Palm Beach Predator

by Tom Turner

“I appreciate the effort anyway,” Crawford said reaching for his wallet. “If you have any more thoughts in the future” —he handed her a card— “why don’t you email them to me? It’ll be easier than coming all the way here.”

  She smiled, fluttering her fake lashes. “Oh, it was no problem. I loved seeing where you work.”

  Fuuuccckkk.

  Eleven

  Crawford tried to get past Ott’s cubicle without getting spotted, but Ott knew his walk.

  “Hey, Charlie, so how’d it go with Holly? She serve up a case-buster for you?”

  Crawford just kept walking but heard Ott’s chair scrape on the floor.

  Ott followed him back to his office. Crawford turned to him. “Put a lid on the Holly shit, huh?”

  Ott laughed. “Aw, don’t be so sensitive. Not everyone can have their very own stalker. I just wanted to tell you about my calls to the names on Stabler’s list. The guys from the Poinciana. I just knocked off two and made four earlier.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Stabler was definitely at the Poinciana, and he definitely was on the range and putting green. One guy saw him tee off and two guys saw him in the bar. But—and seems like a pretty big but—nobody remembers actually seeing him on the golf course after he teed off.”

  “Good work,” Crawford said. “So, seems like all he’s got is a flimsy alibi.”

  “Not only that,” Ott said, “three of them commented they thought it strange that Stabler was playing by himself. He usually plays in two regular foursomes, and none of ’em ever saw him play solo.”

  Crawford was nodding. “So his alibi just went from flimsy to shaky.”

  “Yeah, it was like he realized he needed one, so, spur-of-the moment, he went to the Poinciana and made himself as visible as possible.”

  “The problem is, the guy can have no alibi at all but it doesn’t matter if we got nothing on him,” Crawford said.

  Ott nodded. “Yeah, good point.”

  “I got an idea, though,” Crawford said. “I’m gonna take a drive over to the love nest and see if any of those keys from Mimi Taylor’s condo fit. I got an appointment with the judge to get a warrant to search the place.”

  “Good thinkin’,” Ott said. “We’re getting to be regulars at the judge’s chambers.”

  El Cid is one of the most desirable locations in West Palm Beach. As the crow flies, it’s less than a thousand yards to Palm Beach—just over the Intracoastal—but millions of dollars apart in terms of real estate prices. The house at 317 Granada Road was a small white stucco—singularly lacking in curb appeal. In Palm Beach it would have gone for a million five; here, you could pick it up for a mere five hundred thousand.

  The third key Crawford tried unlocked the front door. It was light and sunny inside and looked like it had been completely renovated recently. There was no foyer or entranceway, you just walked straight into the living room, which had brightly polished red oak floors. Crawford put on his vinyl gloves and walked through the entire house. It had three bedrooms and three baths, all of them, including the master, small. It looked as though someone had spent an afternoon in Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma—Crawford’s guess was Mimi Taylor—charging up a bunch of things on Stark Stabler’s credit card then called it day. There were almost no personal possessions in the entire house, and the closets contained a minimal amount of clothing. It looked exactly like what it was — a place where two people went, knocked back a few cocktails, then had sex.

  Crawford was about to leave, when he opened a coat closet to the left of the front door. In it was a six-foot-tall fiberglass golf bag carrier on wheels. Crawford’s first thought was that Mimi Taylor’s body could easily have fit in it. With room to spare.

  Twelve

  It got better.

  Crawford opened the golf bag carrier and saw down at the bottom a woman’s pearl earring. He took out his iPhone and took a few photos, first of the golf bag carrier itself, then of the earring at the bottom. Then he had a thought and walked into the kitchen. He opened drawers until he found what he was looking for: a yellow box of small plastic trash bags. He took one, went back to the closet, knelt down, picked up the earring, and placed it in the bag.

  Then he put the plastic bag in his jacket pocket, pulled out his phone, and dialed a number he had dialed hundreds of times before. It went straight to voicemail.

  “Hi, this is Dominica. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Hey, Dominica, it’s Charlie,” he said. “I need to speak to you. Call me as soon as you can.”

  He went and got back into his Crown Vic and pounded the steering wheel, excited that he may finally have had a break in the case. He drove back to the station and went straight to where the CSEU—Crime Scene Evidence Unit—cubicles were. Dominica was not there, so he left her a note to call him. Then he went to Ott’s cubicle.

  “Check this out,” Crawford said to Ott, who was on his computer.

  “Whatcha got, bro?”

  Crawford handed Ott the four photos he’d taken at 317 Granada. “Found this in a coat closet at the love nest.”

  Ott studied them closely. “Holy shit, man, so you’re thinking our boy Stark moved Mimi Taylor’s body in this thing?”

  “Could be,” Crawford said. “And I’m guessing that earring belonged to her. I’m trying to track down Dominica to see if Mimi Taylor was wearing the mate to this one when she got killed.”

  Ott high-fived Crawford. “Good goin’, man. ’Bout time we got movin’ on this sucker.”

  Crawford smiled. “Well, it helps I got you poking holes in the guy’s alibi.”

  Crawford saw Norm Rutledge’s office door open and the great man walk out. Rutledge’s title was Director of Public Safety, though he, Crawford, and Ott still referred to his position as Police Chief, since Director of Public Safety had the ring of a glorified crossing guard. Rutledge had steered relatively clear of Crawford and Ott on the Taylor case so far, which was exactly the way they liked it.

  He walked over to them. “Hey, boys, you’re lookin’ awful happy,” Rutledge said. “You get laid or something?”

  That was the second-worst thing about Rutledge. His sense of humor. The worst thing was when he’d meddle in their cases and float lame theories about their homicides.

  “No such luck,” Crawford said. “But we may be getting somewhere on Taylor.”

  Rutledge gave them the double thumbs-up. That was the third-worst thing about him. The lame gestures. “Okay, so let’s hear.”

  Crawford went through the case blow-by-blow, with Ott occasionally interjecting and Rutledge doing his double thumbs-up thing once more. Just as Crawford wrapped it up by showing Rutledge the photos of the earring, he looked up and saw Dominica McCarthy walk in. Dominica had big brown eyes, high cheekbones, a bouncy full head of hair, and a figure everyone agreed was in the top tenth of one percent in Florida. And quite possibly the world.

  “Hey, guys,” she said.

  “There you are,” Crawford said, taking the plastic bag out of his pocket. “Just one quick question.” He held up the bag expectantly. “Does this earring match one you found on Mimi Taylor?”

  Dominica looked at it and shook her head. “Sorry, Charlie, but she was wearing two gold studs.”

  “Wait, are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Dominica said, pulling out her iPhone. “Got shots of ’em right here.”

  The three men crowded around as Dominica scrolled through photos taken in the master bath at the house on North Lake Way the day of the murder. “See,” Dominica said, pointing to a close-up of Mimi Taylor’s head.

  “Shit,” Crawford muttered.

  Rutledge cocked his head. “Well, it looks like that case you thought you had wrapped up might need a little bit more work.”

  Crawford had once calculated that in about forty percent of his conversations with Rutledge he’d had the overwhelming urge to coldcock the man.

  Thirteen

 
It was back to square one.

  Saturday morning, and Mimi Taylor’s funeral was in forty-five minutes.

  You’d expect that Palm Beach billionaires and millionaires would object to having their final resting place be in West Palm Beach, but, fact was, Palm Beach had no cemeteries. So, Margaret M. (Mimi) Taylor was being buried at Woodlawn Cemetery across the Intracoastal in West Palm. There was, however, in Crawford’s opinion, nothing the least bit shabby about Woodlawn. You drove in through a massively impressive stone archway with the words THAT WHICH IS SO UNIVERSAL AS DEATH MUST BE A BLESSING carved into it. Some might take issue with that sentiment, which had been variously attributed to German philosopher Johann Schiller, the eighteenth-century satirist Jonathan Swift, and even Henry Flagler, who originally owned the cemetery land back when it was a pineapple field. What is known for sure is that in 1914, Flagler gave the Woodlawn property to the city of West Palm Beach.

  Others buried where Mimi Taylor was about to be interred included a woman who had confessed to murdering her married lover. Her name was Lena Clarke, and she’d been the West Palm Beach postmistress. When in court for the murder trial, she claimed to have been, in a previous life, a resident in the Garden of Eden when the solar system was created, as well as—much later on—the Egyptian goddess Isis. She did a two-year stint at Chattahoochee State Hospital for the Insane before returning to West Palm Beach to sort mail and teach Sunday school at the Congregational church.

  But the best-known couple to have a tombstone at Woodlawn were Judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife, Marjorie. There are no bodies beneath their shared tombstone because the couple was kidnapped, taken on a boat out to sea, wrapped in weights, then flung over the side. Five years after the heinous crime occurred, one of the killers bragged about the murders to a friend and it surfaced that he and another man had been hired by another judge to kill the couple. The other judge was the kingpin in a local moonshine racket and feared being exposed by Judge Chillingworth.

  So, Mimi Taylor was far from the first murder victim in Woodlawn’s history.

  The funeral party was small. Corinne Taylor sat with an older male friend whom Crawford and Ott couldn’t identify. There were a number of women in their thirties, forties, and fifties, some of whom Crawford remembered from their meetings at the various real estate agencies. His rough count was that there were twenty to twenty-five women, most of them agents, with Rose Clarke being one of the attendees. Rose gave Crawford and Ott a little hand wave. Arthur Lang, the manager of the Sotheby’s office where Mimi Taylor worked, had worn a shocking-pink tie, which Crawford considered somewhat inappropriate.

  Quickly catching Crawford and Ott’s attention was a man sitting in the back row and clearly moved by the occasion. He was wearing a fashionable blue suit and burgundy tie and dabbed occasionally at his eyes with a handkerchief. He had sandy-brown hair, watery blue eyes and a tan that would have made George Hamilton (not to mention, Holly Pine) envious.

  Ott and Crawford were sitting at the other end of the back row. Ott leaned into Crawford. “Any clue who he might be?”

  Crawford shook his head. “We’ll find out.”

  As they expected, Stark Stabler was not in attendance.

  At the end of the short ceremony, Crawford and Ott waited as people payed their respects to Corinne Taylor. One of the last ones to do so was the man in the blue suit. He started to give Corinne a hug, but she made no move to hug him back, so he awkwardly pulled back and shook her hand. They spoke for less than a minute, he doing most of the talking. Then two women, one of whom Crawford remembered from the Douglas Elliman meeting, approached and expressed their condolences to Corinne. The older man who had sat with Corinne gave her a kiss on the cheek and slowly walked away. Finally, it was Crawford and Ott’s turn. They took a few steps toward her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Taylor,” Crawford said, shaking her hand. “It was a very nice ceremony. Again, my condolences.”

  “And mine too,” Ott said, shaking her hand.

  “Thank you both for coming,” she said, then got right to business. “Anything so far?”

  “We have several possibilities we’re working on,” Crawford said. “Mrs. Taylor, if you would tell us who the last man you spoke to is, please?”

  “Oh, that’s my friend, Mark Chase. He lives up in Vero Beach.”

  “And before him, the younger man in the blue suit?”

  Corinne Taylor’s smile faded. “Oh, that’s Lowell. Lowell Grey. The playboy, remember? As many polo ponies as girlfriends?”

  “Right, I remember.”

  “He told me how sorry he was, then said he had been thinking about trying to get back together with Mimi, but…”

  “What did you say to him, Mrs. Taylor?” Ott asked.

  “I just said something innocuous like, ‘That’s nice,’” Corinne said. “Then he asked me something kind of strange.”

  “What was that?”

  “He asked if I had a key to Mimi’s condo. Said he had left a paddleboard there and wanted to get it.”

  “Why did you think that was strange?” Ott asked.

  “Well, because he had six months to get it, while Mimi was alive,” Corinne said. “Why didn’t he get it then?”

  Crawford glanced at Ott, who, judging by his expression, seemed to think that was a good question too. “Did he say where it was? The paddleboard?”

  “Out on her balcony,” Corinne said.

  “He seemed kind of broken up,” Crawford said.

  “Or maybe that was just Lowell being dramatic. I’ve seen it before.” Corinne sighed. “Well, I think I’m going to spend some time with my daughter alone now.”

  Crawford and Ott said goodbye and got into the Crown Vic for the ride back to the station.

  “What are you gonna do now?” Ott asked as they crossed the north bridge.

  “Thought I’d drop in on Stabler again,” Crawford said. “Ask him about that earring.”

  Ott nodded. They drove in silence for a few moments. “Also, how do you s’pose he was going to explain to his wife where the hundred grand went that he was going to give Mimi?”

  “Good question. Like I said before, he could have made that whole thing up.”

  “What’s your sense about the polo guy, Lowell Grey?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think about him much before, but now he’s worth a look,” Crawford said.

  “The paddleboard thing?”

  “Yeah, like the lady said, a little strange, ”Crawford tapped his fingers on the console. “Tell you what occurred to me…maybe he wants to get into Mimi’s condo for something other than his paddleboard.”

  Ott nodded. “I buy that. Especially since it seems he forgot about the paddleboard until now. Want me to give him a call?”

  “Sure. I’ll swing by Stabler’s house and ask him a few questions,” Crawford said. “You try to set up an interview with Grey.”

  “You got it. He and I can compare notes about polo.”

  Crawford pulled into Stark Stabler’s parking court and parked between a Mercedes S550 and a Porsche Cayenne.

  The unsmiling Asian woman in the blue uniform answered the door again. She didn’t hide her frown when she saw Crawford. When he told her he wanted to see Stabler, she walked away without a word.

  Two minutes later, Stark Stabler appeared.

  “How ’bout a little walk, Mr. Stabler?” Crawford said, turning and walking back down the steps.

  Stabler followed him. “Anything but sitting in that car of yours again.”

  “You got something against American cars?” Crawford said, eyeing the Mercedes and Porsche bookending the Vic.

  “Thing smelled like a goddamn locker room.”

  Crawford caught Stabler’s eye. “Probably ’cause it’s had a few criminals sit in it over the years.”

  They walked another ten yards, and Crawford stopped, reached into his pocket and took out his iPhone. He scrolled down to a photo of the earring in the golf bag carrier and showed it t
o

  Stabler. “Whose is this?”

  Stabler squinted. “Oh, shit. My wife’s been looking everywhere for that.”

  “How would it end up in the bag carrier?”

  Stabler shrugged. “’Cause we both used it. She went on a ladies’ weekend down to Casa de Campo two months ago.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The Dominican Republic.”

  Crawford looked down at Stabler’s green rubber Crocs and found them unbefitting of a former Davis Cup tennis player. “My question is,” his eyes wandered back to Stabler’s face, “what was your bag carrier doing at 327 Granada?”

  “I took it there straight from the airport a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In Nassau. A place called Lyford Cay.”

  “Then what? You took your clubs over to the Poinciana and left them there?”

  “Exactly.”

  Crawford nodded. His eyes drifted back to Stabler’s face and his pencil-thin mustache. It had looked fine on the old-time actor David Niven. But Stabler was no David Niven.

  “You like art, Mr. Stabler?”

  “What kind of a question is that?”

  “Just curious.”

  Stabler thought for a second. “Not really. Norman Rockwell a little.”

  “How ’bout Modigliani?”

  “Who?”

  Crawford eyed him for a tell. Was he playing dumb or just…dumb?

  He glanced over at the Crown Vic between the two expensive German cars. “I think I should inform you you’re a suspect in the murder of Mimi Taylor. So, don’t be going on any fancy golf trips.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Stabler said, a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. “I told you I was at the Poin—”

  “I heard you,” Crawford said. “The question is, did you play a full eighteen or cut it short?”

  Fourteen

  Crawford’s cell phone rang as he was pulling out of the driveway of Stark Stabler’s house. He fished it out of his pocket and looked down at the display. Ott.