Death Storms the Shore (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 4) (16 page)

Thirty-Five

“Mom,” Kevin said, “don’t forget to take all your financial information, and your credit cards, checkbook, and what else, hon?”

“Income tax forms for the last three years.” Kate could hear her daughter-in-law shouting instructions. She pictured Jennifer’s smooth blonde hair close to Kevin’s wiry, graying, auburn curls. “Charlie’s pension info. Your Social Security and Medicare cards, plus any supplemental medical insurance cards. And all the cash in the condo. If the power goes, Kate, you won’t be able to use an ATM.”

“Did you get that, Mom?”

She sighed. “Jennifer makes it sound as if I won’t be coming home again.” When had she started to think of Ocean Vista as home?

“Igor may become a Category Five, Mom. And it may hit sooner than expected.” She could hear the concern in Kevin’s voice. “You may not be going home, at least not for a very long time. Peter’s on the phone with Aunt Marlene now, telling her what to bring.”

“Kevin, Aunt Marlene couldn’t find those records if her life depended on it.” Oh God. Marlene’s future might depend on finding them. “Sorry, poor attempt at humor. I’ll go and help her as soon as I get my act together. Please don’t worry, darling, we’ll be fine. Kiss the girls and Jennifer for me.”

Kevin and Peter, her Irish twins, born a year apart. How Charlie had loved them.

“I love you, Mom.”

“And I love all of you.” She hung up as the first tear fell.

“Focus, Kate,” she said aloud, knowing she couldn’t. Kirk Island kept getting in the way. Damn.

Yet another motive from fifty-six years ago. Rosie O’Grady had lost her lover in the nuclear disaster. And Bob Seeley had lost his parents. It couldn’t be coincidental that Rosie, Bob, and Walt had all wound up living at Ocean Vista. That Weatherwise had been Bob’s client. That Bob had stolen the weatherman’s money. That Bob had convinced Walt to move up here from Miami. That Uncle Weatherwise had been the young man she’d met in Sophie Provakov’s apartment on the day that Muriel Goodman had been arrested.

She sobbed as she opened the medicine cabinet unable to decide what to pack. Or what to tell Marlene.

Rosie had chattered all the way back to the condo, seeming—or pretending—not to realize that she’d dropped a bombshell. Again, all those decades of shared body language had paid off. Kate’s raised left eyebrow kept Marlene at bay.

Kate had said a quick goodbye to Rosie and Marlene, promising to call her sister-in-law. Since Peter was more chatty than Kevin, Marlene and he were probably still on the phone, but Kate’s reprieve wouldn’t last long.

A loud rap on the front door startled Kate. Ballou, at her feet, yapped. She dropped the Listerine bottle in the sink. The glass shattered. The familiar medicinal smell seemed intoxicating, overpowering.

Together, Kate and the Westie ran through the foyer. She dreaded dealing with Marlene. Confronting the past. Facing the future.

She yanked the door open.

Mary Frances, beautifully groomed and dressed in a green designer sweatsuit that matched her eyes, stood in the corridor. She cuddled an uncannily lifelike baby doll, wearing a pink romper and matching bonnet.

She stepped into the foyer. “I’m not going, Kate. I can’t leave my girls behind. Please take Emma with you. She’ll fit in somewhere.” The former nun sounded calm. Too calm.

“Listen to me, Mary Frances.” Kate aimed for June Cleaver, but came across more like Murphy Brown. “Ocean Vista and your dolls will survive this hurricane. And you’re not staying home alone. If you don’t evacuate, I’ll be forced to stay with you. So go upstairs and finish packing.”

“I can’t,” Mary Frances cried, clutching the doll to her chest.

The Westie, who’d never cottoned to Mary Frances, rubbed his nose against her ankle.

“See, Ballou wants you to come too.”

“But...”

“Look, give me Emma. I’ll put her in my briefcase. It’s expandable.” She’d leave the income tax forms behind. If all went well, Jennifer would never have to know. “And bring Jackie O and Marilyn. Wrap them in a blanket. We’ll fit them into our bags somehow.”

“You really believe Ocean Vista won’t be flooded? That my other dolls won’t be blown away?”

“Absolutely,” Kate lied.

“Okay. I’ll call you when I’m ready. Can we leave on the same bus?”

“Sure,” Kate, not having a clue how they’d board the busses, lied again. “Meet me in the lobby at five thirty. If you don’t I’m sending Miss Mitford up to get you.”

Mary Frances almost smiled.

Kate placed Emma on the bed, as gently as if she were a real baby, then returned to the bathroom, picked up the glass, and scrubbed the sink. Feeling somewhat better— needed?—she got serious about packing, her organizational skills, at least temporarily, trumping her fear. She even turned the TV on.

“A Four that may turn into a Category Five, picking up speed, heading for Palmetto Beach.” Great; Ocean Vista would be ground zero. She prayed Mary Frances wasn’t watching the young weatherman, who now seemed frightened enough to deliver the forecast straight. No editorializing. No histrionics. And so much more terrifying. Ballou yelped. Then Kate heard the knocking too. “Okay, that must be Auntie Marlene.”

Again, they hurried to the front door. Kate flung it open.

S. J. Corbin said, “May I come in, Kate?”

Though she’d been tracking Sophie down, leaving her messages, wanting to talk to her, Kate had dreaded seeing her. And now she’d arrived, asking to come in.

“The living room’s straight ahead.” Kate, nervous, laughed. “But, of course, you know that. It’s just like Bob’s.”

“Only lower.” Sophie smiled, sitting on Kate’s off-white couch, also very much like Bob’s.

Kate sat in the club chair, facing her. Silent strangers, sharing a terrible secret from a lifetime ago. She couldn’t go there yet. She’d begin with a more recent betrayal. “You told Detective Parker to ask me about that summer, didn’t you, Sophie?”

Ballou stayed at Kate’s side, his paw on her foot.

“Yes, I did. Anonymously. Wea
therwise was murdered because of the Kirk Island nuclear explosion.” Sophie bit her lip. “I needed to steer Parker in the right direction.”

Kate didn’t blink. Hadn’t she been expecting this? She’d buried the past in a dark corner of her mind, but she couldn’t cleanse the stain on her soul. “You were going to use me as your pawn?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Kate. Exposing the past was necessary to reveal the killer.”

“And did you phone Parker, again, while he was interviewing me?”

“No,” Sophie sighed, “but the killer must have. To feed him some lies. To lure him to Rosie’s car.”

Exactly what Marlene had said:
If we find out who made the second phone call
...
we’ve found the killer.
“Sophie, do you know who murdered Uncle Weatherwise?”

“One motive: revenge. More than one suspect.” Sophie shrugged. “I can’t be certain.”

Her almond-shaped brown eyes looked hurt. Confused. Kate felt the decades disappear. Evaporate. As if they were kids in Queens again.

“Where did you go, Sophie? Why didn’t you ever call?”

“You know the answer to those questions, don’t you? A smart girl like you. Such a newspaper reader.”

Silent, Kate rubbed Ballou’s neck.

“What could I have said, Kate? I still don’t know what to say.”

Thirty-Six

January 18, Forty-Nine Years Ago

Kate had a crush on a cute cop, Charlie Kennedy, a great job as an Eastern Airlines stewardess, and a 3.8 grade point average in her night classes at Hunter College. She couldn’t remember ever having been so happy. Or feeling so full of promise.

Then, at cocktail hour, her father finished his Old Fashioned, folded the
Journal-American
to the op-ed page, and handed it to her. “Read this, Katie. That young hot shot, Jack Anderson, fancies himself an investigative reporter. Seems he’s scratched an itch about that explosion out on Kirk Island, around six years ago. Says the U.S. government has always called it a ‘nuclear accident,’ but Anderson’s story reveals a long-planned, complicated espionage plot. And guess what my girl? You knew the spies.”

K
IRK ISLAND EXPOSED

Almost thirty years ago, a Russian, Boris Provakov, and his wife, Irina, were dispatched by the KGB to the US. Their mission: to establish a legitimate low-key lifestyle, then wait until called at some future date to serve the mother country. They were instructed to avoid political activity and any contact with the Bolshevik movement.

The Russian, trained as a draftsman, was adept at mechanical, electrical, and geographical drawings to precise specification.

He held a series of jobs with construction companies and later established a consulting business enabling him to accept jobs on consignment and to work in his apartment. The wife held a series of clerical jobs. Their only daughter, Sophie, was born a few years after they arrived in America.

And had become Kate’s friend
thirteen years later. Terrified, she forced herself to read on.

At the height of the cold war, Russia had achieved nuclear capability. The Berlin Wall and the Berlin airlift were both in place. Families, including immigrants, across the U.S. sent CARE packages to Europe. Using a code established before the Provakovs’ departure from Russia, an undercover KGB agent contacted Boris Provakov. His long-delayed mission: determine the wind-flow patterns along the East Coast and, using these, determine the precise location for a small nuclear detonation that would spread lethal radioactivity to fewer than one hundred people in a confined setting somewhere on the East Coast of the U.S.

In a rare breach of information compartmentalization, the KGB agent explained how the Russian navy planned a “nuclear accident” that would kill a small number of U.S. citizens. Russia hoped the resultant political pressure would force the U.S. to accept Russian demands to stop the Berlin airlift and agree to a unilateral commitment to halt production of nuclear weapons.

Boris Provakov determined the best source for the vital wind current information would be the U.S. Weather Bureau. Irina obtained a file clerk position in the Bureau’s NYC office and became a valued and trusted employee, serving in the Atmospheric Research branch.

Irina made friends with Will Wager, who’d grown up in the Midwest and was lonely in the big city. The weatherman accepted the friendship of the Russian family, loved the ethnic food, played chess with Boris, and became a frequent visitor at the Queens apartment.

Provakov told Will of his fascination with wind currents and how they affected weather, sea patterns, storms, and about one of his avocations: hot-air ballooning. The Russian shared Will’s dream of taking a hot-air balloon to sea on a large boat, then floating back to shore in the balloon, even though the upper atmosphere’s prevailing winds would push it in the opposite direction.

Will, delighted to help, became a font of information. He brought reams of data about the wind currents off the coast of Long Island and how they varied by the season, and by earth and sea temperature. He even assisted Boris Provakov in plotting the currents on Mercator map projections.

By August six years ago, Provakov had the information providing the desired solution: the precise longitude and latitude to unleash a small nuclear explosion where the wind currents would carry the radioactive cloud over Kirk Island, originally a Dutch settlement, off the coast of Long Island. He reached his KGB contact who, under suspicion himself, advised Provakov to use an unknown third party to pass the data to Muriel Goodman.

Oh dear God. She’d been the unwitting third party, passing the note in the bathroom at the Russian Tea Room.

When the bomb exploded at sea off Kirk Island, on August 18, five people died. Two hundred and fifty others contracted radiation sickness. Fifty more people have died over the last six years.

The explosion didn’t have the desired effect on the American people; instead, stern protests were given to the Russian government and the Cold War was pursued with renewed vigor.

The Russian defector said Boris and Irina Provakov had slipped into Canada a week before the explosion, then returned to Russia.

The defector had no idea where their only daughter, Sophie, had gone. She might have returned to Russia with her parents.
Kate, now sick with guilt, had been wondering what had happened to her friend for years.

What ha
d happened to Will Wager was another story. When questioned by Jack Anderson for his upcoming exposé, Wager realized he’d played a critical part in the death of U.S. citizens.

Betting he’d be exonerated, he made a dangerous move, confessing he’d been duped into giving critical weather data to Provakov, then offering to help the CIA with the investigation.

His bold move had paid off. With great fanfare, Anderson ended his article by praising Wager’s patriotism.

Kate felt like a traitor.

Thirty-Seven

The Present

“I need to know, Sophie. Did you go to Russia with your parents?” Kate gestured toward the couch. “Would you like some tea?”

“In a glass with a long silver spoon?” Sophie shook her head, then sat on the edge of the couch, appearing poised for flight. “No tea, thank you.” With the palm of her hand, she brushed her short dark hair away from her forehead.

Not a gray strand. She must color it. Kate’s thoughts meandered toward the mundane, maybe to postpone dealing with the truth.

“I didn’t go to Russia, Kate. I never saw my parents again.”

“Never?”

Sophie’s face sagged. Her carefully applied makeup seemed to highlight rather than conceal the deep lines running from her nose to her mouth.

“I’m convinced I was part of their cover. A child would have made them seem more like a normal family.” She stood, then walked toward the glass doors. “The wind has picked up. A beach chair just flew into the pool.”

“Your father loved you, Sophie.”

“He used you. I think he used me too.” She turned around and stared at Kate, unblinking. “When I came home from the movies that Friday afternoon, my parents were packed and ready to roll. They went to Canada. I was sent to Ohio to live with my mother’s old cousin. The one I’d visited earlier that summer.”

“Your parents didn’t call you before they left for Russia?”

“No.” Sophie’s eyes grew dark
er. “They never got in touch with the cousin either. God, how she resented me. I got the hell out of there at sixteen, called myself S. J. and waitressed my way through Kent State. A guidance counselor helped me get a partial scholarship.”

Such a sad story. But was it true? “Then what?”

“I became a teacher in Cleveland, married a great guy, Mike Corbin. He and I traveled to the USSR years later to search for my parents, but they’d vanished. None of their relatives or old friends knew what had happened to them. Or where they’d gone.” She shrugged. “If they returned to the USSR, they lived far away from Moscow. Who knows? Maybe they never left Canada.”

“Oh, Sophie.”

“We never had any children. When Mike died, I moved down to Florida and became a Realtor. I’ve become very successful, Kate. Much of my money has been spent tracking down the victims of Kirk Island. Those who’d lost their parents in the nuclear explosion.”

Kate heard the anger in Sophie’s voice and thought about Bob Seeley’s parents. Their smiling faces in the black and white photographs. Their death certificates. “Why?”

“I’d discovered that two of the children and Rosie O’Grady had been tracking Uncle Weatherwise’s path for decades. They and I harbored a mutual hatred of Will Wager. We all wanted revenge. The bastard had been responsible for the explosion that killed the kids’ parents. And, by labeling my parents as evil incarnate, the weatherman had gotten away with murder.”

Hate. Revenge. Strong motives. Could Sophie be the killer?

Sophie smiled, a rueful, small one, but a smile. “If one of them hadn’t—
finally
—murdered him, I think I might have.”

“Yet you told Detective Parker about that summer. You wanted him to know about Kirk Island. If you believe Uncle Weatherwise got what he deserved, why did you want Parker to arrest his killer?”

“Don’t you see, Kate? I’m next. I’m only alive because I’m S. J. Corbin. Either Bob or Lucy, who both lost their parents, or Rosie, who lost her lover, want Sophie Provakov dead too. Revenge for what my parents did.”

“I wasn’t aware of Lucy’s connection to the island,” Kate said. She wasn’t surprised. “Are the survivors aware of each other? It’s strange how they all wound up living in Ocean Vista.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Rosie had been an adult, only coming to the island on weekends. The two children wouldn’t have known her. Lucy’s maiden name was Gordon. She’s a few years younger than Bob. They probably hadn’t known each other either.”

“One of them might have figured it out.” Kate wondered if that would make a difference. “The killer must have convinced Weatherwise to move here.”

Sophie, frowning, nodded. “I’ve followed their lives for years. Lucy’s parents died an agonizing death. She found them burned to a crisp. Once she tracked down Weatherwise in Miami, she tried to prosecute him. Even pretended to be his lover. She’d have framed him. Or perjured herself. Or whatever it took to get the bastard behind bars, but she was thwarted at every turn. If Lucy’s the killer, she had good reason.”

Weird. Her old friend sounded like the defense attorney for a murder suspect who might be planning to make Sophie her next victim.

“Bob Seeley watched his parents die in Kirk Island’s tiny hospital. He’d been badly burned himself. His groin area.” Sophie gulped. “For God’s sake, Kate, he was only twelve years old. And damaged for life. Bob, too, had started working on his revenge a long time ago, outsmarting both the weatherman and the SEC. I understand most of Weatherwise’s millions are now in Bob’s Swiss bank account.”

Kate nodded. “I know.”

“You always were a smart girl. Just watch out. You may be on the killer’s hit list.” Sophie chewed her lower lip. “Bob’s capable of murder. And he was an Army Ranger.”

“What about Rosie?”

“I like Rosie, but she’s our least likely suspect.”

Kate felt foolishly pleased that Sophie had said “our.”

“Sure, she’d romanced Albert Anastasia and swears Weatherwise had a part in his hit. But even though my father met Walt Wager in the Park Sheraton’s barbershop back then, why would that implicate the weatherman in a mob hit later?”

Kate shook her head.

Sophie smiled. “I think Rosie just enjoys spreading rumors about Weatherwise. Causing trouble, casting doubt trying to destroy his avuncular image any way she could. It’s true she lost a boyfriend on Kirk Island, but Rosie’s had hundreds of boyfriends. Both before and after the disaster. Would revenging one boyfriend’s death be a strong enough motive for two murders?”

A loud knock preempted Kate’s response. Maybe Marlene had surfaced. Kate, who’d been distracted by motives, now wondered where her sister-in-law had been all afternoon. She ran through the foyer and opened the door.

Rosie O’Grady, dressed in purple sweats, and carrying an ice bucket holding a bottle of Moët, barged in. “Let’s toast the hurricane, Kate. Igor could be our Katrina. The rain’s rolling in under my balcony door. And my favorite beach chair just sailed over the railing and out to sea.” A blast of thunder accompanied her words.

“Have you seen Marlene?” Kate asked.

“Listen to this,” Rosie said. “I just heard that Walt Weatherwise will have one of them serenity panels, a perpetual video with a shatterproof screen, implanted in his tombstone. While the sun shines, it’ll run for four hours nonstop, showing clips from his TV forecasts.”

Sophie laughed. “How predicable.”

“Oh, hi, S. J.,” Rosie said. “I didn’t see you lurking in the living room.”

“Rosie, have you seen Marlene?” Kate raised her voice.

“Yeah. Well, about a half hour ago. I saw her going into Bob Seeley’s apartment. Now how about getting us some glasses for the champagne?”