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"The expense money. I didn't need it."
Detweiler took the money and held it for a moment before tucking it in the pocket of his open-collared plaid shirt.
"I didn't expect any back, and I was just about to say, 'Matt, go buy yourself something,' but you don't try to pay dear friends for an act of love, do you?"
Oh, shit!
Matt turned away in embarrassment, saw a cast-iron love seat, walked to it, and sat down.
"He doesn't need your money, Dick," Brewster C. Payne said. "He made a killing at the tables."
"Really?"
"More than six thousand," Brewster Payne said.
"I didn't know you were a gambler," Detweiler said.
"I'm not. That was my first time. Beginner's luck."
Detweiler, Matt thought, seemed relieved.
"You understand that the money I took from your father today," Detweiler went on, "is not really gambling."
"More beginner's luck?" Matt asked innocently.
His father laughed heartily.
"I meant, not really gambling. Gambling can get you in a lot of trouble in a hurry."
That's why you give your guests at the Flamingo a ten-thousanddollar line of credit, right? So they'll get in a lot of trouble in a hurry?
"Yes, sir," Matt said. He took a sip of his Scotch. "Nice booze."
"It's a straight malt, whatever that means," Detweiler said, "it suggests there's a crooked malt."
Penny Detweiler, trailed by her mother and Mrs. Payne, came onto the veranda. She had a long-necked bottle of Ortlieb's and a glass in her hands.
"What's that?" Detweiler asked.
"It's what Matt's been drinking all afternoon," Penny said. "When did you start drinking whiskey?"
"As nearly as I can remember, when I was eleven or twelve."
"No, he didn't," Patricia Payne said.
"Yes, he did, dear," Brewster Payne said. "We just managed to keep it from you."
Penny sat beside Matt on the cast-iron love seat.
"What am I suppose to do with this?" she asked.
"You might try drinking it," Matt said.
"Penny…" Grace Detweiler said warningly.
"A glass of beer isn't going to hurt her," her father said. "She's with friends and family."
There was a moment's awkward silence, and then Penny put the glass on the flagstone floor and put the neck of the bottle to her mouth. Her mother looked very uncomfortable.
