Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(75)

“They were a bit more high-tech.” Roarke spoke directly to the uniform now. “They used doctored balls programmed to pocket directional devices.”

“Fuckers. A man who’ll cheat at golf will scam his own mother outta the rent money.”

“At the least,” Roarke agreed, amused enough to tolerate the rest of the ride down to the garage.

“They know the course,” he continued as they walked to her car. “Have obviously mapped out each hole, programmed various lies. They signal each other as they study their positions, the angles and so on. One takes his turn; the other engages the device. They’re smooth about it. I’ll drive since you have a headache.”

“I don’t have a headache. Exactly.” When he cocked his brow at her, she dropped into the passenger seat. “I have an eye ache. That’s different.”

He walked around the hood, slid behind the wheel. “They’re careful not to play so well it causes undo attention. Solid players, is what they come off as. And having a very good game today, a few strokes under their handicap. Until the tenth hole.”

“I don’t know what that means and don’t want to.”

“Neither do I, particularly.”

“Successful businesspeople are supposed to like golf. It’s some sort of rule.”

“Well, by your rules I’m an abysmal failure.” He said it cheerfully, with a definite tenor of pride. “In any case, we started closing the gap on the tenth.”

“How did you beat them?”

“David’s a superior player, and you can say I got into the spirit of the thing, put myself into it more.”

“They were cheating. It takes more than having a good game to beat a cheat.”

“They’re not the only ones who know how to manipulate a game. I screwed up their devices with one of my own. Every time they used one, they sliced or hooked.”

“What, like a fish?”

“I adore you. I do.” Unable to resist, he leaned over and kissed her cheek. Noisily. “You make me feel like a duffer.”

“Okay. If you want.”

“Actually, not at all.” He streamed through traffic. “I’d send their ball far right or left, into a trap or the rough, which added strokes or points to their scores. In golf you want the lowest.”

“I know that much.”

“In any case, by the thirteenth hole, bad luck for them, we were even, and they couldn’t risk using the devices. So we played it straight.”

“Really?”

He turned his head to smile at her. “I was tempted to add an edge, just to rub their faces in it. But I had brought David in for the entertainment, and he got more pleasure out of beating them without it.” He paused a moment, nipped through an intersection. “And the truth of it, so did I.”

“How’d they react to losing?”

“Oh, they were well and truly pissed, masked under hearty laughter and gracious congratulations. Even bought us a round at the nineteenth hole. Dudley’s hands shook, and that was rage. He had to keep them in his pockets until he’d controlled it. And I believe he controlled it with whatever he snorted or swallowed on a trip to the loo.”

“Yeah, I’m betting he snorts, swallows, or smokes a lot. But I meant losing to you in particular.”

Nothing got by his cop, he thought. “I’d say they’ve gone from disdain to loathing, which is also satisfying. If I were the sensitive type, I’d have scraped off their loathing with a putty knife, as it was thick and sticky, but the fact is I enjoyed it quite a lot.”

“That’s because by drinking on their dime and joining their hearty laughter you were actually giving them the finger.”

“And with a modest, just-had-a-run-of-luck smile.”

“You milked it,” Eve concluded.

“Like they were a couple of cows with engorged utters.”

“Eeww.”

“Maybe you had to be there. You’d be interested, I think, to know that Dudley had a bit of a rage in the locker room when we weren’t around and ordered his clubs destroyed.”

“How do you know?”

“I bribed the butler, naturally.”

“Naturally, and naturally locker rooms in your world include butlers.”

“He also smashed his transmitter. I found pieces of it on the floor of the dressing room he used.”

“Temper, temper. That’s good. I can use that.”

“I thought so. He mentioned you. Made a point of telling me he’d met you, and tried to find out how involved I am in your investigation. I made it seem as if this case wasn’t of any particular interest, just a driver and an LC, hardly worth my notice, and not all that important to you from my perspective. That didn’t please him either.”

She said nothing for a moment as he maneuvered through the sluggish river of vehicles. “That was good. That was a pretty good play. It gives him an emotional investment, makes him want to create more importance, more notice. It can’t be ordinary, that’s the whole point. If you were right, and they wanted me in particular, and likely you, it’s no good if you aren’t interested, and it’s just another day of work for me.”

“The Icove case was huge—investigatively, in the media, in the public’s attention. You said he mentioned the case, the book to you when you interviewed him. He did the same with me.”