by Tom Turner
Magwood nodded. “I was just going over to Palm Beach to pay my respects to his wife.”
Crawford nodded. “According to what we’ve heard, you knew him about as well as anyone.”
“Well, I knew him longer than anyone. Plus, of course, I worked for him.”
Crawford nodded. “For how long?”
Magwood scratched the three-day growth on his chin. “Somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years. Back in Louisville, a little 500-watt station, I did the grunt work and he did the talking.”
Sounded like that was still the case until yesterday, Crawford thought. “So I have a question: when Mulcahy and you prepared for his shows, what exactly was involved in that?”
Magwood looked blank.
“I mean, Mulcahy didn’t just get on the air and wing it, or did he?” Crawford asked.
“Well, actually he kinda did, but not always,” Magwood said, shifting from one leg to the other.
“How do you mean?” Ott asked.
“Well, basically, we’d put together a list of subjects. Say like, ‘Obama-ISIL’ or ‘Hilary-Vince Foster’, then he’d pretty much wing it from there. Like talk about how Obama was the only guy in the world to call ISIS ISIL. Or how Hilary was behind Vince Foster’s suicide.”
“So what about when he got talking about local guys and how bad their stock fund was or them cheating at golf?”
“You mean Ainsley Buttrick and Sam Pratt?” Magwood said with a grin.
“Yeah, exactly.”
“Sometimes they’d be on the list, and sometimes he’d just—outta the blue—rip ‘em a new one.”
“So like maybe, ‘Obama-ISIL, Hilary-Vince Foster, Pratt-golf?’”
Magwood scratched his chin again. “Somethin’ like that.”
“And these guys—like Pratt and Buttrick—did Mulcahy ever talk to you about being scared of either one of ‘em? Or think they might’ve wanted to kill him?”
Magwood gave his chin one more scratch. “’Cause of things they said, you mean?”
“Yeah, exactly,” Crawford said.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Magwood said. “It was just guys getting pissed off at each other—the way they do. You know how it is. Even that guy Church who actually did threaten to pop him, I’m pretty sure Knight didn’t take him too seriously.”
Crawford nodded, looked over at Ott, then started to get up. Next batter?
Ott cocked his head. “Was there a list of subjects for next week, by any chance? People who Knight was planning to talk about next?”
“Well, Trump as usual,” Magwood said.
“How about local people?” Ott asked.
“I remember Juke Jackson was on the list,” Magwood said. “Knight played golf with the guy, said he was like incredibly good. Hustled Knight out of a couple grand. Turned out he’s a three-handicap or something. He kinda forgot to tell Knight that.”
Crawford shook his head. He knew Juke Jackson had recently bought a house in Palm Beach, but a three handicap? His idol had just gone up another notch.
“Yeah,” Magwood said. “Three-hundred-yard drives…guy can play.”
“Really,” Crawford said, admiringly.
Magwood nodded his head. “Oh, also, this guy Earl Hardin was on the list, and Sam Pratt again.”
Ott wrote down ‘Earl Hardin’ and looked up, “Who’s Earl Hardin?” he asked.
“I don’t really know,” Magwood said. “A guy who lives around here.”
“About Pratt? What was he going to talk about this time?” Crawford asked.
Magwood shrugged. “Don’t really know that either,” he said. “Knight didn’t fill me in, but something about a play, I think.”
“A play?” Crawford asked.
“Sorry, that’s all I know,” Magwood said.
“So,” Ott jumped in, “knowing him as well as you did, what’s your theory about who might’ve killed him?”
“I been racking my brain since it happened,” Magwood said.
“When did you first hear?” asked Ott.
“Last night. About two in the morning. His son Paul called me.”
“Pretty broken up, huh?” Ott asked.
Magwood thought for a second, then cocked his head. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he said. “But ol’ Pawn sounded kinda…I don’t know, relieved.”
Eight
Crawford was in a booth at Three Petes having lunch by himself.
The Pete with the comb-over and gimpy leg—not to be confused with the short, squatty one, or the one with the purple birthmark on his face—had just served him a bowl of clam chowder and a Caesar salad.
He was digesting his food along with everything else he had just heard related to the murder of Knight Mulcahy and was ninety percent sure he hadn’t talked to the murderer yet.
He looked around the restaurant and took in his fellow diners. A casually-dressed, blue-haired woman in her eighties who he guessed had probably shrunk a few inches over the last ten years. Four women in halter tops and clingy sun dresses in their thirties, yakking away non-stop all at once. One had looked over at him a couple of times, winking once. A distinguished man—fifties or sixties—in a double-breasted blue blazer over a white sports shirt. Hmmm, Crawford thought, looking twice at the jacket. But it wasn’t like he could go up and ask him if he had been to any good cocktail parties lately.
He leaned back and thought about his two years in Palm Beach. Mostly good. Sometimes bizarre. His thoughts came in a wave; Palm Beach was kind of a town that was hard to describe. Beautiful, big houses, often way-over-the-top in their grandiosity and look-at-me ostentatiousness. Incredible, lush landscapes everywhere you looked, but almost obscene when you figured what it all cost and started thinking about the homeless just across the bridge in West Palm. Not that Crawford was about to get preachy or sanctimonious.
Also—he wondered—was there a cleaner place in America than Palm Beach? You really could, as the old cliché went, eat off the streets. And pity the poor guy on the beat-up bike, who you’d see in many other towns, going around looking for cans. Trying to fill up his Hefty trash bag and get a nickel for each one. He’d be lucky to find two cans in a whole day in Palm Beach. The streets were just so damn immaculate. It was almost as if some higher authority had decreed that if you dropped a candy-bar wrapper on the side walk, you’d be put in prison for life.
His mind was a million miles away when he heard the familiar voice right behind him.
“Hey, hot shot, couldn’t find anyone to break bread with?”
He smiled up at Rose Clarke and patted the banquette next to him. “Just sitting here, hoping you might happen along.”
Rose was a five-foot-ten blonde who prided herself on being gym-trim and tight. She was also—at least as far as Crawford’s unscientific ranking system went—in the top one percent of the best-looking women in Southern Florida. And, far and away, the best real-estate agent in Palm Beach, with annual sales of high-end properties of more than three hundred million a year. Even going back to the bad old days in 2008. She had also been invaluable—a couple of times—in providing him with information about people who had factored into murder cases. If you wanted the scoop, Rose was the one to talk to.
“What’s the good word, Charlie?” she asked, sliding into the booth and seeing the headline of his Palm Beach Post. “So the Mouth of the South is no longer with us. Quelle dommage.”
That was another thing about Rose—the girl was blunt. Particularly about people she didn’t like.
“Did you know him?”
“Too well. He bought his house from me,” she said. “Hondled on the price, on the commission, on the attorney’s fee, you name it.”
Crawford shook his head. “That’s amazing. With his kind of money?”
“Some of the cheapest men I know are some of the richest.”
“Guess that’s how they got that way.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, come on,” she said. “He was just cheap to be cheap.”
>
“You gonna have something or just pick on those who can’t defend themselves?” Crawford said. “I’m buying, by the way.”
Crawford flagged down the short, squatty Pete.
He came over, pad in hand. “Just the house salad, Pete, with gorgonzola, please,” she said.
“You got it, Ms. Clarke,” he said and walked away.
“Sure is easy,” Rose said. “Everyone who works here named Pete.”
Crawford pointed at the Post. “Okay, out with it: your theory about who killed Mulcahy. I’m sure you spent a good part of this morning while doing your Downward Dog chewing it over.”
“You know me too well,” she said. “I’ve gotten too damn predictable.”
“Yeah, and my prediction is you have a laundry list of possible suspects.”
“More like half of Palm Beach,” Rose said. “Paul Mulcahy wants his inheritance; Jacqui…ditto; Brewster Collett wants to marry Jacqui; Chuffer Church got screwed by him and couldn’t stand him; Lila Moline was sick of him stringing her along. I mean, Christ, even the damn mayor had a motive.”
“Whoa, whoa, slow down, you’re going way too fast,” Crawford said.
“I was just getting started,” said Rose.
“Okay, first of all, who is Brewster Collett?”
“A formerly rich guy who lost his inheritance and is one of Jacqui Mulcahy’s toy boys. I heard he tried to get Jacqui to divorce Knight but she told him she’d only get three million bucks if she did.”
“So Mulcahy had her on a tight little pre-nup?”
“Exactly,” said Rose, “but if he died, she got half.”
“His son Paul gets the other half?”
“Paul and his spoiled-rotten sister.”
“Gotcha,” said Crawford. “Okay, so Lila Moline, who’s she? Never heard that name before.”
“She runs a little antique shop on South County and Worth. Les Trucs, it’s called. Overpriced French junk.”
“Yeah, but who is she?”
“One of Knight’s girlfriends,” said Rose. “The one he promised he’d divorce Jacqui and marry.”
“Knight and Jacqui had the proverbial marriage-made-in-heaven, I see,” Crawford said. “How’d you find this out about Lila Moline, I mean?”
“Same way I find out everything. Drink less than the people I’m with and listen really well. But in her case, she got drunk one night and told an agent I work with the whole squalid story.”
Rose’s salad showed up. “Thanks, Pete. Looks di-vine.”
Pete nodded, smiled and walked away.
“You said Jacqui’s ‘boyfriends’ and Knight’s ‘girlfriends’…plural.”
“Yeah?”
“So are you saying—”
“I’m saying, by my last count, Knight had three and she had two. But that could be low.”
Crawford shook his head. “Really?”
“Really.” Rose tore into her salad.
“What about this guy Jacqui Mulcahy told me about, some mook who goes around crashing cocktail parties?”
Rose laughed. “I love it when you use those colorful detective words,” she said. “The mook you’re talking about is the man in the double-breasted blue blazer.”
“Yeah, exactly. What do you know about him?” Crawford asked.
“Not much,” Rose said. “But I’ve probably seen him at least a dozen cocktail parties. Guy gets around. Wait, you’re not thinking he could be your man?”
“I don’t know,” Crawford said. “I’d at least like to question him. You never caught his name, did you?”
“I think it’s John,” Rose said. “But, sorry, absolutely no idea what his last name is.”
Crawford took a slow pull on his water. “And the mayor? You mentioned her. How’s she factor into this little soap opera?”
“I heard one time when Knight got a fifty-dollar parking ticket he went into a long rant about how corrupt the Palm Beach local government was,” Rose said. “Called her a greedy dyke or something subtle like that.”
Crawford shook his head. “Jesus, the guy was a real loose cannon,” he said. “But I don’t think I need to put her on my interview list.”
Rose nodded and put down her fork. “Yeah, probably not. Still, I can guarantee you there weren’t a lot of tears shed in this town in the last couple of days.”
“How about you? What was your feeling about the guy? Aside from him being a world-class hondler.”
Rose laughed. “Hey, I could be a suspect, too, I guess,” she said, leaning forward. “Supposedly he told a bunch of his pals in the Poinciana locker room I was a lousy real-estate broker.”
“Based on what?” Crawford asked. “I mean, you sell half the houses in Palm Beach.”
“How the hell do I know? Based on the fact that I didn’t laugh at one of his lame jokes maybe,” Rose said. “Or suck up to him so he wouldn’t rip me on his show.”
She took another big bite.
By the time they left Three Petes, Crawford literally had—not including the mayor or Rose herself—between four and five new suspects. Granted, some of them were long shots, but they all seemed worth checking out.
Crawford walked up to Ott’s cubicle at the station house and heard him on the phone.
“Thanks,” Ott said. “And no DNA to speak of?”
Then Ott nodded a few times. “Okay, so let me know if you run across anything in ballistics. Yeah, I know the serial number was filed off the weapon, but maybe you’ll come up with something else.”
Pause. “Yeah, I know. Thanks anyway.”
Ott looked up at Crawford. “Evidence techs are comin’ up empty.”
“Given the lack of prints from the scene, I’m not surprised.”
“But I got something good,” said Ott. “You know how our boy Chuffer said that movie was on from nine to eleven. He watched it, then lights out.”
Crawford nodded.
“Well, I checked and it actually was on from seven to nine,” Ott said. “But the best part is I got him on a security cam coming out onto North Lake Way at 10:05.”
“Well, well,” Crawford said, “guess we need to show up on ol’ Chuffy’s doorstep again.”
Ott nodded. “Yeah, find out where he was headed in that sweet little Aston-Martin.”
Nine
Algernon Poole, tall, poised and striking-looking, walked into Jacqui Mulcahy’s drawing room. The room was mainly browns and dark blues and seemed appropriate colors for the room of one deep in mourning. But Jacqui was pretty much over her husband’s death two nights ago and seemed to have moved on.
Jacqui stood up and gave Algernon a kiss on the lips, then threw her arms around him.
After a moment, Algernon pulled back. “Everything okay with you, my love?”
“Yeah, it’s just going to be an endless parade of accountants and lawyers for a while,” she said, sitting back down.
“Then what?” he asked, sitting down next to her.
“Then I thought I might go on a little cruise,” she said. “There’s this Cunard Northern Europe and British Isles one I’ve been dying to go on. Kept trying to get Knight to go but he didn’t want to take a week off and have lousy weather.”
“It’s not always like that,” Algernon said. “When would you go?”
“Just as soon as I get my gazillions,” Jacqui said. “And if you’re nice to me, maybe I’ll have a ticket for you. You could watch your ancestral castle pass by from the Sandringham suite on the Queen Mary 2.”
“That sounds lovely,” Algernon said, “only problem is, the ‘ancestral castle’ is about thirty miles inland.”
“Ah, too bad,” said Jacqui, “I was reading about the suites on the boat—they’re actually duplexes. They look absolutely huge.”
“Well, then, what are you waiting for? Sign me up.”
Jacqui smiled and leaned into Algernon. He put his arm around her and kissed her hard and long. After a minute, Jacqui went over to the French doors, closed them and turned the lo
ck. She walked across the room, gave him a ‘come hither’ signal with her long, skinny finger and went toward a tufted chaise longue sofa, shedding her clothes along the way. When she got to the chaise, she was completely naked and he had to catch up.
Then she smiled, lay back, and said. “Take me, oh noble prince.”
Algernon wondered whether that was a line from Shakespeare or Monty Python as he lowered himself down on her.
He was smoking an English Oval and had a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Just like in the movies, huh?” Jacqui said.
“What do you mean?” Asked Algernon.
“A fag after a shag. Knight would kill me if I let anyone smoke in the house.”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Algernon said.
Jacqui laughed. “Nothing can hurt him now,” she said, looking away in thought. “So what would you think if I offered you the same job you have, but paid you twice as much as what the Millers pay you.”
“How do you know what they’re paying me?”
“I have my spies.”
“So how much?”
“$125,000,” Jacqui said.
Algernon Poole was not that easy to get. “Yes, but my Christmas bonus was another $25,000.”
“Okay, fine, so make it three hundred thousand,” Jacqui said. “And you won’t have to wear an evening dress coat and striped trousers like Nancy makes you do. Plus, I promise, I won’t refer to you as my manservant.”
“How very 21st century of you.” Algernon stubbed out his Oval in an ashtray that looked as though it had never been used before. “Nancy, or milady as she insists I call her, has been trying to recreate Downton Abbey in that tacky Beaux-Arts Mediterranean house of hers. Which, let me assure you, I can’t wait to put in the rear-view mirror.”
“So you accept my offer?”
“Three hundred thousand and I get to boff the hot-blooded mistress of the manor,” Algernon said. “Are you kidding? No sane man would ever refuse that.”
Jacqui leaned forward and kissed him again. “Good,” then pulling back, “I have a question for you.”