The Eighteenth Green

by Webb Hubbell

  THE

  EIGHTEENTH

  GREEN

  THE

  EIGHTEENTH

  GREEN

  WEBB HUBBELL

  THE EIGHTEENTH GREEN

  Copyright © 2018 by Webb Hubbell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information, storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Author. Inquiries should be addressed to Webb Hubbell, 820 East Kingston Ave., Charlotte, N.C. 28203. This is a work of fiction. Any characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

  For inquiries about orders, please contact:

  Beaufort Books

  27 West 20th Street, 11th Floor

  New York, NY 10011

  Published in the United States by Beaufort Books

  www.beaufortbooks.com

  Distributed by Midpoint Trade Books

  www.midpointtrade.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN:

  hardcover: 9780825308857

  eBook: 9780825307737

  Cover Design by Michael Short, cover image courtesy of Shutterstock

  Interior Layout Design by Mark Karis

  To:

  Suzy, John, Laura, Pete, and George

  PROLOGUE

  STEVE KOEPPLE WAS A METHODICAL MAN, a man of habit. As head greenskeeper at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland, he began his morning as he always did, traversing the course just before dawn, assessing the condition of the greens and the work needed to make sure they’d be in tip-top condition before play began for the day.

  A golf course is at its best right before the sun rises—when the air is crisp and clean and dew covers every blade of grass. To Steve, Columbia seemed to shimmer as if it were alive and breathing. The acres of green space and stately trees—a sanctuary of green encircled by the suburb’s affluent neighborhoods and bumper-to-bumper traffic—took on a life of their own.

  This morning the course spoke to him—something was wrong, off-kilter; it didn’t feel right. So far, both the fairways and the greens were in good shape, and he shook off his unease as he drove down the long path to the eighteenth green. Climbing out of his cart to get a better view of the elevated green, he saw a motionless lump at the far edge.

  “What now?” he groused, the tinge of unease returning.

  A decent perimeter fence surrounded the course, but critters found a way in; deer were a constant nuisance, and there’d been a few coyote sightings. But deer, and usually coyotes, run at the sight of a golf cart, and this lump wasn’t moving. Steve was sure he was looking at a drunken duffer sleeping it off. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Whoever he was, he wouldn’t appreciate being discovered, so Steve approached gingerly. He knew that an embarrassed club member could make an employee’s life miserable. A club manager in Virginia lost his job after he’d interrupted a member and another member’s wife playing tennis sans clothing on a clay court late at night. The club’s board decided that the manager used poor judgment in disturbing the embarrassed couple; at the least, he should have let them complete their match. No job had a shorter life span than that of a country club manager.

  He feigned a loud cough, hoping the noise would rouse the sleeping man. No such luck. A broken rake lying just off the green caught his eye, and he wondered absently why it was there. He called out, “Hey, fella!” Still there was no movement. Steve sighed, leaned down, and shook the man. The inert figure didn’t move.

  Gathering himself, he hurried back to the cart, where he reached for the walkie-talkie under the dash.

  “Josh, we’ve got a problem. There’s a dead man on the eighteenth green. Call nine-one-one, now!”

  SATURDAY MORNING

  1

  I WAS OUT OF SORTS, had been all week. I figured it was because I hadn’t been able to get in a round of golf for more than three weeks. I was more than ready to get back to my regular Saturday game at Columbia. But as I pulled up to the gate, the security guard stopped me to say the course was closed—no explanation.

  I parked and hurried into the clubhouse, looking for my playing partner, Walter Matthews. I spotted him near the bar, coffee in hand, surrounded by a group of grumbling, would-be golfers. He waved me over, and I asked the obvious question.

  “What’s up? Why’s the course closed? It hasn’t rained in a week. Don’t tell me the President is playing this morning.”

  Sure, it was a big deal for the President to play the course, a huge honor for the club, but most members would happily forego the prestige. The Secret Service demanded a three-hole gap between the President’s foursome and any other group on the course, backing up play everywhere.

  Walter gave me a wry smile. “Nope, that guy only plays at his own courses. The greenskeeper found a body on the eighteenth green early this morning. The police have shut down the whole course, even the driving range.”

  Columbia’s clubhouse overlooks the eighteenth green, so we joined others to stare out the large window. Stakes joined by yellow police tape circled the green, and I could see what looked to be a discolored area on the edge of the manicured grass. The green itself was empty, save for a few guards standing off to one side. The lab guys and detectives must have finished their grisly work.

  I turned to Walter. “A body? Anyone we know?”

  “I hear it’s a man named Spencer, Harold Spencer. I didn’t know him, did you? The gossip is he only played golf on occasion, but was a regular on the tennis courts and at Friday’s poker game.”

  “Sounds familiar, but I can’t place him. Anyone know what happened?”

  “Beaten to death with a sand rake, they say. No one knows why he was out on the course last night; so far, it’s a mystery.”

  With no golf in our future, we found a table and made small talk over fried eggs, country sausage, hash browns, and buttermilk biscuits. Walter has been my best friend, golf partner, and client for years. His wife Margaret—Maggie—and I work together at a small antitrust law firm we started after we left my former law firm.

  Walter and I tried hard, but our conversation was stilted. I mean, a man had been killed with a sand rake, for God’s sake, only a few yards from where we sat. Yet a bunch of golfers, myself included, were eating breakfast and drinking Bloody Marys, trying to pretend nothing had happened. The sorry fact was most of us weren’t too upset about what had happened; it didn’t seem real. We just wanted to play golf.

  The golf pro made the mistake of strolling into the clubhouse. He had no answers to the barrage of questions: “What happened out there? Why can’t you open the driving range? Can’t we at least play the front nine?”

  He left quickly. I scolded myself for being so callous and indifferent about the fate of Harold Spencer.

  I was all at sixes and sevens. Truth is, I’m a man who likes routine, and now I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. I thought about driving out to the Eastern Shore to meet Carol Madison at her weekend home. Carol and I had been seeing each other non-stop for months, and we’d just had our first serious disagreement over my decision to play golf instead of spending the weekend with her.

  Carol was a political consultant—not a lobbyist, but a very discreet, very successful Washington political consultant, whose business was gathering information from the powers that be and feeding that information to her clients and their lobbyists. For example, after severa
l cocktails a senator might confide to Carol that his finances were shaky. She’d pass that information on to her client, who would help straighten out his finances by asking a particular organization to invite the senator to give a speech—in exchange for a generous honorarium. No quid pro quo was mentioned, but the senator would remember the favor when the client’s lobbyist came knocking.

  Carol never acted as a lobbyist, and seldom knew how the information she gathered was used. She preferred it that way. She was a gatherer and conduit of information in a city where information was power, and for that information she was paid well.

  Most every weekend when Congress was in session, Carol invited a few select clients to join carefully selected members of Congress and high-ranking officials in the administration at her second home on the Eastern Shore. These house parties provided the perfect opportunity to enjoy a weekend of tennis, boating, and good food while making the right connections in a very private setting.

  As of late, I’d been a regular at these weekends, but the weekends were business for her. I’d tried to engage with her other guests, but I didn’t have much in common with DC politicos at that level. I also hadn’t played tennis since Angie died. I spent all day by Carol’s pool, eating and drinking too much. I was tired of missing my usual Saturday round of golf, so at lunch with Carol on Monday I’d suggested an alternative—this week I would play golf on Saturday and drive up on Sunday.

  “If golf is that damned important, why not play the entire weekend?” she snapped.

  Our lunch ended in stony silence, neither of us willing to back down. By Thursday I’d gotten over my bullheadedness and called to apologize. She continued to huff at my “misplaced priorities and need to have things my way,” so I ate more crow, and we made a date for Monday’s baseball game.

  The more I weighed calling her now that golf was cancelled, the more I thought better of it. I’d stay home, relax, or maybe catch a movie.

  We had reached a point when it was time to talk about “priorities.” Carol was my first real relationship since the death of my wife Angie five years ago. But how serious was I, or was she, for that matter? We’d both been going with the flow, avoiding the tipping point.

  I loved being with her. She was classy, intelligent, and knew more about baseball than any woman I’d ever known. The sex wasn’t bad either—oh, who was I kidding—the sex was terrific. I didn’t enjoy the DC cocktail circuit or the power weekends that were an essential part of her business, but I sure didn’t want some other guy to fill in as her “special guest” at such events. I was willing to meet her more than halfway.

  I felt a jolt at my arm and realized that Walter was handing me his cell phone. “Maggie,” he said, grinning.

  “Left your phone at home again, didn’t you?” she asked with a touch of annoyance.

  “Guilty as charged,” I laughed. “What’s up?”

  “Clovis has been trying to reach you all morning. I told him you were playing golf, but I’d see what I could do. If Walter hadn’t answered, I would have called the pro shop and had you pulled off the course. He sounds that desperate.”

  “Any idea what’s bothering him?”

  “I haven’t a clue. You know Clovis, nothing fazes him. But this time—well, I’ve never heard him so frazzled. It’s a bit worrisome.”

  Walter waited in silence as I punched in Clovis’s number.

  I’d met Clovis Jones several years ago when I returned to Little Rock to help my long-time friend, Woody Cole. Woody had been arrested for shooting Arkansas’s Senator Russell Robinson in the State Capitol Rotunda. Clovis was my lead investigator and provided security for my team during that case. Since then he’d played a major role in every high-profile case I had. He’d saved my bacon more times than I cared to think about, and we’d become close friends. I’d spent a week every spring with him in Arkansas fishing for trout on the White River, and it was easy to talk him into coming to DC to watch the Nats.

  Clovis answered on the first ring.

  “Thank God Maggie found you. How soon can you get here?”

  “Slow down, Clovis. What’s up?” I asked.

  “Ben is about to mortgage his place and hire that damn fool Les Butterman to represent his daughter. Butterman will take every penny Ben’s got and plead her out like he does every poor fool who hires him. Ben’s too damn proud to ask you for help, so I’m asking for him—you need to get your ass down here.”

  Ben Jennings had been—well, not exactly a second father, but a safe haven for me when I was growing up in Little Rock. For as long as I’d known him, he’d owned and run a barbeque restaurant on the south side of town that made the best chopped pork sandwiches, ribs, and hush puppies anywhere, and I mean anywhere. He was a family man to the core. His wife Linda and his kids, Ben Jr., Lee, and Rochelle meant the world to him.

  I tried again. “Slow down, Clovis. What are you talking about? Is Rochelle in legal trouble? Why can’t Micki handle it?” I held the phone so Walter could hear, too.

  “Don’t they have television in DC? Ben’s daughter is Rachel Goodman, for God’s sake, the woman accused of spying for Israel and stealing military secrets. Hell, Jack, she’s been on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Where have you been—holed up in a cave?

  First, my golf game had been cancelled, and now Clovis was trying to pull off some weird joke. It wasn’t funny. If Ben’s daughter was a spy, then I was the King of England.

  2

  I SPOKE WITH IRRITATION. “Ben has one daughter, and her name is Rochelle. I haven’t seen her in years, but there’s no way in hell that Rochelle is a spy. Are you and Stella in town?”

  Clovis’s significant other, Stella Rice, did computer consulting for Walter’s companies, so it wouldn’t be unusual for the two of them to come to DC unannounced. I expected Clovis to laugh, but his voice remained tight.

  “Since you haven’t seen her in years, you wouldn’t know that Rochelle got married a few years back and changed her name. It’s too long a story to get into, but the Rochelle Jennings you knew is now the Rachel Goodman you’ve been reading about in the papers. You need to come to Little Rock.”

  I could hardly believe my ears. Surely he was mistaken. Surely Rochelle wasn’t the Rachel I’d seen in the headlines. “Hold on a minute,” I replied, putting the phone down on the table.

  “Walter, any chance I can charter your plane for the weekend?”

  “Sorry, but no, you can’t.”

  The awkward silence only lasted for a few seconds, before Walter flashed that sneaky grin I’d come to know and enjoy.

  “But you can use it gratis for as long as you need it. I’ll ask my pilot to be ready to leave by one o’clock. Does that work for you? Do you need Maggie? We’re supposed to go to the symphony tonight but we can cancel.”

  I was no longer surprised by Walter’s spontaneous generosity. Thankful, but not surprised.

  “The timing is perfect, thanks. I have no idea what to expect, but there’s no need for Maggie to make the trip. But I do need to talk to Ben in person before he hires that shyster Butterman. Sorry, Walter, but I can’t get you out of this evening’s concert.”

  I picked up the phone and said, “I should be there around three o’clock your time this afternoon. I’ll text you before we take off. See if you can get me a room at the Armitage. If it’s booked, try the Marriott. Just don’t let Butterman anywhere near Ben until I get there.”

  “Got it. Ben will be thrilled. This thing’s really gotten to him; it’s way outside his wheelhouse. I’ll give Micki and Sam a heads-up, too. We wondered if you’d fallen off the map, or maybe Carol wouldn’t give you a hall pass. I guess I should’ve called earlier. I’ll see you at the airport.”

  His comment about Carol stung—I hoped he meant it in jest. As I handed the phone to Walter, my mind wandered to what little I had read about the Rachel Goodman who had been accused of espionage.

  She had graduated with honors from the University of Virginia, maj
oring in Arabic Studies, and taken a job with the Justice Department in New York. In the course of her work she had met and fallen in love with a young Jewish Rabbi, Ira Goodman. They had married and soon moved to DC. Two years ago he was the lone American victim of a rocket attack that killed more than twenty people at an outdoor restaurant in Jerusalem. The Israeli government blamed Hamas, but no one was ever arrested.

  I heard Walter push his chair back, and I returned to the present.

  “Thank you again, Walter. You know how grateful I am.”

  “I’d ask you to bring back a couple of bottles of Ben’s barbeque sauce, but not this time. How on earth could Rachel Goodman turn out to be Ben’s daughter?” He shook his head in disbelief, but continued before I could get in a word.

  “Here’s the thing, Jack. I think the world of Ben, but if the allegations about his daughter prove to be true, I’ll have a hard time with this one. I’ll keep an open mind for Ben’s sake, but . . . stealing military secrets is hard to condone.”

  I wasn’t surprised by his reaction. When the story hit the papers, I’d felt much the same way. Only my lawyer’s caution and the presumption of innocence had tempered my outrage. I couldn’t imagine any excuse for stealing military secrets and turning them over to another government, even an ally like Israel.

  I hurried home to pack and call Maggie. When I told her Ben was about to hire Les Butterman, I wasn’t surprised by her reaction. We’d met Les during the Cole matter, and she’d had a visceral reaction to the man. Who wouldn’t? Oily, slicked-back hair, bad manners, cock-sure of himself, with a sexist attitude to boot. He was the kind of lawyer who gives all lawyers a bad name.

  “Don’t you dare let that sleaze bucket anywhere near Ben,” Maggie fumed.

  “Thanks to your husband’s generosity, I’m on my way to Little Rock right now. Sure you don’t want to hitch a ride so you can give your regards to ole Les? I know he’d love to see you,” I teased.