Palm Beach Deadly

by Tom Turner

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Not long,” Rose said. “Maybe two weeks.”

  And there it was, Crawford realized: Knight Mulcahy was about to go public with the whole story. Spin it, probably, to make it seem he wasn’t such a dupe as he apparently had been, but in any case, make Sam Pratt out to be the sleaziest con artist who had ever walked the mean streets of Palm Beach. Not to mention probably have him prosecuted for swindling, defrauding, grifting, and whatever else he could come up with.

  Pratt’s days in Palm Beach would be numbered and his next residence would likely be a jail cell somewhere in a bad Florida neighborhood.

  Or maybe up in North Carolina, bunking in a cell next to fellow scam man Bernie Madoff.

  Forty-Four

  It was eight the next morning and Crawford was playing hurt. He wasn’t sure he did his best work the morning after imbibing at least a bottle of champagne all by himself, but he wasn’t about to tell Ott about it. He did fill him in about Sam Pratt’s phantom play, though, and Ott hung on his every word, much as Crawford had the night before. Ott shook his head a number of times and chuckled appreciatively at Pratt’s con-man creativity.

  Earlier, Crawford had called both Pratt and Earl Hardin and left messages for them to call him. He wasn’t going to hold his breath and unless he heard back from them by eleven or so, he and Ott were going to go to Pratt’s house and Hardin’s office.

  “I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about Hardin,” Ott said. “Here’s the problem I see: To cover his ass, he could just say he came up with a price for those little old ladies’ houses that needed work and the ladies were good with his prices. Then he had a buyer who specialized in fixing up old, beater houses. Happens every day, right?”

  Crawford shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. It’s probably no crime, but you sure as hell can make a case he was playing fast and loose with the ethics.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, so you make a shitload of money off of one little old lady…okay, maybe that doesn’t raise eyebrows. You do it five or six times over the course of a couple of years, that does. It’s pretty damn clear to me—and Rose Clarke—that he was taking advantage of their trust. And if the world suddenly finds out—”

  “Okay, but Pratt’s still my leading contender,” Ott said.

  “Mine, too,” Crawford said as his phone rang.

  Crawford didn’t recognize the number, but clicked the green circle. “Hello.”

  “Detective Crawford,” said a woman’s voice. “This is Laurie Pratt. I got your message on our landline and just wanted to tell you my husband is out of the country.”

  Crawford turned to Ott and mouthed, ‘Pratt’s wife.’ “Thanks for the call, Mrs. Pratt. And when will he be getting back?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she said. “He’s in Switzerland on business. He might be there for a while.”

  “Could you give me his cell phone number?” Crawford asked.

  “Ah, sure,” she said, reeling it off. “But he told me he doesn’t have very good service there. Kind of spotty.”

  “Okay,” Crawford said. “When he did leave?”

  “Yesterday morning,” she said.

  “Flew out of Miami, I assume?” Crawford asked.

  “Yes, ah-huh,” she said.

  “Well, thank you very much,” Crawford said. “When he calls, will you ask him to call me right away.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” she said. “I will. Goodbye, Detective.”

  Crawford hung up and looked out his window for a few seconds. Then, back at Ott. “I’m not buying a word of that.”

  “What did she say?”

  “First of all, that Pratt is in Switzerland on business.”

  “Went there to see his fictitious producer friend about his fictitious play, no doubt?”

  Crawford nodded. “Yeah, something in her tone I just didn’t buy.”

  “So, simple enough,” Ott said. “I check all flights from Miami to Geneva and Zurich. Where else?”

  “Umm, Basel maybe?”

  Ott chuckled. “You a Geography major, Charlie?”

  Crawford was right. No Sam or Samuel Pratt on any flights from Miami to any airport in Switzerland, though Ott had someone double-checking to be absolutely sure.

  And, as predicted, no call from Earl Hardin by eleven o’clock. Crawford and Ott decided to go to Hardin’s Bush Island office and drop in. Afterward they planned to swing by Sam Pratt’s Golfview Road house unannounced. In the meantime, Crawford sent two detectives to keep an eye on Pratt’s house—to see whether he came or went.

  The receptionist at Earl Hardin’s office asked for Crawford and Ott’s names when they walked in and asked for Hardin, then went back to get him. A minute later she came back out and said he wasn’t there, must have gone out the back door.

  Crawford glanced at Ott and Ott shook his head. “You mean, when you told him our names?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” the receptionist protested. “He wasn’t there. Probably had a showing.”

  “Do you have a picture of Mr. Hardin?” Crawford asked.

  The receptionist nodded and said, “Yes, sir, in this brochure.” She handed him a brochure. Earl Hardin had a big unctuous smile and a flaming red bow tie.

  Crawford and Ott thanked her and left.

  Back in the car, Ott turned to Crawford. “What now?”

  Crawford shrugged. “What can we do? Can’t drive around Bush Island all day trying to find the guy.”

  “Go to Sam Pratt’s house?”

  Crawford nodded.

  “Gonna be kind of embarrassing,” Ott said. “Interviewing someone I saw naked.”

  It took them forty minutes to get to Pratt’s house. Laurie Pratt answered the door, shading her eyes with her hand. “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Crawford, spoke to you earlier,” he said. “This is detective Ott.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, not inviting them in.

  “Mrs. Pratt,” Crawford said. “We need to speak to your husband.”

  “But, I told you—”

  Ott cut her off. “I checked all flights from Miami to Switzerland yesterday and your husband wasn’t on any of them.”

  Laurie cocked her head, going for a shocked look. “Well…well, maybe he flew to Italy and drove up.”

  “I tried Milan too,” Ott said.

  “Mrs. Pratt,” Crawford asked, “are you aware of your husband’s efforts to finance and produce a Broadway play?”

  Her face flushed and she glanced away. “I don’t know much about it. Just that in the end it didn’t work out.”

  Crawford nodded. “We believe that your husband might still be here somewhere. Maybe he said he was going to Switzerland but changed his mind,” he said, giving her an out.

  “What we want to avoid, Mrs. Pratt, is ratcheting up our hunt for you husband,” Ott said. “We don’t want to make it a public thing, where the whole town knows we’re pursuing him. So, when you speak to him, please have him check in with us.”

  She started nodding. “Oh, I will, I will. I’ll definitely try to reach him”—she looked at her watch—“it’s five o’clock over there now. I’ll try to catch him before dinner.”

  “Thank you,” Crawford said. “Oh, do you have a photo of your husband?”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you want it for?”

  “We just like to keep a record of everyone we interrogate,” Crawford said.

  “But you haven’t interrogated him yet.”

  “No, but we will, sooner or later,” Crawford said.

  She looked like she had bought it. “Okay, wait a sec.”

  A minute later she came back with a picture of her husband.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Pratt,” Crawford said.

  Ott nodded and they walked down the steps to their car.

  “He’s here,” Ott said as he turned the ignition key.

  “Yeah, I know,” Crawford said.

  “What
’s with the photos?” Ott asked.

  “I’m going to pay a visit to my friend Willow,” Crawford said. “See if she can ID either of them.”

  “Good thinkin’,” Ott said.

  “Time to head back up to Bush Island,” Crawford said.

  “What if Hardin ducks us again?” Ott asked.

  “I got a tried and true method to make sure he doesn’t,” Crawford said. “We have to make a quick pit stop at the station first.”

  They went down to Dominica McCarthy’s cubicle in CSEU and explained that they needed her help.

  After they spent a few minutes on the website for Earl Hardin’s real-estate company, Dominica dialed her phone.

  “Yes, hello,” she said, “my name is Abigail Carnegie and I would like to go see one of the houses I saw on your website.”

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Carnegie, which one?” the receptionist asked solicitously.

  “414 South Beach Road,” Dominica said.

  “If you’ll hold for a second, I’ll get the agent whose listing that is,” said the receptionist.

  “Yes, but explain to him that I need to see it right away, my plane leaves from Stuart”—the local private airport—“to St. Barth’s at 2 o’clock this afternoon.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said the receptionist.

  The smarmy voice of Earl Hardin came on right away. “Hello, Mrs. Carnegie, this is Earl Hardin,” he said. “We can see the house at 414 South Beach Road right away. The owners are up north now.”

  “Very good, let’s make it 12:30,” Dominica said.

  “Excellent,” said Hardin. “Are you the New York Carnegies or the Pittsburgh ones?”

  Dominica was not prepared to answer any question about her made-up heritage. “Does it matter?”

  “No, I just—”

  “See you at 12:30,” Dominica said and hung up.

  Crawford greeted her with a high five.

  “More like the South-Miami-Beach-by-way-of-Brooklyn Carnegies,” she said.

  Forty-Five

  Crawford and Ott were waiting in the driveway as Hardin drove up to 414 South Beach Road in his Mercedes S550. His disgust became apparent as he got parallel to their Crown Vic, the replacement for their wounded warrior Caprice.

  Crawford rolled down his window. “Sorry, Mrs. Carnegie got a flat and asked us to come in her place.”

  Hardin was steaming. “I’ve had just about enough of you assholes,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Likewise,” Ott muttered.

  “At least you didn’t have to come down to Palm Beach this time,” Crawford said. “We needed to talk to you and clearly you’ve been unresponsive to our calls. So, your car or ours?”

  Hardin glanced over at the grimy Crown Vic and shook his head in disgust. “I wouldn’t get in that piece of shit if you paid me.”

  Crawford laughed as he and Ott got out of their car and walked over to the Mercedes. Crawford opened the passenger side door as Ott got in back.

  “Pretty nice,” Crawford said, inspecting the instrument panel. “But how’s it on gas?”

  “Some of us don’t have to worry about shit like that,” Hardin said.

  “Thanks to the Elizabeth Raymonds, Harriet Norbeths, and Martha Brinkerhoffs of the world, right?” Crawford had gotten from Rose the names of some of the little old ladies whose houses Hardin had sold in the last two years.

  “What’s the question?” Hardin asked with a mile-wide frown.

  Bluffing time again. “We heard something about how Knight Mulcahy was going to expose you—well, maybe that’s too strong—was going to suggest that maybe you didn’t have the best interests of certain clients of yours in mind when selling their houses. Word is, maybe you went straight to a certain buyer and made deals before your clients’ houses were even on the market. I’m hearing the local real-estate board might frown on such a practice.”

  “Yeah, and if all the details came out,” Ott said, “it might hurt your business and your lily-white reputation. People like Abigail Carnegie might not want to deal with you.”

  Crawford continued the one-two punch. “And maybe the best way to prevent all that from happening,” he said, “was to silence the Mouth of the South.”

  “That would be Knight Mulcahy,” Ott said.

  Hardin shook his head in disgust and glared at Ott, then Crawford for a full five seconds.

  “So are you really suggesting I killed Knight Mulcahy?”

  “Question is, are you denying you killed Knight Mulcahy?” Crawford asked.

  “I am denying it loud and fucking clear,” Hardin said. “And I want you clowns to stop harassing me or you’re going to have a nice, fat lawsuit.”

  “All we’re hearing is that your alibi is you left the party early—went out the back door, not far from the pool house where Mulcahy got killed—got home and watched something on the Golf Channel,” Crawford said. “No witnesses, nothing to back up your story.”

  Hardin turned away from Crawford and thumped his steering wheel lightly for a few moments. Finally, he turned back to Crawford and lowered his voice. “Call up Jenny Bayliss and you’ll get all the alibi you need.”

  “Who is Jenny Bayliss?” Crawford asked.

  Crawford sighed. “A new agent in our office. She lives in Bush Inlet Colony, just south of Bush Island.”

  Crawford snuck a smile at Ott.

  “So you went there after Mulcahy’s party?” Crawford asked.

  Hardin nodded without making eye contact.

  Crawford glanced back at Ott and smiled. “To watch the Golf Channel, I’m guessing.”

  Sure enough, Hardin was at Jenny Bayliss’s house from eight forty five to ten o’clock. Bayliss said she knew that for a fact because she took off her watch right before the two of them climbed into her hot tub, and her watch read 8:50. That was at least forty-five minutes before Paul Mulcahy saw his father walk out the back of the house with Olivia Griswold and an hour and fifteen minutes before the ME estimated Mulcahy’s time of death.

  After they met with Bayliss, they went by the Chesterfield Hotel after Crawford contacted Wieslawa Nowicki on her cell. She met them in the lobby and looked at the two pictures of Hardin and Pratt. Then she shook her head and said she was sorry but she couldn’t ID either one. She just didn’t get a good enough look, she said. But then she added that if she had to choose, it would be Pratt.

  Sam Pratt was still on the lam. Crawford had called his wife, who said she still hadn’t heard a word from him. She mentioned the poor cell service again and Crawford said, ‘ah-huh’ again. Ott had been on his computer for more than an hour, trying to see if he could find anything more about Pratt’s theater scam. Crawford was in his office, when Ott came storming in.

  “Bein’ kind of a movie guy,” Ott started excitedly, “you’re gonna love this.”

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Okay, remember, back twenty years ago when that Canadian actress got killed on a set up in Vancouver?”

  Crawford didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, sure, Danielle DeRham,” he said. “I had the big-time hots for her when I was a teenager.”

  “Well, they never found out who did it,” Ott said. “Primary suspect was this actor by the name of Torben Belz.”

  Crawford put his feet up on his desk and cocked his head. “Where you goin’ with this?”

  “I remember tellin’ you how I thought Sam Pratt might be Canadian,” Ott said. “Him saying ‘a-boat’ instead of ‘about’” —Crawford leaned closer to Ott—“So I found out Pratt was, in fact, born in Toronto. And, get this, he moved down here and married this woman who was one of the producers of that movie Danielle DeRham was killed in.”

  Crawford slid his feet off the desk and sat up straight. “Holy shit, are you kidding me?”

  Ott smiled wide and nodded. “Nope,” he said. “Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Damn right I do,” Crawford said. “But I got a million questions.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Oka
y,” Crawford said. “So, first of all, how did all this come onto your radar in the first place?”

  “You know I always start with Google—”

  Crawford nodded.

  “So I Googled Pratt, having no idea what I’d come up with, and the first thing I found out was he changed his name legally twenty years ago from Torben Belz to Samuel Billingsley Pratt.”

  Crawford started tapping his desk. “But to become a citizen they do a background check, fingerprints, the whole deal, right?”

  “Yeah, but marrying an American citizen makes it a hell of a lot easier,” Ott said. “Still, there’re a bunch of hoops you gotta jump through. Like you said, a background check for one—where they want to know your previous address and place and date of birth. Plus, there’s fingerprints, petitioning the court, the whole nine.”

  “And what about arrest records?”

  “That, too.”

  “Well, so if he was the leading suspect in Danielle DeRham—”

  “He was never arrested and never charged,” Ott said. “So nothing ever showed up. You can be a suspect all day long and be asked a million questions, but you know how it is, nothing’s in the public record if you’re never charged.”

  Crawford nodded. “So keep going, he marries the woman producer, then what?”

  “Okay, so I was on the phone a good part of the morning. Tracked down the lead detective on DeRham at Vancouver PD. He’s retired now. He remembered just about everything, though. Told me word was ol’ Torben was banging both the producer and Danielle at the same time. Seems like he started straying when he got a whiff of Danielle on the set.”

  “What’s the producer’s name?” Crawford asked.

  “Nancy Pulitzer,” Ott said.

  “Okay, so the obvious quest—”

  “What was Torben/Sam’s motive to kill Danielle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “According to the lead again, Torben had this really nasty, public fight with Danielle over something,” Ott said. “Supposedly the director had to get between ‘em before they scratched each other’s eyes out.”

  “About what?” Crawford said. “What was the fight about?”