A Hole In One
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A Hole in One
A Glass Dolphin Mystery
Judy Penz Sheluk
Praise for The Glass Dolphin Mysteries
The Hanged Man’s Noose (#1)
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“A thoroughly engaging debut mystery… well-plotted, well-paced and just plain well done!” — Elizabeth J. Duncan, award-winning author, the Penny Brannigan and Shakespeare in the Catskills mystery series
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“A small town with a dark past, its inhabitants full of secrets, a ruthless developer, and an intrepid reporter with secrets of her own come together to create a can’t-put-down-read.” — Vicki Delany, bestselling author of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery series
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“Compelling characters with hidden connections and a good, old-fashioned amateur sleuth getting in over her head.” — James M. Jackson, author of the Seamus McCree mystery series
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A Hole in One (#2)
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“What fun! A twisty tale chock full of clues and red herrings, antiques and secrets, and relationships that aren’t what they seem.” — Jane K. Cleland, award-winning author, Josie Prescott Antiques mysteries and Mastering Plot Twists
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“A bang-up mystery! Two friends, two murders, secret pasts, and a touch of romance. Who could ask for more?” — Lea Wait, USA Today bestselling author, Shadows Antique Print and Mainely Needlepoint mystery series
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“A well-constructed, well-paced mystery tale grounded in an eclectic cast of characters…a puzzling murder set against a believable portrait of village life...and a fun read that is perfectly paced.” Jim Napier for The Ottawa Review of Books
Praise For The Marketville Mysteries
Skeletons in the Attic (#1)
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“A smartly constructed mystery in the good old-fashioned and highly readable sense.” — Jack Batten, The Toronto Star
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“Callie’s plight grabs the reader from the get-go and, as the plot twists and twists again, you follow her with heart in mouth. Is there any way for this to end well? Yes, there is, and you won’t see it coming!”— Catriona McPherson, award-winning author of The Reek of Red Herrings
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Past & Present (#2)
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“A tense, emotionally gripping, multifaceted mystery that serves both as a perfect continuation of Callie's life story and as a fine stand-alone read for newcomers.” — Midwest Book Review
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“Sheluk nails it with this intriguing mystery that stitches together an investigation into the past with people’s lives in the present—including that of protagonist Callie Barnstable. Treat yourself to a new present-day read—you won’t be disappointed.” — Edith Maxwell, author of the Agatha-nominated Quaker Midwife mystery series
A Fool’s Journey (#3)
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“A compelling page-turning mystery you won’t want to miss.” – Rick Mofina, USA Today bestselling author of The Lying House
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“A well-crafted mystery with fabulous characters and a series of twists and turns that keep you hooked until the end.” — Mike Martin, award-winning author of the Sgt. Windflower mystery series
Also by Judy Penz Sheluk
NOVELS
Glass Dolphin Mysteries
The Hanged Man’s Noose
A Hole in One
Marketville Mysteries
Skeletons in the Attic
Past & Present
A Fool’s Journey
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Best Laid Plans: 21 Stories of Mystery & Suspense (Editor)
Live Free or Tri
Unhappy Endings
SHORT STORIES
Plan D (The Whole She-Bang 2)
Live Free or Die (World Enough and Crime)
Beautiful Killer (Flash and Bang)
Saturdays with Bronwyn (The Whole She-Bang 3)
Goulaigans (The Whole She-Bang 3)
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events described herein are products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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A Hole In One: A Glass Dolphin Mystery #2
Copyright © 2018/2019 Judy Penz Sheluk
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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Edited by Anita Lock and Ti Locke
Cover art by Hunter Martin
Cover Illustration by S.A. Hadi hasan
Published by Superior Shores Press
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ISBN Trade Paperback: 978-1-989495-17-9
ISBN Kobo: 978-1-989495-20-9
First Edition: March 2018
Second Edition: July 2019
For Mike, who keeps on believing
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1
Arabella Carpenter ran her hands over the smooth surface of the shiny new jet ski. It was the hole in one prize at the Second Annual Kids Come First Golf Tournament. The tournament—a charitable initiative supporting program for at-risk youth in the tri-community area of Lount’s
Landing, Miakoda Falls, and Lakeside—was being held at the Miakoda Falls Golf and Country Club.
Somehow, Gillian “Gilly” Germaine, the tournament organizer, had convinced her that sponsoring the contest would be good advertising for Arabella’s Glass Dolphin antiques shop. Well, “convinced” wasn’t entirely accurate. It was her new business partner, Emily Garland, who’d talked her into it, though what jet skis and golf had to do with antiques was beyond Arabella. Nevertheless, their deal was that Emily would be in charge of advertising and promotion, leaving Arabella to concentrate on purchasing and sales. Nixing Emily’s first real A&P idea would have been bad form.
Arabella didn’t have much choice in the matter. Emily had been adamant. A jet ski, she had explained, would be the kind of prize the well-heeled folks in Lakeside would gravitate toward. The Glass Dolphin sponsoring such a prize would give it the sort of chichi street cred that would make them want to visit the shop. Once they made the twenty-five-minute trek to Lount
’s Landing, they were bound to buy something. Especially once they saw the quality of the Glass Dolphin’s merchandise.
“What if someone actually hit a hole in one and they had to give away the jet ski?” Arabella had asked. Emily had a ready answer. The odds were astronomical. The third hole, a nasty par three, was one hundred and forty yards to carry over a pond, another twenty-five yards to the pin, with a thicket of trees on both sides, and a sand trap that beckoned from behind. Downright nasty it was.
Having played the course on a couple of occasions, Arabella had conceded that number three was challenging. But that didn’t make it impossible. Not by a long shot—pun fully intended.
Even better, Emily had countered. “If no one won the jet ski, it would be that day’s news, quickly forgotten. But if someone won, imagine the headlines. For sure it would make the local press, but they might even get some coverage in the Toronto papers, not to mention the rampant word-of-mouth machine that ran in the tri-communities.”
The sound of a golf cart heading in her direction stopped Arabella’s thoughts midstream. She glanced over the green and watched as Emily wound her way along the paved path, a cardboard sign propped up in the basket at the back of the cart. She parked the cart a few feet from where Arabella was standing, hopped off, smoothed out her black golf skort, and positively sprinted over to the jet ski.
As always, Arabella felt a touch of envy at Emily’s glossy, dark hair, now neatly tied into a ponytail, her bangs held gently in place by a black and gold Miakoda Falls Golf and Country Club visor. Arabella’s own hair was a mass of auburn curls that behaved well enough on a cool, dry, winter’s day, but got wilder and woolier as summer’s heat and humidity ratcheted up. On a hot, muggy day like today, it was virtually unmanageable. Stick a cap on top of it and she resembled Bozo the clown. Not exactly the look an almost forty-year-old woman was after, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Even if she took the time to flat iron it straight, it would last all of an hour in this heat.
“Gorgeous,” Emily was saying, her fingers caressing the jet ski. “Too bad we’re ineligible to win.
You know, on the off-chance one of us gets a hole in one.”
“I think the odds of that happening are pretty slim.” And slim just left town.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Wait ’til you see what I’ve got.” Emily ran back to the golf cart, pulled a gold-lettered placard out of the basket, and inserted it into the rectangular tee sign currently advertising the club’s twilight rates, fussing and fidgeting until she got it positioned just right.
“Print It! did a great job, don’t you think? Gave us a good deal, too. I think Harvey felt sorry for me, and to be honest, I did milk getting fired from Inside the Landing to broker a deal. Plus I let him put his Print It! business logo on the bottom.” Emily grinned. “I think that was rather a stroke of genius.”
A good cost-saving idea, sure. A stroke of genius? That might be taking things a bit far. “They look great. The sign, the jet ski. Except I’m the one doing the books, and believe me when I tell you, and not for the first time, that the Glass Dolphin is barely breaking even. I’m just not sure we can afford it.”
Emily sighed. “First off, it’s a bit too late to renege now, the night before the tournament, don’t you think? What would that do to our reputation? Second, I’ve already explained how little money this will actually cost the shop. One good sale should easily cover it. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll go over the numbers one last time.”
“Humor me.”
“Fine. The jet ski is being supplied by Luke’s Lakeside Marina. Luke transported it from the marina, at no cost to us, and he’ll either take it back to the marina after the tournament, or arrange delivery to the winner, should there be one. He’s also springing for half the insurance and fifty percent of the sign, which, as I already told you, is costing us next to nothing. Essentially, we’re co- sponsoring the hole with him.”
Arabella suspected Emily’s relationship with Luke Surmanski ran a lot deeper than co-sponsoring a hole in one contest at a golf tournament, but she let it go. Emily would confide in her when she was ready.
“Explain the insurance again.”
This netted another sigh, along with an exaggerated eye roll. “I gave you the policy to read over two weeks ago. Didn’t you do that?”
Arabella had meant to, but she’d been busy. Then there’d been that two-day multi-estate auction in Pottageville. She’d won more box lots than expected, and had been sorting through them ever since. It wasn’t easy to decide what items to keep for sale in the shop, which to reserve for sale online, and what should be donated to the local ReStore. Before she knew it, the day of the tournament had arrived. She shook her head and did her best to look sufficiently contrite.
The look must have worked, because the exasperation on Emily’s face softened ever so slightly. “I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. I went to Stanford McLelland Insurance Brokerage, and you’ll be happy to know that I dealt directly with Stanford.”
That, at least, made Arabella feel better. Before opening the Glass Dolphin, she’d worked for Stanford doing a variety of claims-related tasks, especially those involving antiques and collectibles. When it came to the insurance business, there wasn’t much the man didn’t know.
“Stanford found a company that specializes in hole in one insurance. That’s all they do, actually.”
Incredible. Here they were, trying to diversify to boost sales, and there was a company that did nothing but sell hole in one insurance.
“How does it work?”
“They calculate the number of golfers participating in the tournament, which in this case is nine holes with four golfers per hole for a grand total of thirty-six, minus our foursome, which leaves thirty-two possible winners. Then they calculate the degree of difficulty for the hole along with the value of the prize. The cost for the Glass Dolphin, all in, is two hundred dollars, which we’ll split down the middle with Luke’s Lakeside Marina.”
“It does sound like you have every angle covered.”
“That’s the spirit. Trust me, nothing will go wrong.”
2
The morning of the tournament was picture perfect, a mid-July day which brought cloudless skies, temperatures in the mid-seventies, and the hint of a gentle breeze. Gone was yesterday’s intense heat, and while the humidity was forecast to return later in the week, Arabella was grateful for the temporary reprieve. She allowed herself to hope that the change of weather bode well for the success of the tournament and Kids Come First, and in turn, that the jet ski strategy would bring customers into the Glass Dolphin. She hadn’t wanted to worry Emily, but the Pottageville purchases had all but obliterated their bank balance. So far, summer sales had been soft. Hot weather sent people to parks, beaches, and ice cream parlors. Shopping for antiques was a long way down on the to-do list.
But today wasn’t the time for negative thoughts. Arabella smiled when she thought about the perfume bottle they were donating to the tournament’s silent auction. It was part of one of the ten- dollar estate sale box lots she’d bought in Pottageville. In amongst the glass doorknobs, embroidered doilies, and an assortment of what looked like polished rocks, but might have been semi-precious stones or crystals, were a half dozen circa 1890s Herman Tappan clear glass figural perfume bottles. Unmarked, yes, the labels long removed, but definitely signature Tappan if you knew your stuff, which thankfully, the estate sellers had not.
To be fair, the Herman Tappan Perfume Company wasn’t a household name in the same way Lalique was. Nonetheless, Tappan had been one of the major American perfume companies during the Victorian era, producing glass novelty perfume bottles shaped like street lamps, ladies’ slippers, baseball bats, birds, and more.
Arabella thought donating one of the bottles to a worthy cause would bring more good luck, not to mention the interest it might bring to the Glass Dolphin—so much more on point than a jet ski. She’d studied each of the six
bottles in the lot and finally selected a figural bottle of a small girl wrapped in wolf skin fur for the auction.
Levon had been at the same sale, and still couldn’t believe he’d missed the perfume bottles. Levon Larroquette was not only her ex-husband, he was also an antiques picker by trade, having taught her most of what she knew. Sure, she’d had to dig a bit under the doorknobs and doilies, but it wasn’t like they’d been invisible. When she’d shown him, afterwards, he’d looked slightly annoyed and more than a little embarrassed.