I dashed into the OB/GYN wing, my rubber golf spikes gripping the shiny floor for dear life. I had just enough oxygen left in my lungs to gasp out my name to the nurse at the round desk and she pointed down the hall and said a number.
When I rushed into the room, Mary Jane was lying in a bed, rails up and a pool of light surrounding her like a sunbeam from heaven. Her hair was a bit tangled and sweaty and she was wearing a hospital gown. She was holding in her arms a bundle of something wrapped in blankets and wearing a tiny little knitted cap on its head. A blue cap.
Mary Jane looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears of happiness.
“Hacker,” she said. “Meet your son, Daniel James Hacker. I think we’ll call him DJ.”
DJ squirmed around a little and let out a sigh. It was a sound of utter contentment.
“I was one over par through twelve,” I said. “At Brookline, for Pete’s sake. I may never forgive him for that.”
I bent down and kissed my wife. Then I kissed the head of my son. He smelled like baby: warm, new and hopeful.
“Oh,” she said. “I think you will.”
JAMES Y. BARTLETT is an award-winning writer, editor and author. His work has appeared in dozens of magazines, including Esquire, Bon Appetit, Forbes FYI, and Hemispheres. He has published six nonfiction books about golf and is the author of the Hacker Golf Mystery series, published by Yeoman House Books. He lives in Rhode Island.
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Hacker and Mary Jane are in Scotland for the Open at St. Andrews. But a dead golf official sets off a chain reaction, with Russians, aristocrats, Mi5, an alcoholic caddie, an anti-golf professor and even a flamboyant American developer creating a Royal & Ancient mystery for the ages!
A body in a bunker at Augusta National sends Hacker off on a mad chase from Magnolia Drive to Aiken, SC to “the Terry” to find, and stay ahead of, a drug cartel assassin. Talk about a drama-filled back nine ... this is a Masters unlike any other!
When a friend invites Hacker to a long weekend of fun at a private country club outside Boston, he leaps at the chance. But a body turns up in the cart barn, and Hacker spends most of the tournament trying to figure out who had the motive and opportunity to do the evil deed. Even the Boston mob gets involved in this case!
As a favor for an old friend, Hacker agrees to cover the LPGA event in Miami. There, he finds that one of the Tour’s stars holds an unhealthy degree of control over the Tour and its players. When he begins to dig in, bodies turn up everywhere and his own life is threatened during the explosive final round! Who said girls always play nice?
Golf reporter Pete Hacker is covering the PGA Tour event in Charleston, S.C., when an up-and-coming Tour star is found dead on the course. Or was he murdered? Hacker digs into the case, tracking a drug-dealing caddie, a bevy of golf groupies and a strange, Bible-thumping Tour chaplain before he finds the killer.
An Open Case of Death Page 24