“What do you think?”
“I think this is getting very weird,” Dino said.
41
CALLIE CAME ON DECK. “AND WHAT HAVE YOU TWO planned for the day?” she asked Stone and Dino.
“Zip,” Dino said. “But I wouldn’t mind some golf.”
“I’ll book you a tee time at the Breakers,” she said.
“I don’t want to leave you and Liz alone,” Stone replied. “We’d better stick close.”
“Liz and I will be just fine,” Callie said. “I have your gun, and Juanito and a couple of crew members will be around. Besides, if you have to spend all your time here, you might get tired of me.”
Stone snaked an arm around her and kissed her on the neck. “Not much chance of that,” he said.
“I know,” she replied, “but unless you and Dino get out of here and allow Liz and me some girl time, I’m going to start getting sick of you both.”
Stone threw his hands up. “Golf, it is. Come on, Dino.”
The starter cleared them from the first tee. Stone drove his usual slice into the next fairway, and Dino hooked his into yet another fairway.
“How’re we going to handle the cart on this?” Dino asked, getting in.
“Well, I’m not giving it to you. You’re away, so we’ll go to your ball first.”
Dino addressed the ball with a fairway wood, took a practice swing and sent the ball two hundred yards over a stand of palm trees, back into the fairway. “Take that!” he said.
Stone drove to his own ball, took a long iron and hit it to within five yards of Dino’s ball.
“Looks like we’re back in the game,” Dino said.
“Back in the fairway, anyway.”
They both parred the hole. A bit later, as they were crossing South County Road, Dino spoke up. “You are the most unobservant person I know.”
“What brought that on?” Stone asked. “And how does being observant help my golf game?”
“Nothing can help your golf game,” Dino replied, “but if somebody had told me that my former wife and lover was hunting me down to kill me, I’d take a look around me once in a while.”
Stone tensed. “Where?”
“Over your left shoulder, parked at the curb, about two hundred yards down. Don’t look yet!”
Stone tried to keep his eyes ahead. They stopped to tee off, and he took his driver out of the bag and tried a couple of practice swings, which allowed him to look at the car. “I can’t see who’s inside,” he said.
“That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?” Dino asked. “If she’d wanted you to see her, she could have parked twenty yards from us.”
“We’ve already made the local papers this week, as a result of the scene in the restaurant,” Stone said. “I don’t think I want to read a story that says I was shot dead on the golf course at the Breakers.”
“Don’t worry,” Dino said. “You won’t. I may, but not you.”
“How do you know she doesn’t want to kill you, too?”
“Because I never married her, then dumped her when an old girlfriend called,” Dino said. “I’ve always been nice to Dolce.”
Stone teed up and swung at the ball, hitting it straight, for a change. “I remember your telling me once that Eduardo was the devil, and that Dolce was his handmaiden. Is that what you call being nice?”