Palm Beach Pretenders Read online

  He found what he was looking for. “Says Carla Carton is the name of the actress who plays Madeline Larsen.” He glanced down at the body again. “Thirty-nine years old, she was also in that show, The Gloaming. Before that, a bunch of soaps. Married to—I’ll be damned—Duane Truax.”

  Ott spun around and his mouth dropped. “Get outta here.”

  “Yeah, for the past fourteen years,” Crawford said.

  “Who the hell is Duane Truax?” Hawes asked.

  “Christ, what rock you been hiding under?” Ott said. “Guy’s a big time NASCAR driver.”

  “Why the hell would I pay attention to that redneck sport?” Hawes shot back.

  A man in gray pants and a starched long-sleeved white shirt walked between the two Palm Beach cops and beelined over to Crawford, Ott and Hawes.

  “Who’s in charge here?” he demanded.

  Crawford stepped forward. “Sir, this is an active crime scene,” he said. “I’m going to have to ask you—”

  The man got so close it looked like he was going to kiss Crawford. He lowered his voice. “We don’t need this,” he said. “Is there any way you can keep this whole thing under wraps? We really don’t need this.”

  “Sir, I don’t know who you are, but this is the scene of a double homicide, and we don’t keep homicides under wraps,” Crawford said. “Not only that, I don’t know if you noticed, but there are a bunch of reporters out on the street who know something’s up.”

  Ott nodded. “Cat’s gonna be out of the bag any minute.”

  The man sighed as his eyes darted around nervously. “Okay,” he said, “but do you need to release the victim’s names? This is a matter of national security.”

  “It is?” asked Crawford. “And how’s that?”

  The man had no answer. He sighed theatrically, turned, then cut through the cluster of onlookers.

  “Well,” said Ott, “at least we know what qualifies as national security: when a guy making millions drawing up X’s and O’s gets whacked ballin’ a TV hottie.”

  Three

  The media, of course, was having a field day. How could they possibly have asked for more? A famous, married man having a moonlight tryst with a famous, married actress at Mar-a-Lago, gunned down together point-blank. It didn’t get any better than that.

  Palm Beach Police Chief Norm Rutledge, on the other hand, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In his eleven-year stretch as chief, he had never faced anything quite like this. Yes, there had been the billionaire killer a few years back, and the murdering, then murdered, Russian brothers last year, not to mention the famous talk-show host who had bought it in his pool house with his skivvies down around his ankles.

  But there had never been anything like this: a murder at the home-away-from-home of the most powerful man in the universe.

  Rutledge was calling Crawford, who was still at the crime scene, every five minutes for a progress report. When Crawford had stopped answering, the chief had begun calling Ott, but Ott had a firm policy of avoiding Rutledge’s calls altogether.

  Bob Hawes and the two crime-scene techs had come up almost completely dry in their initial analysis. They concluded that the murder weapon had been fired from less than twenty feet away, but that was about all they had. Worse, none of the bullets had lodged in either body and not one of them had been recovered. Hawes reported that the three bullets that had passed through Paul Pawlichuk’s body had ricocheted off the cement pool deck on a trajectory toward the ocean. The slugs that had gone through Carla Carton, he stated, could have gone anywhere.

  * * *

  So, Crawford and Ott had very little to work with. In the six hours since the bodies were found, they had been interviewing people who had attended the wedding, their hope, of course, being to find someone who might have been an eyewitness to the murders. It quickly became apparent that no one had.

  What seemed clear was that the murdered couple had wandered away from the wedding reception—which was being held outside the main house at Mar-a-Lago—and, no doubt in search of privacy, crossed Ocean Boulevard to the beach club and pool on the other side of the road. Several witnesses had noticed the two talking, after which they hadn’t been seen again.

  Mindy Pawlichuk had called Palm Beach Police at 3:25 a.m. to report her husband missing, though judging from her tone, she hadn’t been overly concerned. Two plainclothes cops had arrived at 3:39 and spent an hour looking for Pawlichuk, while at the same time discovering that Carla Carton was not in her room. Finally, at 6:15 a.m., they found the two bodies and contacted Crawford and Ott, who’d arrived at Mar-a-Lago within five minutes of each other—at around 6:30.

  They had met with Mindy Pawlichuk after having spent an hour and a half at the crime scene. Mindy’s reaction was odd: she didn’t seem shocked, nor did she cry. In fact, she hadn’t looked too broken up at all. She simply nodded and asked who her husband had been with before they even had a chance to tell her that Pawlichuk’s body was discovered ten feet away from a naked woman. Crawford and Ott concluded that this was not the first time Paul Pawlichuk had wandered off with someone who was not his wife.

  Mindy, a woman in her early fifties, was wearing a loose-fitting caftan, possibly to disguise the fact that she was twenty to thirty pounds overweight. She had a pretty face with nice bone structure, but wore her hair in an unflattering bun. She said she had been married to Paul for twenty-six years. Her flat tone while reciting the facts seemed to indicate that many of those twenty-six years had been less than idyllic.

  She spoke to Crawford and Ott for more than an hour and never came close to shedding a tear. A good cry might have been expected of one whose husband had just been brutally murdered, but Crawford got the sense that her crying days were long past. And judging by the hour spent with her, her smiling days as well. Then again, what was there to smile about when you were married to an apparent serial cheater?

  “In order to find your husband’s killer,” Crawford had started out, “we’re going to need to ask you some pretty blunt questions. I hope that’s okay?”

  Mindy nodded automatically.

  “To the best of your knowledge, do you happen to know whether there was any history between your husband and Ms. Carton?”

  Mindy Pawlichuk looked weary. “I don’t know,” she said. “There could have been. I never met the woman before, but, obviously, there was the connection between my new daughter-in-law Addison and Carla Carton. Them being sisters, I mean.”

  “Right, of course,”

  “Plus, Paul was away a lot, for his job,” she added.

  Like being away from home was synonymous for being on the prowl for women.

  Ott, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up to that point, weighed in with the velvet hammer he often wielded. “Does the name Madison Ko mean anything to you, Mrs. Pawlichuk?”

  Mindy rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “You mean the woman who Paul bought a house for five minutes from the stadium?” It was not a question. “The woman Paul promised to marry after he divorced me?” Another non-question question.

  Crawford shot a glance at Ott, then back at Mindy. “How do you know that?”

  “She told me,” Mindy said, dropping her eyes. “When I went and confronted her ten years ago. I guess Paul decided a divorce would cost him too much money—” then, as if reconsidering— “or maybe figured having lots of girlfriends on the side was better than just one.”

  Crawford glanced at Ott. He was always impressed at how fast Ott was at digging up relevant information. He wondered how he had heard about Madison Ko. Probably a quick Google search. That was his own initial go-to as well.

  “On another subject, Mrs. Pawlichuk,” Crawford continued, “your new daughter-in-law, Addison, and her sister, we haven’t heard anything about their parents?”

  Mindy bowed her head slightly. “They were killed in a car accident…together. About three years ago. I never met them.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Crawf
ord said.

  Mindy nodded. “Yes, it was a terrible tragedy.”

  He wondered whether she’d put her husband and Carla Carton’s double homicide in that category.

  They spent another twenty minutes questioning Mindy Pawlichuk, then thanked her and said they’d be in touch as soon as they had something to report. She nodded but didn’t seem to be particularly interested in whatever they might come up with.

  It was strange.

  Next up was Carla Carton’s husband Duane Truax, a mustached man who was waiting for them in the Mar-a-Lago living room.

  Upon first seeing him, Crawford was surprised at how short Duane Truax was. Five-eight, max. He figured maybe the race-car driver’s stature helped him squeeze into those cars with all the decals on them. Maybe a lighter bodyweight let the car go round and around a little faster too. Truax wore black Levis, a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots that he rested on an antique chair. Crawford wasn’t sure Mar-a-Lago’s owner would appreciate the racer’s heels on his furniture but left it alone.

  Far from being broken up with grief, Duane Truax answered their questions in short phrases and yawned a lot. It turned out that he lived full-time in Birmingham, Alabama. Carla, he explained, didn’t spend much time there and had a house in the hills above Hollywood. When Ott asked him the address, Truax didn’t know, only that it was near Mulholland Drive.

  That was strange too.

  Truax was scheduled to fly back to Birmingham that night. He wasn’t sure what Carla’s plans had been. A little voice was suggesting to Crawford that Duane Truax and Carla Carton, like Mindy and Paul Pawlichuk, had something less than a marriage made in heaven.

  Despite the yawns, Truax struck Crawford as a man who maybe had ADD. His hooded blue eyes darted around constantly and he couldn’t keep his hands still. He had dark hair that stuck up in front and yellow teeth that could have used a Crest Whitestrip or two.

  “Look, man, let’s cut to it,” Truax said, after Crawford and Ott got through their intro remarks. “I didn’t kill my wife, okay? She and I were separated, okay? Not legally, but in fact. What else do you need to know?”

  Might as well just cut to it, too, Crawford figured. “Mr. Truax, at any point last night did you go down to the pool on the beach here at Mar-a-Lago?”

  “Not hardly. I didn’t even know there was one. Last thing I was doing was following Carla around…” A long pause, followed by a confiding lean-in and whisper: “See, I had a little thing going with one of the bridesmaids.”

  Ott eyed him, not trying to hide his disdain. “Oh, did you now?” he said. “And what was her name?”

  “Chelsea…didn’t catch her last name,” Truax said.

  “Course you didn’t,” Ott muttered.

  Truax shot him the maximum stink-eye.

  “So, keep going,” Crawford said.

  Truax wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Me and her ended up taking off, going to a strip club.”

  “You and her, huh?” Ott hated grammar-butchers. “‘Til what time?”

  “‘Til after it happened. The murders.”

  “Oh?” said Ott. “And how do you know when the murders took place?”

  “I heard a guy say.”

  Ott, taking notes, glanced at Crawford.

  “So, were you aware of there being a relationship between Pawlichuk and Carla?” Crawford asked.

  “I had kind of an inkling,” Truax said. “But like I said, me and Carla had both moved on.”

  “‘An inkling?’ Where’d you get that from?”

  “You know, like a hunch.”

  Crawford figured it was time he and Ott moved on too. Duane Truax was almost certainly not their man.

  But Ott wasn’t done. “So, you two weren’t staying in the same bedroom?”

  “Not hardly. Like I told you—”

  “I know…separated.”

  Truax suddenly looked like a thought had just snuck up and slapped him on the side of the head. “I did walk past the room where she was staying and saw the door open. I thought that was a little strange.”

  “Why?” Ott asked.

  “‘Cause she almost never went to bed later than ten, and this was way after that,” Truax said. “Needed her beauty sleep, she always said. Plus her mask.”

  “Her mask?” Ott asked.

  “Yeah, she’d always get into bed, then put on her mask,” Truax said. “Damn thing cost a fortune. Golden Luminescence Infusion Mask, it was called.”

  “I see,” Crawford said, imagining hopping into bed with someone wearing a Golden Luminescence Infusion Mask. Romantic didn’t spring to mind.

  “So what time was that?” Ott asked.

  “’Round midnight, I’d say.”

  They thanked Truax. He yawned and walked away.

  “Another idol bites the dust,” Ott said.

  “Him?” Crawford looked at the back of the race-car driver and shook his head. “Christ, man, you musta been really hard up for idols.”

  Four

  Crawford and Ott decided to retreat to the relative normalcy of their office. Normal, that is, until Rutledge invariably barged in and began one of his rants.

  Crawford had a whiteboard on the wall opposite his desk. Ott, who had by far the better penmanship, had written only five words, four of which were names.

  The first word he wrote was SUSPECTS:

  Then, the only obvious suspects:

  Duane Truax.

  Mindy Pawlichuk.

  Next to Truax he wrote “Unlikely,” then, next to Mindy, he wrote “more unlikely.”

  He glanced at Crawford. “By the way, what’s with all these slimeballs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not one of ‘em we’ve come across so far had a normal relationship. Pawlichuk buying a house for a Japanese chick and banging a movie star who’s married to a guy who doesn’t know what his wife’s address is and who’s taking a bridesmaid half his age to a strip club. I mean, what the fuck, dude?”

  “Korean,” Crawford said.

  “Huh?”

  “That woman Pawlichuk bought the house for.”

  “Whatever.”

  “And does every other sentence or yours have to have the word ‘banging’ in it?”

  Ott shook his head. “Sometimes I say ‘bangin’ and sometimes I say ballin’.” He tilted his head and looked at Crawford. “What do you want me to say? Shtupping or boinking or—”

  “Okay, okay, ‘banging’ just sounds so…late Elvis.”

  “Noted,” Ott said. “So let me ask you this: do you think this was premeditated or spur-of-the-moment?”

  Crawford leaned back in his chair. “That’s a good question. My gut says pre-meditated but I’ve got absolutely no proof. If it’s spur-of-the-moment that means it’s got to be someone who was jealous of Pawlichuk doing Carla, or the other way around—”

  “Oh, so that’s your word for it?”

  “What?”

  “‘Doing.’”

  Crawford shook his head. “For Chrissakes, will you let me finish? And since the obvious choices, Mindy and Truax, are ‘unlikely’ and ‘more unlikely’—”

  “Yeah, but I guarantee we’ll be adding some boyfriends and girlfriends to the list.”

  “But so far, we just have the Korean woman, and I got a feeling she wasn’t on the guest list.”

  “Yeah, but just because she wasn’t invited doesn’t mean she couldn’t sneak in—” He saw Crawford’s skeptical look. “I know, long-shot department. But, I tell you what isn’t…Hollywood Carla and boyfriends.”

  “Yeah, that could be a long list.”

  Ott nodded. “Bet your ass it is.”

  Crawford leaned back in his chair and thought for a second. “I think you’re ruling out Truax a little too fast,” he said. “I did a Google search and found out he has a long history of being a hothead.”

  “Yeah, well, as someone who’s seen a bunch of his races, that’s a fact,” Ott said. “You’re talking about goi
ng after other drivers in the pit after they cut him off and shit, right?”

  Crawford nodded. “I guess. Like one time he dragged that guy Jeff Burton out of his car at a race and beat the shit out of him.”

  “So, tell you what: I’ll put him down as ‘still in the running’ instead of ‘unlikely.’ That make you happy?”

  Crawford nodded as Ott walked up to the white board and made the appropriate edit.

  “Done,” he said.

  “So, we got Rich Pawlichuk and his new bride in ten minutes,” Crawford said, looking at his watch and standing.

  They left the station on South County Road and drove the short distance to Mar-a-Lago on South Ocean for the 2:30 p.m. interview. There were three men at the front entrance to Mar-a-Lago. Shaved heads, tight-fitting dark suits, ear buds, every stereotype of a fed there could ever be.

  Crawford hit the button for his window and it rolled down.

  One of the men bent down and looked in.

  “Detectives Crawford and Ott, Palm Beach PD,” he said. “Here to interview Rich Pawlichuk and his wife in the main living room.”

  “Okay, Detective, you know where it is, right?” the man said, friendly enough.

  “Yeah, we were here this morning.”

  “How’s it comin’ so far?” the man asked.

  “Nothing much yet,” Crawford said. “You heard anything that might be helpful?”

  The man shrugged. “Sorry.” Then he stepped back and ushered them in.

  Mar-a-Lago, a 126-room, 62,500-square-foot house, had been built in 1924 by cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband E.F. Hutton. The forty-fifth president had purchased it in 1985 and converted it into a club, where members paid a $200,000 initiation fee and $14,000 a year in membership dues. The club contained 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, 12 fireplaces, and three bomb shelters. It also had five clay tennis courts, two pools, a putting green, and a croquet court. Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley had spent their honeymoon there in 1994 and were said to have been quite pleased with the accommodations.

  Crawford looked back in his rearview mirror as he approached the house. “One of the shaved heads is behind us.”