Deadly Divots

by Gene Breaznell

  “They’ll live.”

  “Maybe I won’t.”

  “What do you mean? You said you have no lessons.”

  “Some of these members ride me so hard when the course gets closed, I can’t tell if my butt’s been punched or bored.”

  “Could one of those members be Dr. Fitch?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “He coulda busted a club over my head this mornin’. Or wrapped a noose around my neck and strung me up from the rafters.”

  “He’s the violent type?”

  “My best customer for new clubs and repairs. He don’t play a round without bustin’ somethin’.”

  I withdrew a shiny new iron from a floor display. “These are expensive, aren’t they?”

  “Like ’em, Detective?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “You can have that set right there at my cost.”

  “Feels pretty good,” I said, trying out my new grip. I had recently made a change, mostly for the worse. And I was tempted. My clubs are older than white dog crap.

  “It’ll cut your handicap in half.”

  Like O’Reilly’s temple?

  “Sand Wedge,” I read the stamping on the bottom of the blade. Could a club like this stop me from playing like pastrami on rye?

  “That’ll get you under any ball,” Jones said, “no matter what the lie.”

  “It’s also a lethal weapon.”

  “Just another part of the golfer’s arsenal.”

  “How would you use it?” I handed it to him.

  He carefully set his grip with a well-practiced hip shake and shoulder wag, waving the club head, addressing an imaginary ball on the plush carpet.

  “Not like that,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Like Barry Bonds hits a baseball. How would you hit someone who’s standing up, in the side of the head?”

  Jones raised the club to his right shoulder, looking pleased to oblige. Shuffling his feet, as if digging into the batter’s box. Waggling his hips and the sand wedge, ready for a Roger Clemens fastball. Suddenly taking a wicked swing at me. I flinched, but the flashing blade stopped barely an inch from my forehead.

  “That’s a little too close for comfort,” I said, upset but trying not to show it.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jones, his grin now wider than the state of Texas. “I can handle these things.”

  “You’re right-handed,” I observed, as calmly as possible. I felt like shouting, You could have killed me, you idiot!

  “Never seen a lefty golf swing worth a damn,” he said, lowering the weapon. “’Cept Phil Mickelson, who couldn’t take a major if they gave it to him.”

  O’Reilly’s apparently fatal head wound was on the left side of his cranium. If he had been facing the water hazard, relieving himself as his open fly indicated, and was hit from behind with a golf club, it would have been a left-handed swing.

  “Who golfs lefty around here?” I asked, also wishing that I could play like Mickelson, though I’d win a major in my dreams.

  “They’re few and far between,” Jones said, seeming not to mind “golf” as a verb. “Come to think of it,” he added, “Dr. Fitch is a southpaw.”

  “You sure?”

  “With a swing like one of them big ol’ pretzels you get at the ballpark. A thousand lessons couldn’t cure it.”

  “You’ve tried?”

  “He took one lesson, quit in a huff, and busted another club. I’ve seen him heave a whole bag of new clubs into a water hazard.”

  “His temper’s that bad?”

  “No patience,” Jones grinned. “That’s bad for a doctor, ain’t it?”

  I had to smile. Though his jokes were cornier than Hee-Haw and his Texas twang annoyed me, he was oddly engaging. And handsome. He must be a hit with the ladies.

  “Dr. Fitch tried teachin’ me in that lesson,” he added. “Told me I had a slice stance, which I don’t. Couldn’t remember when I last sliced one. But it stuck in my mind and messed me up for a month. I sliced more balls than the rib roast they serve at Sunday brunch.”

  “Been there, done that,” I said. “Though I’m mostly a hooker, so to speak.”

  Slices glance in one direction when the club face is too open, hooks bend in the opposite direction when the face is too closed.

  “It should be easier to keep them straight,” I added. “The power of suggestion can be awfully strong, and there’s too much time to think.”

  “Like detective work?” Jones said. “That’s all about thinkin’, ain’t it?”

  “Not always . . .” Sometimes it’s reflex—conditioned, of course. Like letting go at the top of your swing. Like tying big guys like you up in knots.

  “How ’bout it, Detective?” Jones handed back the sand wedge. “Buy this set and I’ll throw in a free lesson. If you promise not to wrap a club around my neck or try to teach me.”

  “I’m not so patient either,” I admitted, setting the club back in the display. “And I’ll never be good enough for these.”

  “Never’s a long time,” Jones told me. “My daddy shot a seventy-six on his seventy-sixth birthday. ’Course he died a day later.”

  My old man died in the line of duty. Shot by a pimp. He was forty-six.

  “Where in Texas are you from?” I asked.

  “Big D,” Jones drawled.

  “Dallas?”

  “It ain’t Denver or De–troit.”

  “How long you been a golf pro?”

  “I’ve done ten years,” he said, as though it were prison time. I made a mental note to check his criminal record.

  “Good life?”

  “Mostly, I guess. Broken Oak’s a pretty good club, but it ain’t the PGA tour or the Skins game.”

  “Looks like a nice pro shop,” I said. “Must bring in a pretty penny.”

  The surrounding shelves and display cases were loaded with designer clothes and the latest golf fashions for men and women, putting my golf wardrobe in its place. Frayed khaki shorts, T-shirts with beer logos, and a Yankees baseball cap that’s older than Derek Jeter are par for the public links.

  “Looks can be deceivin’,” Jones said. “What with all them big sports stores these days, the members here ain’t breakin’ down my doors. How ’bout those irons at my cost?”

  “No thanks.” But I’ll think about it.

  “These members are loaded, but you’d think some of ’em don’t have two nickels to rub together. Sure. My prices are higher. But I’m providin’ a service, and they oughta support it.”

  “At least you get to play,” I said. It was easy to like Jones. I hoped I didn’t have to arrest him for murder.

  “Not much,” he complained.

  “Play yesterday?”

  “By myself, toward evening. Only a few practice holes.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “Slim, maybe.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “One of our caddies. Been here forever. Slim sees everything.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Could be Pickins, for all I know. You can find him out by the caddy shack.”

  “I thought it was all carts these days.”

  “Some folks still walk. Mostly for the exercise. Some think walkin’ makes ’em play better.”

  “I like it too,” I said. It’s also a lot cheaper. “But why would O’Reilly walk the course at night?”

  “That’s easy,” Jones grinned from ear to ear. “Mr. O’Reilly was workin’ on his night moves.”

  “Wasn’t that a song?”

  “Bob Seeger, a good ole boy.”

  “From Texas?”

  “Not sure, but I like the song. ’Bout a guy makin’ out with a hot young thing in his ’60 Chevy. Remember, Detective?”

  The song, or making out?

  “Of course I remember. I’m not that old.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I got lost in the mansion’s maze of anterooms
and hallways while looking for the manager’s office. I don’t mind getting lost. I’ve stumbled across some great clues that way. I wandered into a mahogany-paneled parlor filled with dark antique furniture and oil paintings. Carol would have loved it. She was always dragging me to the antique and art shops over in Cold Spring Harbor, where the prices left me cold and wishing I was on the golf course. Though I do not mind window-shopping. She was always talking about the old masters, when she wasn’t watching the Antiques Roadshow. I was always talking about the Masters in Augusta and the PGA. I’d rather have a good chip shot than a Chippendale. And Duncan Phyfe may as well be a cake mix. I’m more interested in antiques and oils when they’re stolen. But I wish Carol was around to take me antiquing again. I’d hide my sticker shock, even watch PBS with her.

  The parlor had a huge fireplace with a spit for roasting pigs. Not this pig. I will find O’Reilly’s killer and bring him to justice without questioning suspects with a plunger handle. I will not turn and burn eternally on the spit in a Broken Oak fireplace, while members like Dr. Fitch spit at me and my wife waits in vain on the lathe of heaven.

  I heard a voice behind me, seeming to come from a marble bust of Homer.

  “May I help you?” asked a small, balding man.

  He must have come out of the woodwork like a termite. Or used a hidden door in the paneling like an old horror flick. His mouth barely opened as he spoke. Locust Valley lockjaw, it’s called around here. An affliction on Long Island’s Gold Coast that makes the rich ventriloquists. And seers, apparently. The guy knew instantly that I was not a club member and could never be one.

  I flashed my ID, as I had with Al Jones. This time, however, I felt like a flasher.

  “It must be about Mr. O’Reilly,” he said, like there’s a fly in his soup and I’m his waiter.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Randy Randall. I own Broken Oak and I manage the club. Perhaps you have heard of my aunt, Dame Winifred Randall?”

  “Who hasn’t?” Just don’t ask me if I’ve read any of her books.

  “Have you read any of her books?”

  “Of course,” I lied.

  Though I had read several pages of something by the old Dame, urged by Carol, the prissy little tec, desolate settings, stuffy suspects, and red herrings on every page left me colder than gazpacho. I don’t like fish either. Our house always smelled like herring when I was growing up. Charity catch, fish too ripe to sell, from a fishmonger friend of the family in Sheepshead Bay.

  “Which do you like best?” Randall asked.

  “They’re all good,” I lied again. I always fell asleep during the first few pages, then lost my place when the book hit the floor and had to start over. I couldn’t even remember the title.

  “I wish we had time to discuss each one,” I continued, weaving a web more tangled than any of his aunt’s tortured plots. But I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Of course,” Randall smiled crookedly. “I know enough about detective work from my aunt’s books to understand the procedure.”

  We’ll see about that.

  “You knew Mr. O’Reilly?”

  “What a terrible accident.”

  “We’re not so sure.”

  “You suspect foul play?”

  “You knew O’Reilly?”

  “I know all the members. I screen and approve them.” Randall’s mouth stayed shut, like a screen door during blackfly season.

  “You approved him?”

  “Regretfully.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He was trying to acquire this property. And cover it with condos.”

  “A developer?”

  “A complete misnomer, Detective. O’Reilly was a destroyer who would have razed this wonderful, historical monument to my aunt and her marvelous work.”

  I would raze the ugly pile too, but I’d keep the golf course.

  “But you said you own the place.”

  “I am the major shareholder.”

  “This a country club or the New York Stock Exchange?”

  “The property taxes and upkeep costs are exorbitant, Detective. I was forced to incorporate and sell shares.”

  “Which means you’re subject to hostile takeovers?”

  “Something like that. At least, where O’Reilly was concerned, hostile is the correct word.”

  “Explain?”

  “He was dying to get his hands on this property.”

  “He got part of his wish,” I shrugged.

  “He got what he deserved.” Randall smiled crookedly again.

  “You deserve to be a suspect?” I asked.

  “Hardly, Detective. O’Reilly was really no threat. I believe that he was broke, and I’m nearly solvent.”

  “Nearly?”

  “I’d be doing a lot better if my aunt had also left me the rights to her books. An even one hundred to be exact. She began writing in the 1920s and continued to the day she died in this very parlor. She collapsed into that fireplace. The servants were off and no one found her for days. But you probably know all that.”

  “I know all her books were best-sellers,” I said. That was all I knew. Thanks to Carol, who had read enough Dame Winifred mysteries to peg a Ph.D. on, while I failed to manage the first few pages.

  “All still in print, Detective. Unlike my aunt, very much alive.”

  “Unlike O’Reilly,” I added.

  “You wouldn’t believe the royalties and the movie rights,” Randall continued, like O’Reilly was yesterday’s news. “Unfortunately, she left all that to her favorite nephew, not to me. She had a strange sense of humor.”

  “I could have sold out,” Randall added, brushing an imagined spot off the sleeve of his Brooks Brothers jacket. “I could have walked away with a tidy sum and no headaches. But that’s not my way. Too many of these wonderful old estates get parceled out and plundered. There will soon be none left.”

  “Damn developers,” I said, straightening my Sears necktie, attempting to egg him on.

  “Very clever,” said Randall. “I understand your method and your persistence. You may well be a match for my aunt’s protagonist. I suppose he is somewhat dated, what with modern forensics and all. But he always got the killer.”

  “Me too.”

  “I can see that you have some of the same, shall I say, pride in your work.”

  “Job’s a job. Now let’s get back to this murder. O’Reilly had one hell of a head wound. And what you’ve just told me makes you a prime suspect.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Detective. I’ve done my homework. O’Reilly was no threat. All bombast, persiflage, flat broke.”

  “He was wearing a gold Rolex.”

  “Everything’s relative,” Randall said, glancing at my plastic jogger’s watch. Letting me know, in no uncertain terms, that the membership costs are also murder.

  “Relatives are always suspect,” I countered.

  “Very clever, Detective. But I am in no way related to Mr. O’Reilly. Nor am I as profligate.”

  “That a euphemism for skirt chaser and boozer?”

  Randall winced. Offended by an apt description of O’Reilly’s activities, or a cop knowing a word like euphemism? “That means he spent extravagantly in the pro shop,” he said, “even more in the restaurant and bar, though he was in over his head. He was also posted every month.”

  “Don’t some of your members do that on purpose?” I asked.

  “Not Mr. O’Reilly,” he insisted.

  “How do you know?”

  “I ran a credit check.” Randall smiled slightly, brushing the other sleeve of his natty jacket, checking his look in a gold-leaf mirror. “I normally respect a member’s privacy and go to great lengths to protect it, but it’s sort of a hobby.”

  “Sounds more like good business,” I said, though I wasn’t born yesterday. He was worried to death about O’Reilly buying him out and bulldozing this mausoleum.

  “Even you must have a hobby, Detec
tive.”

  “I’m a golfer,” I admitted.

  “Really?” said Randall, as if saying, Who isn’t, these days?

  “But your golf pro told me O’Reilly was a miser, and you just said he dropped a bundle in the pro shop.”

  “Not on clothing or equipment, as I recall. Every month, however, there was a hefty charge for lessons.”

  “Your pro also told me he wasn’t much of a lesson taker.”

  “Correct. But his wife took a lesson nearly every day. Oddly, she never had a charge for carts, caddies, or greens fees. I don’t think she’s ever played a round.”

  “But she played around?” I smiled slyly.

  “I understand the innuendo, Detective.” Randall raised an eyebrow, though his jaws stayed wired. “You are quite clever. Quite like my aunt’s protagonist. Let’s just say it’s par for the course, as the saying is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Al Jones, tall, handsome, charming, single, in case you haven’t noticed, handles a great many lessons like that.”

  “Is that why you hired him?” You a pimp or something? This a country club or a cathouse?

  “Hardly,” Randall frowned. “He is extremely discreet, and a wonderful teacher. I have never heard so much as a whisper about any indiscretions.”

  “Was he putting the wood to Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  “Does that have something to do with a driver?”

  “Was he fucking her?”

  “How direct.” Randall sniffed. “But I have told you all I know.”

  “About the virtue of handsome itinerant golf pros and bored horny housewives?”

  “Honi soit qui mal y pense, Detective.”

  Say that in English, you smug pseudo-intellectual.

  “Were you at the cocktail party last night?” I asked.

  “Working, as usual. You would not believe my hours.”

  “Was Al Jones there?”

  Randall shook his head.

  “Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  “I believe she’s been away. Possibly in Florida. They were getting a divorce, you know.”

  I nodded. We had already informed her of her husband’s untimely demise and she was on her way back from the Sunshine State.

  “You sure your pro had nothing to do with their marital problems?” I probed, like a dedicated proctologist. Though Randall frowned again, I got the feeling he might enjoy a proctological exam from someone like Fabio.