Free Death Storms the Shore (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 4) by Noreen Wald

living room, Ballou sniffing at her sneakers.
    Without being asked, Lucy sat—almost collapsed—on Kate’s off-white couch. She looked haggard. Frightened.
    “Would you like a cup of tea? Or maybe a drink?”
    “Scotch. Straight up.” Lucy barked, then chortled. “Thanks. Sorry, guess I’m too upset to mind my manners.”
    Kate located a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black on a shelf behind the wet bar in the dining room. Nary a highball or a lowball glass in sight. A testament to the changing tastes in booze over the last few decades. Only wineglasses. Hmm? Red or white?
    “What’s wrong, Lucy?” Kate handed her a red wineglass half filled with scotch.
    “Detective Parker.” Lucy coated her words with venom. “Thinks I killed Walt.” She downed most of the scotch in one gulp. “Do you think so, too, Kate?”
    Nothing if not direct, Kate almost replied, “You’re certainly on my list,” but instead shook her head and said nothing.
    “That’s why I was out there at Coral Reef Police Station this afternoon, but you knew that, didn’t you?” For a woman drinking Charlie’s best scotch, Lucy Diamond behaved as if she were prosecuting Kate. And, for sure, this hadn’t been Lucy’s first drink of the night.
    Kate, too tired to take her guest’s guff, lashed out. “When we were being evacuated, did you cross the bridge next to Walt Weatherwise?”
    “What the hell difference could that possibly make, Kate?” Lucy drained her scotch. “But, for your information, Walt crossed between Rosie and Bob.”
    Damn. Why, of all the questions she’d wanted to ask Lucy, had she started with that one? Dumb move, Kate.
    “You overheard me fighting with Walt in the gym, didn’t you?” Lucy held out her glass. “God knows, I wanted to kill the bastard, but I didn’t. Pour me another drink and I’ll tell you a story. A sad story.”
    Suspecting this would be another long night, Kate poured herself a white wine.
    Turning, she raised her glass. “To sad stories. I’m listening.”
    Kate hadn’t overheard much of anything between Lucy and Walt in the gym, but if Lucy believed she had, why should Kate correct her?
    Lucy nodded, quiet now. Preparing her opening statement?
    Kate sank into a chenille armchair. Edmund had described the chair’s color as butter pecan. If she had to compare the chair’s color to ice cream, Kate thought it looked more like toasted almond.
    For a fleeting moment, she could hear the ring of the bell on the Good Humor man’s bicycle, feel the cold blast from the freezer box in front of his handlebars cooling her sweaty face, taste her favorite toasted almond bar, savor the last lick of ice cream off the wooden stick. Then she started, scolding herself: Focus, Kate, focus. Get the hell out of the past.
    “Weatherwise and I go back a long way.” Lucy’s agitation had vanished. She appeared stronger, calmer. Had some of her earlier histrionics been an act? Or had her professional demeanor taken over—going on automatic pilot—as she prepared to present her case?
    It was Kate’s turn to nod.
    “Fifteen years ago,” Lucy said, “long before my hair turned white and I began dying it black, long before I retired and started collecting Social Security, long before I lost most of my muscle tone and any semblance of a positive attitude, I met Walt Weatherwise in Miami Beach at the Blue Parrot, a swinging singles bar for middle-age loners. Make that losers.”
    Kate sipped her wine, hoping she could nurse it through Lucy’s maudlin saga.
    “He not only stole my heart, he compromised my integrity. A deadly combination for a federal prosecutor’s suitor.”
    “What happened?” Kate tried to steer Lucy away from emotion and into a few facts.
    “Well, as you know, Walt wasn’t much to look at, but back then the man’s conquests were legion. The PR people at the TV station planted tabloid stories bragging that Weatherwise had bedded 20 percent of his female viewers. Our affair began at his