Death With An Ocean View (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 1) (13 page)

Twenty-Four

“Hello!” A loud,
raspy, all-too-familiar voice filled the room. “I just drew the ‘get out of jail free’ card.” Kate jerked her head around toward the double doors. Stanley Ferris had arrived at Stella’s Sajak’s wake.

A brief stunned silence was quickly followed by nervous chatter as Stella’s mourners tried not to stare at the man who’d been arrested for her murder.

Stanley posed in the doorway—there was no other way to describe that stance—hands on hips, pelvis thrust forward, like an aging rock star greeting his fans. Last seen in handcuffs and a skimpy bathing suit, Stanley now wore a cream-colored blazer, black silk pants, and his signature alligator cowboy boots. Obviously, he’d gone home to change before making his entrance.

“Damn.” Jeff Stein sounded pained. “His timing sucks. The presses are rolling. An hour earlier, I could have interviewed him for the Extra.”

Kate felt torn, wanting to hear more about David Fry and the crooked councilman—Jeff Stein was a fount of information—and wanting to know how Stanley Ferris had gotten out of jail.

Where was Nick Carbone? Had Oberon been arrested? Could the attorney actually have pulled the trigger? Or had he hired Timmy to do more than deliver a note? Had Oberon confessed?

Maybe the last word that Nancy had uttered hadn’t been
Joe.
Or
yo.
Or even
oh.
Maybe what she’d heard Nancy say was
O
as in Oberon. Kate’s stomach churned: That made sense. Wyndam Oberon, the unlikeliest murderer since the two little old ladies in
Arsenic and Old Lace,
had killed Stella and Nancy, and then held a smoking gun to her head.

But why? What was his motive? Had Oberon been part of Stella’s life before Palmetto Beach? Kate’s eyes moved from the doorway to the table that held the yearbook. How old was he anyway? Could he have been in high school with Stella and Joe? The attorney might be about the right age, but he couldn’t have grown up in suburban Michigan, not with that syrupy, Southern drawl. Maybe, despite Charlie’s
message
,
the motive hadn’t been rooted in Stella’s mysterious past, but in her combative present. Unless…

“Kate.” Marlene startled her. “Jeff is leaving.” Marlene’s emphasis on “leaving” signaled that if Kate had any more questions, she’d better ask them now.

“I’ll get up early tomorrow morning to read your Extra,” Kate said, extending her hand to Jeff Stein. “One more question, if I may.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you have any idea what Nancy Cooper’s third story might have been about? Even a hint. I think she was murdered to kill that story.”

A glint of admiration appeared in Jeff’s brown eyes.

“You are dogged, Mrs. K. And I meant what I said earlier. If you ever want a job as a reporter, give me a call.” He reached into his pocket and handed Kate a card. “I have no clue what Nancy’s third story was about, but I’ll ask the police to check her computer files, and who knows, maybe they might even come across a disk—if they can find anything in all that clutter.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, “but I’d bet the killer erased the file and took the disk.”

With a little nod, Jeff disappeared into the crowd. “Look at the sappy expression on Joe Sajak’s face.” Marlene almost growled. “He’s smitten with the mayor.” Once again, Kate turned away from the entrance where Stanley, like a conquering hero, was greeting his well-wishers with smiles and pats on the back.

Joe and Brenda Walters, engrossed in animated conversation, did appear to have eyes only for each other.

“When the widower spotted the mayor this afternoon at the Dew Drop Inn—immediately after watching his wife’s cremation, I might add—he seemed transfixed and told me that she reminded him of a movie star.” Marlene shook her head. “Then he proceeded to down a bacon cheeseburger with four thousand French fries—no doubt smothering his grief in grease.”

“You think it’s all an act, don’t you?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Marlene laughed. A roar deep from the gut, reminding Kate of the happy laughter they’d shared as children. “Do you?”

“At the very least, I think he’s overacting, trying to prove how much he cared. But I don’t know why.”

“To cover up a motive for murder?”

Fascinated, Kate watched as Joe whispered something in the mayor’s ear. Brenda Walters smiled and touched his forearm.

“Now isn’t that cozy?” Marlene said. “Come on, let’s go over and join them.”

As Kate and Marlene approached Brenda Walters and Joe Sajak from the left, David Fry barreled in from the right, and Stanley, making his way from the double doors, swept down the center. Feeling childish, Kate picked up speed.

Fry got there first.

Kate could hear the mayor telling him, “No. I will not schedule a special meeting. Jerome Clark has, at my request, and with the approval of the other two members, been temporally removed from the council, pending the outcome of the State’s Attorney’s investigation. As of now, it doesn’t look good for your buddy Clark.”

“I think you’re overreacting, Mayor Walters.” Fry sounded considerably less charming than usual.

“And I can’t believe you’ve put my administration in this position, Mr. Fry.”

Kate wondered if their formal manner of address was for the benefit of their growing audience.

Stanley Ferris squeezed in between the mayor and the widower and spoke to Joe. “Let an innocent man offer his sincere condolences.” He held out his hand.

Joe backed away from him, almost knocking over the urn. He caught it; then cupped his right hand over the lid as if to protect Stella’s remains.

“Would a guilty man show up at his victim’s funeral?” Obviously, Stanley had never read any of Agatha Christie’s cozies.

The dentist was now almost nose to nose with Joe. “Stella was my colleague on the Ocean Vista Board of Directors. And I respected her.”

“Stanley,” Marlene said. “There isn’t a woman dead or alive that you ever respected.”

“Marlene Friedman, you have a big mouth,” Stanley shrieked.

Samuel Adams popped out from the wall of burgundy drapes behind the urn and announced, “Visitation hours are over.”

Twenty-Five

The pizzas arrived
at nine forty-five.
One plain—out of deference to Kate’s digestive system—the other topped with sausage, peppers, and onions. Mary Frances, Marlene, and Kate had accepted Joe Sajak’s invitation to stop by his place and order in—he’d added that he didn’t want to be alone.

Though Kate was ravenous—lunch at Del Ray had been hours ago—she’d wanted to get back to her own apartment and work on Timmy’s timeline. Stella’s too. Spotting the yearbook in Joe’s hand as they left the funeral parlor, she’d said, “Count me in.”

The yearbook was now on the breakfront, inches away from the Persian urn. Odd. Joe had let Marlene carry Stella’s ashes, but he’d carried the yearbook.

Just as she and Mary Frances had berated Stanley all the way home, his bad behavior continued to be the prime topic of conversation.

“Why in the world did the police let him go?” Joe had asked this question twice before.

This time Marlene fielded it. “Because your attorney, Wyndam Oberon, is looking and acting mighty guilty. And because Nick Carbone never really believed Stanley Ferris was a killer. It’s snowbird season and the mayor and council wanted the case closed.” Marlene flipped a slice of pizza on a paper plate and passed it to Kate. “You know, Joe, the way the mayor was pushing the chief of police to make an arrest, you should consider yourself lucky you weren’t the scapegoat.”

Kate devoured her slice, washed it down with Diet Coke, and reached for another.

“The mayor is an interesting woman and most attractive…and she seems so familiar…like a television anchor,” Joe said as he turned toward the pizza box.

Over his bent head, Marlene winked at Kate. “I thought she looked like a movie star.”

“I gather that the mayor and Stella had some differences,” Joe said, ignoring Marlene’s comment, “but she seems to be genuinely distraught…”

“You might want to remember that she’s a politician,” Mary Frances said.

Kate wiped her hands with a paper napkin. “May I look at Stella’s yearbook?”

“Well, I—er—I…” Joe stammered.

Kate felt herself flush. Why didn’t he want her to see the yearbook?

Joe put down his pizza.

“I guess that would be okay, but I’d like you to wash your hands before you touch it.”

“No problem.” She stood. “Is the bathroom down the hall?”

Marlene held a hand over her mouth. Kate suspected she was stifling laughter.

“Yes, next to the guest room. Please don’t use the ecru towel with the white embroidery. That’s Stella’s handiwork and I consider it an heirloom.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “And why don’t you fill in Marlene and Mary Frances on the missing page.”

The guest bathroom was charming—brass sconces, an old-fashioned pedestal sink, white wood planking on the floor—and immaculate. Had Stella been this tidy and clean? Or had her anal retentive widower given it a scrub-down? Kate washed her hands, wiped off the soap dish, and used a plain white hand towel.

On her way back, she popped into the guest bedroom. Again, very grandmother’s cottage in decor. Joe’s suitcases were neatly stacked in one corner. She opened the closet. His jackets, shirts, and pants were hanging there, two inches between each garment; shoes lined up like soldiers. So Joe wasn’t sleeping in the master bedroom. Because of his grief? Because he didn’t want to mess it up? Or because he and Stella hadn’t been sharing a bed during their
Same Time, Next Year
reunions?

“Can I help you with something?” Joe took her by surprise.

Staring at the hook rug on the highly polished wood floor, she said, “Er, sorry, just nosy, I guess. It’s so pretty.”

She followed him back to the living room, feeling like a kid who’d been caught by the principal.

As the other three continued eating, Kate picked up the yearbook, treating it as if it were a first edition, and sat in an armchair far removed from the food.

She turned to the jagged edge of the missing page. “By any chance would there be another picture of the science teacher?”

“Yes,” Joe said, “in the back. Under Science Club. There’s a picture of Martin Baum with Stella and some of his other honor students.”

Kate flipped to the back and found the photo. Martin Baum, a horse-faced man in his mid-thirties, with thinning fair hair and thick glasses, was surrounded by three girls and one boy. Rather uncharitably, Kate decided that not one of them, including the teacher, could be called even remotely attractive. All five were focused on a Bunsen burner. One of the girls held a clipboard. The boy held a vial.

Joe, Mary Frances, and Marlene came over and circled Kate’s chair.

Kate pointed to the girl in the center, who sported a mane of fuzzy dark curls. “Is this Stella?”

“That’s my sweetheart.”

The girl to Stella’s right had stringy brown hair, which looked in need of a good wash, and a bumpy nose. The other girl was overweight with acne. The boy looked like a younger version of Martin Baum.

“Who are these other kids?” Kate asked. “Can you tell me something about them? They’re only identified as honor students.”

Joe walked around and stood next to Kate. “God, let me think. The guy is Howie Gordon. He was in my homeroom. A real bookworm. The heavyset girl is Sophie Stefanos. Or some name like that. Her father owned a diner. The family had some money. Most of us were working-class poor. And I think the other girl is Bea Wernoski. Lived in a trailer. Her mother was a widow. Dirt poor, but smart. They were all smart. Howie won a scholarship to Princeton. Why do you want to know all this?”

Kate shrugged. “The science teacher committed suicide. He was rumored to be having an affair with one of his students. I wanted to see what he looked like. And I wanted to know something about Stella’s classmates. No real reason. Just curious.”

“Yes, I noticed your curiosity in the guest bedroom.” Joe lifted the yearbook off Kate’s lap.

“Whoa,” Marlene said. “You didn’t wash your hands!”

Twenty-Six

Seated at the
kitchen table, armed with mugs of decaf Lipton—she and Marlene had to get some sleep tonight—and two huge pieces of yellow cake with chocolate icing, their long-standing favorite, Kate was finally getting to work on the timelines.

Ballou snuggled in Marlene’s lap, loving the attention and the bits of cake that she was feeding him.

“Okay, Ballou, your Aunt Marlene and I have work to do.” Marlene put the Westie down and he stretched out between their chairs.

Kate handed Marlene a yellow pad, then held out a box of ballpoint pens and, doing a fair imitation of Joe Sajak’s smooth baritone, asked. “Would you like a green pen, like Stella always used?”

“Sure. Maybe her spirit will inspire us.”

Kate took a sip of tea. “I think we should start in the lobby on Tuesday afternoon. Timmy delivered the note while we were all at Town Hall and, for some reason, went back to work. You bought a newspaper from him on our way home from the meeting. Maybe he was just killing time until his appointment with Oberon. Hmm—I wonder how Timmy felt when he saw Stella in the car with us. Anyway, we arrived in the lobby around three thirty, and Miss Mitford handed Stella the note. I remember being impressed with the quality of the paper.”

“Good taste eliminates Stanley, right?”

“Probably.”

“Should I make columns?” Marlene sounded wide awake and ready to roll at eleven p.m. on what felt like the longest day of Kate’s life. “I can put each suspect’s name at the top of a column, do the timeline along the margin, and then, under each name, enter where that suspect was—or wasn’t—at any given time.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Kate smiled. “I’m glad Mary Frances decided to go straight to bed. You know, she’d offered to help with the timelines, but I’d rather work with you.”

The glow on Marlene’s face flooded Kate with warm memories. As little kids, she and Marlene played with movie star paper dolls, creating their own scenarios for their favorite actresses that, sometimes, seemed better than the stars’ Hollywood plots.

And later, as gawky twelve-year-olds, they wrote and starred in their own plays, assigning the supporting roles to their less ambitious friends. They’d performed on a makeshift stage in Kate’s basement, dressed up in her mother’s flapper gowns. And Kate’s mother in an apron, far removed from her dancing days, would serve hot chocolate and crumb buns fresh from the German bakery around the corner and would applaud their performances, shouting, “Encore, encore.”

Marlene held up her artwork. “Ready. You talk; I’ll enter.”

“Okay. David Fry, Stanley, Mary Frances, Stella, you, and I were at Town Hall with the mayor when the note was delivered. Joe Sajak claims that he was down in Fort Lauderdale on his friend’s sailboat, but like his alibi for the time of the murder, that can’t be confirmed. We don’t know where Wyndam Oberon was, but we do know that at a little after four, he was seen talking to Timmy on the pier. Timmy had a martini at the Neptune Inn right after their conversation, then disappeared. Maybe the attorney had advised him to get out of town. Did Oberon murder Stella and Nancy?” Kate shrugged. “His actions today certainly indicate he’s our killer, but I believe he was a middleman. God, when he gave Timmy that note, he may not even have known he was aiding and abetting a murderer.”

“Where did Stella go when she left the lobby?” Marlene filled in the timelines as she spoke. “She dashed right out the front door after she’d read the note. Do you think someone picked her up?”

“Where did Stella go? That’s the sixty-four-dollar question. And why didn’t we ask it earlier?”

Marlene screwed up her face in the chipmunk-like expression of bewilderment that she’d used ever since they were kids. “Even if I’d thought of the question, I wouldn’t have had a clue as to the answer.” She shook her head. “I still don’t.”

“What if that note scared the hell out of Stella? What if she had been blackmailing someone? And what if the note was an invitation, or a demand, to meet that someone—who’d already given her a two-hundred-thousand-dollar cashier’s check—on the beach? And what if Stella had left the lobby, gone to the parking lot, got into her own car, and driven over to the
Gazette
Building to give Nancy Cooper a heads-up, so that if something happened to her, Nancy would have the dirt on her murderer? And what if after Stella’s death, Nancy called the person Stella had been blackmailing to ask some questions and the killer realized Nancy knew the truth and shot her too.”

“Those are a lot of what-ifs
,
Kate. You remind me of when we were kids, playing movie stars and plotting those plays.”

“But this plot is for real. Nancy had to die…”

“To kill the third story. Nancy’s big scoop that Jeff Stein never saw.”

Kate nodded. “Exactly.”

“David Fry,” Marlene said. “Nancy Cooper spent a lot of time with him following Stella’s murder and went to great lengths to convince us that she and he were good friends, and maybe more. Could there have been yet another skeleton in his closet in addition to the corruption, fraud, and bribery story that’s supposed to run tonight? What else could Fry be guilty of? Maybe a major personal scandal. Something kinky? Like an orgy with the mayor and her three councilmen?”

Kate drained her tea. “Or maybe a secret from his and Stella’s and Joe Sajak’s past. I wonder where David Fry grew up.”

Marlene had slipped Ballou another morsel of cake and he was still licking her fingers long after the last of the icing was gone.

Kate felt a pang of jealousy. Would Charlie’s dog always prefer Marlene?

“That’s why you were checking out the yearbook.” Marlene pounded the table. Ballou jumped up, ready for action, and looked dejected when ignored. “And our host wasn’t happy about your snooping. If Stella was killed because of something that happened almost a half-century ago, I think Joe Sajak must be our man.”

“Me too.” Kate pushed her hair off her face. “I guess.” She couldn’t recall ever having been this tired. “Except…”

“What?”

“I’m not sure…but I’d like to get another look at that yearbook.”

“Listen, you’ve had a rough few days, Kate. Go to bed. At eight thirty tomorrow morning, I’m helping Samuel Adams turn Ocean Vista’s rec room into ‘a nonreligious yet chapel-like sanctuary, with her urn surrounded by flowers. A farewell scene suited to Stella’s personality.’ Personality doesn’t come cheap. I think the flowers alone are over a thousand dollars.”

Kate managed a weak laugh.

“So get some rest.” Marlene put the yellow pad on the table. “We can finish these timelines after the memorial. And I promise, even if I have to steal it, you’ll get to read Stella’s yearbook.”

Kate had stacked the dishwasher and was wiping off the table when the phone rang. Ballou yelped and Kate said, “Quiet.” Then, feeling guilty, she petted his head.

“Hello?”

Who would be calling her this late? Could one of her kids…

“Nick Carbone, Kate.”

“Oh. Hi. What’s wrong?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I never call with good news, do I?”

“Well…” She felt like yelping herself.

“We found Wyndam Oberon. He didn’t answer the door. His place was locked up like Fort Knox. And it took forever for the judge to issue a search warrant, so I’ve just left his house.”

“What did he say?” Her hand clenched.

“He’s dead, Kate. We found him fully dressed, sitting at his desk in the bedroom. He’d been shot in the head with what we think is the murder weapon. We couldn’t find a note, but the ME says it looks like suicide.”

“And what do you say? Do you believe he killed himself?”

“Well, we haven’t found Timmy, and I hate loose ends, but yes, I think it’s suicide.”

“So the killer’s dead. Can I go out alone now and not worry?”

Carbone sighed. “Until the autopsy is completed and I review the final report on the weapon, watch your back, Kate.”

She hung up sad and shaken, and wondering how Stella’s science teacher had committed suicide.