by Tom Turner
“My sister probably,” Freddie said. “She’s a lot more involved in the, ah, management of SOAR than me.”
Crawford hoped that would be the case. Unless Crux—in their little stroll session behind Elysium—was telling her to clam up.
He met Ott in the living room. Ott had just wrapped up with a man named Sumner Harris. Fannie Melhado, it seemed, had just come back inside, and was talking to another woman.
Crawford walked over to the two women. “Ladies, if we could meet with you two in about ten minutes. My partner and I need to have a quick conversation first.”
Fannie Melhado rolled her eyes, like she was being terribly inconvenienced, but the other woman smiled and nodded.
Crawford flicked his head, signaling Ott to follow him. They went into the sun-filled dining room and remained standing, facing each other.
“Whatcha got so far?” Crawford asked.
“Well, these people can call themselves a congregation or whatever the hell they want, but there’s no doubt about it, it’s a goddamn cult. And a cult leader can blow smoke up your ass and use fifty-cent words all day long, but when it comes right down to it, I think the dude’s in it for sex and money.”
Crawford smiled. “Okay, Mort, tell me what you really think.”
“Isn’t that the way you see it? I mean, this whole gang could be a rich man’s Manson family… they’re just about five murders short.”
Crawford put up a hand. “Whoa, big fella, you’re goin’ a little overboard now. I’d say the jury’s still out. My interview with the one in the black dress should be interesting. Fannie Melhado. Heard anything about her yet?”
“Yeah, she’s the one bangin’ the boss. Got a shitload of money, right?”
Crawford nodded. “Inimitable Ott-speak… never a man to mince words.”
“Inimitable… shit, Charlie, you get around these people, you start talking like ‘em.”
“Did you notice on our little tour of the third floor, there was a door from Crux’s bedroom to the bedroom on the right?”
Ott nodded. “The one that had women’s clothes in the walk-in?”
“Yeah, you spotted it?”
“Hey bro, not much gets by ol’ Morty.”
Crawford chuckled. “That’s Fannie Melhado’s bedroom.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Ott echoed Crawford’s reaction from earlier. “So, Fannie Melhado is just a door away from the boss.”
Crawford chuckled. “Yup. You get anything else useful?”
Ott put his hand on his chin. “Well, for one thing, the death of Crux’s old squeeze, Marie-Claire Fournier, sounds a little fishy after all.”
“I agree with that. A lot fishy.”
“For another, as you found out, we got a game of musical houses going on here.”
Crawford nodded. “Yeah, people switching around from one to the other.”
“Exactly. Everyone trying to get into Elysium,” Ott said. “Shit, I would be, too, just to be a few steps away from that world-class gym.”
Crawford nodded. “Yeah, but with these people Elysium’s like a status thing.”
“Like havin’ a house on the ocean.”
“Exactly. Or a power thing,” Crawford said. “All right, let’s see what we can get out of these two.”
Ott nodded and they walked out of the sunroom back into the living room.
Crawford walked up to Fannie Melhado. “Ms. Melhado, if you would come with me, please.”
She didn’t say anything, just stood and followed him.
They went into the sunroom and sat down. “So, Ms. Melhado, I had a nice talk with your brother.”
She shook her head and scowled. “He’s quite the conversationalist, isn’t he?”
Sounded like what she meant was that he was quite the gasbag. “Did you know Christian Lalley very well?”
“Not really. We spoke a few times, but that was about it,” she said, tapping her hand on a side table.
“Ms. Melhado, I’m interested in what SOAR does. That hasn’t really been explained in detail to me yet.”
She smiled. “What? You want to join, Detective?”
Crawford smiled. “I’m a lapsed Unitarian who plays golf on the Sabbath.”
“So, you mean, a heathen.”
Crawford chuckled. “Pretty much.”
“You’re forgiven,” Fannie said. “So, I’ll give you an answer. For one thing, we’re doing everything we can to end homelessness in this area. And it’s a really big problem. You’d be surprised how much homelessness there is just across the Intracoastal in Lake Worth and West Palm and up in Riviera Beach,” she said. “We also spend a ton of time teaching the indigent. Specifically, high-school dropouts and the mentally challenged. We believe that teaching kids about James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway or when the French and Indian War was fought is a complete waste of time… who gives a damn? That’s not what these kids need, they need to be taught a profession. Robotics, computer science, or hell, how to be a plumber and make a hundred bucks an hour. We don’t have any plumbers in SOAR, but we’ve got a lot of tech-savvy people—a few who used to have big jobs in Silicon Valley. Virtual jobs, in a lot of cases. If we at SOAR don’t have the necessary teaching knowledge, we hire people who can teach these kids how to be dental assistants, electricians, cosmetologists, you name it. Fields where they can go out and get a job right away.”
“So, in effect you’re like a vocational school?”
“Kind of. But we go further. A lot further. Vocational schools, trade schools, whatever you want to call ’em, generally are government-run or for-profit. Government-run means all the usual government flaws and limitations and red tape; for-profit means—bottom-line—they’re more interested in making a buck than teaching a kid what he needs to know.”
“That seems very worthwhile.”
“Thank you. I think it is.”
She leaned back in her chair, quite satisfied with her explanation. Crawford’s sense was that she seemed genuinely dedicated. Like she might have been an aimless dilettante for most of her life—riding horses, going to debutante parties and charity balls, jet-setting to fancy places—and had finally found a purpose. At least, that’s how it came across. Or maybe she was just a good actress. Like Mensa-chick Geena Davis.
“Well, thank you,” Crawford said. “Now I know. It all sounds pretty admirable… what you do, that is.”
“Fuck admirable,” Fannie said. “It’s long, long overdue, what we do.”
The f-bomb slid off her lips like it was nothing more than ‘gosh’ or ‘golly gee.’
“I’m curious about something,” Crawford said, “how you ended up in SOAR. Your brother told me a little.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Why? You don’t think I fit in or something?”
“No, actually I do. You seem very committed to the cause and making SOAR a success.”
She looked amused. “And you seem like a very earnest young man.”
To the best of his recollection, he had never been called earnest before. And young? Not in the last five years, at least. Besides, he was pretty sure she was younger than him.
“I wasn’t trying to avoid the question,” she said, “if there was a question there. See, here’s the thing. You can either be rich and buy a lot of things and do whatever the hell you want, or you can be rich and make something of yourself and put your money to good use.”
Crawford nodded.
“For the first thirty-two years of my life I bought whatever I wanted and did whatever the hell I wanted—” she laughed “—within reason of course. Then a while ago I decided I wanted to make something of myself. Make a difference somehow. Well, it wasn’t going to be in business because I suck at business. And I wasn’t going to suddenly become an actress and win an Oscar. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to be a famous athlete because I’m not very coordinated—” she laughed again “—so it was pretty easy to rule out a lot of things.”
“So, you decided to…
do good?”
“Well, yes, I guess that’s true, but I am not without ego. I wanted to be involved in something that will change the world. That will make it a better place. But I also must confess I want people to say, Oh, yeah, SOAR… that’s Fannie Melhado’s brainchild.”
That was a bit of a curveball. “But… isn’t it Crux’s brainchild?”
Fannie put her hand up. “Yeah, you are absolutely right… I meant to say, Crux and Fannie Melhado’s brainchild.”
Crawford made note of this, realizing that having a goal of being the next Joseph Smith, John Calvin or Jesus Christ was a lofty ambition. He wasn’t sure what to say next and decided to go in a whole new direction. “So, I’m just going to come right out and ask, who do you think did it? Killed Christian Lalley? Or if you don’t want to speculate on that, what do you think the killer’s motive might have been?”
“I’m sorry, but I have absolutely no idea. It’s not as though I saw someone walking around with a knife dripping blood—”
“No, of course not.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be flip, it’s just this whole thing makes us look so damn bad. It’s a real set-back.”
“I understand. I get that,” Crawford said. “I have another question. Do you know how Marie-Claire Fournier died?”
“A brain aneurism, supposedly.”
“Supposedly?”
“Why do you ask?
“Because that’s what I do.”
“And seems like you’re pretty good at it.”
“Thank you, but I’m just asking basic questions,” Crawford said. “Have you ever heard any other theories about what happened to Ms. Fournier?”
“Isn’t a brain aneurism enough?”
“So, you never heard there might have been foul play?”
Fannie shook her head slowly. “You actually call it that? Foul play?”
Crawford shrugged. “Yeah, I agree, sounds a little dated. But that is what we call it.”
Fannie shrugged back. “Okay.”
“So, you never heard anything else about Ms. Fournier?” he persisted.
“You’re a real dog with a bone,” Fannie said. “Why would someone kill her?”
“I don’t know, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Maybe it actually was an aneurism,” Crawford said. “Let me go back to something from earlier.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you think Christian Lalley could have been killed by an outsider?”
She rubbed her chin. “I have absolutely no idea. But I hope so.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? ’Cause if it’s someone in SOAR, the black eye will be even blacker.”
Crawford nodded, then put his hand on his chin and thought for a second. “Why is it that you don’t have the name of a star or something in the solar system? You know, like a lot of the others.”
Fannie chuckled. “Fuck that. I gotta tell you, I think that whole star thing’s kinda bogus. I mean, come on. Plus, I’ve got enough money to tell Crux I’ll stick to Fannie, thank you very much.”
She had refreshing honesty, in addition to her other attributes.
Crawford nodded and reached for his wallet. “Thank you, Ms. Melhado. Here are two cards”—he handed them to her—“in case you think of anything else.”
“You think I might lose one?”
“No, the second one’s for your brother. I forgot to give him one,” Crawford said. “Oh, one final question.”
“Yes?”
“Just curious, are you a Mensa?”
“No,” she said, putting his cards in her leather handbag, and smiling, “but pretty damn close.”
Eight
After a long, exhausting afternoon of asking the same question to thirty-two different people, both detectives were weary and didn’t know that much more than they had before. Whereas the Melhados were refreshingly candid, as was Vega to some degree, the others seemed like a bunch of highly intelligent eggheads bordering on sheep, who provided answers that were virtual carbon copies of everyone else’s responses.
Crawford and Ott got back to the police station at just before five. They adjourned to their separate offices—well, office for Crawford and “executive cubicle,” as Ott called his space—and jumped back onto the Lalley case. Crawford was convinced that there was more to the Marie-Claire Fournier death than he had heard so far. Ott had gotten phone numbers for Christian Lalley’s ex-wife and brother and was eager to question them.
At just before eight o’clock, Ott called it a day. Twenty minutes later Crawford headed over to his apartment in West Palm.
Simon Petrie was walking his dog, Chief, along Washington Road in West Palm Beach on a loop they took every morning and night. It was exactly one point six miles. Petrie knew because it was one of the many functions his Apple Watch Series 5 performed. Petrie had researched all the functions his watch was capable of and figured he used at most two percent of them. Measuring his walk with Chief was his most commonly used function by far.
He walked late every night, after the eleven o’clock news. He liked to pick a story he had just heard on the news and memorize it word for word. Then he’d repeat it to Chief on their walk. Odd? Very possibly, but maybe it was just one of those things Mensa people did for amusement. If another pedestrian came along when he was reciting the news story to Chief, he’d stop, then continue on after the person was out of earshot.
Petrie was crossing a street when he heard footsteps approaching behind him. He stopped his recitation to Chief—it was about the armed robbery of a jewelry store up in Palm Beach Gardens—then felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder. It felt like someone had bashed him with a baseball bat, except the pain was more pinpointed. As he staggered under the attack, he felt another stab of intense pain in his neck and knew it was a knife. He tried to turn but couldn’t. He heard Chief yelp and he released his grip on the leash. Then he felt the man behind him push up against his back and, this time, felt a sudden pain in his chest. He realized that the man had reached over his shoulder and plunged the knife into his upper chest. Petrie screamed out in pain and started to fall forward as he saw Chief bare his fangs and charge the man from the side.
Chief growled ferociously, a menacing sound Petrie had never heard in the four years he’d owned the dog. Then he heard a cry from his assailant and saw out of the corner of his eye the man slash his knife at Chief, missing by a few inches. As Petrie fell to the ground, he caught a glimpse of the man as he turned and ran. He tried to get a look at his face but all he saw was a dark gray hoodie. Chief didn’t chase the man but just started whimpering. Petrie saw blood on one paw and didn’t know if it was his own, the dog’s, or the assailant’s. Chief hunched into a crouch and licked Petrie’s face.
“We’re going to be okay, boy,” Petrie said, but he wasn’t so sure. He was losing a lot of blood.
Then a shape appeared on the sidewalk in front of him about twenty feet away.
“Are you all right?” a woman shouted. She was wearing a running outfit. “I heard a scream.”
And that was when Simon Petrie lost consciousness.
Crawford was in the middle of that dream that everyone has, the one where you wake up in a sweaty panic about not having done your homework. He had another recurring one in which he was walking with some faceless woman—not Dominica or Rose or anyone he knew—in a park. All of a sudden, he heard the shrill roar of a low flying airplane above him, then he watched in horror as it crashed into a stand of tall pine trees.
He woke up in a cold sweat and thought about both dreams for a moment. He wondered what a shrink would say about them. Did they symbolize something? Were they harbingers of something? Or, remembering the old Shakespeare quote from a course at Dartmouth, was it all sound and fury, signifying nothing? He always liked that quote—how it applied to so many things—and decided that’s probably all it was.
Eyes open now, he heard a sharp noise somewhere and didn’t know whether it was part of his dre
am or real life. He woke fully now and realized the noise was the ring of his cell phone beside the bed. He reached for it.
“H’lo.”
“Charlie, it’s me”—it was Ott— “that guy Simon Petrie got mugged. He’s at Good Sam in pretty bad shape. I’m on my way.”
Crawford slid one leg over the side of the bed. “All right, see you there,” he said and clicked off.
Good Samaritan hospital was fifteen minutes from Crawford’s condo in West Palm. He knew he could get dressed in three minutes—three and a half if he was tying a tie. He skipped the tie.
He and Ott pulled up to the emergency ward of the hospital at exactly the same time.
“These cult people are really cutting into my sleep time,” Ott said, shaking his head as he approached Crawford.
Crawford chuckled. “Or in this case, a ‘disgruntled former member.’”
They walked under an overhead light and Crawford noticed that one of Ott’s shirt tails hadn’t been tucked in, and it looked like he was wearing one blue sock and one black one. Crawford figured close enough and chose not to point it out as they moved quickly through the emergency ward door.
“You got any more details?” Crawford asked.
“He got attacked is all I know,” Ott said, flagging down a man in scrubs. “Knife wounds on his neck and chest. Lost a shitload of blood.”
“Guy with a knife seems to be getting around,” Crawford said.
“Yeah, I wonder if there’s a way to match it up with Christian Lalley?”
“That might be tough.”
The man in scrubs came over.
“We’re looking for the victim of a stabbing, took place a little while ago. Name’s Petrie.”
“Yes, sure,” the man said, pointing, “go in this door here. Hang a right then you’ll see him.”
“Thanks,” Crawford said.
Ott nodded and led the way through the door. Even though Ott’s legs were considerably shorter than Crawford’s, he could get them churning at a pretty good clip.