Palm Beach Perfidious, page 18
“I heard that!” Fiona said. “Just for the record, it is very unmanly to concede.”
“Yeah, you gotta take your punishment,” Cynthia chimed in.
Ott smiled at Crawford. “Yeah, Charlie, you some kind of pussy.”
*****
Fifteen minutes later, after he and Crawford had downed three more cups of beer, Ott swayed forward and bumped into the table, knocking a considerable amount of beer out of the Dixie cups and knocking one over that was now dripping over the side of the table.
First, Fiona and Cynthia laughed, then they accused Ott of doing it on purpose.
“Honest, I didn’t,” Ott protested. “I just don’t have full control of all my motor skills at the moment.”
“Oh, good,” Fiona said. “So you’re ready to dance then?”
Ott burst out laughing as he looked off in the distance of the cavernous room and saw dancers thrashing on the dance floor to an old Culture Beat tune.
Ott shook his head. “Sorry, but I only do the bossa nova.”
Nobody got the reference.
*****
Crawford didn’t exactly bounce out of bed. He got up slowly, got dressed slowly, and took the slow elevator down to the ground floor of the Hanover Inn. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ott in the large dining room across the lobby, a silver pot of coffee in front of him.
He walked over to him. “Whose idea was that?” he croaked.
“What?”
“Going to Theta Delt.”
“Yours. You wanted to show me your name on that plaque.”
Crawford laughed. “What are you having?”
“A stack and a pile of bacon. Proven hangover killers. What about you?”
“A large bottle of Bayer aspirin.”
THIRTY-SIX
Crawford and Ott were in the fourteenth row of a JetBlue flight from Hartford to the West Palm Beach airport.
“You feelin’ any better?” Ott asked Crawford.
“You mean since I killed half that bottle of aspirin?”
“Shit never worked for me.”
Crawford shook his head. “I had to try something. I was near death. In that Beirut game alone, I figured I had at least a six-pack.”
“That was nasty beer, too. I figured your frat bros could do a little better.”
“What kind was it?”
“Keystone.”
“Never even heard of it.”
“Pure piss water.”
“All right, Mort, we gotta do our best to pull it together and talk about the case.”
“Okay,” Ott said. “You never heard back from your friend at West Palm PD, did you?”
“Yeah, when I was getting the aspirin. He gave me the number of the girl Luther King beat up. I called her and left a message.”
Ott nodded. “So in no particular order, we got Frank Lincoln—never had a padre before as a suspect—and Janny Hasleiter, and now Luther King’s back in the running ’cause of his assault charge against, ah, Justine Burroughs, plus Waverly and LV, despite how innocent they both claim to be. I miss anybody?”
“I wouldn’t call him a suspect,” Crawford said, “but I want to at least talk to this guy David Balfour mentioned, Lord whatever, Nigel somebody, who, by process of elimination, might be the biological father of Antonia’s daughter Esmerelda.”
“What do you think you’ll find out from him?”
“I don’t know exactly, but according to David, he was a Brit looking to snag himself a rich American wife. It didn’t quite work out, to the point where the guy didn’t have two nickels to rub together. So, if I was him, and suddenly I found out my daughter was about to inherit fifteen million bucks, I would sure as hell want to come forward as her loving papa.”
“To relieve her of some of that fifteen mil?”
“Yeah, I mean she lives with Antonia’s cleaning lady in a pretty basic bungalow in Lake Worth. I never told you about her.”
“No. Just that you met with her. No specifics.”
“So, anyway, yeah, add ol’ Nigel to your list.”
“Okay, five suspects all together. But nobody’s jumping out.”
“I don’t know about that. If you’re Frank and used to your mother shelling out a couple hundred thou a year on you and all of a sudden it dries up and she says, ‘That’s it,’ that might be a motive to go to her and beg. And if she says, ‘No, that’s all you’re getting, business has slowed down,’ then maybe you lose it and kill her and create a new will on the spot.”
“Yeah, but the whole torture thing?”
“I know, I know. Not exactly something I see a son doing to a mother, especially a son who’s a padre. The torture doesn’t fit what we know of any of them. But we don’t really know much about Luther King, except when he gets mad, he gets violent,” Crawford said, with a shrug.
“Okay,” Ott said, “but what’s his motive? With all the others it could be money, but with Luther, being a few bucks short of being a billionaire, it clearly isn’t.”
“Back to Janny Hasleiter. Antonia goes from being her dear friend who she put up for membership at the Poinciana Club to a woman who’s maybe blackmailing her. Course we don’t know that for a fact, just something Waverly threw out there.”
“To maybe take the heat off of her and LV?”
“We got too many maybes, Mort.”
“No kiddin’,” Ott said. “So what’s our next move?”
“That’s a hell of a good question. All I can see doing is asking a bunch of new questions to all of ’em. Press ’em all a little harder.”
“You think it’s one of ’em?” Ott asked.
“Put it this way, I’m confident enough that we’ve done our job to the point where it’s highly unlikely some new suspect is gonna come out of the woodwork.”
Ott nodded. “I agree.”
The captain announced that they were about to land in West Palm and that they were ten minutes ahead of schedule.
“I hope this is a soft-landing pilot,” Ott said.
“What do you mean?”
“’Cause this hangover of mine is not gonna be able to handle any bounces.”
“Why’d you have to remind me? All that talk about suspects made me forget.”
Ott shook his head. “That frat house of yours is an evil, evil place.”
“I guess I never mentioned something.”
“What?”
“It was the real-life inspiration for Animal House.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
As Crawford and Ott were walking through the airport, Crawford got a call on his cell.
“Antonia’s attorney,” Crawford told Ott, then answered the phone.
“Hi, Charlie, it’s Perry Jastrow. Boy, do I have a scoop for you.”
“Can’t wait to hear it.”
“Okay, so does the name Nigel Ballantrae mean anything to you?”
“If he also goes by the name The Duke of Montpelier, it does.”
“Yes, same guy,” Jastrow said. “Is that how you pronounce it, Mon-pell-yay?”
“Yes, it is. So tell me.”
“Okay, so I got a FedEx envelope this morning. In it were two things: the first was a promissory note, allegedly from Antonia von Habsburg to the duke. Cut through the legal bullshit, it says that Antonia owes the guy three and a half million bucks because she bought a painting from him for four million, of which she, again, allegedly, paid him $500,000 in cash.”
“Meaning she still owes him three and a half million?”
“Exactly.”
“And what was the other thing?”
“A letter to me from Nigel Ballantrae explaining that he sold her a painting of his called, Untitled (Machinations) by an artist named Cy Twombly, and that their agreement was—as stated in the promissory note—that she make three more payments on March 1 of each of the next three years to pay it off.”
“Incredible,” Crawford said. “And I was told, by a pretty reliable source, that Nigel Ballantrae, the Duke of Montpelier, was down to his last dollar and living on PB&Js.”
“I didn’t know what to make of it,” Jastrow said. “It came with a photo of the painting, and the signature was either Antonia’s or a damn good forgery.”
“My money’s on a forgery,” Crawford said, as he and Ott walked out the main entrance of the airport.
“I just thought you’d want to know,” Jastrow said. “I don’t know what this does to the distribution of Antonia’s assets. I suppose I’m going to need to freeze ’em—put three and a half million dollars in escrow, at least until this painting thing gets resolved.”
“Then there’s the whole issue of the two conflicting wills, right?”
“Yeah, I mean I strongly suspect Frank Lincoln’s is bogus, but it’s got some credibility in that you and your partner found it in Antonia’s house.”
Crawford held up his hand to Ott and stopped walking. “Do me a favor, Perry, will you put all that stuff you got from the duke into an email, including, if you can, a copy of the painting?”
“Sure. You got it. I’ll get it over to you as soon as possible.”
“Thanks. I think what I’m going to need to do first is go to Antonia’s house and see if the painting is there. She had a fair amount of artwork but it wasn’t as though I was checking out each artist’s name.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Jastrow said. “Will you get back to me as soon as you’ve had a chance to check this all out?”
“Yeah, definitely. We’ll talk soon.” Crawford clicked off.
“What was that all about?” Ott asked, as they walked to the bus stop for short- and long-term parking.
“Just the latest chapter in the most bizarre, convoluted case you and I have ever had to try to wrap our badly impaired minds around.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Crawford dropped off Ott at the police station on South County at 6:45 that night. He had a mission before he could call it a day. He drove up to Antonia von Habsburg’s mansion and was happy not to find a wedding in full swing or LV Wurfel and his friend, Dirt, sitting around and drinking beer and watching NASCAR. What he did find to the right of von Habsburg’s eight-foot-high marble fireplace was a painting by the American abstract artist, Cy Twombly. Crawford knew it was a Twombly because he had found a website that displayed many paintings of Twombly’s and what prices they had fetched. The one hanging on Antonia von Habsburg’s wall was of what appeared to be scribbled white letters on a blackboard-colored background. The letters didn’t spell anything and, on closer inspection, weren’t actually letters at all but more like dashed-off scrawls.
Of course, Crawford had the reaction that probably many people before him had about Twombly’s multi-million-dollar paintings: What’s all the noise about? Hell, an eight-year-old kid could have done that. But, admittedly, Nigel Ballantrae’s story seemed to be holding up—there was a Cy Twombly hanging in Antonia’s house—but there was a lot more that needed to be determined before Crawford told Perry Jastrow that he better get ready to write Ballantrae a three-and-a-half-million-dollar check.
At 7:20, Crawford arrived at his apartment at the Trianon. He made himself a tuna salad sandwich and a giant smoothie using leftover fruit, plus some chunky peanut butter and a large scoop of protein powder and propped himself up in front of his Samsung. He got halfway through a movie, which he had no intention of finishing, and was in bed by 9:15.
He slept like a baby and didn’t wake up until 7:15.
*****
Nigel Ballantrae wasn’t too difficult to track down. Crawford just Googled him—1437 Lake Crystal Drive, Unit J, to be exact. Sure didn’t sound like the snappy address of British royalty. Crawford briefly debated with himself whether to call the man—a number was listed—or to go with the tried-and-true just show up strategy, which Ott and he had been employing a lot lately.
He went with the latter, drove into the complex, and searched around for numbers. He finally found 1437 Lake Crystal Drive, Unit J, and spotted a man on a second-floor balcony just to the left of a Unit J sign.
He got out of his car, shaded his eyes, and looked up at the man, who was reading a book.
“Are you Mr. Ballantrae, by any chance?” he called up to him.
“I am, and who might you be?”
No doubt about it, the man was a Brit.
“Name’s Detective Crawford, Palm Beach Police. Mind if I have a word with you?”
The man had reddish hair, parted pretty close to the middle of his scalp, and tortoiseshell glasses. “Why don’t I come down to you,” Ballantrae said. “My flat’s a mess.”
“Sure, come on down.”
A minute later Crawford was face-to-face with Nigel Ballantrae, the Duke of Montpelier, on a badly cracked sidewalk.
“Thanks for coming down,” Crawford said, seeing a woman with a dog coming toward them on the sidewalk. “I’m one of the detectives investigating the death of Antonia von Habsburg.”
“I figured as much and was pretty certain you’d eventually get around to me.”
“Yes, well, I recently had a conversation with Perry Jastrow, Ms. von Habsburg’s attorney, who told me about receiving your claim for three and a half million dollars from her estate.”
Ballantrae scratched his cheek. “I bet that came as kind of a shock to Mr. Jastrow.”
“Yes, it definitely did. There have been a few other shocks in the case as well.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Ballantrae said, as the woman and the dog walked past them. The dog started to give Crawford’s right leg a sniff, but the woman tugged on its leash.
“He liked you.” Ballantrae smiled.
Crawford smiled back. “So can you tell me about the transaction between you and Ms. von Habsburg?”
“Absolutely,” Ballantrae said. “It’s relatively simple. Antonia and I became friends, and I found out about her interest in contemporary art and simply asked her if she might be interested in purchasing a Cy Twombly of mine.”
Crawford glanced at Ballantrae’s plain white brick building and couldn’t imagine that he had a lot of million-dollar paintings hanging on his walls.
“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Detective: ‘How is it that this man, living in this… not so grand apartment building, ends up with a four-million-dollar Cy Twombly?’ Well, I’ll be happy to tell you: about thirty years ago, I lived in Rome where, it so happened, Cy Twombly lived with and was married to an Italian painter named Tatiana Franchetti. I got to know him a little, though he was much older, as I was a student at an art school there. I admired his art enormously, and one time he asked me if I wanted to visit his studio. Of course, I jumped at the chance and fell in love with this one painting he was finishing up. He asked me, totally out of the blue, if I wanted it and naturally, I said yes, but told him I only had a thousand pounds to my name. He said, ‘Fine, you just pay me a thousand pounds a year, for twenty years.’ I was thrilled at the idea and said I’d pay him a thousand pounds a year for the rest of my life. He just laughed and said, ‘Twenty years is long enough.’ I read later that he had sold a painting earlier that year at a Christie’s auction for 5.5 million, so… I guess he really didn’t need the money.”
“That’s a pretty amazing story,” Crawford said. “So where did you go to school in Rome, Mr. Ballantrae?”
Ballantrae smiled and raised a finger. “Aha, you’re trying to check my story, aren’t you? See if I just made this whole thing up?”
“Just curious.”
“It’s called the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma.”
“So you had the painting for thirty years before you sold it to Ms. von Habsburg?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And it seems like she got a pretty good deal. I saw some of the prices other paintings of his sold for.”
“Yes, she did, and I let her pay for it over a period of several years, just like Cy had done for me.”
“You call him Cy.”
“Yes, he was a very down-to-earth, simpatico man. He was named after an American baseball player, Cy I-forget-the-last-name.”
“Cy Young?”
“That’s it,” Ballantrae said. “I’ll tell you a quick story about him… if you have time?”
Crawford found himself suddenly very interested in this painter he had barely heard of before. “Sure, I’ve got time.”
“So,”—Ballantrae thought for a moment—“I guess it was about fifteen years ago at a show of Cy’s works in France—Avignon, I think—when a French woman came up to a triptych of his and kissed it. Well, it was a white canvas and now it was smudged with the woman’s bright red lipstick. She was arrested on the spot and later charged in court with—I remember it word for word—‘voluntary degradation of a work of art.’ I always reckoned that seemed a little harsh. Anyway, the woman did, in fact, go to trial and defended her act by saying something like, ‘It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand.’”
The woman with the dog passed by them again, the pup now in the woman’s arms.
“Hello, again,” Crawford said, and she gave him a business-like nod.
“So what finally happened?” Crawford asked.
“Well, the prosecution demanded that she pay a big fine and go to some kind of behavioral modification class.”
“Never heard of that before.”
“I know, so what finally ended up happening is the woman was ordered to pay the owner of the painting a thousand euros, then another five hundred euros to the owner of the gallery, and to Cy, one euro.”
Crawford shook his head. “That’s a pretty incredible story. Now going back to the painting you sold Ms. von Habsburg: I’m assuming that you’re intending to get the remainder of what she owes you—$3.5 million—after the will is probated.”
“Yes. Correct.”
Crawford nodded and paused for a moment. “On a completely different subject, Mr. Ballantrae, what do you know about Ms. von Habsburg’s children?”
“I just know that she didn’t see them very often, but it seemed she was very generous with both of them.”
