“Weird. They don’t lock up when a storm’s coming,” I said. “Everybody congregates inside, drinking beer and telling lies. It also makes no sense that Earl’s truck and Harding’s SUV are in the parking lot, but neither one of ’em is here.”
“You think they’re out there somewhere? Rounding up stray golfers or something?”
“Hard to imagine a reason they’d be doing that together.”
A clutch of golf carts were lined up next to the clubhouse, facing front like a troop of soldiers ready to march. Under the rapidly darkening skies, I doubted I’d be able to distinguish incoming from outgoing tire tracks, but I walked over to the cart phalanx anyway. A glint of silver caught my eye when I squatted in the dirt. It was a small, round-headed cart key, lying next to the driver’s side of a cart in the front row.
I snatched it and slid into the driver’s seat of the nearest cart. “Let’s take a little cruise around the course, see what we can see.”
I zoomed along the cart path that ran along the first hole, any noise more than overcome by the rising wind.
“Remind me, what is there for shelter out here?” Rufe kept his voice low.
“The maintenance barn is out near the tee boxes on six. Couple of portable johns near the fourth and the fifteenth holes.”
Other than that, big broad fairways and a mix of deciduous and fir trees—an invitation to the lightning gods.
Sticking to the cart path, zipping along at ten miles an hour, I scanned the left side while Rufe bird-dogged the right. As we crested a small rise between the third and fourth holes, I spotted something. Slowing to a crawl, I eased the cart through the false dusk of the approaching thunderstorm and rolled to a stop next to an ancient blue spruce one wide fairway north of the maintenance barn.
I could make out the passenger side of a tan rental cart, similar to what I was driving. When a flash of lighting illuminated the maintenance building, a second cart—steel gray—was visible behind the rental. Both were empty.
“The gray one’s Jay Preble’s,” I said. “Maybe Leo borrowed it, but Preble also could be out here asking his own questions. What do you say we confirm what’s what before we bust in?”
Rufe grunted his assent. “And find out if anyone’s armed with more than golf clubs.”
As we continued to study the maintenance barn, the big spruce creaked in the wind. The storm was rocketing along the river, thunder echoing louder now. The sky was as heavy and gray as it gets on a July afternoon, not as dark as nightfall but nearly so. I’d not yet felt a drop of rain, but the air was so pregnant with it my skin was sticky.
Rufe took the initiative, motioning for me to follow. He ran low like an infantryman across the fourth fairway. Before reaching the far side, he dropped to the ground next to a high-sided sand bunker. I followed suit and found myself in a puddle left over from the previous night’s thunderstorm.
“Christ,” I said, feeling muddy water soak my khakis.
“Wait here,” Rufe said into my ear, and he slipped off to the left, leaving me to study the approaches to the maintenance building eighty feet south of where I lay. Beyond the bunker there was another ten feet of mowed fairway, then a cart path that connected the fifth and sixth holes. Shrouded in the gloom forty or so feet beyond the cart path was the maintenance building. From my position I could see its east side, where a dilapidated pickup truck was parked among some scraggly pines, along with several old mowers that had been cannibalized for parts. Rufe’s return was so silent I didn’t know he was back until he flopped on the grass. Leaning over, he spoke into my left ear.
“Fan vents on the back wall. Six feet off the ground. Fans aren’t running. Good eavesdrop potential.”
Hoping potential would translate to reality, we scooted west in order to come up on the building from behind. Sure enough, there were two large openings through which fluorescent light was visible in the murky half-light.
“I’ll take the one on the right, you go left. Whistle if you hear somebody coming.”
“If we can’t outrun Leo Harding, we’re in deep shit,” Rufe whispered.
We crawled to the edge of the mowed area, carrying our golf clubs out front like rifles. The back wall of the fabricated metal building was twenty yards away, a verge of knee-high grass surrounding it like a moat. Remaining flat on my stomach until my breathing slowed to normal, I watched Rufe take high, quiet steps through the long grass till he reached the building. Easing to my feet I copied his moves. In seconds my back was pressed against the ribbed steel, the right vent inches above my head. A bolt of lightning jumped from sky to earth two hundred yards northwest of where I stood.
The wind picked up. Branches groaned in complaint. A bang from inside the maintenance building yanked my attention away from the coming storm.
“The guy who called the dogs needs to call them off.” Leo Harding wasn’t talking, he was roaring. “Whatever the fuck you’ve been telling the cops, you need to un-tell ’em because I’m not going down for something I didn’t do.”
A quieter voice said something else, but I couldn’t make out the words. Coatesworth I assumed, as soft-spoken as ever. Earl responded, sounding close, as if he was on the other side of the wall from where I stood.
“I’m telling you, the cops haven’t called me and I haven’t gone looking for them.” His voice sounded tight. Gesturing to Rufe, I pointed up at my vent and tapped my ear. He high-stepped toward me.
“We’re a lot of years down the road from that whole mess and we can count on one hand the number of people who know what happened. The others haven’t said boo. The cops want to question me and Kenny? It’s gotta be you flapping your lips.” Harding’s voice was closer, as though he was right in Earl’s face.
Rufe had finished making his way to my vent. Our bodies pressed to the ribbed steel, we strained to hear over the wind’s growing roar.
“Until now, I’ve never known it was you. I wondered if you had something to do with it, because you worked so hard to look innocent.” Earl’s voice carried a spark of anger. “You and me, we weren’t friends. But because you knew I was tight with George, you went out of your way to tell me your little manufactured alibis. I didn’t believe you, but I didn’t know what happened either.”
“What happened is your buddy George was a nosy little ass-kisser. He was working overtime, reconciling accounts that weren’t his to reconcile. Eddie Talcott was in charge of vendor accounts. Desmond shouldn’t have been touching ‘em. But he went looking for trouble and it found him.”
Raindrops splatted my head and shoulders as the pent-up clouds began to explode. Earl said something about it being George Desmond’s job to report evidence that someone was scamming the mill. I didn’t have to strain to hear Harding’s response.
“You’re a fucking overgrown Boy Scout, just like him.” Another bang rang out, metal on metal, like a hammer pounding a pipe. “Oh, gee, did I almost get your fingers?” Harding’s voice was nasty. “Next time I won’t miss.”
“Cool it with the torture threats, Leo. We aren’t barbarians.” A different voice. Closer this time.
It wasn’t Ken Coatesworth.
I leaned over and spoke a single word into Rufe’s ear. “Preble.”
“We aren’t thugs but we aren’t fools either.” The elderly banker’s voice was strong and clear. “You may not have been talking with the police, but that damn kid Gale is, and I know you’ve been talking with him.”
Adrenaline shot through my body. Preble wasn’t just running interference for his buddies, he was a hands-on player himself. I’d bought his entire fucking act, and now Earl’s life was in danger. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my sodden cell phone. Four jabs at the on button didn’t bring it to life. Cursing myself for landing in the bunker-side puddle, I grabbed Rufe by the shoulder and spoke into his ear. “Where’s your phone?”
“Left it in the car.”
“Shit. Mine’s waterlogged, probably dead.”
A bolt of lightning crashed into the woods on our right as the sky opened up, rain soaking us to the skin in seconds. I glanced at my watch. Two forty-five.
“We need the cops. Can you go back to the parking lot and make the call?”
He nodded.
“Call Chief Wyatt. Direct, not 911.” I rattled off the chief’s cell phone number. “Tell her it looks like a hostage situation.”
Rufe disappeared into the curtain of rain, sprinting when he reached the fairway.
Glancing to my right, I spotted a stumpy log fifteen feet away in the long grass. A crash of thunder covered the noise I must have made rolling it against the building. Flipping it on its end, I climbed up, using the metal ribs as handholds. The extra height made it possible for me to see through the mesh screening that covered the fan vent.
Leo Harding—his face so red it was almost purple—was standing in the middle of the work space, holding a large wrench in his right hand. The overhead light made his bald head gleam. His golf shirt appeared soaked with sweat, even the part that stretched over his huge belly.
Jay Preble was between Harding and the front door. He paced as he spoke, hands in the pockets of his khaki pants. The thrum of rain on the building’s metal roof rendered his words unintelligible.
Earl wasn’t in my sight line, proving my assumption he was standing or sitting along the back wall. I wondered if they had him restrained.
Ken Coatesworth was nowhere in sight. I was turning that over in my mind, wondering if I had only two of them to deal with, when I looked to my left and saw a figure in a rain poncho coming around the south corner of the building, head ducked in the pouring rain. No convenient boom of thunder covered the sound of me scrambling off the log or the shouts of the scout.
“Leo! Trouble!” he hollered and I ran, leaving my golf club behind. A dozen steps took me to the north side of the building. Thrashing noises told me poncho man was following, so I took the corner as sharply as possible and flattened myself against the wall. He wasn’t making any attempt to muffle his footsteps so I was able to time my launch off the wet gravel and tackle him before he realized I was there. Scrambling to my knees, I put it out of my mind that the man I had pinned to the soaked earth was older than my father. Two punches to his face and his slender body went slack. Ken Coatesworth was out cold, oblivious to the rain streaming across his pale face and tan hair.
Back on my feet, I turned back toward the building and noticed for the first time a windowless door halfway down the north wall. Feeling exposed in the flashing lightning, I sprinted thirty yards to the clutter of abandoned equipment and flung myself behind the rusting pickup. The maintenance barn’s bay door was difficult to see through the pouring rain, but I had an advantage on Preble and Harding. I knew where they were. They had to guess about me.
It took a few seconds but I was able to make out the two of them—one huge and bulky, the other tall and angular—standing under the overhang that protected the overhead door, peering out into the torrent, the heavy sky and pouring rain making midafternoon seem like night. The wind stole their words before they reached my ears but it was clear Preble and Harding were barking at each other. One of them needed to go find out what Coatesworth had been yelling about and neither wanted to get soaked or be struck by lightning.
I imagined Earl sitting inside, plotting to make a run for it while their focus was elsewhere. Unless he was restrained. Then he’d be praying for rescue.
The luminous hands of my watch told me Rufe had been gone two minutes. Preble and Harding’s inattention to Earl wasn’t going to last long, and the cavalry wasn’t on the other side of the ridge. I had to make a move. I calculated the most direct route to the side door.
Taking advantage of a sky flashing like a pinball machine and thunderclaps reverberating like bombs, I slipped out from behind the pickup and ran for the side door. When I was four feet away, it opened toward me. Earl burst out, the fear in his eyes nearly sizzling in the driving rain.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him back toward the shelter of the rusted-out truck. He stumbled twice, but we made it before Preble and Harding finished their argument. Earl slumped down on the rear bumper.
“They armed?”
“Preble’s got a handgun. Don’t know about Big Leo.” His breathing was ragged. Emotion, not exertion. We’d run less than thirty yards.
Knowing any moment one of his captors would turn and find him gone, I put my hand on Earl’s shoulder, willing him to catch his breath. I’d been planning a retreat via the same fairway Rufe and I had crossed in order to put distance between us and the crazy old men. Earl’s hyperventilation nixed that option.
“Goddamn son of a bitch!”
Leo Harding’s voice was unmistakable. A second later he emerged from the building and lumbered around its southerly end. Preble burst through the door through which Earl had escaped. He looked to his right, where Coatesworth lay on the ground.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. The golf carts were parked on the gravel pad outside the big overhead door, both facing north, Preble’s in the rear. I pulled Earl to his feet and pointed him toward the cart path behind us. “Head toward the seventh fairway. I’ll pick you up.”
Not waiting for his response, I ran as fast as I could toward the carts. Instinct told me to drop to the ground before I reached them and it was a damn good thing I did because Preble’s first shot would have taken me out. It hissed by two feet over my head, the sound unmistakable despite the roar of the storm.
Crawling on my stomach, I wriggled behind the front cart, putting it between me and him. Lifting my head I confirmed the key was in the ignition. Preble’s shouts told me he was running toward me, along the side of the building.
In one motion I hurled myself into the driver’s seat and kicked the accelerator, leaning hard to the left so I was hanging sideways out of the cart, head pounded by rain but as far as I could get from Preble and his gun. Another shot whistled past as I drove ten yards to the cart path. A third shattered the cart’s rear fender. When the wheels hit the pavement I had trees to protect me, so I pulled my upper body back inside the cart and hunched forward. Earl was moving directly ahead.
“Earl!” I shouted. “Jump in!”
He did, grabbing the roof brace and swinging onto the seat next to me.
“Get your head down.” I put my right hand on the back of his neck and pushed him toward the floor. When I floored it, the cart surged forward, but I knew it didn’t have the same souped-up motor as Preble’s. Proof we were being pursued came in the form of a bullet whizzing by, wide to the left.
“Jay’s chasing in his cart,” I said.
“Then we’ve got to get off this cart path. He’ll catch us quick.”
A fork lay ahead, left leading toward the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth holes, right looping back toward the seventh, eighth and ninth. I took the right and at the crest of a rise steered us onto the soaked fairway, angling to cross at its narrowest point.
“Easy and steady on the pedal,” Earl said. “It’ll skid with all this water on the grass.”
A bolt of lightning hit an old spruce on the far side of the fairway, splitting it in two and illuminating our position like a klieg light. Harding’s bellow was close but the next gunshot sounded far away. Earl stuck his head out the side of the cart.
“They did a one-eighty back there,” he said. “Too much speed.”
Preble was still trying to find traction when our cart reached the corner of the eighth hole, a downhill par three with multiple bunkers and a pond in front of the green.
“We’ve got enough distance on them for you to stick to the path,” Earl said. “You were lucky back there.”
Our luck ran out
fifty yards later when the cart’s electric engine died. No warning. Just ran out of juice.
“Shit,” I said, kicking the accelerator pedal madly.
Earl’s face was gray. “We’ve got to get into the woods.”
“You lead,” I said, pushing him toward the trees. He was moving faster than before, but slower than I would have liked. We scrambled through a rocky gully and worked our way into the sodden woods, keeping a screen of trees between us and the cart path as we made our way downhill. We’d made progress of about 150 feet when Preble’s cart roared out of the trees up by the tee boxes.
“There they are,” I said. “Stay down and keep moving. Assume he’s reloaded the gun.”
Preble was cutting across the fairway again, either desperate or believing he’d mastered the skill of driving a golf cart fast on soaked grass. He was taking the shortest angle, aiming for a shallow bunker that lay next to the cart path where it snaked behind the green.
Keeping one eye on Preble’s cart and one on the ground in front of us, I urged Earl forward, wondering if Rufe was still in the parking lot and whether the thunder had masked the sound of gunshots. The clubhouse was at least a quarter-mile away, farther if we stuck to the woods. I wasn’t sure Earl could make it.
Another shot cracked. Looking back and to my left as I ran, I saw Harding pointing up the hill at our abandoned cart. Whoever was holding the gun fired a shot in that general direction, apparently thinking we were crouched behind it.
We weren’t that stupid, but we were vulnerable. A flash of lightning could show our position in an instant. When I turned back toward Earl I almost fell over him. He was on his knees, gasping for air.
“Can’t run anymore.” Face gray, he was wheezing. “Get help. I’ll stay here.”
We were only fifty feet from the cart path but there was a deep gully between us and them and they hadn’t seen us enter the woods.
Quick Pivot Page 27