Death at the Member Guest

by James Y. Bartlett

  He smiled at me, ruefully this time. “Not as far as I want, that’s for damn sure,” he said. “I’ve begged her to meet me somewhere away from the club, dinner, or lunch, or… But she says she couldn’t ever get away. Said Vitus kept her on a short leash. It’s been driving me crazy, I don’t mind telling you.”

  “And Vitus?” I asked. “You think he ever knew?”

  Ted McDaggert shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “’Cause if he did, my ass would be outta here in a second. I’ve known Vitus Papageorge for years. He backed me on Tour. Hell, I’m still paying him off. I call it the never-ending debt.” He sighed. “He was one ornery, cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch, and even though I’ve worked for him for a dozen years, he would have cut my heart out and eaten it in front of me.”

  “So what happens now?” I asked.

  “Damn if I know,” Teddy said, staring off into space again. “Doesn’t want me to come over. She says once all this dies down a little, we’ll talk. That doesn’t sound like she’s planning to spend the rest of her life with me, does it?” He looked at me, eyes haunted and hurting.

  “From what little I know of her,” I said slowly, “She seems like someone who takes care of herself first. Maybe it’s a good time to take a step back and regroup.”

  He nodded, but he was off in that distant place again. Where unconquerable women submit, one’s fantasies become real, and everyone lives happily ever after. Which is why they call it Never-Never Land.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I found my partner upstairs in the deserted lounge. With no one to play cards with, he was scanning the Sunday newspaper. He did have a half-empty Bloody Mary at his side, however, decorated forlornly with a stalk of wilted celery. He peered at me over the top of the paper when I walked in.

  “How ya hitting them, Hack?” he asked. “Long and straight, I hope.”

  “Have you ever thought about warming up a little before a match?” I asked.

  He put his newspaper down. “Pards,” he said, “I figure I have about six, maybe ten, good shots in me per round. The last damn thing I’m gonna do is waste any of them up there on that hill, on a yellow ball with stripes. I know how to hit a golf ball…it’s just up the golfing gods as to when and where the good ones come. And this, my friend…” he raised his tall Bloody Mary, “ … is the sacrament I use to let the gods know I know what the game is. So, again I ask…how ya hitting them?”

  “Never got there,” I said. “I was doing a little reconnoitering and happened across some juicy stuff.”

  “Do tell,” Jack said, putting his paper down.

  I told him what I had learned. McDaggert probably didn’t even realize, in his lovelorn state of mind, that he had catapulted himself into Prime Suspect No. 1. His torrid little affair with Leta Papageorge, which was not getting consummated all summer long, gave him an excellent motive for knocking off his boss, Vitus. Get the husband out of the way, and Leta could be his.

  “But Teddy doesn’t really seem like the violent type,” Jack said, frowning.

  “Most killers don’t,” I said. “Besides, he mentioned that he still owed Vitus money for backing him on Tour a decade or so ago, and he made it sound like the debt load wasn’t getting any lighter. I think Vitus owned the guy. That adds another layer of motive into the equation. Maybe Vitus was calling in his note, putting the pressure on. Ted says he has two kids from a former marriage. That probably means child support, college educations and other costs. You and I both know golf professionals at country clubs do not make tons of money. It all starts to add up. Leta, money, Vitus’ sparkling personality. Maybe he decides that life would be easier on a lot of levels if Papageorge shuffled off his mortal coil.”

  “You build a strong case, counselor,” Jack said. “But it’s all circumstantial. No smoking gun.”

  “He strangled the guy, for Chrissakes,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah. Point taken.”

  “One more thing that’s been eating at me,” I said. “You told Tierney that Ted picked up the phone and called the cops when the cart kid came running in from the barn. But I remember that he came out to the barn, saw the body, and then went running off.”

  “Right,” Jack nodded.

  “So which was it? I think the natural reaction if a kid comes running in and says there’s a body in the cart barn is to hightail it out there and see for yourself. Maybe the kid is mistaken. Maybe someone is pulling a bad joke. But you want to make sure. But if you know there’s a body in the cart barn, because you were the one who did the deed there, then you play along, gasp in surprise and shock, call the cops and then go out to see for yourself.”

  “Elementary, my dear Hacker,” Jack said drolly. “But unfortunately, still circumstantial. Maybe Teddy knew the cart kid was straight up, and if the kid said there’s a body in the barn, then he knew he should call.”

  “Maybe only counts in horseshoes,” I said.

  Jack looked at me. I looked at him. Then we both started to laugh.

  “Holy crap,” I chuckled. “Agatha Christie would be pissing herself listening to us.”

  Jack was wheezing with laughter. “Inspector Clouseau!” he gasped.

  We eventually calmed down.

  “Still,” Jack said. “You have uncovered what appears to be an interesting and perhaps important piece of the puzzle. I think we should go play some golf and think about it later.”

  “Capital idea, Holmes,” I said in my best clipped British accent. “And if the Hound of the Golden Slipper happens to bite your ass on the back nine, don’t say you were not forewarned.”

  “Indubitably, my good man.”

  We left the clubhouse arm in arm, which, along with our all-black getup, was duly noted by our fellow competitors with assorted hoots, hollers and homophobic comments.

  On the first tee, we met our opponents. Bill, the member, was a mustachioed dentist and his guest was a young guy named Stanley, who wore a multihued baseball cap and wraparound dark glasses secured to his person by a bright pink strap that hung part way down his back. I decided to call him The Dude. We all shook hands, chatted, compared scorecards to get the stroke situation cleared, and teed off.

  Jack and I must have been thinking about Ted McDaggert, his love life and finances, because we quickly lost the first two holes. Jackie quacked his drive off the first tee, the ball diving hard left through the screen of oaks and plunking into the dark river beyond. I buried my tee ball in the high-lipped bunker Mr. Ross had thoughtfully placed in the landing area of the right rough, just across the driveway. Three chops later, we conceded.

  On the second, Jack hacked his way through the thickest rough on the golf course, while I nailed my drive forty yards off-line to the right and deep into the shady woods. I managed to get my second shot back onto the golf course, but then The Dude nailed a five-iron approach to near kick-in range. I got my ball on the green, but Stanley calmly sank his birdie putt to win the hole. He let out an excited, whooping yell, exchanged high-fives with his partner, and strode off towards the third green with the same swagger Jack Nicklaus used to have at Augusta.

  My partner and I rendezvoused at the golf cart.

  “I hate it when they yell like that,” Jack said, cleaning the stains off his well-hacked ball.

  “I’m getting kinda pissed myself,” I said.

  “What say we begin the general butt-kicking?” he suggested.

  “I’d say it’s about time,” I answered.

  “We bad,” he said.

  “We mad,” I said.

  “The Brothers!”

  Our Palmer-like charge took a while to get rolling. We managed to stop the bleeding by halving the third. On the par-three fourth, across the river, Jack laid a little nine-iron within two feet of the cup and dropped the putt to win the hole. Neither of us whooped or yelled. On the par-five fifth, I made a nice birdie after nailing a three-wood approach to the edge of the green. But Bill, with a stroke in hand
, managed a par five to tie. Still down one with four to play.

  I made another birdie on the sixth, but the Dude tied me with his four-net-three. On the long seventh, I tried to cut the corner with my tee shot, but was stuck behind the trees and had to pitch sideways. I eventually carded a par five, but everyone else had strokes. Luckily, my partner also made a five to halve the hole with The Dude. One down, two to go.

  The eighth is a long and tough par four, dogleg left and the green perched way above the fairway up a long hill. I tried to draw a three-wood around the corner, but got under it just a hair and the ball didn’t carry all the way down to the flat area. My partner blocked one right and short, ending up in the rough. The tooth jockey hit a rope down the left side, dangerously close to the out-of-bounds stakes along the road, and his partner sliced a banana ball off to the right where we heard it knocking around in the pines.

  “This bodes well,” Jack said as we rode after our shots.

  “Forsooth,” quoth I. “Fortune is merry and in this mood will give us anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t guess Shakespeare translates well in golf,” I said.

  “Will you please shut up and play golf?” my partner griped. I guess the pressure was getting to him.

  As it turned out, fortune wasn’t as merry as we hoped. Both our opponents were able to chop their balls back onto the fairway, in good position on the flat part of the fairway, perhaps 100 yards below the hilltop green. Jackie whacked his ball out of the rough, and it scooted up the hill and dribbled into a bunker left of the green.

  I had the dreaded hanging lie. My ball had somehow managed to stop on a steep downhill section. The ball lay below my feet and on an uncomfortable angle. I knew the shot was likely to shoot off to the right, but I had to guard against overcompensating to the left, because of the road, trees and out-of-bounds waiting on that side. And with bunkers on both sides, the entrance to the green, some 175 yards away at the top of the hill, looked as narrow as a rich man’s gateway into heaven.

  On the downhill angle, it was difficult to make a balanced swing, much less get the clubface moving on anything resembling a square path. I made as easy a swing as I could, trying not to rush and just make good contact, and the ball took off with a reassuring sound. But the hill-imparted sidespin soon took over, and the ball began drifting slowly and inexorably to the right.

  “Hold on, honey!” I yelled at it. “Get on the ground!”

  Fortune laughed. The ball plunked into the bunker on the right.

  With both of us in trouble, our opponents had new life. I watched as they talked over their next shots: easy uphill pitches to a large open green. Bill went first and hit his a little thin: it flew up the hill and landed in the middle of the green, running to the back edge. He would have a long, bending and very fast downhill putt. Stan the man hit next, and, guarding against doing the same thing, chunked his just a tad. His ball thunked down on the front edge of the green, hopped forward once and then rolled backwards, stopping in the frog hair on the collar. He had about 30 feet to the hole, but his was an uphill putt, unlike his partner’s.

  We rode up to the green and parked on the left, next to the bunker where Jackie’s ball lay. He had a good lie, but the green sloped steeply away from him.

  “Just pooch her out and let it run down to the hole,” I said.

  “Right,” he nodded, his face taut with determination, and he climbed down into the bunker.

  His pooch turned out to be a Rottweiler. Jackie got all ball and no sand, and the ball rocketed high over the green, through a stand of small bushes, past an ancient stone wall, and disappeared into the darkness of the forest primeval. He held his pose, club over the left shoulder, and watched his disaster. Then, still in the classic finish position, he began to curse in soft, quiet strings of obscenities. Things related to both men’s and women’s bodily parts and excretion functions, both alone and in combinations, both possible and beyond the imagination of the most feverish pornographer. Somewhere, a monsignor shuddered and crossed himself. Somewhere a puppy died. In a perverse yet creative way, it was quite an amazing elocution.

  He finally slowed down and stopped, but not before the three of us, standing there on the edge of the green, were teary with laughter. He dropped his pose, looked up at us and flashed the famous Connolly grin.

  “That’s my horse,” I said wearily. “Clutch player of the year.”

  I walked around to the far bunker to find my ball. Lady Fortune was having a high ole time with us, the bitch. My shot had landed on a slight upsweep in the bunker and plugged. It was a classic ham-and-egg lie, the ball nestled deeply into a perfect halo of sand created by the incoming missile of the ball. Instead of being able to toss the ball out lightly on a perfect, soft cloud of sand, I would have to dig it out. That meant any control of what happened to the ball once it got on the green was lost: it could run for days, or stop short. I figured it would run. And not only was my lie impossible, but I had to get the ball in the air quickly to get it over the high lip in front of me. With both my opponents looking at a possible two-putt for five-net-four, I really needed to get up and down to halve the hole. Or else our goose was cooked.

  I took a deep breath and a moment to compose myself. Despite all the possible disasters this shot presented, I knew this was not a particularly difficult shot to pull off. Most amateurs get tense and excited in the sand, tighten up and flail away wildly. Getting out of the sand is really pretty easy, as long as you slow it down and make a smooth, relaxed swing.

  I pictured the shot I wanted to make, picked out a target on the green where I wanted the ball to land, dug my feet in, made my arms relax, and put an easy swing on it. The result was not too bad, considering. Ball and sand flew up in the air. The ball popped up high in the air, came down pretty close to my target spot and ran towards the hole. As I had feared, there was no backspin, so the ball kept rolling, just missing the cup and continuing on for about twelve feet. I was left with a slightly uphill putt with some sideways break. Tough, but not impossible.

  Now it was their turn. The dentist, putting down the hill from the back of the green, made a gentle stroke, but once the ball got rolling down that hill, it refused to stop. It zoomed past the cup and kept going and going, finally dribbling to rest nearly fifteen feet past the hole.

  “Shit,” he said helplessly. “I just breathed on that one.”

  “I don’t think you could get it any closer from up there,” I told him, consolingly.

  He marked his ball and went over to help The Dude read his uphill attempt. Thirty feet. Break to the right. Again, Stanley seemed to have been influenced by his partner’s strong putt. His putt died quickly going up the hill and stopped six feet short. Knee-knocker time.

  Bill was away, and took some time looking at his putt, but his fifteen-footer never was on line and skittered past. Six-net-five. We were still alive. I was next. I studied my putt. The amount of break was determined by the speed: if I hit it firmly, it was just an outside left edge read. But if I tried to die the ball into the hole, I’d have to borrow about eighteen inches. I figured what the hell, no sense pussyfooting around with it. I decided to take the break out and just hammer the thing home. That’s what Tiger would do, I told myself.

  I learned a long time ago that successful putting is all about trusting your reads and just letting go. Internal urgings to do this or don’t do that will kill you every time. The secret is to pick the line, make sure the putter head goes back and forth along that line and hit the putt with the inner certitude that it’s going to go in the hole. It doesn’t always go in, of course, but it does more often than not when you can trust and let go.

  So I finally stepped up to the ball, aimed along the left edge and let her rip. At first, I thought I had powered it way too hard: the ball zipped along the grass up the slight incline, and didn’t begin to curl a little right until it was maybe two feet from the hole. I began to see it in almost slow
motion at that point, even though in real time, the ball was humming along. But I saw it bend slightly to the right, in line with the left edge I had been aiming for. Ball and hole came together in those last few nanoseconds, and just before it slipped past, the ball moved oh-so-slightly to the right again, enough to catch just a piece of the hole and drop in with a definitive rattle.

  “Jeezus,” the Dude said with awe in his voice. “What a great goddam putt. You rotten rat bastard.”

  I smiled and thanked him, and pulled my ball out of the hole. I looked over at my partner, who nodded at me with approval. No histrionics. Not for The Brothers. The Golf Assassins.

  Stanley still had his knee-knocking six-footer left to tie me, but I suddenly knew he was toast. I would have bet my mortgage – if I had one – that he couldn’t put his ball in on top of mine. The pressure, the psychology of the moment, the sudden need to deliver … altogether too much for his brain to handle. Besides, an old golf pro I knew said you can never putt well wearing dark glasses. The old pro was right, and so was I. Stanley’s attempt was wide right by three inches.

  We were all square heading to the last.

  The par-three ninth is a great hole for deciding a close match. It was playing right at 190 yards today, with a slight breeze against. From the elevated tee, the green looked miles away and impossible to hit, perched atop the far hill and surrounded by sand, trees and that imposing false front that dropped down into the purgatory below.

  We had the honor. Jack took out his five-wood and pushed it into one of the bunkers to the right of the green. He slammed his club down hard in frustration.

  “That’s OK, pard,” I reassured him. “You got that shot.”

  He laughed.

  I took my three-iron and cut it in from left to right. The pin was back left but my goal was to get it somewhere –anywhere—on the green. Mission accomplished, my ball landed in the middle and stuck, about forty feet to the hole. I figured a three would be tough to beat.