by Tom Turner
“What’s up?”
“So, here’s a coincidence for you.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m driving down Worth and I get near the end and I look up to see these two sign-installers putting up a new sign on a shop. Guess what it’s for?”
“I don’t know? A Walmart?”
Ott laughed. “Yeah, about as likely as a Home Depot. No, it says Lowell Grey Gallery.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, so I parked and looked through the window. There was this young woman and guy in there putting up paintings but no Lowell. So I knocked on the door, and the girl opens it and tell me it’s not opening ’til Tuesday. I told her I was looking for Lowell Grey and she goes, ‘Oh, that’s my dad. I just came down from DC to help him with the installation.’ She explained that Lowell’s having a big opening cocktail party tomorrow night. He’s expecting like three hundred people to show up for it.”
“Well, well. What kind of art did they have?”
“From what I could tell, real abstract stuff. Like that artist who puts up a canvas and throws shit at it.”
“Can’t say I know who that is, Mort.”
“Yeah, you know. The guy who sometimes shoots a paintball gun at his canvases.”
“No clue who you’re talking about.”
“Well, anyway, the paintings are colorful, I’ll say that for them. So, the daughter told me she expected Lowell back in a few minutes.”
“Where are you now?”
“Back out in the car.”
“Okay, I’m ten minutes from there. Meet you outside the gallery. What’s the address?”
“It’s at 318 Worth. You can’t miss it, sign guys are still out there with their crane.”
“See you in a few.”
Lowell Grey was still wearing the blue pants from the blue suit he’d worn at Mimi Taylor’s funeral. He also was still wearing the crisp button-down shirt, though he had rolled up the sleeves.
Crawford knocked on the gallery door. Ott was right beside him.
This time the gallery namesake opened the door himself. “Sorry, fellas, we don’t open until Tuesday. Wait, didn’t I see you at Mimi Taylor’s funeral this morning?”
“Yes, you did,” Crawford said. “My name is Detective Crawford, and this is Detective Ott, Palm Beach Police Department. We’re working on the Mimi Taylor homicide. Could we speak to you, please?”
“Ah, yes, sure,” Grey said, opening the door further. “Come on in.” Pointing to the young couple, “That’s my daughter, Melissa.”
“Yes, we met,” Ott said, as Melissa, clad in black spandex, waved.
“And that’s Todd,” Grey said, pointing to a man in blue jeans and a blue-and-white sports shirt. “The brains behind the operation.”
Todd, on a ladder, smiled and waved too.
“We can go in the back and talk,” Grey said.
They followed him into a room that had two brand-new white leather contemporary sofas facing each other with a chrome-and-glass table in between. On three sides of the room were paintings leaning against the walls. “Sorry about the mess. Kind of a last-minute scramble around here.”
“We understand,” Crawford said. “Mr. Grey, we know you’re busy, so we’ll try to make this brief, we have some questions about you and Mimi Taylor.”
“Well, ask away.”
“Okay, our understanding was that you and Ms. Taylor broke up six months ago and that you were the one who initiated it.”
“Yes, that’s pretty accurate.”
“But we observed you at the funeral, and you clearly were upset, so—”
“You wondered what was up?”
“Well, yes.”
“Basically, I screwed up. I should have never ended it. I met another woman and was temporarily…smitten. Head over heels. Infatuated, really. It was ridiculous. She was—” he lowered his voice— “younger than my daughter, and it lasted about five minutes. But when I realized the error of my ways, it was too late, Mimi was already seeing that odious bore Stark Stabler.”
Crawford didn’t need to know why he called Stark Stabler that but agreed.
“Mr. Grey,” Ott cut in, “Mrs. Taylor mentioned that you asked her if you could borrow a key to get into Mimi Taylor’s condo and get a paddleboard of yours.”
Grey slipped his brown loafers off with his heels and put his feet up on the glass-topped table. The blue socks had pairs of crossed polo mallets sprinkled on them.
“Yes,” Grey said finally, “I’ve been getting a little squishy in my core” —he grabbed a fold of skin at his stomach— “and figured I better get back out on the water.”
“Gotcha,” Ott said.
“So, have you always been interested in art, Mr. Grey?” Crawford asked.
Grey chuckled. “I’ll level with you, back when I lived up in New York, I figured out it was a good way to impress women. Start talking about Caravaggio this, or Basquiat that, women eat that shit up. I always used to ask ’em if they wanted to go to the galleries down in Chelsea on our first date. Get ’em thinking I was a real connoisseur, you know. Gagosian this, Acquavella that.”
Crawford leaned forward. “I could be wrong, Mr. Grey, but isn’t the Acquavella gallery on the Upper East Side?”
Grey looked dumbstruck.
“Charlie used to live up in New York,” Ott explained.
“Wherever it was,” Grey said, “women love a guy who can talk the talk.”
Crawford decided to lob it in there. See how Grey would react. “What’s your opinion of Modigliani?”
Crawford didn’t notice a flinch or a hesitation.
“I like him. Talk about a guy who gave all his subjects the longest damned necks.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“There was one,” Crawford said, “Reclining Nude, that got a hundred and seventy million at auction a couple years back.”
“I remember reading about that,” Grey said, not reacting to the painting’s name. “My paintings here go for a whole lot less than that. Case you were thinking about putting one on your living room wall.”
“I’m not sure I have a wall big enough for these,” Crawford said, then abruptly changed the subject. “Mr. Grey, where were you last Thursday between twelve noon and two o’clock?”
It didn’t seem to dawn on Grey what he was being asked at first. Then, “Wait, a minute, you don’t—”
“Everybody we talk to gets asked that question,” Crawford said, putting up his hand.
Grey didn’t look insulted but instead pointed to his face. “See this golden tan? I was out at my pool. Gotta look good for my opening.”
“With anyone?” Ott asked.
“Nope. Solo.”
“Did anyone see you there? A pool cleaner. A gardener maybe?” Ott asked.
Grey shook his head. “You don’t really think—”
“Gotta ask,” Ott said.
Grey shrugged.
There was nothing more they needed to ask.
“Well, thanks for your time, Mr. Grey,” Crawford said, getting to his feet. “Maybe we could do you a favor.”
“What’s that?” Grey asked.
“We have a key to Mimi Taylor’s condo,” Crawford said. “If you want, you could stop by our station at 345 South County when you want to pick up your paddleboard.”
“Hey, that’s really nice of you,” Grey said, suddenly casual. “You find anything helpful at Mimi’s?”
“No, not really,” Crawford said.
“Well, that’s too bad,” Grey said, slipping back into his loafers. “So, I might swing by your station tomorrow or the next day.”
“Just give us a call before,” Crawford said, shaking Grey’s hand and handing him a card. “And good luck with the opening.”
Ott nodded, and they walked out into the gallery, waving goodbye to Melinda and Todd. Then they went outside and onto the sidewalk.
“What did you think?” Crawford asked.
“He didn’t react much when y
ou asked about Modigliani and mentioned the specific painting.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Ott reached the car and hit the clicker. “What was the plan when you offered him the key to Mimi Taylor’s condo? I could see something shifty going on in your brain.”
Crawford laughed. “I was thinking there might be something there that we didn’t spot that he wants. And not a paddleboard. I’m thinking about getting the boys at Sun-Tech to install a few cameras.”
A big smile spread across Ott’s face, and he gave Crawford a fist bump. “Always something up your sleeve, bro.”
“And if Grey doesn’t take that paddleboard, maybe I’ll give it a go.” He grabbed a fold of skin on his stomach. “Getting a little squishy in my core, don’t ya know.”
Fifteen
The dry-erase board hung vertically on the far wall of Crawford’s office, facing him and his desk. Ott was standing next to it with an orange Expo low-odor marker in hand. The board was four feet high and three feet wide, and there was plenty of room to write the names of suspects and people to be interviewed.
Under Suspects, Ott, who had by far the better handwriting, had written Art Nunan, Johnny Cotton, Stark Stabler, and Lowell Grey. Buddy Lester had not been included on the list because both Crawford and Ott had found him convincing when he’d told them he’d never been to Palm Beach.
Ott had gone to the Palm Beach Kennel Club and found two men who said that Art Nunan was at the dog track when the murder took place. But, one admitted to drinking a lot that day and, under pressure from Ott, the second one said Nunan gave him ten bucks to say he was there at the time.
Johnny Cotton, who had been working close to the murder scene when it happened, made for a weak suspect because of the very tight window between when his fellow landscapers went to get lunch and when they returned twenty minutes later. Not to mention, his convincing lack of art knowledge. Nevertheless, they definitely weren’t ruling him out.
Both Crawford and Ott agreed that Stabler and Grey were their prime suspects.
Crawford took his cell phone out of his pocket. “Just had a thought,” he said to Ott, dialing the phone.
“Hey, Rose, it’s Charlie. Mind if I put you on speaker? I got Mort here, so keep it clean.”
“Yeah, none of the usual bawdy stuff,” Ott said.
“I’ll try.”
“We need to ask you about Lowell Grey,” Crawford said.
“Didn’t I mention him to you before?” Rose asked.
“Yes. ‘Too much money and too much time to screw around’ were your exact words.”
“That about says it. And now he’s going into the gallery business.”
“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about. He doesn’t exactly strike me as a dedicated art lover.”
There was a pause at the other end. “Here’s all you need to know about Lowell Grey, the man’s a dilettante. He probably knows enough about art to tell the difference between a Van Gogh and a Warhol, but that’s about it. Just like he probably knows the difference between a polo pony and a cow.”
Ott laughed.
“Just sayin’,” Rose said. “Though I did hear that the man might have some unusual sexual proclivities.”
“What’s a proclivity?” Ott asked.
Rose laughed. “So Charlie taught you how to play dumb too, huh, Mort?”
“Nah, it comes natural.”
“But what’s with his opening a gallery?” Crawford asked.
“His latest fad. He’s got some young guy who’s going to run it and do all the heavy lifting. Lowell gets to bloviate about his gallery at cocktail parties. He’s a forty-five-year-old guy who thinks he’s still got to impress women.”
“I’m a fifty-one-year-old guy who can’t,” Ott said, wistfully.
“You’re doing just fine,” Rose said.
“He said he was trying to get back together with Mimi Taylor,” said Crawford.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Rose said.
“You ever hear about him mistreating women, anything like that?” asked Ott.
“There was something…a long time ago,” Rose said. “Up in New York, I think.”
Crawford leaned forward in his chair. “What happened?”
“I remember it was in Page Six” —the famous gossip column in the New York Post. “It was like something inspired by that Marquis de Sade weirdo.”
“Really?” Crawford said. “Be a little more specific?”
“Sorry,” Rose said. “I can’t. Can’t you go back into the annals of Page Six?”
Crawford already knew that was a job he was going to foist off on Ott. “What else, Rose?”
“He’s really vain.”
“I can see his tan’s pretty important to him,” Crawford said. “What else?”
“Oh, Jesus, where do I start?” Rose said. “Well, for one thing, he posts his workout schedule on Facebook. Like who would possibly care? And speaking of Facebook, he’s the king of selfies. All these stupid poses…like that Zoolander guy.”
“All right, Rose,” Crawford said. “As always a fountain of knowledge on a myriad of subjects.”
“Are you cutting me off just when I was getting rolling?”
“Much as we’d like to sit around and shoot the breeze with you—”
“I know, I know, you got a murder to solve.”
“Yes, but thanks for everything,” Crawford said.
“Yeah, thanks, Rose,” Ott said.
“You’re always welcome. Bye, boys.” She clicked off.
“Piece of work, huh?” Crawford said.
“Piece,” Ott said.
Ott went and looked into the Page Six story about Lowell Grey. A half hour later he came back and had a copy of the story with a date handwritten on it of 3/14/2011.
“Back when you were a wee lad in the big city, Charlie,” Ott said.
“That was a couple years before I left,” Crawford said, referring to his stint in the NYPD.
“Too bad you never hung with Lowell and the gang,” Ott said, “they were getting it on with a bunch of lady wrestlers.”
“What?”
Ott handed him the copy of the Page Six article. “Can’t make this shit up.”
Crawford started reading it. Men from prominent families and posh boarding school backgrounds have recently found amusement far from their exclusive athletic and social clubs on Park Avenue. A group of young financiers, bankers, and ad executives are known to have regularly frequented a decidedly un-tony Lower East Side spot called 98 Lady Wrestlers (the number apparently refers to the address at 98 Broome Street, as opposed to the number of wrestlers in the enterprise). The main feature of the club’s activities is to wrestle naked with the women wrestlers, some of whom were reported to weigh in excess of 250 pounds. Apparently, the men were rarely victorious, which according to one participant, the polo player Lowell Grey, was ‘what made it such a hoot.’
It went on for another paragraph, but that was enough for Crawford.
Ott saw the look on his partner’s face. “Exactly,” he said. “What the fuck, right?”
Crawford was shaking his head in confusion. “Yeah, I mean…wrestling with naked women who weigh twice as much as you? I mean, how the hell would that be a fun source of entertainment?” He exhaled, still shaking his head. “I always thought these guys just played a mean game of squash.”
Sixteen
The next morning at Mimi Taylor’s condo, Crawford met up with a man he’d worked with before, Mel of Sun-Tech Systems. The only instructions he gave Mel, who was very good at what he did, was to put an “eye” on the whole apartment and hide the cameras well. Mel, who was not much for conversation, nodded and started working.
In the meantime, Crawford first checked to see if there was, in fact, a paddleboard on Mimi Taylor’s balcony. There was. Maybe that really was the reason Lowell Grey wanted to get into her condo. But maybe not.
Next, he spent an hour and twenty minutes going over every sq
uare inch of the twelve-hundred-square-foot space. He even went through every book in Mimi Taylor’s four shelves of books, having once found a note inside one that was key to solving a murder.
While he was on his iPad checking emails at the kitchen table, Mel came up behind him.
“Okay, Charlie, time to play hide ’n seek.”
Crawford went from room to room and finally spotted a camera peeking up over a piece of cove molding. “You’d have to be looking for it to see it,” Crawford said. “This guy’s not gonna be. Great work as always, Mel.”
Crawford figured he’d kill two birds with one stone. For one thing, he missed Dominica McCarthy. Of course, he had the power to remedy that situation. Like dial his cell phone and ask her out for a drink. Or dinner. Or both. Nothing difficult about that. Nothing except the fact that the charge of “Mr. Noncommittal” had recently been hurled at him and the possible truth to the allegation had shaken him up a little.
Or maybe his inaction had something to do with the still simmering failure of his fourteen-year marriage in New York—or what he referred to as eight and a half years of marital bliss and five and a half years of pure, unadulterated hell. It was a subject he tended not to speak about with anyone. The prospect of failing again had put the fear of God in him. At one point in the last year, he had actually thought about asking Dominica to marry him. Well, more accurately, he had floated a trial balloon and had actually gotten what appeared to be the green light…but then he’d just kind of chickened out.
Aside from the personal, Dominica was, professionally, a damn good person to bounce ideas off of. Maybe it was the female perspective. Maybe it was simply because she was really smart. In any case, with both the personal and professional in mind, he decided to head down to where the crime scene evidence techs were located in the Palm Beach Police building.
And there—looking like a million bucks—she was. The first thing you noticed was her dark complexion, then the pronounced cheekbones, which made her cheeks look sunken, then her dazzling green eyes.
