Palm Beach Nasty (17 page)

He handed her a flyer.

The woman reached for the half-moon glasses hanging by a silver chain, then examined the sketch.

A flicker . . . but then it faded and died.

“Sorry, my memory . . . sometimes I forget what I had for breakfast.”

She was eyeing him now, like he was Cary Grant.

“Well, thank you m’am, I appreciate it,” Ott said, ready to move on.

She studied the sketch, then her eyes got big.

“Can you wait one second, Detective?”

“Sure.”

She was back in a few seconds.

“Make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye out for that man, if you keep one out for Scroggins.”

“Scroggins?”

She handed him a picture. It was a poodle that looked more like a Fifi, Ott thought. Her neatly hand-printed flyer said that he was lost at the intersection of South County and Banyan, gave the dog’s weight, a phone number, then said, reward $25,000.

“$25,000 . . . wow,” Ott said, figuring that probably worked out to about five grand a pound.

“He’s all I had,” she said sadly.

“Give me a bunch of those, I’ll get the word out. I’d advise you, though, to put the $25,000 in big red letters at the top.”

“That’s a good idea, Detective,” she said, flipping back her hair and smiling coyly up at him. “You know, Detective, you are a
very
handsome man.”

As he walked down the long driveway to the house next door, Ott figured, the last time he got propositioned was back in the nineties. And she was a suspect, trying to get off.

Ott was beginning to wish he had taken his car as he hit the buzzer on the large two-story Mediterranean. A middle-aged black man opened the door. He was dressed in gray flannel pants, a white shirt and dark tie. Ott introduced himself. The man nodded and said his name was Alcie Luvley. He had erect posture and a dignified, yet friendly way about him.

“Mr. Luvley, you ever seen this man?” Ott handed him one of the sketches. “Name’s Nick Greenleaf.”

Alcie took it, studied it and said softly, “Hmmm.”

Then he handed the flyer back to Ott. “Sorry, can’t say as I have.”

“You positive?”

“At first, I thought . . . someone from way back, like twenty years ago.”

“This man’s only around twenty-five years old.”

“Oh, well,” Alcie said, “guess not.”

“I tell you what,” Ott said, handing the flyer back to Alcie, “hang onto it, will you? Just in case.”

Alcie nodded.

“Absolutely.”

“You never know,” Ott said again, handing him his card.

“You never do, do you,” said Alcie, his unusually wide smile revealing a sparkling set of uppers and lowers.

TWENTY-SIX

C
rawford came back to the station after an hour and a half conversation with David Ponton, manager of the Poinciana. He stopped off to pick up the warrant giving him access to Nick Greenleaf’s condo at the Palm Beach Princess.

Ott, who had just returned from handing out sketches, held one up to Crawford.

“This is our boy, Nick, Todd . . . whoever.”

Crawford glanced at it, then tore it out of Ott’s hand.

“Jesus, Charlie, easy.”

“I saw this guy . . . yesterday.”

“Where?”

“Tell you later,” he was already halfway to the elevator.

T
HERE WERE
no open parking spots in front of the Fonseca Gallery, so Crawford went a few doors past it and pulled into a spot behind a black Mercedes stretch limo. Limos—stretch or otherwise—were not an uncommon sight on Worth Avenue, but this one immediately caught his attention. Its engine was idling, barely a whisper, the New York vanity plate read, “Shortem.”

Crawford just had a hunch Shortem was related to Rainmkr.

He edged up to the plate glass window of Lil’s gallery and looked in. Sure enough. He saw Ward Jaynes through the window, standing near Lil’s desk, gesturing to Lil with choppy hand motions.

Lil sat in the chocolate brown leather chair opposite him, chin in hand, listening intently. He watched as Lil handed him a photograph. Another couple was looking at a painting on the far side of the gallery. Crawford turned and headed back to his car. He figured it was better if they didn’t know he had seen them together.

W
HEN HE
returned forty-five minutes later, Jaynes and his limo were gone.

As he approached the front door, he saw Lil alone in the gallery, pacing catlike.

He opened the door and walked in.

She swung around and put her hands on her hips.

“So, Charlie . . . traded me in for a woman in a blue, plastic jacket?” Lil asked, wearing a beige skirt that stopped just centimeters short of her crotch.

“We work together, Lil,” Crawford said. “And, just for the record, it’s not plastic.”

“Whatever, she’s very cute,” Lil said, running her hand through her long, streaked hair.

“I need to talk to you about that guy you had lunch with yesterday,” Crawford said, avoiding her assertive cleavage.

“O-kay,” she said, like it wasn’t okay.

“How do you know him?”

“I sold a painting of his. Why?”

“How much did you pay for it?”

She cocked her head to the side and put her hands on her hips.

“What difference does it make? Is he an ax murderer or something?”

“How much, Lil?”

“Sixteen thousand dollars.”

“A check?”

She nodded.

“Made out to Nick Greenleaf?”

Her face tightened and she broke eye contact. Then she looked back at him and her smile returned.

“Yes . . . to Nick Greenleaf.”

He heard a whisper of tension in her voice.

“What aren’t you telling me, Lil?”

“Jesus, Charlie, I’m not used to the third degree from you.”

“Sorry, but once a cop always a cop. I need to know how to find Greenleaf.”

He made a note to go around to the banks, find out if Greenleaf was a customer.

The bell tinkled, the door opened and two women walked in.

Lil gave them an enthusiastic wave.

“I need to speak to him, Lil. You have an address?”

“No, I—”

“A number?”

“All right, all right,” she said, and walked back to her desk. “You know, I
do
run a business here.”

She opened up a red leather book and turned away, so Crawford couldn’t see it.

“Here we go . . . . 6-5-5-0-1-2-3.”

“Thanks.”

Lil put her hand up to her sculpted chin. “What do you want him for?”

“I need to ask him some questions.”

“About what?”

“I can’t go into it.”

She put her hands on her hips, and lowered her voice.

“But it’s okay you ask me any damn thing you want?”

“Like I said, once a cop—”

“Yeah, yeah . . . bye, Charlie, I got customers to attend to.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

A
fter her customers walked out, Lil beelined to the front door and hung up a little sign that said, “Back in fifteen.”

She had a lot to absorb.

She sat down at her desk, rested her elbows on it, put her hands up to her head and rubbed her temples.

She flashed back to when she was an eighteen-year-old, five-dollar-an-hour employee of Paul Pools outside of San Francisco. Her job was to scoop out palm fronds and dead chameleons with a long-handled strainer, then add chlorine tablets to maintain a pool’s PH balance. Her rounds included rich people’s houses in Mill Valley, Tiburon and Ross, where lots of kids her age squinted down their long aquiline noses at her. She was invisible to most of them as she scrubbed green mold off the sides of their pools. She noticed a lot of $300 bikinis on scrawny, flat-chested girls and made sure to thrust out her well-developed breasts when boys were around. She always wore short shorts that showed off her long, perfect legs.

One of the rich boys asked her out one day when she was cleaning his parents’ pool. She figured out early on he just wanted to get into her pants, which wasn’t about to happen until he spent a lot of money on her. Until she got a taste of what life was like in the big houses behind the high stucco walls.

She had come a long way, for sure. But now . . . Avery Robertson was, in reality, some fraud named Nick Greenleaf. Christ! The goddamn phony even had a phony sounding name. That explained his rough-around-the-edges thing.

So his whole spiel about having tagged along with his grandfather when he bought art was . . . complete bullshit. And the painting she had sold for him was no doubt . . . stolen goods. And the whole divine plan she had cooked up to make her a millionaire was about to come crashing down around her shoulders. She should have figured something was up when his eyes changed overnight from green to blue.

She could always call up Charlie and tell him everything. Admit that she had just told him a white lie—that the $16,000 check was made out to Avery Robertson, not Nick Greenleaf. That she was an innocent victim of this horrible con man, whatever his name was. That he was living at Spencer Robertson’s house passing himself off as Robertson’s grandson. She could give Charlie his cell number instead of the one at the place where he used to live. Charlie would arrest him and she’d be a hero. Probably make the front page of the
Glossy
. Something like, “Art Gallery Owner Assists in Con Man Takedown.”

Whoopee.

And just how did that pay the rent? How did that cover the cost of the Elsa Peretti necklace she’d just sprung for at Tiffany?

And what about the gallery? At the pathetically anemic rate she was selling paintings, the gallery was going to get foreclosed on like every third house in South Florida. So she’d end up the only nonmillionaire in Palm Beach? That was totally unacceptable. She’d already charged up the white sequined Chanel dress, figuring with what she was going to make on the Hopper, she could fill a couple of walk-in closets. So now if the Hopper deal didn’t happen . . . what was she supposed to do? And what was she going to wear to the Fall Ball? The three-year-old Ungaro everyone had seen her in?

No way in hell.

Lil got up from her desk, went over to the love seat across from it, sat down, exhaled and did some deep breathing. She did her best thinking when she sank into its deep plush comfort.

She reviewed the plan that had been creeping into her head and taking shape over the last twenty-four hours. No question about it, it was brilliant. Yeah, okay, maybe it was a tad . . . felonious. But it was so damn inventive, plus the jig wouldn’t be up until after the old guy, Spencer Robertson, was moldering in his grave. By then she’d be ensconced in a penthouse on Park Avenue, living under the pseudonym she had dreamed up in tribute to her two favorite artists: Stella Hockney.

Then she changed her mind . . . better make it San Francisco. Her triumphant return to her hometown. They had penthouses there, too. Problem with moving to New York was that too many New York people had come to the gallery and knew her. San Francisco would be just fine. Then she remembered one of the reasons why she left . . . but there had to be at least a
few
good men there.
Right?

She got up from the love seat. She’d made up her mind. She was going to go forward with the plan. All she had to do was keep a close eye on Nick. Make sure he didn’t blow it. Get him to stay put at the house on El Vedato, not go out in the open where Charlie or some other cop could spot him. Just keep doing his Avery Robertson routine.

Hell, he really wasn’t all that bad at it.

TWENTY-EIGHT

A
s he headed back to the station, Crawford pondered Lil’s reaction when he asked her about Greenleaf. Best he could come up with was a boxing analogy. Like she had taken a punch that stung, shook it off and came back with a series of jolting jabs.

He stopped by CSEU on the first floor to get the ball rolling on the warrant he got from the golfer judge.

Mel Carnahan was at the desk.

“Hey, Mel.”

Carnahan nodded back. Crawford caught a reflection of the overhead fluorescent light off Carnahan’s chrome dome.

“Any chance I get one of your guys to check out a suspect’s condo at the Princess?”

“I’d go, but I’m up to my ass in alligators,” Carnahan said.