The Club

by Jane Heller

  “No wonder Duncan wouldn’t let anybody fire Brendan,” said Hunt.

  “I still don’t understand why Delia would volunteer all this information to the police if she’s so paranoid about people finding out about her relationship to Brendan,” I said, “especially now that he’s been arrested for stealing from the club.”

  “Because she’s even more paranoid that the members of The Oaks will think Mr. Tewksbury was in on the kickbacks,” Tom explained. “Like son, like father? She wanted me to know that her husband is innocent, that he had absolutely no knowledge of any schemes, and that she’ll testify in court to that effect.”

  “Do you believe her?” Hunt asked Tom. “We know Brendan must have had at least one accomplice at the club. He was talking to somebody about the kitchen renovation in the bookkeeping office that day.”

  Tom shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “And frankly, I’m not all that interested in whether Duncan Tewksbury was padding his wallet.”

  “Tom’s right. We’ve gotten off the track here,” I said. “Who cares about some dopey kickbacks when it’s Claire’s murder we’ve got to solve? Isn’t that why we wanted to nab Brendan as a rip-off artist? So we could prove he had a motive for killing Claire, assuming she knew about the kickbacks and was about to blow the whistle on him?”

  “Yes, and I’m getting to that,” Tom said. “Mrs. Tewksbury dropped another bombshell this afternoon: she admitted that, a few days before Ms. Cox’s death, she had gone to her grandniece’s house and asked her advice about Brendan, about the fact that he was blackmailing them, harassing them. She figured that since Ms. Cox was a lawyer—and a member of the family—she’d keep their confidence and tell them how to handle the situation.”

  “What advice did Claire give Delia?” I asked.

  “She told Mrs. Tewksbury that she would handle the situation with Brendan, that she would confront him and threaten him with legal action if he didn’t leave the club and Belford.”

  “But why would Claire stick her neck out for the Tewksburys? She didn’t get along with them,” I pointed out. “Duncan didn’t even want her to join the club. Why would she do them any favors?”

  “Didn’t you say Claire wanted the club to fire Brendan and hire a better chef?” Hunt asked. “She probably had her own reasons for wanting him gone.”

  “Good point,” I said, then turned to Tom. “Well, Detective, it sounds like you can wrap this case up now. Brendan has to be our man. He had the opportunity to murder Claire, seeing as he was at The Oaks the night she was killed but admitted that he left the party, supposedly to go back to his cottage. He had access to the murder weapon, seeing as he often played golf on Mondays and used the golf pro’s clubs. And he had the motive for killing Claire, seeing as he wanted to stop her from going to the police about him.”

  Tom nodded. “We’ll see what the prosecutor says, but I’m pretty sure he’ll go for it—especially since Delia Tewksbury has agreed to testify against her son.”

  “You mean you can’t arrest Brendan for murder right away? This afternoon?” I asked.

  “No,” Tom said, grinning at my naiveté. “It may take a little while longer to get Mr. Hardy back in jail for good. But the hard part’s over. We’ve got enough evidence to make a case against your favorite chef—thanks to you two.”

  I stood up and cheered. “Hooray for us!” I cried, then danced around the room.

  Tom and Hunt stood and watched me celebrate. Then they smiled and shook hands and spoke of truth, justice, and whether or not the situation called for an ice-cold beer.

  “Forget the beer,” I said jubilantly. “Let’s break out the Dom Perignon. It’s not every day that we solve a murder.”

  Part Three

  Chapter Nineteen

  Point O’ Palms, where my parents have lived since the mid-eighties, is like every other gated, upscale “country club community” in south Florida—only more so.

  Occupying several hundred acres in Boca Raton and developed by Westinghouse or General Electric or some other American corporate giant, it boasts two golf courses, a tennis stadium, three pools (in addition to the private screened-in pools that are de rigueur in the backyards of every house), a marina, several man-made lakes, an opulently appointed clubhouse, dozens of fountains, and a profusion of tropical shrubs and flowers. And then there are the homes themselves—ostentatious megastructures that the Point O’ Palms sales agent who sold my parents their homesite referred to as “product.”

  “How can you live in a place where they call houses ‘product’?” I had asked my parents when they’d announced their intention to build in Point O’ Palms.

  “That’s the way they talk in Florida,” my father had explained. “The communities are ‘subdivisions,’ the houses are ‘product’ and the people who live in the houses are ‘units.’”

  “Sounds dehumanizing,” I’d said.

  “It’s not dehumanizing at all,” my father had maintained. “The developers think of everything a human being could possibly need when they build the houses. Jacuzzis. Bidets. Subzero refrigerators. Three-car garages, plus a separate garage for your golf cart.”

  Presently, Point O’ Palms consists of six “neighborhoods,” although construction is under way for at least six more. The neighborhoods have names like “Crystal Isles,” “Leeward Estates,” and “Mangrove Way,” and every house in its neighborhood looks exactly like the one on either side of it, right down to the landscaping. For example, the “Windemere Key” neighborhood is adjacent to the North golf course and features pastel-colored houses that are Bahamian in architecture. The “Coral Cove” neighborhood, where my parents live, is set close to the marina and offers Mediterranean-style homes complete with red tile roofs.

  It was nearly noon when we drove through the Point O’ Palms gatehouse in our rental car. Our plane had landed right on time at the Fort Lauderdale airport, thank goodness. Never a fan of flying (did they have to call the airline building a “terminal?”), I had been particularly on edge during the two-and-a-half-hour flight from LaGuardia, to the point where I’d needed three drinks to calm me down. It wasn’t the occasional turbulence that had made me anxious, I knew, or Kimberley’s presence, or even the fact that the man who sat in front of us insisted on leaving his window shade open during the movie. No, whatever had caused my anxiety was far less obvious. But there it was and continued to be—a very real sense of foreboding that I just couldn’t shake, no matter how many Bloody Marys I threw back.

  “It’s probably from all those weeks of wondering who murdered Claire,” Hunt suggested when I told him I had a bad case of the willies. “After what happened to you in our elevator, who would blame you for feeling shaky? You could be having a delayed reaction. ‘Post-traumatic stress,’ isn’t that what they call it?”

  I nodded and tried to concentrate on happy thoughts, on the fact that I had made it out of Belford alive; that I had escaped the lunacy of The Oaks; that I no longer had a murder case weighing on me; that the police knew who killed Claire and would put him away; and that I didn’t have to worry about anyone breaking into my house, especially since Arlene was staying there and looking after it.

  Kimberley had been remarkably pleasant during the flight. She even thanked me for letting her come along on the trip. She said she liked being included instead of left out. Maybe she was growing up. Maybe we all were.

  “Here we are, everybody,” I said as Hunt pulled into my parents’ driveway.

  Arthur and Lucille Mills were standing on the lawn waiting for us. My father waved, while my mother chatted with someone on her portable cellular phone.

  “Lucille, hang up. They’re here,” my father nudged her.

  “I can see that, Arthur. I have eyes,” said my mother, who ended her call, rested the phone on the front steps of the house, and rushed over to our car. She was wearing a mauve jogging outfit, Reeboks, and a Florida Marlins baseball cap, which must have infuriated my father, the Mets fan. He had on his Florida
uniform: madras shirt, white slacks, white shoes.

  “Hello, hello,” said my mother as she hugged and kissed me, then Hunt. “And look at Kimberley! What a big girl she is! And so bee-yew-tiful!”

  Kimberley pretended to wince as my mother clasped her to her ample bosom and covered her cheeks with wet, sloppy kisses. But I could tell my stepdaughter was flattered by the attention. She never received that kind of overt affection from her mother—or, for that matter, from me.

  We carried our bags inside as we talked about the flight down, the food on the flight down, the weather, how well we all looked, etc. After we had unpacked, we were summoned to the pool for the huge lunch my mother had prepared for us.

  “You didn’t have to do all this, Mom,” I said as I surveyed the platters of food. There were salads, cold cuts, pastas, breads, cookies, pastries. My mother’s idea of a light repast.

  As we ate, I asked my parents what plans they had made for my father’s birthday party the following evening.

  “We’re going to Stefano’s,” said my father. “I made a reservation for seven-thirty.” Stefano’s, an Italian eatery, was one of three restaurants in Point O’ Palms. The other two were Chinese, and they delivered.

  “I wanted to throw a party for your father here at the house, invite some friends, people from the club, go all the way,” said my mother. “But Arthur wouldn’t hear of it. The man didn’t want me to exert myself. He’s convinced I’m going to drop dead any second.”

  “Drop dead? What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Oh, you know Arthur. The way he worries.”

  I looked at my father, then back at her. “No, I don’t know the way he worries. He’s never struck me as much of a worrier.”

  “Well, he’s a worrier now,” she said. “Ever since I had that incident.”

  “What incident, Lucille?” said Hunt.

  “Just some heart thing,” said my mother.

  “What heart thing?” I said, putting my fork down on the plate and looking at my mother expectantly. I was more than a little alarmed. She had always been so strong, so healthy. She’d certainly never said a word about a “heart thing.”

  “A few months ago. I had chest pains.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”

  “Mom! You had chest pains and you didn’t tell me?”

  “What’s to tell? The doctor sent me home from the hospital after a couple—”

  “You were in the hospital?”

  I had always thought my relationship with my parents was a close one, considering that they lived in Florida and I lived in Connecticut. We spoke on the phone every Sunday. We visited each other at least once a year. We didn’t have periods of estrangement. We didn’t go on “Oprah” and accuse each other of heinous crimes. Besides, my mother had always been somewhat of a kvetch, who told you more about her aches and pains that you ever wanted to know. So why had I been kept in the dark about her chest pains and hospitalization? Why hadn’t my parents said a word about something so potentially serious? Instead, they’d acted as if my mother had been in perfect health when they’d been up North the previous month.

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” was my father’s explanation. “What was the point?”

  “The point?” I said, my voice rising. “The point is that I’m your daughter. Your only daughter. You’re supposed to be honest with me. When I call you every Sunday and say, ‘How are you?,’ you’re supposed to tell me. You’re supposed to tell me what’s really going on with you, even if it’s bad. Especially if it’s bad.”

  “Excuse me,” Kimberley interjected, her mouth full of egg salad. “But I’m your only daughter and you and Daddy don’t tell me what’s really going on with you. I always feel like you tell me one thing but really mean another.”

  I was too stunned to speak. I had just arrived in Florida for a few days of vacation, and suddenly I was in the middle of a psychodrama.

  “What do you mean, pumpkin?” Hunt asked Kimberley. “I’ve never heard you say those things before.”

  “I never heard Judy say those things to her parents before,” she replied. “It made me realize that you two treat me exactly like they treat her.”

  “Oh, now Kim,” I said. “Let’s not get carried away here. You—”

  “I’m telling you,” she went on, ignoring my interruption and directing her comments to Hunt, “that whenever there’s a problem—like when Judy lost her job or when you two are mad at each other—you always try to pretend everything’s fine. You treat me like a total retard. Like I’m too stupid to understand anything.”

  Hunt patted Kimberley’s knee and said, “I had no idea you felt that way, Kim. Neither did Judy, I’m sure. I guess our only excuse is that we know that you have a lot to deal with in your life—your schoolwork, your friends, your mom—and we don’t want to add to it by laying our problems on you.”

  “Well put, Hunt,” my mother applauded. “Now you all understand why your father and I didn’t mention my heart thing.”

  “Look, Mom, Dad. I can appreciate the desire to protect me,” I said. “But if there’s a serious medical problem, I really should have been told.”

  “All right. So we’re telling you,” said my father. “The doctor says your mother has early signs of clogged arteries. But you know Lucille. She knows everything. She thinks she can carry on as if she’s seventeen.”

  “Now, Arthur. Don’t exaggerate. So I had some chest pains,” my mother said. “I’m supposed to exercise and watch the cholesterol now, Judy. But does anybody really expect me to change my lifestyle—at my age?” She rolled her eyes and shoved a large forkful of chopped liver into her mouth.

  I felt sick. My mother had heart trouble, yet she didn’t seem to care. Was this what my sense of foreboding had been about? Had I somehow known that my mother was going to reveal that she had health problems? “Mom, no wonder Daddy’s worried about you,” I sighed. “Do you still have the pains?”

  “Not really,” she said. “The doctor gave me some pills. Now. Let’s forget all about this business and talk about your father’s birthday. A man doesn’t turn seventy-five every day, you know.”

  My mother began to describe the new set of golf clubs she’d bought my father for his birthday, but Kimberley cut her off. She wanted to keep talking about the way Hunt and I never treated her like a real person.

  “Take the time we were at the country club and I found Judy’s beeper in her purse,” she told my parents. “Dad was real mad because he didn’t even know that Judy had a beeper. And then when he saw the message that this guy sent her, he went nuts. He got real jealous and accused her of sleeping with the guy. The next thing I know, Dad is taking me to my grandparents’ house and not telling me a thing!”

  My parents eyed me.

  “Sleeping with what guy?” they said simultaneously.

  I shook my head. “It’s not what you think,” I told them.

  “Judy. Not you. Not our daughter,” said my father. “We didn’t bring you up to—”

  “You see that, Arthur?” my mother interrupted. “I knew something was funny when we visited them in July. I even asked her about it. Remember, Judy?”

  “Hunt, tell them,” I said. “Tell them I wasn’t fooling around. Tell them I was doing a job, for God’s sake.”

  “I thought you couldn’t get a job,” said my mother. “You told me your friend Arlene found another job but you couldn’t.”

  “Right,” I said. “But I meant that I couldn’t get a publishing job. The job I got was a police job.”

  “A police job?” my parents said, once again in unison.

  I took a deep breath and told everybody all about my job as a police informant.

  “You were involved in that Claire Cox murder case and didn’t tell your parents about it?” said my father.

  “Or your stepdaughter?” said Kimberley.

  “I didn’t want any of you to worry,” I said. “You would have worried if you’d known.”

  “Aha
! Now you see why we didn’t tell you about your mother’s chest pains,” said my father. “Nobody wants to worry anybody.”

  “So nobody tells anybody the truth,” said Kimberley with a pout.

  “Look, everybody. Let’s just agree that, from now on, we’ll stop protecting each other and be honest,” I said.

  Hunt lifted his water glass. “A toast,” he said. “To honesty.”

  We all clinked glasses and drank.

  “On second thought,” said my mother, setting her glass down. “I want to hear more about the murder case, Judy. How do we know you’re not in any danger?”

  “I told you,” I said. “The police caught the guy who killed Claire. He was the chef at the club.”

  “But you said he hasn’t been arrested for the murder yet,” said my father. “Only for the kickbacks. And that he’s still out on bail.”

  “Detective Cunningham said that, by the time we come home from Florida, Brendan Hardy will be back in jail,” I said. “For good.”

  “I certainly hope so,” said my mother.

  “Hey, let’s drink to that,” Hunt said, lifting his glass once more. “To putting Claire Cox’s murderer away—for good.”

  “Here, here,” I said.

  We all clinked glasses again. Then Hunt and my father volunteered to clear the table and do the dishes.

  “What do you say you and I go swimming?” I asked Kimberley, bracing myself for her usual reluctance to do anything with me.