The Palm Beach Murders

by James Patterson

  He held a handful of tickets for the third race and threw in a cartoon madman’s laugh. Who wouldn’t smile at an act like that? He looked cute, dressed casually in a polo shirt and jeans. This was just another one of his surprises, and I had never been to a horse-racing track before.

  Marty knew I loved horses but had been avoiding the polo fields of Wellington because I didn’t want to risk running into Brennan. I had casually mentioned it the evening before as we shared a bottle of wine on the beach. That was when he’d come up with this perfect alternative. We’d left this morning for the track in Hallandale Beach. It was a nice ride, about an hour away, and on a weekday, the place wasn’t too crowded. The hot dogs were good and the beer was cold. Marty had managed to sweep me off my feet once again.

  When the starting gun sounded, the gates opened and the horses burst out like water from a broken dam. It didn’t bother me that there weren’t enough people around to make the cheers sound thrilling; I screamed for our horse anyway. We’d put no real thought into making a dozen bets on a horse named Sullivan’s Dream. Marty had showed me how to bet on the horse by itself, as well as in combination with other horses, and now we were about to see the result of our leap of faith.

  Everything looked good until the third turn, where our horse slowed considerably, and before the race had been decided officially, we realized we were out of the money. Marty said, “Had enough of horses for the day?” He scooped up the losing tickets and stuffed them into his pocket.

  “What did you have in mind?” It was warm, and I didn’t mind the idea of avoiding Broward County rush hour.

  A few minutes later, I found myself on the shuttle heading toward the far reaches of the sprawling parking lot and my white Volvo S-60.

  Marty said, “I’ll drive, if you don’t mind.”

  I smiled as I thought about what a gentleman he was. Then we slipped onto I-95 and started cruising north.

  I said, “This is great. Just what I needed. A few hours away from Palm Beach.” I realized that was the opposite of the opinion most people held.

  Marty kept his eyes on the road as he said, “Glad you liked it.”

  “What would you like to do now?”

  He thought about it for a few seconds and then said tentatively, “I have a game in mind.”

  “Anything you want. You’ve definitely earned it.”

  Marty just gave me one of his smiles and didn’t say anything else. I was content with that. We let Adele’s music fill our silence as we zipped along the interstate northbound. I didn’t say a word when we passed our exit. Marty had already proved that his surprise trips were always worth the effort.

  When we were more than an hour past Palm Beach, I finally said, “Is this all part of your game or are you lost?”

  He kept a smile as he said, “All part of the game.”

  “Want to fill me in?”

  He just smiled, and I liked it. He looked a little nervous, with his fingers thumping on the steering wheel and his constant shifting in the seat. I didn’t really know what it meant, but I was willing to go along with the game.

  We pulled off the interstate and took the long road east until we were on the edges of the city of Vero Beach.

  I said, “Okay, I can guess that this game has something to do with your ex-wife. She lives here, right?”

  Marty nodded. “She does. You still in?”

  “Sure, I said I’ll play.”

  “Then do me a favor and reach back into my jacket on the rear seat.”

  I twisted and reached for the Windbreaker and immediately felt something heavy in the pocket. I pulled out the pistol and held it up.

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  Marty grinned and said, “If you think it’s the pistol I took from Brennan’s closet.” He made it sound innocent, like it was a shoe he had taken.

  “What’s it for?” I kept my voice as even as possible.

  “Our game.”

  “What’s the game?”

  “It’s called scare the shit out of my ex-wife, Teal.” He kept driving, taking a few turns, and said, “Come on, it’ll be good for a laugh.”

  I didn’t say yes or no as we parked on a short cul-de-sac a few blocks from the ocean.

  Marty pointed at one of the three houses on the right side of the road. A vacant lot took up the space on each side of it, separating it from the houses next door. “That’s her house.”

  It was nice. Nothing like my old house, but it was clean and cute. A short walk to the beach. I was getting nervous as I considered all the crazy things that could happen. But I didn’t want to let Marty down, and frankly I was curious as to how he’d scare her. He was a smart guy. I was certain he had put some thought into this.

  A brown Audi whipped down the street, then pulled into the driveway.

  Marty said, “And heeeeere’s Teal.” Then he looked at me and said, “Are you sure you want to play? I could really use the help.”

  I hesitated, then blocked out all the reasons I should say no. Instead I said, “Yeah, I’ll play.”

  Chapter 23

  Marty explained my part of his plan quickly, and I just nodded like a robot. It all sounded crazy to me. All I had to do was distract his ex-wife and he would do the rest. I still had no idea how badly he was going to scare her, but somehow, the idea was enticing. Maybe it was because I wanted to scare Brennan badly that I agreed to go along with everything. This was as close as I could get for now.

  We both slipped out of the car, and Marty darted toward a row of bushes that would keep him out of sight. I just started to walk slowly down the street in the direction of Teal’s house. I noticed that of the few houses, one of them was empty, with a For Sale sign in the yard, and another house on the corner had no cars in its gravel driveway. On the other side of the street, where we were parked, there were no houses, just the rear of a church soccer field.

  Teal was unloading groceries and had to make a couple of trips from the front door to her open trunk.

  When I was on the street in front of her house, I got my first good look at Marty’s ex-wife. She was a beauty: tall, with a creamy complexion and long, wavy hair. I realized I had never seen a picture of her. I’d done a little snooping on Facebook, but she had no profile.

  She noticed me, and I felt my stomach jump. My pulse was racing. I wasn’t sure I liked this game.

  Teal stared at me for a moment. That pushed me to say, “Hi, I, umm, I’m sorry to bother you, but I just had a stupid flat tire. I was hoping there might be someone who could give me a hand.” Marty had said to distract her, but I really hadn’t put much thought into it. I hoped this was doing the trick. I figured he’d just slip into the house or do something equally juvenile.

  Teal said, “I don’t think I’d be much help, but we can call someone. There’s a service station less than a mile away.”

  She didn’t sound anything like I’d thought she would. Her voice was warm, and she genuinely seemed interested in helping me. That was a stark contrast to the portrait Marty had painted for me of his ex-wife. She was wearing a simple yellow floral print sundress and looked like a suburban mom who’d brought her kids back home from soccer practice. Suddenly I didn’t like the idea of helping Marty scare her.

  Teal took a few steps past her open trunk toward me and was just about to say something else when Marty burst out of the bushes and stepped into the yard next to the driveway.

  If this was his prank, it worked. Teal jumped and squealed, turning to face her ex-husband. Then she said, “Martin? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Right at that point, I realized the game was already spiraling out of control.

  Chapter 24

  Now that Marty was out of the bushes and ready to confront his ex-wife, I didn’t see where the real scare was. He didn’t have the gun in his hand, and they immediately started to bicker. It was really more awkward than scary, and I have to say I was disappointed by the outcome.

  Marty even looked a little
confused as Teal started to make her points.

  She said, “All you do is complain to me about not being able to pay alimony. How you’re so busy you don’t have a free minute in the day. But somehow you have time to drive all the way up here from West Palm Beach with your bimbo? That doesn’t make any sense, Martin.”

  Marty just stared at her for a moment, and in all honesty, I felt embarrassed for him. Then he said, “Do you have any idea how you sound? How you are more like a shrieking bird than an actual woman? You’ve never even met Christy. How dare you call her a bimbo.”

  “Really, Martin? Really? You’re at my house, where I moved to get away from your crazy jealousy and stalking, and now you’re lecturing me on jumping to conclusions about a woman I’ve never met?”

  Then Teal looked at me. She did not have the scared, confused expression I had been expecting. Instead she said, “Are you part of his plan? You seem bright enough. How did he trick you? Did you just get sucked in slowly to his crazy schemes? It’s easy, I know. Everything seems normal until all of a sudden you realize he has no boundaries. His concept of reality is very different than it is for the rest of us. My advice to you would be to run. Just like I did. But apparently I didn’t run far enough.”

  Teal turned back to Marty and said, “Congratulations, Martin, way to impress your new girlfriend. Now, I’ve got a lot to do, so if you’ll excuse me, I need to finish bringing in these groceries.”

  That felt like a pretty definitive end to our little escapade. I knew Marty wanted the experience to last. He wanted to see fear on her face and maybe expected her to be jealous of me. I’d never really been clear on the goal, but now I could see that coming here had been a mistake. His plan to scare her just hadn’t worked out.

  Marty reached behind his back, and when his right hand came in front of him he was holding the pistol. I have no idea how badly it scared Teal, but at that moment, I was in absolute shock. I could feel the acid in my stomach back up into my throat. I had never seen a gun pointed at a person before except on TV. I could feel my knees starting to get shaky.

  Marty wasn’t wearing his normal good-natured smile. He shouted, “You know why I came all the way up here?”

  Teal was mesmerized by the gun as she took a step away from Marty. The pretty yellow sundress fluttered in the breeze, but I could see Teal’s legs start to shake. Was this the moment Marty had been looking for? Was the terror he was causing his ex-wife enough for him? It was for me.

  Teal held both hands out in front of her and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, Martin, but this has gone far enough. Put the gun away and we’ll forget about this whole stupid encounter.”

  That sounded good to me. Maybe we hadn’t ruined everything. I was about to tell Marty that I wanted to leave when I heard two loud pops. They dissipated in the wide-open space and didn’t sound the way I thought gunshots should sound, but the noise, coupled with the bright flashes from the barrel of the gun, told me Marty had snapped.

  For a moment, I just held my breath. Time felt like it had stood still. The two of them stood facing each other and hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d pulled the trigger. Then Teal slowly turned to face me and I could see two red stains on her pretty yellow floral print dress. One was just below her sternum and the other was along the top of the dress, closer to her right arm.

  Teal’s mouth moved like she was trying to say something, but no words came out. For a moment I just heard an unsettling bubbling sound; then she kept turning until she fluttered to the hard gravel of the driveway in a heap. Her long hair drifted behind her and settled around her face like a soft blanket.

  Slowly I looked at Marty, who was still frozen in place with the gun out in front of him. He looked as if he was as surprised as anyone that the gun had gone off. But he still didn’t move. He just stared at the lump of flesh that was his ex-wife, Teal.

  Maybe I should’ve been in shock longer, but immediately the practical part of my brain kicked into gear. I’ll admit I had let out a quick scream as soon as Marty fired, but my first real thought was to wonder if anyone had heard the gunshots.

  I turned my head, quickly scanned the soccer field behind us, and saw that there was no one outside the church. There were those vacant lots on each side of Teal’s house, and when I looked up the street I saw nothing but one car passing on US 1. I didn’t think the sound of the shots would’ve carried very far. They’d happened so close together that it would be difficult for someone to pinpoint where they had come from.

  Taking everything in and making a quick assessment led me to yell at Marty, “We need to go, right now!”

  God forgive me, but it wasn’t until we were in my car and Marty was driving south on US 1 that I even thought about whether we should have checked Teal to see if she was still alive.

  Chapter 25

  “Holy shit, what have I done? Holy shit, what have I done?” Marty kept chanting that same phrase like it was some kind of mantra that would bring him back to reality. Or maybe it would keep him from reality. Because at this moment, as we tried to gain some perspective and figure out what we would do next, we knew that we were both involved in a murder.

  My car swerved as Marty overreacted to a car pulling up to a side street.

  I screamed, “What the hell are you doing? We need to draw less attention to ourselves, not more!” I immediately regretted being so sharp. I was on edge, and looking at Marty, who was perspiring uncontrollably and leaning into the steering wheel, I knew he was, too.

  He took the turn onto Kings Highway, and I knew we’d be cutting through some odd little neighborhoods just north of Fort Pierce.

  “Where are you going?” I asked with the stress still evident in my voice.

  “The turnpike.”

  “Listen, Marty, we have to take a deep breath and think this through. You want to go to a road that will photograph us entering and ping off my SunPass as we pay the toll? We need to stay on the back roads, or at most, get on I-95.”

  I could see that my words were registering with him. He said, “Do you think anyone saw us? It just sort of happened. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

  I felt like I was about to throw up. I’d never been involved in anything at all like this. I had talked to the cops more in the last couple of weeks than I had in my whole life combined. If I’d been counting on Marty being my rock, I could see I’d made a mistake. Even if I went to the police right now, I’d have to explain why I’d driven all the way up to Vero Beach with Marty and why we’d both fled the scene. This wouldn’t play out well in any courtroom. Now we had to jump in with both feet.

  Marty turned onto one of the main roads and then took the entrance ramp to I-95. I didn’t want to question his every move; he was already so far over the edge that I even wondered if he might pull the gun and use it on himself or maybe even on me. If we got stopped by a cop now, it would all be over. There was no way he’d be able to look calm with the way he was acting.

  “Speed up and get into the center lane. You’re drawing attention,” I snapped when I looked at the speedometer and saw that he was only going forty-eight miles an hour. Cars whizzed past us like we were parked.

  Marty mumbled something as he got into the flow of traffic. He was still staring straight ahead, and I tried to figure out how to get the gun from him. That would be a good first step. Eliminate the possibility of more murders or a suicide.

  I leaned over and patted him on the shoulder and rubbed his neck for a minute. He didn’t respond. The guy was a wreck. Then I let my hand drift down between the seat and his back until I felt the grip of the pistol tucked into his belt on the right side of his back.

  I didn’t say anything; I just pulled out the small semiautomatic pistol and slipped it into the console.

  Marty saw where I put the gun but didn’t say anything. I felt like I might have relieved some of the pressure he was feeling by taking the gun from him.

  I said, “Marty, we’re going to have to come up with a
decent alibi to get through this.”

  “I know, I know. I still can’t believe what just happened.”

  “The last place anyone can prove we visited was Gulfstream Park. I think I have one of the betting slips in my purse.”

  “I have a whole bunch crammed in my pocket.”

  “Good, good. We just say we stayed at the park until later in the afternoon, then took I-95 back to Palm Beach. We’ll make sure someone sees us as soon as we get into town. We can go to the Palm Beach Grill and have a drink. If we hurry, we can be there by five thirty and it will match up with leaving the racetrack about four.” I waited for some kind of response from my semicomatose boyfriend. Then I said, “We’re going to have a drink and gather ourselves. We won’t mingle with anyone unless we have to, but we at least want the bartenders to see us.”

  He took his eyes off the road and stared at me for a moment but didn’t say anything. I had to gasp and point at the slow Mazda in front of us to get him to look back at the highway and swerve into the right lane.

  “Trust me, babe, this is the only thing we can do.”

  He took the exit at Jupiter before I could say anything. He said, “I don’t know why, but I feel like it’s a better idea to drive down to US 1 here and then south to Palm Beach. Maybe it’s an instinct. Does that sound right to you?”

  Suddenly he sounded coherent and in control. “Yeah, that sounds good, Marty. Just keep cool and it’ll all work out. But there’s one other thing we need to talk about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No matter what happens, you know the police are going to talk to you, if for no other reason than the fact that you’re Teal’s ex-husband. You have to face them and be cool and composed during the whole meeting. They might come as soon as tonight. They’ll try to trip you up on details. You have to be careful with what you say.”

  “Talk to me about what? We’ve been at the track all day, then stopped for a drink at the Palm Beach Grill. I can account for almost every minute of my day.”