Death With An Ocean View (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 1) (7 page)

Twelve

They hadn’t heard
Joe Sajak’s response because, before he could even open his mouth, Detective Carbone had
invited
him down to the police station to take his statement.

To get away from the dining room, abuzz with chatter and filled with curious stares, Kate had invited Mary Frances and Marlene to her apartment. She, too, was dying with curiosity and felt certain that those two would have some answers.

Sitting in Kate’s living room, holding Ballou in her lap, Marlene said, “Is Sajak a snake? He seemed so sweet at first blush.”

Wanting to say, “And don’t they all, Marlene?” Kate instead nodded and waited for her former sister-in-law to continue.

“I know. I know,” Marlene said. “You don’t think I’d recognize a snake if it slithered up my arm.”

Kate smiled. “Well…”

Mary Frances, who’d been pacing, stopped and pointed a finger at Marlene. “Did you believe that cock-and-bull story that Joe Sajak told that nice Mr. Oberon?”

Kate pounced. “Did Joe Sajak say where he’d been before he showed up at Stella’s this morning?”

“Since you have such a low opinion of my judgment in men, Kate, why are you asking me about Joe’s whereabouts?” Marlene raised her voice. “Aren’t you afraid that my propensity for snakes will color my reportage?”

“Kate asked me, Marlene, not you, so why don’t you just keep quiet for once?” Mary Frances stopped pacing and perched on the edge of the off-white couch. Kate wondered how many condos in Ocean Vista had off-white couches, probably two out of three.

The storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. Sunlight streamed through the glass doors that led to the patio, and though the plastic furniture still glistened with raindrops, all would be dry in a matter of minutes.

“Speaking of reportage,” Kate looked at Marlene, “I have an appointment with Nancy Cooper at three, so whoever wants to tell me about Joe Sajak had better talk fast.”

“Nancy seems to have the goods on David Fry,” Marlene said. “Though all smug hints and no hard facts—if you can believe anything that woman says—her story in tomorrow’s
Gazette
should expose him.”

“Good,” Kate said. “Maybe she’ll give me a preview.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Mary Frances shrugged. “Why don’t you start the Sajak saga, Marlene? As a former teacher, I have an ear for details. I’ll fill in what you leave out.”

Giving Mary Frances a dirty look, Marlene said, “Well, when the undead husband walked through the door—he had a key—we were already in a state of shock. You wouldn’t believe the weird stuff that Stella bequeathed to me, Nancy, and Mary Frances.”

“Nancy Cooper was in Stella’s will?” Kate asked.

“Yes,” Marlene said, putting Ballou down. “The three
surviving members of the lonely Hearts club are now heiresses. Unfortunately, all we inherited was Stella’s flotsam and jetsam.”

Kate glanced at her watch.

“Okay, here’s the abridged version.” Marlene went into speed mode. “Joe Sajak arrived in Fort Lauderdale late Tuesday afternoon.”

Kate’s heart jumped. “Just in time to kill Stella.”

“You betcha.” Marlene fumbled in her tote bag and pulled out a Milky Way. They hadn’t had dessert, and since they’d been kids, Marlene never considered a meal complete without a sweet. “Sajak told Oberon he’d borrowed a boat from an old friend who kept it berthed at the local marina. Joe claims that he flew into Fort Lauderdale, went straight to the store, loaded up on groceries, then boarded the boat and took off Tuesday night around eight. That, of course, would be well before Stella had been shot.”

“Where did he sail to?” Kate asked.

“Said he headed north on the Intercoastal and anchored in Boynton Beach around midnight then spent the night on board. On Wednesday morning, he sailed out of Deerfield Beach Harbor and did some fishing in the ocean. He sailed back to the marina this morning and—finally—showed up at Stella’s. Being away from his home in Michigan, and not having a cell phone, he never picked up Oberon’s many messages and never knew that Stella had been murdered.”

“But his own story doesn’t give Sajak an alibi,” Mary Frances said. “I mean no one else was on board. He sailed alone.”

Kate nodded. “So…if he left the marina and docked somewhere close by here, he could have hopped off the boat and arrived on the beach in plenty of time to kill Stella.”

“And if, as Joe Sajak claims, he came to Fort Lauderdale to surprise Stella, why did he sail away without seeing her first?” Marlene pulled out two more Milky Ways. “Anyone want to join me?”

“To create an alibi.”

Kate shook her head, both to Marlene’s Milky Way offer and May Frances’s comment. “But as you just pointed out, Mary Frances, it’s not much of an alibi.”

“I don’t think he’s too bright. What kind of man spends all those decades in a
Same Time, Next Year
marriage?” Mary Frances twisted a red curl around her index finger, then turned and stared out the window. Could she be thinking about all those decades that she’d spent in the convent?

Having no takers, Marlene bit into another Milky Way. “The card table wasn’t the only place where Stella cheated. I’ll bet lots of people wanted that woman dead. God knows what devilment she’d been up to before she moved down.”

“G
od,” Kate said, “and possibly, her widower. Marlene, when Joe Sajak returns from the police station, why don’t you invite him over for dinner?”

“I’ll bring dessert,” Mary Frances said.

Driving over, Kate rehearsed her opening line.

“So, Nancy, do you think David Fry killed Stella Sajak?”

Though the sun was shining, a burst of thunder answered her.
“Okay, Charlie, I hear you. I’ll be more subtle.”

The
Palmetto Beach Gazette
was located off Federal Highway, a block away from the police station and Town Hall. The three-story pink stucco Spanish-style building had pretensions toward Boca Raton’s downtown flair, but fell far short. Kate pulled into the parking lot and grabbed her umbrella; it was raining again. Her Ocean Vista neighbors always said, in South Florida, if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. Walking around to the front door, Kate hoped that today they were right.

With wet chinos and soggy shoes, she went through the oak doors into the lobby. The air-conditioning hit her damp shirt with a cold blast. Somewhere in the rear of the building, the presses were rolling. Shivering, she checked the names list next to the elevator.

Nancy Cooper’s office was on the second floor. As Kate reached to press the button, the elevator door opened and David Fry stepped back to allow an attractive blonde to exit before him. Well, well, Mayor What’s-Her-Name.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Kennedy.” Fry oozed that canned charm. “I believe you’ve met our mayor, Brenda Walters?”

The mayor smiled and extended her hand. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Kennedy. I’m so sorry about your friend’s death. Such a civic-minded woman. What a great loss for our town. I want you to know that the police are working round the clock to find Stella Sajak’s killer.”

Kate felt startled. Should she be receiving condolences on Stella’s death? She’d never considered her a friend, only a neighbor, and rather a pain in the butt at best, but she said, “Thank you.”

The mayor smiled, showing lots of white teeth and not unattractive crinkles around jade green eyes. “Wyn has invited me to the memorial. I’ll see you there.” So Stella’s—and the condo’s—nemesis would be at the Ocean Vista memorial. Talk about the enemy at the gate.

David Fry, looking solemn, said, “I’ll be at the service too.” He took Brenda Walters’s arm. “I’m sorry to dash off, but we’re running late.” His smile dazzled too. Fry, the mayor, and Joe Sajak must have shared the same dental plan. “Good day, Mrs. Kennedy. I’ll be seeing you.”

How could such obsequious politeness sound so ominous?

Kate crossed in front of him, stepped into the elevator, and pushed two. As the door was closing, she said, “You can count on that, Mr. Fry.”

So Fry was cozy with the mayor and the mayor was cozy with Wyn Oberon, and dollars to doughnuts, Fry and Walters had just visited Nancy Cooper. What a tangled web of a town.

A plump older woman—probably older than Kate, who recently had been noticing how many elderly women were still working—sat at the desk in the
Gazette
’s reception area. Its white stucco walls were cluttered with laminated newspaper headlines and framed pictures.

“Take a load off your feet, sweetie,” the woman told Kate, pointing to a faux leather black couch. Kate sighed. South Florida’s decor, like South Florida’s population, seemed filled with fakes. “Her majesty is holding court, but the Knave of Hearts should be out in a minute.”

Kate, suddenly feeling very tired, sank into the couch. It smelled like plastic, reminding her of the pink, ruffle-trimmed plastic cushions on her mother’s kitchen chairs. She could see her mother, wearing a crisply ironed apron, sitting at the table with its pink, flowery, linoleum-backed tablecloth, pasting saving stamps into a booklet. When the stamps added up to $18.25, she’d buy a savings bond and put Kate’s name on it. “One day, these bonds will mature and send you to Marymount, Kate.” But by the time Kate had been ready for college, her mother had died, and they sold the bonds to bury her, and even with a scholarship Kate’s father could scrape up enough for only two years at Hunter, then Kate had gone to work for an airline.

Funny how a smell or a touch or a taste could transport you back to your childhood. Maybe would-be time travelers should concentrate more on the five senses.

She heard a door open—nothing wrong with her hearing, but she had trouble believing her eyes. Stanley Ferris came strutting back into the reception room, wearing a white linen sports jacket and a black silk shirt.

“Yo, Kate, if you’re here to see Nancy Cooper, let me warn you—though she’s only second vice-president, she has stepped into Stella’s role as condo crusader and is even meaner than the original.”
When Kate said nothing, he continued, “Listen, do you like to dance? I’m going to Ireland’s Inn tonight and I can really cut a rug. I bet you still have a few good moves left.” Stanley had discovered Stella’s body on the beach on Tuesday night and by Thursday afternoon he felt ready to jitterbug. Kate wanted to scream.

Nancy Cooper pushed open the door that Stanley had just closed. “Kate Kennedy, come on in. But make it snappy. I’m on deadline.”

Thirteen

Unlike the very
well put together Ms. Cooper, her office looked worse than Marlene’s apartment. Empty coffee cups, wads of crumpled-up tissues, overstuffed file folders, and sloppy piles of paper covered her desktop and spilled over onto the tiled floor. Old
Gazettes, Sun-Sentinels,
and
Miami Heralds
filled much of the re
maining
floor space, and navigating through the sea of paper proved difficult. Even the computer looked grimy.

“Please have a seat.” Nancy Cooper gestured to one of two armchairs in front of her desk. “Is it okay if I call you Kate?” Asked with the smug deference of one a generation younger.

Kate thought, why not? If you want a person to reveal secrets, you’d better be on a first-name basis. She smiled broadly, warmly. June Cleaver herself couldn’t have been more motherly. “I’d like that, Nancy.”

“Since I’m really pressed for time, Kate, why don’t you sit down and tell me everything you know about David Fry?”

“Well, first I have a question for you.” Kate rolled her eyes upward and made a silent apology to Charlie. “Do you think David Fry killed Stella Sajak?”

Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Playing Miss Marple can be a dangerous game.”

No threatening tone, just a brisk, cold warning from a busy woman who definitely knew something. But what? Kate’s question hadn’t seemed to surprise Nancy. Whose side was she on? David Fry’s? Or was she, as Marlene surmised, ready to expose him and his company? Or could it be something else? Something more sinister? Kate realized that she had precious little information to barter, and that Nancy must have damaging evidence about Fry—either connected to Sea Breeze’s corrupt operation or to Stella’s murder. Or to both. Kate sat straight and silent and waited.

After twelve seconds—Kate had counted—Nancy spoke. “Look, I’m the reporter and I’m used to gathering information, not leaking it. If you have something to tell me, please go ahead, but if not I have three stories on deadline, with only the obit ready to roll. I still have to put the
finishing
touches on the other two, then I’ll have to fight like the devil to get one, or maybe both, in print, so I haven’t time for innuendo.”

God, she really
does
think she’s Bob Woodward.

“Three stories?” Kate tried to sound awed. “My, you are a busy woman. Let’s see. The first is Stella’s obit. Then there’s the story about David Fry that you mentioned to Marlene and Mary Frances.” Kate figured two sources were better than one. “And from what they said, I gather that article will expose Sea Breeze Inc. and its CEO, and maybe even Palmetto Beach’s mayor and council. I ran into Fry and the mayor in the lobby. I figured you’d been interviewing them, looking for a quote or a denial. But what I’m really curious about is your third story.”

Nancy started, then her eyes darted to the slim folder on the top of the pile directly in front of her.

Kate focused on the folder too. Printed in bold black letters on its cover was: STELLA SAJACK’S PAPERS. Why would that file make Nancy nervous? After all, she’d probably used those papers to write the obit.
Had something in that folder given Nancy a clue to Stella’s murderer? Maybe something incriminating about Joe Sajak?

“Did you know that Joe Sajak was alive?”

Nancy looked up from the folder and gave Kate a Cheshire Cat grin.

“No, I sure didn’t, but when my story runs tomorrow, that will be
so
yesterday’s news.”

“Which story?” Kate ached with frustration. “The second or the third?”

Nancy stood. “Read tomorrow’s edition of the
Palmetto Beach Gazette.
Now I have to end this chat.”

“But…”

With grace and agility, obviously based on long practice, Nancy strode around the mess on the floor and opened the door. “One piece of advice, Kate. If you know what’s good for you, stay the hell away from David Fry.”

When Kate arrived at the condo, the phone was ringing and Ballou was barking. Grabbing the phone, she said, “Hush.”

“Well, hush to you too, Mom.” Kevin chuckled.

“Oh, Kevin, sorry, darling. I guess I’m doing too many things at once.”

“That’s great. You sound—I don’t know—happier?” Kate heard the hesitation in his voice.

“Yes. Happier may not be quite the right word, but certainly I’ve been busy these last couple of days.” Kate saw no reason to mention that she and Marlene were investigating a murder. “Getting out more.”

“I’m glad. Playing bingo?”

“God, Kevin, no. But I may join a Hearts group. One of the members died suddenly.”

“Listen, Mom, I need to talk to you about Thanksgiving.”

“Yes, will you all come down here or should—”

“Mom, Jennifer wants to take the girls skiing in Vail. Lauren could fly in from Boston and Katharine, Jennifer and I would meet her there.”

He paused, then coughed.

“Oh…
”

“Of course, you’re more than welcome to join us. We’re renting a chateau. Jen’s bonus will pay for it. We’d love to have you.”

“Kevin, the last time I went skiing was long before you and Peter were born. I tried the small slope, even took lessons, but failed miserably and spent most of my time as a ski bunny, sitting at the bar in the lodge, waiting for your father to get off the slopes.” Her stomach gurgled. “I don’t think this old rabbit would be comfortable doing that now. But you guys go. It sounds like a great family vacation.”

“You really don’t mind, Mom? I mean, we’ve always been together for Thanksgiving.”

“Marlene and I will be fine. You know how much she enjoys fussing over holiday dinners. Maybe we’ll start a new tradition—Thanksgiving turkey al fresco on the beach.”

“And we’ll all be together for Christmas at Peter’s, right?”

“Yes, darling.” Kate swallowed her resentment. “That’s right.”

When Kate hung up, she felt sad, abandoned, and foolish. A mix of emotions that further aggravated her stomach.

Jennifer Lowell Kennedy, Kevin’s beautiful and brilliant wife, managed to get her own way, via charm, wile, and on occasion, whining. Kate loved her, if not like a daughter, like a favorite niece. Kevin, the firefighter, worshipped his stockbroker wife, whose high-six-figure income made it possible for them to live in a brick Tudor and send Lauren, who’d inherited both her mother’s brains and those fabulous Lowell cheekbones, to Harvard. Their younger daughter, Katharine, who had neither her mother’s beautiful body nor her beautiful mind, was Kate’s namesake and her favorite. Katharine’s red hair and freckled face, with its pug nose and impish grin, not to mention her raucous, “Yes I can” personality, readily identified her as Charlie’s granddaughter. Well, she wouldn’t be seeing either of the girls till Christmas.

Needing comfort and a cup of tea, Kate dialed Marlene.

By five, her gripe session long over, Kate was walking the beach with Marlene and talking about murder. Ballou had pranced ahead of them, doing his own investigation of a dead crab, which he now kicked some sand over.

As the still warm surf washed over her bare feet, Kate said, “Nancy Cooper may be a whistle blower, but I’m not sure whose tea kettle is boiling over. David Fry may be romancing the mayor as well as bribing the councilmen. And Nancy must have something on Stanley Ferris: I don’t believe his visit to the
Gazette
today was about condo politics.”

“Well, I guess we’ll know tomorrow morning when we read the
Gazette.
You have no clue about the third story?”

“Only a hunch.” Kate sighed. “When I asked about it, Nancy’s eyes went straight to Stella Sajak’s folder.
Could there be something in that folder that might lead to Stella’s killer?”

“Stella gave Nancy that obit stuff months ago—in June, I think. Stella couldn’t have had any idea back then that she’d be murdered on Halloween. So how could she have planted evidence? That doesn’t make any sense, Kate.”

“No, it doesn’t…but what if Stella left a letter or something in the folder by mistake? And what if that letter—or piece of paper, or whatever—has somehow revealed the killer’s identity?”

“What do you mean? Like what kind of paper?” Marlene, raising her voice, yanked Ballou’s leash, and he responded with a yelp.

“Hey, watch it, Marlene. You startled Ballou,” Kate said, thinking that she’d startled Marlene. But that was crazy. Why would Marlene be concerned about what might or might not be among Stella’s papers?

“I’m just thinking out loud. Nancy kept staring at that folder. I don’t know, maybe I’m all wet.”

A large wave crashed at their feet, splashing them up to their knees. Their shared laughter seemed to dissipate Marlene’s tension, but not Kate’s curiosity.

Puzzled by Marlene’s reaction, frustrated by her visit to Nancy, and most of all suspicious of Joe Sajak, Kate decided to temporarily shelve the third story and move on to the widower.

“Is Joe Sajak coming to dinner?”

“I invited him about an hour ago and he accepted with ‘great pleasure.’ Mary Frances had spotted him in the lobby, so we knew he was out of Carbone’s clutches.”

“He didn’t spend much time at the station, did he? I guess the good detective had no hard evidence.”

“No, it must have been a quickie. Joe had been back for a while, and I wasn’t his first visitor. Three widows had dropped by with casseroles before I arrived.”

Kate laughed. “I guess we should be flattered that he’s dining with us. What time is dinner?”

“Seven thirty. And I’ve got to go. The steaks are marinating and my pound cake is cooling. And I still have to melt the fudge for my million-dollar secret frosting.”

Kate decided to take two Pepcid ACs as appetizers.