by Tom Turner
A woman in a green silk top and bold cleavage raised her hand.
“Yes,” Crawford said, pointing at her. “You don’t need to raise your hand, you can just go ahead and speak.”
She nodded. “So, my question is, was anything stolen from the house?”
“Not that we’re aware of,” Crawford said. “Why, what was your thinking?”
“Well, ’cause there’s this pair of guys who have come to open houses and stolen stuff.” A few heads started nodding around the room. “What happens is one distracts you, you know, with a bunch of questions, while the other is filling his pockets—”
“Or his man-purse,” another woman added.
“Yeah, the tip-off is when they walk in and the tall one’s wearing a trench coat on a sunny day in the eighties,” said another.
Half the room was nodding now.
“I heard about this,” Ott said. “I’m Detective Ott, by the way. I think our burglary team looked into this. I believe several of our men have gone undercover at a number of open houses but haven’t been able to locate the two you’re referring to.”
“A friend of mine who’s an agent down in Manalapan told me the same two were spotted down there,” a man said, turning to the woman who had first brought it up. “A tall guy with longish hair and kind of a fat guy, right?”
“Yeah, they go after stuff like iPads, tablets and Echoes,” Bold Cleavage said. “Even stole a small painting at this one place I gave an open house at. I lost the damn listing ’cause of that.”
“Oh, yes, I remember that,” Arthur Lang said, shaking his head at the memory.
“But you have no reason to believe that those two men have acted in a…violent manner, do you?” Crawford asked. “Or could have been murderers?”
“They never did anything physical, as far as you know?” Ott asked.
“Well, no,” Bold Cleavage said. “But then we had the squatters.”
Half the agents in the room groaned.
“The what?” Crawford asked.
Bold Cleavage turned to a man in a pink-and-white bow tie next to her. “Well, you tell ’em, it was your listing.”
Bow Tie was shaking his head. “So, I had this listing. Way, way overpriced. I never showed it and kept thinking the owner was going to drop the price. Half a year went by and, first, this family of squirrels moved in. So I got the Orkin guy to come over and get them out, and then I gave an open house, and” —he took a long, deep breath “—well, apparently, from what I pieced together after, what happened was this guy hid in a closet and came out after the open house was over and I had locked up. Next thing I know, about two weeks later, I go to the house to show it—like I said, I hardly ever showed it—and my key didn’t work. So I hear this Grateful Dead music inside and look through the window and see a bunch of people passing a bong—”
Ott leaned over to Crawford and whispered. “I remember hearing about this. Just before you came down.”
“—so I call you guys,” Bow Tie flicked his head at Crawford and Ott, “and the police come and ask the guy who answers the door what he’s doing there. The guy says he’s just visiting, that his friend, who’s at the Winn-Dixie at the moment, is renting the place. I go, ‘No, no one’s renting the place. There’s no lease and it’s on the market.’ So the cops leave after a while and the guy comes back with a bunch of groceries. I was so pissed. It turned out he had the balls— ’scuse me, the temerity—to have the locks changed and kicked me out of the house. Can you believe it? So I called the cops again. They come back, and he claims he has a lease but it’s at his office. One look at this guy and you know…no way a druggie like him’s got an office anywhere, ’cept maybe at a crack house.”
Crawford thought about cutting the guy off but knew that was not exactly in keeping with the spirit of the free-flowing meeting.
“So the poor owner, who’s up in Chicago by the way, has to hire an attorney to prepare an eviction notice, then they serve the deadbeat in the owner’s house, then after he still doesn’t move out, have to start a lawsuit to evict. I mean, are you kidding me? Three weeks later, the squatters are still in the house—”
Crawford saw a few people’s eyes glaze over, including Ott’s. It was time to move on.
“Sir, sorry, I don’t know your name—”
“Miller. Brad Miller.”
“Mr. Miller, you have no reason to suspect that that man, or any of his friends, is a murderer, do you?”
“No, I have no reason to think that, even though he threatened me. I guess maybe I’m just pissed off I spent so much time on all this nonsense and the damn house has still never sold.”
“I understand,” Crawford said, looking around the room. “Regarding Ms. Taylor, did she ever mention to any of you that she might be afraid of someone, or maybe there was someone she had reason to believe might harm her?”
The agents looked around at each other and heads began to shake.
“I’m just so afraid now,” said a female agent with blue-framed glasses; other agents started nodding their agreement. “I mean, there’s a homicidal maniac out there somewhere.”
“Yes, will you please just catch the guy?” Bold Cleavage said. “We can’t be worried that every time we walk into a house some guy’s going to jump out of a closet and kill us.”
“We hear you loud and clear,” Crawford said, “which is why we’re here.”
“We’ve brought along a lot of cards,” Ott said, reaching into his jacket pocket. “And we want to urge you to call us if you have any additional thoughts, or if there was something that you didn’t want to bring up in front of the group.”
“Thank you all very much,” Crawford said. “We appreciate your time and assure you we’ll be doing everything possible to apprehend this perpetrator.”
Crawford and Ott thanked Arthur Lang and headed toward the door.
“Excuse me, Detective?” came a woman’s voice.
Crawford swung around to see a woman who looked somewhere between thirty-five and sixty depending on the light, the angle you saw her from, and whether you’d had a few cocktails in you.
“Yes, ma’am?” Crawford was no expert on face-lifts, but if you’d been around Palm Beach long enough you knew one when you saw one.
“You’re Rose’s friend, right?” She was trying to smile but was having a tough time with all the botox that had, no doubt, been pumped into her face.
Off to the side, Ott chuckled his annoying chuckle, and Crawford wanted to haul off and smack him.
“Rose Clarke?” Crawford asked innocently.
The woman nodded. “There’s only one Rose,” she said, batting her inch-long eyelashes.
“Yes,” Crawford said. “We’re friends of Rose.”
Might as well drag Ott into it.
“She told me nice things about you,” the woman said. “And how cute you were.”
“Oh, well, great,” Crawford said. “Did you have anything to tell us about Mimi Taylor or our investigation?”
“No,” she said. “I just wanted to get a look at you close-up.”
Crawford couldn’t get out the door fast enough.
Six
“Good place to pick up chicks,” Ott said as they slid into the Crown Vic. “Your mother’s age.”
Crawford wasn’t going to dignify that with even a grunt.
“Though there were definitely some young, hot ones there too,” Ott added.
“Is that what you were doing, checking out the women?”
“No, Charlie, I was trying to get some info that would help solve our murder,” Ott said, “but we didn’t. We just heard people talk about weirdo house crashers and bellyache about how their jobs sucked. All you gotta do is listen to me if you want to hear that shit.”
“Thought you liked your job.”
Ott nodded. “Yeah, I do. Except when Rutledge gets involved, that is,” he said, referring to their boss, chief of the Palm Beach Police Department.
“I still think going ar
ound to the real estate offices is a good idea,” Crawford said.
“I do too.”
“Well, good. As usual, we’re on the same page.”
Crawford and Ott had just left the Corcoran real estate office on Royal Poinciana Way after having previously gone to Brown Harris, Douglas Elliman, and the Fite Group.
“I never thought about how vulnerable they are,” Ott said. “Sitting alone in a house during an open house. Anybody can just walk in.”
“Yeah, I know, that last story was pretty scary,” Crawford said.
An agent had told them how two well-dressed men had walked in at the tail end of an open house she was giving. They appeared to be a father and son, she said—big smiles and lots of apparent interest in the house. She was about to give them the tour, when one of them casually pulled out a snub-nosed pistol from his jacket, while the younger one went and locked the front door.
“Okay, honey, we’re going to make this quick and easy,” he said. “Where’s your purse?”
She pointed to her purse across the room on a sofa.
The younger of the two went over and got it. He emptied the cash from her wallet and found her checkbook.
“How much you have in your account?” the older one asked.
“Oh, a couple hundred dollars,” the agent said. “Maybe a thousand.”
“Don’t lie to me,” the older one said, pressing the pistol barrel to her head. “How much is in it?”
She told Crawford and Ott she was not about to die over money.
“About fifteen thousand,” she said.
The younger one handed her a pen. “Start writing.”
“Fourteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-five dollars,” the older one ordered with a smile. “You’re gonna need the rest for dinner tonight.”
The older one went to the bank with the check, while the younger one stayed with the agent to make sure she couldn’t call the bank and cancel the check.
A half an hour later, they were gone and so was all but twenty-five dollars in her account.
As far as concrete leads on the Mimi Taylor murder, Crawford and Ott had nothing after having gone to the four offices. But they didn’t consider it a waste of time because now almost two hundred agents had their business cards and could attach faces to their names. If something suspicious were to happen or one of the agents remembered something that might be helpful, Crawford felt confident they would call.
After the Corcoran office, they went back to the station. Crawford put in a third call to Stark Stabler, and then he and Ott split up the thirty-seven profiles provided by Red Noland, the West Palm Beach homicide cop.
Crawford went through eight of his and already had two that were of particular interest. One was a murder suspect who seemed to have gotten off on a technicality. The victim was a woman whom the suspect had apparently had a dispute with over work he had done at her house. A witness, who was a friend of the suspect, told Red Noland’s partner that the suspect had admitted to him having strangled the woman.
Crawford had a number for the man, whose name was Art Nunan, and he called him.
“This is big A, you know what to do,” said Nunan’s voicemail.
“Detective Crawford, Palm Beach Police, call me right away.” He left his number.
The second person of interest was a convicted murderer named Buddy Lester who had been released after doing twenty-five years at Raiford prison.
The day after Lester got out, he spent five hours in a bar, picked up a woman, and strangled her in her apartment but failed to kill her. Lester was arrested, but the woman recanted and said it was a case of mistaken identity. Red Noland told Crawford that he suspected a friend of Lester’s had gotten to her and either threatened to kill her or paid her off.
Crawford called Lester, but his phone just rang and rang.
As he picked up the next file, he glanced at his watch.
It was 7:45. He was supposed to pick up Rose at 7:30 for a 7:45 reservation at Giovanni’s.
He dialed Rose’s number. She picked up after the second ring.
“Hello, tardy Charlie.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be there in five.”
“Don’t break the speed limit, you’ll have to arrest yourself.”
They got to Giovanni’s at 8:05 and fortunately Crawford’s table hadn’t been given away. He was a regular, after all. Not to mention a good tipper.
Rose, five feet ten inches tall with a near-flawless distribution of body parts, was wearing a clingy beige dress that showed a lot of leg and thigh and toned, tanned arms. She sat as Crawford held her chair.
“Thank you. Those perfect Ivy League manners of yours.”
“Trust me, the only thing I learned in college was how to drink prodigious amounts of grain alcohol,” Crawford said. “So, I went to Sotheby’s, Brown Harris, Corcoran, Douglas Elliman, and Fite Group today and heard a lot of war stories.”
“Like what?”
“About squatters, thieves, and worse.”
“But no help on Mimi’s murder?”
“Not really, but it’s still early.” Then, remembering, “I met a friend of yours at Sotheby’s who’s about five three, a little on the chunky side, and probably spent about ten grand on what they call ‘facial-reconstruction surgery.’”
“Ten?” Rose said with a laugh. “Triple that. So, you had the pleasure of meeting flirty Katie. She actually couldn’t be nicer.”
“Yeah, she seemed it. Anyway, I have a couple more real estate companies tomorrow.”
“Well, I guarantee you that I can top whatever war stories you heard today.”
“Okay, let’s hear.”
Rose smiled. “Did I ever tell you about the couple who lived in a trailer park up in Riviera Beach who were looking at fifty-million-dollar houses?”
“No, I’d definitely remember that one.”
“So, normally I’m very careful about vetting buyers before I take them out.” Rose shrugged. “’Cause time is money.”
“How do you vet ’em?”
“Well, for instance, if a guy tells me he works on Wall Street, I know enough people there so I can check him out. Find out whether he’s a lowly stockbroker on commission or a managing director making five mill a year. Google’s also made things a whole lot easier. So anyway, I get a call from an agent in our Boston office, whom I don’t know, telling me she’s making a referral.”
“That’s where she tells you about a buyer, and if you sell ’em a house, she gets a piece of the commission, right?”
“Very good, Charlie, you’ve been paying attention,” Rose said. “Her name is Gail somebody and she tells me her referral is this very understated couple but that the husband started a high-tech company on Route 128 in Boston which he just sold to Sun Microsystems for gazillions. Well, I’d heard of Sun Microsystems, of course, so I said great, thanked her, and told her she’d get twenty percent of the commission if something came of it.” Rose shook her head and smiled. “Two days later I get a call and this guy says he’s the one who Gail in Boston sent my way. I go, ‘Oh, yes, Mr. Bialecki, I was hoping I’d hear from you.’ Which I was ’cause Gail said he wanted something on the ocean or Intracoastal for between twenty-five and fifty million.”
Crawford did the math; even after paying Gail in the Boston office a referral fee, Rose could still make upwards of a million dollars.
“So what happened?”
“First of all, this couple showed up at my office in a Dodge Dart. And not even a vintage Dodge Dart. A real beater. He’s wearing ten-dollar blue jeans with these cheap suspenders, and she looks like the wife in that Grant Wood painting American Gothic.”
“You mean with the husband and his pitchfork.”
“That’s the one,” Rose said. “So, I remember what Gail said and figured that sporting outfits from the Depression era is what she means by ‘understated.’ So, I haul ’em around to every house between twenty-five and fifty mill, and I’m paying close attention to
hear the brilliant tech-guy Hal say something genius but never do. Oh, I forgot one big thing, the wife, Darla, never talks. I figure, okay, she’s a mute…probably not the first mute to ever buy a house, right?”
Crawford shrugged. He didn’t know any mutes.
“So, after three days and a couple tanks of gas in the old Range Rover, Hal finally makes his move. He says, ‘We really like that one on North Ocean Way, the one just north of the S curve, and we’d like to try it out for a week.’”
“I go, ‘You’d like to what?’”
“‘Try it out,’ he said again. Said they wanted to see which they like better, being on the ocean or on the Intracoastal. And I’m thinking, Well, that may be how you do things up in Beantown but not here, my friend.”
Crawford chuckled. “Hey, I’d like to do that too.”
“Everyone would…except the owners,” Rose said. “So, Hal got really insistent. He says, ‘I don’t know why that’s so unreasonable. After all you test-drive a car, why not test-drive a house?’ To which I said the obvious, ‘You don’t test-drive a car for a week, just a half hour or so.’ So then he came up with something priceless, and finally I’m thinking, ‘Aha, so this is the genius who started the high-tech company.’”
“What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘If I’m paying, say, fifty grand for a car, then a half hour test-drive is enough.’ Then he closes his eyes like he’s thinking really hard, doing the math, maybe. ‘But if I’m paying five hundred times that for a house, then I deserve a lot longer test-drive.’ ‘Like a week?’ I asked. ‘Uh-huh, like a week,’ he said.”
“I gotta hand it to him,” Crawford said, “he is beginning to sound like a guy who started a tech company and sold it for billions.”
Rose smiled and put her hand on Crawford’s hand. “Except, he never did.”
“What do you mean?”
“So I decided to follow Hal and Darla after we looked at houses, in their orange Dodge Dart, figuring they’re down from Boston probably staying at The Breakers or the Four Seasons.”
