Death Storms the Shore (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 4) (5 page)

Nine

Monday, July 3, Fifty-Six Years Ago

Over the next few days, Pete moved on to blonder pastures and Kate met Marlene’s possible replacement in Miss Ida’s bookstore.

Jackson Heights, though in Queens—one of the five boroughs that made up New York City—suffered, in Kate’s opinion, from small-town syndrome. Yes, riding the E or F train she could get to Times Square in under a half hour, faster than many Manhattan residents living down in Little Italy or up in Harlem could, but a real Manhattanite didn’t have to cross a bridge or tunnel to arrive at Forty-second Street. And nothing exciting ever happened in Jackson Heights.

Except for the growing number of high-rises and the density of the population, she might as well have been living in Kansas City. Well, maybe Philadelphia. But for sure, sophistication began at York Avenue and ended at Twelfth, the east and west boundaries of the city she loved. Forget about neighbors’ goods or wives, what Kate coveted was a brownstone on the Upper East Side.

She’d learned as a toddler that Eighty-ninth Street in Jackson Heights was very different from East Eighty-ninth or West Eighty-ninth in the city. Her parents considered their Queens lifestyle a big step up; Kate considered it an embarrassment. She’d rather live in Hell’s Kitchen where her father had grown up. The script played out: poor but brilliant girl goes to Columbia on a scholarship, then marries a boy from Sutton Place. Very Gene Tierney. Or Harlem, where her mother had grown up. That plot line included helping disadvantaged children, working with church groups, and falling in love with a doctor. Very Jeanne Crain.

Stuck in Queens, she’d turned to the society pages to fuel her fantasies. The gossip column had captured her interest six months ago, and know she couldn’t go a day without gossip about the rich and famous.
She found old money more intriguing than movie moneymakers. On Saturday, her father had laughed when he came out of the ocean and discovered Kate sitting in his beach
chair, soaking up the sun and the
Journal-American’s
editorial page at Rockaway Beach.

She loved the writers; such conflict, so much diversity, all on one page. Her mother, already nagging Kate about dropping Marlene, hadn’t been amused. “Bill, your daughter is now addicted to politics as well as gossip.”

Her father had shrugged. “It’s all the same.”

Kate was, indeed, fascinated by, if not addicted to, one story. A spy case. The events leading up to the impending arrest of David Goodman for spying had been making the Hearst paper’s headlines for months. All the columnists seemed to agree his wife, Muriel, might be arrested too. The couple’s pictures—two ordinary people who could be Kate’s neighbors—had been featured on the
Journal-American
’s front page almost every day.

With the Daily News and Dorothy Kilgallen in the
Journal-American
also required reading, Kate found less time for her first love, books.

Still, on the day before the Fourth of July, she walked the block and a half to Thirty-seventh Avenue to pick up the new mystery she’d requested. Miss Ida had called early this morning to inform her favorite customer, Maggie Norton, that Kate’s special order had arrived.

The bookstore, on the west side of the avenue, sandwiched between the Castle Cave, the bar on the corner, and the dry cleaners, had been Kate’s favorite place to hang out prior to her spending most afternoons sipping egg creams at Irv’s, a candy store on the east corner, where the boys were.

“Katie, it’s wonderful to see you.” Miss Ida, prim in a high-neck white blouse, despite the summer heat and a store cooled by two fans almost as old as the proprietor, stood behind the counter arranging a display rack of recently released hardcover rentals. “So grown-up you are. So pretty in your pink shirt.”

Kate felt herself flush, hot red spreading from neck to temple. She stared down at the floor, mumbling, “Thank you.”

Her legs looked stumpy in her Bermuda shorts. And her toes, which her mother had painted in Revlon’s Fire & Ice, stuck too far out of her white sandals.

The tiny bookstore’s lending library did a brisk business. Maggie Norton, a loyal customer, had never liked being waitlisted for months at the Jackson Heights Branch of the New York City Public Library. For ten cents a day, Maggie and her neighbors could read the new releases while the books were still on the
Times’
bestseller list.

Kate had orders to pick up a copy of
a book
that her mother had reserved weeks in advance. She placed a five-dollar bill on the counter. “How are you, Miss Ida? Mom says, ‘Hi.’”

Miss Ida, bracketed by three walls filled with books, reached under the old oak countertop and, with a flourish, placed the new mystery in front of Kate.

Another love lost. The thrill of seeing, feeling, smelling a hot-off-the-printing-press mystery in this girl-reporter series had vanished. Poof. Gone. Just like that

Had Kate become fickle? Tossing old friends away? First Marlene, leaving her flat after having been best friends for more than half of their lifetimes. Now, her favorite series. Their love affair had begun with
book one.
Kate had remained a fan all through the plucky heroine’s college days, her career, her world cruise, in the Orient on a treasure hunt and, of course, her romance. Would she wind up with Larry or Jim?

Frankly, Kate, who’d just read
Gone With the Wind
,
didn’t give a damn.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Miss Ida sounded concerned. “You seem a bit odd, Katie.”

“Nothing.” Kate nodded toward the now undesired mystery. “Please put that in a bag, Miss Ida, along with
my mother’s book
.”

She fought an urge to flee. From what? Her family? Her choice in literature? Her past? Holy smoke, she’d just turned thirteen! Shouldn’t she wait until she was twenty to have a nervous breakdown?

Miss Ida handed Kate two dollars and seventy-five cents change. “Please tell your mother that
Kon-Tiki
is scheduled to be returned tomorrow.”

“I’m waiting for that book as well.” A refined voice, not a native New Yorker—a rare breed in Queens—came
from behind Kate, who hadn’t realized anyone else had entered the store.

Kate spun around. The good diction belonged to an exotic, dark-haired, slim girl about Kate’s age. She wore blue jeans and a peasant blouse, its embroidery gathered around her small, firm, breasts. No bra. No undershirt. Finding her different, but beautiful, Kate stared at the girl’s olive skin and huge, almond-shaped brown eyes.

“Katie, say hello to Sophie Provakov,” Miss Ida said. “She loves books as much as you do.” The spry eighty-two-year-old smiled. “Sophie, this is Kate Norton.”

Sophie nodded, then ignoring Kate, addressed Miss Ida. “Am I not the next reader for
Kon-Tiki
?”

Miss Ida chuckled. “Don’t you worry, I have two copies, Sophie dear. Yours is right here.” Her slim hand darted under the counter and produced the book in question.

Kate’s mood lifted. Sophie, speaking up, intrigued her. Bold. Not a boy. Kate had tried—and failed—boy chasing. And not the same old garden-variety neighborhood kind of girl. Not Marlene. Not any of the girls at school. Sophie Provakov. She rolled the foreign-sounding name around in her head. Maybe Russian? Kate’s father didn’t trust the Soviets. And some people blamed communism for all the world’s evil.

No matter. Whatever Sophie’s heritage and wherever she now lived, Kate wanted to be her friend.

Ten

Monday, July 3, Fifty-Six Years Ago

Fate in the form of their mutual fondness for egg creams played into Kate’s hand.

The two girls wound up sitting side by side at the counter in Irv’s Candy Store, sipping sodas. Kate took the plunge. “I’ve never tasted a vanilla egg cream.” She stirred chocolate foam, trying to look nonchalant.

“Here, taste mine.” Sophie pushed her glass in front of Kate’s. The hair on Sophie’s bronzed bare arm had been bleached blonde by the sun. Good. She must like the beach.

Though she desperately wanted to, Kate couldn’t bring herself to use Sophie’s straw. Her overly fastidious mother and her “wear your gloves on the subway at all times in all seasons” grandmother had transmitted their fear of germs. The dilemma made Kate hesitate.

Sophie reached over and pressed the plastic straw dispenser. “Use this.” She seemed amused, not annoyed.

Kate nodded. “I know. Weird, right? I’m a third-generation cleanliness freak. My family’s into germ warfare.”

“I’m an expert in dealing with strange parents, Kate. Would you like to meet my father?” Sophie smiled. “He’ll serve you hot tea in a fancy glass.”

Would she ever!

In instant
like,
exchanging hopes, dreams, and favorite movie stars, they chattered nonstop for seven blocks. Who needed Marlene? This exotic, smart, almond-eyed girl might become Kate’s new best friend.

Sophie lived in an old, rather run-down stucco apartment house directly across Thirty-fourth Avenue from the empty lot where, for a few days every August, a traveling carnival set up rides, poker games, and cotton candy stands, then folded its tents and stole away into the night. Even as a little kid, Kate had sensed the carnival’s sleaze.

The rumor mill and the
Long Island Star-Journal
had been reporting that some guy was thinking about buying up empty lots in the low Nineties between Northern Boulevard and Thirty-fourth Avenue and building several high-rise apartment complexes.

Kate’s father had not sounded pleased when he’d explained to her mother why the proposed project would forever change Jackson Heights’s charm. More brick and mortar, fewer lawns and gardens.

Sophie would be one of Kate’s few friends who lived in an apartment house.

Kate’s grandaunts, her father’s aunts and Etta’s sisters-in-law, lived with two of their widowed brothers in a huge apartment in an elegant old stone building on Central Park West. She more than coveted the huge dollhouse, bigger than a beach cabana, that the “aunties” had bought for another grandniece who, following her mother’s death, also now lived with the four old maids. But that odd mix of Nortons were the only apartment dwellers in the Norton clan.

Sophie’s lobby had peeling paint, faded furniture, and an odd, unpleasant aroma. It hung in the air, enveloping and offending. Kate sniffed. Cabbage. Kate’s mother boiled cabbage in a big cast-iron pot, together with corned beef and potatoes on St Patrick’s Day. Not Kate’s favorite meal, though cabbage tasted somewhat better than it smelled.

“We’re on the third floor.” Sophie pressed the elevator call button, seemingly oblivious to the odor.

A tall, thin man dressed in shiny black pants and a tattered plaid bathrobe worn over a white undershirt opened the door to apartment 307. “My dear, did you forget again your key? I am in the middle of my work.” Sophie’s father had an accent like Paul Henreid in
Casablanca
.
He even looked a little bit like the actor.

“Father, I have brought home a friend.” Kate’s heart smiled when Sophie referred to her as a friend. “This is Kate Norton. We met in Miss Ida’s bookstore.” She turned to Kate. “This is my father, Boris Provakov.”

“Well, come in, come in, young ladies, we’ll have tea.” Mr. Provakov sounded polite, and grinned widely, revealing a gold tooth, but Kate felt certain he found her visit intrusive.

Sophie’s father worked
at home. A concept so alien that Kate had never heard of, much less met, such a man before. Even more intriguing, Mrs. Provakov went to work every day at a real job in a real office while her husband stayed in the apartment, fixing his daughter’s lunch and preparing tea for her friends.

Carpets hung on the walls. Books were everywhere. In the corner of the living room serving as Mr. Provakov’s office, a drafting table was filled with hand-drawn maps and small black notebooks, one of them open, crammed with strange-looking letters of what Sophie called the Cyrillic alphabet

Mr. Provakov spoke to his daughter in a language that Kate figured had to be Russian, and Sophie closed the notebook.

A shortwave radio, its crackles interrupted by staccato sentences—again, in what must be Russian—sat on top of a steel file cabinet with locked doors. While her father brewed tea in the kitchen, Sophie told Kate that Mr. Provakov wore the keys to the cabinet on a chain around his neck. “I warned you my parents were strange.”

The sweet tea—no milk—was, indeed, served in tall glasses, not unlike the ones their egg creams had been in, except these glasses were crystal with a fancy design and sterling silver holders.

Strange or not, Kate found herself liking Mr. Provakov, who wore a bathrobe in the middle of the day—her grandmother would consider him sloppy and maybe lazy—treated her as if she were a grown-up, and produced a wonderful dessert that Kate had never tasted before: blintzes, topped with sour cream and fresh cherries. Certainly not treating her like an intruder.

“You have read
War and Peace
,
Miss Kate?” Sunbeams streaming through dusty blinds landed on, then bounced off, his gold tooth.

“No, Mr. Provakov, I haven’t.”

He turned off the radio, just after Kate had caught what sounded like the words, “David Goodman,” spoken in heavily accented English, smack in the middle of a Russian sentence.

“We start today. Sophie, please bring us Tolstoy’s masterpiece, and read aloud to us.” Mr. Provakov hoisted his glass as if toasting Kate. “Then we discuss.”

By the time they finished off the blintzes, Natasha had
almost
replaced Scarlett as her all-time favorite character in a book. And when Sophie’s father said. “Good day, Katya. We read chapter two next visit,” Kate had
almost
forgotten she’d heard David Goodman’s name broadcast over Mr. Provakov’s shortwave radio.