Indulgence in Death (26 page)

“What’s your handicap?”

“Twelve.”

Roarke watched Dudley smirk, an expression of derision the man didn’t bother to mask. “That’s why it pays to keep the game sharp.”

“I suppose so. You?”

“Oh, I run at eight.”

“I think that’s what Su hits. I should send him along with you. He’d have a better time of it.”

Dudley let out a short laugh, then signaled. Roarke turned, gave Moriarity another casual nod as he approached.

“I didn’t know you played here,” Moriarity said when he joined them.

“Rarely.”

“Roarke’s entertaining a business associate with a round, though he claims golf isn’t his game.”

“It’s the perfect way to mix business and pleasure,” Moriarity commented, “if you possess any skill.”

“What’s one without the other? David.” Roarke turned again, drawing the lean man with the silver-speckled black skullcap of hair into the group. “David Su, Winston Dudley and Sylvester Moriarity. David and I have some mutual interests in Olympus Resort, among others.”

“A pleasure.” David offered his hand to both. “Would Winston Dudley the Third be your father?”

“He would.”

“We’re acquainted. I hope you’ll give him my best.”

“Happy to.” Dudley angled, subtly, giving his shoulder to Roarke. “How do you know him?”

“Other mutual business interests, and a shared passion for golf. He’s a fierce competitor.”

“You’ve played him?”

“Many times. I beat him the last time we played by a single stroke. We have to make arrangements for a rematch.”

“Maybe I can stand as a surrogate. What do you say, Sly? Shall we make it a foursome?”

“Why not? Unless Roarke objects.”

“Not at all.” And that, Roarke thought, couldn’t have been easier.

Shortly, they stood outside in the breeze surveying the first hole. Dudley smoothed on his golf cap.

“I met your wife,” he said to Roarke.

“Did you?”

“You must have heard about the murder. A limo driver, booked by someone who, it appears, hacked into one of our security people’s accounts. A terrible thing.”

“Yes, of course. I caught a mention of it on a screen report. I hope that’s not causing you too much trouble.”

“A ripple.” He dismissed it with a flick of the wrist as he took his driver from the caddy. “She did me a service when she uncovered a scam being run by two of my employees.”

“Really. Not connected to the murder?”

“Apparently not. Just something she came across while looking into the compromised account. I should send her flowers.”

“She’d consider it her job, and nothing more.”

Dudley took a few practice swings. “I assumed, from reading Nadine Furst’s book, you were more involved in her work.”

Roarke flashed an easy grin. “It plays well that way in a book, doesn’t it? Still, the Icove business had some real meat, and certainly interest in it has proven to have considerable legs. A dead limo driver, even with that loose connection to you, isn’t quite as . . . sensational.”

“The media seems to find it meaty enough.” Turning his back on Roarke, he set at the tee.

Annoyed, Roarke thought, and wasn’t surprised to find himself largely ignored by both men. Su was more of an interest to them as his blood was bluer and truer than an upstart from the Dublin alleyways.

He had no doubt they’d never have spoken above two words to him, much less arranged a golf foursome, if not for their belief he had the inside track on Eve’s investigation. Now that he’d indicated otherwise, he was of no particular interest.

The space they provided gave him the opportunity to observe them.

They cheated, he noted, and by the fifth hole he’d deciphered their codes and signals. Smooth and subtle, he concluded, and very well practiced.

They were a bloody pas de deux, he thought.

Midway through the course Roarke and Su opted to send their cart ahead and walk to the next hole.

The temperatures hadn’t yet reached their peak, and on the tree-lined green in Queens, with the occasional breeze to stir the air, the heat was pleasant enough.

And the walk, as far as Roarke was concerned, provided more entertainment than bashing at a little white ball with a club.

“They’re disrespectful to you,” Su said, “in the most polite of ways.”

“That doesn’t concern me.”

But Su shook his head. “They wear their rudeness as comfortably as their golf shoes.”

“I expect they put more thought into the shoes. The rudeness is simply second nature.”

“So it appears.” He gave Roarke a curious look as they walked. “In the years we’ve done business together, you’ve indulged me in a round of golf, which you dislike, but this is the first time you’ve arranged a foursome in this way. Which you did,” Su continued, “by maneuvering Dudley into suggesting it.”

“One of the reasons I like doing business with you, David, is you see clearly no matter how thick the bullshit.”

“A skill we share. And so seeing, I think you have other concerns here.”

“You’d be right. It was an opportunity to ask your opinion, as you know Dudley’s father. What do you think of the son?”

“That he and his friend aren’t the sort I would play golf with as a rule.”

“Because they cheat.”

Su stopped, narrowed his eyes. “Do they? I wondered. But why would they risk censure by the club for a casual game? We have no bet.”

“For some, winning’s more important than the play.”

“Will you report them?”

“No. That doesn’t concern me either. I’m happy to let them win this game, in their way, as there’s a bigger one they’ll lose. This game was, for me, a way to observe, and a chance to add to their sense of entitlement, overconfidence. Should I apologize for drawing you into it?”

“Not if you’ll give me more details.”

“As soon as I can. How well do you know Dudley’s father?”

“Well enough to tell you the father is disappointed in the son. And I see now he has cause.” Su sighed. “It’s a pity you don’t put more time and effort into your golf game. You have a natural ability and an excellent form, without the interest. If you had it, I think even with the cheating we could beat them.”

Well then, Roarke mused, he was here to entertain an associate. “I can make it harder for them to cheat.”

“Is that so?”

“Hmm.” Roarke slipped a hand into his pocket, tapped his PPC, which boasted a number of off-the-market modifications. “In fact, it might be more to the point of the exercise to do just that. The game itself, David, will be mostly on you, but I’ll put myself into it with more . . . interest from this point.”

Su’s smile spread sharp and fierce. “Let’s bury the bastards.”

 

 

E
ve turned toward the bullpen at Homicide as Baxter and Trueheart walked out.

“You’ve got a Patrice Delaughter looking for you,” Baxter told her. “We put her in the Lounge.”

“Huh. Word spreads fast.”

“It does. Such as looking forward to Saturday.”

“Appreciate the invitation, Lieutenant,” Trueheart added.

“Right. Good. Peabody—”

“Listen, Trueheart’s too shy to ask, but I’m not. Can the boy bring a date?”

“I don’t care,” Eve said as Trueheart turned light pink and hunched his broad shoulders. “I guess that means you want to bring one, too.”

“Actually no.” Baxter grinned. “A date means I’d have to pay attention to somebody, and it’s going to be all about me, brew, and cow meat. We’re due in court.” Baxter tapped a finger to his temple and strode toward the glide.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Casey’s going to be really excited about Saturday. Um, can we bring something?”

“Like what?”

“A dish?”

“We have dishes. We have lots of dishes.”

“He means food,” Peabody interpreted. “Don’t worry about it, Trueheart. They’ve got plenty of that, too.”

“Why would somebody bring food when they’re coming to your place to eat?” Eve wondered when Trueheart hurried after Baxter.

“It’s a social nicety.”

“There are too many of those, and who started them? It’s like dresses and suits.”

“It is?”

“Never mind. I’ll take Delaughter. Write up the interview with VanWitt, and start digging into the travel.”

“All over it.”

Eve headed into the Lounge with its simple, sturdy tables, vending offerings, and smell of bad coffee and meat substitute. A scatter of cops took a short break there, or conducted informal interviews.

No one would mistake the woman at the corner table for a cop. A mass of wavy red hair with golden highlights spilled past her shoulders in a fiery waterfall. It tumbled around a porcelain face dominated by bold green eyes, such was the family resemblance to her cousin.

It ended there.

She wore a snug, low-cut tank over very impressive breasts and a snug, short skirt over fairly stupendous legs. A multitude of thin chains of varying lengths sparkled around her neck, over the impressive breasts, and to the waist of that snug, short skirt.

She looked . . . indolent, Eve thought, as if she had all the time in the world to sit there—all sparkle and flame in the dull room—and was mildly amused at where she found herself to be.

“Ms. Delaughter?”

“That’s right.” Patrice did one quick up-and-down sweep, then offered a hand. “You’d be Lieutenant Dallas.”

“I’m sorry you had to wait. I was expecting to go to you at some point.”

“Felicity contacted me. I was in the city, so I decided to come here. It’s a fascinating place. That’s a fabulous jacket. Leonardo?”

Eve glanced down at the blue jacket she’d put on to cover her weapon. “Maybe.”

“Simple lines in a cropped length matched with a strong color in that Nikko blue, and the interest of the Celtic design on the buttons, which match the one on your ring. Clever. And the fit’s perfect.”

Eve glanced down again. She’d just thought of it as the blue jacket.

“Leonardo’s one of the reasons I’m in the city. He’s designing a gown for me.”

“Okay. Do you want something to drink?”

Patrice’s smile went from beautiful to breathtaking. “What’s safe?”

“Water.”

With a laugh, she gestured. “Water it is.”

Eve crossed over, scowled at the vending machine, and mentally warned it not to give her grief. She plugged in her code, ordered two bottles of water, and to her surprise the machine spit them out without incident.

When Eve came back to sit, Patrice held up a hand. “Let me just say, before we start, that I knew some of what Felicity told you today, but not all. We’re friendly, and we love each other, but we tend to drift in and out of each other’s lives. I wish, back when she got involved with Winnie, I’d taken more care with her, that I’d taken care of her. We were both young, but she was, always, softer than I. Sweeter, and more easily hurt. So I suppose I’m here because of that, because I feel, in some ways, responsible for what happened to her. How he treated her.”

“She came through it.”

Felicity smiled again. “Softer and sweeter, and in some ways stronger. The woman he ended up marrying was neither soft nor sweet, and came out of it richer. Maybe a bit harder.”

“You know Annaleigh Babbington?”

“I do, though we’re not particularly close. I dated her second husband for a while.” Patrice flashed that smile again. “We’re colorful, playful fish in an incestuous little pond. From what Felicity said, I imagine you’re going to talk to her at some point. It may have to be a later point, as she’s vacationing on Olympus for the next couple weeks. I can tell you, as it’s common knowledge in our little pond, there’s no love lost between Leigh and Winnie.”

“Is there any lost between you and Sylvester Moriarity?”

“None.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it? About him.”

“Sly.” She sighed, sipped her water. “No woman forgets her first—husband I mean. You’re still on your first.”

“Planning to stay there.”

“We all do. I was crazy about him. Maybe I was a little crazy altogether, but I was young and rich and considered myself invulnerable. He was exciting, maddeningly aloof, and a little dangerous under all that polish. It attracted me—the undercoating, you could say.”

“Dangerous how?”

“Everything was immediate, and harder, faster, higher, lower than everyone else. It had to be or we’d be like everyone else, and that we would never be. We drank too much, did whatever illegals were in style, had sex anywhere and everywhere.” She angled her head. “Did your mother ever pull out that chestnut about if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?”

Eve had a flicker, very brief, of her mother’s face, and the loathing in her eyes for the child she’d borne. “No.”

“Well, it’s an old standard. We had to be the first to jump off the cliff. If there was a trend, we were going to set it. If there was trouble, we were going to make it. God knows how much money our parents pulled out of the coffers to keep us out of jail.”

“There aren’t any arrests on your records.”

“Greased palms.” Patrice swept her fingers over her palm. “It’s also a standard and works in every language. We were self-indulgent and reckless, then I did the most reckless thing of all. I fell in love. I believe he had feelings for me, which I thought were love—and might even have been, for a while, in some strange way. Then he met Winnie, and though it took me a long time to see it, Sly loved him more.

“Not romantically, exactly, and not sexually,” she added. “Sly likes women. But what I came to realize after we were married, after it became clear we couldn’t remain so, was he and Winnie weren’t like two sides of the same coin. They were the same side. They didn’t want anyone, not long-term, on that other side.”

“Did he ever hurt you, physically?”