“Sure I do!”
Maggie was conscious of a feeling of relief which surprised her. She hadn’t realized just how much she was counting on her friend’s help. “But Dyna,” she cautioned, “it would have to be very discreet. I might be wrong about someone from here being involved. And of course, I might be right, in which case it could be dangerous if we’re not careful.”
“Right. But it can’t hurt to just ask a few questions, and keep our eyes open, can it?” Dyna replied, her eyes already bright with anticipation. “Where do we start?” She looked ready to leap from her chair into action.
“Well, I’ve been thinking. One person who’s been mentioned so far with a hint of suspicion is the tennis pro, Rob Clayton. Remember when Burnelle brought our dinner to the room she said she thought there might have been something going on between them? Why don’t we start with him?”
“Rob Clayton. OK.” Dyna was on the edge of her chair by now. “What should we do, follow him? Watch him?”
Maggie smiled. “No, just talk to him. But in a way that seems natural, not like we’re interrogating him. How about if I take a lesson from him? My backhand is really awful, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Good idea. But what about me? Should I come along?”
“Well, it might be easier to get him to talk if it’s just one on one, don’t you think? But I’d certainly feel a lot more comfortable if you were nearby, like maybe practicing your serve or something on another court?”
“Sure. Those courts are so far away from everything else, if he’s the one who killed Lori, you don’t want to be out there alone with him. I’ll be your safety net. Or watch dog, or whatever.” Dyna jumped up suddenly and pulled at Maggie’s hand, her face eager. “Come on - let’s go. Let’s set you up for a lesson, then we can work out how you’re going to pump him.”
Maggie laughed, and let Dyna pull her towards the hotel, her blonde friend’s ponytail - what remained of it - bouncing with each step. Maggie felt more subdued than Dyna, but she now had fewer qualms. She knew she would have gone ahead on her own if Dyna had refused to get involved. But it was so much better knowing someone would be there with you. Even if that someone was an animal-rights-activistic-psychic-studying witch.
Once again Maggie walked the shaded pathway to the tennis courts alone, this time in fresh navy shorts and a white, McHenry High School T-shirt. She and Dyna had decided to arrive separately.
“I get there a few minutes before your lesson - it’s at two, right? - and just grab a basket of balls and an empty court and start practicing.”
“Right. Now if we synchronize our watches….” Maggie grinned as Dyna looked at her watch. “Just kidding. No need to get too serious about this. After all, it’ll probably lead nowhere.” Maggie wondered, though, if she were trying to convince Dyna or herself. Deep down, she knew things might get very serious. Her brother Joe’s face popped in her head and she winced, knowing just how he would react to this. `What are you doing, Maggie! I told you to get out of there.’ Yes, he told her that, and she would, soon. As soon as she found out a few things, that is.
Her thoughts went back to yesterday, shortly after the police had taken charge of the murder scene. She remembered watching Rob, as he lingered nearby, remembered noticing the intensity of his interest in all that was happening, an interest that somehow seemed detached and unemotional. She hoped to find out what that strong interest meant, among other things.
Maggie reached the path surrounding the courts and began to pass the court where Dyna stood with an orange basket of balls, studiously ignoring Maggie as she went through the motions of practicing her toss and serve. Most balls flew wild, her thoughts apparently not on what she was doing. Suddenly there came the sounds of loud, angry shouting. Both women’s heads snapped in the direction of the sports shop. The voice was Rob Clayton’s.
“You jerk. You stupid….” They were spared the rest by the sound of a door slamming loudly. Muffled shouts still carried through, but were unintelligible. Something crashed against a wall.
Maggie looked over at Dyna through the fence, and her face looked startled and bewildered. She shook her head and shrugged, indicating to Maggie she had no idea what was going on.
Maggie hesitated. She thought of getting closer to the sports shop to hear better, but then the shouting ended. She waited a moment, wondering what would happen next, if Rob would still show up for her lesson, and decided all she could do was go to her court and wait. She signaled to Dyna, pointing toward it - it was two courts farther down - and walked on. No other courts were occupied, and Maggie was doubly glad that Dyna would be lingering nearby.
She had uncovered her racquet and was trying some practice swings when she caught sight of Rob walking rapidly from the sports center. This could be a grim tennis lesson, Maggie thought, and worse, a very uncommunicative one. As he drew near, though, she was surprised to see a calm expression on the tennis pro’s face.
“Ready to attack that backhand?” he called as he looked up and saw her watching him.
“Sure am,” she called back lightly, but she wondered if someone else with Rob Clayton’s voice was back in the center, shouting and throwing things, or if Rob had the most amazing ability to switch emotions she had ever encountered. If he did, it was great from the cooling-down side. What was he like in the flaring-up mode though? Did he lose control as quickly as he seemed to gain it, become violent in a moment, perhaps enough to kill?
Maggie didn’t have time to mull this over because Rob hurried onto the court and got down to business right away.
“Let’s see what you’re doing now,” he said. He set up his ball basket near the net, and motioned her to stand at the baseline. Then he began tossing balls for her to hit.
“Not bad, but this is where you’re going wrong.” He demonstrated with his own racquet, then went through the proper motions of the backhand with her. He tossed more balls at her, keeping up a constant patter of instruction, and Maggie struggled to follow it all.
“Turn your shoulder more, that’s right. Now follow through - you didn’t follow through on that one. See where your ball ended up?”
She was swamped with detailed directions. She felt clumsy and uncoordinated.
“Hey, that’s a good one. Perfect!”
Maggie beamed. This was fun. She hit a few more. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.”
“Oops, you didn’t step forward enough on that one. Always remember….” Back to square one.
The sun beat down on the court. Maggie wiped sweat from her face and pushed back the short brown waves of hair that were rapidly tightening into what Joe teasingly called, “little Shirley Temple curls.”
“Do you think we could take a break?” Maggie finally asked, breaking into Rob’s steady stream of instruction.
“Arm getting tired?” He glanced at Maggie and checked his watch. “Yeah, let’s sit down a while.” He took her racquet from her, leaned it against the net, then led the way to a shaded bench beyond the fence. Maggie noticed he had barely worked up a sweat. His white tennis shorts and shirt still looked crisp and fresh, the skin of his neck below the dark hair was tan and dry. She wrapped a towel around her own damp neck and dabbed at the edges of her hairline.
“Try to work on what you just learned,” Rob said, “practicing until it feels natural, automatic.” He filled a paper cup with water from a cooler and handed it to her, then filled one for himself.
“I don’t know if it will ever feel natural.” Maggie held the cold cup against her temple, then forehead and cheek. “I’m obviously not one of those natural athletes.”
“Even a natural athlete has to work at it, and work hard.”
“I guess you’ve played for a long time?” Maggie asked, glancing over.
“Since I was four,” he grinned back at her, “and could barely hold a racquet.”
“No kidding? Someone said you played at Wimbledon. Is that right?”
Rob’s grin faded, and he squin
ted at the sky. “Yeah, that’s right. I had to qualify, but it was a dream come true. Something I spent years working towards. Did pretty good too, until, well, let’s just say Wimbledon demands 100 per cent of its players, and suddenly I crashed down to about 25 per cent.”
“An injury?”
He gulped his water and threw the cup down, then picked it up again, tossing it into the nearby trash basket. “I don’t like to talk about it much. I thought I was beginning a career on the tour, and it didn’t work out. That’s that.” He raised an eyebrow as he turned and looked at her with an easy smile. “I’d much rather talk about you. Understand you’re a teacher. That right?”
“Yes.” Maggie heard his flirting tone now and felt annoyed. He seemed to be able to turn it on so easily. Was he just trying to avoid talking about himself? She gave him a cool look and said, “Math. High school.”
“That’s great.”
“The math is great, but sometimes the system is less than wonderful, like when they give me someone who hasn’t mastered multiplication yet and expect me to get him into quadratic equations by the third quarter.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it great when you start to see some improvement, and know you brought it about?”
Maggie looked at Rob, surprised. “Yes, it is. It’s one of the reasons I went into teaching.” She took a sip a water, then, watching Rob’s face closely, said, “Did you know that the girl whose body I found, Lori, was a student of mine back in Baltimore?”
Rob looked back at her steadily, and she noticed a tightening at the side of his mouth. “I had heard that. I wasn’t sure it was true. Made it pretty tough, huh?”
“You could say that. Did you know her?”
His gaze moved in the general direction of the murder scene. Bits of yellow tape from the investigation still clung to a few trees. “Well, yeah, I know just about everyone here. I ran into her now and then. Nice kid.”
“She was. You didn’t know her well, then?”
“No.”
“Someone gave me the impression you two were seeing each other.”
“Your `someone’ doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
Maggie shrugged. “Lori was a good kid. I had high hopes for her when I taught her. I remember she enjoyed math. I wonder if she planned to do something with it?”
“Social work. I think. I mean, I think I heard someone say that’s what she wanted.”
“Mmm.” A `nice kid’ he ran into now and then whose college major he just happened to know? Maggie was sure he was holding back on her.
“So you didn’t….” she began, but Rob suddenly jumped up from the bench and looked at his watch, scowling.
“Hey, I’ve got another lesson coming in a few minutes, but we could go over those backhand moves a few more times if you’re up to it.”
“Sure, why not.” Maggie followed him back on the court, frustrated at having their talk cut short, but unable to come up with a way to extend it without sounding like an interrogator. This detective work was harder than she thought.
They repeated the same toss, swing, and critiques as before, and Maggie tried to concentrate, but her mind kept going back to their conversation. It wasn’t enough. She should have kept him talking. She should have asked him where he was at the time Lori was killed. But he could easily lie about that, couldn’t he, and how would she know?
She remembered how cool he was when she arrived for her match with Dyna yesterday. Would he have been so calm and casual if he had murdered someone a few hours earlier? But then, he had arrived for her lesson today looking quite calm, and she had heard him shouting and throwing things just minutes earlier. Maggie swung at a ball and missed.
“Your mind is wandering,” Rob called. “That was an easy one.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I’m getting tired.”
“Our time is up anyway. Here comes my next lesson.”
Maggie turned and saw a pair of energetic tow-headed ten year olds, accompanied by a tired-looking mother, scrambling down the path.
“Hey Tyler! Hey Travis!” Rob greeted them with light boxing punches as they came onto the court, and they shrieked and giggled as they protected themselves. “Okay, you two, before we start I want to see three jogs around the court to warm up - next to the fence!”
The boys took off with noisy energy, and Maggie packed up her things.
Rob handed her her towel along with a few final words of advice. “You should practice alone before you play any games. If it doesn’t get to be automatic, you’ll just go right back to your old way of hitting.”
She thanked him and promised to try. As she reached the gate she turned to watch for a moment. Rob had joined the twins in their run and they giggled at something he said. She smiled, but found herself wondering just who was the real Rob Clayton. There seemed to be a few sides to him that didn’t quite fit together.
Maggie walked on down the path back to the sports center, her towel draped under her damp curls. She checked out the court Dyna had been on earlier, but her friend was nowhere to be seen. Did she leave already? Maggie looked around again, then walked over to the sports shop building. She glanced around inside from the doorway and saw no one at all.
“Did she think I had left when Rob and I were taking our time-out on the bench?” Maggie murmured to herself, puzzled.
She walked back out and started alone on the mulched path back to the hotel. She had gone about a hundred feet when she heard a stick crack somewhere behind her. She turned around and called,
“Dyna?” No answer. Where is she? Maggie wondered, feeling annoyed now. She didn’t like these woods any better than she had the first time and decided to pick up her pace and get out into the open as soon as she could.
About another minute had gone by when she again heard the sound of someone stepping on dry sticks. She whirled around and called sharply, “Dyna, is that you? Who’s there?”
At first there was silence, then Maggie heard footsteps coming towards her, beyond the last curve in the path. A man in rumpled work clothes came into view. He walked lazily, hands in pockets, and wearing a grin that looked to Maggie more frightening than if he had been holding a weapon.
“Your girlfriend,” he said as he came closer, “got held up.”
***
CHAPTER 11
“Who are you?” Maggie tried to ask it with a measure of authority, as in, “Where is your hall pass”, or, “Why aren’t you in homeroom?” She took a deep breath and tried to hide the fear she actually felt.
The man grinned even more. “Don’t matter, but I happen to work here.” He pulled a hand out of his pocket and pointed to the Highview logo on his dark cotton shirt. On the pocket below was machine-stitched, “Eric”. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, medium built, and might have been called good-looking with his even features and dark hair except for a certain shifty-eyed smirkiness about him. He tilted his head to one side, looking at her teasingly, and said, “Saw you talking to ol’ Rob back there.”
“Yes?” Maggie watched him carefully. He hadn’t made any threatening moves, but his manner was a long way from putting her at ease.
He pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and bit on it, moving it from side to side with his tongue, lizard-like, and she relaxed some. Disgusting as the sight was, she somehow felt he was now less likely to make any aggressive move towards her. Her grip on her racquet eased.
“Ol’ Rob tell you all about his great tennis career?”
“Why?”
“Oh, I just wondered if he tried to snow you like he’s tried to snow all the others, that’s all.”
“Snow me?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, and wiggled his fingers in a downward motion in the air, “snow, like that white stuff comes outa the sky, or like….”
“Look, I’ve got to go.” Maggie turned and started to walk away. He fell into step with her and she knew there was nothing she could do about it. But at least she was moving.
“He tell you he g
ot hurt at Wimbledon? And that’s why he don’t play the tour no more?”
“What does it matter what he told me? Why do you care?”
“Just trying to do a good deed.” He grinned at her , catching the toothpick before it fell.
“Well, thanks anyway, but….”
“Truth is he got kicked off the tour. Dropped by his coach. Like to guess why?”
“I’m sure you’d like to tell me.”
“Beat up his girlfriend.” He paused, then added with obvious satisfaction, “Yeah, that’s right,” when Maggie turned a stunned face towards him.
When she didn’t comment, he went on. “Got arrested and everything, only the girlfriend decided not to press charges and they had to let him go. Over there in England, you know, this was.”
“Is this true?” Maggie searched his face for credibility. She had done the same to scores of teen-aged boys trying to get away with one thing or another at school. This face, however, was harder to read.
“Sure it’s true. The police couldn’t hold him, but his coach knew what happened. The tournament guys knew. ‘At’s why he got kicked out. But he likes to tell his own story about it, make the girls feel so sorry for him. I just thought I’d save you some trouble.” He went on grinning the whole time he talked, and Maggie was still unsure how seriously to take him. Was he making up a story to get back at Rob for some reason?
“Eric, before my lesson I heard Rob sounding pretty mad at someone. Was that you, by any chance?”
He looked down at her, his grin now reduced to a smirk, then took out his toothpick and studied it. Whether he was planning to answer her or not Maggie never found out because suddenly Dyna’s voice came sailing down the path from around a bend.
“Maggie! Maggie, wait!”
“See you later,” he said, then stepped off the path and disappeared into the trees.
“Maggie! There you are!” Dyna came to a stumbling halt as she caught sight of her friend. Her face was flushed and her hair flew out in several directions.
Mary Ellen Hughes - Maggie Olenski 01 - Resort to Murder Page 6