by Quinn, Lucy
Officer Sandy asked, “Were you at the party the whole night?”
I nodded. “The glow-ball tournament was my idea, and I organized the whole thing. It seemed like a really good idea to recruit new members, right up until we found Ruddy here on the seventeenth green.”
“Were you in the clubhouse’s dining room the whole time after Mr. Oliver Shwetz had that argument with Mr. Ruddy Agani?”
“The whole evening, yes, until we went out to find him. Needless to say, the evening took a downturn at that point.”
Constable Sherwood’s eyes crinkled a little at the corners, and he seemed to be repressing a smile. “Finding one of the guests murdered often puts a damper on a party, I’ve found.”
“This is the first time I’ve found someone murdered at a party, so this is quite the new experience for me,” I told him.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so flippant, considering what happened later, but Sherwood was biting his lip and seeming to have an even harder time refraining from smiling.
My other ex-student Gregor asked, “Other than Oliver Shwetz, who else did the victim have an altercation with that night?”
“No one that I know of. When I saw Ruddy and Oliver arguing, I went right over to break it up.”
Sandy and Gregor sneaked a glance at each other and were trying not to smile.
“Is something funny?” I asked, conscious that I sounded exactly like the teacher I had been.
Sandy and Gregor stared at the grass for a minute, and finally, Gregor said, “No kid in your classroom dared start an argument. Whenever anyone said anything to someone else, you were right there, every time.”
“Yes, well, anticipating arguments is a necessary job skill that kindergarten teachers often develop, along with eyes on the backs of our heads.”
Gregor elbowed Sandy. “I told you that she had eyes on the back of her head.”
Sandy laughed and asked, “So, with your eyes in the back of your head, did you see anything else at the party that we should know about?”
I smiled at my two ex-students, who were so cute while they were doing their little jobs. “I offered Oliver my office to cool down for a while after their altercation. He went directly to the stairs and went up to my Lady Captain’s office on the second floor. His cardiologist had told him that stress was bad for his heart.”
Sandy asked me, “So, you didn’t leave the party?”
“I was so busy talking to prospective members, answering questions, and making sure everyone was having a good time that I wouldn’t have had the chance to leave the clubhouse. I didn’t notice if anyone was doing anything suspicious.”
Sandy nodded, the sunlight shining off of her black police hat. “Yeah, you never saw the bad in anybody, anyway. I didn’t think we’d get much out of you.”
I wasn’t sure whether to be complimented or insulted by that, so I chose to be complimented, probably because I didn’t see the bad in anybody.
I wondered if that was true, and if it was, maybe that was why I was having problems suspecting that any of my friends might be capable of murdering Ruddy Agani.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to see the good in everyone. Maybe I should be a little more jaded.
Being a bit more suspicious might’ve saved Ruddy’s life.
Officer Gregor held up a Ziploc bag holding the blood-encrusted knife. “Does this look familiar?”
I glanced at it, but I didn’t like looking at a murder weapon very much. “It seems to be the knife that we found on the seventeenth green last night next to Ruddy Agani’s body.”
Officer Sandy asked, “Have you ever seen it before?”
“It’s one of the steak knives from the club. Steak was served last night before the glow-ball golf tournament, so every place setting had a steak knife. There were at least eighty of them sitting on the tables last night.”
Gregor sighed. “We were hoping that only some of the people had steak and would have had a steak knife.”
“We served steak and lobster. Everyone had a steak knife, and everyone had a nutcracker for the lobster.”
“That wouldn’t have narrowed it down anyway,” Sandy said. “Even if only half of the people had had the steak and thus a steak knife, it doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t have grabbed a dirty steak knife on their way out.”
Gregor said, “I was hoping you could give us a place to start, Mrs. Bee. Do you know of anybody else who was mad at Mr. Agani?”
“From what I understand, quite a few people were mad at him.”
Constable Sherwood and the two police officers groaned and looked around themselves in discomfort.
I continued, “Evidently, Ruddy Agani didn’t like to pay his bills, even though he had the money. He didn’t like to pay the club’s bills either, even though we had the money, too. He also didn’t like to pay his clients’ bills.”
Constable Sherwood ran his hand through his hair, messing up the black strands streaked with gray. “Can you get us a list of the people that the club owes money to?”
“Maybe, but I’m just on some of the committees. I think the treasurer of the club or one of the other financial officers are going to have to go through all of our accounts and figure out whom Ruddy had not paid. Erick Walters is our treasurer.”
Sandy consulted her phone. “He’s the man who was with you last night when you discovered the body, right?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, he is.”
Sandy shoved her phone in her hip pocket. “We’ve already talked to him once this morning. I guess we have to go back over there again this afternoon, Greg.”
The two young police officers left, leaving me alone with Constable Sherwood. “The course looks like it’s in really good shape,” he said.
“Bhagwan Das has been working hard to get it in shape for all these membership drive events.”
He frowned while staring at the short grass of the seventeenth green. “I thought the club went to spikeless golf shoes a few years ago.”
I looked over at where Sherwood was looking at on the green. A constellation of tiny holes pinpricked the velvety short grass and sod beneath. “We did, but some people insist on wearing traditional spiked cleats. You can repair spike marks in your line now, you know, not just ball marks on the green.”
“I cannot keep up with all these PGA rules changes.”
“It’s difficult. You haven’t been out yet this year, have you?”
“There’s been a lot going on. I’m up for reelection this fall, which means I have to do fundraising and campaigning again this summer.”
“Have you thought about running for higher office? The town council could use good people like you. The school board needs conscientious people like yourself, too.”
“I’ve thought about it. Maybe the next election cycle. Being the town constable leaves me plenty of time for golf,” he said.
“Priorities are important.”
“Walk you back to the clubhouse?”
I could tell Trudi that I had allowed Sherwood to walk me back to the clubhouse, and then maybe she would stop bothering me for a few minutes about going out to coffee with him. “Yes, I’m going back to the clubhouse.”
We strolled down the eighteenth fairway, and the springtime sun warmed my shoulders.
Sherwood asked, “Are you fostering a kitten or a puppy right now?”
“A mama cat and her three newborn kittens,” I said. “Someone dropped them off at the shelter just before she popped, and of course they didn’t want the kittens around the other adoptable cats because they’re too young to be vaccinated yet. They’ll stay with me for another six or seven weeks.”
“I still remember that herd of chinchillas that you fostered that one time,” he said. “They were mischievous little things.”
“But very soft. I still get pictures from the people who adopted them, mostly their little noses peeking out of shirts.”
We reached the clubhouse, and I paused with my hand on the door. “See you a
round?”
“Yeah, I need to book the clubhouse for some of the fundraising events before the election this fall, but I’ll see you around the golf course before that, I’m sure.”
“I’ll see you on the course, Sherwood.”
Chapter 6
THE next morning, Sunday, I was dressed and had checked on my foster kittens and a mama cat living in a good-sized box in my living room. The mama cat had a litter box in the little half-bathroom just steps away from the box, and food and water just outside her nursery. The kittens were still far too small to escape the box. I’d spent a delightful half-hour watching them drag themselves around the blanket in there, mewing blindly for the mama cat, who was chowing down on a special high-fat cat food for nursing mothers. I had a stack of cans near her area, and she was already not shy about letting me know when the food in her bowl had gotten low.
She wasn’t shy with me at all anymore, and she butted my knee for pets before she climbed back into the box to nurse her babies. Mama cat was a ginger tiger with white feet, and her kittens were every permutation of orange, white, and black. They would go back to the town shelter for adoption when they were old enough, though the shelter and I had an understanding that if mama cat didn’t find a home, she would come back and stay with me.
My mind circled around a name for her. Orlando, maybe, but I didn’t call her that yet.
The shelter and I had had this understanding for several animals, but they had always found good and loving homes, which was better for me anyway. I organized golf trips for the club members, and I liked to travel to other places, too. Fostering animals was the perfect solution, giving desperate animals a loving, safe, temporary home until they found their forever homes and allowing me some pets to love and then send out in the world, happy, socialized, and healed of their trauma.
Just after I had stroked each of the kittens’ tiny heads with one finger, beginning to socialize them so that they would grow up to be happy house cats, my doorbell rang a strident bing-bong through my small house, which I considered to be more of a cottage. I staggered up from the floor, and mama cat gave me one concerned meow before she hopped back in the box with her babies.
When I opened the door, I didn’t bother to check through the peephole first, and maybe I should have.
Outside, standing on the winding path of brick pavers that led from the sidewalk to my front door, stood Coretta Dickinson, my next-door neighbor. She and her husband, Jim, were always angry at everything, and yet they argued with each other constantly because they always seem to be angry about the same things but for the wrong reasons. They were both known to call the police on their neighbors for any little thing, from the grass being too shaggy, to the trash bins being outside too long, to not liking the new paint on someone’s window trim.
The neighborhood didn’t actually have a homeowners’ association, just one nosy, whiny homeowner.
The police officers who responded to the whiny complaints did discuss town appearance codes with the neighbors, but they nearly sprained their eyeballs as they did it. Everyone generally ignored Coretta and Jim Dickinson, but they lived directly next door to me.
“Hello, Coretta! I just made some lemon bars this morning. Would you like a lemon bar and some fresh coffee?”
Bribing them with baked goods resulted in fewer police calls for myself and the whole neighborhood.
Coretta carefully wiped her feet on the doormat outside the door, leaving barely damp tracks on the mat, and then on the mat inside the house before she walked inside. “Refined sugar is bad for one’s teeth. You shouldn’t eat so much of it.”
Same old Coretta. “Maybe just a cup of coffee then? Or tea?”
“I’ve given up caffeine. Caffeine is bad for your health. It causes heart attacks and strokes and bad breath.”
Yep, same. “If you’d like to sit down in the kitchen,” I said, “I could get you a glass of water, with ice if you’re living dangerously.”
Coretta sniffed the air as if she smelled a bad odor. “I suppose I could have a glass of water.”
She followed me to my small kitchen, decorated with blue and yellow lighthouses because I did love New England. At the café table inside, I set a tall glass of ice water for her, a cup of coffee for myself, and a plate of the lemon bars in the center.
Coretta sipped the ice water and eyed the lemon bars. “How did that golf-in-the-dark thing go Friday night?”
I sipped my coffee to give myself a moment to think.
Canterbury is a small town, and small towns have their grapevines. Coretta either already knew about the murder, or she would soon. Honestly, if she was the last person in town to know, it was only because people didn’t talk to her because she was such a snitch about minor homeowner issues.
If I didn’t tell her and she found out later, she would probably conclude that I was hiding something. If she thought I was hiding something, she would probably call the police and either insist that my lack of edging the grass around the pavers was indicative of a murderer’s mindset, or else she would make something up, and then I would have to debunk whatever lies she told the police.
Really, the best option was probably to tell Coretta what I knew so that I didn’t have to deal with anything worse. “We had a problem at the glow-ball golf tournament.”
“Oh, no.” Coretta grinned. “Was Friday the night that it rained, or did everybody just hate the idea?”
Trust Coretta Dickinson to come up with two snotty options. “No, it didn’t rain, and everybody seemed to be having a great time. As a matter of fact, we sold out the event weeks ahead of time.”
“Then, who did something to ruin it?”
Every time I let Coretta Dickinson into my house, I regretted it. “Maybe you can help me with this. Do you know anyone who was angry at Ruddy Agani?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Rudolph Agani? The CPA who kept the books for several of the small businesses in town? I think he did the bookkeeping for Paul Hampdale’s law firm and some of the knickknack stores and the ice cream shop down by the beach that the tourists go to.”
“Never heard of him, but I don’t gossip.” Coretta took a lemon bar from the plate and bit into it.
“Well, of course, we would never gossip,” I said, because otherwise, Coretta would tell everyone in town that I was a terrible gossip, “but I heard a lot of people were mad at him. I was just wondering if you knew anyone who was. He lived a few blocks away, over on Dorchester Street. His house has a low fence around it, and he has four beagles, if I remember right. His wife worked at the tee-shirt store during the tourist season.”
Coretta scrunched up her face as she chewed and thought. “I think I know the house that you’re talking about. Those beagles barked every time I walked by on my daily walks. Someone should report him to the town for a noise violation.”
“Someone murdered him last night at the golf club during the glow-ball tournament.”
Coretta gasped, and crumbs fell from her lip onto the floor. “Right there in front of everybody?”
“No, he’d had a little argument at the reception, and then he walked out onto the golf course, I guess to blow off steam. We found him out there, already dead, two hours or so later. No one knows who did it.”
“I never have approved of these country clubs serving alcohol to so many people at parties like that. Something like this was bound to happen. They should have known better.”
“We’ve been holding two or more events at the club every month for thirty years. This is the first time anyone has been murdered.”
“Still, this is what happens when people drink alcohol. They shouldn’t do that, and country clubs shouldn’t encourage it. I don’t know why the town even allows a country club. We shouldn’t have places where regular people are excluded.”
“Pretty much anybody can join the Canterbury Golf Club. I don’t think we’ve turned down a membership in thirty or forty years, and we wouldn’t ref
use anybody membership right now.”
Coretta took another lemon bar. “Having places like that isn’t good for the town.”
“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion.” I’d used that phrase a lot with parents when I was teaching kindergarten.
“Once news of this murder gets around town, nobody’s going to want to belong to such a country club anyway. I imagine that lots of people will quit, and certainly no one new is going to want to join up. I certainly wouldn’t want to join a country club where a murder had occurred. I wouldn’t ever feel safe there.”
As much as Coretta was a whiny snitch, she had a point.
Once word got around town that Ruddy Agani had been murdered at Canterbury Golf Club, people might be afraid to join.
Coretta said, “That country club might have to close down like the yacht club did last year.”
Oh, yeah. There was that, too.
I needed to get down to the club and work on damage control.
I stood. “Coretta, unfortunately, I have some places to go. I’ll see you later.”
Coretta took several more of my lemon bars from the plate. “I’ll just take a few of these for Jim.”
When I opened my front door to usher Coretta out of my house so I could leave, the Canterbury Tales newspaper lay on the front step.
MURDER AT THE COUNTRY CLUB, screamed the headline.
Dang. Everyone in town would know that Ruddy had been killed at CGC now.
Chapter 7
THE morning sun bore down on the asphalt and the hood of my tiny car as I pulled into the Canterbury Golf Club. The parking lot was about a quarter full, and I recognized most of the cars that belonged to members and friends.
Over at the driving range, Constable Sherwood Kane’s small SUV shone in the sunlight, and Sherwood’s tall form swung a long club on the practice mats.
Just the man I wanted to see.
Hiking over to the driving range took just a few minutes, and I huffed as I trudged up the steep slope to where Sherwood stood, swinging his golf club in a wide, round arc. His ball flew down the range’s fairway, a solid shot.