“So not a difficult fix.”
“No, Mr. Jones, not difficult. But you’re missing the point. Members bring guests, often clients and such. When half the carts don’t work they get embarrassed.”
“I can’t imagine. Embarrassment. How awful.”
“You may mock, Mr. Jones. But the members pay substantial money to be part of this club. Money they can spend elsewhere. At another club, for example. Membership in this club is an achievement. No, we’re not one of the Palm Beach clubs. We don’t have hundred-thousand-dollar initiations. But we do pride ourselves on both inclusivity and exclusivity. Anyone may join, but you must have reached a certain station in life to be able to do so.”
“Be rich, you mean?”
“Hardly, Mr. Jones. Our members are not the multibillionaires of Palm Beach or Jupiter. We are working people. Our members have earned the privilege, and they don’t wish to be embarrassed by it.”
I nodded and kept my mouth closed. Nothing good was going to come out of it, so I heeded my mother’s words from decades before. I figured Keith’s version of working people and my version differed slightly. As an investigator I spent a lot of time with people that Keith Hamilton would hire to get down on their hands and knees and scrub his tile floors. Not a mile from the manicured grass we stood on was the first of an endless number of trailer parks. Single-wides with potted plants and a carport on the side. Places where people lived because even in paradise a CBS construction house was out of their reach. I knew nurses and teachers and laborers who would never pass through the gates of the likes of South Lakes Country Club.
“Okay, Mr. Hamilton. So someone is embarrassing the members. You think this damage to the green is linked?”
“It’s all linked. The sabotage, the poisoning, the vandalism.”
“Poisoning?”
“Of course. You saw what happened at the Coligio-O’Neil wedding.”
“I did, sir. But there’s no evidence that was sabotage. The health department is quite confident it was a food-borne virus.”
“Our kitchen is immaculate. It didn’t just suddenly become a cesspool.”
“No one is suggesting that, sir. It doesn’t take a lot for a food-borne illness to spread.”
“Look, Deputy. I know what I know. Chef Lex might not be much to look at, but he is a top-notch kitchen manager. He has worked in some of the finest establishments in New York and New Jersey.”
I didn’t think adding New Jersey to the resume added a whole lot, but I kept that to myself. We reached the tee box and cut up toward the clubhouse. We stopped and looked back toward the damaged green. In the distance we could see Diego the greenskeeper, hard at work.
“Mr. Hamilton,” continued Danielle, “I don’t see the link and I don’t see how anyone would contaminate the kitchen in the way it seems to have been. Why target a wedding?”
“Deputy, Mr. O’Neil is one of our most prominent members. It’s just like the golf carts. It is a major embarrassment to him. His family and friends, and clients. His in-laws for goodness sakes—they are a Palm Beach family. I can only imagine what they are saying.”
Danielle gave him her concerned but not sold look.
I said, “Keith, let’s say for argument’s sake this is all true. Let’s say someone is trying to embarrass your members. There’s a big missing part. Motive. Why would someone do it? I mean, the carts and the tires. That could be a disgruntled employee or even a student prank. But the virus, if that’s what it is, that’s a whole different ball game. That’s not kids. So what’s the motive?”
Keith gazed at me. He had a wise, old face, lined with experience. He looked at me for longer than was necessary and it ebbed into uncomfortable territory. Then he spoke, quietly.
“I believe there are people who wish to see our club closed down.”
“People? What people?”
“Powerful people.”
“But that doesn’t answer the question. Motive.”
Keith began to smile but didn’t. “The greatest motive there is. The whole reason the state of Florida exists at all.” He kept looking at me, waiting for me to come up with the answer all by myself. But I was already there. There was only one reason people came to a staggeringly hot, sweating swamp of a place like Florida and turned it into a destination.
“Money.”
Keith nodded.
“How?” asked Danielle. “How does your club equal money for someone else?”
“Deputy, there are so many ways. When South Lakes was built it was on the edge of civilization in the Palm Beaches. Now we are in the middle of it. You can drive more than half an hour west before the last housing development. This ground we stand on was once jungle, but now it is very expensive real estate.”
“You think someone wants to close the club so they can build more houses?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“Does West Palm really need more houses?”
“Thirty years ago Florida had a population of ten million. Now we are over twenty million, and growing. You tell me.”
“All right, Mr. Hamilton,” said Danielle. “We’ll certainly take a look at the damaged grass. And the carts, did you report that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m an attorney, Deputy Castle. I know what the sheriff will and will not spend time on. And as I said, the carts were disabled, not damaged. You wouldn’t have even opened a file on it. And there was nothing to claim insurance on, so no need of a police report.”
She nodded. He was on the money.
“I’ll take a look anyway.”
“And you, Mr. Jones?”
“I don’t think there’s anything more for me to offer, Keith. Unless we hear different.”
And then we heard different.
Chapter Seven
Connie Persil strode out of the clubhouse and looked around until her eyes fell on us. She marched over with the stilted action of someone walking fast while simultaneously not wanting to appear to be walking fast.
“Deputy, a word.”
She eyed both me and Keith, and then turned and walked back to the other side of the practice green. Danielle followed. Connie spoke. Danielle listened. There were no gestures, no facial expressions to give us an inkling of what they were talking about. Connie appeared to be giving Danielle an update of the facts, just the facts. She was more impassive than Dan Rather. Once she was finished she took a deep breath, as if she didn’t like to breathe while talking, and glanced at Keith and me. Danielle said something and Connie gave an uncomfortable shrug, and then the two of them walked back to us.
“Tell them what you told me,” said Danielle.
Connie paused, like she was a lawyer who was about to breach client-attorney privilege, and then she spoke like a schoolteacher.
“We just got initial results back from the lab.”
We said nothing, waiting for her to continue. But she didn’t. It was like a pregnant pause that was going full-term. Eventually Keith cracked.
“And?”
“The contamination does not appear to have originated in the kitchen, or the food.”
“So where?” I asked. “Do you know?”
“Not all the environmental swabs have been tested. And we need to complete testing of the patient samples.”
“But . . .”
“But it appears to be viral.”
“And . . .” I was thinking something about blood from stones.
“And the samples that are testing positive are the chairs.”
Keith frowned, which was not a great look on an old guy. “The chairs?”
“Yes. So far environmental swabs from all other locations are proving negative.”
“I don’t understand,” said Keith. “The chairs, you say?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of virus is it?” I asked.
“The lab is doing more testing of the patient samples to confirm.”
This routine was getting old. �
�But . . .”
“But as I hypothesized, it appears to be norovirus.”
“So gastro?”
“In simple terms, you could say that.”
“On the chairs.”
“That is what the initial data suggests.”
“So it’s not our kitchen?” asked Keith.
“We are conducting secondary testing, but no, it does not appear so.”
“So you’re not closing us down.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But if it’s not the kitchen . . .”
“It’s still here in the club. We need to pin this thing down.”
“We have golfers starting to arrive tomorrow.”
“Not here. Not yet. Look, I need to get back to it. I just wanted to keep Deputy Castle in the loop.” She said it in a way that told Keith and me we were ever-so-lucky to have been indulged. It wasn’t an attitude that was winning me over.
“One thing, Connie,” I said. “How would something like this get on the chairs? Just the chairs?”
“That depends on where the chairs came from.”
We all looked at Keith.
“No hire chairs have arrived yet. The wedding chairs were ours. We have a stock, for functions.”
I turned back to Connie. “So?”
“So I don’t know.”
“If you were a betting person?”
“I don’t gamble.”
I had gotten that far by myself. “If you had to hypothesize?” I would have said guess but I figured Connie didn’t guess either. But she was the kind of gal who hypothesized.
“Without the full data I can’t be sure. But my hypothesis based on available evidence would be that the environment was contaminated purposefully. Now I must get back. Deputy.” She nodded at Danielle and walked back inside. I looked at Keith.
“Contaminated purposefully,” I said. “Quite the mouthful.”
Keith nodded. “Another person might say sabotage.”
“They might.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Danielle said. “I’m going to call it in to the office.” She stepped away as she pulled out her phone.
Keith looked at me. “What say you, Mr. Jones?”
“I’d say the game is afoot.”
“Not original, but quite right.”
“And the PBSO is on it.”
“Yes, and while I have full confidence in the sheriff’s office, I do believe they have a certain way of looking at things.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning their agenda, like the department of health, is public safety, so-called. Unfortunately that manifests itself as people who get elected for a living doing things that make them look like they are doing things, rather than actually doing things.”
That was certainly my experience, but I had to ask the question. “Your point?”
“Closing down the club temporarily is the political play here, Mr. Jones. But even a temporary closure will be catastrophic to us. Possibly terminal. It means the cancellation of the tournament, or worse, moving to another venue. Either way, we can kiss future PGA Tour visits goodbye. And with it, the finances that sponsors and patrons bring. You see my point?”
“I think I do. If someone is really sabotaging you, closing you down right before the tournament is close to checkmate.”
“So I repeat, what say you?”
“There is a potential public safety risk. You have to admit that.”
“You heard that woman. It’s on the chairs. So surely we can clean them. For heaven’s sake, I’ll burn them if I have to.”
I nodded and looked back down the fairway. Diego, the greenskeeper, appeared to be digging out the dead grass. And for all his bluster, Keith was right about the green. That was no accident.
“All right, Keith. I’m on it. But as of now, I’m on the clock.”
“Of course. I assume there is some kind of family and friends rate, given Ron’s position with the club.”
I looked around the finely cut fairways and raked sand traps. I thought of the European cars in the parking lot.
“Sure, Keith. Anything for Ron.”
He offered a canine smile that made me think of a fox. “Thank you, Mr. Jones. Where shall you begin?”
“I’d like to talk to any of the board that are still here.”
“They’re all still here. I’ll summon them.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll find them.”
I found Martin Costas first. I wandered around the clubhouse and came in through the front. Martin was in the reception lobby when I pushed the double doors open.
“Leaving?”
He nodded. “Work beckons.”
“Can have I have a word?”
“Walk with me.”
We wandered back outside into the sun. It was warming up. It was going to be a perfect beach day. Martin Costas looked overdone in his suit. At least he wasn’t wearing a tie. Either way he didn’t look hot. He had one of those Mediterranean complexions that look designed for the sun and never appeared to overheat. Or sweat.
“Did you hear about the testing?”
“I did. Good news, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Sure. Good for the tournament. Improves our chances of it happening. But it still happened, so it’s not all sunshine.”
“Keith suspects sabotage. What do you think?”
“I think there are some suspicious things going on.”
“Like putting viruses on chairs?”
“I don’t know about that. How would one even do that?”
“So you don’t think it’s sabotage?”
“The evidence doesn’t suggest it, does it?”
“The evidence? What is it you do for a living, Martin?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Seems to be a few attorneys in the club.”
“No, I don’t think so. That’s one of the reasons I’m a member. There’s Keith, of course. Not sure I know another.”
“Why does that make you want to be a member?”
“Miami, I work with a lot of folks from the island. It is good for my business to spend time there. I am a member of a number of organizations in Palm Beach, including the yacht club. But this?” He waved back toward the clubhouse, not the parking lot. “This is a sanctuary. My father was a shopkeeper. We lived above the store. I paid my way through law school.”
“Which school?”
“Michigan.”
“Good school.”
“It is.”
It also explained why he was now in South Florida. Those Ann Arbor winters were brutal.
“But I learned a thing or two about people, Miami. I learned not to judge a man by the cut of his suit.” He looked me over. “Or indeed whether he was even wearing one. These people are real. Yes, we have a couple of lawyers. And we have real estate developers and politicians. But we also have plumbers and gardeners and storeowners. Real people. I like that. It reminds me that the world in which I work exists inside a bubble. It keeps my feet on the ground.”
We reached his car and he opened the door with a fob and slipped his feet off the ground and down into a Maserati. The metaphor clearly only went so far.
“So what does the evidence suggest to you?”
“I think there are two things going on. The first is the damage. The carts, now the greens. That feels like someone with an agenda to me. Maybe a disgruntled former employee.”
“You dismissed anyone recently?”
“Not that I know of. But hiring and firing doesn’t happen at the board level. You should ask Barry or Natalie Morris about that.”
“What about a disgruntled former member?”
“That would come before the board. And it does happen. Some folks don’t pay their dues, some need to be reminded of club etiquette, that sort of thing. But honestly, I don’t recall a member dismissal for quite some time.”
He punched a button on the console and the car roared to life and then settled into
a purr like a throaty lion.
I continued before I was lost to the engine noise. “You said there were two things.”
“If the virus thing isn’t an accident, I don’t see how it’s connected anyway. It would be a whole different level of action from other events. Like I say, I can’t even begin to figure how anyone would do it. How does one get hold of a virus? You see what I mean? That’s not a disgruntled employee. That’s something bigger.”
“Any hypotheses?” I figured a lawyer was also more likely to hypothesize than guess.
“Honestly?” It was a word that he liked to use. I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “I’m not sure it has anything to do with the club.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I’d be checking out the families. At the wedding. I know the groom’s side reasonably well. I didn’t get the impression the father of the groom was all that impressed with his son’s choice of wife. Or more specifically with the in-laws.”
I nodded and stood back as Martin slammed the gear selector, which looked like something from a fighter jet, into whatever position it needed to go, and he pulled out of his slot. He backed around me and I stepped toward the window and he stopped.
“Why would the groom’s father infect himself and his family?”
“Who says he did?”
“I saw his wife go down. It wasn’t pretty.”
“Maybe he doesn’t value her as much as you think. Or maybe he does. But think about it. Something like that. He wouldn’t do it himself. He’d have people. All these guys have people. Maybe his people aren’t that clever.” He shrugged like anything was possible. “You need anything else, call my office. Or I’ll be around later.”
I nodded but he didn’t see it. He gunned the car and it took off like a ballistic missile, barely pausing for the security guy at the gate, before launching out onto the road. I could still hear the roar of the engine as I wandered back into the clubhouse.
Chapter Eight
If you believed what you saw on television, you’d think that private investigations work involved a lot of car chases and sultry women, with a good smattering of gunplay and a fedora or two. I don’t own a television but that was the impression I got. I suppose they made it like that because no one would watch the reality. The reality was lower-key. There was a lot more sitting around thinking, or in this case wandering around an empty golf club looking for someone to talk to. Unlike the television guys I didn’t carry a gun. I did have one, but it stayed locked away as much as was humanly possible. If I had it in my hand then events had most decidedly taken a turn for the worse. Things had gotten that bad once or twice in the past, and those memories still gave me sleepless nights. I had no desire to add to them any time soon. And I certainly didn’t own a fedora.
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