convincing as grandmother and grandson. But I’m sure you’ve figured that out.”
Sam Meyers née Levin might be many things, but dumb wasn’t among them.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” ended and the strains of “The White Cliffs of Dover” filled the room. If she weren’t trying so hard to interrogate Sam, Marlene would really be enjoying herself. “Let’s keep dancing,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound desperate.
He gave her a sly smile and pulled her closer.
Maybe she needed to toss some truth into the mix. “My best friend and I live in Ocean Vista. Her granddaughter is Katharine Kennedy. Do you know her?”
“Yeah, she’s the redhead who followed Jon Michael to Palmetto Beach, right?”
“Had you met her in Acapulco?”
“She’d split before I got there. The only woman I met in Mexico was Annette.”
“The other three boardsmen knew Amanda Rowling. Did you?”
“Like I said, I only met one woman in Acapulco.” He loosened his hold on her. Maybe she’d better switch gears.
“Such a tragedy about Jon Michael, wasn’t it? Such an awful way to die.”
“Is there a good way, Marlene?”
She was getting nowhere fast. Yet she had a hunch that, despite his glib answers, Sam was an okay guy. He worked in the computer field, saving his money so he could get married, held a full-time job while protesting against greedy developers, seemed to love Annette, and maybe loved women in general. Marlene loved men in general, so who was she to judge?
Acting on her hunch, she said, “You seem more grounded than the other surfers, Sam. I hate to see our Katharine mixed up with that unsavory lot.”
Sam’s heel landed on her big toe. His first misstep. “Funny you should say that Marlene. Jon Michael was the best of the bunch and that’s not saying much. That sociopath Claude Jensen should be in jail like his father the ax murderer. I’ll bet there’s more than one skeleton in that cracker’s closet. And Roberto Romero’s down there in Miami hustling his body and his soul for chump change. And some crazy old broad who wears her jewels to bed keeps him in threads.”
“Why do you hang out with them?” Marlene’s puzzlement was in her voice. And she’d check out that old broad who slept in her jewels.
“Make that past tense,” Sam said. “I hung out with them, want
ed to surf like them, learn how to catch a wave. The boardsmen were wicked, the coolest. Like in Acapulco, Jon Michael and Roberto could have had any girl they wanted. Same here in Florida.”
“But?”
“But I got fed up. It’s time for me to put away my toys and settle down.” Sam glanced across the room. “If you’re done with your questions, I’d like to dance with my girl.”
Marlene ate a hearty lunch—playing detective works up an appetite—drank two Diet Cokes, wanting to be awake for the drive home, and enjoyed a quick spin around the floor with the former Navy officer. He said he’d call.
All in all, not a bad day.