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

broken. Could that, too, be result of a knife wound? Somehow Kate didn’t think so.
    And why in the world had Parker gotten into the backseat of Rosie’s car? The body hadn’t been there when she and Marlene returned from the Sea Watch and parked next to the Lincoln, had it? She didn’t remember looking into the car, so she couldn’t be sure. And the blood looked fresh. He couldn’t have been dead long.
    Not wanting to leave fingerprints, Kate inched out of the front seat and through the passenger door the same way she’d crawled in, without using her hands. “It’s Detective Parker.”
    Lucy gasped, then teetered. Had she not recognized the body either?
    “Why did that cop have to get himself killed in my car?” Rosie hurled her question at Kate as if she expected Kate had the answer. “I just had the seats reupholstered, ya know. Cost me more than my entire July Social Security payment. There ain’t no justice.”
    “Life’s a bitch, Rosie,” Lucy snapped, then wiped her eyes.
    Strange. Parker’s demise might let Lucy off the hook for Weatherwise’s murder, but she was carrying on as if she’d lost the love of her life. Or was she mourning unrequited love?
    Kate turned to Rosie and realized for the first time that the former Rockette was dressed to kill. In blood red. A full-skirted chiffon cocktail dress, not unlike a bridesmaid circa 1957. Matching strappy sandals, flattering those great legs, last noticed wrapped around Uncle Weatherwise’s neck. And enough rhinestones, glittering like tinsel, to trim a tabletop-size Christmas tree.
    “Where were you going?” Kate assumed that Rosie hadn’t been driving home with a dead detective in her backseat, but still, ten p.m. was pretty late for an eighty-four-year-old to be starting out.
    “Dancing.” Defiant in body language and tone. “At Ireland’s Inn.”
    Kate waited.
    “I was watching my Lawrence Welk video and got nostalgic, ya know, wanted a little companionship. A little smooth dancing. In someone’s arms.” Rosie stared down at the ground. “Maybe an Old Fashioned. My favorite cocktail.” It had been Kate’s father’s favorite too. “I figured I’d run into Joe Sajak at Ireland’s.” She jerked her thumb toward an empty spot across the parking lot. “His car wasn’t there, so I was right, he’d gone dancing.”
    Kate had dropped the phone before hearing Mary Frances’s decision. She hoped the former nun wouldn’t be losing her virginity to snaky Sajak.
    A Paul Newman lookalike, once a suspect in his wife’s murder, Joe had most of Ocean Vista’s widows and divorcées dropping off casseroles and inviting him to dinner on Las Olas and plays—that they “just happened to have an extra ticket for”—at the Broward County Performing Arts Center. The man made Kate squirm. How well had Joe known Uncle Weatherwise? And what time had he left for Ireland’s Inn?
    “Kate!” Marlene, her platinum hair in huge pink plastic rollers, wearing a marabou-trimmed, white satin dressing gown, had arrived, dragging an ashen Bob, in tailored—probably Brooks Brothers—pressed pajamas, behind her.
    An ambulance’s siren heralded its arrival and a Palmetto Beach Police car, lights flashing, pulled into the parking lot behind it.
    “The 911 operator wouldn’t let me off the phone. Reporting a dead body isn’t easy. Questions. Questions. Details. Details. I finally told her I’d been stabbed too, and hung up.” Marlene groaned. “So here I am, and not a second too soon.”
    “Let me go, Marlene.” Bob looked even thinner than usual. And frightened. “You roused me out of bed, mumbling something about a murder in the parking lot…” He came across as vague, his breathing labored.
    Marlene gestured to the police car, literally shoved Bob at Lucy, and whispered in Kate’s ear. “Around eight thirty or so, I was sitting on my balcony having a nightcap.”
    A nightcap. After three Cosmos at dinner. Kate sighed, then asked,