Palm Beach Pretenders

by Tom Turner

Ott got down in a crouch, too. “Speaking of theories, what we were talking about at Starbucks might fit here.”

  Crawford nodded. “I was thinking of that. Duke meeting a rich father who he thought was going to pay him for a video of his daughter?”

  “But instead, daddy had a gun?”

  “Yeah, or maybe it was a hired gun.”

  “Possible,” said Ott. His expression suddenly changed. “Aw, fuck, here he is.”

  Crawford didn’t need to turn around to know that Bob Hawes, the ME, had just arrived.

  “What’s he wearing this time?” Crawford whispered.

  Bob Hawes had a wardrobe that made Ott look chic.

  “That red cardigan,” Ott said.

  “The one with the deer on it?”

  “Yup. Fuckin’ Bill Cosby wouldn’t get caught dead in that,” Ott muttered as Hawes approached them.

  “My two favorite Palm Beach homicide detectives,” Hawes said.

  That was Hawes’s little joke, since they were the only two homicide detectives in Palm Beach.

  “Hello again, Bob,” Ott said and Crawford nodded.

  “Vic’s name is Xavier Duke,” Crawford said. “If that rings a bell it’s because he was at the Pawlichuk wedding last week.”

  “Can’t say it does,” Hawes said.

  “Anyway, he lives within a short walk. That house the Russian brothers used to live in on North Lake Way,” Crawford said.

  “Jesus, what’s with that place? You buy it and end up tits up.” Hawes caught Sheila Stallings’s eye. “Oops, sorry, Stallings.” He glanced down at Duke’s body. “Wow, someone really didn’t like this guy.”

  Crawford had the sense that Hawes felt it was part of his job description to be a wise-ass in the face of even the grimmest murders. Like he had seen a movie once where a wise, old ME had acted less than solemn in the face of death. Whatever the reason, that had become the MO of the ME.

  Hawes got down in a crouch, and both knees cracked. “How ya doin’, ladies,” Hawes said to Kislak and Stallings.

  “Hi, Bob,” Kislak said with a nod as Stallings pretended to be preoccupied with a soil sample.

  “I said, ‘Hello, Stallings,’” Hawes said.

  “Hello, Bob,” Stallings said, looking up and seemingly suppressing a frown at the sight of Hawes’ sweater.

  “Found anything good?”

  “I got a rusty bottle cap and an old lighter,” Stallings said. “No wallet, but we didn’t need one since Charlie and Mort knew the guy.”

  Hawes nodded. “What about you, Kis?”

  “Nothin’,” Kislak said.

  “Question is, is it the same shooter as Pawlichuk?” Crawford said. “I mean, three shots apiece there, three shots apiece here. Close range in both cases. Entry wounds look similar.”

  Hawes looked up at Crawford and shaded his eyes. “I don’t know, Charlie, I just got here.”

  “The good news is we got a slug,” Kislak said.

  “That is good news,” Hawes said. “Unlike Pawlichuk.”

  “You’ll let us know as soon as you got something, right?” Ott said.

  Crawford knew what Hawes’s next line would be. All in due course.

  Hawes nodded. “All in due time.”

  Close enough.

  Hawes turned and took pictures of the three bullet holes with his iPhone. Crawford signaled to Ott, and they walked away.

  “No point in us hanging around here,” Crawford said. “Let’s go to Duke’s house. See what we come up with there.”

  Ott nodded.

  They walked back to Hawes and the CSEUs. “We’re going to Duke’s house,” Crawford said.

  “Okay,” Hawes said. “But be careful, for Christ’s sake. That place definitely has a hex on it.”

  * * *

  Crawford and Ott got to the house on North Lake Way at just past ten a.m. They had no idea whether Xavier Duke was married and had kids but suspected he didn’t. Their hunch was he was single and lived alone in the ten-bedroom house on the ocean and probably had a few freeloaders and hangers-on who tended to overstay their welcomes.

  No one answered when Ott pushed the doorbell. He pushed it again, and they waited a full three minutes.

  The man who finally answered was in his twenties and wearing short boxers and a tattoo above his right bicep.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said, rubbing his eyes.

  Crawford recognized him as the man they had seen leaving the house with two women.

  “I’m Detective Crawford and this is my partner Detective Ott, Palm Beach Police Department,” Crawford said, flashing his ID. “Are there any members of Xavier Duke’s family living here?”

  “No,” the man said, “I don’t think he has any. Wait a minute, ‘cept for his mother up in Illinois, I’m pretty sure.”

  “And who are you?” Ott asked, taking his notebook out.

  “Jared,” the man said. “A friend of the X-man’s.”

  “Your last name please?”

  “Ford.” Jared said. “What’s this about?”

  “Sorry to tell you, but Mr. Duke was killed,” Crawford said.

  Jared put a hand up to his mouth. “Oh, my God, you’re kidding,” he said slowly.

  “He was shot several times,” Ott said. “Not far from here.”

  A young woman in a bathrobe appeared behind Jared. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Xavier was murdered,” Jared said. “This is so terrible. I can’t believe it.”

  The girl put her hand up to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said, putting an arm on Jared’s shoulder.

  “What’s your name, please?” Ott asked.

  “Ellie,” she said. “Ellie Ferraro.”

  “When did you both last see Mr. Duke?” Crawford asked.

  “Last night,” Jared said. “I had a drink with him in the bar. Then he went upstairs.”

  “And you?” Crawford asked Ellie.

  “I only met him once. About three or four days ago,” she said. “I didn’t see him last night ‘cause I got here after he went up to his room.”

  Crawford turned back to Jared. “He went upstairs alone?”

  Jared nodded. “Yeah, he wanted to see something on the tube. He isn’t much into the parties here. Or, wasn’t, I mean.”

  “Well, then, the obvious question is,” Ott said, “why’d he have them so often?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” Jared looked up at Ott and shrugged. “I- I guess ‘cause he liked to have people around. Being a single guy, maybe he got lonely.”

  Ott eyed Crawford but Crawford decided not to press it. “Who else is in the house now?”

  Another shrug. “I’m not sure,” Jared said. “But my guess is there’re a few others here.”

  “What’s a few?” Ott asked.

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Two to four? Five to ten? Ballpark?” Ott asked.

  “I’d say two to four.”

  Ott turned to Crawford. “Let’s go find out.”

  Crawford nodded. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said to Jared, then to the Ellie, “You too. We might need to ask you some more questions.”

  They both nodded.

  “Are all the bedrooms upstairs?” Ott asked Jared.

  “There’re actually two down here,” Jared said, pointing. “At the end of that hall.”

  * * *

  It turned out there were three other couples and a threesome at the house, so Jared had been low on his estimate. Ott took all their names, but he and Crawford were almost certain that none of them knew anything about the death of Xavier Duke. In fact, four of the nine claimed that they had never even met the man. They had come to Windsong for the famous parties and ended up spending the night there with, in two out of three cases, people they’d never met before.

  None of the nine, including Jared and Ellie, had seen Duke leave the house. Crawford and Ott spent an hour checking the home’s four security cameras—one at the front door, a second at the back door, and
two exterior ones—and didn’t see Duke leave the house.

  Then they went to Xavier Duke’s bedroom, which was large but not as large as they expected. It had a room off of it, which had been turned into a neatly organized office. The bedroom furnishings were a tasteful but dated Victorian style dominated by burgundy and deep blue colors. The most surprising feature was a simple, queen-sized brass bed. Or maybe it was just that Crawford expected that the bed would be the dominant feature of the room. Like it had been in Hugh Hefner’s original.

  There was an iPhone on a nightstand next to the bed. Crawford reached in his pocket, pulled out his vinyl gloves, put them on, and picked up the iPhone. Unlocked, fortunately. He scrolled down the recent calls. It looked as if Duke had called a man named Danny at least three times a day. Then Crawford saw one that said ‘Mom’ and recognized the 312 Chicago area code.

  He looked at Ott across the room. “I found a number for his mother.”

  Ott glanced back. “You’re up, bro. I did the last one.”

  Crawford nodded and dialed the mother of Xavier Duke.

  Death notifications were a bitch.

  * * *

  Duke’s mother didn’t answer, so Crawford left a message on her voicemail for her to call him back. He was secretly relieved not to have to break the news about her son. For now, anyway.

  Next Crawford and Ott went into Duke’s office. It was a fine line between needing a warrant and conducting a simple search, so they went a few inches over the line. In the middle drawer of a desk Crawford found Duke’s checkbook. It was one of those three-to-a-page, three-ring-binder kinds. He went through the check stubs from the account at PNC Bank on Royal Palm Way and didn’t find anything that looked unusual. The checks were all for mundane things like water, electric, gas and telephone bills. Then there were large weekly checks made out to ABC Wine & Spirits in West Palm. He found no sign of what he was really looking for: deposit slips.

  Meanwhile, Ott was rifling through the other drawers of the desk. One had various warranties for kitchen appliances and TVs, another one had brochures for expensive-looking resorts in Asia and Australia, and a third was catalogs for luxury boats. The others were empty.

  “Anything?” Crawford asked Ott.

  “Guy was apparently looking into expensive vacations and buying a boat.”

  Crawford looked up from the checkbook. “A boat, huh?”

  “Yeah, million-dollar boats.”

  “But you couldn’t tell whether he bought one or not?”

  Ott shook his head. “Tell you what I would have liked to have found: a drawer full of DVDs.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Crawford said. “I’m gonna get a crew of techs to get a warrant and go through this place. Let’s go find those cameras Dominica spotted.”

  The bedroom with the cameras in it was three bedrooms down from the master. The cameras had been painstakingly embedded in the elaborate molding; you had to be looking for them to see them. They did a quick search of two bureaus in that room for DVDs, but found nothing. They decided to get a crew of CSEUs to search the entire house.

  Then they walked back to Reef Road and canvassed the neighbors on all sides of the empty lot where Duke’s body had been found. Turned out none of the homeowners they spoke to had heard gunfire, supporting Crawford’s theory that a silencer had been used.

  Four hours after arriving at the crime scene, Crawford and Ott had little more than when they’d begun. They went back to Crawford’s office at the station and talked about what to do next, their conversation punctuated by long stretches of silence.

  “They gotta find something,” Crawford said, referring to the three CSEUs who were on their way to get a search warrant then head up to Duke’s house. Their express purpose was to find DVDs but they’d take whatever they could get.

  “You’d think they would have been in his office,” Ott said. “Assuming they exist.”

  “They exist,” Crawford said. “Remember with Pawlichuk how you said ‘follow the money?’”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s exactly what we need to do now. Look into Duke’s bank accounts and see where the money came from. Or, rather, who the money came from.”

  * * *

  They drove down to the PNC branch and asked to speak to the manager.

  He was a man in his forties named Randy Connors who, upon learning they were detectives, greeted them with something less than open arms.

  “How can I help you?” he asked, facing them in his small office.

  “Mr. Connors, we’re investigating the death of one of your customers, Xavier Duke,” Crawford said.

  Connors looked appropriately shocked. “Oh, no, what happened? The poor man.”

  “He was found shot to death near his house on the north end,” Crawford said. “And in order for us to try to find his killer, we would appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Of course. I’ll help if I can.”

  “We’d like to examine all his accounts with your bank,” Crawford said. “We’re particularly interested in deposits he made.”

  Connors thought for a second. “I’m sorry, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, our customers expect confidentiality from us. I can’t allow you access to his accounts.”

  Ott frowned. “Mr. Connors,” he said. “Your customer is dead. Your cooperation might help us find his killer.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but that’s bank policy, and I’m not allowed to act contrary to it.”

  “All we need to see are his bank deposits for the last year,” Crawford said. “Specifically, who they were from.”

  Connors shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  Crawford stood up. He had seen plenty of minor functionaries dig their heels in before—a way of taking full advantage of those rare occasions when they could exert power over others.

  “Okay,” Crawford said. “We’ll be back.”

  “Sorry, I—”

  “We’ll be back,” Ott echoed his partner.

  * * *

  Crawford and Ott had a good relationship with the judge who they’d need to get the court order from. It would be pretty easy to demonstrate to the judge why they needed Xavier Duke’s financials. The real problem was tracking the judge down. One time, they’d had him sign the paperwork they needed on the eighteenth hole of his country club’s golf course. Another time, it was on his boat. The judge seemed to have plenty of time for recreation.

  Today, he was actually at the courthouse. They met in his chambers and told him what they needed and why.

  “You boys have been pretty busy lately.” Judge Shanahan took a sip from a water bottle. “You getting anywhere on Paul Pawlichuk and that actress?”

  “Slowly,” Crawford said. “We’ve got a couple of leads, but nothing solid.”

  “Someone told me you guys have solved every case you’ve been on since you came down from New York,” Shanahan said. “Is that right?”

  Crawford gave Ott a pat on the shoulder. “In Mort’s case, Cleveland,” he said. “My partner’s a dog with a bone.”

  “That’s Charlie’s way of being modest,” Ott said.

  “All right, well, I’ll sign it,” Shanahan said. “And maybe you can wrap it up by the end of the day.”

  “Something tells me it’s gonna take a little longer than that,” Crawford said.

  * * *

  They were back at the bank at 3:30. Sitting in the manager’s office again.

  “You fellas work pretty fast,” Connors said.

  Ott shot him another frown. “When we said we’ll be back, what did you think we meant? In a year?”

  Connors gave him a perfunctory smile. “So, what exactly is it you want?”

  “First of all, how many accounts did Xavier Duke have?” Ott asked.

  “A regular checking account and a money market,” Connors said.

  “Do you know what his balances are in both?”

  “I took the liberty of looking them up,” Connors said. �
�He’s got about ten thousand in the regular checking account and just over three million in the money market.”

  “Whoa?” Crawford said. “Three million in a money market?”

  Connors nodded.

  “And what interest rate does that pay?”

  “One point one percent,” Connors said.

  “Why would anyone keep that much money in an account paying so little?” Crawford asked

  “Can’t help you there, detective,” Connors said. “He made most of his deposits fairly recently, so maybe he just hadn’t decided yet what to do with the money. I had actually suggested that he meet with our people in the investment-advisory department who have instruments that perform much better than that.”

  “I mean, won’t some CDs pay twice that much?” Crawford asked.

  “Yes, they will,” Connors said.

  “We’d like to take a look at all the activity in Mr. Duke’s account for the last two years, the emphasis being on his deposits. Those deposits will show who wrote checks to him or wired money into his accounts, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s correct,” Connors said. “Would you like to come in tomorrow morning? I’ll have it all set up for you.”

  Ott frowned. “Why can’t we do it now?”

  Connors looked at his watch. “We close in fifteen minutes.”

  Ott looked at his watch. It was 3:45. “Guess that’s why they call ‘em bankers’ hours, huh, Mr. C?”

  Twenty-Three

  After the bank, Crawford went straight down to the CSEU cubicles. For business…and pleasure. The business part was to see if any DVDs had been found at Xavier Duke’s house, but it turned out that the three who had gone up there hadn’t returned yet. The pleasure part was to ask a certain CSEU out to dinner that night.

  He sat down in the spare chair in Dominica McCarthy’s cubicle, lowered his voice, apologized for it being last-minute and asked her.

  “You know,” said Dominica, “there was a time in my dating life—not so long ago—when I would have immediately said, ‘Sorry, I’m busy,’ just so you wouldn’t think I was too available—”

  “But hopefully that’s not your answer this time?”

  “It’s ‘yes’ if you promise me you’re not asking me out just for sex.”