Palm Beach Bedlam Read online

  Palm Beach Bedlam

  A Charlie Crawford Mystery (Book 8)

  Tom Turner

  Copyright © 2019 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 Bedlam/Tom Turner – 1st ed.

  Contents

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  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

  Killing Time in Charleston (Exclusive Preview)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tom Turner

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

  1

  Charlie Crawford was having one of his recurring dreams. He and Wayne Gretzky were walking through the kitchen of his parents’ house in Connecticut. Gretzky had dropped by to pick him up so they could make the drive into New York City to play hockey at Madison Square Garden: the New York Rangers against the Los Angeles Kings. It didn’t seem to matter Gretzky played for the Kings and Crawford the Rangers, because they were pals and liked to hang out together. It also didn’t seem to matter they were almost thirty years apart in age. After grabbing a couple of ice cream sandwiches from the Crawford Frigidaire, Crawford and Gretzky walked into the garage to get Charlie’s hockey stick, skates, and gloves.

  There was a thick smell in the garage—like a car’s exhaust—and Crawford saw his father slumped over the steering wheel of his Lincoln.

  That’s when Crawford usually woke up. Sweaty and in a paralyzed panic.

  In real life, his father had committed suicide, but Wayne Gretzky had not been there. And instead of hockey sticks, Crawford had actually gone out to the garage to get a lacrosse stick so he could toss a ball with a neighborhood friend. He did, in fact, find his father slumped over the steering wheel of his Lincoln Continental. Needless to say, it was an image he’d never forget.

  It always took him a long time to get back to sleep after dreams like that. Sometimes it would start to get light in his bedroom and he’d get up because by then a million things would be pinballing around in his head. A murder case badly in need of a clue or an overlooked revelation. Bills that he had been putting off paying. Dominica McCarthy or Rose Clarke? All kinds of stuff.

  This time he had actually fallen back to sleep when his cell phone rang. He reached over to the bedside table and knocked over the alarm clock groping for his iPhone.

  Finally, he located it. “Hello.”

  “Charlie,” his partner, Mort Ott, said, “we got a dead female on the ocean side of The Colony.”

  That was a hotel located on Hammon Avenue in Palm Beach.

  Crawford was immediately focused. “How’d it happen?”

  “For one thing, looks like she got tossed off a high floor. For another, she’s got multiple stab wounds.”

  Crawford slid out of bed and put his feet on the floor. “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

  “I got the coffee.”

  Crawford got there at a little after two a.m. The Colony Hotel was blocked to the west and the south by Palm Beach Police Department cars. Crawford hadn’t seen so many blue and whites at any one place since the Knight Mulcahy murder up on the north end the year before. Not to mention what looked like a couple of football fields’ worth of yellow tape strung up already.

  He parked at the corner of Golfview and South County, spotted Ott a block away talking to a uniform, Art Ryan, and walked toward them. As he got closer, he saw the woman’s body behind Ott and Ryan with two crime scene techs down in crouches.

  Ryan saw Crawford approach and said something to Ott. Ott turned and handed him a coffee. “Hey,” Ott said. “Vic’s name is Grace Spooner, staying at the hotel.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Ryan stepped forward. “Guy at the desk came out and ID’d her. Just before Mort got here. She was staying in one of the penthouses.”

  Crawford walked over to the woman’s body. One of the techs looked up. Her name was Sheila Stallings. “Hi, Charlie.”

  “Hey, Sheila,” he said, looking down at the body. “How many stab wounds, you figure?”

  “Lots.”

  “That’s not very scientific.”

  “I haven’t counted yet, but I’d say at least twenty.”

  The other tech, Robin Gold, looked up. “But that’s not the worst part.”

  Crawford got down in a crouch. “What do you mean?”

  Gold, wearing vinyl gloves, pried open the victim’s mouth with both hands.

  Grace Spooner’s tongue had been cut out.

  2

  Grace Spooner’s mouth had a pool of blood in it, but the cut was clearly visible. Instead of the end of her tongue being rounded, it ended in a straight line.

  “Jesus,” Ott said, shaking his head. “Poor woman.”

  Crawford stood up. “No kiddin’. Let’s go check out the penthouse.”

  Ott nodded. “Gotta be security cameras all over the hotel.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Crawford said, turning toward the entrance of The Colony.

  Then he turned back to the techs. “We’re going up to the room she was staying in. You coming up after here?”

  “Yup,” Stallings said. “See you up there.”

  Crawford turned, and he and Ott started walking toward the main entrance of The Colony.

  Crawford flashed to his last case, in which the victim was buried alive up to his neck on the beach on the north end. Between a pack of hungry crabs and the incoming tide, it did not end well for the buried man. The killers turned out to be from a Mexican cartel. Cutting someone’s tongue out reminded Crawford of how the cartels did things.

  He and Ott walked into the opulent lobby of The Colony. There were clusters of people there, sitting and standing. They all had one thing in common: frightened and troubled looks on their faces. At quarter after two in the morning, they weren’t there to socialize. It reminded Crawford of the minutes after a fire alarm has sounded. He assumed between hearing police sirens and seeing flashing lights, sleep had become impossible for the guests. They had no doubt come down to the lobby because they were curious about all the commotion. Some of the people were fully dressed, others in bathrobes. One woman was holding a tufted quilt over her shoulders. A man was bare-footed and wore a white undershirt and pajam
a bottoms.

  Crawford decided to take advantage of them being there and walked into the middle of the crowd and raised his voice. “Can I have your attention, please.” He waited a few seconds. “My name is Detective Crawford, Palm Beach Police, and”—he extended an open hand toward Ott—“this is my partner, Detective Ott. It is important if any of you knows of, or saw, anything that might be relevant to our investigation of a woman’s death here”—several gasps of shock and fright—“you come forward and tell us what you know.”

  The man in the pajama bottoms and undershirt stepped toward Crawford and Ott. “What exactly happened? Nobody’s told us anything at all.”

  “As I mentioned, there’s been a homicide … Obviously, we want to do everything we possibly can to get to the bottom of it as quickly as possible.”

  Ott raised his voice to the crowd. “We’d be most appreciative if anyone here who saw anyone or anything that looked suspicious would please step forward.”

  Several people glanced around at each other and shook their heads, but no one made a move.

  “How about, did any of you hear anything?” Crawford asked. He didn’t want to be any more specific than that, like saying a scream or a shriek.

  A woman in a fluffy white bathrobe shyly raised a hand. “I thought I heard a thump sound. I was reading because I couldn’t sleep.”

  Crawford nodded. “A thump sound, thank you,” he said, knowing exactly what it was. “Did you hear anything before that?”

  The woman shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Well, thank you again. Anyone else?”

  “I just heard that party down in the restaurant,” the man in the pajamas said. “It got pretty loud.”

  Several people nodded their assent.

  “What party was that?” Crawford asked.

  The man in the pajama bottoms shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. I was told there was a private party in CPB.”

  That was the name of The Colony restaurant. Crawford guessed it stood for The Colony Palm Beach.

  “A birthday party, I think it was,” volunteered the woman with the quilt around her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” Crawford said. “Anything else any of you might think would be helpful to us?”

  A few shook their heads, several others shrugged, and then a woman came up to them.

  “I don’t know whether it’s helpful or not, but I saw a very drunk man wearing a bathrobe wandering around in my hallway.”

  “What floor, ma’am?” Ott asked.

  “Third.”

  “Thank you,” Ott said, making a note of it in his old leather notebook.

  Crawford turned to Ott, flicked his head toward the reception desk, and lowered his voice. “Let’s go talk to the guy over there. Get the key to the vic’s room.”

  “Can you imagine,” Ott said, lowering his voice, “reading a book in the middle of the night and suddenly you hear a thump sound.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Crawford said grimly.

  The two walked up to the man at the desk.

  “We’re Palm Beach Police detectives,” Crawford said. “Are you the man who ID’d Ms. Spooner?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, I’m Rick Hodding.”

  “Anything you can tell us about Ms. Spooner, Rick?”

  Hodding shrugged. “Not much. She had a reservation for just tonight in Penthouse B. Checked in around five, seemed very nice. Friendly and all.”

  “Did you see her talking to any other guests? Or did she have any visitors that you’re aware of?” Ott asked.

  “No, sorry. I saw her go out at around seven. I assumed for dinner. But she was by herself when I saw her. She came back around eight, or eight fifteen maybe. Also alone.”

  Crawford nodded. “Can we get a key to her room, please?”

  “Of course,” Hodding said. He reached down for a nearby plastic card as though he’d been expecting them to ask for it. He handed it to Crawford.

  “Thanks,” Crawford said. “Will you be around for a while in case we have other questions?”

  “I’m here until eight this morning.”

  “Graveyard shift, huh?” Ott said, then grimaced at his unintended double entendre.

  They got into one of the elevators, and Crawford reached into his pocket for his vinyl gloves and put them on. Ott did the same. The elevator operated without a security card, which surprised Crawford.

  “Doesn’t look like someone not staying here would have a problem getting up to one of the rooms,” Crawford said.

  “Yeah, I noticed that too,” Ott said as the elevator stopped and they got out. “But she’d still have to open her door to whoever it was.”

  “Yeah, unless he had a key.”

  Ott nodded as they walked down the hallway to Penthouse B. They got to the door, and Crawford slipped the card into the slot and pushed open the door.

  There was a breeze in the room, and they immediately saw a slider that went out to a balcony was wide open.

  Next, they noticed a lamp tipped over on the floor and blood stains on the putting-green-colored carpet. Just beyond that, the round glass top of an overturned table was also spattered with blood and leaning against a sofa.

  “She didn’t give up without a fight,” Ott said, carefully examining the glass top.

  “No way he cut out her tongue when she was conscious,” Crawford said.

  “So, you think he killed her first, then did it?”

  Crawford thought for a moment. “Maybe she wasn’t dead, just unconscious.”

  “Why the hell would someone go to the trouble of cutting someone’s tongue out in the first place?”

  “I been thinking about that,” Crawford said. “Only thing I can come up with is it was a message.”

  Ott nodded. “Okay, but to who?”

  Crawford shrugged as he glanced out at the endless black expanse that was the ocean. “That’s the question.”

  “Gotta be honest with you,” Ott said with a grim look, “I’m not real keen on finding a tongue.”

  Crawford wasn’t either, particularly because he couldn’t see how finding it would help advance the case. “Remind me to ask the techs if there’s anything under the vic’s fingernails,” Crawford said. “Good chance she may have scratched the guy. Got some DNA.”

  Ott nodded. “Maybe some of this blood is his.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Crawford said, crouching down and lifting the skirt of a sofa. He looked underneath for a knife even though he knew it was a long shot. Not much chance the killer would leave that behind.

  Unlike his short, stout, balding partner, Charlie Crawford looked nothing like a cop. More like a male model who’d just popped out of the pages of GQ (minus the snappy threads). Six-three with dirty-blond hair on the long side, he had burned out on high-profile homicides in New York City four years before and headed south. Ott preceded him by a year, having happily left high crimes and misdemeanors in Cleveland in the rearview mirror. The two, most agreed, had a quite functional marriage of opposites.

  The trail of blood led out to the terrace.

  Taking pains to step around it, Crawford and Ott went onto the terrace and up to a brick wall around its perimeter. They looked down. In addition to the two techs, they could see Medical Examiner Bob Hawes had arrived.

  Ott picked up a nearby flowerpot. “I could drop this on Hawes’s head.”

  Crawford chuckled. The man was not their favorite.

  Crawford noticed something off to the side on the terrace floor. He crouched down, picked it up and showed it to Ott. It was a wide strip of duct tape, which Crawford guessed the killer might have used to cover Grace Spooner’s mouth. “Maybe lift a print off this.”

  Ott nodded. “Unless the guy was wearing gloves. What do you think, maybe he tasered her at the door, then stuck that over her mouth?”

  “Yeah, he’d have to do something pretty fast, or she’d start screaming.”

  “Unless she knew him.”

  Crawford nodded. “Let’s go back
in and look around some more.”

  They spent the next half hour looking under furniture and all around the large living room. Then they went into the bedroom, but it seemed apparent nothing had taken place in there.

  “Not much to work with,” Ott said as he followed Crawford out into the living room.

  “Yeah, might as well take off,” Crawford said, walking to the door and opening it. “Our best chance is if they lift a print off that duct tape.”

  “Yeah,” Ott said, approaching the elevator, “’cause without that we ain’t got squat.”

  3

  Crawford got back to his condo in West Palm Beach at 4:25 a.m. He was tired but couldn’t get back to sleep right away. Too many thoughts about the murder racing around in his mind. But finally, he fell back to sleep.

  He was in the middle of that dream everyone has: the one where you wake up in a sweaty panic about not having done your homework. It was terrifying. Talk about being riddled with guilt about not hitting the books as a kid.

  Another recurring one hit Crawford before he woke. He was playing in a lacrosse game, Dartmouth against Cornell this time, and running down the field cradling the lacrosse ball when his legs suddenly downshifted from a full sprint to slow-motion … and that was when his alarm went off. He was glad to see it still worked after knocking it over reaching for his iPhone earlier.