Death Storms the Shore (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 4) Read online

  Praise for Noreen Wald

  Mysteries by Noreen Wald

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  Copyright

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  The Kate Kennedy Mystery Series

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  GHOSTWRITER ANONYMOUS

  A MUDDIED MURDER

  ARTIFACT

  COUNTERFEIT CONSPIRACIES

  NUN TOO SOON

  Praise for Noreen Wald

  THE KATE KENNEDY MYSTERIES

  “Sparkles like the South Florida sunshine...Kate Kennedy is a warm and funny heroine.”

  – Nancy Martin, Author of the Blackbird Sisters Mysteries

  “Miss Marple with a modern twist...[Wald] is a very funny lady!”

  – Donna Andrews, Author of the Meg Langslow Mysteries

  “A stylish and sophisticated Miss Marple, seeking justice in sunny South Florida instead of a rainy English Village, and meeting the most delightfully eccentric suspects in the process.”

  – Victoria Thompson, Author of the Gaslight Mysteries

  “Kate Kennedy’s wry wit, genuine kindness, and openness to adventure make her a sleuth to cherish. Death is a Bargain is another top-notch entry in a great series.”

  – Carolyn Hart, Author of the Death on Demand Mysteries

  THE JAKE O’HARA MYSTERIES

  “Murders multiply, but Jake proves up to the challenge. She sees through all the subterfuge and chicanery, solving a mind-boggling mystery in a burst of insight. All the characters are charmingly kooky and fun…a good beginning for a new series.”

  – TheMysteryReader.com

  “[Wald] writes with a light touch.”

  – New York Daily News

  “The author keeps the plot airy and the characters outlandish.”

  – South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  Mysteries by Noreen Wald

  The Kate Kennedy Series

  DEATH WITH AN OCEAN VIEW (#1)

  DEATH OF THE SWAMI SCHWARTZ (#2)

  DEATH IS A BARGAIN (#3)

  DEATH STORMS THE SHORE (#4)

  DEATH RIDES THE SURF (#5)

  The Jake O’Hara Series

  GHOSTWRITER ANONYMOUS (#1)

  THE LUCK OF THE GHOSTWRITER (#2)

  A GHOSTWRITER TO DIE FOR (#3)

  REMEMBRANCE OF GHOSTWRITERS PAST (#4)

  GHOSTWRITER FOR HIRE (#5)

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  Copyright

  DEATH STORMS THE SHORE

  A Kate Kennedy Mystery

  Part of the Henery Press Mystery Collection

  Second Edition | March 2016

  Henery Press, LLC

  www.henerypress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Henery Press, LLC, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Copyright © 2016 by Noreen Wald

  Author photograph by Matthew Holler

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-943390-97-7

  Digital epub ISBN-13: 978-1-943390-98-4

  Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-943390-99-1

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-941962-31-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To Steve, with love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My gratitude to my friends, colleagues, and loved ones—some fall into all three categories—who have helped shape, edit, and/or promote my novels: Donna Andrews, Nancy Beardsley, Cordelia Benedict, Helen Brennan, Carla Coupe, Ellen Crosby, Diane and Dave Dufour, Laura Durham, Peggy Hanson, Doris Holland, Barbara Giorgio, Susan Kavanagh, Valerie Patterson, Gail Prensky, Bill Reckdenwald, Peter Rubie, Pat Sanders, Dr. Diane Shirer, Steve Smith, Gloria and Paul Stuart, Joyce Sweeney, and Sandi Wilson. Thanks to the Henery Press team for putting new life into Jake and Kate. A special thanks to my lead editor, Rachel Jackson. The new covers designed by Kendel Lynn are great.

  One

  “Don’t ya just wanna kill him?” Rosie O’Grady, a retired Radio City Rockette, asked Kate Kennedy. “Such a phony-baloney.” Rosie’s raspy Bronx accent came across loud and clear.

  Kate’s Westie, Ballou, ran back and forth along the shoreline, scattering sand on Rosie’s pedicure. He’d been yapping and agitated since Kate and Rosie had set up their beach chairs. The little dog was trying to tell her something. But what?

  A few feet away, the object of Rosie’s murderous wrath, Uncle Weatherwise, South Florida’s answer to Willard Scott and Al Roker, and Ocean Vista’s newest resident, held court at the water’s edge.

  Rosie’s question, though amplified by the sea breeze, fell on Weatherwise’s partially deaf ears. The fat man smiled and nodded in response to his fawning fans’ patter as white-capped waves crashed against his feet. Kate doubted he could hear a word anyone said.

  ‘Trust me, Kate, he’s no good.” Unlike her neighbors, longtime admirers of the seventy-something local television icon, Ocean Vista’s Program Chair Rosie, eighty-four and still kicking, had cast the lone dissenting vote when the condo board approved Walt Weatherwise’s owner/member application.

  Nodding, Kate tried to appear neutral, though she’d disliked Weatherwise at first sight, sensing something strange, yet eerily familiar, about the smiling, rotund weatherman.

  Rosie wiped away sweat beads dancing across her upper lip. Late August in Palmetto Beach—even with the setting sun, their beach chairs planted in damp sand, and their feet washed with an occasional wave�
�was like being burned at the stake...by choice. Kate missed Jones Beach, where summer’s twilight held a hint of autumn.

  “Weatherwise’s teddy bear TV image is a cover. He’s full of it and full of himself. For starters, he’s not from the Midwest. Back when I was a hoofer, he used to pal around with the mob in Manhattan.”

  “The mob?” Kate asked, surprised. “Really?”

  Rosie arched her right foot, disturbing Ballou’s relentless pacing. Whining, he made a sharp turn, walking over his mistress’s toes, in dire need of a pedicure. “Weatherwise is a wiseguy. I know, Kate. I dated Albert Anastasia, before he got bumped off in the old Park Sheraton’s barbershop.”

  Kate smiled, remembering that a lifetime ago her father, who’d worked two blocks away on Fifth Avenue, had his hair cut at the hotel too.

  A gust of warm wind blew Kate’s favorite Southampton straw hat into the water. An agile Rosie scrambled out of her beach chair to rescue it.

  “Thanks.” Kate smiled at the lithe octogenarian and plopped her hat back onto her bead. Maybe her yoga exercises weren’t enough. Maybe she should enroll in Rosie’s dance class.

  Lucy Diamond, the condo’s bylaws chair, sauntered over to Weatherwise’s circle. The tall brunette was not one of his fans. “Just call me Uncle” had blown into his first condo board meeting and brewed up a tempest in a coffeepot, demanding that Lucy’s committee amend the bylaws so that he could plant medicinal marijuana on his terrace. Lucy, a retired federal prosecutor, hadn’t been amused.

  “He’s a lousy weatherman too.” Rosie raised her voice, shaking a head full of steel-gray curls. “We shoulda canceled this year’s clambake. These old bones tell me we’re in for a storm.” Today? She stamped her foot in the sand.

  Ballou ran back from the ocean, dug his feet into the sand, and barked sharply at Kate. What was wrong with the Westie?

  Could Uncle be off track with Hurricane Harriet? He’d predicted landfall in Key West tonight. The residents in the Keys had been evacuated.

  Walt Weatherwise was renowned for tracking a hurricane’s path, and his colorful forecasts leading up to a storm’s hit or miss got higher ratings than the final episode of M*A*S*H.

  Kate stood too, irked that she couldn’t get up and out of a beach chair with the dancer’s grace. A darkening sky and turbulent sea made her wonder if Rosie was right. Did Ballou smell danger? Should Palmetto Beach residents have gone shopping for duct tape along with their neighbors to the south? And, instead of roasting corn and clams in a brand new garbage can—that Kate had shopped for herself—should they be getting ready to evacuate?

  The moonlighting lifeguard, hired for the evening’s festivities—as Marlene Friedman, Kate’s former sister-in-law, lifelong best friend, and condo president had explained, “Every year at least one old goat with a bellyful of beer swims out too far and decides he’s drowning”—was on his cell phone, his left hand gesturing toward the sea, his mouth moving, his words inaudible.

  “Yo, Kate!” Marlene, wearing a scarlet polka-dot tankini, a deep tan, and a frown, waved an ear of corn and shouted over the garbage can. During a fleeting moment of romantic interest in Uncle Weatherwise, Marlene had volunteered to serve as sous chef at the clambake. “Raindrops are falling on my...” The wind whipped away the last of Marlene’s lyrics and blew Kate’s beach chair into the ocean.

  “My God, look, the water’s up to my knees!” Lucy’s alarm proved contagious. The crowd around Uncle Weatherwise moved like lemmings in reverse, away from the sea.

  The rains came—hard, driving, relentless. The navy sky went black. A siren roared. Soaking wet, Kate clutched Ballou’s leash with one hand and reached for Rosie with the other. The wind, now wicked, lashed across Kate’s face. She staggered, losing her balance in the wet sand. Rosie grabbed Kate’s arm, helped her up, then, with Ballou glued to Kate’s heels, they trudged toward Ocean Vista, the wind at their backs pummeling them.

  “Everyone off the beach!” the lifeguard shouted through a megaphone. “Now. Move it! Get off the beach!”

  Napkins, plastic pitchers, plates, and small beach chairs were flying around with the squawking seagulls. A plastic knife struck and stuck in Lucy’s forehead, drawing blood. Kate, wanting to scream herself, thought Lucy could be heard in Boca.

  Marlene, overweight but toned, dropped her beach bag and half-carried Lucy toward the condo.

  Wiping sand from her eyes, Kate saw Uncle Weatherwise reach the pool first. His long legs made the fat man leader of his fans. Or, maybe, former fans: Weatherwise dashed straight toward the condo’s back door, letting the pool gate swing shut. Skinny Bob Seeley, the condo’s finance chair, a surprising second, held the gate open for those behind him. Marlene dragged Lucy through the door, then returned to relieve Bob.

  Proud of Marlene, Kate reached down, lifted Ballou, and said, “Come on, Rosie, we’re almost home.” Then she whispered in the Westie’s ear, “I should have listened to you, Ballou.”

  “Ain’t I the one who got us here?” Rosie’s rasp came out as close to a shout as decades of unfiltered Chesterfields allowed.

  Kate, feeling guilty for taking the credit, laughed. A mistake. Sand coated her teeth like toothpaste.

  Why hadn’t she gone to Martha’s Vineyard with Kevin and his family? Her daughter-in-law, Jennifer, had predicted, “August in Florida, Kate? You’ll be sorry.” A seer as well as a stockbroker?

  Ocean Vista’s residents, on what seemed like a daily basis, dismissed clouds by quoting the Palmetto Beach Chamber of Commerce’s party line: “If you don’t like the weather in South Florida, wait five minutes.” And, often as not, to Kate’s annoyance, the sun would appear. Even in her panic, she savored the reverse irony.

  “The U.S. Weather Service,” the lifeguard’s voice broke as he yelled into his megaphone, “now reports that Palmetto Beach is in the direct path of Hurricane Harriet.”

  Two

  They had less than ninety minutes to evacuate.

  Kate spent six of those minutes in the shower. No way would she leave full of sand. She washed, then finger-combed her short silver hair, and put on moisturizer and lipstick. How long would they be gone? She threw her cosmetic case in her toiletries bag and checked her watch. Seventy-five minutes left to transport all of Palmetto Beach’s residents over to the mainland.

  Policemen had been driving their patrol cars up and down A1A, sirens blaring, shouting instructions, asking residents to line up in front of their condos as soon as possible, stressing the Neptune Boulevard Bridge was backed up for miles and evacuees must carpool six to a vehicle, and, most frightening, that the bridge would close at nine p.m.

  She and Marlene were to meet in the lobby in ten minutes, then carpool with Rosie O’Grady, Lucy Diamond, Bob Seeley, and Walt Weatherwise, in the latter’s SUV. Not Kate’s idea. Rosie’s. And how bizarre was that?

  Prioritizing, she tossed Ballou’s dog food and her Pepcid AC into a large green cloth Barnes & Noble shopping bag and, stumped, wondered what else she should take. Tissues. Underwear. A sweatshirt. Money. ID.

  Kate felt grateful to be living in Ocean Vista. Public high schools and other large hurricane shelters didn’t accept pets. Most condos on the beach would be enforcing the strict evacuation rules that had been agreed upon, then signed and sealed at closing: Residents were required to leave their pets with family or friends on the mainland before proceeding to a shelter.

  But Ocean Vista had a secret weapon: Bob Seeley, an elder at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Coral Reef. And St. Thomas’s pastor had offered its high-school gym as refuge for the Ocean Vista residents and their animals.

  Coral Reef was fifteen miles west of 95. Should she bring a pillow?

  Would she be coming back?

  The misanthrope in the apartment next to hers didn’t think so.

  When Kate, holding Ballou, had been strugg
ling to open her front door with a wet, sandy hand, her neighbor popped out into the hall, screaming that no one would ever make it, the island and everyone on it would be swept away, and Ocean Vista would crumble into the sand. Then, vowing to go down with the condo, she’d darted into her apartment.

  What if Harriet left Kate with nothing? Images of Katrina’s and Rita’s destruction and their ravaged victims flooded her head. Could she, too, end up homeless? Could the wind hammering her windows become strong enough to destroy Ocean Vista?

  Kate scurried, unexpected tears spilling down her cheeks, pulling photos of her granddaughters from the bookcase’s bottom shelf, shoving them into the tote bag. She rushed to the bedroom, Ballou at her heels, grabbed Charlie’s wedding ring from her top bureau drawer, then ran back to the living room.

  She stopped short in front of the TV.