“I need to tell Catchitt about last night. The caddy,” I said to Danielle. I nodded to Nixon and left them to it. I wasn’t that concerned about being left out. I was fairly confident Danielle would pass on anything she thought I needed to know.
I wandered back out to the lake. The yellow crime scene tape glistened in the sun like a billboard for everything bad that could happen to a tourist in Florida. It was my feeling that the tournament was going to get canned. It didn’t feel like an accident. People did get drunk and go swimming in dumb places, but with all the other strange goings-on at the club, I couldn’t even sell that idea to myself. So the sheriff’s investigators would want to keep the scene as pure as they could. And the governor would have kittens if he saw shining police tape on the television coverage of the third hole.
Catchitt was taking off gloves as I reached the tape and she waved me under.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Nothing significant. We’ll probably get a better idea after the necropsy.”
“I feel bad for the gator.”
“Let’s hope he makes someone a nice pair of boots.”
There was that gallows humor again. I didn’t laugh and I didn’t smile and she didn’t seem to care either way. I told her about my altercation with the big caddy the previous night. She listened to the details but took no notes.
“I’ll pass it on to the sheriff’s investigations team. If they want to talk to you about it, they know how to find you.”
A guy stuck his head out of the tent and called Catchitt over. She nodded for me to come. I wasn’t keen but I followed. A second guy was standing by the remains of the leg I had seen before. It had been lifted onto a table that looked like a gurney but was stainless steel on top. He had the pocket of the coveralls open with pincers, and had removed something with long tweezers.
“What have we got?” asked Catchitt.
The guy looked at the item through his glasses and I wondered if poor eyesight hampered his work at all. He looked to be holding some kind of paper, but it was wet through and sagged from where he held it.
“Looks like some kind of card. The size is consistent with a business card. But it’s pretty damaged.” The guy placed the card on the steel tabletop next to the limb and then grabbed a phone and took a photo. He handed the phone to Catchitt. She held it up so we could look at it together.
It was part of a business card. One end of it was mashed and illegible. The other end was torn but bore a small logo in the top corner. It was smudged, but looked like a coat of arms, like a shield. It looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it. Under it were the letters O-N-I. And below that three numbers: 561.
“What do you think?” asked Catchitt.
“The numbers. It’s a phone area code.”
“Right, 561. The Palm Beaches.”
“Big area, though. From Jupiter down to Boca, and all the way west to Okeechobee.”
“Right. What about these letters? O-N-I?”
I shook my head. “Not sure. The logo looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t recall it.”
“Never mind. We’ll get it to the lab. We’ll figure it out.”
As I stepped out of the tent another guy in waders and rubber boots approached as fast as one can in waders and rubber boots. He looked hot.
“We found something odd.”
We marched around the lake to the section of it that touched against the fifteenth green. It was as far from the clubhouse as one could get and still remain on the course. On the other side of the green was a line of Australian pines, and beyond that I noticed the coils and wires of the electrical substation that the pines were planted to hide.
We stopped by the water. Like the other side, there was a perimeter of red mulch between the long rough and the water. The rough grass wasn’t that rough. I’d played courses in New England where Magellan wouldn’t have found a lost ball. This stuff was just longer than the fairway, but it looked thick enough for the ball to sit up on it. But two lines of the rough grass had been matted down, like a vehicle had driven over it. The lines led to the edge of the water, but stopped short of the mulch. The red mulch was covered in grass cuttings, as if someone had recently mowed the nearby rough.
“A vehicle has been here,” said the guy in waders. I wondered if he was paid extra to state the blindingly obvious.
“What sort of vehicle?” asked Catchitt.
“That’ll take some time.”
“A maintenance vehicle,” I suggested.
Catchitt frowned at me. “You saying it’s coincidence?”
“No. I’m saying that it would be hard to drive a Rolls Royce onto a golf course without someone noticing. And there were security people out here all night. The club put extra bodies on for it. Danielle was even out here until pretty late. But no one mentioned seeing a vehicle. But a maintenance vehicle might not raise suspicion.”
“Fair argument.” Catchitt smiled. She wasn’t a handsome woman, and I think she knew that. But she’d either grown easy with it or plain didn’t care, because she carried an assurance about her that many attractive women yearned for but few found. Outside the gallows humor I liked her.
She said, “You ever thought about doing this for a living?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“We need to speak to a course maintenance guy.”
“A greenskeeper.”
“Yeah, that.”
I got on my phone and called Ron, and told him to call Diego the greenskeeper. We waited less than five minutes. Diego arrived in a golf cart that had pretensions of being a flatbed truck. He got out and eyed us with suspicion. I didn’t blame him. Someone was going to get the blame, one way or another. He wasn’t keen on it being him.
I introduced Diego to Lorraine Catchitt. I just called her Lorraine. I didn’t feel comfortable doing the baseball/kitty litter joke. That was hers to do.
“Is there a reason why a maintenance vehicle would be down here?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Maybe trash blew into the water. Would one of your guys come fish it out?”
“Of course.”
“But you’re saying they didn’t?”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, they didn’t.”
“It looks like a vehicle was here recently. Like maybe last night?”
“No.” I was getting the impression that old Diego was defensive. And while I didn’t blame him for that either, it wasn’t helping.
“You’re saying these tracks are imaginary?”
“No. I’m saying these tracks weren’t made by my team.”
I stood tall and looked at him. Of course he would say that, but he seemed pretty sure of himself.
“How can you be so sure?”
“You see this cart,” he said, pointing at the little vehicle he had arrived in. “The maintenance crew uses vehicles like this. The whole fleet is electric.”
“Okay. So?”
“You see these tracks in the grass? You see how far apart they are? These were not made by an electric cart. They are too wide apart. This was a full-size vehicle. Like a pickup truck.”
Catchitt nodded. “Possible.”
The guy who had found the tracks walked over to the golf cart and used a tape measure to test the width of the tires. Then he put the tape measure against the depression in the grass.
“He’s right. It’s not a match.”
“We’ll need an inventory of all the maintenance vehicles used by the club,” said Catchitt.
Diego nodded. “Si, okay.”
“Diego, could someone get to this point on the course in a vehicle without being seen from the clubhouse?”
He looked around the course, over the fifteenth green and then at the water.
“Si,” he said. “If you went straight back here, around the fifteenth and down those pines, you would hit the maintenance path behind the palms over there. That runs around the edge of the course, down aroun
d the executive course. There’s an access track that goes along where all the hospitality tents are right now. Out to the parking lot.”
I thought about the track where I had seen the red Toyota Tacoma appear the previous day, the one that had turned out to not belong to Ernesto the facilities guy.
I was thinking when Diego stepped past me. He had seen something by the water’s edge. I hoped it wasn’t another alligator. I suspected the sheriff’s divers hoped it more than I did.
“What is it?” asked Catchitt.
“Hmm. Nothing.”
“Diego,” I said. “What do you see?”
“Grass.”
It wasn’t earth-shattering news. Grass on a golf course.
“What do you mean, grass?”
“Here.” He bent down and picked up some grass clippings that lay on the mulch.
“Clippings? You didn’t mow recently.”
“Of course we mowed. All week. The course has to look perfect.” I recalled what he had told me about high-definition televisions picking up the blades.
“So what about it?”
“Look.” He held the clippings in his hand. It looked like grass. Long thick blades, like the stuff I had at home. I shrugged like I didn’t get his point, because I really didn’t.
“This grass,” he said, holding up his hand, “is not the same as this grass.” He brushed his other hand over the rough.
“Not the same? Are you sure?”
He gave me a look like a doctor when a patient questioned his diagnosis. “I know grass. I told you, we use Bermuda on the fairways and rough, creeping bent on the greens. We overseed the fairways in winter with rye grass.” He held up his hand. “But this? This is St. Augustine. See the thicker blades? This grass did not come from this course.”
I looked at Diego and then at Catchitt. She looked impressed. I knew for a fact that she would check what he had said was true, but I also knew for a fact that it was. Those Aggies know their grass.
“Where did it come from?”
Diego shrugged. “No idea. Half of the state of Florida is planted with Bermuda grass. The other half is St. Augustine.”
“That’s it? Two grasses?”
“I don’t mean literally. There are lots of different grasses. But they are the big two. St. Augustine is the most popular in residential community developments. It grows and grows. Thick and lush. But it takes a lot of mowing—that’s why those communities have to have full-time gardeners. It could take over the state if it wanted to.”
I recalled Diego telling me about it before. I also recalled who he said grew most of it. Dig Maddox. And not for the first time that day I wondered where Dig Maddox was.
I left Catchitt to get the lowdown on Diego’s maintenance crew. She said she’d call Danielle if she heard anything of interest from the necropsy of the poor old dumb gator. I wandered toward the back of the course, around the fifth green at the back near the power substation. I was following the tire tracks. They arced around the green and then into the pines. Behind the pines was a small track, covered in mulch similar to that which rimmed the perimeter of the lake. Once on the track I lost the tire marks. The track was firm and compacted by years of use. But I followed it along. It was like a secret passage, passing around the edge of the course. I walked a long way around until the trees opened up to a small clearing, still mostly hidden from the view of the golf course. Here I came upon a large shed. It was painted green to camouflage it from the course. I had no doubt if you looked you could see it from the fairway, but you would have to really look.
The shed had a roller door at one end, and the door was rolled up. I looked inside and confirmed it was a maintenance facility. A few more of the electric maintenance carts were parked inside. There were shelves of tools and buckets of who-knew-what. It smelled like wet grass inside.
Beyond the shed the track continued along the perimeter of the executive course, around to the hospitality tent village. I didn’t care to go there, so I ducked out of the trees and onto the first fairway. I wanted to find Keith, and I wanted to find Dig. I found Danielle instead. I’d take that every day of the week.
“What’s news?” she asked.
“They found some tire tracks down at the lake. And some grass.”
“Grass?”
I told her about the grass. “I want to find Dig Maddox. Your buddy from the FBI have much to say?”
“FDLE, not FBI. And funny you should mention Maddox. Nixon did too. He said there were some irregularities with some projects that he had recently done.”
“Irregularities?”
“This doesn’t go any further.”
“Hey, it’s me you’re talking to.”
“And it doesn’t go any further.”
Ouch. “No further.”
“There were some cases where Dig’s company laid sod—a lot of sod—in a development project. Only for the sod to die. On two occasions the gardening team was blamed, and their liability insurance had to cover the cost of installing it fresh.”
“But it wasn’t the gardeners’ fault?”
“The suspicion is that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. They believe the sod never died. You remember Diego said the grass went dormant?”
“They replaced dormant grass?”
“Maybe. Nixon says they may have removed the sod and then replaced it with the exact same sod. Just moved it from one community to the next.”
“Like a Ponzi scheme,” I said.
“More or less.”
“That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing the state investigation bureau would be interested in.”
“Except that they are concerned about it being the tip of an iceberg.”
“Massive sod fraud?”
She grinned at me. “Not sod fraud, you clown. Property fraud.”
“By whom?”
“He didn’t say. Or wouldn’t. There are very powerful people involved. You know who really runs this state.”
“Property developers.”
Danielle smiled instead of replying. “I need to get going. We have to interview all the caddies and all the players. Find out what happened to the missing caddy.”
She touched me on the arm in a way that normally left me feeling giddy, but it barely registered. I was somewhere else. I was thinking about property developers. About powerful people. About the people who really ran the state. I was thinking about that because I remembered something. I remembered where I had seen the smudged logo on the business card Catchitt’s guys had found on the leg the gator had left behind. The coat of arms. I had seen it on a set of wrought iron gates. And suddenly the letters made sense. O-N-I. As in the Bonita Mar Club. As in Nathaniel Donaldson’s club.
I headed out through the clubhouse toward my car. I suddenly had a hankering for some tasty little sandwiches.
Chapter Twenty-Three
On my way out to the island I called Lizzy to get an update and give her a new job.
“LCI,” she said.
“It’s me. Did you get anywhere with the properties?”
“Hello and a good day to you, too.”
“Sorry, hello,” I said.
Lizzy was an undercover member of the courtesy police. “Good manners take neither a penny nor a pound.”
I had no idea what that meant but I suspected keeping my mouth shut was the way to go.
“But since you asked, yes, I got something. The properties around the country club are mostly individually owned homes. There are two properties that stand out. One is a multifamily unit. Sixteen apartments. The owner is listed as an individual in Panama.”
“Panama Beach?”
“No, not Panama Beach. If I meant Panama Beach, Miami, I would have used the word beach.”
“Okay.”
“I mean the country Panama.”
“Oh, all right.” I slowed as I passed Barry Yarmouth’s office again and made my way onto the island.
“The other property is the old power substation.”
“No, Mr. Interruption. It used to be owned by FP&L but they sold it about a year ago. It hasn’t been in use in a decade. The technology there is old and the replacement cost too high, apparently.”
“So who?”
“It was purchased by a consortium based out of Antigua. The local correspondence address is a law firm in Lake Worth. Care of one Keith Hamilton, Esquire.”
I nearly drove off the bridge and into the Intracoastal. Keith Hamilton was the point man for the largest single landowner around the club. I considered the possibility that Keith was behind the sabotage of his own club. He had been the one most vocal that it was sabotage. I had to consider the possibility it was a double bluff. No one ever suspected the guy who cried fire.
I thanked Lizzy for the information, and then I asked her to do something new. I wanted to know the details of any development projects she could find that had sod provided by Dig Maddox. She asked how she was supposed to get that sort of information. It wasn’t public record. I suggested she start with those projects listed on Dig Maddox’s website, and then try a search for projects mentioning Maddox sod. Sod It All was a well-known supplier. Short of that, call the sales offices for every development from Fort Pierce to Lauderdale.
She said she’d get back to me, and I thanked her once again and got an earful of dial tone. Then I reached my destination. The wrought iron gates were closed but the coat of arms on the fence was definitely the one on the card pulled from the lake. Bonita Mar Club.
The guard saw the car and came out to me, and I rolled the window down.
“I’m afraid the club is closed for a private event.”
“What event?”
“Members only.”
“I just need five minutes of Mr. Donaldson’s time.”
“Not today.”
I waited and looked at the guy. In my experience most people don’t like silence. They feel the need to fill it with words. But this guy wasn’t most people. He met my silence with silence. Then he spoke.
“I’m going to need you to move your vehicle.” He looked behind me, so I glanced in my mirror. There was a big car behind. A nice piece of work. A Bentley, I thought. I’m not a car guy. I don’t go to car shows, and I don’t sit around Longboard Kelly’s talking about them, and I don’t have a half-naked girl laying across one on a calendar pinned to my wall. But I could see a large B in reverse on the grill of the tank behind me.
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