Palm Beach Bones

by Tom Turner

  “Remember the old guy in Loadholt’s poker game with all the theories?”

  “Yeah? Jaworski?”

  “Well, he stopped by to have another chat. I had to tell him I was expecting a conference call and ring-a-ding-ding, right on cue, there you were.”

  Crawford filled in Ott on Luis Arragon, Valentina’s husband, and Ott did the same with what Jenny Montgomery had said about Jamie Ransom and Arthur Sandusky.

  “So we’ve got two carpenters,” Crawford said. “Luis Arragon and Jamie Ransom.”

  “I know,” Ott said. “Two carpenters and a stalker.”

  “Sandusky, you mean.”

  “Yeah,” Ott said. “And if he followed Lila to Balfour’s place, he knows David’s rich. A guy who can come up with three mil.”

  “Yeah, but all three of them know that.” Crawford said. “What’s your gut after talking to the girl?”

  Ott started walking toward the elevator to go to his office. “Sandusky, I got no clue. Just don’t know enough about him. Jamie Ransom, I’m still not sure he’s up to the job. Plus, he’s all about getting the girl. And he seems to think the way to do that is convince her he’s somebody—a guy going to law school first, now a guy who’s gonna make millions flipping houses.”

  “So from what you heard from Montgomery, you don’t think he’s capable of it?”

  “Not really,” Ott said. “But let’s just say for the moment he did do it. Hired these guys to go to Balfour’s house and kidnap Lila. And let’s assume Lila never sees Ransom while she’s being held and has no reason to suspect he’s got anything to do with it. So then, let’s say, Balfour pays the money and Lila is returned…”

  “Okay.”

  “So what’s Ransom gonna say to Lila?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean is he gonna say, ‘Hey, guess what? I just flipped a house and made three million bucks. Will you take me seriously now? Oh, and hey, while we’re at it, let’s get married?’”

  Crawford didn’t say anything for a few moments. “I hear ya, probably doesn’t add up. Sandusky then?”

  “Shit, Charlie, it’s hard to say. But seems like Sandusky’s probably more qualified to pull it off,” Ott said. “Montgomery mentioned he did something to quote, creep out Lila.”

  “But she didn’t say what?”

  “No, I asked, but I don’t think she knew exactly,” Ott said. “Whatever it was, though, it was enough to get Lila to quit his class and want to get a new advisor.”

  “Really?” Crawford said. “We’ve gotta find out what it was. I’m gonna take another look at Lila’s cell phone. I went through it pretty fast. Couple things I couldn’t open.”

  “Okay, and I’ll do an FCIS and a DAVID search on both Luis Arragon and Sandusky.”

  “Sounds good,” Crawford said. “Then we’ll talk again.”

  Twenty-Seven

  The Mentors were on the fantail deck of Beth Jastrow’s 146-foot Feadship. The sun had just gone down and there was a light breeze on the starlit night.

  “Lulu thinks Eddie is going to sign her,” Elle said. “It’s in the lawyers’ hands now.”

  Eddie Buskey was Elle T. Graham’s friend at Rhino Records.

  “Wow, that was fast,” Diana said.

  “Eddie loved her,” Elle said.

  “‘New Rhino recording artist, Lulu Perkins,’” Beth said. “That ought to help fill up seats in my casinos for the two weeks she’ll be playing them.”

  “Probably going to have full houses, I would imagine,” Elle said.

  A man in a white jacket and black bow tie came back to the aft deck with a bottle of champagne and refilled all of their glasses.

  Rose said, “Thank you, James,” then, “So who’s next?”

  Marla set her champagne glass down on a mahogany table. “How would you ladies feel about a politician?”

  “After the big check I wrote Hilary,” said Elle, “I’m kind of gun shy.”

  The others laughed. “I hear you,” Marla said. “But let me just tell you about her. Her name is Laura Dominguez—”

  “Oh, yeah, down in Miami, right?” Rose said.

  “Yes,” Marla said. “She’s a Democratic councilwoman there. Last election she got seventy-six percent of the vote. She was a protégé of Marco Rubio before switching parties. Very smart, charismatic, photogenic, and she’s after Neil Griscom’s seat in the senate.”

  “Good,” Rose said. “That guy’s old and on cruise control. I’d love to see her fight it out with him.”

  Beth stood up. “Gotta pee,” she said. “Champagne just goes right through me.”

  Marla turned to Beth. “I’d like to get Laura up here to meet with us. You guys in?”

  “I’m in,” Beth said, walking inside.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” Diana said.

  “Hey, speaking of fights,” Rose said lowering her voice. “I’d put Beth up against Muhammad Ali any day.”

  Marla and Elle laughed. Diana didn’t get it at first. Then, “Oh, you mean, that little incident in the elevator.”

  “Yeah,” Rose said. “Girl’s maybe got a little anger issue.”

  “Hey,” Elle said. “As long as she’s on our side.”

  The waiter with the champagne came back out again. No takers this time.

  “And let me just say,” Marla said. “This is a pretty damn nice spot to have our meetings.”

  Beth walked back out. “I miss anything?”

  “Nah,” said Rose. “We were just saying how much we like your boat.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Crawford was going through Lila Bacon’s iPhone again when he saw the Snapchat he had first noticed the night before. What he hadn’t noticed before was that it was from Arthur Sandusky—at one thirty in the morning. Being oblivious to most things technological, Crawford at least knew that Snapchat was an app where you could send and receive photos, which would then disappear in ten seconds. He was dying to know just what kind of photo Arthur Sandusky would have sent to Lila at one thirty in the morning.

  He called West Palm Beach chief, Ron Mendoza, the man who had been telling Norm Rutledge all about the latest police technology the other night.

  “Hey, Ron, it’s Charlie Crawford,” he said. “So you being Mr. Tech Wizard, I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Fire away, Charlie,” Mendoza said.

  “Okay, let’s say I get a Snapchat from somebody and it’s gone in ten seconds.”

  “You actually set a timer for how long until it disappears.”

  “Okay, good to know,” Crawford said. “But let’s say that, after it’s gone, like maybe the next day, I want to take another look at the photo. Is there any way I can? You know, retrieve it?”

  “It’s called a snap, by the way,” Mendoza said. “And, yes, it’s a piece of cake.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, nothing to it.”

  “You made my day,” Crawford said. “How the hell do I do it?”

  Mendoza walked him through it.

  Finally, after he followed all of Mendoza’s instructions, he clicked the snap.

  And God, it was not pretty.

  It was a full-length shot of a naked and smiling Arthur Sandusky. He had to be drunk, Crawford concluded, seeing the half-filled wine glass in his hand.

  The guy was double-chinned, triple-gutted, and had flaccid albino skin.

  Not to mention, Crawford thought, the man was one sick bastard.

  Crawford put the iPhone down on the table in front of him and just thought for a few minutes.

  He had met a shrink at Ultima, his gym in West Palm Beach. The guy could bench almost as much as Ott, who could do his weight plus fifty pounds. Phil Ulrich was outgoing, friendly, and had a hail-fellow-well-met personality—the antithesis of the stereotypical New York City shrink. Crawford had called and asked him a shrink question once before and still had the man in his contacts. He dialed him on his cell.

  “Hello.”

  �
��Hey, Phil, it’s Charlie Crawford,” he said. “Got a patient stretched out on your couch there?”

  Ulrich laughed. “Hey, Charlie. Nope. Someone just left. I’m writing up some notes.”

  “Can I take five minutes of your time?”

  “Sure, that’ll be…nine dollars and thirty three cents, but you can buy me a can of FitAid instead.” That was a drink sold at the gym.

  “So, I’ve got a hypothetical question: a college professor develops an interest in a young woman in his class, a really beautiful girl. She doesn’t encourage it, but then it like ramps up, turns into an obsession on his part. The guy’s calling her and emailing her all the time; then he starts stalking her. Finally, he sends her one of those Snapchat things—”

  “Yeah, a snap.”

  “Of him…naked,” Crawford said. “And this ain’t like some buff guy in the gym.”

  “Hardly matters,” Ulrich said. “The guy’s clearly got a serious problem.”

  “So, the girl who was just mildly freaked out before is now totally freaked.”

  “Who can blame her?”

  “My question is, what is the next move a guy like this makes?”

  Ulrich exhaled long and loud. “Jesus, I don’t know, Charlie. That’s an impossible question to answer.”

  “I know it is,” Crawford said. “But, in your experience, does he ratchet it up? Possibly get violent with her, or does he just quietly go away after a while?”

  “‘I don’t know’ is not the answer you want to hear, but it’s the only honest—”

  “Girl’s the niece of a friend of mine. I—”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ulrich was silent for a few moments. “Honestly, Charlie, I’d say that’s the profile of a guy who went from zero to sixty, then eighty, and might keep his foot on the accelerator. But there’s no way to say with any real certainty. First thing I’d do is check, see if he’s got any history.”

  “We’re on that now,” Crawford said.

  “Unofficially, it doesn’t sound to me as if he’s just going to ‘quietly go away.’”

  Crawford sighed. “All right, Phil, thanks for your help. I understand it’s not like anybody can predict what a guy like this is gonna do next.”

  “Exactly,” Ulrich said. “Good luck, Charlie. Hope it works out okay. See you down at the gym.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  He dialed Ott’s number. “You got anything on Sandusky yet?”

  “I was just gonna call you,” Ott said. “Guy’s a real beauty. Turns out four years ago he got fired from his job at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.”

  “Why?”

  “Sexual harassment,” Ott said. “Charges filed by two students. And get this: one was a girl, one was a guy. Then, when they went to arrest him, they get him for possession of an unlicensed firearm too. He claimed there were a series of burglaries in his neighborhood.”

  “Wonder how the hell he got the job at Florida Atlantic?”

  “Somebody did a shitty background check would be my guess,” Ott said. “Eventually UNC dropped the charges. Probably didn’t want it publicized. It was right around the time of that incident at Duke with the lacrosse players.”

  “Good job, man.”

  “Oh, and also, you asked me to check up on Sonia Reyes’s brother. The guy in the Mexican jail?”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Turns out Hector Reyes has been out of prison for six months,” Ott said. “So either he didn’t tell his sister or she was lying to you.”

  Crawford didn’t have to think about that for long. “I’d go with the latter.”

  “So I sniffed around the Miami area,” Ott said. “Got a little help from a detective down there and guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Hector apparently took a little fishing trip recently, ended up at Palm Harbor Marina a while ago.”

  “Which is where?”

  “400 North Flagler, West Palm.”

  “No shit.”

  “I think we should pay him a visit,” Ott said.

  “I agree, but Sandusky’s my top priority right now,” Crawford said. “I think he might be our guy. Particularly after what you found out.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I called Palm Beach Atlantic,” Crawford said. “Arthur Sandusky teaches a class on Saturday. How would you feel about auditing it?”

  “Sure. What’s the course?”

  “It’s called Marketing in a Mega Media World.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ott said. “Right up my alley.”

  “I’m thinking you and the prof have a little after-class chat,” Crawford said.

  “Done,” said Ott.

  “So back to Hector Reyes,” Crawford said, “maybe we pay him a visit before you go to class.”

  “Gonna be a busy day, huh?” said Ott. “When do you want me to pick you up?”

  “How ‘bout we meet at Mellor Park in fifteen minutes.”

  “See you then.”

  Crawford and Ott were on their way to the Palm Harbor Marina.

  “Hector’s boat is called The Ghost,” Ott said. “It’s a 53-foot Rybovich, if you know what that is.”

  “I don’t know shit about boats,” Crawford said.

  Ott shrugged. “I know less than you. Never did any boating on the Cuyahoga River. Too damn polluted.”

  On the way over to pick up Crawford, Ott had spoken to Kelly Poe, the harbormaster of Palm Harbor Marina, who told him exactly where The Ghost was moored. Ott drove up Flagler and pulled into a parking lot in front of the marina.

  They hopped out and walked to the southernmost dock. The Ghost was supposed to be the next to last one on the right. They started walking faster as they saw a boat pull away from the dock at that location.

  Then Crawford started running. He spotted the name on the hull of the moving boat. Sure enough, The Ghost, and below it, Miami, Florida.

  He turned back to Ott. “That’s it,” he shouted. They both started running at full speed.

  Then, after going about twenty yards, Crawford jumped down into a boat right next to The Ghost’s just vacated berth, where a middle-aged couple with coffee mugs in their hands were sitting in deck chairs. The startled couple looked up at him in shock.

  “What the hell?” the man said.

  Crawford already had his ID out as Ott thudded down onto the boat’s deck not three feet from the woman.

  “We’re detectives, Palm Beach Police. We need to commandeer your boat. We’ll reimburse—” Crawford saw the key to the right of the wheel and walked over and turned it. The engine started up and had a nice, powerful rumble to it.

  The owner still had a full-blown ‘this can’t really be happening’ look on his face.

  “Won’t take long,” Ott tried to assure him. “We’ll have you back at the dock in a jiffy.”

  The man’s expression didn’t change. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “We need to talk to the owner of that boat,” Ott said, pointing at The Ghost off in the distance, as Crawford turned past the end of the dock and slid the boat’s throttle forward.

  “About what?” the owner asked.

  The fewer details the better, thought Ott. “Something that happened last week,” then he had a second thought. “Would you folks mind going into the cabin.”

  He was imagining the possibility of shots being fired.

  “Okay,” said the owner. “Come on, honey.”

  The woman looked to be still absorbing the shock of seeing a two-hundred-thirty-pound, quasi-bald man drop from out of the sky.

  “Come on, honey,” the man said again. “They want us inside.”

  She shook her head. “Thought you gave the orders on this ship, Sam.”

  He shrugged and without another word they went inside.

  Crawford had the boat going full throttle and they were catching up with The Ghost.

  Ott unholstered his Glock and too
k a few steps over to Crawford.

  “Good idea,” Crawford said. “Getting them inside.”

  The Ghost was a football field away. Crawford unholstered his Sig Sauer semi.

  Ott spotted a bullhorn stowed behind the front seats. He handed it to Crawford. “So you don’t need to yell.”

  Crawford smiled and took it. “Thanks.”

  He eased back on the throttle as they pulled up to The Ghost then raised the bullhorn. “Hector Reyes, Palm Beach Police, we need to talk to you.”

  A short man up on the bridge, wearing a tan baseball cap and Oakley’s, turned and had an expression of being both confused and put upon. “What the hell do you want?” he shouted back.

  “We want to come aboard,” Crawford said, pulling up next to The Ghost. “Ask you a few questions.”

  Reyes scowled.

  Four men came out of the cabin. None of them seemed to be armed, but Crawford didn’t want to take any chances. He raised his Sig Sauer and Ott did the same with his Glock.

  The four men looked as though they had never had guns pointed at them before.

  “Jesus, what the hell’s this?” one of them said in a frightened tone.

  “You four,” Crawford said. “Walk up to the front of the boat.”

  “It’s called the bow,” Reyes said, then shaking his head. “You know, these men are paying good money to go after tuna, not be ordered around by a couple Palm Beach cops.”

  Crawford had a sinking feeling. “This is a…”

  “Charter boat,” said Reyes.

  Crawford heard Ott sigh his, ‘oh shit’ sigh.

  “Where were you last Thursday night, Hector?” Crawford asked, shading his eyes from the sun.

  “I don’t see why it’s any of your goddamn business,” Reyes said. “But are you talking about the night my old friend, Clyde Loadholt, got capped?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” Crawford said, a little voice telling him he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Well, first of all, a bar in Nassau, then a restaurant in Nassau, then a fleabag of a motel just outside of Nassau,” Reyes said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. “Care to see a few receipts…Detective?”

  Ott walked over to the side of the boast, got up on the gunwale, then jumped down into The Ghost.