Palm Beach Bones

by Tom Turner

  “All I can tell you was he said he was going to see someone on a boat somewhere,” Susie said sniffling.

  “Clyde wasn’t the most communicative man in the world,” the sister offered.

  Crawford nodded. “But he didn’t tell you who the person was or the location of the boat?”

  Susie Loadholt shook her head. “No, that was all he said.”

  “And, Mrs. Loadholt, what did you think when Clyde didn’t come home last night?” Ott asked.

  Susie pulled another tissue out of the box. “I thought it was very strange. I called him on his cell a bunch of times starting at around eleven. Never slept a wink. Then this morning, I got the call from Norm.”

  Norm Rutledge, Crawford and Ott’s boss. He’d been chief of police in Palm Beach ever since Clyde Loadholt retired.

  “So Clyde never said anything else about who he was going to see last night?” Ott asked.

  “She already told you,” the sister said with an irritated look.

  Susie Loadholt held up her hand. “I can handle this, Mavis,” she said. “He did say one thing. He was going to repair an old wound. That was it.”

  Or maybe open up a new one, Crawford thought. “And you didn’t happen to ask him what he meant by that?”

  “No,” Susie said.

  “Mrs. Loadholt,” Ott waded in again, “did Clyde say anything recently about someone he might have had trouble with, a disagreement with, or mention anyone who might have threatened him?”

  Susie shook her head and sniffled again as her sister planted yet another kiss on her rouged cheek.

  “How about back when he was police chief?” Crawford asked. “I know that was quite a while ago, but was there ever anyone he told you about, someone who, as my partner asked, might have threatened him or posed a danger to him?”

  “Oh my God, that was ten years ago,” the sister said. “How could she possibly remember?”

  “Enough, Mavis,” said Susie, turning to Crawford. “No, I don’t remember anything at all like that. Clyde didn’t exactly go around arresting hard-core criminals. It was Palm Beach, after all. He was—well, you know, the chief. Spent most of his time supervising his men. Probably the same as Norm Rutledge.”

  Crawford nodded. “Mrs. Loadholt, please understand, we have to ask you a few tough questions.”

  “I’m a big girl, Detective.”

  “Did Clyde, as far as you know, owe anyone money?”

  Mavis burst out laughing.

  “What’s so damn funny?” Susie Loadholt turned to her sister.

  “You know perfectly well,” Mavis said. “Clyde never spent a dime. So how could he ever owe anyone money?”

  Susie squinted her eyes and balled up her fists. “Why don’t you just say he was cheap, Mavis,” Susie said. “Did it occur to you that the poor man just died. I mean, for God’s—”

  “You’re right,” Mavis patted her sister’s arm. “I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

  Crawford glanced over at Ott who was scratching away at his notebook and trying to hide a smirk.

  “Mrs. Loadholt,” Crawford began again, “by any chance, did Clyde gamble at all?”

  Susie drew her head back. “If you want to call a friendly poker game where you’d win or lose fifty dollars, then, yes, he gambled.”

  “But not any trips to Las Vegas or betting with bookies, anything like that?”

  Mavis looked like she wanted to jump in but was biting her tongue.

  “Mostly he just liked to do his Sudoku and watch baseball on TV,” Susie said.

  Mavis couldn’t hold back. “Football too,” she added.

  Susie turned on her. “Jesus, Mavis, who was married to him? You or me?”

  “Just sayin’ he was a big Dolphins fan.”

  Susie shook her head, threw up her hands, and gave Crawford a tired look. “Maybe you should be interviewing her.”

  Four

  Crawford and Ott were in one of their least favorites places in the world: Norm Rutledge’s office. Rutledge had pictures of his family on all four walls—the ultimate loving husband and dad. But, on the sly, as just about everyone but his wife knew, he had something going with one of the women uniforms. Before that it had been a new female employee down at CSEU, the department’s Crime Scene Evidence Unit.

  “He was a good man,” Rutledge said. “Ran a tight ship. Palm Beach couldn’t have had a better guy at the helm.”

  The clichés always rolled off Rutledge’s tongue. Nautical and otherwise.

  “Do you remember him butting heads with anyone?” Ott asked, taking a swig from a water bottle.

  “Everybody in this job butts heads with someone from time to time,” Rutledge said.

  “But not usually to the point where it gets ‘em killed,” Crawford said, looking up at a picture of Rutledge, his wife, and two sons dressed in chocolate brown sweaters and cracking smiles like they’d just heard a real knee-slapper.

  “I don’t really know,” Rutledge said with a shrug. “Kinda lost touch with the man. We used to have lunch every once in a while after he retired. He had this poker game with a bunch of guys.”

  “Who was in the game?” Ott asked.

  Rutledge leaned back in his faux-leather chair, looked out his window, and scratched his head. “Nobody you’d know. Mostly a buncha retired guys. A lawyer named Chuck Mitchell, I think he still practices. A guy who ran the dog track in West Palm. Another guy who—” Crawford watched as Rutledge suddenly bolted upright in his chair, his eyes enormous. “Ho-ly Christ! Judge Meyer! Yeah, Rich Meyer was in the game.”

  Crawford leaned forward. “Who is he?”

  “Rich Meyer was a judge who got killed about three years back. Up in Jupiter,” Rutledge said. “Official verdict was that it was a home invasion. But I wasn’t sold on that.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause whoever did it didn’t take a thing.”

  Crawford glanced over at Ott, who was writing furiously now. It had taken place before he and Ott had come down to Palm Beach. Probably right around the time when Ott was swearing off shoveling snow in Cleveland and Crawford was going through a painful divorce in New York City.

  “You thinking there might be a connection, Norm?” Crawford asked.

  “I sure as hell think you guys oughta look into it.”

  Crawford nodded. “We’re on it.”

  Ott nodded. “Okay, I need you to give me a list of everyone in that poker game, including phone numbers and addresses if you have them.”

  Rutledge nodded, his eyes as bright as Crawford had seen them in a long time. “Sure, no problem.”

  “So,” said Crawford, “we got a police chief and we got a judge. Both played in the same poker game and both got shot and killed. Seems like a connection, not a coincidence, right?” Crawford had the jazzed-up feeling he got when he had something by the tail, even if it was a slippery tail. “So I’ll do a quick hypothetical: two guys in the law enforcement business, one of whom, a police chief, arrests a guy for something, then another guy, a judge, throws the book at him and sends the guy away for a long time…”

  “So the guy, who’s in jail,” Ott picked up on the thread, “hires someone on the outside to pop the judge and the police chief?”

  A frown drifted across Crawford’s face. “Only problem with that is the timing. Ten years after Loadholt retired is a pretty long time for the guy to wait to finally get revenge. And why three years between Meyer and Loadholt?”

  Ott nodded. “So maybe the guy got someone to take out Meyer while he was inside, then recently got out and did Loadholt himself?”

  Crawford nodded. “Maybe,” he said. “There’re a lot of possible scenarios. Especially if a guy was doing a long bit and thinking twenty-four/seven about the guys who put him in. But I still got a problem—if it’s the same guy—with him waiting three years to do Loadholt.”

  “When did Meyer retire?” Ott asked Rutledge.

  “I don’t know exactly. Right around the same time as Loadhol
t, I think.”

  “You remember any big cases,” Crawford started, “where maybe a guy on trial got up after the judge sentenced him and said he was gonna get him?”

  “Seen too many movies, Crawford,” said Rutledge.

  “Hey, I got news for you,” Ott told Rutledge. “Shit like that happens in real life. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

  Crawford glanced at Ott. “Bet the boys up in Jupiter looked into that possibility back when Meyer was killed.”

  “I would think so,” Ott said with a shrug.

  Crawford turned to Rutledge. “Anyone else in the house when Meyer got killed? A wife, a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, as I remember it, his wife was there. Shirley, I think her name was.”

  Crawford got up from his chair. “Let’s go, Mort,” he said. “We’ve got some digging to do.”

  Ott followed Crawford out the door. “I know what that means,” he said in the hallway. “I’ve got some digging to do.”

  Crawford laughed. “Hey, just so happens you’re a hell of a lot better at it than me.”

  Ott shook his head. “Translation: I don’t really wanna do that shit,” he said. “Butter me up like I’m some kind of Einstein of research.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Come on, Charlie, don’t go blowin’ smoke.”

  On the way back to their offices Crawford said how that was the first time in his two and a half years on the job in Palm Beach that he could ever remember Rutledge actually being helpful on a case. Ott said that wasn’t true, he was helpful on the last one. Crawford racked his brain to remember Rutledge’s contribution. Finally he asked Ott what he had done on the last one.

  “Stayed the fuck out of the way,” Ott replied.

  Five

  Crawford was already fifteen minutes late for his dinner with Rose Clarke at Malachi’s in Citiplace. He had been on the phone with Judge Meyer’s widow setting up a meeting for the following morning. He was going to drive up to her house in Jupiter and meet at nine before her morning bridge game.

  He had just gotten another call from a woman who identified herself as Alexa Dillon. The name didn’t register at first. Then he remembered: the card fluttering down to the sand a few feet from Clyde Loadholt’s corpse.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re the one who messed up my crime scene,” he said. “I’ve run across aggressive reporters before—”

  “Freedom of the press, Charlie,” the woman interrupted. “I don’t remember Palm Beach Police Department owning the air space above a public beach.”

  He already didn’t like her. And wasn’t thrilled about her calling him Charlie.

  “So you went to journalism and law school?”

  “Just a girl trying to get a story,” she said. “Not mess up your crime scene.”

  “Too late,” Crawford said. “That’s what a helicopter blowing sand does.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, like she actually meant it. “How ‘bout I buy you a drink to make up for it?”

  Yup, aggressive was the word.

  “Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But I’m pretty busy.”

  “Come on. I don’t bite.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But I gotta go.”

  He clicked off.

  Rose was a good friend, not to mention occasional lover of Crawford’s. It was almost like sex with no strings, or in the parlance of the day, they were friends with benefits. Rose was also the most successful real-estate broker in not just Palm Beach but in the whole Sunshine State as well. They were just occasional lovers because they both knew that Crawford’s true love was Dominica McCarthy, a stunning crime-scene tech at Palm Beach PD. Only problem was, Dominica and Crawford were on hiatus at the moment.

  Long story.

  Rose was five ten and blond. She had a daily training session with a Romanian trainer who had made her into a shapely, gym-trim hard-body with absolutely no droops or jiggling body parts. Besides selling homes and exercising, another thing Rose liked to do was talk about people—just this side of gossip. Trouble was, she knew she had to hold her tongue around most people. But with Crawford, due to the nature of his job and his natural discreet manner, she knew she could blab away to her heart’s content and be sure he’d never repeat a word.

  That suited Crawford, who liked to listen way more than talk. But mainly, it was the fact that Rose was an incredible asset to him. She knew everyone, particularly the Palm Beach elite, and nothing happened without her knowing about it. Rose was quite happy to share what she knew with Crawford—for a price. Sometimes a lunch, sometimes a dinner, and sometimes, well, a sexual favor wouldn’t be an inaccurate description.

  “So the group started last month when five of us got together at Marla Fluor’s house—”

  “Who’s she again?” Crawford asked, having heard that name before, but not remembering from where.

  “She was like the first woman partner at Goldman Sachs,” Rose said. “Something like that. Country girl from South Carolina originally, endowed a law school up in Columbia, I think it was.”

  Crawford nodded and took a pull on his Bud.

  “The idea being women mentoring other women,” she patted Crawford’s hand. “‘Cause as much as we love you, you guys still don’t give us a fair shake. Still have that glass ceiling we have to crash through and don’t pay us as much as you pay yourselves.”

  Crawford put up his hands in protest. “Whoa. Whoa. What is this ‘you’ stuff? I don’t have anything to do with it, and just so you know, I think what you’re doing is great.”

  Rose high-fived him. “Why aren’t all men as smart as you, Charlie?”

  Crawford shrugged. “So keep going. How’s it work?”

  “Well, like I said, we basically mentor women. You know, invest in their businesses. Use our contacts to help ‘em get to the next level.”

  Crawford nodded. “Who else is in the group?”

  “Well, except for me, just about everyone’s from the Forbes 400,” Rose said. “I mentioned Marla Fluor. Then there’s Elle T. Graham, she started that Silicon Valley company Groupthink, and Diana Quarle—”

  “The designer, right?” Crawford said. “Has that big house on Everglades Island.”

  “Yup. And Beth Jastrow, owns two Las Vegas casinos,” Rose said.

  “Wait a minute, a woman owns Vegas casinos?”

  Rose nodded, a little scorn showing. “You’re getting dangerously close to sounding sexist, Charlie.”

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t think of a woman—” he cut himself off, not wanting to get any further into the dog house. “Know what it kinda sounds like to me?”

  “What?”

  “That TV show, Shark Tank, where people come on and pitch their products, companies and stuff.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Rose said. “All of ‘em on it are pretty pleased with themselves. Think they’re the smartest people on the planet. The difference is we’re all on the same team and don’t bid against each other or take a piece of their businesses. Sometimes we front capital, but with no interest. And if the business goes under, well, then that’s our tough luck. But that’s not gonna happen, not the way we screen ‘em.”

  “Sounds like a helluva good thing,” Crawford said.

  “Oh and I forgot something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We don’t have anybody like that bald, obnoxious guy, Mr. Wonderful,” Rose said, shaking her head. “What about you, Charlie? What’s new in the murder game?”

  “Funny you should ask,” Crawford said. “After almost six months of it being quiet, we had a murder this morning. Guy who used to be police chief, matter-of-fact.”

  “Really?” Rose said, cocking her head. “What’s his name?”

  “Clyde Loadholt. Retired about ten years ago.”

  Rose shook her head. “I vaguely remember the name. How’d it happen?”

  Crawford explained how Loadholt had washed up on the beach behind The Breakers with a single bullet in the chest. Then
he mentioned the connection to Judge Meyer. Rose had heard of Meyer, said he’d been known as a pretty tough judge. The waiter came and refilled Rose’s glass of rosé and got Crawford another Bud.

  “So are we gonna sleep together tonight, Charlie?” Rose asked casually after a sip.

  Crawford smiled at her. “Jesus, Rose, direct much?” he said. “You know, that expression has always amused me. I mean, it sounds like we go get into our pajamas, climb into bed, you get your pillow, I get mine, then we just quietly nod off.”

  Rose laughed. “Jesus, Charlie, it’s called a euphemism. So that would be a no...?”

  Crawford put his hands up. “Hang on,” he said, then like he was pondering. “So after careful consideration, Rose…” dramatic pause, “you talked me into it.”

  Rose shook her head and laughed. “Real tough sell, aren’t you, Charlie.”

  Six

  Crawford rolled out of Rose Clarke’s place at six thirty in the morning. As he drove out of her long driveway with the crunchy, white pebbles, he thought he might be able to get used to a place like 1241 South Ocean Boulevard. Twelve rooms, a pool, and—not that he had first-hand knowledge on the subject—one of the best ocean views around.

  Only problem was, he wasn’t in love with Rose.

  As he pulled up to his one-bedroom West Palm Beach condo with a view of the vast Publix parking lot, the reality of his own humble existence kicked him in the teeth.

  He showered in his tight shower that never had enough water pressure, toweled off in his pocket-sized bathroom, got dressed, and walked the ninety-odd steps to Dunkin’ Donuts. Janelle, with the big smile and gold tooth, greeted him with his go-to: a regular extra dark and two blueberry donuts. He deluded himself into thinking the fruit-themed donuts were somehow good for him, even though they had glazed sugar coating them like salt spray on a life preserver and weighed in at 263 calories each.

  A half hour later he was at Shirley Meyer’s house in Jupiter. It was a far cry from Rose’s place, but was a neat, brick ranch on a cul-de-sac in a nice, middle-class neighborhood. A few late-model Detroit cars were parked on the street and bougainvillea grew up the sides of several neighboring houses.