Palm Beach Perfidious, page 9
“Top of the morning, Mac,” Crawford said.
He called her “Mac,” short for McCarthy, when they were on the job, “Dominica” when he was being formal, and “babe” when they were alone.
“Hey Charlie,” she said. “How’s it going?”
“Mort and I had a little excitement in the middle of the night.” He decided not to go into the Ott-DeeDee connection. “Know what lingchi is?”
“Sure. That Chinese knife torture thing.”
“Well, someone did it to a woman over on Westminster Street last night.”
Dominica cocked her head. “Jesus, really? But that’s in West Palm, right?”
Crawford nodded.
“Why’d you catch it?”
“Mort knew the vic. A woman. She called him right after it happened.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s alive. Got cut up pretty bad, though.”
“Christ,” Dominica said, shaking her head. “You want me to go check out the scene?”
“Yeah, if you would. I want to clear it with West Palm first.”
“Gotcha. This have anything to do with the von Habsburg murder? I mean, two really nasty tortures?”
“That’s an accurate description. The connection occurred to us, but we have nothing definitive yet.”
“I mean, sounds like it might, right?”
“Yeah, it does,” Crawford said. “You pretty busy?”
“Nah, things have slowed down.”
“Nothing wrong with that, huh?”
Dominica smiled up at him. “No, but I’m like you, I like action.”
*****
Rose Clarke had gotten Janny Hasleiter’s cell phone number from the Poinciana Club. Only members could get other members’ phone numbers and emails. So, Crawford dialed the cell number, expecting the usual routine: leaving five messages, then a pointed threat, before getting a call back.
Miraculously, though, a woman answered on the first ring. “Hello, darling,” she said.
“Ms. Hasleiter?”
“Ah, no, this is her friend, Ms. Shamburg, but you can call me Lulu. Who’s this?”
“My name’s Charlie Crawford, Palm Beach Police Department.”
“Well, hello, Officer. You want Janny?”
“Yes, please, is she there?”
“Yes, she is.” The woman lowered her voice and dialed up a sexy purr. “Are you in uniform, Officer? One of those sexy blue uniforms with the silver buttons?”
“Well, actually—”
“Because Janny and I are skinny dipping here in Janny’s pool and maybe you’d like to—”
“Gimme that, Lulu!” Crawford heard in the background, then another woman’s voice came on. “Who is this?” the other voice demanded.
“Name’s Crawford, I’m a Palm Beach homicide detective. Is this Ms. Hasleiter?”
“It is. What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you about your friend, Antonia von Habsburg. I’m one of the detectives investigating her murder.”
There was a pause. “Ms. Hasleiter?” he said.
“Yes, I’m here. I’m checking my schedule,” she said. “Can you come right now? Because tomorrow I’m flying out to Los Angeles, and tonight I have a dinner.”
Not only first ring, but she was actually being cooperative.
“Sure. I can meet with you now. Where are you?”
“The Bristol. Penthouse A.”
The Bristol was actually close to where he lived. “Your friend mentioned something about a pool. Are you down at the pool there?”
“No, no, we’re at my pool… outside my apartment.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
He heard the voice of the first woman, Lulu, in the background. “Don’t forget your Speedo, Officer!”
The Bristol was a new, ultra-sleek building on South Flagler Drive not far from where Crawford had recently bought a condo. His building was called the Trianon. The Bristol, practically next door, put his building to shame. He had heard—from Rose probably—that a condo there had recently sold for thirty million dollars. Something told him it might just have been Janny Hasleiter’s.
He walked out the back entrance of the station, got into his Crown Vic, and made the short drive over the middle bridge to the Bristol. What killed Crawford was how half of the condo buildings, not to mention office buildings, restaurants, and stores in West Palm made it seem like they were actually in Palm Beach. He remembered seeing a woman walking past the station with a blue and white canvas bag that said, The Bristol, Palm Beach. Well, no, actually it’s in West Palm and there was a good-sized body of water called the Intracoastal in between the two. Not to mention, the Palm Beach Airport was in West Palm. Ditto the Palm Beach Zoo. The Palm Beach Post was in West Palm. The list went on. It seemed no one wanted to ’fess up that they were domiciled in lowly West Palm Beach.
He parked at the Bristol, went inside and stepped up to the stylishly-dressed woman at the main desk. He told her Ms. Hasleiter was expecting him, and she directed him to the elevator.
Janny Hasleiter met Crawford at the front door of her apartment in a fluffy white terry cloth robe and blue flip-flops. She looked to be in her mid-forties, had long, dark, shiny hair, and, something told Crawford, a well-toned body underneath the bathrobe. Crawford walked into the apartment, which seemed to have glass walls on all four sides. He got a quick glimpse looking east over Palm Beach and to the ocean beyond. It was what they used to call a million-dollar view. But now, it was more like a thirty-million-dollar view.
“Well,” Janny said, after they’d done their introductions, “might as well work on our tans while you pepper me with questions.” She led him through the luxurious apartment, dominated by white furniture and what appeared to be eighteen- to twenty-foot-high ceilings and out to the terrace and pool.
Crawford shaded his eyes from the sun.
And there in a micro red polka-dot bikini, stretched out in a double chaise lounge, was a woman who could only be the provocatively-talking Ms. Shamburg. She was blond, zaftig, and tan. Late thirties, he figured. Around his age.
“Aww,” she said seeing Crawford, “no uniform with nice, shiny buttons.”
“Sorry, I’m a detective, ma’am. We just wear regular clothes.”
“And wear them so well,” Lulu said.
“Christ, Lulu, leave the poor man alone,” Janny said. “He just got here.”
“I was just—”
Janny cut her off with a look.
Crawford was not surprised to see a half-empty bottle of Whispering Angel rosé on a table next to Lulu.
“Can I get you something to drink, Detective?” Janny asked.
“Ah, I’d love a Coke, please,” Crawford said.
“What a sport,” said Lulu. “Come on, it’s after twelve.”
Some people in Palm Beach, Crawford had noticed, started cocktail hour at six, others at five, but for the hardcore—noon.
Crawford glanced at Janny, who seemed to be waiting to see if Lulu had shamed him into changing his order. “Thanks. Just a Coke.”
Janny walked back inside.
Lulu patted the side of the chaise lounge she was in. “Come have a seat.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” he said, pointing to a teak chair next to her, “I’m just going to sit there.”
“Aww,” she pouted, “and Detective, lose the ‘ma’am’, okay? Makes me feel like a fossil.”
Crawford nodded. Closer up, she looked to be around forty-five and, clearly, no stranger to cosmetology.
“So you want to talk to Janny about Antonia?” Lulu said, pouring the last of the rosé into a plastic wine glass.
“Yes, did you know her?” he asked, remembering that tipsy women had always been a good source of information in the past.
“I just met her once. Terrible what happened to her.”
Crawford nodded. “Did you know anything about her?”
Lulu took a quick pull on her wine. “Just that she had a lot of men in her life. Lucky girl. But, I guess a lot of that had to do with her job.”
Janny walked back out onto the terrace with Crawford’s Coke and a red drink in her other hand.
“You doing a Bloody?” Lulu asked.
“Uh-huh,” Janny said.
“What a good idea. Think I’ll switch over.”
Janny handed the Coke to Crawford. “Here you go. What’s your first name anyway? Detective has too many syllables.”
“Charlie.”
“Good. Only two,” said Janny. “So what do you want to know about Antonia?”
Crawford glanced over at Lulu.
Janny shook her head and lowered her voice. “Don’t worry about her. She’ll forget everything in ten minutes.”
Lulu laughed. “I heard that,” she said. “Actually, only five.”
Crawford eyes came back to Janny. “I’m told you were a pretty good friend of Ms. von Habsburg. Did she ever say anything to you about anybody she was scared of? Someone she may have feared? Or who may have threatened her? Anyone who, I don’t know, wanted to do harm to her?”
“That’s all kind of redundant, isn’t it, Charlie?” Janny said. “I was actually a very good friend of hers. I always felt she was in kind of a dangerous business. I mean, it could have been a lot of people.”
“What do you mean? A dangerous business, how so?”
“Well, she told me about this one man”—she paused to take a sip of her Bloody Mary—“who told her he was going to destroy her business. What happened was one of her girls got him drunk, took all his credit cards and charged up a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. Antonia, who always took great pride in how well she vetted the girls, was going to fire her anyway, but by then the damage was done and the girl was long gone.”
“Any other incidents like that?” Crawford asked.
“Let’s see, I’m sure you know about Luther King by now,” Janny said. “He always strikes me as a man… I don’t know, capable of bad things. Of course, it doesn’t get any worse than that rat thing.”
“Yeah, that was so horrible,” Lulu piped in from her double chaise.
“Then, there’s her ex-husband, LV. Figured he got screwed out of what was rightfully his. Saw his piece shrinking and shrinking. Antonia always told me that he was getting more than he deserved, but I don’t know.”
“Anybody else?”
Janny looked off in the distance, then her eyes returned to Crawford’s. “Okay, and you didn’t hear this from me,”—she glanced over at Lulu—“and if you tell anyone I’ll kill you,”—Lulu put up her hands and shook her head mightily—“but I heard something through the grapevine that Antonia might have blackmailed a few men.”
“Blackmailed them? What do you mean? How?”
“Telling them she was going to tell their wives about their little… indiscretions, unless they paid her a lot more money. But I want to make it clear, this was just a rumor. And if you put all the rumors in Palm Beach together you might end up with one whole truth. I also heard, she had photos too… very, very graphic photos.”
“Was one of the men”—he glanced over at Lulu who had just stood up, and lowered his voice—“a man named Courtie Hiller?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lulu peel off her top. He mustered his willpower and didn’t turn to look.
Janny nodded. “He was one.”
“Who else?”
Janny sighed. “You know, I’d better not say.”
“Ms. Hasleiter—”
“Janny.”
“Janny. If I’m going to find your friend’s killer, I really need your help.”
She sighed again as, in the background, Lulu jumped into the pool.
“Finding her killer’s not going to bring her back,” Janny said.
“True. But don’t you think she’d like her killer to be found?”
Janny glanced up. “Up there in heaven, you mean?”
“Wherever.”
She lowered her voice. “George Morrison,” she said, “the president of the Poinciana.”
“Really?”
“Yes. They both had one thing in common. George and Courtie, that is.”
“Antonia’s girls?”
“Well, that too. But I was going to say, rich wives. Without them they’d have to go get a job or something.”
“Hey Charlie!” Lulu called out from the shallow end of the pool.
He turned. The view was dominated by Lulu’s bronzed and rather large breasts. She was beckoning him with a finger. He turned away.
“Oh, don’t be so damn prudish,” Lulu said.
“I’m conducting an interview,” he said, keeping his focus on Janny.
“Okay, Charlie, interview’s over,” Janny said. “Take a swim with us. Party a little.”
But Crawford stood up to go. “Sorry, I forgot my Speedo.”
SEVENTEEN
“Thank you for meeting with me,” he said to Janny, then turning. “Nice to meet you, Lulu.”
Janny took a step toward him.
“Come on, stick around,” she said. “Trade that Coke in for a man’s drink.”
He flashed to what Rose had said about Janny. He remembered the word voracious. Time to go.
He glanced down at his watch. “I really appreciate everything you’ve told me and assure you I will keep it all between us, but I’ve got a meeting with my boss that I can’t be late for.”
Awkwardly, he stuck out his hand to shake with Janny. “Let me know if you think of anything else relating to Antonia.”
She took one step closer but didn’t shake his hand. “You’re very welcome, Charlie. And we’ll still be here after your made-up meeting with your boss.”
*****
He got out of there as fast as he could.
In the elevator down, his cell phone rang.
He imagined it was Janny asking, Sure you don’t want to reconsider?
But it was Ott. “What’s up?” Crawford asked.
“They let me speak to DeeDee at the hospital. She said we could come over. What are you doing?”
“You won’t believe it. Tell you later,” Crawford said. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Make it ten.”
“You got it.”
*****
Crawford and Ott knew their way around Good Samaritan Hospital. They had been frequent visitors over the years, including when Rose Clarke was broadsided by a hit-and-run driver the year before. It had been intentional, and eventually they’d tracked down the driver. He was in prison now, no longer a threat to Rose.
DeeDee Dunwoody was on the same floor where Rose had stayed and, Crawford wasn’t sure, but it might have even been the same room.
They walked in and DeeDee looked up from a paperback she had been reading. She had gauze bandages covering her face and arms. All you could see of her face was her mouth, nose and eyes. She had very pretty emerald green eyes.
She put the paperback down on her bed. “Oh, hi, Mort. Thank you for coming. Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to put my make-up on yet,” she said.
Ott laughed. “So good to see you, DeeDee,” he said. “This is my partner, Charlie Crawford.”
“Hi, DeeDee,” Crawford said with a nod. “How you feeling?”
“Well, I’ve been better,” she said with a sigh. “But… I’m alive,”—she glanced over at Ott—“thanks to you.”
“I’d love to take credit, but thanks to the EMTs. They got there really fast.”
Ott took out the trusty leather notebook he’d been using for twenty years, and Crawford took out his iPhone, which he took notes on.
Crawford looked at Ott. “Why don’t you start it out.”
Ott nodded. “So, tell us everything you can, so we can find whoever did this and put him away. What was the first thing you saw or heard?”
“Well, I was sound asleep when a noise woke me up. It was close, in my bedroom. I started to turn on my bedside lamp when I felt a hand on my mouth. A man’s voice said something like, ‘Don’t scream or say a word or you’re dead.’”
“That voice… what do you remember about it? Was there an accent or anything distinctive about it at all?” Ott asked.
“Oh God, Mort, I was just scared out of my mind. I didn’t notice much… It was a deep voice. No accent or anything like that. Just scary. Kind of monotone.”
“Understand,” Ott said. “Then what?”
“Then I heard this ripping noise and felt him put something over my eyes. I realized later it was duct tape. After he put it on, he yanked me out of the bed, twisted my arm up around my back and walked me out to the living room. The funny thing was that it sounded like the footsteps of two people behind me. Next thing I remember was him lifting me up and putting me face up on my dining room table.”
“Were there any lights on at this point?” Crawford asked.
“No, but he had a flashlight.”
“Okay,” Ott said, “so you were lying face up on your dining room table. Then what?”
“Do I have to go into all of it?”
“Just what you’re comfortable telling us,” Ott said.
She paused for a second. “Okay, well, I was wearing these baggy pajamas, um, bra and panties underneath. So, he took the pajamas off, then wrapped duct tape around my waist first, then my ankles, then around my… shoulders.”
“Wait, did the duct tape go around you and under the dining room table?” Crawford asked.
“Yes, sorry, I forgot to mention that. Yes, around me and the dining room table. So I couldn’t move. Plus, he put my hands together and wrapped the tape around my hands so they were… kind of resting on my belly.”
“So, obviously you couldn’t move,” Ott said. “I mean you were duct-taped to the table.”
“Yes, I literally couldn’t move at all, then…” her eyes closed, as if the horrible memory had come rushing back.
