Free Green Thumb by Ralph McInerny Page B

mean?”
    â€œTrouble in paradise, my good man. They are separated. But she is as much sinned against as sinning. The good doctor has renewed a passion of his student days, a friend of my older sister, Laura Kennedy.”
    â€œMy God, he must be nearly sixty.”
    â€œSo what? Haven’t you heard of Viagra?”
    â€œIt’s where we went on our honeymoon.”
    â€œNot Niagra. In any case, the lady is a tramp as well as trampled on.”
    â€œWhat lady?”
    â€œWho are we talking about?”
    â€œLaura somebody.”
    â€œNo, no. Maureen O’Kelly.”
    â€œIt is wrong to say such things of her.”
    It was not so much that they were arguing as that they both had spoken at the top of their voices, enunciating carefully and with thick tongues. Toolin had caught Mort in the face with a sofa cushion on his way out, pulling the door shut on his lucky shot. How sobering to realize that was the last time he was to see Mort alive. That melancholy realization kept the conversation heavy on his mind during the next twenty-four hours. But the exchange took on a different aspect when Stewart and Philip Knight talked to him the second time.
    â€œWhat were you fighting with Sadler about the night before he died?”
    Crown must have passed this on, but why? He must know that the police were professionally suspicious. Good God, they talked to him as if he himself had something to do with the death of Mort. Toolin tried to dismiss it as nothing but soon, as he had with Crown, he told them what he and Mort had been talking about after the others left the suite.

16
    Armitage Shanks took an initial sip of his executive martini, so called because it was served in a small carafe that yielded a glass and a half—or two, if one dallied and permitted the ice to melt. Across from him at the Old Bastards table in the university club, Ambrose Dulcedo followed Shanks’s testing of his drink with avid eyes.
    â€œHave one,” Shanks urged.
    Dulcedo held up an arthritic hand. “All that is behind me now.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œDoctor’s orders.”
    â€œSurely longevity can’t be a goal at your age.”
    â€œI don’t want to commit suicide, either.”
    â€œWhat is the latest word on the golf course murder?”
    Others of the group began to arrive, jollying Debbie as they came in, lowering themselves slowly and sometimes painfully into their chairs, barking for a waitress so they could order drinks. When this had been done, the question about the murder on the golf course was raised anew. Bruno, of course, had news.
    He insisted on their undivided attention. He licked his lips and rolled his agate eyes. And began. The police had, in the interest of thoroughness and because they had few leads to go on, checked out the golf bags of Sadler’s three roommates.
    Bruno’s tablemates waited impatiently, but his eye was on the waitress approaching with his beer.
    â€œSo what did they find?”
    Bruno drank deep and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    â€œGolf clubs,” Shanks said disgustedly.
    Bruno smiled as one in possession of as yet undivulged information will smile. It was a mark of the Old Bastards’ table that each of its occupants sought to bring some scoop to the meal and dole out what he knew as slowly as possible. Bruno was merely following the conventions of the group.
    â€œThey found bottles of water.”
    Shanks sputtered into his manhattan. “Find me a golf bag without a plastic bottle of water in it and I will exercise daily for a week.”
    â€œContaminated water?” Bruno asked.
    â€œContaminated!”
    â€œPoisoned. And with the same poison that did in their roommate.”
    This was news indeed. Bruno sat back and allowed his fellows to worry the bone he had thrown them. The obvious thought was that someone had intended to wipe out all four of the old friends.
    â€œBut who?”
    â€œThat