by Tom Turner
Crawford was the first to recover. “Are you saying he had friends who were skinheads?”
“Yeah, bashers,” Logan said, hitting his stride now. “See, Amir was like this super patriotic dude. Had American flags all over his room.”
“But he was Saudi Arabian,” Ott said, still trying to process the skinhead thing.
“Yeah, but he was always talking about dual citizenship,” Logan said.
“Wait, back to the skinhead thing,” Crawford said. “I didn’t know there were a lot of them around here.”
The dean nodded vigorously, like he had no idea there were any at all. Especially anywhere near his precious campus.
Logan glanced over at Sam, like it was his turn to kick in something.
“There were like three or four hardcore guys,” Sam, said in a squeaky voice.
“Skinheads?” Crawford asked.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “This one named Wayne was pretty bad. Got Amir to go to these rallies. You know, to protest the rallies, I mean.”
“Like…what kind of rallies?” Crawford asked.
“Uh, one called, Black Wives Matter, I think it was,” Sam said.
Crawford caught Ott out of the corner of his eye. Ott looked somewhere between amused and incredulous.
“Think you mean, Black Lives Matter, Sam,” the dean said.
“Yeah, guess that’s it,” said Sam.
“They’d get all disruptive and stuff,” Logan piped in. “Wayne and them.”
Crawford and Ott asked questions for another ten minutes. Getting a few more details about the skinheads and the rallies they protested.
Then, when they thought they had gotten all they were going to get, they terminated the interview and headed back to Palm Beach.
“That was totally bizarre,” Ott said, as they waited for the drawbridge over the Intracoastal to go down.
“Which part?”
“All of it,” Ott said. “Wonder what Uncle Jabbah thought of his nephew?”
“I doubt he knew the half of it.”
Ott nodded. “I mean the bedroom with all the flags,” he said. “Like Uncle Sam lived there or something.”
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Crawford said. “But like you said, the whole thing was weird. The skinhead thing being the cherry on top.”
“But the uncle, too,” Ott said. “I mean, the car collection. Did he strike you as a guy who knows the difference between a ‘66 GTO and a 2016 Bentley?”
“What are you thinking?” Crawford asked.
“Almost like he was trying to show how American he is.”
Crawford nodded. “Yeah, I hear ya.”
As they rolled up to the station, Crawford turned to Ott. “I’m gonna go talk to the riding instructor in Wellington.”
“You found out his name?”
“Yeah, my source left it on voicemail,” Crawford said.
“Your source, as in Rose,” Ott said.
“One of the definitions of a source, you don’t disclose their identity.”
“Even to me?”
“Especially to you,” Crawford said. “Why don’t you go to Cafe L’Europe. Check out the waiter there.”
Ott nodded as he opened the car door. “Gotta make a few calls, then I will.”
Crawford watched Ott walk toward the station and hit the accelerator.
Twenty minutes later he was in Wellington, a town in Florida you’d probably most likely go to if you were an equestrian or a polo player.
Jamie Delgatto was the name of the riding instructor. Crawford had tracked him down with help from Rose Clarke and set up the interview to take place at his stable at the Wellington Riding Academy.
Crawford had no idea how pungent a stable could be until he walked into it. He saw a man and a woman talking at the far end as he walked past a snorting chestnut-colored horse with a white patch between its eyes. He remembered riding a horse—just once in his entire life—and how he felt that it was an experience he never needed to repeat again. He never did feel in control. Plus, it hurt his crotch. And that smell…
The man, wearing tight beige pants and a red jacket, turned to him. “Detective Crawford?”
“Yeah, hi,” said Crawford, putting out his hand. “Mr. Delgatto?”
Delgatto shook his hand. “Yes,” he said. “And this is Fredrika Bloomquist.”
“Hi,” Fredrika said. “Detective, huh?”
“Yes,” Crawford said. “Palm Beach Police Department.”
“I see,” she said.
Fredrika Bloomquist was unclassically beautiful—eyes too close, nose too big—but somehow it all worked. Quite nicely, in fact. Incredible cheekbones, big, seductive lips, and long, flowing, dark brown hair.
“Well,” she said, turning back to Jamie after taking in Crawford. “I’m gonna run. Have a nice ride, Detective”—then glancing down at his khaki pants and loafers—“doesn’t look like the most comfortable riding outfit.”
“Thanks,” Crawford said. “But I’m staying on terra firma.”
“Well, nice to meet you,” she said then turning to Delgatto. “See you on Thursday, Jamie.”
Delgatto smiled and nodded.
He turned to Delgatto, who had a whisper of a smile on his face.
“One of my best riders,” he said.
Crawford just nodded. “So thanks for seeing me,” he said. “I’ll get right to it. You mind if we go outside?”
The horseshit was really getting to him.
Delgatto nodded. “No, not at all.”
They started walking. “I’m the lead detective on the Knight Mulcahy homicide,” Crawford said, watching for Delgatto’s reaction.
Delgatto looked away for a split second, but came right back to Crawford.
“I know you two were friends,” Crawford said, checking out Delgatto’s boots. They were average sized. “Were you at his party? The night he got killed.”
Delgatto nodded as they got outside of the barn. “I was, but I left pretty early,” he said. “Not exactly my scene.”
“What do you mean by that?” Crawford asked, happy to smell trees and flowers for a change.
“A little rich for my blood,” Delgatto said. “I’m not exactly in that league.”
“How long had you known Knight Mulcahy?”
“Just a couple of months.”
“And where did you meet?” Crawford asked.
Delgatto’s eyelashes started going like hummingbird’s wings.
“I met Knight at a bar.”
“What was the name of the bar?”
“Laddie’s in Boca,” Delgatto said. “It’s a gay bar. As you already knew, I’m gay.”
Crawford nodded. “So…let me get this straight: was Knight Mulcahy gay?”
Delgatto smiled a demure smile. “Knight Mulcahy was…curious.”
Twenty
Turned out—according to Ott—Renny, the waiter at Cafe L’Europe, was a size twelve. Furthermore, he had been a long way from Knight Mulcahy’s party, down in Key West for the night with one of his restaurant’s regulars.
Crawford went back to his office, took off his jacket, hung it on the hook behind his door and sat down in his chair.
He leaned back and thought about what he had. In two words, not much.
Two homicides and not one solid suspect for either one.
He had two interviews scheduled for later in the afternoon. The first one was with Tommy Sullivan, at whose house, according to Mike Dickerson, Sullivan and some friends watching a football game had come up with the odds on who killed Knight Mulcahy. He and Sullivan had played telephone tag for a while but finally had spoken and set a date. The second interview was with Jabbah Al-Jabbah, the uncle of Amir.
After a half an hour of follow-up and returning calls, Crawford stood up, got his jacket and headed to Tommy Sullivan’s house.
Sullivan lived in a big Mediterranean up on Emerald—not that there was any such thing as a small Mediterranean anywhere in Palm Beach.
Sullivan an
swered the door wearing gray flannel slacks and a pressed long-sleeved blue shirt that looked hot for the eighty-five-degree day.
“Come on in,” Sullivan said, one hand around a Perrier bottle. “Sorry we kept missing each other.”
“No problem,” Crawford said, following him into a large living room that had bright colored upholstered furniture everywhere. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“You’re welcome,” Sullivan said and he pointed to a comfortable looking club chair. Crawford sat down, then Sullivan sat down opposite him.
“So,” Sullivan said. “I know why you’re here. I’m not going to get in trouble for that pool of mine, am I? It was really just kind of a joke.”
Crawford shook his head. “Nah, no law against it. I just wondered if you knew something, or heard anything that my partner and I are not aware of concerning the death of Knight Mulcahy?”
“Probably not. I mean, I seriously doubt any of the guys in our pool did it, except maybe one guy I just added to it.”
Crawford’s head jerked up. “Who’s that?”
Sullivan lowered his voice, though it was hardly necessary. “This is definitely off the record, right?”
“Definitely.”
“Guy named Algernon Poole. He’s an English guy who’s a butler for Harold and Nancy Miller,” Sullivan said with a big grin. “You know what they say, right?
Crawford thought for a second. “Oh, you mean, the butler did it?”
“Exactly,” Sullivan said, nodding enthusiastically and taking a sip of his Perrier.
“I didn’t even know butlers were still around,” Crawford said.
“In Palm Beach? Oh, you bet they are,” Sullivan said. “A bunch of ‘em. He’s kind of this upper-crust guy. Born a baron, I heard.”
Crawford shrugged. “So tell me why you think he might have done it.”
“Harold Miller is in my regular golf foursome,” Sullivan said. “He told me one time, just out of the blue, that ol’ Algernon was banging—ah, having sex with—Jacqui Mulcahy.”
“O-kay. So—”
“So Harold’s theory is that Algernon may have seen a future in the relationship if Knight were…in the past.” Sullivan smiled as if proud of his accidental turn of phrase.
Crawford tapped the arm of the club chair, glanced out a big picture window, then his eyes drifted back to Sullivan. “That’s a pretty big leap, don’t you think? That this man Poole would assume Jacqui Mulcahy would marry him if Knight was out of the picture.”
“Except think about this: she puts him up to it. Says she’ll marry him if he kills Knight. Then Algernon kills him and she says, ‘Nah, I don’t think I want to marry you after all.’”
Other detectives Crawford had worked with over the years didn’t listen to amateur speculations, particularly about who a killer might be, but Crawford’s attitude was…bring it on. He’d listened to more than a few outlandish theories and found that listening stretched the boundaries of his own reasoning and had indirectly helped solve at least one or two cases over the years.
“So you’re thinking that was a way to have her cake and eat it too,” Crawford said. “Mulcahy’s dead, she’s got his money and she can stiff Algernon on her promise to marry him.”
Sullivan shrugged “Or marry him eventually,” he said. “You never know. She’d be a baroness.”
Crawford tapped his fingers faster and thought the only flaw in that was how Algernon would react if Jacqui reneged. Not happily, he guessed. Violently was another possibility.
Crawford got the sense Sullivan had a few more theories floating around in his head. “So any other thoughts?”
Sullivan nodded. “You didn’t ask, but Jacqui’s a pretty big drinker. And like a lot of other big drinkers, Jacqui’s tongue gets wagging after a few martinis. So, this one time, at a Garden Club meeting with my wife, where making bouquets is really just a good excuse to get together and pound cocktails, Jacqui dropped this bomb.”
Sullivan finished off his Perrier as Crawford just waited.
“Jacqui told the girls she caught Knight, quote-unquote, ‘doing his Bruce Jenner imitation—’”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Jacqui was away at her mother’s for the weekend and came home a day early and there was Knight dressed up in a halter top and a black mini-skirt shaving his legs in their bathroom.”
Crawford didn’t know how to react to that. “Really?” was the best he could come up with.
His first thought was to get Ott in the loop right away. He could imagine Ott’s reaction: he’d shake his head, look at him funny and say something like, ‘So you’re telling me the guy was bangin’ half the women in town and at the same time sashaying around in his wife’s Chanel suit?’
And Crawford would nod and say, ‘Yeah, pretty much.’
But before Crawford got Ott caught up on the latest, he wanted clarification on something Sullivan said earlier. “Going back to Algernon Poole, I don’t exactly see a butler—even a fancy one—being on the guest list at the Mulcahy party. Isn’t that a little like asking your neighbor’s landscaper over for dinner?”
Sullivan pondered that for a moment.
“Good point,” Sullivan said. “Except he also doubled as the Miller’s driver. So he definitely would have been there.”
Crawford nodded. “So, you mean, waiting for them in the car?” After a quick detour down to the pool house, Crawford wondered.
Crawford had managed to shoe-horn in Paul Mulcahy at the last minute. They were at the bar at the Poinciana. Crawford was drinking club soda with a slice of lemon.
“I’m not quite sure how to ask this question,” Crawford said, “so I may fumble around a little.”
Paul smiled and gestured with his hand. “Fumble away,” he said.
“Okay, about three months ago your father met a man at a gay bar in Boca…”
“Uh-huh, you mean Jamie Delgatto, the riding instructor.”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
Paul started nodding vigorously. “Okay, I get it now,” he said. “You were thinking Dad might have been playing on the other team.”
“Yeah, something like that,” Crawford said. “I mean when you say on the radio you’re ‘taking a walk on the wild side’ plus you’re going to gay bars…might lead one to that conclusion. But then Jamie Delgatto said he wasn’t. Gay, I mean.”
“Okay,” Paul said, holding up his hands, “explanation time. Right after that guy on Gawker outed that Silicon Valley executive for being gay, Dad got the idea.”
“Got what idea?” Crawford asked, taking a fast sip of his club soda.
“To out people who were in the closet in Palm Beach.”
Crawford, incredulous, shrugged. “I don’t get it. Why? Why would he do that?”
“Damn good question,” Paul said. “I think it had to do with Dad starting to lose market share on the show and deciding he wanted to get edgier, more controversial.”
“So…” Crawford was still having difficulty processing the concept, “the way to do that was to go to gay bars and see who was hangin’ out there?”
“He was more after the big fish in Palm Beach,” Paul said. “Like if he found out, I don’t know, Howard Stern way gay.”
The conversation was getting weirder by the second. “I think the man might be a lot of things,” Crawford said, “but I can pretty much guarantee you, he’s as heterosexual as it gets.”
“Yeah, I was just throwing out a name,” Paul said.
Crawford cocked his head. “So let me get this straight,” he started slowly, “your father posed as a gay man in order to…find other guys posing as heterosexuals who were, in fact, gay…or maybe bisexual. Then he was going to go announce that to the world on his show.”
“Yeah, well, you know, the ratings were down a little and—”
“You said that,” Crawford snapped, shaking his head. Then, maybe a little louder than he intended: “That is really pathetic.”
Paul looked chastened
and hung his head slightly. “Hey, wasn’t my idea.”
“I mean,” Crawford said, dropping his voice, “unbelievable. Just un-fucking-believable.”
Jabbah Al-Jabbah had asked Crawford to meet him at his club, the Royal & Alien. Crawford had done a ‘say what?’ when Ott first told him what the club’s name was six months before. Ott had shrugged and said simply, ‘What can I tell ya? That’s what they call it.’
Crawford pulled up under the porte-cochere of the club and was greeted by a smiling young guy in a crisp white sport shirt. Crawford hit the button that rolled down his window.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said the valet, “Can I park your car for you?”
“Sure,” Crawford said getting out. “Thanks.”
He walked inside and up to a reception desk manned by a slight woman with tinted glasses.
“Hi, I’m meeting with Jabbah Al-Jabbah,” he said.
“Oh, yes, sir. Mr. Crawford?”
“Yes.”
“He’s in the card room,” she said, pointing down a long hallway, “third door on your left.”
Crawford thanked her, turned, walked down the hallway and into the room. It had dark wallpaper and wasn’t much brighter than a coal mine. To the right, he saw six men at a table playing some kind of card game, to his left he saw Al-Jabbah reading the Wall Street Journal.
He walked up to him and Al-Jabbah looked up.
“Thanks for seeing me,” Crawford said.
Jabbah nodded then motioned to a heavily-padded brown leather chair next to him.
Crawford sat down.
“I just wanted to talk to you a little more about your nephew,” Crawford said. “We just don’t think the people who killed him were there to steal your Ferrari.”
“What do you think, then?” Al-Jabbah asked.
“A car like that is just too visible,” Crawford said. “Yes, someone could drive it into the back of a truck and keep it off the highway, but—going with your theory about putting it on a boat bound for South America—customs is gonna catch something like that nine out of ten times.”
“Okay, then what do you think their motive was?” Al-Jabbah asked.
“They were either there to kill Amir or you,” Crawford said.