Deep Rough

by A. J. Stewart

  I nodded thanks, and then I took off club in hand, for the rear of the course, away from the nearest bathroom.

  It took me ten minutes to run back to the rear of the course, and then five more to make it to the copse of Australian pines that divided the main championship course from the executive course. As I reached the pines I peeled my coveralls off like a snake discarding a skin. White coveralls were no one’s idea of covert. I edged along the perimeter of the club grounds, along a tall hurricane wire fence, until I could see the maintenance shed.

  It was a basic structure, four walls and an iron roof. Not hurricane-proof, but then nobody lived there, and it was sheltered from any weather by the trees. The walls were painted green to camouflage the structure from the adjacent golf courses, but up close it was a cruddy-looking building. I supposed it was like looking behind the curtain and seeing how the magic was performed. It didn’t match the pristine look of the rest of the club. But it was designed to hold maintenance vehicles and grass seeds and pesticides and whatever else the greenskeepers used to keep a completely unnatural tract of land looking as natural as it did.

  The front roller door was open about a quarter of the way, so that a man would have to bend down to pass under it. I waited until a few minutes before four thirty, when I watched a man wander through the trees, looking around as if he was fearful of being seen. He stopped by the roller door. Then he looked around one last time, but saw no one. Almost everyone else was on the other side of the course, watching the final holes of the tournament, so the man ducked under the door and into the shed.

  The man, as expected, was Martin Costas.

  Chapter Forty

  I stayed hidden in the trees, watching. I knew I wasn’t the only one. I saw no more movement so I slipped along the fence line to the rear of the shed, where I had noticed a door the day Ernesto had been found in what was formerly known as the Pacific but was now known as Gator Alley. I broke out of my hiding spot and made for that door and stopped by it, looked around and then turned the knob. It was open, and I slipped inside.

  The interior of the shed was dark despite the sunny day. The heavy trees shielded the structure from sunlight like the floor of a rainforest. The remaining light bounced off windows so grimy they appeared to have last been cleaned when Arnold Palmer was a boy. The light that there was burst in from under the roller door like a bank of LEDs. From the dark end of the shed I stepped around one of the electric maintenance carts. I held Heath McAllen’s fairway wood like a hiking stick.

  I saw the figure dip under the roller door, into the strip of light, and then stand there, so I could see only the silhouette of his legs. He took a couple of steps to the side and I heard the flick of a light switch. But nothing happened. The lights inside the shed didn’t come on. It was as if someone had tripped the breaker. I smiled. The switch was flicked back and forth a few times in that way people do, as if impatience alone were capable of summoning electrons to come and do their thing. But the figure got the point, and stepped back toward the middle of the shed.

  “Cute,” he said.

  I said nothing. Martin Costas said, “I know what you did.” His voice came from near where I stood, behind an electric maintenance cart.

  The figure stood in place and I took two steps forward. I knew the silhouette could make out my shape, but not my identity.

  “You went too far,” said Martin.

  The figure rustled his feet. “Don’t be stupid, Martin. We can work this out,” said Barry Yarmouth.

  “I don’t see how. You’re running a Ponzi scheme, Barry. The project in Guam is sinking you. The territorial legislature has put so many roadblocks in front of you that you’ve gone broke. Your project site is right on the endangered habitat for the Hawksbill turtle. But you know that.”

  “It’s one project, Martin. You know the business.”

  “But you’ve sold homes that don’t exist on lots that are on protected land.”

  “Technicalities.”

  “Are technicalities why you’ve sold almost half of the sites at Capricorn Lakes but only built ten percent of the homes?”

  “Building delays.”

  “You’ve built nothing in a year.”

  “The money’s coming, Martin. It’s all under control.”

  “You mean selling South Lakes?”

  Barry Yarmouth stood silently. I watched his legs in the light coming from under the roller door. Then I noticed something by his leg. He was holding a golf club.

  Martin continued. “That’s your plan, isn’t it? Selling off South Lakes Country Club. And the power substation land was the first step.”

  “That was Keith’s idea.”

  “I thought that, too. But it was you who brought it to him. Because Nathaniel Donaldson brought it to you.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I know Keith wants to be the savior of his beloved club. That’s why he made out like it was his plan. But it became his plan, Barry. Didn’t it? You wanted it to look like Keith’s plan. You wanted him to process the paperwork and look like he was lead on the deal. And you and Donaldson would be the silent parties. And then when you had run South Lakes into the ground, you and Donaldson would have a two-thirds majority to develop the substation property as golf course housing. Except Keith blew your plan. He brought in a fourth person. He brought me in. So now you only control fifty percent, and you can’t do anything.”

  “I don’t know why he trusts you so much.”

  “He trusts me because over twenty years I’ve given him reason to. Trust is earned, Barry.”

  Barry took a couple of steps toward me. He thought the body he could see was Martin Costas. But Martin was safely behind a maintenance cart. It was Martin’s voice, but it was me he stepped toward. And I had eyes on the shape of the golf club he held by his side.

  “Mr. Donaldson would have made you rich, Martin. You’re too stupid to see that.”

  “I’m as wealthy as I want to be, Barry. You’re too greedy to see that.”

  “Whatever, Martin. You’re out.”

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “Yep, I do.”

  “What are you going to do, Barry? Kill me?”

  “You’ll never play ball, Martin. You’re some kind of boy scout.”

  “My share doesn’t go away if I’m dead, Barry. You do understand that? I have heirs.”

  “Who will take the money and run, Martin. Heirs always do.”

  I was considering the logic of that argument when the silhouette burst into action. I saw the figure dash toward me and I heard the swoosh of a golf club traveling through its arc. Only this one wasn’t headed down toward a ball. It was coming from up high, down toward my head. The problem was it was in darkness and I couldn’t see it.

  I pulled Heath’s fairway wood up by either end and held it above my head. Barry’s club connected with all the force of a fairway drive. Heath’s club took most of the impact but at a cost. Barry’s swing cracked the shaft like a twig, and then continued through. It still had a fair bit of momentum when it hit my shoulder, but not enough to break anything. I was thankful that the club head, which I figured to be some kind of iron, missed my right ear, and I felt it thump into the rear of my shoulder as Barry drew the club back for another swing.

  I now had two halves of a golf club, one in each hand. I could have done some kind of martial arts nunchuku move with them, if only I knew any martial arts. What I wasn’t going to do was wear another blow from Barry’s club. That was really going to hurt. So I did the only thing I could do. I went at him.

  I took two long fast strides and jabbed the fat club head into the darkness like it was a pool cue. The club was called a fairway wood, but the head was actually made of metal these days, and the hefty metal thumped into Barry’s chest as his club swung by me with another swoosh and connected with thin air. It was an unfortunate miss. The top half of his body launched backward from the impact of my parry, and his own club continued around
on its arc until the iron head cracked into his own shin.

  Barry crumpled to the ground with a high-pitched yelp. “Damn it, Martin,” he screamed. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, standing over him. I was aware that he might have been down and in pain, but he still had a golf club in his hand.

  “Lights,” I said. It took a couple of seconds, but the breaker was thrown and the lights flickered on in the shed. Barry was on the dirty concrete, holding his shin. There was no compound break in his leg, but I couldn’t say any more than that. What I could say was he had dropped the club, so I kicked it away. Barry frowned as his vision cleared and his brain processed what he saw. Then his face turned into a Doberman scowl.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me.” I smiled. They say never kick a man when he’s down. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Barry made to sit up and I put my foot firmly into his chest and pushed him back down.

  “You don’t know anything,” he spat. “You don’t know anything!”

  “That is often true,” I said. “But not today. Today I know that you attempted to kill me, thinking I was Martin.”

  Martin stepped from behind the maintenance cart. He didn’t look as jubilant as I did. If I had to say I would have used the word sorrowful.

  “Self-defense,” said Barry.

  “No dice, Barry,” I said. “And I also know you killed Ernesto Cabala.”

  “Try proving that, smart guy.”

  “I have, and I did. See, I figured out that Ernesto knew something about someone that he tried to use to his advantage. He tried blackmail. He had a record of doing it. He had tried to blackmail Dig Maddox about cheating on the course. But he chose poorly, because everyone knows Dig Maddox cheats on the course, and Dig doesn’t care what most people think of him. He told Ernesto to stick it. But Ernesto learned something new, and he tried it again. On you.”

  “You keep talking, Jones. But you have nothing. That guy went swimming with a gator.”

  “He did, you’re right. But there’s a problem. The gator didn’t kill him. He was already dead when he went into the lake. You killed him. I don’t know if it was premeditated or just fury, but you did it.”

  “You’re delusional, Jones,” Barry said from the floor.

  “As I say, often, but not today. I went to your development, Capricorn Lakes. I thought Martin might have been up to something out there. Sorry, Martin.”

  “That’s all right, Miami. It was an assumption.”

  “It was. But out there I learned a few things. I learned that you have done very little building in a year. The handful of residents who bought the first allotments have been waiting a long time for their resort pool, and some neighbors. And I learned that there had been a gator in your lake out there.”

  “It’s Florida—there are gators everywhere.”

  “That’s true, for sure. But there was something unusual about your gator. He traveled twenty miles. From your lake to the lake here on course known as the Pacific.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Barry.

  “I can, when I try. See, I know this because Lorraine Catchitt, the forensic investigator on the case, discovered that the gator had ingested not only parts of Ernesto, but a large amount of a flowering grass that doesn’t grow here on the course. It’s an Everglades grass called muhly grass, and it covers a large part of the land adjacent to your development.”

  “That proves nothing, Jones.”

  “No, it proves that the gator moved a little farther than gators usually do. They aren’t migratory animals, as a rule. But it made me curious. How would a gator move so far? With help, is the obvious answer. And then I recalled the tire tracks by the lake here. And the St. Augustine grass clippings. Again, not from here. I’ve learned more about grass this week than I ever wanted to know. And I learned that this course is Bermuda grass overseeded with ryegrass. No St. Augustine. But there is St. Augustine around the houses you actually built at Capricorn Lakes.”

  “St. Augustine covers half the state,” Barry said.

  “Again, true. But there’s the muhly grass, the St. Augustine and then the sand that was left by the lake. Again that doesn’t occur naturally here, but it does match the soil you dug out to make that poor excuse of a lake you created on your development.”

  Barry edged away from me a little and sat up. “I’m leaving, Jones. You have nothing. It’s all circumstantial, and not very good.”

  “Until we marry up all these facts. Two grasses and sand from your community. A gator that traveled farther than your average gator tends to go, even on vacation. So I wondered who moved him. And I remembered. You have gardeners out at Capricorn Lakes. I chatted with them. I got the distinct impression that at least some of them might not have had the right kind of immigration papers. Those kinds of people are often exploited, which you’ve got to admit, sounds awfully like you.”

  Barry snarled but said nothing.

  “So I thought, Miami, is it possible that someone at Capricorn Lakes blackmailed these undocumented workers to transport a gator from there to here? At the time I thought it might have been Martin. Again, apologies, Martin.”

  “Again, accepted.”

  “But it wasn’t Martin. It was you, Barry.”

  “How many times can I say no proof, Jones?”

  “As many as you want. And you might have been right, until we got an eyewitness.”

  Barry’s face went blank, but he pulled himself together quickly, if unconvincingly. “Did not.”

  “Did too, right, Special Agent Marcard?”

  Marcard stepped from the rear of the shed. “Indeed. We just spoke with a Mr. Iglesias, your gardening foreman. He told us that you forced him and his colleagues to relocate the alligator.”

  Barry shook his head. “A truck with an alligator just drove onto a course full of security people?”

  “I couldn’t figure that, either,” I said. “Until I recalled that you told me you were in charge of getting more security on the course. You did, but first you sent Mr. Iglesias in under cover of dark.”

  “He’s an illegal—he has no credibility.”

  “You should check with the kid who runs your real estate office,” I said. “He’s an annoying little guy, but he isn’t stupid. He knows that you can’t hire a team of people who don’t have paperwork. One of them has to be a resident, because you have to file at least one legitimate work authorization. Mr. Iglesias is a US permanent resident.”

  “He’s allowing illegals to work here. He’s a criminal,” said Barry.

  “Is that so, Special Agent Marcard?” I asked.

  “There’s no evidence of that. We haven’t been able to locate all his workers, but that’s not really an FBI job. The witness is a resident, that’s all I know.”

  “He’s lying,” said Barry, his voice breaking as he said it.

  “That so? Interesting,” I said. “Did Mr. Iglesias have anything else to say?”

  “He did,” said Marcard. “What was that, Deputy Castle?”

  Danielle stepped into the light from behind Marcard. I wondered for a second how many of them were hiding back there. I knew Marcard would be there. Danielle was a surprise.

  Danielle said, “He told us he had seen you drive away from the development in a red Toyota Tacoma, which he remembered because that is the same truck that he uses with his gardening business. He thought you had taken his truck. But he checked, and his truck was still there.”

  “But who else owned a red Tacoma, Deputy?” I asked, smugly. It happens to the best of us.

  “Ernesto did. And I’ve just spoken to a resident of Capricorn Lakes, a Mrs. Lassiter, who told me she had seen a red truck return late on the night before Ernesto’s body was discovered. She thought it was the gardeners.”

  “So maybe it was,” said Barry.

  “Except she thought it odd that the truck drove into the marshland beyond the development. We’ve just had a look. We
found the truck out there, hidden in the long grass.”

  “And what else did you find?” I asked. I was starting to enjoy myself.

  “We found blood in the bed of the truck. Blood we believe will match that of Ernesto. And about thirty yards from the truck we found a golf club.”

  “A golf club?” I asked in mock surprise.

  “Yes. The club head had blood on it as well. And fingerprints.”

  “Whose fingerprints do you think they’ll be, Barry?” I asked.

  “Not mine.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. My golf clubs were stolen.”

  “That old chestnut? There’s a set of clubs in the garage at your development. I saw them. There were only thirteen in the bag. Which isn’t against the rules, but it is unusual. For a guy who plays as much as you.”

  “I don’t play that much.”

  “You’re a member of a club that costs five figures a year in dues, and you wear nothing but golf attire. Sorry, Barry, not buying that. Except that you haven’t been playing lately, have you?”

  “The course was closed for tournament prep, genius.”

  “It was. But you’re the treasurer and prior to the biggest financial week of the year for the club, you’ve been MIA. Natalie Morris told me you hadn’t been around to help, but I thought at the time she meant as in that day. But she didn’t. She meant she hadn’t seen you in weeks. Right, Deputy?”

  Danielle said, “Correct. Seems no one recalls seeing you before the Friday of the wedding dinner.”

  “So what?” Barry snarled.

  “So I had my office manager, Lizzy, make some calls,” I said. “She found out that an American citizen had been hospitalized in a place called Puerto Escondido. The patient had severe gastrointestinal upset.”

  Barry scrunched his face. “What has this got to do with anything?”

  “The patient did not provide ID, but only spoke English. No Spanish. Which was important, because Puerto Escondido is in Colombia. And the patient discharged himself without signing out. Lizzy got very curious about that behavior so she paid five hundred bucks to a PI in Cartagena to drive down to the hospital with a picture of you, Barry. It’s not a big place—they remembered you.”