I wandered through the dining room and saw no one. I knew Connie Persil and her team were in the kitchen and I didn’t expect anyone else to be in there, so I looped around and headed for the side of the club where I had met the club board earlier that morning. The function rooms were still set up as they had been, with one of the concertina walls closed and one open, creating a small room and large room. Both empty. I continued down a hall and found a couple more doors. One of them had a silver nameplate on the wall by the door, telling me that the space behind belonged to the club treasurer.
I knocked and opened the door. I generally found it a waste of time to wait for someone to invite me in when I knocked on a door. That had been the way I did it at college, with coaches’ offices and such. But since then I found that if you got the affirmative to come in you had just wasted time waiting, and if you weren’t going to get the affirmative then you often walked in on some juicy stuff.
Not today. Barry Yarmouth was sitting at an old metal desk that looked like it had been lifted from the local army reserve base, circa 1940. He was looking at the door with his mouth open, halfway to yelling come in, but halted mid-command by the door opening. He was working on some spreadsheets on a computer screen, which almost put me to sleep by association.
“Barry,” I said, taking a seat in front of his desk. I looked at him. The office lighting wasn’t doing him any favors. Unlike Martin, Barry looked moist in an air-conditioned office.
“Um, Mr. Jones.”
“Miami.”
“Miami. What can I do for you?”
I got the impression that old Barry hadn’t yet been updated on the condition of the first green or the news about the viral chairs, so I went another way than that which I was planning.
“What’s doing?”
“Um, working on contingencies. Cash flow. If the tournament has to be canceled or postponed.”
“Is that likely? Postponement, I mean. I got the impression that if it was canceled it wouldn’t happen at all, or at least not here.”
“Keith lives in denial.”
“How so?”
Barry leaned back from his keyboard. “What you say is true. If the PGA Tour decides that the event has to be called off, it will be canceled, not postponed. The tour calendar is full. They don’t keep a week spare in case a club can’t complete their obligations.”
“What will happen if you can’t hold the tournament?”
“It’s not what will happen, it’s what won’t happen. The PGA Tour will never again cast its wealthy shadow across our fairways.”
“So you’ll never get another PGA tournament?”
“We won’t get another PGA Tour event.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“No. The PGA Tour is a body run for the benefit of professional players. They cover most of the top tournaments, including ours. The PGA of America is a separate association, run by and for all people in the golf profession, including players but also teaching pros, those sorts of guys. The PGA of America runs the annual PGA major, but not PGA Tour events.”
“They wouldn’t want to keep it simple.”
“Of course not.”
“So what would it mean for the club?” I asked. “Surely lots of clubs exist without holding tour events.”
“Most clubs do. But not clubs as extended as this one.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the club takes on a lot of risk in holding an event. We spend a lot of extra money getting the course right. We spend money on facilities, hospitality tents, that sort of thing. We order extra catering, beverages. If the tournament goes well, we get all that money back. We break even. But if the tournament flops, we could take a large loss.”
I asked, “How does a tournament flop?”
“A PGA Tour tournament is reliant on the players playing. But the tour doesn’t compel them to do so. A player needs to compete in a minimum of fifteen events to be a full member. Other than that they can pick and choose when and where they play. If you’re banking on the world number one making an appearance but you don’t end up with anyone inside the top ten, well, you won’t get the crowds and your sponsors will be unhappy and the TV networks will be unhappy and that could mean lost revenue for the host club.”
“So an event’s cancellation would be . . .”
“A catastrophe. The tour wouldn’t reimburse any of the costs, the sponsors would withhold sponsorship money. It could likely mean the end of the club as we know it. This isn’t Augusta National. We need this money.”
“What do you think about the conspiracy theories—that someone is purposefully trying to hurt the club?”
“I don’t know. I’ve not seen any of these things that Keith talks about. I don’t know how much is reality and how much is drama.”
“You think he’s making it up?”
“Making it up? No. But he might be embellishing on things. Some people thrive on drama. Lawyers particularly, in my experience.”
“What do you do, Barry?”
“For a living? I’m a real estate agent.”
I nodded. I had nothing to say to that. Being a real estate agent in Florida was like being on Mars and calling yourself a Martian. In the last real estate bubble there were more real estate agents than there were houses. The implosion of the South Florida market culled the herd plenty, but they seemed to be coming back out of the woodwork, which made it a terrible time to buy, in my limited experience.
“What do you make of the damage to the green?”
He glanced at his spreadsheets, and then back at me. “Green?”
“The greenskeeper found damage on the first green this morning.”
“That’s news to me. What sort of damage?”
I told him about the GUR written on the green. He frowned.
“That’s not good for the tournament.” He looked at the spreadsheets again. “I think I really need to focus on this. We might need these contingencies after all.”
I stood to let him get to work, but stopped by the door. “What would a contingency look like?”
He looked up from his screen. “It would look like the sale of the club so the membership doesn’t lose everything they’ve invested.”
I closed the door and walked back down the corridor. The contingency sounded like a poison pill, which itself didn’t sound like a barrel of monkeys. I wandered back through the reception and into the dining room, where I found Danielle sitting with Natalie Morris, the catering manager. Danielle caught my eye and nodded me over. I took a seat beside her.
“Natalie was just telling me about the wedding,” she said.
“What about the wedding?”
“I was just saying to Deputy Castle that the course was closed the last two weeks. We have to allow time for the PGA Tour people to organize the holes, in conjunction with our greenskeepers. For me it involves a lot of vendors. We’ve erected a small village of hospitality tents out on the executive course. I’ve got mobile cool rooms waiting for food and beverage deliveries today and tomorrow. Food trucks will arrive this afternoon. And in between we had to cater a wedding.”
“That was unusual?” I asked.
“Not unusual to do a wedding. We do plenty. But to do it this week? It’s been crazy. Like we didn’t have enough to do.”
“Why do it?” asked Danielle.
“I do what I’m told. That’s my job.”
“But why would the club do an added function during such an important week?”
“Wouldn’t be my choice, but I assume money.”
“You earn much from weddings?”
“We do okay. But this one more so, I guess. With all the tournament prep, we didn’t have to pay for an extra tent. In fact we were stretched thin on our own equipment. We had to drag chairs out of the store. Some looked like they hadn’t been out since the eighties.”
“Is the club that short of money?” asked Danielle.
“I have no idea. I don’t think so. You’d h
ave to ask Barry Yarmouth about that. I know the food and beverage side makes a profit. But he just sees the bottom line. He hasn’t been around to do the work. He probably thinks these events put themselves together.”
“So tell me about the wedding. You mentioned catering. Was that for the reception?”
“Yes, we did that. Of course we never got to serve it, so most of it got tossed out. We’ll take a hit on that.”
“What else was there?”
“My main thing was the reception and the rehearsal dinner.”
“The pre-wedding dinner?” I asked. “The night before?”
“Yes. That’s why the health department are so focused on the kitchen. Food poisoning, right? Roughly twenty hours after they ate the people got sick. I know we’re in their sights.”
I didn’t say anything about Connie Persil having cleared the kitchen of guilt, however halfheartedly. Danielle had clearly decided to keep that information to herself, so I followed her lead.
“Who set up the tables and chairs for that dinner?” Danielle asked.
“The tables and chairs? Our facilities guy, Ernesto.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since yesterday.”
“He was here? When the people fell sick?”
“No, earlier. Setting up the chairs for the ceremony. I think he left after that. The reception was going to happen here in the dining room.”
“The chairs are still out there,” I said. “Who’s going to pack them up?”
“That would be Ernesto.”
Danielle asked, “Can you contact him?”
“Sure.” She held up her cell phone.
“Do that,” said Danielle. “Ask him to come in.”
Natalie made her call and Danielle and I walked outside. I updated Danielle on my conversations with Martin Costas and Barry Yarmouth. She was interested in the news about the groom’s father, and the precarious position of the club’s finances with regard to the tournament.
“So the timing is great, from a saboteur’s point of view,” said Danielle. “If you wanted to hurt the club, maybe end it, now would be the time.”
“It would seem. Or it could be unrelated, if Martin Costas is right.”
She looked at me. It always made my day, no matter how many times a day she did it. Even when she was looking at me like I was a complete idiot, which happened more often than I liked to admit.
The chairs still sat awaiting a wedding ceremony that was postponed indefinitely. I wondered why they hadn’t been removed if they were the source of a virus. Were they no longer contagious?
Natalie Morris came out of the clubhouse, her phone in her hand.
“Ernesto’s not answering,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow at Danielle.
“I’ll need his address,” Danielle said.
“I’ll have to get that from Barry.”
“Please do.”
“What does Ernesto drive?”
Natalie thought for moment. “A pickup, I think. An older Tacoma. Red, if I remember.”
I thanked her and she marched away. I looked back to Danielle.
“You want to go visit Ernesto?”
“I do.”
“You an investigator now?”
She shrugged. “The boss told me if I wanted I should check it out.”
“That’s good. He sees how you’re wasted doing patrol work.”
“He knows I’m doing this on my day off and he can save some budget by not sending anyone else out.”
“Bet the union doesn’t like that.”
“That’s why he said, if I wanted. It wasn’t an order.”
“He’s clever, that sheriff. Since we’re going out, maybe we should visit with the victims. You know where they were taken?”
“No. But Connie Persil does.”
Danielle went to get the lowdown from Connie while I got Ernesto’s address from Natalie. We met at the car. I had left the top down and the seats were like griddle pans. A convertible sounds like a splendid idea in South Florida, but the truth doesn’t quite match the fairytale. The two indisputable realities of Florida weather are baking heat and driving rain. Neither makes a convertible the smart choice. We fried our backsides on the leather seats and headed out to the gate. I stopped by the security guy. He was a young black man, and he was wearing a uniform jacket that made him look like a UPS guy.
“You logging the cars that come in and out?”
“No,” he said, sounding like he was from the islands. “No one asked me to do that.”
“Fair enough. You see a pickup this morning?”
“A pickup?” He frowned like I must have been going crazy from the heat.
“Lot of fancy cars like yours. Don’t recall a pickup.”
“No? Early this morning? A red Toyota Tacoma.”
The guy gave it some thought. I might have been asking too much. He wasn’t being paid minimum wage to recall everything he saw. He was a deterrent insomuch as he had a uniform. I felt his pain. PI work was often boring. Being a security guard was terminally so.
“You know, maybe I did. Early.”
“Is it still here?”
“No, man. He came early, he left early.”
“You see the guy driving?”
“Latino guy, I think. Can’t say much more than that.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“No problem.”
I pulled out and headed east and then south.
“So Ernesto came and went,” Danielle said.
“So it would seem.”
“Wonder why he would do that.”
“Let’s go ask him.”
Chapter Nine
Ernesto’s address was a two-level apartment block out near the turnpike. The best that could be said about it was that it wasn’t a trailer park. This was no comment on its condition, but rather the likelihood it would still be within the state of Florida after a decent hurricane. Otherwise it was my experience that trailer park residents took better care of their homes. The parking spaces in Ernesto’s building were mostly taken by sun-bleached cars that hadn’t moved in years. Some had flat tires all around, and others had no tires at all.
It wasn’t the kind of place I felt good about parking a Porsche Boxster, and I was again reminded that being an investigator I had a tendency to end up in such places, so said vehicle was probably not the wisest choice. But it wasn’t the first time I had made that mistake, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
We cruised down the row of apartments, their blinds closed against the sun. Danielle pointed out Ernesto’s digs ahead and I pulled right up to his front door. There was no red Tacoma in the lot. I put the roof up, got out and locked the door. We stood under the shade of the walkway for the apartments above and Danielle knocked on the door while I watched the lot. There was no movement. It was a fine Sunday to be out. And everyone in the apartment block was either out or in, but they weren’t moving between the two.
It felt like we were being watched by a thousand eyes but that might have just been paranoia talking. Danielle knocked again. She knocked hard. Law enforcement folks know how to knock with authority. They probably take a class in it at the academy. But no one answered and we heard no movement inside. We wandered around the side of the building, to the rear of Ernesto’s apartment. It was a tight fit between the building and the cinderblock wall, and there was nothing to see but a row of rolling garbage cans and an air-conditioning unit that was tucked into the window sash of his apartment. The AC unit was not turned on. We left Ernesto’s pad and headed to where we knew we’d find some people.
* * *
The victims of the disastrous wedding ceremony had all been taken to the same hospital, and as it turned out, they had all been contained in two adjacent rooms. This was to minimize the potential for the virus to spread. A nurse in pink pajamas showed us to the rooms but warned us that the occupants might still be contagious. She gave us gloves and masks tha
t covered our mouths and noses. She told us not to touch anything, and not to touch anyone. Then she warned us that the mood in the rooms was something short of festive.
How right she was. The father of the bride had succumbed en route to the hospital with his ailing daughter. Father and daughter were in side-by-side beds. The bride-to-be was watching golf of all things, a tournament in Texas. The sound was down but with golf coverage it’s hard to notice the difference. The father of the bride was on an IV drip. The nurse walked in with us and drew his eye, and his ire, immediately.
“How much longer do we have to stay in this damned place?” he spat.
“You and your daughter are suffering from dehydration, Mr. O’Neil.”
“Suffering is exactly the word.”
She gave that smile that nurses give, the one where there’s minimal facial movement and you’re never sure after if they didn’t actually snarl at you. Then she checked Mr. O’Neil’s drip line. He looked tired rather than sick, but I figure a bout of gastro and a night in a hospital would do that to anyone. I let Danielle start proceedings, since she had a better bedside manner and was a hell of a lot more attractive to a guy like O’Neil.
“Mr. O’Neil, I am Sheriff’s Deputy Castle. This is Miami Jones. He has been retained by South Lakes to investigate yesterday’s events.”
“Tummy bug, that’s all. The sooner we get the hell out of here the better.”
“Sir, you are a member at the club, is that correct?”
“Of course.”
“How long have you been a member?”
“Fifteen years, give or take. Why?”
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