“Bill Riley,” Deputy Wilkins interrupted.
“What?” he retorted irritably, glancing up. Spotting the folder under the deputy’s arm, his eyes grew wide. He didn’t wait for a discussion and bolted for the door.
“Someone stop him,” Frank shouted.
Bill didn’t quite make it across the room when two of the men from another table stood up and grabbed him.
“Hey, the Sheriff is trying to talk to you,” one of them told him.
“Let me go,” he exclaimed. “You can’t pin anything on me.”
“Oh, but I think we can, Mr. Riley. I think we have some compelling evidence here.” Greg held up the folder in question.
“Why don’t you have a seat?” Frank motioned toward a chair.
The two men forced the caddy to take a seat, keeping their hands on his shoulders to discourage him from running away again.
“Thanks, gentlemen. I’m glad we have some upstanding citizens left in this town,” Greg praised them. Turning his focus on Bill, his features became stone serious. “You mentioned to Ms. Reed the other day that both your father and grandfather were members of the club?”
“Yeah? So?”
“And I believe this is your application for membership?” Greg added, opening the folder, “And it’s been stamped as rejected.”
“Yeah, I wanted to follow in my father’s legacy, but I got denied. So what? Lots of applications get turned down.”
“But, it was Paxton Manning who wouldn’t allow it, correct?”
“None of that proves anything,” he argued. “All it shows is that I wanted a club membership and got didn’t get in.”
“Unfortunately, I have two eye witnesses who saw you here at the club late last night,” Greg pointed out.
“You told me and my father that you were putting the golf clubs away, the ones you had left in the back of Mr. Manning’s golf cart,” Sonja chimed in.
“What’s your point? There isn’t a crime for putting things away.”
“The problem is,” Greg continued, “I spoke to the security technician yesterday, and she said that no one knew where cart 01 was last night. The person who murdered Mr. Manning had used it to get away, disabled the security devices, and hid the cart somewhere here on the course. So, how could you get the golf clubs out of that cart unless you knew where it was?”
The man’s face turned red with fury, and it looked like he was holding his breath.
“Did you use that same cart to try and run-down Ms. Reed and her father last night?”
“Why would I do that?” he barked.
“It’ll be easier for you if you just come clean now. I’m sure once we get lab results back on that cloth, we’ll find your DNA on it anyway.”
Sonja knew that DNA evidence was hit or miss, but the lay citizen didn’t know that. It was a good bluff.
“You won’t find anything,” he muttered.
“Were you angry that you got rejected and now can’t live up to your father’s legacy?” Greg asked.
“Shut up.”
“Was your father kicked out of the club?”
“I said shut up,” he snapped.
“Did Manning kick him out?”
“Manning deserved to die,” he screamed, causing the whole room to gasp.
Frank and Greg looked at each other knowingly. They had him.
“My father had a slight gambling problem. So, what? Does that mean he deserved to get ostracized on top of being broke? Manning had no right to do that.”
“As the club’s president he had every right,” Frank pointed out.
“He promised me that if I acted as his caddy, that he’d reconsider letting me into the club.”
“But he didn’t?”
“He told me he couldn’t accept my application due to my anger issues.” Breaking free from the men’s grasp, he tried to run. Luckily, Greg was on top of it like a pro, tackling the violent man.
Greg nodded. “We got him.” Pulling out his handcuffs, he restrained the man while reading him his rights.
CHAPTER 17
* * *
“So, it was all because of family heritage?” Sam asked while he and his daughter sat on the front part of the wraparound porch of the house.
The sun had just set and a cool breeze had come up, rocking the porch swing where they sat sipping iced lemon tea and eating a box of butter cookies.
“Seems so,” Sonja said, “but I still don’t understand what the ghosts had to do with it.”
“It seems to me that they had everything to do with it,” her father said.
“Oh?” she asked, turning to face him. “How is that?”
“His last name was Riley, which means he was most likely related to the man who killed that family.”
“Right, it’s part of how I figured out he was the murderer.”
“So, there is an age-old grudge in his bloodline against the Manning family. The original Riley killed them because they wouldn’t give him extra land. Bill killed another Manning this week because he was mad that he wasn’t allowed to be in the club.”
“So, it’s a family feud?”
“A curse,” he stated. “Sometimes, when a horrible crime is committed way down in your ancestry, the bad energy and feelings of resentment pass through to the next generation and the next. It literally creates a paranormal energy—an inner anger—that drives each family member to kill,” he took a sip of his tea, “especially when they are around a descendant or relative of the victims. When Manning took over as president, it was like he was taking his rightful land back.”
“Which probably drove Bill Riley nuts, subconsciously.”
“Right.”
“So, you’re saying these people can’t help it?”
Sam shrugged, “Just like any other family problem that’s passed down, the curse can be broken if someone along the way can learn to control their anger. If they resist the urge to murder when the opportunity arises, the curse is broken.”
Sighing, she leaned back on the bench. “You know, this whole paranormal thing never gets any better.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Of course, it does. Because the police caught the murderer this time, that also avenges an age-old curse. Those ghosts down on the golf course are finally free of their anger. The ancestor of the man who killed them will be brought to justice.”
She was beginning to understand. “I guess that’s good.”
“It is,” he reiterated, leaning back on the bench as a fresh gust of wind blew through the air. “By the way. What was that thing you picked up last night at the barn ruins?”
Sonja’s eyes widened. “Oh, my goodness. I completely forgot,” she confessed, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling it out. “I think it’s a picture.”
Holding it up in the light, both of them gasped. It was the family. The elderly couple and the granddaughter. The thing that stood out, despite the images age, was the older gentleman in the picture. He looked uncannily like Dustin Port.
“Now I understand,” Sonja whispered, “when Dustin’s golf ball kept going off course, it was the granddaughter doing it. She had confused him with his own grandfather.”
“She was trying to get his attention,” Samuel added.
Staring at each other for a moment they began to laugh.
“Poor Dustin,” Sonja sighed, “He had no idea that he was playing grandfather to a ghost this Father’s Day.”
Hole-In-One Waffle (The Diner of the Dead Series Book 17) Page 7