Palm Beach Bones Read online

  Palm Beach Bones

  A Charlie Crawford Mystery (Book 4)

  Tom Turner

  Tribeca Press

  Copyright © 2017 Tom Turner. All rights reserved.

  Published by Tribeca Press.

  This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities are coincidental.

  www.tomturnerbooks.com

  Palm Beach Bones/Tom Turner – 1st ed.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-546-74311-8

  Contents

  Also by Tom Turner

  Join Tom’s Author Newsletter

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Afterword

  Palm Beach Pretenders (Excerpt)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  About the Author

  Also by Tom Turner

  CHARLIE CRAWFORD MYSTERIES

  Palm Beach Nasty

  Palm Beach Poison

  Palm Beach Deadly

  Palm Beach Bones

  Palm Beach Pretenders

  STANDALONES

  Broken House

  Join Tom’s Author Newsletter

  Get the latest news on Tom’s upcoming novels when you sign up for his free author newsletter at tomturnerbooks.com/news.

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve run out of people to thank.

  So Serena and Georgie, world’s greatest daughters, thanks for putting up with all my nonsense.

  One

  Crawford and Ott were eyeballing the body that lay on the beach behind The Breakers. Ott was down in a crouch; Crawford was snapping photos on his iPhone. Even for veteran detectives from the mean streets of New York and Cleveland, it was not a pretty sight. The dead man appeared to be in his sixties, wearing khaki pants and a blue shirt. It was apparent that creatures of the sea had had their way with him. A bullet hole in the middle of his chest indicated that someone of the human species had as well. The victim’s skin was slug white and wrinkled and he had a bulky Breitling watch that was still ticking even though his heart no longer was.

  It was 6:30 a.m. An early morning beach stroller had called Palm Beach PD an hour ago with shock and horror in her voice. Crawford had been at the station at the time of the call, while Ott had come to the scene directly from his house.

  “Shot him somewhere on the beach then dragged him into the water,” Ott weighed in, glancing up at Crawford. “Or maybe dumped him from a boat.”

  Crawford nodded as he took another photo with his iPhone.

  “Hawes on his way?” Ott asked.

  Bob Hawes had been the medical examiner for Palm Beach County for twenty-five years. Way longer than he should have been, as far as Crawford was concerned.

  “Yeah, should be any minute,” said Crawford.

  Crawford looked up and saw a kid and a dog walking toward them. He held up his hand and walked in their direction. “Sorry son, but you can’t come any closer.”

  The boy’s eyes were big. “Is that man okay?”

  “You’re going to have to turn around and go back,” Crawford said, pointing over the boy’s shoulder.

  “Okay,” said the boy reluctantly, still eyeing the body. Then he turned, gave a tug on the dog’s leash, and started walking away.

  Three uniforms came down to the beach, having parked in one of The Breakers’ parking lots. Crawford put a hand up to his mouth and shouted to them. “You guys got any tape?”

  One of them, Stan Gilhuley, held up a roll of yellow crime-scene tape.

  “Good. I need you over there, Stan.” He pointed to where the boy had just come from. “And Jon, over there,” he pointed to the other side of the beach. “Don’t let anyone get anywhere close.”

  He looked up at The Breakers and saw a cluster of people looking down at them. One had a pair of binoculars and two others had cameras. He saw a cameraman from WPEC news, the CBS affiliate.

  “Tape off the path, Hal,” Crawford told the third cop, “between those two trees.” He pointed to two Chinese podocarpus. “Make sure those people stay up there,” Crawford said. “Even the press.”

  “Especially the press,” Ott mumbled.

  Then Crawford saw the figure of Bob Hawes part the crowd, no doubt telling the public to make way so he could get to the crime scene before the clueless cops messed it up. Hawes wore gray flannel pants and a shirt that looked more like a pajama top, totally inappropriate for a June day that was already north of eighty degrees.

  Ott hadn’t noticed the ME yet; he was busy taking notes in his vintage leather-bound notebook that he’d had since way back when.

  “Hawes is about to make his entrance,” Crawford said under his breath.

  Ott groaned as he stood up straight and pocketed the notebook.

  A few moments later, Hawes walked up to them, his black Corfam high-gloss tie shoes having taken on a few spoonfuls of sand.

  “Boys,” Hawes said with a nod to Crawford and Ott before he looked down at the body. “Ho-lee shit.” His eyes were as big as the gut hanging over his white plastic belt.

  “What?” Crawford asked.

  “That’s Clyde Loadholt.”

  “Who’s Clyde Loadholt?”

  “He was chief of police here fifteen years ago,” Hawes said, bending down for a closer look. “That watch…he got that when he retired. Clyde was a damn fine chief. Everyone loved the guy.”

  Crawford didn’t point out the obvious: everyone except at least one.

  Two

  The thwack-thwack-thwacking of a helicopter’s blade broke the silence of the group huddled around the corpse on the beach.

  Crawford looked up as it got closer.

  “Jesus,” Ott said. “What the hell—”

  He shook his head as Crawford walked toward the helicopter, waving his hands. But it just kept coming, lower by the second. It got to right above where the body was, only about twenty-five feet above them, its rotors kicking up a sandstorm.

  A pretty woman, her hair flying in all directions, was leaning out the passenger side, snapping pictures.

  Crawford yelled through the cloud of sand, “Get out of here, you’re wrecking our scene!”

  The woman looked down a
t him, smiled, waved, and just kept snapping.

  Ott, a mile-wide frown on his face, pulled out his Glock and pointed it. “Outta here! Right now!”

  The woman’s smile disappeared but she snapped off a few last shots. Then she lowered her camera, reached into her pocket, pulled something out, and tossed it from the helicopter. It fluttered down toward the beach.

  The helicopter started to rise, then headed inland.

  Ott shook his head, brushing sand out of his thinning hair as he watched the helicopter disappear. “You believe that shit?”

  “Guess you made the six o’clock news, waving your piece,” Crawford said.

  “Which means I’ll be hearing from Rutledge,” Ott said referring to Norm Rutledge, the current chief of police.

  Crawford nodded. “You can count on it.”

  A uniform brought something over to Crawford and handed it to him. “This is what she tossed,” he said.

  It was a business card. It read: Alexa Dillon, Palm Beach Morning News.

  Ott read it over Crawford’s shoulder. “Gotta hand it to her. She got the money shot for tomorrow’s edition.”

  Crawford had been out of town for the past week. He had been up in Connecticut and had just flown down from JFK airport the night before. Family emergency was how he had explained it to Norm Rutledge and when Rutledge pressed him for details he just repeated it.

  Palm Beach had been homicide-free for the last five months, so his timing had been good.

  Bart, Crawford’s twenty-nine year old brother, was the family emergency. Bart had checked himself into Clairmount, located in the pastoral hills of New Canaan, Connecticut. Clairmount, as the website said, specialized in ‘the treatment of psychiatric and addictive disorders,’ and was a, ‘unique and extraordinary place that helps people find the path back to mental health and wellness.’

  It was clear, Bart hadn’t yet found the path.

  Along with their middle brother, Sam, Bart had followed their father’s footsteps and had gone into the investment-banking business. Both Bart and Sam had become phenomenally successful and were now principals in the same New York hedge fund.

  Because of the ten-year age difference, Crawford and Bart had never been too close. But they still got on the phone every month or so and talked football or what different family members were up to.

  Bart was smart, funny, handsome, and very rich, but he’d also landed the Crawford family’s depression gene. It didn’t help that he had a marriage that was shaky at best because of a wife who obeyed her marriage vows only about six days out of seven.

  Bart told Charlie that on the night before he was scheduled to check into Clairmount he had gone to a bar in the meatpacking district of Manhattan and parked himself on a barstool until the place closed down. Then—seven drinks later—he had gotten into his car and, with the companionship of a fifth of Johnny Walker Blue, had GPS’d his way up to New Canaan. He got there around 6:00 a.m., so he’d had some time to kill before Clairmount opened at nine. He then proceeded to pull out a small, dark bottle of white powder and powered through it for the next hour.

  Needless to say, Bart hadn’t made the best first impression with the staff when he’d staggered into reception that morning.

  A week later, Crawford had walked into his brother’s residence, a large Tudor home called Brook House—one of many on the Clairmount campus—and found Bart in the middle of a heated Monopoly game with five women. The brothers shared a long hug and Bart clapped Charlie on the back so hard it was like he was trying to dislodge a chicken bone from his throat.

  “Your brother cheats,” one of the Monopoly players announced to Crawford right off the bat.

  “I could have told you that,” Crawford said, as Bart introduced him to the women at the table. It was an odd mix from age twenty to around sixty.

  “He always ends up on Chance,” one named Emily said.

  “And never goes to jail,” said another named Cynthia.

  “Speaking of jail,” Bart announced. “My brother here’s a cop—well, actually a detective—so you better be nice to him. Did you ever hear about that case where a guy called the Taxidermist killed all those people in Manhattan?”

  Two of the women nodded.

  “Well, Charlie here solved it,” Bart said, beaming with pride.

  “Wait, didn’t you date that actress, Gwendolyn Hyde?” A younger woman asked.

  Crawford’s face reddened.

  “He doesn’t like to talk about that,” Bart said in a conspiratorial whisper to his new friends.

  After Bart had cheated his way to victory, he and Crawford went out on the porch of the house, which had an idyllic view of a swift-moving brook. A family of ducks waddled into their periphery a few minutes later.

  “So how’s it going here, Bart?” Crawford asked. “Something tells me it’s not all fun and games.”

  “It’s all right.” Bart had never been a complainer. “We go to classes, they’re teaching us this thing called DBT, which stands for…shit, I forget. It’s all about trying to get our heads straight. Then we’ve got AA and Al-Anon every night. Hey, if you gotta be at a place like this, I guess this is as good as any.”

  “Doing you any good, you think?”

  “Yeah, maybe. They’re also doing ECT on me. Know what that is?”

  Crawford shook his head.

  “Electroconvulsive therapy. First, they put you out, then zap you with electric shocks.”

  Crawford felt an unexpected protective impulse. “Christ, you don’t mean like in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”

  Bart laughed and held up a hand. “No, no, it’s come a long way from that. Got a pretty good track record fighting depression. Oh, now I remember: DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy.”

  Crawford shrugged. “Whatever the hells that means.”

  “I know, right?” Bart said.

  “So when do you get out?” Crawford asked.

  “I’m not sure yet, but they tell me most people are here for a month or so.”

  “And that’s okay with Grey?” Grey Macleod owned Trajectory Partners, Bart’s hedge fund employer.

  “Yeah, he’s okay with it.” Bart said.

  Fact was, he had to be, since Bart was the star at Trajectory Partners. Crawford had read articles about his brother in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times and Bart had even been featured on Jim Kramer’s TV show Mad Money.

  “So Sam’s pinch-hitting?” Crawford asked.

  Sam, as far as the three brothers went, was the odd man out. Charlie and Bart had been athletes, Sam was on the debate team. Charlie and Bart had been kids who liked to have a good time, Sam was the serious one. Charlie and Bart got by with Cs, Sam straight As. Charlie and Bart were popular with girls, Sam was popular with librarians.

  “Yeah, he’ll be all right,” Bart said.

  “Doesn’t make you a little nervous?”

  Bart laughed. “Nah, he won’t lose us any clients.”

  “I hope this isn’t a sore subject, but what about Charlotte?” Crawford asked of Bart’s wife.

  “Ah, it’s a little sore,” Bart said. “She’s seeing some guy on the side. I’m not supposed to know about it, of course. She went out to the Canyon Ranch for her annual tune-up. And whaddaya know, the guy was out there too.”

  “Sorry, man,” Crawford said. He had always had his doubts about Charlotte, particularly when she flirted with him a couple of times.

  “Yeah, well, this time it’s definitely over,” Bart shook his head. “Hey, not like I was husband of the year. Can we talk about you now?”

  “Same old, same old,” Crawford said. “Arrest guys, put ‘em in jail.”

  “Somehow I think there’s a little bit more to it than that,” Bart said. “How’re you liking Palm Beach?”

  “I mostly like it,” Crawford said.

  “I’ve got a couple clients who have houses down there,” Bart said. “What about Mort, how’s that gnarly, old bastard doing?”
r />   “Still fat and cranky,” Crawford said, then he turned serious. “You think you’re gonna be okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine,” he said. “But quitting the booze might be a challenge.”

  “Well, I got a hotel room nearby for the next couple days. Maybe I can get into your Monopoly game.”

  Bart shook his head. “Naw, you don’t need to stick around. I’ll be okay.”

  “I know,” Crawford said. “But the murder business is a little slow at the moment.”

  Until Clyde Loadholt’s body drifted up behind The Breakers like a beached whale.

  Three

  Susie Loadholt, the sixty-four-year-old widow of Clyde Loadholt, dabbed at her eyes. She had a pink Kleenex box in her lap at her two-story colonial in West Palm Beach. Her sister was sitting next to her, an arm around her shoulder, kissing her consolingly every thirty seconds or so.

  Crawford—six three, one eighty, who everyone said looked like that polo player in the Ralph Lauren ads except with dirty blond hair—sat across from her. Ott—five seven, two thirty, sometimes mistaken for Palm Beach PD’s janitor— had a chair next to Crawford’s.