Palm Beach Pretenders Read online

  “I noticed,” Ott said.

  Crawford slowed to a stop and he and Ott exited the car. They flashed their IDs to a few more plainclothes men, who directed them inside to the club’s living room. Cozy was not a word that came to mind as they were ushered to a corner of the vast room.

  A few minutes later, a couple in their mid-twenties walked in and joined them. Rich Pawlichuk looked larger in person than he did making open-field tackles on TV. His bride was tall, thin, striking, and appeared to be more irritated than in mourning for her sister and short-lived father-in-law.

  Crawford and Ott got to their feet and shook hands with the couple. Rich’s handshake was predictably bone-crushing. Crawford saw Ott try not to wince.

  “Thanks for meeting with us,” Crawford said as Rich and his bride sat on a couch across from Ott and him. “We’re sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  “Yes, sorry for both your losses,” Ott added.

  The couple nodded

  “I hope you don’t mind if we ask you some difficult questions,” Crawford said. “But in order to find out—”

  “Yes, we understand,” Addison Pawlichuk said. “So, if you could get on with it, please? And would you mind if we sat out by the pool? Instead of in here?”

  “Aw, come on, hon,” Rich said. “We just sat down.”

  Addison shrugged. “What’s the big deal?”

  Crawford looked at Ott. “Sure, that’s fine.”

  The four walked outside, followed by two shaved heads ten feet behind them.

  Addison, who was wearing a short skirt, sat in a chaise and immediately peeled off her collared shirt. She had a black bikini top underneath. She looked up and saw Ott glancing at her funny. “We’re supposed to be on a beach 5,000 miles from here,” she explained. “On our honeymoon.”

  “Gotcha,” said Ott.

  “So, Rich, our first question is, did your father know”—Crawford turned to Addison—“your sister before the wedding yesterday?”

  Addison nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Well, we assume they did, but we’re not a hundred-percent sure. See, Carla was a cheerleader at Paul’s college eighteen years ago—”

  Rich took over. “My dad’s been coaching there goin’ on twenty-three years now.”

  “But that’s going back a long way,” Ott said. “You think they knew—”

  Rich nodded. “Yeah, I’d bet on it,” he said. “See, one thing you’re going to find out is my dad had an eye for the ladies”—then he realized—“Well, obviously you already did.”

  Addison was nodding. “And my sister back then—and until today—was a stone-cold fox.”

  Crawford had read that phrase in a bad novel once and heard it on a few cheesy TV shows but didn’t realize people actually said it in real life.

  “But you don’t know if they had seen each other since then?” Crawford asked.

  Rich shrugged and glanced at Addison. “We don’t know for a fact,” he said, “but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  Since Rich had put it out there, Ott felt free to pursue it. “So you seem to be saying that your father had affairs with, I guess it’s safe to say, more than a few women?”

  “Yes, it’s safe to say that,” Rich said.

  “Hundreds,” Addison said, straight-faced. “Possibly thousands.”

  “She’s exaggerating,” Rich said.

  “But not by much,” she said.

  It was time for Ott to take a few swings again with his velvet hammer. “So, what I infer from what you just said is there are maybe a lot of—you’ll excuse the expression—pissed-off husbands and boyfriends out there.”

  “Good inferring, detective,” Rich said. “To name just a few, my assistant coach at Miami, my best friend’s older brother, my uncle Burt…”

  “Not to mention me,” Addison said.

  Rich cocked his head. “What do you mean? What are you pissed off about?”

  “The fact that because of your father and his…wandering dick, we’re not at the Hotel du Cap right now.”

  “Where?” Ott asked.

  Addison was shaking her head. “The Hotel du Cap Eden-Roc in Antibes, France,” she said. “That’s where we were supposed to be for the first three days of our honeymoon. Instead we have to hang around this glorified roach motel.”

  “Come on, hon,” Rich said. “It’s not so bad.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” Addison said. “Look at what Yelp had to say about it. Mostly 1-stars.”

  Ott glanced at Crawford, completely taken aback by what she was saying about the famed Mar-a-Lago.

  “So, Rich,” Crawford took over. “It’s difficult to ask you, but could you provide us with a list of women you have reason to believe might have slept with your father?”

  “Jesus,” Addison said under her breath, “he’s gonna need a couple of legal pads.”

  Rich sighed deeply. “Yeah, sure I’ll do it,” he said, “if it’ll help find his killer.” Then, to his wife: “Do you need to be so hard on the man? He was my father.”

  Addison kissed him on the cheek. “Sorry, hon.”

  “We wouldn’t ask you to do it unless we thought it might help our investigation,” Ott said.

  “You might want to ask my mother, too,” Rich said softly. “Though maybe you could wait a little.”

  Crawford nodded, not bothering to tell him they’d already spoken to her. “Of these men you mentioned, the Dolphins assistant coach, your best friend’s brother, and your uncle, were any of them at the wedding yesterday?”

  “Just Uncle Burt,” Rich said. “But he and my Dad had patched things up.”

  “So it’s safe to assume all three are innocent?” Crawford asked.

  “Yes,” Rich said. “Definitely.”

  “So, of the people who were here yesterday, it’s obviously crossed your mind that one of them may have murdered your father and Carla. So, question is, who would you put on that list?” Crawford asked Rich.

  Rich sighed again. “Well, I’ve actually thought about it a lot,” he said. “But it’s really hard to think of a friend or family member as being a murderer.”

  “What about that guy who crashed?” Addison asked.

  This was news.

  “Who was that?” Crawford asked.

  Rich nodded a few times. “This guy who used to play for my Dad. A bad dude. Showed up drunk and started cursing him out at the wedding.”

  “What was the reason?”

  “He thought Dad didn’t put a good word in for him in the pro draft. He had a couple of pro teams interested but not when they found out about his two domestic abuse cases and showing up drunk for a game.”

  “And what’s his name?”

  “Joey Decker,” Rich said.

  Crawford thought he’d heard the name before. Lying on his couch one Saturday afternoon watching a game probably. “So what happened to him?”

  “A bunch of us tossed him out. I don’t really see him as a murderer.”

  Ott wrote the name down. “We’ll check him out anyway.”

  Addison leaned forward in her chaise and shaded her eyes. “What about Duane?”

  “I don’t know,” Rich said. “You know him. Is he the first one you thought of?”

  Addison nodded. “He’d probably be my choice,” she told the detectives. “Not that he really strikes me as a murderer, either.”

  “Then why’d you mention him, Ms. Pawlichuk?” Ott asked.

  “‘Cause my sister was going to divorce him,” Addison said. “And ‘cause now he’s got a shot at getting her money.”

  Ott glanced at Crawford. “Keep going,” he said. “We’d appreciate every detail you can give us about that.”

  “Well, Carla got paid a fortune for that TV show, something like a million an episode,” Addison said. “And I don’t know whether you follow NASCAR, but Duane isn’t really cutting it anymore.”

  “I follow it,” Ott said. “You mean, he hasn’t won a race in a while?”

  “Y
es, that’s what my sister told me. And he had a lot fewer sponsors putting those little thingies on his car,” Addison said.

  “So they were actually in the process of getting a divorce?” Crawford asked. “He just told us they were separated.”

  “Yes, well, I think he was fighting it. But I know she recently brought it up with him. Going through with it, that is,” Addison said. “The reality is, I wasn’t that close to my sister, so I don’t know all the ins and outs. Mainly because of our age difference. I hardly remember her as a kid.”

  Ott nodded. “Understood. And did Carla have another man she was seeing that you know of?”

  “She never went into that with me,” Addison said. “But my impression was, she had several. And if you believe those supermarket rags…quite a few.”

  Supermarket rags were pretty far out of Crawford’s wheelhouse, so on that subject he deferred to Ott, who wasn’t ashamed of sprinkling quotes from the Star and the Globe into his daily conversations.

  “Did I read about your sister and a TV producer, I think it was?” Ott asked.

  “Yeah, he was one of them,” Addison said. “Maurice Littlefield.”

  “And what about, wasn’t there a big Wall Street mogul who lives down here now?” Ott asked, making notes.

  Rich chuckled. “You do your research in the check-out line at Publix, Detective?”

  Ott nodded. “Close. I’m actually a Winn-Dixie guy,” he said. “What’s the name of the Wall Street man?”

  “One of the Polk brothers,” Rich said. “He was at the wedding yesterday.”

  “Oh, really? Which one?” Crawford asked.

  “Robert?” Rich said.

  His bride nodded. “What I heard is they had an on-again off-again thing over the years.”

  Crawford made a mental note to talk to Robert Polk.

  “I also heard rumors about that writer, Rolf Richter,” Addison said.

  “Isn’t he really old?” Ott said. “I remember reading a book of his in high school.”

  “I got news for you,” Addison said. “Guys’ libidos never die. Look at that place the Villages up north of here in Florida. People in their eighties goin’ at it with a vengeance. Half of ‘em got venereal disease, I read somewhere.”

  Crawford could see it was time to steer Ott and Addison back on course. “Anyone else?”

  “‘Anyone else’ what?” Addison asked. “Oh, you mean, rumored to be having a thing with my sister? Yes, there were a few others, but I’d probably put them in the one-night-stand category.”

  Crawford glanced at Ott. Ott shrugged. They were out of questions.

  “Well, thank you both for your time,” Crawford said, as he noticed Addison stripping off her skirt, revealing a banana peel-sized black bikini bottom.

  “You’re welcome,” Addison said with a smile. “Time to get my bottom half too.”

  Crawford and Ott tried not to stare.

  Five

  Crawford and Ott were on their way back to the station. Ott, as usual, was the designated driver, along with being the designated note-taker and whiteboard-scribbler.

  “What’s with that Addison? She acted like her hamster had died instead of her sister.”

  “I know,” Crawford said. “Pretty tough on Pawlichuk, too.”

  “Yeah, no shit, making him out to be the world’s biggest pussy-hound,” Ott said. “Not to mention being in such a rush to get to that hotel and work on her tan some more.”

  Crawford nodded.

  “You grew up with rich people, Charlie. Are these people typical?”

  Crawford exhaled and shook his head. “That was a long time ago. I can’t really remember, but I’d have to say no. Maybe it’s just Addison. Rich seemed all right.”

  Ott flicked his blinker to turn into the station. “Yeah, I guess. What’s next?”

  “We gottta check out Joey Decker.”

  Ott nodded. “Aka, the wedding crasher.”

  * * *

  Crawford had two go-tos when it came to murder investigations in which he didn’t have much physical evidence. The first one—Google—he had already gone to. The second one was Rose Clarke.

  Rose was the most successful real-estate agent in Palm Beach and knew everything there was to know about practically everyone in town.

  It was unlikely you’d go to a cocktail party in Palm Beach and not see Rose there. Sometimes she’d hop from one to the next, hitting three or four in a single night. And as far as the charity-ball circuit went, she hadn’t missed one in years. Not that she particularly liked them. She’d told Crawford it was just where she got her real estate listings. And dirt on people that could turn out to be useful.

  One thing about Rose was that she was incredibly well-disciplined and never had more than two chardonnays in a night, no matter how many parties she attended. An old boyfriend had once joked that she could listen to four conversations at once and have total recall of all four. There were few people in Palm Beach she didn’t know at least something about, and part of her well-honed discipline was her ability to keep that knowledge all to herself.

  With one exception, that is. Charlie Crawford.

  They were both in the business of exercising absolute discretion at all times. Like Rose, Crawford had to listen carefully and be highly attentive. Sort out fact from fiction, discern lies from the truth. It wasn’t so easy.

  They also had a mutual understanding—a pact, really. Their unspoken arrangement was the following: Rose would answer three questions regarding people or events that factored into Crawford’s investigations in return for lunch on him. Or five questions for dinner at a nice restaurant. Or unlimited questions at a really nice restaurant, followed by an overnight stay at either her luxurious Palm Beach house on the ocean or, less frequently, at his not-so-luxurious apartment in West Palm Beach overlooking the vast Publix parking lot.

  Often, Rose would call Crawford and volunteer information she thought might be helpful to a specific case. As she put it, Charlie was her friend with benefits, and they were both quite happy with the arrangement.

  It was five hours after Crawford and Ott’s interview with Rich and Addison Pawlichuk. Crawford and Rose were at Amalfi, one of the nicer Italian restaurants in West Palm Beach. Crawford never took Rose to places in Palm Beach because he liked to put distance between his social life and where he worked.

  “I’ve been there a few times,” Rose was saying about Mar-a-Lago. “The architect was Marion Sims Wyeth, who did a lot of good houses around here, but I think he had an off-day when he designed that place.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “’Cause it’s downright gaudy. All those Moorish, Gothic, baroque whatever-the-hell-they-are decorations. Didn’t you think it’s all a little bit over the top? Actually, now that I think about it, a man named Joseph Urban designed the interiors. A million frescoes, Venetian arches and Spanish tiles. Too damned busy for my taste. I do love that tower, though. I was up there once. What a killer view.”

  Crawford shrugged. “Can’t say I know much about architecture. And less about interior decoration.”

  Rose shook her head. “Yeah, yeah, you know a lot more about that stuff than you let on,” she said. “Once I went to a Celine Dion concert there that was pretty good”—Rose’s eyes lit up—“but my favorite Mar-a-Lago story was when Jennifer Lopez and that guy Puff Daddy, later to become P. Diddy, showed up there one memorable Easter.”

  “What happened?”

  “You never heard this story?”

  Crawford shook his head.

  “Oh, God, listen to this. So, J Lo and P were taking a stroll on the beach and, as you know, the Mar-a-Lago beach club is right next to that WASP bastion, the Bath & Racquet Club”—Crawford nodded and took a sip of his red wine, knowing this was sure to be entertaining—“And apparently one or both of them started feeling amorous all of a sudden. So, they went over to a chaise on the beach and, without a care in the world, started doing it.”

  “Come o
n. Really?”

  “Swear to God. Hey, it was in the Glossy.” Also known as the Palm Beach Daily Reporter. “Their ace society reporter, Sharon Donleavy, wrote about how Bath & Racquet grandmothers who were having lunch there with their grandchildren suddenly looked out the picture windows in horror as J Lo and P did the, quote-unquote, horizontal rhumba.”

  Crawford shook his head slowly. “You know, you should write a book about all the stuff that’s happened here.”

  “Too late,” Rose said. “Someone already did. It’s called Palm Beach Babylon. A classic, which should be required reading in everyone’s library.”

  “Maybe that’s where Paul Pawlichuk and Carla Carton got the idea,” Crawford said. “The chaise.”

  Rose nodded. “Hey, I never thought of that.” She put her glass of chardonnay down. “That wedding, what a mutt convention.” She put her hand over her mouth. Then more quietly, “Oops, I guess I should be a little more respectful of the dead.”

  Crawford smiled. “Tell me what you know about it.”

  Rose put her hand on Crawford’s. “Okay, here’s the skinny, from my vantage point. Ready?”

  “Let ‘er rip.”

  “Both Paul Pawlichuk and Carla Carton made it a habit of screwing everything within a twenty-mile radius.”

  “Said with typical Rose candor.”

  “Just tellin’ it like it is.” Then she seemed to have a sudden brainstorm. “Hey, I just noticed the alliteration thing.”

  Crawford thought for a second. Then it dawned on him “Oh, you mean, PP and CC.”

  Rose laughed.

  “What?”

  “You said pee-pee.”

  Crawford laughed. “Okay, Rose, we’re devolving fast here,” he said. “What else?”

  “Well, what comes to mind is that Paul and Carla are perfect examples of the all-American success story.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “How a person can become fabulously rich and famous starting out as a high-school cheerleader in pissant Arkansas or as a Neanderthal who makes large men run after other large men and jump on top of ’em.”