Palm Beach Bones

by Tom Turner

  Mindy, a woman in her early fifties, was wearing a loose-fitting caftan, possibly to disguise the fact that she was twenty to thirty pounds overweight. She had a pretty face with nice bone structure, but wore her hair in an unflattering bun. She said she had been married to Paul for twenty-six years. Her flat tone while reciting the facts seemed to indicate that many of those twenty-six years had been less than idyllic.

  She spoke to Crawford and Ott for more than an hour and never came close to shedding a tear. A good cry might have been expected of one whose husband had just been brutally murdered, but Crawford got the sense that her crying days were long past. And judging by the hour spent with her, her smiling days as well. Then again, what was there to smile about when you were married to an apparent serial cheater?

  “In order to find your husband’s killer,” Crawford had started out, “we’re going to need to ask you some pretty blunt questions. I hope that’s okay?”

  Mindy nodded automatically.

  “To the best of your knowledge, do you happen to know whether there was any history between your husband and Ms. Carton?”

  Mindy Pawlichuk looked weary. “I don’t know,” she said. “There could have been. I never met the woman before, but, obviously, there was the connection between my new daughter-in-law Addison and Carla Carton. Them being sisters, I mean.”

  “Right, of course,”

  “Plus, Paul was away a lot, for his job,” she added.

  Like being away from home was synonymous for being on the prowl for women.

  Ott, who had been uncharacteristically quiet up to that point, weighed in with the velvet hammer he often wielded. “Does the name Madison Ko mean anything to you, Mrs. Pawlichuk?”

  Mindy rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “You mean the woman who Paul bought a house for five minutes from the stadium?” It was not a question. “The woman Paul promised to marry after he divorced me?” Another non-question question.

  Crawford shot a glance at Ott, then back at Mindy. “How do you know that?”

  “She told me,” Mindy said, dropping her eyes. “When I went and confronted her ten years ago. I guess Paul decided a divorce would cost him too much money—” then, as if reconsidering— “or maybe figured having lots of girlfriends on the side was better than just one.”

  Crawford glanced at Ott. He was always impressed at how fast Ott was at digging up relevant information. He wondered how he had heard about Madison Ko. Probably a quick Google search. That was his own initial go-to as well.

  “On another subject, Mrs. Pawlichuk,” Crawford continued, “your new daughter-in-law, Addison, and her sister, we haven’t heard anything about their parents?”

  Mindy bowed her head slightly. “They were killed in a car accident…together. About three years ago. I never met them.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Crawford said.

  Mindy nodded. “Yes, it was a terrible tragedy.”

  He wondered whether she’d put her husband and Carla Carton’s double homicide in that category.

  They spent another twenty minutes questioning Mindy Pawlichuk, then thanked her and said they’d be in touch as soon as they had something to report. She nodded but didn’t seem to be particularly interested in whatever they might come up with.

  It was strange.

  Next up was Carla Carton’s husband Duane Truax, a mustached man who was waiting for them in the Mar-a-Lago living room.

  Upon first seeing him, Crawford was surprised at how short Duane Truax was. Five-eight, max. He figured maybe the race-car driver’s stature helped him squeeze into those cars with all the decals on them. Maybe a lighter bodyweight let the car go round and around a little faster too. Truax wore black Levis, a black cowboy hat and cowboy boots that he rested on an antique chair. Crawford wasn’t sure Mar-a-Lago’s owner would appreciate the racer’s heels on his furniture but left it alone.

  Far from being broken up with grief, Duane Truax answered their questions in short phrases and yawned a lot. It turned out that he lived full-time in Birmingham, Alabama. Carla, he explained, didn’t spend much time there and had a house in the hills above Hollywood. When Ott asked him the address, Truax didn’t know, only that it was near Mulholland Drive.

  That was strange too.

  Truax was scheduled to fly back to Birmingham that night. He wasn’t sure what Carla’s plans had been. A little voice was suggesting to Crawford that Duane Truax and Carla Carton, like Mindy and Paul Pawlichuk, had something less than a marriage made in heaven.

  Despite the yawns, Truax struck Crawford as a man who maybe had ADD. His hooded blue eyes darted around constantly and he couldn’t keep his hands still. He had dark hair that stuck up in front and yellow teeth that could have used a Crest Whitestrip or two.

  “Look, man, let’s cut to it,” Truax said, after Crawford and Ott got through their intro remarks. “I didn’t kill my wife, okay? She and I were separated, okay? Not legally, but in fact. What else do you need to know?”

  Might as well just cut to it, too, Crawford figured. “Mr. Truax, at any point last night did you go down to the pool on the beach here at Mar-a-Lago?”

  “Not hardly. I didn’t even know there was one. Last thing I was doing was following Carla around…” A long pause, followed by a confiding lean-in and whisper: “See, I had a little thing going with one of the bridesmaids.”

  Ott eyed him, not trying to hide his disdain. “Oh, did you now?” he said. “And what was her name?”

  “Chelsea…didn’t catch her last name,” Truax said.

  “Course you didn’t,” Ott muttered.

  Truax shot him the maximum stink-eye.

  “So, keep going,” Crawford said.

  Truax wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Me and her ended up taking off, going to a strip club.”

  “You and her, huh?” Ott hated grammar-butchers. “‘Til what time?”

  “‘Til after it happened. The murders.”

  “Oh?” said Ott. “And how do you know when the murders took place?”

  “I heard a guy say.”

  Ott, taking notes, glanced at Crawford.

  “So, were you aware of there being a relationship between Pawlichuk and Carla?” Crawford asked.

  “I had kind of an inkling,” Truax said. “But like I said, me and Carla had both moved on.”

  “‘An inkling?’ Where’d you get that from?”

  “You know, like a hunch.”

  Crawford figured it was time he and Ott moved on too. Duane Truax was almost certainly not their man.

  But Ott wasn’t done. “So, you two weren’t staying in the same bedroom?”

  “Not hardly. Like I told you—”

  “I know…separated.”

  Truax suddenly looked like a thought had just snuck up and slapped him on the side of the head. “I did walk past the room where she was staying and saw the door open. I thought that was a little strange.”

  “Why?” Ott asked.

  “‘Cause she almost never went to bed later than ten, and this was way after that,” Truax said. “Needed her beauty sleep, she always said. Plus her mask.”

  “Her mask?” Ott asked.

  “Yeah, she’d always get into bed, then put on her mask,” Truax said. “Damn thing cost a fortune. Golden Luminescence Infusion Mask, it was called.”

  “I see,” Crawford said, imagining hopping into bed with someone wearing a Golden Luminescence Infusion Mask. Romantic didn’t spring to mind.

  “So what time was that?” Ott asked.

  “’Round midnight, I’d say.”

  They thanked Truax. He yawned and walked away.

  “Another idol bites the dust,” Ott said.

  “Him?” Crawford looked at the back of the race-car driver and shook his head. “Christ, man, you musta been really hard up for idols.”

  END OF EXCERPT

  Palm Beach Pretenders is now available on Amazon in eBook and paperback.

  About the Author />
  A native New Englander, Tom dropped out of college and ran a bar in Vermont…into the ground. Limping back to get his sheepskin, he then landed in New York where he spent time as an award-winning copywriter at several Manhattan advertising agencies. After years of post-Mad Men life, he made a radical change and got a job in commercial real estate. A few years later he ended up in Palm Beach, buying, renovating and selling houses while getting material for his novels. On the side, he wrote Palm Beach Nasty, its sequel, Palm Beach Poison, and a screenplay, Underwater.

  While at a wedding, he fell for the charm of Charleston, South Carolina. He spent six years there and completed a yet-to-be-published series set in Charleston. A year ago, Tom headed down the road to Savannah, where he just finished a novel about lust and murder among his neighbors.

  Learn more about Tom’s books at:

  www.tomturnerbooks.com