Death is a Bargain (A Kate Kennedy Mystery Book 3) by Noreen Wald Page B

one of the few pluses about the aging process was that most people seldom seemed to notice older women, so her hair, frizzed or smooth, was almost a non-issue.
    Though the two-lane road made the trip longer, the highway wasn’t an option. Not today. Lately, hardly ever, and Kate really didn’t like to drive. She’d come of age in an era when many New York City women never learned to drive. If she and Charlie hadn’t moved to the suburbs, she’d still be a non-driver. Her sons—and Charlie—had been telling her for years that she made a far better passenger than driver. She tended to agree with them; however, she had to get around, and South Florida had no subway system.
    Besides, traveling at this slower pace, Kate could think.
    Could Donna be as bad as the evidence indicated? A woman who abused animals? A woman who allowed Carl Krieg to stay overnight in that small apartment, while her son slept in the next room? A woman who seemed to want her ex-husband dead in order to collect his insurance money? A woman who shared dirty secrets with the sleazy Sean Cunningham? A woman who appeared to have embraced an immoral lifestyle and then flaunted it?
    She’d better watch out: It was a short leap from a saint-like judgment call to a Salem-like witch burning.
    Donna had raised Billy. Kate liked to think her two sons, good and decent men, reflected their mother’s influence. Would Billy be such a good kid and loving son if Donna was such an evil woman? Would the child so desperately want to see his mother if she’d been abusive? Maybe. Some television self-help gurus thought so.
    She’d visit Donna, form her up-close-and-personal opinion, then call Edmund. She admired Peter’s partner, a well-respected, down-to-earth psychiatrist.
    What is family for? Edmund wouldn’t mind answering a few questions about good and evil. And mother/son relationships.
    Passing all the new, ornate, very expensive high-rise condos dotting the east side of A1A from Oakland Park to Fort Lauderdale, Kate wondered how anyone could afford them. It amazed and rather troubled her that so many people had so much money. Palmetto Beach, doggedly middle-class, now abutted some of the most expensive real estate in South Florida. If she and Ballou walked south, they’d be sharing the same sand, the same sea, and the same sunset with mega-millionaires.
    She drove across the Sunrise Boulevard Bridge, past the Galleria Mall, and the huge, well-stocked bookstore where customers could dock their boats while they browsed through the book racks. Marlene and Kate often went to signings there or just hung out in the store’s comfy chairs, reading, sipping café au lait, and watching the yachts anchor.
    Turning south, she passed through Victoria Park, an area that looked more like New England than South Florida. With its cottages and Cape Cods, Wedgwood blue shutters, well-tended green lawns, and white picket fences, the neighborhood exuded charm and small-town appeal. Only the palm trees, rustling in the morning wind, reminded Kate that she was still in Fort Lauderdale.
    The parking lot at Broward General Hospital appeared to be full, but in a far corner, at least the length of a city block away from the front entrance, she finally found a spot.
    An elderly volunteer—elderly now defined as anyone ten years older than Kate—handed her a pass, saying, “Room 4122. Miss Viera already has a visitor, but since she’s allowed two, you can go right on up, dear.”
    The lobby, somehow reminding Kate more of a hotel than a hospital, featured both a gift shop and a McDonald’s. She bought a flowering plant in the former and two cups of hot tea—one for Donna, one for herself—in the latter.
    Armed with her small gifts, she shared an elevator with a couple of nurses and two obviously very ill patients in wheelchairs, one a woman about Kate’s age, one a boy about Billy’s. The boy’s bald head indicated he was receiving chemotherapy. She said a quick prayer. For