Palm Beach Deadly
Palm Beach Deadly
A Charlie Crawford Mystery (Book 3)
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 Deadly/Tom Turner – 1st ed.
Contents
Also by Tom Turner
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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
Afterword
Palm Beach Bones (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
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Acknowledgments
As always, thanks to Serena and Georgie for letting me badger you incessantly, ‘Does this character work?’ ‘Which of these titles do you like the best?’ ‘Did you understand that allusion at the bottom of page 314?’ Et cetera, et cetera.
Also, thanks to new loyal readers Sheila Stallings, Lisbeth Thom, Donna Phillips, Edie Murphy and Don Scarpa. And even newer…welcome aboard and thank you, Annette Stone.
And, my old friend—who I’ve never actually met in person—editor extraordinaire, Ed Stackler.
One
Roughly two hundred people were assembled at the thirty-five-million-dollar oceanfront mansion of Knight Mulcahy—yes, the Knight Mulcahy—to celebrate his being clean and sober for three long months. The vast majority of attendees, however, were celebrating with hi-powered cocktails—shaken, stirred, and otherwise mixed—by bartenders who didn’t hold back on the pour. The fact was, only about twenty percent of those present were actual teetotalers and many of them were being sorely tested by the sight of unrepressed inebriants whooping it up and clearly having a hell of a lot more fun than they were.
Mulcahy stood at the alcohol-free bar, a tall goblet of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice in hand, doing what he did best: Bloviate. In fact, the Bloviator was one of several nicknames the press had dubbed him. Another was the Billion-Dollar Gasbag, which was an overstatement of his net worth, but not by much.
Manning the alcohol-free bar was a white-jacketed man with spiky platinum hair. Behind him were four shelves, all featuring bottles of water. Very, very expensive bottles of water…there to slake the thirst of Mulcahy and his fellow twenty percenters. On the top shelf was the exotic Kona Nigari at $419 a bottle, next to the more reasonably-priced Fillico (a mere $219), both products of Japan. On the shelf below was one called Bling, which had a champagne-style cork and stood tall and proud next to Veen, a product of Finland. Below them were two from Canada—One Thousand B.C. and AcquaDeco—which bookended a long, svelte bottle of Tasmanian Rain, from the small island down under the Down Under continent. Below them came the more mundane Perrier, Pellegrino, and other familiar brands.
For those teetotalers who wanted more than exorbitantly priced water, the bartender was whipping up non-alcoholic concoctions with flamboyant names like Fuzzless Navel (peach nectar and OJ) and Innocent Passion (passion fruit syrup, cranberry and lemon juice) and its apparent nemesis, the Evil Princess (grenadine, apple juice and a dash of vanilla syrup.)
Knight Mulcahy peered out over a cluster of his guests and saw his son, Paul, walking across the room with his arm around the shoulder of a woman Knight had never seen before. She was wearing a black silk dress designed to display maximum cleavage. She had beautiful azure blue eyes, high cheekbones and a confident walk.
Paul had done his job better than usual.
As Knight watched his son chat up the top-heavy beauty, Ned Durrell wandered into his periphery. Ned took a four-dollar sip from his Kona Nigari and sidled up to Knight.
Knight acknowledged him with a curt nod. “Hey, Ned, what’s happening, bro?”
Knight—at sixty-one—was way too old for ‘bro’ and the soul knob that sprouted out below his lower lip.
Durrell gave him a withering frown. “Been meaning to take you out behind the woodshed, Knight, bitch-slap you around a little.”
“The hell you talking about?” Knight asked, clearly not alarmed by the threat.
“That comment on your show about Night Wolf,” said Durrell.
Durrell was a thriller writer who’d had a modest bestseller eleven years before but not much since. Night Wolf was his latest, a USA Today bestseller, which lacked the clout of being a New York Times bestseller, but was still nothing to be sneezed at. A thumbs-up from Knight on his number-one rated radio talk show could have meant the sale of thousands of copies, but Knight had panned it. Called it a “sleeper…as in snore,” among other snarky put-downs.
“What can I tell you?” Knight said. “I knew who did it on page nine. And that sex scene”—he shook his head and frowned— “I mean did you really use the phrase, ‘quivering pudenda?’ I guess your editor must’ve fallen asleep by then, huh?”
No sugar-coater was Knight Mulcahy.
“For the record, it was not ‘quivering,’” said Durrell, “it was ‘trembling.’”
Mulcahy, in mid-sip of his Fuzzless Navel, burst out laughing and sprayed peach nectar all over Durrell’s chin. “What-the-fuck-ever,” Mulcahy said. “It was ‘pudenda’ that was so lame. I mean, shit, man, how ‘bout just calling it ‘pussy’ or ‘snatch’ or ‘cooter,’ something the common man can relate to.”
Durrell dabbed his chin with a cocktail napkin. “Cooter, huh? Is that what they call it up in East Jesus, West Virginia, or whatever the hell you come from?”
“Kentucky, my friend,” Mulcahy said. “And I’d say we’ve beaten this subject to death, but one last thing.” Knight always got the last word. “Any sentence with the word pudenda in it should be outlawed. Period. End of story. Sounds so goddamn biological. If you’re gonna write about sex, use words that give guys hard-ons, get women stirring in their loins. Know what I mean, bro? Christ, if you can’t write a good sex scene…”
Knight shook his head
and walked away, leaving Durrell to finish the sentence.
Knight Mulcahy’s sixty-five-million-dollar-a-year salary gave him the right, he figured, to say any damn thing he pleased. And, the reality was, that’s exactly what had made him famous. His irreverent candor. As host of a three-hour daily show focusing on politics and current events, he had thirty-five million listeners a week, who—if Knight told them to dive off a cliff—would do so in a heartbeat. But Knight was content just to tell them how to think, who to vote for, and what products to buy.
Another thing about Knight, as is often the case with men who have vast power, money, and ego: he was an inveterate skirt-chaser and assumed every woman on the planet found him devastatingly sexy, utterly irresistible. Even though the man was bald, eighty pounds overweight, and had the eyes of a newborn warthog.
After shoving off from Ned Durrell, Knight headed in the direction of who he hoped would be his next conquest. Olivia Griswold was the rare female who’d never had a drop of alcohol in her life, but was well schooled in other vices. Among them: cocaine and ménage à trois (viewed by many a Palm Beacher as not a vice at all, just good, clean fun with one extra participant.) Olivia was tall, red-haired and flat-out gorgeous. She worked at Preview Properties and sold high-end houses.
Knight snuck up behind her and put his beefy mitt on her shoulder.
“How ya doin’, honey?” he said and, as she turned, kissed her on the lips.
“Just fine, Knight, lovely party,” Olivia said, taking a step back.
Knight looked across the capacious living room and saw his wife, Jacqui, deep into it with a woman who never talked about anything except her unabiding commitment to the born-again movement.
“How ‘bout taking a walk outside with me,” Knight said. “It’s kinda stuffy in here.”
Stuffy was the last thing it was, but Olivia might have been hoping he’d tell her about a rich friend of his who was moving to Palm Beach and needed a good realtor. Or in her case, a fair to middling one.
They walked out the French doors to the back lawn, which was the size of three football fields laid side by side. It tapered down to the beach, the black ocean off in the distance. In between was an oversized infinity-edge swimming pool that had cost Knight more than half a million dollars.
No more than twenty steps outside the French doors, Knight turned to Olivia and asked, “Wanna fuck?”
Olivia was probably no stranger to being propositioned but, chances were, never this fast and with absolutely no foreplay. She laughed, shook her head and shot him a look that said, you naughty boy, you.
“What a romantic,” she said instead. “I’m terribly flattered, but no. Just out of curiosity, where did you intend this little love-making session to take place? Roll around on the lawn or something?”
He pointed at the pool house.
“Still, no,” she said.
“Okay,” Knight said. “Let’s go back inside.”
“To that stuffy room, you mean?”
Her irony was lost on him because Knight had already moved on, wondering who to go after next. He was—quite clearly—a direct man, and of the school that if you asked enough times, someone would eventually say yes. It had worked for a number of other rich, powerful men. Ted Kennedy for one, Nelson Rockefeller for another. Kennedy had drunkenly taken Knight aside once and explained that the wanna fuck? gambit beat the hell out of flowers, candy, and an extended courtship.
Knight and Olivia walked inside and Knight noticed that the queen of the born-agains was still bending Jacqui’s ear.
“Well, nice chatting with you, Knight,” Olivia said.
Again, the irony fell on deaf ears. “Yeah,” Knight said distractedly, casting his eye around the room.
And there she was on the far side of the room, ready for the taking.
Two
Charlie Crawford was watching Thursday Night Football when he got the call. It was the Giants versus the Eagles. Being a New York City boy, by way of growing up in Connecticut, he missed the Giants. No way was he ever going to change his allegiance and cozy up to some Florida team even though he had been in Palm Beach for almost two years. First of all, the Jacksonville Jaguars were almost in Georgia and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were on the other side of the state somewhere and had a quarterback who had a really bad rep with women. Then there were the Miami Dolphins, who hadn’t been worth watching since Dan Marino hung up his spikes back in 2000.
The dispatcher had just reported that a “big celebrity” had been found dead up on the North End but, when Crawford pressed, didn’t know who it was. Crawford had recently read that Howard Stern—of all unlikely Palm Beachers—had bought a house up there somewhere. He was hoping it wasn’t him because Crawford still tuned into his show every once in a while for a chuckle or two. He was racking his brain, wondering who it could be, when his partner Mort Ott’s radio clicked in.
“You on your way, Charlie?” Ott asked.
“Yeah, just crossed the bridge,” Crawford said. “Where you at?”
“Almost there,” Ott said. “Cross street’s Caribbean.”
“Know who the vic is?”
“Yeah, that fuckin’ loudmouth, Knight Mulcahy.”
“You’re kidding.”
Mulcahy had never been one of Crawford’s favorites. But still, Ott could have at least a little respect for the recently departed.
“Gotta go, I’m at the house,” Ott said. “At least fifteen bags here already.”
A bag was local lingo for uniformed cops.
“Yeah, well, don’t let ‘em mess up the scene,” said Crawford.
“If they haven’t already,” said Ott.
Crawford heard Ott’s door slam and could picture him taking quick, purposeful strides to the house, ready to mow down anyone who got in his way.
Ott, a homicide guy from Cleveland, had come down six months before him. Numbnuts Norm Rutledge, the police chief, had introduced them, and Crawford remembered how warily Ott had eyed him. Crawford, similarly, was thinking, who is this roly-poly rube with the handlebar mustache and Earth shoes from the Nixon era?
At the time, Crawford was a burned-out ex-Manhattan cop with a big rep but not much left in the tank. So, he and Ott had hooked up and became a Mutt ‘n Jeff combo, starving for a good murder, but never admitting it to each other. Somehow it had clicked, and here they were again—another dead guy, famous this time.
Ten minutes later, Crawford rolled up the long driveway, which slalomed its way to a big contemporary house with four sides of glass. Crawford squeezed in between two cars, one with its light still going, and walked into the house. A bag guarded the door.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said to Crawford, “Ott’s down at the pool house.”
“Thanks, man,” Crawford said. “That where the body is?”
The man nodded, then lowered his voice. “And it ain’t pretty,” he said, “dude sprawled out on a couch, skivvies down ‘round his ankles.”
Crawford walked across the huge living room. Two evidence techs were looking around for whatever it was they were looking for. One was down on his hands and knees and had plastic gloves on. Crawford nodded at the other one and opened the French doors that went out the back.
He looked across the wide lawn and saw the pool house all lit up. Four cops were combing the exterior with Maglites. Through the glass French doors, he saw Mort Ott talking to Police Chief Norm Rutledge, which was high on Ott’s list of least favorite things to do.
Crawford walked up to the pool house and went through the open door.
Ott saw him, bailed on Rutledge, and walked over.
Ott, at five seven, two thirty, and ninety-five percent bald, looked like a high school science teacher or maybe a parole officer. His looks worked in his favor, though, since people tended to underestimate him.
Crawford, at six foot three, one eighty, had piercing blue eyes and wore his dirty-blonde hair a little longer than his boss liked. Handsome without much fuss, he could have been a mo
del if models bought their clothes at Overstock.com.
“Lame attempt to make it look like suicide,” Ott said, shaking his head. “Perp shot him twice from ten feet, then put the piece in his hand.”
Ott motioned for Crawford to follow him outside. Crawford followed as Ott ducked behind an areca palm and stopped in front of a window.
“While doing my usual professional investigation,” Ott said, pointing at a footprint in the sand that had yellow tape around it, “I spotted that.”
“Fresh, all right,” Crawford said getting down in a crouch. “Doesn’t look like it’s gonna be much help, though.”
Ott nodded and focused on the shoeprint. “You mean ‘cause it looks like it’s a common size?”
“Yeah, eight or a nine,” Crawford said, standing up.
“But at least we can rule out guys who wear fives or thirteens.”
Crawford nodded. “So what’s your theory?”
“Well, the obvious: Mulcahy was bangin’ some chick and had an audience,” Ott said. “Question is, was it a Peeping Tom? The chick’s husband? A boyfriend? Or a guy who came down here to pop him?”