James Ross - A Character-Based Collection (Prairie Winds Golf Course)

by James Ross

  “Have you been drinking again?” Shari asked undaunted by the drink in her own hand.

  Del laughed. “Of course.” He raised the beer in salute.

  “When did you start today?”

  “Who said I ever stopped?” A hearty laugh followed.

  “Del, have you mixed anything else with it?” Shari suspected more than a beer buzz kicking in.

  “Maybe. What business is it of yours?”

  “You know how we feel about that in this house.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “We had planned an evening together as a family.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You can stay but you know our position on overuse. If you can’t handle it, you’re walking a fine line.”

  “You’ve got a lot of room to talk.”

  Kara couldn’t stand it. “Del, cut it out. Can’t we all have one last night together free from all the sniping?”

  As opposite as they were, Kara and Del liked—even loved—each other. When their parents were busy building the real estate company they had to fend for themselves with the primary guidance coming from their nanny and their teachers especially when Shari was running all over town during their teen years. That closeness formed a bond. They looked after each other. It was a survival instinct to cope with parental dysfunction.

  “Yeah, yeah, okay Sis.”

  Shari chain-smoked and finished her Chardonnay. She made her way to the refrigerator to refill her glass.

  Del was right back at Kara. “See what I mean?”

  Kara defended her mom. “Come on, Del. Knock it off.”

  “She’s the one that started it.”

  “Started what?”

  “The divorce.” His bitterness surfaced. “She’s the one jumping all over town going to all the young clubs.”

  “I like your music!” Shari rallied.

  “And the young guys. I see you hanging all over them. Sometimes it gets embarrassing.” Del fired down the remains in the beer can in one gulp and opened the refrigerator door for another.

  “Del!”

  He left for the great room, over his shoulder saying, “I’d rather have a mom that’s not a cougar.”

  Shari refrained from extending the argument. She turned to Kara, “We’ll do more planning for the wedding after dinner.”

  In the lower level Tyler Cy’s healing process was almost complete. He was putting in some miles at a brisk pace on the treadmill. Jayla, the love of his life, had come downstairs and was now an inquisitive spectator. At twelve years old she was still an impressionable child.

  “How did you hurt it?”

  “It was an accident. I fell down the stairs.”

  “Were you in a lot of pain?”

  Tyler Cy looked at her as sweat rolled off of his forehead. “You wouldn’t believe how bad it was.”

  “What part of your knee was it?”

  Tyler Cy hit some buttons on the control panel of the treadmill. The belt slowed and then came to a stop. He stepped off the device and gingerly made his way to his easy chair. Once seated, he rolled the pants leg of his sweat pants up and showed her the scar on his knee.

  “Oooh!” Jayla shrieked.

  “It’s a mess, isn’t it? They had to replace my whole knee.”

  “With what?”

  He put his right hand in a fist and opened his left palm. “The knee is a ball and socket joint.” He ground his right fist back and forth in the palm. “If this is the ball it rotates back and forth like this and that’s how it bends. Now it’s all metal. They had to take my bone out.”

  “Now it’s all metal? How does it stay in there?”

  “There is a metal plate in my knee. Screws attach it to my thigh bone and my shin bone.”

  The idea was foreign to Jayla. “That had to hurt.”

  “You wouldn’t believe how much it hurt, Jayla.” Tyler Cy rubbed his hand over the top of her hair. “They had to put a plastic spacer in there to act like cartilage and…”

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s sort of a sponge that acts like a cushion between the bones,” he continued. “Then they had to sew my ligaments and attach them to the muscles.” He showed her the scars on the inside and outside of his knee.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “The scars won’t look as bad in time.” He bent the knee back and forth. “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It works fine right now.” Tyler Cy smiled.

  “If it works why do you have to do the exercises?”

  “The doctors want me to get a full range of motion.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Total use of my knee.” He flexed the knee some more. “They want me to build up the strength in my muscles and get full use of it. I’ll be as good as new in a couple of months.” He sighed. “At least I hope so.”

  “Good.” Jayla said before changing subjects. “Are you and Mom still going to get a divorce?”

  The question caught Tyler Cy by surprise. He slowly nodded his head up and down. “It looks that way.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t want to tell Jayla that her mother like to party and didn’t love him anymore so he diplomatically commented. “Sometimes when you grow older two adults grow apart.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You develop different interests and want to do things that the other one doesn’t want to do.”

  “You’re still doing the things that you always did, aren’t you?”

  Tyler Cy nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “Then is it Mom that wants to do other things?”

  “That’s a tough question, Jayla. Maybe you can ask her sometime between now and when you go back to school.”

  “If it’s up to me I don’t want you to get a divorce.”

  Tyler Cy hugged his youngest daughter. “There are two of us that feel that way, Sweetie.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  It was back to Prairie Winds Golf Course for Shari and Ashlyn the following Tuesday. Shari didn’t have a match scheduled. Her opponent that day had an injury and forfeited, so she scheduled an extensive practice session with Curt. As soon as Ashlyn and the rest of the ladies teed off Shari headed for the practice range.

  Even on a day deemed for just practice Shari looked the part of a country-clubber. She was decked out in white golf shorts and a sleeveless lime green blouse with matching white shoes and visor. A thin lime green anklet and lime green hoops in her ears contrasted nicely with her tan. She was a stand-out to both warm-blooded males and jealous females.

  “We haven’t spent any quality time hitting balls for a few weeks, have we?” Curt said as the pair greeted each other.

  “I’ve been so busy,” Shari answered, taking the cigarette out of her mouth to speak.

  Curt wondered if that meant shopping, lunching, and chasing men. “The older we get the quicker time evaporates.”

  “I don’t know where the days go.”

  Curt wasn’t in the best of moods and thought that he’d cover some old topics before they got too far along. “I see that you didn’t think too much of the suggestions that J Dub and I made.”

  Shari shrugged. “What?”

  “The cigarettes and the jewelry,” Curt said. “The smokes won’t do you any good on the golf course. Especially if we have to walk eighteen holes and all of those rings will only hinder your grip.”

  Shari was a little perturbed. “Well, good morning to you too. We haven’t seen each other in a few weeks and you already crawl up my ass.”

  “Are you serious about winning a million bucks?”

  “Wouldn’t anybody?”

  “Heck, we’re excited to have an opportunity to win ten percent of that for selling the winning bottle of SPRITZ. If you want to win then you need to carry yourself like a winner.”

  “You sound like a boss.”

  “If I’m your coach for this event then I guess I am yo
ur boss at least until it is over.”

  Shari was headstrong. “If we can’t get along I can always go back to Jeffrey Free.”

  “Bogey?” Curt answered. “I thought you weren’t a member of Olde Blueblood anymore.”

  The thought had passed Shari by. “Well, that’s true, but I seen good results from him in the past. I’m sure he’d meet me at a driving range.”

  Curt was apologetic. “Look, there’s no use for us to get at each other’s throat. We’re both better off if we agree to get along and take something positive away from these practice sessions. I was just a little surprised that you ignored the advice I gave you when we first started.”

  “You’re too pleasant to look at for me to get very angry at you.” Shari threw out a little tease. She grinned at him. The cigarette was stomped out. She walked to her golf bag and took a pouch out of a storage area. One by one the rings came off. “If you’d like to know, there is history behind every single one of these.”

  “I can only imagine,” Curt replied.

  “I can tell you some stories, but I’ll save them for a time when we’re having cocktails.” Shari teased. “I bet your blue eyes shine brighter in a bar than out here in the sun.”

  Curt smiled. “We’ll take the doubt out of your mind.” He lowered a pair of sunglasses onto his nose. “Now you won’t have anything to compare them to.”

  “You’re a party pooper.”

  “Not really, but when we’re out here we’ve got work to do.” He got a bucket of balls and laid it on its side so that several balls rolled onto the grass. “Are you warmed up?”

  Shari nodded as she pulled the last ring off of her little finger and placed the golf glove on her left hand. “I stretched and took some practice swings before you got out here.”

  “Fire away. Let’s see what you’ve got today.”

  Shari took a stance over a ball and wiggled her butt. She glanced over her shoulder to see if Curt caught the move.

  “Have you met Trot?” Curt asked.

  “I think. Isn’t he Captain Jer’s friend?”

  “Yeah. He’s the comedian. Maybe you can join his act at the comedy club.”

  Shari felt good that Curt caught a nice glimpse of her backside. She thought that he might have some potential if he’d just loosen up a bit. She hit balls for at least an hour and then they practiced on the putting green before heading into the clubhouse.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Pork Chop, YouWho, Captain Jer, and Trot were in the back corner of the clubhouse when Curt and Shari walked in a few minutes ahead of the rest of the ladies. Julie and J Dub worked the counter while Curt continued into the office. A window air conditioning unit cooled that portion of the clubhouse. After time outside on a hot summer day the proprietors would retreat to the office, flop on an old couch, and relax for a few minutes.

  Ashlyn joined Shari at one of the tables when the ladies finished. Conversations from varying groups of golfers bounced off the walls. The TV added to the noise. By lunchtime the guys had tired of the baseball game highlights of the night before. Julie had switched the channel to the local news at noon just like she did every day around this time.

  Local newscaster Paula Stewart provided the stories. Before heading into a commercial she said, “And as a follow-up to a story that we first reported several weeks ago St. Louis County police are reaching out to the public for information in the execution-style death of local businessman Richard W. Richards.” Richie’s photo as well as a hotline phone number accompanied the report.

  “2Dix must have really ticked someone off,” Captain Jer said. He had poured his beer into a frosty mug and was swirling it around.

  “Dey still haven’t caught da guy?” YouWho asked.

  “I don’t know if they ever will,” Trot followed. “If they don’t get some hot leads right away, finding the killer gets tough.”

  “Maybe we’ll turn on the TV in a decade and see that this murder is one of those cold case files that finally gets solved,” Pork Chop said.

  “Hey, Shari!” Captain Jer yelled. “Have you heard anything about your buddy?”

  Julie yelled back. “Jer, how tacky can you be? There’s no need to holler in here.”

  “You just did.”

  “In an attempt to quiet you down.”

  “Well, did she?”

  All eyes were focused directly on Shari. She simply shrugged her shoulders and shook her head negatively. Her interest returned to her nutrition bar.

  The guys played detectives. “Okay. Let’s look at what happened,” Captain Jer started. “This guy gets up early in the morning to play golf at River Bend.”

  “Dat’s a nice place,” YouWho said.

  “A fun place to play,” Pork Chop added.

  Captain Jer surged onward. “He drives to his car pool spot, arrives before anyone else, sits in his car, and gets whacked. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”

  “Somebody had to know he was going to be there.”

  “Right. Who would know that?”

  “It had to be someone that knew what he did five mornings a week,” Trot theorized.

  “Correct,” Captain Jer said. “So someone set up an appointment for him to meet his killer. Do you follow my thinking?”

  “So who would do dat?” YouWho asked.

  “It had to be a family member or friend or business partner or…”

  “Do you tink it was one of da guys dat he played golf wit’?”

  “I would hope not!” Pork Chop replied.

  The retired pilot looked across the room and spotted J Dub behind the counter. “Hey, J Dub, who did 2Dix play golf with every day?” Captain Jer thought he was onto something.

  The head pro rattled off three names. “It was Knuckles, Fatboy, and the Jeffco Echo.”

  “That does us a lot of good,” Captain Jer whined. “Do they have names?”

  “I’m sure they do,” J Dub replied, “but I’ll have to look them up. I don’t know their real names off the top of my head. That’s what they go by.”

  Captain Jer continued. “Anyway, it really doesn’t matter to us. I would think that those three guys were at the top of the list for the cops to question.”

  “I can’t believe that a guy’s golfing buddy would have him killed,” Pork Chop said.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Captain Jer said. “Maybe he owed one of them money and they all agreed to show up a few minutes late for the designated time so that the killer would have time to do the deed.”

  “Then that would implicate all of them,” Trot said. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Especially over a golf bet,” Pork Chop added.

  “Okay, then you cross those guys off the list,” Captain Jer said. “Who is next?”

  “Wife.”

  “Business partner.”

  “Somebody he screwed on a business deal.”

  “And I’m sure that is the same way that the cops are thinking,” Captain Jer said. He raised his mug in the air. That was the signal for Julie to bring him another. “Come on, Jules. This stuff wakes up my brain cells. Hurry up.”

  “What do you tink happened, Captain Jer?” YouWho respected the retired pilot.

  “I won’t know until I have some more to drink. Beer makes me smarter.”

  “Aren’t we the lucky ones?” Julie said as she approached the table. “Think of what’s going to flow out of his mouth the rest of the day.”

  Captain Jer smiled. “Where would we be without it?” He raised his can for a toast.

  “Responsible,” Julie replied before retreating.

  “Okay. So where were we?” Captain Jer asked.

  “It was eitha da wife or da bizness partna or da guy he skude.” YouWho never could pronounce an r.

  “I don’t think the wife would do it,” Trot guessed. “I’m sure she was one of the first people they talked to.”

  “So we’ll throw her out,” Captain Jer agreed.

  “
Den it was somebody he skude in bizness.”

  “Maybe so. It makes sense,” Captain Jer said. “But who would that be?”

  “The cops would have to go through his computer and all of his business files,” Pork Chop said, “until they find a dirty deal or somebody with an axe to grind.”

  “So that’s probably where the cops are at with this thing,” Captain Jer predicted, “and nothing has turned up yet.” He raised the beer to his lips and took a healthy sip. “Damn, this is too much work trying to figure something like this out.”

  “Den we solved it,” YouWho replied. “Who else could it be?”

  “I don’t know,” Captain Jer said. “I’m sure the cops have thought about all kinds of scenarios.” He thought some more. “There’s only one other person that could have done something like this, and we failed to mention it.”

  “Who dat be?”

  “You nicknamed him YouWho. What was it?”

  “2Dix.”

  “Why?”

  “Because wit’ two dicks in his name he thought he was a lubber.”

  “We have to add one more suspect to the list then.”

  “Who dat be?” YouWho repeated.

  “With his reputation, maybe it was a jilted lover,” Captain Jer said loudly. He took another healthy swig and let his sapphire eyes stare directly at Shari Daniels-Donnelly.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Leslie Potter’s month was booked well in advance with client meetings, Go Green Ecology pro bono work, animal safe haven seminars, WOFO (Women Organize for Opportunity) conferences, and a book signing. For her affluent divorce clients, however, she was available on short notice. It was Shari Daniels-Donnelly’s turn for an update.

  Shari arrived looking impeccable in a fashionable pants suit with the top three buttons undone. Leslie wondered if she had a happy hour date or was going on the prowl after their appointment.

  “We haven’t seen each other in a while,” Leslie said. “Would you like an update on what is taking place?”

  “Yeah. I want this over! Why is it dragging so much?”