“Hunter Mullins? Is that you?”
Hunter turned to a familiar face. “Hi, Ida. What you doing here?”
“Carl gave me passes for the tournament, so the hubby and I came to watch. We were supposed to meet Carl for a late breakfast this morning, but he’s not answering his cell. And they won’t tell me if he is staying here.” Ida brushed bangs of graying dark brown hair to reveal her dark brown eyes. She didn’t have make-up on, like she normally did, and wore for a ponytail, and for half a second he wondered why she hadn’t worn any. Ida prided herself as being a fine member of the Ponte Vedra community so it was odd Ida hadn’t put on make-up or wore her hair to her shoulders so she could toss to the side, when she wanted to, flirting like she did at any man she fancied, sometimes even in front of Lenny, her husband. “Those lattes aren’t for Carl, are they? I can’t see Carl drinking chai.”
“No, they’re for a friend.” Hunter blushed. Dimas and his secret often put Hunter in this predicament. Usually, he could lie and shrug it off, but this was Ida. She lived close by, and she’d known him since he was a kid.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“No one.” He paused and tried to think of something but couldn’t. Ida had been good friends with his mom, often bringing her food and visiting her in her last days. He’d figured if anyone in Ponte Vedra knew about Hunter, she would since his mother probably told Ida. His mother had been the only one who knew about Hunter and Dimas. And Hunter didn’t like lying to Ida because she was always good to his mom.
“Well,” she sighed, her tone expressing disappointment, “tell Carl I’m looking for him.”
His eyebrows knitted together as Hunter scanned the hotel lobby for Lenny. “Okay, I will.”
Ida left quickly as she appeared. He followed her steps, and once he confirmed that Lenny wasn’t anywhere in the area, he palmed out his phone and texted his stepdad.
You up? Ida was looking for you.
Hunter slid the phone back in his pocket and sipped on the latte the barista handed to him. By now, Dimas should be out of the shower and dressing for the first of three interviews. It was close to noon. He headed back to Dimas’s room.
Their room.
When he arrived at their suite, Dimas was gone. He contemplated going to the news conference and leaving the chai there with an assistant but then changed his mind.
It’ll just get everyone talking if I do that. Why is Carl’s stepson delivering a latte to Dimas?
He picked up the dirty clothes Dimas had thrown to the side and threw it in the hotel’s courtesy laundry bag. Dimas must have left just a few minutes earlier because there was still steam on the bathroom mirror when he opened the bathroom door.
He placed Dimas’s tea on the nightstand next to the unmade bed, and left, making sure that the housekeeping door tag gave fair warning not to service the room.
He trudged over to the suite Carl booked one floor down, and stepped inside. The living room’s dining room table had several beer bottles on it. He stepped toward Carl’s bedroom, then knocked. When Carl didn’t answer, he twisted the doorknob and checked out the room. The drapes stood open and sunlight brightened the room. There were two wine glasses on the nightstand. A spoon lay next to a wine glass, no doubt with very minute traces of cocaine. As Hunter approached, he saw lipstick on the rim of one of the glasses.
Hunter walked quickly to the room he had left his suitcase, and saw his notebooks scattered on the bed. He had binders of notes for the next two golf tournaments. Hunter didn’t see his TPC notebook, so he squatted down to see if it had dropped below the bed.
He checked his bathroom, and didn’t see the binder there. He scratched his head, knowing he left it on the bed last night after the tournament.
He walked back into the living room and nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Lenny?”
“Hey, Hunter. The door was open. I was looking for Carl.” Ida’s husband’s eyebrows scrunched together. Lenny stood a few inches shorter than Hunter’s five eleven and he was stick-thin like Ida. His complexion was pale like hers too. The similarities between Ida and Lenny made them so similar that they were commonly mistaken as siblings. Lenny wore running shorts, and his thinning gray hair was all disheveled.
“He’s not here. I just checked.”
“Oh?” As if he didn’t believe him, Lenny stepped forward and peeked into Carl’s room.
“Yeah, I’m not sure where he is. I told Ida this a few minutes ago.” Dimas worried that Lenny saw the lipstick-stained wine glass.
Lenny cocked his head. “Where did you see Ida?”
“In the coffee shop off the lobby.” Hunter crossed his arms. “Did you and Ida stay here over night?”
“No,” Lenny shook his head. “Ida did, but I didn’t.” Lenny looked down at the ground, avoiding Hunter’s gaze.
“Do you want me to give him a message?”
“Just tell him I was looking for the paperwork. He knows which one.”
Hunter nodded his head. He didn’t want to bring up the fact that Ida told him something else earlier. His curiosity was now piqued. “Was Carl supposed to meet up with you?”
“No, not really. I mean…No. When you see Carl, ask him to call me.”
Hunter pursed his lips. He wasn’t sure what to make of Lenny’s sudden appearance in the hotel room. Before he could say anything else, the phone rang. Hunter walked to the phone and answered.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Mullins?”
“This is Hunter Mullins.”
“Mr. Mullins, this is the front desk. There is a deputy asking to come up to the suite to ask you some questions about Mr. Carl Mullins.”
“Oh?”
What’d he do now?
“May he come up?”
Hunter nodded. “Sure.” Before he could say anything else, Lenny left the room without saying a word.
“Okay, he’s coming right up.”
“Thanks,” Hunter said, wondering what Carl had gotten himself into.
A few minutes later, after a knock on the door, Hunter opened the door to find a corpulent deputy, dressed in a dark green polyester shirt, and pants, and a heavy gun belt, sweating with a small noted paid in his hand. “Mr. Mullins?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Is your father, Carl Mullins?” The deputy wiped his brow with a handkerchief.
“Stepfather. And, yes, is he in trouble? What has he done?”
“Maybe we should take a seat in the living room table area. I’m Deputy Myers. St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.”
Hunter shook the deputy’s hand, after the deputy turned down the volume of his holstered walkie-talkie, then Deputy Myers walked in, along with a tall, dark suited man. The second gentleman, based on his name badge, was hotel security and another person, a pixie-cut brown-haired, diminutive woman trailed after him. The female wore a white starched shirt and over the left front of her blouse the words, “Crime Scene” had been embroidered.
“Do you mind if I look around?” she asked.
Hunter hesitated. “Hold on.” He took a step toward Carl’s room, but she blocked him.
“You can’t touch anything sir. Not right now anyway.” Her voice was firm, but not angry. It had a tone of empathy in it.
“We don’t care if there’s any evidence of partying,” Deputy Myers said.
Hunter nodded. “Okay, go on ahead…Wait, why do you want to look around?”
“I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’ll just spill it out. This morning, a jogger on the running path, found your stepfather. Ordinarily, we would have asked you to identify him, but he was easily recognizable.”
“How is he? Is he okay?” Hunter sat down.
“I’m sorry to say this, but he’s dead.” Deputy Myers spoke as if he had uttered those words countless of times. His voice was flat. Unemotional.
Hunter blinked. “What?” He slouched in his chair as if someone just punched him in the stomach. “That can’t be. Th
ere must be some mistake.”
The crime scene tech that’d been taking pictures of the living room, walked up to Hunter. She eyed the deputy who nodded. She held her digital camera and her finger flipped through images. She finally stopped at one and showed it to Hunter.
Carl was on the ground, his face was up, and his eyes were closed. Dark, dried blood appeared on the side of his face. A pond was in the near distance of the photo.
“Where?” Hunter asked, his voice hoarse as he tried to stop the tears from flowing.
“Just beyond one of the holes, near the running and bike path,” the deputy said.
“From the looks of it, he’d been there more than two hours, based on body temperature,” the crime tech volunteered. “The ME might know better about the time of death, though.”
Hunter closed his eyes and tried to hold back, but silently his eyes watered, his nose became congested and he couldn’t speak. Thankfully, the hotel security guard quickly moved and grabbed a box of tissue that had been on the side of the table and handed it to Hunter.
“I’m sorry to have broken the news this way. We’ll have you officially confirm it’s your stepfather, but right now the area where he was found is cordoned off until crime scene techs are done.”
Hunter nodded.
The female investigator raised a finger to ask a question. “Whose room is whose?”
“Mine is to the left, my stepdad’s is over there.”
She nodded, lifted her camera, and walked over to Carl’s room. “Deputy, there are two wine glasses here. There also appears to be lipstick on one,” she shouted. Then she started clicking away with her camera, doing close ups of the spoon, the wine glasses, and the immediate areas of the bed.
“Did your stepfather have a guest?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t stay the night here?”
“Oh?” The deputy flipped open his notebook and started writing. The hotel security guard took out his cell and texted.
Their activity unnerved Hunter, and he couldn’t figure out why.
“Where were you when your stepfather was entertaining?”
“I was with a friend. In the hotel. With whom, I’d rather not say.”
Deputy nodded. “You understand that if the investigation reveals foul play, we’ll have to take you in for more formal questioning, and you’ll have to say where you were.”
Hunter nodded. He hoped he didn’t have to divulge he was with Dimas. Carl’s death didn’t have anything to do with his boyfriend, so why risk Dimas’s golf career?
“I have to ask you some questions to make sure we’re on the right track and to rule out any possibilities. Please don’t take offense to the questions I’m asking you.”
Hunter nodded, curious to find out what the tech was doing because he saw camera flashes going off every second in Carl’s bathroom.
“Do you wear lipstick?” the deputy asked.
Hunter furrowed his brow. “No.”
“I’m sorry I have to ask, but have you ever had a sexual relationship with your stepfather?”
Hunter straightened from his chair, and his face reddened. “No!”
“I had to ask these questions to see if I can rule out suspects. Now, before I came up on the elevator, we ran a list of calls to your home with your stepfather in Ponte Vedra. Several domestic calls were made. One was several years ago.” Deputy Myers showed on his phone the date and time and the complaint caller’s information. “Your mother called in to report that your stepfather was drunk and was hitting you. When deputies arrived, you denied any physical abuse although the deputy noted that your face was red and you had been crying. There was a car that crashed into the side of the house. They later took you to the hospital with severe lacerations and bruising to your arm, collar bone and shoulders, and your mother and you refused to give any details. Everyone refused to press charges. Then there’s the call almost four years ago. Neighbors called because your stepfather started breaking the windows of your car and calling you—”
“Faggot. He was calling me a pussy and retard too.” Hunter beat back the tears. “We had just lost a junior tournament. He was mad. He came out to watch the tournament. It was the first and last time he caught a collegiate tournament of mine. He thought I was weak, and made the team lose.”
Deputy Myers sat there silently for a moment. The hotel security guard pinched his nose and sat down at a chair away from both Hunter and the deputy. “If your stepfather’s death was caused by foul play, you’d have motive to rid of him. I’ve been a deputy a long time.”
“He wasn’t a bad man.” Hunter wiped his tears with the tissue, and then blew his nose. “He just became a different person when he was drunk. It was like Jekyll and Hyde with him. Give him several drinks and he could become a monster. He wasn’t always like that.”
Deputy Myers cleared his throat. “We need an alibi from you from around midnight to a couple of hours ago.”
Hunter nodded. “All I can tell you is I was with someone.”
“Excuse me, deputy,” the dark suited man interrupted. “Our records show that at two in the morning a call was made from this room to the front desk, and then transferred to room service. Room service arrived around two-thirty with two hamburgers and two glasses of wine. We just pulled a security feed that shows that Mr. Carl Mullins poked his head out of the room around two-thirty to accept the food and signed for the check.”
“I don’t see any remnants of room service here.” Deputy Myers scanned the living room.
The security representative nodded. “Early in the morning we walk the halls. Because of the number of guests that stayed for the tournament, we had a large number of room service calls, so around five this morning, each floor was checked, and food carts cleared out. The next time a room key was swiped to gain entry into the suite was about a half an hour ago. We don’t keep track of exits from this room, but the RFID key card system told us when an entry is made.”
“That would have been the time I came in,” Hunter said.
“Do you have your keys?” Deputy Myers asked.
“Yes.” Hunter fished out the room key, but now he wasn’t sure which suite was which, so he put two keys out.
“Which one is the key to this room?”
“I’m not sure,” Hunter answered.”
“And the other key?”
“Where I stayed last night,” Hunter said.
“And you still can’t tell me who you were with?” the deputy asked.
“No, I can’t say.”
“Can I get any help on this?” Deputy Myers asked hotel security.
“I would have to take both keys and read them using the RFID chip reader to see which room is assigned to which.”
“That would violate my privacy and the privacy of the other person,” Hunter said, his voice coming across sterner than he intended. “I’m not a person of interest, right?”
Deputy Myers shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m trying to make sure you’re not. Clearly, you could have the potential motive to have your stepfather dead. Preliminary reports of his death suggest some blunt force trauma to the back of his head. We’re not sure if it was from a fall, or from some sort of weapon. The impact point is rather small and required a lot of force.” The deputy hesitated. “What’s usually used if it’s murder is something nearby, like a bat, a heavy stick. Even golf clubs if heavy and swung a certain way. Do you know where your stepdad’s golf clubs are located?”
“It would be downstairs with the bell valet. I think the tournament officials took them from me to transfer back to the hotel.”
“That’s good then. Since you’re not in possession of the golf clubs, you won’t mind if we test each club for any forensic evidence.”
“I have nothing to hide, so test away.”
“Except the identity of who you were with last night,” the deputy mumbled. “And if you’re trying to protect this person, he must be very famous.”
Hunter involuntarily gasped and then f
lushed. It dawned on him that Deputy Myers had been fishing for information, and Hunter’s reaction just confirmed it.
The security manager, who’d ignored this exchange, glanced up from his cell phone. He narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, then crossed his arms. Hunter wasn’t sure what the hotel representative had just read off his cell phone, but the fact that he eyed the keys on the table and then his cell phone again made Hunter uneasy.
When the dark-haired hotel security manager gritted his jaw seconds later and stared at Hunter almost in disbelief, Hunter went numb. The hotel must have security video showing Hunter going into Dimas’s room last night, and then leaving this morning. They had cameras in every hallway. They could easily confirm Hunter’s alibi. But now they knew Hunter’s horrible secret and in learning this, they could expose Dimas too.
“Deputy, I’m being called by the hotel manager, so excuse me.” The dark-haired man stood up, glanced briefly at Hunter.
“Sure,” Deputy Myers said.
As the dark-suited man approached the door, he glanced back to Hunter. Again. That moment was like a gut punch. Carl was dead. His life was upside down, and the secret of the man he loved will no longer be a one if the hotel and the deputies had their way.
He wanted Dimas with him, to tell him that everything was going to be okay, and this feeling of loneliness and sadness would go away. But Dimas wasn’t there, and the inquisitive deputy, and the photo-taking crime scene tech only made Hunter sadder.
He wondered what happened to Carl. Why was he up so early in the morning? What made him go outside that early? And if it was murder, who would want to kill him?
His spine shuddered when he remembered Dimas’s words earlier in the morning. “I’d fucking kill him.”
* * * *
Dimas laughed. He hadn’t expected a series of questions in Spanish. But he answered them anyway. He had to give her credit; the journalist’s questions were direct and on point. At least in this tournament, no one asked him about Tiger Woods, or Rickie Fowler. Golf analysts when he started the pro tour had compared Rickie’s game with Dimas, even though their style of play was completely different. Dimas was not offended by the comparison, since Rickie was a great player, but he was tired of comparisons made by the media to him and other Asian, or Asian-mixed players like Tiger, or Rickie.
Just the Facts, Volume 1 Page 21