Deep Rough Read online

  Deep Rough

  A Miami Jones Florida Mystery

  AJ Stewart

  Jacaranda Drive

  For Evan. Who comes up with the best names for everything.

  * * *

  And Heather, always.

  Contents

  Readers’ Crew

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Readers’ Crew

  If You Enjoyed This Book

  Also by AJ Stewart

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Readers’ Crew

  Sign up to AJ Stewart’s readers’ crew for the exclusive Miami Jones novel Three Strikes, and occasional updates on new books. Visit ajstewartbooks.com/reader.

  Chapter One

  The wedding ceremony started exactly as such ceremonies do. There was music—a string quartet playing Pachelbel's Canon in D. There was a gang in classic tuxedos waiting at the front. The groom and six—count them—six groomsmen. They looked like an a cappella group. They each stood with their hands clasped before them, surely the idea of a wedding planner, and looked down the aisle between the two sets of white folding chairs. The aisle was a blue carpet laid over a wooden platform that itself had been erected over immaculately grown grass. Six young women in coral dresses, the color and design of which suggested that their maiden voyage would also be their last, swayed down the aisle. The bride’s team moved to the opposite side to the groomsmen, backed by a large hospitality tent.

  The string quartet broke out of Canon and into Wagner’s Bridal Chorus with practiced efficiency. The change in tune caused the congregation to turn their heads as one toward the doors of the clubhouse, and the bride stepped out past where Danielle and I were standing at the back. The bride was in a white dress rather than anything my mother would have called a gown. It was slimming and tight and pushed her breasts toward the sky. She wore a wide smile. The man on her arm, the father of the bride, wore a smile that suggested he was happy but not at all comfortable with two hundred pairs of eyes on him.

  The bride and her father marched past us, in time with Wagner, a military precision that felt out of place. Danielle wiped a tear from her eye, even though she had never met the bride before. Perhaps it was a woman thing. Danielle had gone with an unusual choice of attire—brown pressed trousers with a white blouse and tan vest. It was very Annie Hall, and I wondered as I watched the bride pass by if Danielle had dressed in such a fashion as to ensure she didn’t look better than the bride, which I had heard was very bad karma. I don’t think the same rule applied to the groom, but it was moot anyway, because he definitely looked better than me in his tux, despite the late afternoon sun. I looked like a newsreader from Los Angeles, my blond mess of hair a counterpoint to the suit that I used for weddings and funerals.

  The bride was handed off by her father and the groom linked her fingers in his. I wasn’t sure if the fellow standing before them was a priest, a pastor or a civil celebrant, but the couple turned away from us, and once they tore their attention from each other they offered it to him. He nodded sagely and gave a smile to the congregation that spoke of the joy of the occasion and of his desire to get things over with so he could remove his heavy frock and get out of the hot spring sun. He cleared his throat and prepared to speak.

  That was when I noticed the harbinger of trouble.

  Only two of us noticed at first, at least to my eye. Me—from the back of the congregation, looking out beyond the wedding party toward the sprawling expanse of the eighteenth green of South Lakes Country Club—and the girl who was standing second in line from the bride. She noticed because the girl beside her, whom I assumed was the maid of honor given her exalted position next to the bride, was the first to go down. Slowly in the beginning, like the first minutes of the Titanic, and then faster and with the inevitability of the aforementioned ship. First her left leg gave out some, in that way that women’s legs sometimes do when they are wearing those ridiculous high-heeled shoes and they misstep. But the maid of honor was standing still, and her faulty leg made her wobble more than trip. The girl next to her gave her a look of contempt, perhaps the result of being beaten out for the maid-of-honor honor.

  The winner of that honor turned to the girl next to her, and for a second their eyes met over coral frills. Then the maid of honor doubled over, gripping her stomach as if she had been shot, which she had not. She grabbed at the bridesmaid next to her, gripping a puffy sleeve and moaning softly. Softly but loud enough for the sound to travel to my ears at the back, and to draw the attention of the silent congregation.

  Then the maid of honor vomited with great intensity into the bridesmaid’s chest. It was loud and unpleasant and voluminous. The girl must have hit the wedding eve buffet hard. Her body spasmed like an Abrams tank spewing forth artillery shells. Boom, boom, boom. I thought for a moment she might suffocate, and gave passing consideration to who of the well-dressed and well-heeled in attendance would offer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But then the bombardment stopped, and the maid of honor sucked in a great chunky breath of air. And then the bombardment began again.

  Nausea is like yawning. It’s contagious. I once offered a yawn to the governor of Florida while he was giving a stump speech and he actually broke into a gaping yawn himself. He didn’t thank me for it, but the result was thanks enough. There were no yawns at the South Lakes Country Club. There was the collected sound of gulping and of breath being held, and hands over mouths.

  Then the mother of the groom lost her lunch. Right onto the deck platform. The father of the groom spun in his seat like he had been electrocuted, but to his credit he went straight to the aid of his ailing wife. Someone in the first row of the bride’s side of the congregation stood, did something that resembled a dance move that would look unbecoming on anyone over the age of eighteen—one hand on her stomach, one hand on her buttocks, bend over and twerk it all about. Then she deposited her insides on the gentleman next to her.

  And then it got bad.

  First, the bridesmaid who had worn the initial barrage began wiping her dress. Once she realized she was collecting vomitus by the bucketload on her hands she started waving her arms frantically, raining the front rows in what looked suspiciously like carrots and peas, as if they were sitting in the wet zone seats at Sea World. Then she stopped suddenly, her eyes bulging, and she launched her cookies out past the maid of honor.

  And right into the bride. I’m no expert on the subject but I was pretty confident that those stains were never coming out of a white wedding dress. The bride stood mouth agape, looked down at her vomit-splattered pearls and then back at the bridesmaid who had deposited on her. Then she took off.

  I didn’t blame her. It was runaw
ay bride stuff, but it was all warranted. Things were not going well. I bet myself dollars to donuts that the wedding planner had a contingency for a South Florida rain squall bursting across the golf course, but I was equally certain that current events had not come up at online wedding planner school. The bride broke for the aisle, kicking her shoes off deftly as she went. She was fast for someone in such a tight dress, and she made it halfway down the aisle toward Danielle and me before her bare feet came to a great screeching halt.

  She bent over a touch, like an honorific in a Japanese restaurant, and then she looked right at me. I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. Danielle and I were there simply because Ron and I had solved a case for her father, and he had asked us along as thanks. To be fair Ron had done all the work, and he and the Lady Cassandra were sitting in the middle of the congregation as a result. I was only invited to the reception. But Danielle had considered it bad form to turn up just for the beers and canapés without attending the ceremony, so we came early and stood at the back. I would most certainly hold Danielle responsible for having to witness what we had seen as a result.

  The idea of the Titanic came to me again. It wasn’t the most original train of thought, but I am a former baseball player cum private detective, not Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This time I saw the movie in my head, the version with Leo and Kate, the one that Celine Dion aptly sang went on and on and on. The big ship is going down. The stern is pointing at the moon and the massive propeller is spinning in midair. And in my mind I see a man gripping a railing by one hand, hanging high above the churning ocean below. The railing is too wide and his hand cannot hold on, and in that second the man’s face conveyed the certainty that his grip would fail and he would fall to his death. I don’t know who the actor was, or if I even remembered it right, but that guy deserved an Oscar. That was acting. That was a face of pure terror.

  The bride gave me that same face. Only she wasn’t acting. She stood motionless in the middle of the aisle, her eyes searing into me. Confusion and terror. Confusion: What on earth is happening, and why is it happening on this day of all days? And then terror: It doesn’t matter what or why. It’s just happening and it’s happening right now.

  It was a reminder to never wear white. I had done so a few times during my baseball career and it was almost always a guarantee that I’d end up in the dirt. I’d overbalance during a pitch, or a drive would get smacked straight at the mound, or I’d have to field an infield dribble and flick it to first base, and I’d end up face down on the clay, my uniform fully soiled. Never seemed to happen when I was wearing gray or green. Always white.

  The bride would no doubt remember the lesson too. She grimaced hard, and then every orifice in her body opened simultaneously. It was, short of seeing the final seconds of a human life, the most unpleasant thing I had ever witnessed. Grotesque to be sure, but what I felt more was sorrow. Granted people put too much stock in weddings. They were way overdone, production numbers filled with stress and angst that was never fully compensated for. But for those who did put their stock in the event, they seemed to mean so much. And the bride was clearly one of those people. I could see that from her dress, now stained colors that never appeared on any rainbow, and from the size of the congregation and the location of the ceremony. And at that moment I just felt sorry that it was going to stick in her mind until the day she died, for all the wrong reasons.

  As I watched the bride expel and then collapse onto the deck, Danielle turned and ran. Away from the mess and the chaos, into the clubhouse. As a sheriff’s deputy she had seen all the worst that the human condition could offer, and I found it hard to believe she was squeamish. I was right. As quickly as she left she returned, pulling on a pair of latex food service gloves. She didn’t break stride. She left the bride on her hands and knees in the aisle and called across the growing commotion. Seats were being cast aside as people retreated from the turmoil and others joined in.

  “People, please move slowly away from the deck. If you feel ill, please move this way.” She pointed at the adjacent fairway with two hands, like one of those guys directing traffic at the airport.

  “If you do not feel symptoms please move this way.” She pointed the other way, toward the large practice green that sat under the window of the clubhouse bar.

  I moved to offer help to the bride and Danielle caught my eye and shook her head.

  “Might be contagious,” she said quietly.

  She took out her cell phone and made a call to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Calling in backup. I heard her tell whoever was on the line to call the paramedics and the health department. Then she ended the call and repeated the directions for people to move away.

  Her directions were partially heeded. Those who had not succumbed to events moved quickly away, gathering by, but not on, the practice green. Even in the commotion this was a crowd that knew that trampling a putting green was bad form. But those who felt symptoms did not move in the other direction. For the most part they stayed were they were, or fell to their knees.

  Danielle moved away and left them where they lay. She pushed me back to the door of the clubhouse.

  “What the hell?” It was all I could think to say.

  “Might be food poisoning. Might be viral. If it’s the latter, it might be airborne.”

  Danielle pushed the allegedly healthy group further back down onto the first tee, away from the strewn chairs and crushed flowers. She told them she was a sheriff’s deputy and that no one was to leave until the paramedics arrived. Then she marched back up to the clubhouse and told a woman who wore a name badge to tell the valets to not allow any cars to leave and that they would deal with the sheriff if they did.

  Then she returned to me. At my count there were sixteen bodies down, and we ran our eyes over them to ensure no one was in mortal danger of choking. Danielle said we had to wait for the medics, who would be properly equipped.

  So we stood there, like photographers in Vietnam, watching the horror but not getting involved.

  Chapter Two

  The paramedics arrived first. Two trucks, four medics. They must have been shocked at what they saw but they didn’t show it. They were pros, and like Danielle, they had seen folks at their worst. They donned gloves and masks and waded in. They wandered through the mess of bodies, performing triage, looking for those worse off. I don’t know how they could tell one from the other. Some folks had it coming from all exits, and some just orally. That didn’t seem to be the determining factor for them, and they split up. One attended the bride first, which felt right in the circumstances.

  The paramedics called for more ambulances and announced a contagion protocol, which didn’t mean anything at first but became apparent as gurneys were wheeled out covered in plastic. Several sheriff’s deputies arrived before the extra ambulances and Danielle directed them to the crowd on the first tee. Uniforms always worked better at crowd control than someone who simply proclaimed themselves a deputy. There were some unhappy folks in that bunch, and several men demanded that they be allowed to leave, but the deputies offered them the option of vomiting their guts up in a cell on Gun Club Road, and as one they choked back their complaints and stood down.

  It was the health department team that put the fear of God into everyone. These guys turned up in hazmat gear, as if a nuke had accidentally exploded in West Palm Beach. They had the full helmets and everything. Astronauts wear less equipment. They cordoned off the area around the decking and began taking samples from the fallen. A couple of them went over to the group on the first tee and conducted interviews to ascertain how everyone was feeling. They took a handful of people away—I assumed it was because they said they weren’t feeling so fresh.

  My rule of thumb when dealing with government officials of any kind is to keep mum. I could have the cold sweats and I’d say I’m feeling like a bunch of roses. It probably wasn’t protocol, but I preferred to never be led away by a guy wearing a hazmat suit. I’ve seen E.T.—Spielberg doe
sn’t lie.

  Over the course of the next hour the sick were taken away to the hospital, the name of which we were not told, which only reinforced my E.T. theory. More health department folks arrived in hazmat suits, and then a unit from the Florida National Guard arrived in a truck. A team of eight carried a bundle to about the fifty-yard mark of the first fairway, and then dropped their bundle. They proceeded to erect a tent in record time. It was a geodesic thing, large enough to house the truck it had arrived in. Two more soldiers wheeled an air-conditioning unit out to the rear of the tent and fired it up, and the tent puffed out like a balloon.

  A dude in a hazmat suit asked the gathering on the first tee to enter the tent. He should have yelled fire, because it would have been more effective. No way a crowd of movers and shakers from both sides of the Flagler Memorial Bridge was entering an alien-looking tent at the direction of a guy dressed for the apocalypse. He almost started a riot, albeit of the Palm Beach variety. There were frowns and stern words under breath. Then a woman who wore no more protection than a pair of rubber gloves and a paper mask took control and informed the group that there was a possible viral outbreak and that the group was unlikely to have been infected but state procedure demanded for their own safety that they be screened.