Palm Beach Deadly Read online

  Crawford clicked off a few shots with his cell.

  “I got some too,” Ott said, turning to go back in. “Come and check out Mulcahy’s body.”

  Crawford walked over to Knight Mulcahy’s body on the beige sofa. Crawford guessed he weighed around two hundred and seventy fleshy, untoned pounds. He was sprawled out on the sofa, but his shaved head dangled over the side. One cushion was saturated with blood and there was another pool on the heart of pine wood floor in front of the sofa.

  “Two shots, chest and stomach?” Crawford asked Ott.

  “Yeah,” Ott said with a nod, then flicking his head. “Nice u-trou, huh?”

  Crawford glanced down at the white boxers around Mulcahy’s ankles which had red hearts sprinkled all over them.

  “He and his wife were having a big party up at the house,” Ott said. “Caterers and bartenders are still up in the kitchen. I told ‘em to stick around.”

  “Who else is still here from the party?” Crawford asked.

  “Just his wife and son,” Ott answered. “She’s up at the house somewhere. That’s his son over there.”

  Ott flicked his head towards a short man in his early thirties wearing yellow pants, a blue blazer, and a patterned pocket square, talking to a uniform. He had a half-filled glass in his hand.

  “What’s his name?” Crawford asked.

  “Paul. Rutledge told me people call him Pawn,” Ott said. “Knight…Pawn, get it?”

  Crawford nodded. “You talked to him yet?”

  “No. I was just about to.”

  Crawford walked over to Paul Mulcahy, Ott right behind him.

  As they approached, Paul turned to them.

  “Mr. Mulcahy, I’m Detective Crawford, this is Detective Ott,” he said. “We’re sorry about your father’s death.”

  Mulcahy nodded and squeezed off a quick smile. “Thanks.” He didn’t look as though he was anywhere near tears.

  “Can we ask you a few questions?” Crawford asked.

  “Sure,” said Paul. “I was just telling Officer Swan what I knew.”

  Crawford nodded. “About how many people were at the party tonight, Mr. Mulcahy?”

  “I’d say about two hundred.” Paul said. “Maybe a little less.”

  “Is there a guest list, do you know?”

  “I don’t really know, you’d have to ask my stepmother about that.”

  Crawford watched a tech pick up something behind Mulcahy.

  “You and your father, were you pretty close?” Crawford asked.

  “Yeah, we were. Worked together, too.”

  “Oh, you did? What did you do?”

  “I’m one of the producers of his show.”

  Crawford nodded. “And tonight, did you happen to notice your father leave the house?”

  Paul took a sip from his amber colored drink. “I saw him go out the back door with a woman, but they came right back in.”

  Ott taking notes, looked up. “What’s the woman’s name?”

  “Olivia Griswold.”

  “Can you spell that, please?”

  Paul did.

  “Let me ask you a direct question,” Crawford said.

  “Sure.”

  “Was there anyone at the party who, in your opinion, might have wanted to kill your father?”

  Paul exhaled dramatically, then finished off his drink. “Let me tell you something you probably already know. My father was in the business of offending people, that was his shtick, I guess you could say,” Paul said, with a little heh-heh-heh laugh. “But killing him? No, I can’t really think of anybody he’d offended that much.”

  Ott took a step forward. “But if you had to,” he said, “if you had to come up with a list of people who might have had a motive—whatever it may have been—who would be on it?”

  Paul scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know, that’s a tough one. Like I said, he antagonized a lot of people, some of the stuff he said on the show—”

  “We just need somewhere to start,” Crawford said. “Two hundred people, that’s a lot of potential suspects.”

  “Yeah,” said Ott. “Maybe you can help us narrow it down a little.”

  Crawford looked at Ott then back at Mulcahy. “Sorry to be so persistent, but if you had to come up with, say, five people, who would they be?”

  The dramatic exhale again. “Let me think about it a little, will you?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Crawford said, pulling his wallet out and taking out a card. “Just give me a call.”

  “Will do.”

  “Well, thanks. We appreciate your help,” Crawford said. “Again, we’re sorry about your loss. We’re gonna head up to the house and talk to your stepmother.”

  Paul nodded at Crawford, then Ott, and did his little laugh again. “Come to think of it, that list…she’d be right up there.”

  Three

  They first questioned the waiters, waitresses, bartenders and cooking staff, but didn’t get anything of much value from them. None of them had gone outside the house and nobody had seen Mulcahy go down to the pool house.

  Crawford thanked them and said they could go home. Then he and Ott went and introduced themselves to Jacqui Mulcahy.

  She had fiery green eyes, blonde hair and a body somewhere between buxom and zaftig. Crawford could see the tan line on her breasts, which were nestled inside a tight, black cocktail dress. They were in her bedroom, which Crawford estimated was about twice the size of his entire apartment. It had a large sitting area where they were now seated. Ott was in an upholstered wing chair. Crawford sat next to him in an armless club chair facing Jacqui, who was slumped down in a snow-white love seat. She had a monogrammed silk handkerchief in one hand and a Pellegrino water bottle in the other.

  Crawford had done the standard ‘sorry for your loss’ icebreaker and Jacqui was sniffling into the handkerchief.

  She was about the same age as Crawford’s short-lived girlfriend, Lil Fonseca, and he guessed they might have traveled in the same social circle. Lil, thirty-seven now, had owned an upscale Palm Beach gallery and went to all the charity balls. That is, until relocating to a minimum-security jail cell up in North Carolina. But that was another story.

  “One of the things I don’t understand,” Jacqui was saying, “is why someone didn’t hear the noise from the pool house.”

  “You mean the gun shots?” Crawford asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s pretty far from the main house and I’m sure it was loud inside with all the people here,” Crawford said.

  Jacqui nodded and sniffled again.

  “Ms. Mulcahy—”

  Jacqui held up her hand. “Just call me Jacqui, please.”

  “Jacqui,” Crawford said. “We asked your stepson Paul this same question: Of all the people who came to your party, who do you think might have had a motive to kill your husband?”

  She looked puzzled, then she shrugged. “Well, if they were invited to the party, presumably they were all friends of Knight’s and mine.”

  Ott shifted in his chair and cleared his throat the way he did when he had a zinger all set to come down the pike. “Yes, but there’s that old expression, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’”

  “I never thought of that,” Jacqui said. “I just asked Knight who he wanted to invite and his secretary emailed me a list. Some of them, to tell you the truth, I barely knew. You know, like business friends or guys he played golf with.”

  Ott jumped in. “Where’d he play golf?”

  “At the Poinciana,” she said. “He had a poker group there, too.”

  Crawford was surprised. He figured the Poinciana was too high-brow for any card game other than bridge. “So where did they play poker there?”

  “I think in the locker room,” Jacqui said. “There’s a little bar there, too.”

  Crawford looked at his partner nodding and knew what he was thinking: That was a poker game he’d want in on. All those fat cats sitting around with big,
fluffy towels around their flabby waists, ready to get taken for a few hundy.

  “So of the people you knew at the party,” said Crawford, “can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to kill your husband?”

  Jacqui tapped her fingers on the arm of the love seat, then smiled up at Crawford.

  “I can think of a few who might have wanted to call him a dirty name, or even punch him, but nobody who’d actually want to kill him.”

  ‘Punch him’ sounded so quaint to Crawford. Like ‘bop him in the nose’ or ‘box his ears.’ “Can you tell us who they’d be?”

  “Well, there’s Ainsley Buttrick,” Jacqui said. “He runs a fund that Knight invested in. I think Knight made some money for a while but in the last year or so the thing kind of tanked.”

  Despite having been an Economics major at Dartmouth, Crawford’s basic understanding of financial matters was a little rusty. “So what exactly happened, if you remember, to the fund?”

  “Well, Knight eventually pulled all his money out of it,” Jacqui said. “He said on air that if you wanted to throw your money away, the Panther Fund was as good a place as any to do it. Something like that.”

  “The Panther Fund was the name?” Ott asked, writing it down.

  “Yes, and I think Ainsley threatened to sue him, or maybe did sue him. Eventually, Knight did kind of a retraction on the show. Said the fund had good years and bad years, like many of ‘em, but just so happened all the bad years were when he had his money in it. Not much of a retraction, now that I think about it.”

  Ott was busy taking notes.

  “Thanks,” Crawford said. “Who else would be on the list?”

  “Ah, let’s see, I’d put Sam Pratt on it.”

  Crawford waited for an explanation.

  “Sam is another friend from the Poinciana. Knight used to play golf with him all the time, but he always told me that Sam cheated,” Jacqui said. “I always figured it was just sour grapes, ‘cause Sam was really good and always took Knight’s money. But then, apparently, Sam got kicked out of some other club that he belonged to because he actually got caught cheating. In the club championship or something.”

  Jesus, thought Crawford, was this how rich guys whiled away their days?

  “So what was the reason for the bad blood between Sam Pratt and your husband?”

  Jacqui nodded. “One day, after Knight had a few drinks at lunch—back in his drinking days—he went on the air and told the story about Sam getting caught. Apparently, what happened was, he had this little hole in the pocket of his golf pants and if he ever lost a ball—you know, hit one out of bounds or in the water—he’d roll a new ball down his leg.”

  Pretty neat trick, Crawford thought. “And Pratt heard your husband say this on the air?”

  Jacqui nodded again. “Yeah, he heard it live. Drove straight up here, absolutely apoplectic, and in the middle of the show, said he was going to, pardon my French, ‘kick the shit’ out of him. Meaning Knight, of course.”

  “Wait,” Crawford said, “is your husband’s studio here, where the show is broadcast from?”

  “Yes, in the back of the pool house. It’s a pretty big studio. There’s a separate entrance behind the room where he was found.”

  “And your stepson,” Ott asked. “He’s the producer of the show?”

  Jacqui made one of those psshh sounds, akin to a skeptical chuckle. “If a producer is someone who runs down to Green’s to get aspirin when Knight is hung-over. Or picks up a guest for the show at the airport, then, yes, Paul was a producer.”

  “Ah, with all due respect, that sounds more like a go-fer,” said Ott.

  Ott had an inimitable way of cutting to the chase.

  “Yes, doesn’t it?” Jacqui said with a wry smile.

  Four

  Jacqui Mulcahy got seriously loquacious after a while, identifying yet another possible suspect.

  His name was Chuffer Church, a man, Jacqui said, she had known for the last fifteen years. Church had started a chain of chic young women’s stores while still in college, and by age twenty-five had sold out to the biggest apparel maker in Hong Kong. With fifty million in the bank in the early ‘80s, he set out to become a polo player. But after a while he got bored with horses that wouldn’t do what he commanded them to do, and set his sights on winning the America’s Cup. He bought a ten-million-dollar yacht and got close to winning, but then one night—drunk at the helm—he crashed it into a seawall and was lucky to survive. A series of other unrealized, expensive pursuits followed, and by age fifty-five, Chuffer Church was down to his last three million.

  At that point, he decided to go back to the well and start another chain of stores that sold preppy clothes. Based on his track record, he raised enough money to open three stores: in Soho, L.A., and Boston. According to Jacqui, he had approached Knight Mulcahy two years back about becoming a backer. Knight had said he’d consider kicking in ten million dollars, which would have been enough to launch five more CC Ryder stores and give Knight a ten percent ownership of the company. It turned out, though, that the three existing CC Ryder stores were sputtering. From what Jacqui had heard anyway, the preppy look wasn’t so popular in L.A., and in Soho the competition was intense. The Boston shop, word was, was barely breaking even.

  Then one day last fall, Knight flew up to visit his daughter at Wheaton College, in a little town outside of Boston. The two went into Boston to sightsee and decided to pay a visit to the CC Ryder on Newberry Street. Knight’s daughter, Annie, totally panned the place. Said there was nothing in there she’d ever wear.

  “Nothing but a cheesy J. Crew rip-off,” were her exact words. That was right before Knight and Annie went to a competitor, Vineyard Vines, just down the block and came out with two full shopping bags. The next Monday, Knight had his accountant call Church and tell him he was not going forward with the deal. Chuffer screamed and caterwauled and said he had a couple hundred thousand dollars in legal fees and start-up commitments based on Knight’s saying he was in. The accountant just said he was sorry.

  “Still,” Crawford said, playing devil’s advocate, “it’s quite a leap to go from your husband reneging on a business deal with Church to wanting to kill him.”

  “I know, except that’s exactly what he threatened to do,” Jacqui said.

  Ott looked up from taking notes. “Church threatened to kill your husband?”

  Jacqui nodded and yawned at the same time. “It got really nasty. First, he sued Knight, then, outside of court, he confronted him and said he was going to kill him. I mean, I was there. I remember.”

  “You remember his exact words?”

  Jacqui smiled. “As a matter-of-fact, I do.”

  “Could you tell us what they were?”

  “He said, ‘You really messed things up, you fat son-of-a-bitch cocksucker. I’m gonna kill you.’ Those were his exact words…verbatim. Knight told me he didn’t mind ‘son-of-a-bitch’ or ‘cocksucker,’ he’d heard those before. But he was a little sensitive about his weight.”

  “Seems you have a pretty good memory for insults, Jacqui,” said Ott.

  “Yes, well, those two were pretty memorable,” Jacqui said. “Kind of hard to forget.”

  “If it was like that between your husband and Church,” Crawford asked, “why was he at your party?”

  Jacqui shook her head. “Oh, no, he wasn’t. I didn’t think you were just asking about people at our party.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” Crawford said. “But what about Sam Pratt? Did he come to the party?”

  “Yes, he was here. Left kind of early, I think.”

  “And Ainsley Buttrick?” Ott asked, looking at his notes.

  “Yes, he was, too,” Jacqui said with a shrug. “I guess he and Knight had patched things up.”

  “Thank you,” Crawford said. “Anybody else?”

  “Well, a friend of mine told me Knight had a pretty big argument with Ned Durrell about something,” Jacqui said.

  The name was v
aguely familiar. “Who’s he?” Crawford asked as Ott wrote the name down.

  “The writer,” Jacqui said.

  Crawford nodded. “But you don’t know what it was about?”

  Jacqui shook her head. “No, sorry. I just thought of someone else. Kind of in the long-shot category, though,” Jacqui said. “The man in the double-breasted blue blazer.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s this guy who always shows up uninvited at cocktail parties.”

  “Wait, what?” said Crawford. He glanced at Ott. Ott shrugged back.

  “He’s a man—I think his name is Bob—who just shows up at cocktail parties. Chats up a few people, has a couple pops, a shrimp or two, then goes on his merry way. There was this joke going around that if Bob wasn’t at your party, then it probably wasn’t much of a party.”

  “And this man was here tonight?” Crawford asked.

  Jacqui laughed. “Yes, though he didn’t exactly go on his merry way.”

  “What do you mean?” Ott asked.

  “Well, what happened was Knight went up to him when he was up at the bar and confronted him. Asked him what he was doing here, having not been invited and all. And Bob—if that is his name—didn’t really answer him.”

  “So what happened?” Ott asked.

  “So Bob took his drink and just kinda walked away from Knight,” Jacqui said. “But the one thing you really don’t want to do with Knight is ignore him. So, Knight went charging after him, asking him again what the hell he was doing here. Meanwhile, Bob was just trying to get away from him. You would, too, the way Knight gets. All aggressive and everything. So finally, Knight grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around and said something like, ‘Get the hell out of here, you low-life freeloader.’”

  “And what did Bob do?”

  Jacqui laughed. “What any self-respecting man would do. Threw the drink in Knight’s face. Then he said, ‘I didn’t want it anyway. Stuff tastes like rotgut.’ Which drove Knight really crazy with all we’d spent on everything.”

  “And what did your husband do?” Crawford asked, glancing at Ott, who was glued to her every word.