Death Storms the Shore (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 4) (2 page)

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 struggling 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.

“The hospital evacuation is well under way, though the Neptune Boulevard Bridge is backed up for two miles to the south.” Uncle Weatherwise’s stand-in sounded deadly serious. “Chief Wilson has ordered all A1A residents to leave their homes immediately. The police expect to have everyone off island by nine p.m.
The eye of Hurricane Harriet should hit around eleven. Please leave now.” He seemed to be staring at Kate. “Do not delay.”

Confirming the weatherman’s warning, rain slammed against the sliding glass doors that led to her balcony. Kate watched water seep in, staining her wall-to-wall off-white carpet. She dashed to the linen closet, grabbed a pile of towels, and tried to stem the tide. Useless; her ocean view was now a liability rather than an asset.

She’d had Channel Eight on all through her evacuation preparation. The station’s somewhat subdued hurricane-countdown watch—less of the usual hype and soap-opera style coverage that dragged on for days, and often ended in anticlimactic shortfalls or total misses—scared Kate more than the high drama.

Uncle’s stand-in, a nerdy young man dressed in a slicker, ready to evacuate himself, tried hard to reassure his audience. Throughout his reportage, his voice remained calm and soft, but a slight tremor transmitted his fear.

Ready to roll, Kate yanked her cell phone out of her sweatpants’ pocket and dialed her sister-in-law. Her fingers shook. She sank into a chair. Ballou licked her hand.

“We’re out of here,” Marlene said.

Kate held the Westie on a tight leash as they left the apartment. Like Scarlett O’Hara locking the Yankees out of Aunt Pittypat’s house in Atlanta, she bolted the door behind her.

Charlie had dropped dead still clutching the pen he’d used to close on the condo. Kate had so resented living here alone. Ocean Vista had been Charlie’s dream retirement, and since they’d sold her beloved Tudor in Rockville Centre, she didn’t have anywhere to go. Over the last year, she’d come to accept, even feel part of, Palmetto Beach. Be careful what you wish for. Would Kate retroactively get what she’d wanted? Or worse, what she deserved?

Ballou and Kate rode the elevator alone. He nuzzled her cheek. She allowed herself three sobs. One per floor.

Pandemonium reigned in
the lobby. Well, with all the faux marble, gilt-framed minors, and glass floor-to-ceiling front doors, it appeared to have been decorated for just such an occasion. Kate took perverse pleasure in her snide thought.

Hordes of her neighbors, all clamoring at once, clustered around the huge center fountain celebrating mixed myths: An alabaster statue of the Greek Goddess Aphrodite cavorting with the Roman Cupid. Dozens of Roman Cupids.

Her friends’ fear, matching her own, sobered Kate; she felt ashamed for being so damn judgmental.

“Kate.” Marlene startled her. “Over here. Turn left at the first potted palm.”

The thick crowd made it impossible to find any landmark. She headed toward the strained sound of her sister-in-law’s voice.

Marlene wore a plum jogging suit with matching sneakers. Her lipstick and eyeshadow were color coordinated too, and she’d styled her platinum hair in her trademark French twist. She carried a tote bag the size of a small trunk and her feet were surrounded by a matching set of Louis Vuitton luggage.

“There will be five other people in the car, Marlene.”

“So?”

“Whadda ya, crazy?” Rosie O’Grady popped out from behind the fake plant “Or just a selfish old broad? There ain’t no room in Weatherwise’s car for all those suitcases. Talk about dumb blondes.”

A wide-eyed but silent Marlene stared at the older woman. Had she been rendered speechless? Kate stifled a giggle.

“Please allow me to help carry the bags back to your condo, Marlene.” Bob Seeley, ever polite, spoke with a sense of urgency. “As you know, I’m assisting in the evacuation effort, and the police have just advised me that Walt Weatherwise is third in line to pick up his passengers at the front door.”

Without a word, Marlene placed a smaller suitcase on top of a larger one, and pulled them toward the elevator. Bob grabbed the duffel bag and followed in her wake.

Kate,
squeezed
in the backseat between Marlene and Lucy—the latter opting to sit as far away from Uncle Weatherwise as possible, had claimed the right rear passenger seat as her own—squirmed, but couldn’t get comfortable. A Mercedes SUV with a front bench seat should provide more room for their fat-cat customers.

In the front, the tall but slim Rosie sat in the middle, the too thin Bob Seeley to her right. With Uncle’s girth spilling over into Rosie’s turf, Kate had no complaints.

Conversation turned out to be as constricted as the passengers: Weatherwise babbling about the storm and its poor coverage with him out of the loop; Rosie and Marlene jabbing at each other; Bob and Kate acting as peacemakers; and Lucy’s silence getting on everyone’s nerves.

And, after more than an hour in the car, its windshield pelted by rain and the ever-increasing wind whistling through its windows, they weren’t going anywhere.

“We still haven’t turned onto Neptune Boulevard.” Rosie had stated the obvious.

Marlene groaned, but a sharp rap on the driver’s side stifled her retort.

Uncle Weatherwise opened the rear window. Kate started as rain soaked the SUV’s backseat.

“Everyone out of the car,” a cop shouted. “Hurry up, folks. We’re forming a human chain and walking across.”

The
nine p.m. bridge closing deadline was less than ten minutes away.

Three

A s
oaked Kate, linked hand to hand between a young policeman—who had Ballou tucked under his left arm—and Marlene, stumbled, twinging the human chain to an abrupt halt.

“Don’t look down,” she told herself, startled to hear her own voice, not realizing she’d spoken aloud. Tonight, the Intracoastal Waterway far below the bridge seemed as rough and forbidding as the North Atlantic.

The moon’s intermittent appearances between the dark clouds, together with the cops’ flashlights, provided spotty light.
God knows the rain-dimmed headlights of the cars jamming both the incoming and outgoing lanes as they inched west toward the mainland were of no help.

“You bastard!” someone shouted. Could that be Rosie’s rasp?

Kate spun around, again losing her balance as the wind slapped her face. She broke her fall, and wobbly, let go of Marlene’s hand to grab the railing on the bridge’s narrow, slippery footpath. Uncle Weatherwise, several links behind, dropped someone’s hand to raise his arm in a threatening gesture aimed at the person behind him. A tall, slim figure. Lucy? Rosie? Bob?

“Keep your eyes forward and pay attention to what you’re doing, ma’am,” the young policeman shouted. Ballou yelped, squirming toward his mistress. A gust of wind brought Kate to her knees. Marlene went down with her. The bridge swayed. The bridge at St. Luis Rey came to mind. Several people screamed. Rosie’s was the most riveting. Would they ever get to the other side?

As the evacuees—that’s how Kate now defined herself—settled into the smelly, overcrowded high-school gym, she figured the misanthrope next door might have had the right idea. Ocean Vista never looked better. Maybe she should have stayed in her apartment and taken her chances.

“Could ya believe that bus ride?” Rosie lit a Chesterfield. “Not even a toilet in the back. Don’t they know us old broads need to pee every hour? And the ladies room in this school could use a little elbow grease. Clorox, that’s my secret weapon.”

“Please put that cigarette out, ma’am.” The young, gallant cop who’d carried Ballou to safety sounded peeved.

Rosie made a face, but dropped the cigarette into her Coke can.

“If I catch you lighting up again, ma’am, I’ll have to confiscate your cigarettes.” The cop returned to his task at hand, assigning sleeping quarters. No one wanted the bleacher benches, but floor space was at a premium.

Kate felt sorry for him. And annoyed at Rosie. They were in a school, for heaven’s sake. Why would Rosie think she could smoke? And why did she keep lumping Kate and herself in the same “old broad” category? The former Rockette had been dancing at Radio City before Kate was born. And their age difference put Rosie in a different generation, didn’t it? Kate laughed. She’d better stop talking to herself: she sounded exactly like a cranky old broad.

“What’s so funny?” Rosie asked, stretching her
thin
arms to the floor, then walking them around in a circle.

Amazing. Rosie O’Grady smoked like Bette Davis in
Dark Victory
,
drank like a sailor on shore leave, had slept with Albert Anastasia, and, if you could believe her, most of the Rat Pack. At eighty-four, she rasped, but remained as limber and healthy as a teenager. So much for clean living.

“Life’s funny.” Kate sighed. “Would you like a couple of Social Teas? I have a thermos of tea too.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I have a flask of gin.”

“I’ll have one of those, young man.” Lucy Diamond cornered one of St. Thomas’s teenage volunteers
handing
out pillows and blankets. She pointed to a bunch of cots that would fetch some really big bucks if they went up for bid. “My spine is arthritic and I cannot spend the night on the floor or up in those bleachers.”

The boy shook his head. “I’m not fixing to assign the cots, ma’am. Y’all will have to figure that out.”

A Florida native, judging by his accent. A rare breed, displaced by uppity Northerners who’d taken over their towns, not unlike the carpetbaggers during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War.

“I want that cot.” Lucy Diamond, hard-hitting federal prosecutor, would have given General Sherman pause. “If you hand over two pillows and a blanket, I’ll make my bed up now.”

The boy took her in stride. “You might want to talk to your condo commander, ma’am.” Not a trace of irony in his voice.

Walt Weatherwise, a two-way transistor radio tucked into his pocket and a pile of bedding clutched under his right arm, used his left index finger to tap the teenager’s shoulder. “Do you know who I am, boy?”

The kid stared at Weatherwise, meeting his eyes and not blinking, then shook his head. “I sure don’t, mister.”

“I’m Uncle Weatherwise, from Channel Eight.” The boy’s face remained blank. “Your hurricane point man. I’m in contact with the United States Weather Service, receiving updates every five minutes.” He kicked the left front metal wheels on one of the remaining cots in the small pile. “I am requisitioning this bed. The bureau has upgraded the hurricane to a Category Two. With my many years of experience and the ongoing input from the Weather Service, I can guide us through Harriet and save our lives.” Weatherwise grabbed the cot, propped a pillow up against the gym wall, and stretched out. His feet dangled over its bottom end and his love handles flopped over its sides.

“That’s my bed, you old fraud. Get up,” Lucy, who’d stood by brooding, lashed out at Weatherwise.

“What are you going to do, put me in jail?” A smiling Uncle used his soothing, trained-for-television voice.

The kid caved. “You can each have a cot.” He set up Lucy’s as far away from Weatherwise as the geography would allow, then walked toward the cafeteria.

The wind whistled through the gym’s closed windows.

Rain seeped through a rear window. Kate thought she felt the school move. Ballou, who’d been off exploring, returned to her side and licked her hand, comforting her.

“Give me the latitude again,” Weatherwise barked into his cell phone.

It was going to be a long night.

On the bleacher below her, Marlene snored. Kate had dozed, but Weatherwise haunted her dreams. The ghost of hurricanes past? Why did she dislike him so? She hardly knew him.

“Don’t threaten me, Walt. You’re in way too deep.” Fury coated Bob Seeley’s words.

Good lord, why would Bob have been threatening the weatherman? Kate raised her head, straining to hear.

“The money better show up, Bob. By tomorrow.” Weatherwise laughed.

Mild-mannered Bob’s anger had shocked Kate, but Weatherwise’s evil laugh scared her.

All that rage had to stem from something deeper than condo finances. Something from the men’s past?

How she wished she could roll over.

Ballou, thank heavens, was sound asleep. She closed her eyes.

Minutes—hours?—later, Kate awoke again. Sitting up, she spotted Rosie and Weatherwise under the basketball hoop. Rosie, so proud of her high kicks, had wrapped her left leg around his neck. The weatherman squirmed, struggling to remove her ankle, but the octogenarian, in far better shape, just kept on talking. Kate tried, but couldn’t make out Rosie’s monologue.

Weatherwise must have
slipped out while the weary slept. At seven the next morning, no one seemed to care. And no one seemed to care that most of the hurricane hype had been just that.

Harriet downgraded to a tropical storm, had hit Palmetto Beach at two a.m.
,
then veered south.

The power was back on, sunshine streamed through the gym’s windows, and Channel Eight’s substitute weatherman, all smiles, announced there had been no reported injuries and property damage was being assessed.

Ocean Vista’s residents, following a flurry of loud conversations, had demanded to go home to see for themselves.

Kate wiped her face with a moist towelette and took Ballou for a walk. The buses would be picking them up in an hour.

Piles of debris were scattered in front of the school. Ballou investigated them thoroughly, sniffing each and every one. After he’d done his business and Kate had used her pooper-scooper, he returned to one of the higher piles. “Come on Ballou, we have a bus to catch.”

The Westie ignored her, digging deeper, exposing part of a large black plastic bag.

Could that be the toe of a sneaker sticking out? She peered closer. Yes, for sure—a Nike, covering a foot. Using her own sneaker, she kicked away the bag, revealing the rest of Uncle Weatherwise.