by Tom Turner
“We just came up with a suspect. Ott’s been digging around. Up ‘til then we didn’t have squat. Nothing but a few people probably pretty happy Loadholt’s dead,” Crawford said. “Like these two guys you’re talking about. Pretty unlikely, though, they’d do something so long after it happened.”
Scarpa shrugged. “You never know, man.”
Crawford got to his feet. “Thanks for fillin’ me in, Don. I appreciate it. Gotta head back to the station, hear about a stripper at Loadholt’s house.”
“Oh, you mean at his poker game?”
“Yeah, you know about that?”
“Fuck, yeah, those games were notorious,” Scarpa said. “I heard he’d send his wife over to her sister’s whenever they played.”
“On the theory that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her?”
“Something like that.”
Crawford got back to the station at 7:30 p.m. Ott and the woman in dispatch were the only ones there. Ott came into Crawford’s office with an apple in his hand and asked what Scarpa had to say about Loadholt.
Crawford filled him in.
“Jesus, Rutledge’s beginning to sound like a goddamn saint compared to this guy,” Ott said.
“Yeah, I know,” Crawford said. “So tell me about the stripper.”
Ott put his apple down on Crawford’s desk. “Okay, so apparently they found her at Gussie’s, a strip club up on 45th Street” Ott said. “You ever heard of it?”
Crawford shook his head.
“That’s the right answer, Charlie. Good to know you stay out of dens of iniquity like that,” Ott said with a grin. “So she came to Loadholt’s house—I guess his wife was away or something.”
“Yeah, Scarpa said Loadholt sent her over to her sister’s sometimes.”
“Just where I’d want to go. Hang out with Mavis the mouth.” Ott shook his head. “And by the way, if you’re Susie Loadholt, wouldn’t that get you a little suspicious? Your husband tellin’ you to go see sis so he can get shitfaced and eye-fuck strippers?”
“Eye-fuck?”
Ott nodded. “Yeah, you’ve never heard that before?”
Crawford shook his head. “No, but it’s very colorful, Mort.”
Ott snickered. “Anyway, I guess the stripper starts peeling and having a few drinks with the boys.”
“Wait, where’d you get all this?”
“The transcript of the trial.”
Crawford’s mouth dropped.
“Guess I didn’t mention that,” Ott said, picking up his apple. “There was a trial.”
Ott took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.
“You’re kidding? And what was the charge?” Crawford asked.
“Rape. She claims she got raped, by Meyer.”
Crawford was silent.
“So she went home after leaving Loadholt’s. She’s all hysterical and traumatized, so her husband calls the cops. Well, obviously that’s a joke since Loadholt is the cops. Flash forward to the shortest trial in history. I mean, you got a defendant who’s a judge and an accuser who’s a stripper. Who, of course, the defense attorney makes out to be a hooker. Who you s’pose is gonna win that one? You know how it goes, basically she’s the one who ends up getting put on trial.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that movie a million times,” said Crawford, taking a sip of coffee.
“So after the trial, the stripper—”
“How ‘bout calling her by her name,” Crawford said.
Ott held up his hands. “Jesus, sorry, man. Chelsea McKinnon,” he said. “So after the trial, Chelsea’s husband gets interviewed by some TV reporter and totally flips out, says something like there’s a ‘place in hell for animals like them.’ Then says, quote-unquote, ‘Their day will come, trust me.’”
Ott tossed his apple into Crawford’s wastebasket.
“So, sure enough, it did come,” said Crawford.
Ott took a peek inside his notebook. “Yeah, five and eight years later.”
Crawford nodded. “But I’m having the same reaction I keep having: if it was Chelsea’s husband who killed ‘em, why’d he wait so long?”
Ott shrugged. “I hear you, people usually cool off over time.”
“Okay, so let’s split ‘em up,” Crawford said, draining his coffee. “I’ll go talk to Sonia Reyes and then I’ll track down the gay couple. You talk to Chelsea and her husband and also see what else you can find out about Loadholt’s stellar career.”
Ott started shaking his head.
“What?” Crawford asked.
“It’s amazing to me that the guy stuck around for as long as he did,” Ott said.
“Yeah, ‘cept it sounds like he was a master at covering his tracks. Plus, he mighta had the knack Rutledge has.”
“And that would be?”
“Sucking up to those in high places.”
Fifteen
Marla Fluor, Elle T. Graham, Diana Quarle, Beth Jastrow, and Rose Clarke were in a small private, dining room in the back of Cafe L’Argentine, a five-star restaurant on Royal Palm Way.
“So Sandy is off and running,” said Elle, the billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
They were talking about Sandy Lu, the ambitious nail-shop owner.
“Yeah, girl’s definitely going places,” Diana said. “I got her hooked up with my friend who franchised that chain of Thai restaurants, Tamarind Seed.”
“Yum,” said Rose Clarke. “I love their food. So Sandy’s going into Miami, Jacksonville and Orlando?”
“Tampa, too,” Elle said. “It’s tough holding her back. She wanted to go wide in all of the Southeast, not just Florida.”
Marla laughed. “We tried to explain the concept of baby steps, but she just kept saying, ‘I want to be in all fifty states,’ in that cute little accent of hers.”
“So we told her, all in due time,” Elle said.
“What did she say?” Beth asked
“‘So, you mean, by next year?’” Elle said and all of them laughed.
“I used to be like that,” Diana said. “It takes its toll after a while, though. You’re just exhausted all the time”
All five nodded.
Beth took a sip of her wine, then put it down. “Okay, so I want to talk about this woman singer who absolutely killed at Balthazar.”
Balthazar was one of the two Vegas casinos that Beth Jastrow had a majority interest in.
Elle Graham frowned. “I don’t exactly see us going into show biz. Not exactly our wheelhouse.”
“Why not, it could be fun?” Diana said. “I know Oprah’s agent. That might be a pretty good start, if she’s really that good.”
“Trust me, world-class,” said Beth.
“What’s her name?” Diana asked. “And what kind of singer is she?”
“Name’s Lulu Perkins,” Beth said. “And I’d say a cross between Sheryl Crowe and, um, Janis Joplin maybe.”
“Well, they did pretty well for themselves,” Diana said. “Where can we see her?”
“She’s got a gig coming up in Atlanta, I think,” Beth said.
“A ‘gig,’ huh?” Diana said. “How very hip of you.”
Beth laughed and shrugged. “Hey, that’s what you call it.”
Rose raised her wine glass. “Well, come on then,” she said. “Road trip.”
The five clinked glasses.
Sixteen
Crawford had a dream about his old girlfriend, Dominica McCarthy. He’d had a few in the last month. They were at something that resembled a junior prom and he asked her to dance. The problem was the words came out of his mouth really slowly and before he got the whole question out she was dancing with a guy who looked like a young Norm Rutledge with a pink bow tie and baggy white ducks. Being beaten out by Rutledge was about as low as he could go, so he got out of bed and decided to try to erase the memory with a jolt of Dunkin’ Donuts—dark, no sugar.
The diminutive Janelle smiled up at Crawford. “The usual, Charlie?”
“No, I’m gonna ix-nay the shot of
milk and sugar. Just black, please.”
“Ix-nay?”
“Pig Latin,” Crawford said. “Maybe they don’t teach that in school anymore.”
“But you’re not ix-naying the two blueberry donuts, right?”
“Never,” said Crawford. “Gotta have my health food.”
He took his coffee and donuts and settled in with the Palm Beach Morning News, which was, at most, a fifteen-minute read. He had tracked down Sonia Reyes the night before, gotten her phone number and called her. She did not warm to the idea of talking to a cop, but eventually he’d persuaded her to meet at her house in West Palm. Their meeting would take place in...he checked his watch. Oops. Five minutes from now.
Sonia Reyes lived in a modest ranch house that had electric blue shutters and was dwarfed by a twenty-foot tall Canary Island date palm tree. She answered the door with a scowl and a lop-sided tilt of the head.
“Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Reyes,” Crawford said. “I’m Detective Crawford.” He was doing his best ‘charmin Charlie’, which was what Rose Clarke had dubbed it. He was pretty sure Reyes wasn’t going for it, though.
“Yes, Detective,” said Reyes, “let’s get this over with.”
She was tall and paper-thin, probably around his age, which was thirty-nine. She had penetrating green eyes and looked as if she might blow away if a stiff breeze kicked up. Not exactly the profile of a partner in a burglary team. Or a killer.
He followed her in to a sun-filled living room that had a lot of heavy furniture and bouquets of flowers everywhere.
“Beautiful flowers,” said Crawford.
“They’re fake,” said Reyes, motioning to a club chair.
Crawford sat down in it. “So Ms. Reyes, I’ll get right to the point. As I’m sure you have either read or heard, Police Chief Clyde Loadholt was killed the day before yesterday.”
She nodded. “And you think I might have had something to do with it?”
“It’s my job to go around and talk to everyone who might have had a motive to kill Loadholt,” Crawford said. “And because of his involvement in the death of your father, I needed to talk to you.”
“Involvement? Is that your word for it?” Reyes said. “That bastard killed my dad in cold blood. We weren’t shooting at them. My dad never shot a gun in his whole life. We were just trying to get away.”
Crawford nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Ms. Reyes, where can I find your brother? How do I get in touch with him?”
Reyes laughed. “You get on a plane and fly to Mexico City, then go out to the suburbs to a quaint little town called Almoloya de Juarez, then go to Altiplano Federal Penitentiary. That’s the same place where El Chapo Guzman escaped from. You didn’t do your homework, Detective. My brother’s been there four years.”
Thanks a lot, Mort.
Crawford had planned to ask Reyes whether she had a boat, thinking it might be the boat on which Loadholt may have gotten killed. But there was no way in hell this woman could have lured Clyde Loadholt onto a boat or anywhere else. Plus, there was no way Loadholt would have had a pang of conscience to go “repair an old wound” for having killed her father.
Crawford got to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Reyes,” he said as she stood up too.
“Just so you know,” she said, her eyes flinty and her jaw set, “I intend to go dance on that man’s grave just as soon as he’s in the ground.”
Crawford smiled and nodded, thinking, Somehow I doubt you’ll be the only one.
Seventeen
Crawford got a call on his cell in the car. He recognized it as a Connecticut prefix, 203, and thought immediately of his brother. He picked up.
“Hey, Chas, it’s your fuck-up brother,” Bart Crawford said.
“You mean my former fuck-up brother,” Crawford said.
There was a long pause. “Nah, ‘fraid not,” Bart said, sounding grim. “I had a little relapse.”
“Oh, shit, what happened?” Crawford asked, pulling over to the side of the road.
Bart laid out the whole sad story in painful detail. He had arranged to be picked up by a limo—without the knowledge or approval of the authorities at Clairmount—in the early morning and headed into New York to attend a breakfast business meeting with an important client. It had gone well but on his way back the sight of one bar after another along Third Avenue, the majority of which he had logged hours in, was too much for Bart’s rapidly diminishing willpower. He had asked the limo driver to pull over in front of one establishment that, he fondly remembered, made one of the best martinis in town. And at ten thirty in the morning, he’d ordered one. Then another. Then a third. After that he stopped counting.
He had tried to slip back into Clairmount without anybody noticing, but had gotten caught just as he was about to get to the safety of his bedroom, where he planned to sleep it off.
Now a special meeting was going to be held that night to see whether Bart was going to be kicked out of Clairmount.
Crawford sighed and thought for a moment. “First thing you gotta just get down on your knees and beg,” he said. “Tell ‘em how much you need the place. And, yeah, how it was a bad slip-up—I would not say fuck-up—but it will never happen again. Tell ‘em how you’re gonna redouble your efforts, work harder than ever, and be able to look back at that moment as the turning point in your life.”
“I don’t know, Chas,” Bart said. “It’s a pretty serious offense.”
“No, shit, I get that,” Crawford said. “But you get booted and you’ll be back in the first bar you see.”
“Yeah, I know. I probably shouldn’t be back out in the real world at this time of my life.”
“Damn right. You should be in a goddamn straitjacket,” Crawford said. “Oh, hey, I got another idea. Tell ‘em about how you were thinking about creating a scholarship or something at Clairmount. Or, how about this? Give ‘em a building. You know, in honor of your beloved brother, The Charles A. Crawford Halfway House has a nice ring to it. I’m kidding, but it sure as hell doesn’t hurt to remind ‘em you’re a rich guy. That you want to give back a bunch of money to your alma mater, good ole Clairmount.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Bart said.
“I know,” Crawford said, “but remember, you’d really have to do it.”
“Hey, whatever it takes.”
Eighteen
Cam had a brand new hammer in his tool belt as he walked up the steps to the house at 102 South Ocean Boulevard. New work boots too. Like this was his first day on the job. But the job at 102 South Ocean had actually started five weeks before. Beside him, Marco was carrying a red metal toolbox, also brand new, but he had scuffed it up with sand paper and dented it with his hammer so it didn’t looked fresh off the rack. If all their tools seemed brand new they wouldn’t look like real construction workers.
The third guy, Mel, came up behind them, pulling the 72-inch rolling metal toolbox that they had bought cheap on Ebay. It came with rows of shelves for tools, but Mel had taken them all out so now it was just a big empty box with nothing in it.
Cam had come by a few days earlier and had seen the Butler Brothers sign on the front lawn of the house on South Ocean. He took down the number and got his girlfriend to call it. She got a man named Jason Butler. She told Butler that she and her uncle, owners of the house at 102 South Ocean, were sick with the flu and didn’t want to hear a lot of electric saws and nail guns, so could the work crew not come to the house on Friday. She added that her uncle was happy to pay them extra for the downtime. Butler said yes, that was no problem, but they should come on Monday, right? The girlfriend said yes, that should hopefully give them enough time to get over the flu.
Cam knocked on the front door of the house. All three of them were wearing dust masks and caps and about all you could see were their eyes. A Latina woman answered the door, looked them over, then laughed. “You men look like banditos,” she said in a lilting Spanish accent.
Cam gave her a big smile. “We’re
the finish carpenters,” he said, “here to work on the guesthouse.”
The woman nodded and motioned them inside. She walked through the house with them behind her and opened the French doors that went out to the swimming pool and the guesthouse behind it. She pointed, “Right over there.”
“Thanks.” Cam went through the door followed by Marco and Mel, with the tall, rolling toolbox. The three went up to the second story of the guesthouse. There was a stack of two by fours, a sawhorse, and several boxes of nails off to one side in the living room.
Cam looked at Marco and smiled, “You know how to saw?”
Marco nodded.
“Well, go for it,” Cam said. “Probably a good idea we make a little noise up here.”
Two hours later the girl came out to the pool. Cam looked down and saw her as she took off a white terrycloth robe, spread suntan lotion on her body, and lay down on the green slatted chaise longue.
He walked downstairs and past the pool to the main house. He had the dust mask on so the girl couldn’t see his face. She saw him and gave him a wave. He waved back.
He opened the French doors to the house and walked in. The woman walked out of the kitchen when she heard his footsteps. “Can I help you?” she asked.
“I just wondered if I could get some ice,” he said. “The water I brought got pretty warm.”
She gave him a nod and a smile. “Sure, come on in.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Anybody else here?” he asked casually as he reached down for his hammer.
“No, just me and Lila, the girl out by the pool,” she said as she opened the refrigerator door.
He raised the hammer and the handle came crashing down on her head. He didn’t give it all he had, fearing it would kill her. He caught her as she fell backwards and lowered her down on the travertine floor. He pulled out the note he had written ahead of time and put it on the floor next to her.
He walked through the house and back out through the French doors. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the roll of duct tape. Noiselessly he walked over to the girl who was lying face down on the chaise longue with headphones on. He pulled out an eight-inch strip of duct tape and, with his teeth, cut it from the roll. Then he came up behind her and, putting one leg over the chaise longue, straddled it quickly and reached down and covered her mouth with the duct tape.
