Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  As I gazed over the green expanse and reed-choked water hazard on the right, memories of the night of the glow-ball tournament filled my head. We were right back on the seventeenth tee box that morning, looking down the fairway that led to the seventeenth green where we had found the body of Ruddy Agani.

  I had played the Canterbury Club’s golf course since Ruddy had passed away.

  This wasn’t the first time I had set foot on the seventeenth hole.

  Playing this particular hole with Pauline Damir gave me the creepy-crawlies up my spine, though.

  And yet, what better place to get her to confess?

  Having Erick and Ann with us seemed especially poignant, since they had been with me when we found Ruddy’s body. Maybe, with the three of us reminiscing around the flagstick at the end of the hole, Pauline would be pressured into saying something.

  It sounded like a good plan.

  Yet, my back felt like someone had poured ice water down my shirt.

  All four of us stood on the first tee box, staring down the fairway toward the green.

  The seventeenth is a long par-four from any of the tee boxes. Hardly anyone reached the green in two. It usually took me three or so hits to finally dump my ball near the hole. Even the club’s best golfers considered it a bogey hole.

  Erick asked us ladies, “Who has the honor?”

  He was asking who should hit their ball first. I said, “Since you’re playing from the men’s tees, you should go ahead. After you’re done, we’ll walk up to the red tees.”

  Erick pushed his tee into the ground and grabbed his back as he stood up, groaning.

  Oh, I hadn’t known that Erick had a bad back.

  An odd thought insinuated itself into my mind: Had Erick hurt his back when he struggled with Lale Kollen when he had killed her, just a few days before?

  No, surely not Erick.

  Erick Walters was a nice guy. Surely, he wasn’t a murderer.

  I watched him.

  Erick stood over his ball, waggling his long golf club, his driver.

  He looked down the fairway and squinted in the sunlight and then back at his ball.

  He waggled his club some more, loosening the tension in his hands and wrists.

  He looked back down the fairway and then back at his ball near his feet again.

  Waggle, look.

  Waggle.

  Loooook.

  What on Earth had happened to Erick, who used to be a quick player?

  The fingers of my right hand hurt, and I realized that I was gripping my golf ball so tightly I had left a thousand pockmarks in the skin of my palm and fingers from the tiny dimples in the golf ball.

  Meanwhile, Erick was still waggling his golf club and staring at the fairway like it might have moved since the last time he looked up.

  Suddenly, I couldn’t picture this hesitant golfer acting on the impulse to stab anyone.

  Waggle, look.

  The insane image of Erick standing in the dark with a knife, waggling the blade and looking from it to Ruddy Agani’s chest, back and forth, waggle, look, waggle, look, assailed me.

  I coughed, trying to cover up the very dark humor that had tried to come out as a laugh.

  And yet, what if Erick’s recent case of nerves was remorse?

  I always say that you don’t really know someone until you’ve played golf with them, and a major change in their game can mean that they’ve had a major change in their lives.

  Erick continued to waggle.

  Beside me, Ann Carmo rubbed the side of her face and fidgeted from one foot to the other, looking at the sky. She caught my eye, and her head inclined toward Erick, as if asking, What the heck?

  Pauline didn’t seem to notice that Erick was taking forever to hit his first shot. Indeed, she smiled at Erick serenely.

  Something in the back of my brain screamed, Hit the flippin’ ball, Sergio! but I didn’t say anything.

  Maybe the seventeenth hole was making him nervous because he had committed a crime here.

  Maybe two murders weighed on his soul.

  Maybe he had grabbed the knife lying on the green that night when we’d found Ruddy’s body to cover up the fact that his fingerprints had already been on it, and the other prints that the state forensic lab had found were merely from some innocent person who had set the tables before supper.

  These suspicions were driving me crazy. Everyone seemed to be a suspect, which meant I was surrounded by possible murderers. If I were in a movie, the murderer’s theme music would have been playing all the time, every minute, like they were always just about to jump out and grab me.

  I stared at the toes of my golf shoes, bright white leather against the emerald green grass, until I finally heard the whack that meant Erick had hit his tee shot.

  Finally.

  “Okay!” Ann said as the three of us ladies began walking toward the red tees, pushing our golf handcarts over the crunching gravel of the cart path. We really needed to pave the whole cart path because some sections were still lined with gravel, but we wouldn’t have the money for that until our membership numbers returned to normal. “Nice shot, Erick.”

  “Oh, yes, excellent!” Pauline added. “That was an amazing shot, Erick.”

  Well, I wouldn’t call it an excellent or amazing shot. It was a moderate drive that had landed on the right side of the fairway, but he had indeed kept it in the short grass. It wasn’t a bad shot. “Yep, good job.”

  We ladies teed off at the red tees, as was customary, with no club-waggling.

  While Ann stood on the elevated tee box, placing her ball and tee and getting ready to tee off, Erick dipped his head near mine and whispered, “I’ve been looking at those spreadsheets some more.”

  “Oh?” I warily watched Ann go through her pre-shot routine, picking a target and aligning the toes of her scarlet golf shoes with it.

  Erick was right beside my shoulder. I couldn’t even get a golf club out of my bag in time if he grabbed me.

  Erick said, “There’s another sheet that you need to see. Or somebody needs to, anyway.”

  I turned to him. “Like what?”

  “Checks that don’t match vendors.”

  Whack.

  Ann had hit her ball, launching it down the fairway.

  I glanced over to see her white ball rolling down the middle of the short grass. “Nice shot!” And to Erick, “Which vendors?”

  Erick glanced over my head. “A couple of them. I’ll talk to you later.”

  With a few more hits of our balls and a whole lot of club-waggling from Erick, we were all chipping onto the green of the seventeenth hole.

  I tried not to remember the lump of Ruddy’s body lying on the ground, nor the dark stain that had marred the grass in the light from our cell phones.

  All of us were probably feeling the same way. Ann and Erick had been right there with me. They were probably seeing Ruddy’s corpse in their minds, too.

  As we stood on the flat-mown grass, I noticed that Erick and I had managed to overshoot the hole, and our golf balls lay far away from where Ruddy’s body had been.

  Ann and Pauline had chipped their last shots to right where Ruddy’s dead body had lain.

  That didn’t mean anything.

  The most likely explanation was that none of us were particularly good at our short games and needed more practice time at the chipping area.

  Erick and I skirted the edge of the green to get to our golf balls. After some minor maneuvering to see who was farther away, I putted my ball from the fringe to quite near the hole, whereas Erick chipped up and left himself a long putt for his par. He took his stance over that and knocked it skittering across the shaved grass.

  This hole was almost over.

  No one had confessed yet.

  I should say something around Erick and Pauline to make one of them confess.

  If only I could figure out what that was.

  I opened my mouth and sputtered, “So, wow, this is weird, huh
?”

  I was not good at this interrogating stuff. Kindergartners were so much easier to finagle the truth out of.

  Erick stared at the grass, frowning. “Yeah, he was right here. I was surprised they only closed the club for a day and a half. It seemed wrong that people were just walking over where Ruddy had been lying. Did they even wash the blood off of the green?”

  I told him, “Bhagwan watered all the greens as soon as everyone left the next morning. It was warm, so he soaked them.”

  Ann chuckled and looked down, shaking her head. “He’ll water the greens for any reason at all, won’t he?”

  I added, “The police officers and the forensic people had already been here and gone. I guess the board didn’t want to anger members by keeping the course closed any longer than necessary.” That seemed so self-serving. “The police forensic technician did a cursory sweep of the area. On those television shows, they do so much more, but that’s probably not realistic. I don’t know whether I expected the officers to examine the grass with a lice comb or what, but it seems like they took a look around and left.”

  Pauline was neither frowning nor smiling, just regarding the grass with a blank expression. She moved a little closer to Erick. “You think the forensic guys missed evidence?”

  Um.

  I tried to think of something to say.

  Anything.

  I stumbled, “I don’t really know. When I came out here the next morning and talked to the officers, they’d already picked up the knife to take it to the state lab for analysis.”

  All three of them were staring at me.

  Erick asked, “What did they find?”

  Sherwood’s warnings rose in my mind.

  I sucked in a deep breath and said, “Constable Sherwood Kane said that the state lab can take a long time to do the analysis and send back the results.”

  That was true.

  It wasn’t the answer to his question, but it was true.

  I still felt bad about saying it.

  Erick nodded, though he was still staring at the ground where Ruddy’s body had lain.

  Pauline took a step closer to him, though she also did not look up from the grass.

  There was no discernible difference in the grass where Ruddy had been lying. The stems were neither crushed nor had any vibrant growth due to his blood fertilizing the soil. All the grass was perfectly the same, which if anything, made it more horrible.

  Ann took a step closer, barely took her stance over her putt, and knocked her ball in the hole. She skirted the area where Ruddy’s body had been to retrieve her ball. “Let’s just putt out and move on.”

  Erick said, “I’ve only got six inches left. That’s a gimme.”

  Ann said, “There are no gimmes in Ladies’ League.”

  He took an awkward stance, keeping his toes away from the area where Ruddy’s body had been. “You ladies are tough. In the men’s league, anything under three feet or so is a gimme.”

  Yes, well, women play by the rules, which is why women’s sports are purer than men’s sports. Men flop all over the place during games, pretending to be fouled to make the refs call a yellow card or get a free shot. Women play sports as they were intended.

  I tapped my ball in for a bogey, and so did Pauline.

  Getting away from the seventeenth green seemed like the most important thing right now. I didn’t want to hang out there even a second longer. I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t believe in haunted things, but jeez, it felt weird to stand where Ruddy’s corpse had been lying on the ground.

  I trotted over to where we had left our carts with Ann walking right beside me. We slapped our putters into our bags and left the area as quickly as we could, pushing the heavy carts uphill toward the eighteenth hole, her bright red golf shoes clicking metallically on the asphalt of the cart path.

  Behind us, I didn’t hear anything.

  I didn’t hear Pauline and Erick following us and pushing their carts.

  I glanced back to where Pauline and Erick were still standing on the seventeenth green, staring at the scene where the murder had taken place.

  Pauline reached out and caught Erick’s fingers in hers.

  Erick tugged her close to his side and wrapped his arm around her waist, dropping a quick kiss on her temple just under the brim of her hat.

  I turned and faced the eighteenth, pushing my cart directly down the cart path.

  Pauline Damir had been married to her husband, Tom, for over twenty years. I had taught their kids in kindergarten. There had been no rumblings on the golf grapevine that they were separated or getting a divorce.

  And I could say exactly the same thing about Erick Walters. His wife had mentioned that they were going to Europe that fall for a river cruise.

  Such things happened around country clubs. People were thrown together on boards or in foursomes, and sometimes attractions turned into affairs.

  But I had never heard a whisper about Pauline and Erick.

  And yet, there they were.

  And Erick’s quick move to grab the knife that had killed Ruddy Agani that first night suddenly made much more sense. If he had already known that Ruddy was dead, he might have decided to wipe her fingerprints off the knife or smudge them enough so that they were unusable.

  Pauline had been drunk at the reception after the glow-ball tournament, as if she had been upset and thrown back a few drinks to calm herself.

  She would have had plenty of time to tell Erick what had happened before the four of us walked out to look for Ruddy.

  “Hey, Bee! You walked right past the eighteenth tee box!” Ann yelled from behind me.

  I stopped, my golf shoes skidding on the loose gravel. “Oops.”

  I backed up along the cart path, not turning around to see where Pauline and Erick were.

  “You okay? Ann asked. “Something bothering you?”

  And now I needed another lie. “I’m just really concerned about the club,” I said. “Just barely enough people finally signed up for the Nine and Dine this Friday. There’s just a lot of preparation to do to for it, and I’m not sure how I’m going to pull it all together.”

  Ann exclaimed, “I can help out! Why didn’t you say something, Bee? I can do whatever you need help with.”

  And now my lie had turned into something I had to deal with. “I would appreciate it if you could be here Friday at three o’clock to help me decorate for the Nine and Dine.”

  Ann grinned at me. “You bet.”

  Chapter 26

  AFTER we all completed our nine holes of golf, I dismissed Ladies’ League and trudged into the clubhouse to have lunch with Trudi. At least our lunch would be a bright spot in my day. Finding out that Erick and Pauline were probably having an affair had messed with my head to the point where I didn’t know which direction was up anymore.

  As I climbed the stairs from the ladies’ locker room in the basement up to the clubhouse’s dining room, I saw that Trudi was already sitting at a table and perusing the menu as if she had never seen it before.

  Trudi was not a creature of habit. Trudi might order anything at all off the menu and did not play favorites, except for her once-monthly BLT, as allowed by her cardiologist.

  I collapsed into the seat across from her. Chilly air from the air conditioner sprayed over the room and drew a line down the back of my neck. “You would not believe what happened at Ladies’ League today.”

  And yet, I realized to my horror that I couldn’t tell her what had happened at Ladies’ League.

  In the dining room, all the ladies who had been out on the golf course that morning for league were sitting around us, ordering their lunch. Discussing the murder with Trudi right here, in the middle of Canterbury Golf Club, was completely impossible.

  Everyone would hear.

  Everyone would talk.

  The murderer would either hear that we suspected them or would know that we didn’t, if we were completely wrong in all our theories.

  Tru
di didn’t look up from her menu. “Oh? Did you almost get that elusive hole-in-one again? Did the ball roll up to the hole and somehow manage not to fall in again?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  Trudi lowered her menu slightly, just enough to peer over the top of it with one eyebrow raised at me. “I assume we’ll discuss that later, too.”

  Oh, she had already figured out that we shouldn’t discuss my suspicions in public.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “I just have to get this.”

  Trudi glared at me over her menu with that suspicious eyebrow waggling at me, again. She knew that my phone had neither buzzed nor chimed.

  I pulled Trudi’s contact up and texted to her, Pauline Damir and Erick Walters are having an affair. It’s possible that he picked up the knife that night to obscure her fingerprints or his own on it. I tapped the screen and sent the text.

  Trudi’s purse rattled against the back of her chair, but she ignored it because the waitress was there to take our order. Trudi said, “I’ll have the summer salad with grilled chicken, please. Extra grapes.”

  As I ordered a club sandwich with tomato soup, Trudi reached around the back of her chair to retrieve her phone, glanced at it, and tucked it back in her purse. When the waitress left, Trudi said, “I’m going to the ladies’ locker room.”

  Uh oh. “Trudi, what are you doing?”

  “You stay here. I’ll be back in just a few minutes.” She picked up her purse.

  Trudi had been a scientist before she retired, and she kept all kinds of things in that enormous carpetbag of hers. I warned her, “Trudi.”

  “If that’s the case, we should just take a little look around.” She glanced around the dining room, where every table had four or more ladies seated, all of them lunching happily. “After all, if everyone’s here, the locker room would be the place to be.”

  She stood, slinging her massive beast of a purse over her shoulder, and walked toward the stairs.

  “Trudi!” I jumped up and ran after her, assuring the waitress along the way that we would be right back and to leave our lunches on the table. “You shouldn’t—and wait for me!”