Death Rides the Surf (7 page)

Tuesday Morning, October 31

The image of
Jon Claude’s bloody stump woke Kate up just before the clock struck seven. If only there was a delete button for the subconscious.

Ballou yelped as she crawled out of bed, nuzzling her ankle as she headed toward the bathroom. Kate had heard Katharine come in at eleven thirty and, though wide-awake reading Ava Gardner’s biography, she hadn’t gotten up. She’d decided to wait until morning to discuss Jon Michael’s death and Grace Rowling’s visit. Now that morning had arrived, Kate dreaded that conversation, wondering if her granddaughter already knew about the surfer.

Tempted to go back to bed, instead she walked to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, her lifelong panacea.

Katharine sat at the kitchen table clutching her own cup of tea. Somehow that pleased Kate.

“Nana, Jon Michael’s dead. Did you know that?”

Kate heard the heartbreak in Katharine’s voice, almost a replay of Grace Rowling’s tone last night.

“I’m so sorry, darling.” Kate put her arms around her granddaughter, not sure what else to say. She gave Katharine a long hug, and then turned on the jet under the kettle.

“Claude called me.” The girl had dark circles under puffy eyes. She’d been crying long and hard. “Attacked by a shark. What a terrible way to die. I cried all night. Your couch must be totally tearstained.”

“You didn’t sleep in the guest room?”

“Mom’s in the guest room.” Katharine didn’t hide her disgust.

“Jennifer’s here?” Kate reeled, feeling out of control.

“Yeah, she sure is. She flew down on Sunday night and checked into the Boca Raton Hotel, you know, that resort on the beach; nothing but the best for Mom, right?”

Katharine screwed up her nose, reminding Kate of Charlie’s expression of disgust. No doubt Jennifer had checked out of the hotel and slept here last night because she hadn’t wanted to let Katharine out of her sight.

“Mom said she had an appointment with a client up in Palm Beach yesterday morning, but I know she’s been spying on me, Nana. Now she’s insisting that I go home with her today. But I’m not going. Not today. Not ever. I promised Jon Michael’s grandmother when I called her this morning that I’d be at his funeral and no one, not even Jennifer Lowell Kennedy, can stop me.”

So Katharine had spoken to Florita Flannigan, who Marlene had suspected might be Diamond Lil, bank robber extraordinaire. What had the girl been up to yesterday? And why had Grace Rowling wanted to talk to her? Grace had declined to tell Kate, only saying she needed to speak to Katharine alone and she’d be back.

Confused and overwhelmed, Kate tried to keep it simple. “I heard you come in last night,” she said as the kettle whistled. She poured the boiling water into her cup, and then jiggled the tea bag as if that would make the tea brew faster. “But I didn’t hear your mother.”

“No reason you should have, Nana. We weren’t talking and Mom went straight to bed.” Her granddaughter sounded drained, but much more like her old self, the hard edge gone.

Kate stuck a bagel in the toaster, though she wasn’t sure she could eat, then faced Katharine. “Marlene and I were worried last night. We wondered where you’d been all day.”

Katharine stared at the tile floor, beige and bland like almost everything else in the condo. Less is more, Edmund, her son Peter’s partner, had assured her. One day she’d paint the kitchen walls red, but for now she waited, sensing Katharine might open up.

“I’m sorry, Nana. I screwed up.” She sounded as if she meant it; her eyes welled up with tears again. Katharine wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “Life sucks.”

Kate spread strawberry jam on the two halves of the toasted bagel and handed one to Katharine. “Yes, I guess right now it does. Have another cup of tea and we’ll take Ballou for a walk on the beach. Maybe we can sort things out; then, if you’d like, we can go see Mrs. Flannigan later.” If Kate had an ulterior motive, she didn’t feel obliged to mention it.

“Cool. Let’s get out of here before my mother wakes up.”

In the glow
of the morning light, the sun on their backs, its rays dappling the sand with golden streaks, and the Atlantic Ocean caressing their bare feet, Kate inhaled a brief moment of happiness; then Katharine spoke.

“I wanted to kill Jon Michael, Nana. That’s why I’m so upset that he’s dead. Why I have to go to his funeral.”

Trying to show no emotion, Kate asked, “Why? What did he do to you, darling?”

“He broke my heart and, worse, he made a fool of me.” Katharine sighed. “No, that’s not true. I was already a fool for loving him.” She kicked a dead crab out of her path and into Ballou’s. He eagerly explored the prize.

The sadness in her granddaughter’s voice made Kate want to take the girl into her arms, but she had to hear this out.

“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.”

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 that 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 preformed 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 her Tony Bennett CD 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 of the twentieth century, 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 since 1972, 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 widow 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.”