Murder, Malice and Mischief

by Quinn, Lucy

  Trudi beat me down the stairs to the busy hallway and the women’s locker room because although she had short legs, that little woman could scamper like a squirrel. She dodged between all the people walking between the pro shop and the locker rooms like a sprite slipping between willow trees.

  I slapped open the door that had just barely closed. “Whatever are you—oh my heavens and angels.”

  Trudi was on her knees with her purse in front of the lower locker that was embossed with the nametag for Pauline Damir. Small, silver tools were scattered on the floor beside her.

  Other than Trudi, the entire locker room was empty of people.

  She said, “Look, if we suspect that Pauline might have murdered Ruddy and/or Lale Kollen, then she is somewhat of a threat to everybody at the club. I don’t like that you were out there on the golf course all morning with her if she might be dangerous. We need to know whether she did it, and if we find anything like blood on her golf clothes or shoes or whatever, we will turn it over to the police.”

  “But how shall we say we got that evidence? Don’t you need a search warrant or something?” I asked her.

  “Nah, I’m on the clubhouse committee. Our bylaws say that any area of the clubhouse can be searched at any time. It was mostly to keep people from hiding cocaine in the lockers, but I’m sure it would apply to murder weapons, too. By the way, the other day at the club board meeting, Erick Walters said that he wanted me to look at some spreadsheets.”

  I told her, “We have the murder weapon. It’s a knife. It was lying on the ground next to Ruddy with his blood on it. The murder weapon is not the problem. I don’t think we should be searching people’s lockers.”

  “Then we are looking for other evidence. I’m not saying that Pauline killed someone else, but the chances are higher, statistically, for somebody who has already killed someone to do it again.”

  I fretted, “This feels wrong. Shouldn’t we at least get a master key or something?”

  Trudi picked up one of the small silver implements beside her knee. “I just happen to have some little probes and needles in my purse. You never know when these kinds of things will come in handy. And these locks on these lockers are about thirty years old and about as secure as the lock on my bathroom door, which my cat can unlock.” She inserted a silver wire into the lock and another thing that looked like a mini-crochet hook right above it.

  “Should I even ask how you know how to pick locks?”

  “You pick up a lot of skills being a professor,” Trudi muttered as she manipulated the small tools. “Graduate students locked their lab keys in their desk drawers all the time, and it was just easier to get them out this way than it was to call the custodian or campus security. Plus, sometimes you have to make sure that no one is taking the reagents home for more nefarious purposes.”

  I was shocked. “Did some of your graduate students make drugs for tuition money?”

  “Drugs, no. Glitter bombs to torture each other, yes. Those kids were weird. And there it is.” She sat back. The locker door swung open.

  I bent to peer inside the locker. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “And yet, you have not left in protest.” Trudi reached inside the locker and pulled out a few items. “Shampoo, conditioner, basic makeup kit. Her golf shoes are in here, but they’re clean.” The turned them over. “But there’s a bit of mud and grass on the bottom. It doesn’t look like she washed them to try to hide blood anytime recently.”

  “I still can’t believe she’s having an affair with Erick Walters,” I said.

  Trudi shrugged. “That’s not what we care about here. Besides, affairs aren’t shocking.”

  I sat back on my heels and looked at my friend of thirty years. “Trudi, did you have an affair?”

  She shook her head dismissively and frowned. “No, but I worked in a university department. There’s a lot of hormones going around with those young twenty-year-olds. You see things that maybe you wish you hadn’t. Let’s say that I don’t find affairs between anybody shocking.”

  “Do you see anything in Pauline’s locker that would suggest she killed Ruddy?”

  “No. This was just a waste of time.” Trudi rearranged everything in the locker just as we had found it and slammed the door with a clank. “Anybody else you want to check up on while we’re breaking into lockers?”

  “I feel guilty enough about this already, and we didn’t find anything. We can’t just open everybody’s locker and see if we find something.”

  Trudi mused, “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “It’s not a good one, either. Clubs like this are run on trust. If it gets out that we’ve been breaking into lockers to try to figure out who the murderer is, people wouldn’t like it. We’ve lost enough members as it is.”

  Trudi plucked a tissue from the box on the counter and wiped off her small tools. “Still, it’s better than letting a murderer hang out around the club, especially when we have late events like that Nine and Dine, coming up.”

  I climbed to my feet, and Trudi walked over to throw away the tissues. She stepped on the pedal to open the top of the trashcan and was holding her hand suspended over it when she said, “Well, what do we have here?”

  “We have something?” I came and stood beside her and looked in the trashcan.

  Inside, a white leather golf glove was half-hidden by paper towels. From what parts of it that we could see, brown stained the thumb and first finger.

  I asked, “What? Somebody threw away a muddy glove?”

  Trudi shook her head. “I don’t think that’s mud.”

  “Oh, my word. We found a bloody glove, of all things.” I squinted and peered at it more closely. “I think it looks like mud.”

  “Of course, the blood has dried. It was over a week ago. Or even if it’s Lale’s blood, it’s been a few days. But that doesn’t look like mud. The splash material itself is too thin. There are streaks and sprays. It’s not clumpy or grainy, and there are no specks in it like you would expect to find if it were dirt.”

  “Bhagwan does overwater the course. It could be thin mud or thick pond water.”

  “It might not be.”

  “If we think it might be blood, we should just hand it over to the police.”

  “If it is just mud, then we look stupid, especially when I can just test it and see if it is blood.”

  I frowned at her. “Do you still have lab privileges at the university?”

  Trudi laughed. “I don’t need a lab. I just need the first-aid kit.”

  “Oh, Trudi, I don’t think we should do this.” I rummaged under the sink to find the first-aid kit. “What do you need?”

  “Rubbing alcohol, a cotton swab, and hydrogen peroxide.” She produced a small bottle from her purse.

  I got two paper towels from the dispenser and carefully fished the brown-stained glove out of the trash, holding it away from myself in the paper towels.

  Trudi said, “Lay it on the countertop.”

  I did, carefully avoiding any little water spots that might have still been on the counter.

  The brown stuff might be mud.

  I really hoped the brown stuff was mud.

  Trudi opened the bottle of rubbing alcohol and moistened the cotton swab with the astringent liquid. The smell of a hospital lingered in the air of the locker room.

  I asked, “How are we going to explain to the police that some of the blood is missing, if it even is blood?”

  “We will tell them that we have no idea how that little bit went missing, and they probably won’t even notice, anyway. Forensic technicians aren’t real scientists.” She gently brushed the damp swab over the edge of one of the glove’s fingers, where the brown stain was the darkest. She rubbed the leather glove until the cotton was faintly brown.

  Trudi opened a tiny vial that she had retrieved from her purse and squeezed one drop of the solution onto the tip of the cotton swab. “This is phenolphthalein.”

  “What on Earth is that?
” I asked her, squinting and trying to read the label without my readers. “It looks like it has too many consonants.”

  “A very useful reagent. Not only is it one of the principal reagents in the Kastle-Meyer Test for blood that we are currently performing, but it’s also a really useful pH indicator for other assays, not to mention a powerful laxative if someone makes me angry.”

  Trudi scared me sometimes. “You wouldn’t put that in someone’s food, would you?”

  She glanced at me and went back to staring at the cotton swab. “Of course not. I would never do such a thing.”

  She had been my closest friend since our college days when the dorm lottery had assigned us to be roommates. “What did you do?”

  Trudi grimaced and stared at the ceiling for a second. “Remember when those guys were grabbing at the women last year? And then there was a rumor that the really horrible stomach flu that was also going around was transmitted by grabbing women’s boobs?”

  “You didn’t!”

  “That’s exactly my story, that I didn’t do it. And now we put the hydrogen peroxide on and see if it turns pink.”

  Trudi gently dripped just a little hydrogen peroxide on the swab.

  Even without my readers, I could see that the beige-stained cotton turned quite pink.

  Trudi sighed. “That means it’s positive for blood. That glove is covered with blood. I admit, I was hoping it was just mud, too.”

  “We’ll have to give it to the police.”

  “Of course, just as soon as we figure out whose glove it is.”

  “I’m calling them right now.” I grabbed my phone out of my pocket.

  Trudi looked pensively at the glove lying among the paper towels. “Almost assuredly, a woman put it in this trash can. That hallway outside the door always has people walking down it. If a man had come into the women’s locker room, all heck would’ve broken loose. Therefore, we can assume in the absence of any broken-loose heck, that a woman must have been in the locker room and put it in the trash.”

  My phone rang the police station, and I waited for them to answer. “Trudi, let the police handle it.”

  She inserted a slim metal rod inside the glove and lifted the edge, craning her neck to peer inside. “It’s a left-handed glove, so the person plays golf right-handed, as seventy-five percent of the club does. That rules out Manpreet, Xun, and Sultana, that I know of. I don’t think any of the women play Tommy-two-hand with two gloves.”

  “Trudi, quit messing with it.”

  “This glove is made out of Cabretta leather,” she continued as she examined it, “not the cheapo synthetic stuff. Sung-Min only wears fabric gloves because her palms sweat too much, but it could be anybody else’s. The police aren’t going to be able to lift a fingerprint off of that suede surface on the inside. It’s seen light use, probably only a few rounds. Someone threw it away because it had blood on it, not because it was worn out.”

  “Trudi, just stop.”

  She tilted her head, looking at where she was lifting the edge with the metal probe. “The tag says it’s a women’s medium, so it would fit around half of the ladies of the club. Not me, of course, but you wear a ladies’ medium.”

  “Don’t even bring me into this.” I covered my phone’s microphone with my hand, even though it was still ringing. “How do you know what size glove I wear?”

  Trudi shrugged. “I’m not blind. Besides, you get your weird brand of gloves by the dozen at the sports store in Hamilton when you get your clubs regripped.”

  “I do not want to know how you know all this stuff about me.” And I felt bad that I didn’t know the same sort of things about her, as usual.

  A voice emerged from the phone in my hand.

  “Hello, officer!” I said. “This is Beatrice Yates over at Canterbury Golf Club, where Ruddy Agani was murdered? We found a glove in the trash in the ladies’ locker room, and we think you should have a look at it.”

  I talked to them for a few minutes, giving them the basic details, while Trudi threw the evidence of our little scientific experiment in the Dumpster outside.

  Just as she entered the locker room where I was waiting with the bloody glove, two police officers followed her in. Officer Sandy was there again, my ex-student, who made me feel old just by existing as an adult in the world. The other officer introduced herself as Officer Amira Hashami.

  As expected, the officers wanted to take possession of the glove, so we backed away from where we had laid it on the counter, still wrapped in paper towels.

  Officer Hashami picked it up with tongs and dropped it into a plastic Ziploc bag. She started filling out a label for it.

  Officer Sandy turned to me. When she was five, I’d braided her straight, black hair into pigtails because she had gotten too hot from playing on the monkey bars at recess. She asked, “Was there anything else in the trash can?”

  Trudi and I glanced at each other, eyes wide.

  I said, “I guess we just saw the glove and it looked like it might be blood, so we didn’t look any farther.”

  “Let’s take a look.” Sandy tipped over the trash can and crouched, sorting through the fluff of paper towels spread over the carpeting by pushing the paper aside with a pen.

  As would be expected for a trash can next to a sink in a women’s bathroom, a whole lot of damp paper towels flowed out that smelled faintly of the green-and-forest balsam soap in the sink dispensers and the shower stall.

  Something thunked out of the trashcan and rolled onto the floor.

  “What was that?” Sandy asked and used her pen to poke through the rubbish.

  She cleared away the paper towels, revealing two golf balls.

  One was printed in the design of a yellow and black soccer ball.

  The other was white with pink hearts scattered over it.

  “Hey,” Trudi said. “That looks like the one I found in the water hazard and gave you.”

  “Yeah,” I said, frowning. “And the other one looks like my favorite bumblebee-colored soccer ball that went missing last week. I thought it must have dropped out of my bag while I was on the course.”

  “Did you lose the one with pink hearts?” Officer Sandy asked.

  “I don’t know. Let me look in my bag.”

  We went out to my car, and I dug around in the big pocket on my golf bag and the milk crate in the trunk, too. “I don’t see it.”

  Officer Sandy was frowning. “So, think before you tell me this. Is it true that two golf balls that resemble ones that had been in your possession were found in the same trash bag as the glove, which may have blood on it and be linked to the two recent murders?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, “but I lost them.”

  Sandy nodded slowly. “I’ll make sure to note in the report that you said you lost them, Mrs. Bee. Just between us, please be careful what you tell police officers and, um,” she glanced toward the clubhouse, “be careful that no more of your stuff turns up near bloody objects that might be related to a murder, okay?”

  After she left, I asked Trudi, “Did she just say that was evidence against me?”

  Trudi was frowning. “I wish I’d thought to look deeper in that trash bag. We could have gotten those golf balls out before the police saw them.”

  Chapter 27

  THE next morning, I was on the driving range at seven o’clock sharp, taking my frustration out on a bucket of golf balls.

  Though the morning was warm, a light fog hung over the end of the driving range, near the forest that ringed the country club. The mist scuttled over the grass like ghosts.

  I shook my head as I gripped my driver, trying to clear my mind of all thoughts of ghosts, dead people, or murders.

  When a car pulled into the small parking lot behind me, I pulled back and whacked the next golf ball as far as I could, which wasn’t nearly as far as I would have liked.

  Footsteps crunched on the gravel and then were muffled in the grass as someone walked toward me.

  I didn�
�t hear the repetitive clink of someone carrying golf clubs in a bag.

  I spun, holding my driver at shoulder level so I could knock the intruder’s head off with it.

  The man walking toward me was Constable Sherwood Kane, and he was marching over the grass, his arms swinging at his sides in anger. “What are you doing, talking to the police and making yourself a bigger suspect than you already were?”

  I said, “I told them the truth. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

  He stood in front of me, his hands opening and closing like he was trying to figure out what to say. “First, you ‘found’ one murder victim—”

  “Three other people were with me when we discovered him. I have an alibi for most of the evening.” Most of it.

  “And then you found another murder victim, but you were all alone that time.”

  “Other people can account for my whereabouts all morning.”

  “Lale Kollen wasn’t killed that morning. She was definitely killed the night before. That’s why her porch light was still on.”

  “Oh, yeah. I noticed her front yard light was on. But the fact that I didn’t know when she was killed means that I didn’t do it.”

  “Do you have an alibi for the night before?”

  Not anything that anyone could verify. “I was at home, socializing my foster kittens. You can ask my neighbor, Coretta Dickinson, whether my lights were on. She was probably snooping.”

  “So you were alone and have no alibi for the time of the murder, and now you’ve ‘found’ a glove with blood all over it.”

  “Trudi von Shike actually found it, and she’s not a suspect at all.”

  “And two of your golf balls were sitting beside it.”

  “I told Officer Sandy that I lost those.”

  “And you were the only other person in the room with Ms. von Shike, your best friend, who backs up your claim that she found the glove just like any best friend would.”

  “Half the female population of the Canterbury Golf Club had been in that locker room in the last few hours. It was Ladies’ League day. Besides, I’m not even the best suspect for Ruddy’s murder. Oliver Shwetz had just had an argument with him. Plus, Ruddy’s wife, Linda, was getting ready to divorce him. They’d just had a huge fight that night. She’d already made plans to move to California.”