Deadly Divots

by Gene Breaznell

  “Instead of hoarding it down at headquarters, hanging me out to dry?”

  “He said we’re sorry.” Kowalski continued grinning.

  “Sure. What about his life insurance?”

  “He didn’t have any,” Gleason said.

  “In fact,” said Kowalski, “his wife’s gotta come up with some serious coin to keep that house.”

  “Jones was stupid if he offed him for money,” Gleason said.

  “Stupider if he did it to get the fucker’s wife when she was already getting divorced,” Kowalski said.

  “You figure she put him up to it?” Gleason asked.

  “What else?” Kowalski said, as if he had written the homicide handbook. “She didn’t have to let him know her husband was broke.”

  “I’d have done it if she didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” I said, flashing back to her bouncing naked on the diving board. I almost said two nipples.

  “Can you crack her?” Gleason asked.

  “Sounds like he’d like to,” Kowalski winked at me.

  “She’s smart and she’s tough,” I told them, ignoring the innuendo, trying to sound clinical.

  “Could she have done this?”

  “She could have done this to keep him quiet,” Gleason interrupted me, as forensics prepared to lift Jones out of the trunk.

  “She could also have done it for revenge,” said Kowalski.

  “She was divorcing the SOB,” I said brightly. “There was no love lost between them.”

  “Some divorces are amicable.”

  “So I’ve heard, along with other urban legends.”

  “You’re a legend in your own mind, Kanopka.”

  “And you’re a protean Polack genius.”

  “Hey. I’m your—”

  “Sorry. You’re a protean Polack genius, Captain Kowalski.”

  “Cut it out, you two,” Gleason said. “There’s also a heel print at the murder scene that matches Jones’s golf shoes.”

  “So what?” said Kowalski. “There must be a million heel prints out there.”

  “That’s strong stuff.” Gleason smacked his lips, as if he’d just downed a shot of Old Bushmills.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Kowalski. “O’Reilly was murdered out on the golf course, by a water hazard, around midnight, by a guy wearing golf shoes?”

  “What are you driving at?” Gleason asked, golf pun unintended.

  “Who plays golf in the dark?” Kowalski said.

  “Golf pros, caught in the daily routine of lessons, filling out foursomes, running the shop, what have you, often wear their spikes around the clock.” I think I smirked at him.

  “Like cops always carry their pieces?”

  “Precisely,” I said. I didn’t dare say précisement. Anyway, the two captains seemed to accept the analogy.

  “The course gets damp at night,” I added. “Jones could have been wearing the spikes to make sure of his murder stance.”

  “Which makes it premeditated,” Gleason said.

  “That’s nice,” Kowalski smirked back at me. “Murder in the first. Now we can put him away for life. Oh, I forgot. He’s already dead.”

  Gleason said, “Five iron last time, wasn’t it?”

  “With ashes on it,” I said.

  “Ashes?” They both looked surprised.

  “From a campfire, or something like that. Forensics found them in the head wound.”

  We watched forensics lifting the body, curled like an Iron Age corpse in a peat bog.

  Gleason nodded, considering my information. Kowalski could not help opening his big yap one more time.

  “If this guy’s head wound also has ashes,” he said, “I bet it’s from the same weapon.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “Okay. At least it’s gotta be the same killer.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Even the head wound’s on the same side. A lefty whacked O’Reilly. Right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Looks like a lefty whacked this guy, too.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Another definite maybe?” asked Kowalski. “You should know how these things work. It’s the same killer. I’d stake your reputation on it.”

  “Why you Pecksniffian putz.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t know what a putz is?”

  “Of course. It’s that other word. And don’t forget—”

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  I’m not sure what Pecksniffian means, but my wife used it occasionally and it sounds pretty bad. I hope it means someone who sniffs peckers.

  “You know,” Kowalski’s eyes narrowed, “we can take you off this case.”

  “Calm down,” Gleason broke in. “I only want to know if it’s the same murder weapon.”

  Before I could answer, a young woman from forensics ventured, “It’s quite possible.”

  The ME, the one I disliked, overheard her, and asked, “You a golfer?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “Then what do you know about club selection?” he said, with a glare that warned her not to offer any more opinions.

  That irked me. I welcome opinions. Even from know-italls like Kowalski. It shows confidence, though most often misguided in Kowalski’s case. It’s like going for the green in one shot over woods or water instead of playing it safe. It’s the only way to go when you’re cornered. I can also play it safe, the only way this ME plays it. So he’s only allowed to work on stiffs and hide behind microscopes. I would have told him so, if I wasn’t under the microscope myself.

  “There’s no blood in the car or in the trunk,” said another forensics person, waving a high-powered flashlight.

  “Any on the ground?” I asked.

  “Not that we’ve found.”

  “Which means he was killed somewhere else?”

  “Of course,” Kowalski said, as if he’d authored the Forensics Manifesto.

  “Where?” I asked. “That’s the question.”

  “Out on the golf course, of course,” Kowalski shrugged.

  “In the mansion?” Gleason said.

  “What about O’Reilly’s house?” I said.

  “You think a woman did this?”

  “Why not?”

  Mrs. O could have whacked Jones, though her golf swing sucked. What irony if, during all those lessons, her eye was on his cranium instead of the ball. But Jones was a big guy, and she might not be strong enough to dump him into the trunk. She could have had some help. But who? And why? Had she put Jones up to murdering her husband? Was she afraid he’d break down under Kowalski’s clever questioning? I’ll have to wait again for forensics. For the approximate time of death, possible location, probable murder weapon. All definite maybes. I’d better not tell Kowalski.

  “A guy that size looks odd in the fetal position,” I said, as they loaded Jones into the meat wagon.

  “You finished with his car?” Gleason asked someone else from forensics, as they tidied up.

  “Not by a long shot. We’re taking it back to the lab.”

  “Bet it’s the same killer,” Kowalski repeated, like a broken record.

  “Still my case?” I asked Gleason, without expression.

  To my surprise, Kowalski answered, emphatically, “Of course it is.”

  Maybe he’s not such a doofus. Or maybe he just can’t wait to watch me fall flat on my face.

  “By the way,” Gleason asked, “what made you look in the trunk?”

  Well, you see, I was sitting out here in the parking lot, reading an old paperback. No. I’d never admit that. Nor would I admit that Murder on the Moor had prompted me, that Algernon Spotswood’s body in a steamer trunk on the Orient Express got me off my duff. They’d think I was crazy and take me off the case. Sorry, Dame Winifred.

  “Just a hunch,” I answered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  At 3:00 A.M. everyone was gone, along with Al Jones’s body in
the meat wagon and his Crown Vic. I stood alone in the empty parking lot, pondering murder in the dark. Not the Broken Oak murders, but Murder on the Moor . Damn that dated little tome. Its title kept running through my mind. Visions of Algernon Spotswood stuffed in a steamer trunk on the Orient Express kept flashing before my eyes like a slide show. I should toss it into the nearest trash can, give myself the good old wham-bam for wasting time, and get back to reality.

  I finally climbed into my car, the obstacle of my prime suspect having been whacked. I was feeling like a new golfer who’s been forced to play Bethpage Black, though his best drive carries only 150 yards and you need at least 200 to make most of the fairways.

  Instead of heading home to get some sleep, I sat and stared at Dame Winifred’s gothic manse, looming like the progenitor of evil, replete with spires and gargoyles. Mesmerizing my weary eyes in the stygian predawn. Then a light went on, not in my blurry brain but in a window up behind a spire and two gargoyles. In the wing where Randy Randall had stopped me from searching for Al Jones. I meant to ask him earlier: What’s behind that padlocked door? when he was out in the parking lot seeing what all the commotion was about. Before Gleason and Kowalski accosted me.

  Randall had been shocked by the second murder but soon became indignant. “Our members will leave in droves,” he complained, threatening to have my badge if I fail to “solve these unfortunate incidents immediately and preserve Broken Oak’s impeccable reputation.” What’s he been smoking? Calling cold-blooded murder an unfortunate incident is like calling 9/11 an airplane accident. Randall’s obviously the type who talks back to traffic cops and always gets the ticket. Even Gleason and Kowalski, who seem more concerned these days about public reaction to crime than about the cop on the beat, were annoyed at Randall for attacking me. They were more annoyed, however, at his failure to provide coffee and sandwiches. Come to think of it, that also annoyed me.

  I climbed out of my car and headed for the light in the window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In the massive door frame, the tiny button looked more like a knot than a doorbell. No one answered when I pressed, but I pressed only once, and not too hard. It was 4:00 A.M. and Randy Randall was sawing logs. He’s not a bad person, unless he murdered O’Reilly for threatening to form a cartel, buy Broken Oak, raze his beloved aunt’s mansion, plow under the golf course, cover it with condos and tract housing. Or put his golf pro up to the deed, then killed him to cover it up.

  Who could hear a bell in a mansion this big, anyway? By the time you got to the door, the caller would be gone. Which could be good, if it was a salesperson, a serial killer, or a politician. I considered using the huge wrought iron door knocker that would surely awaken the dead. Instead, I tested the latch, only for Randall’s protection of course, and found the door unlocked. He should be more careful with a killer on the loose. Unless it’s him. Unless he left the door unlocked for us cops to come in and use the bathroom. Yeah. Right. Randall was so inhospitable we joked about “pulling O’Reilly’s” and peeing into the water hazards.

  Randall could have left the door unlocked hoping to be robbed and vandalized, giving him an excuse to close the club and collect insurance, while commotion over the murders subsides. He could also be luring me in to bring me up on trespass charges. Maybe he wants my tin badge, like a trophy in the men’s grill. Like a tin cup in that Kevin Cost-ner golf movie. Or he could be hiding behind his arras, waiting to whack me with some medieval weapon, a mace or a mashie, with the plausible excuse that he thought I was the killer. Taking a wicked divot in my half-Polack cranium, smiling all the while. Okay. Maybe I am letting my imagination run away with me.

  I opened the great front door, barely wide enough to slip inside, and quietly shut it behind me. It made no noise at all, which seemed odd for such a heavy door. Only bank vault doors are just as quiet.

  It was also uncannily quiet inside the main entrance hall. Dame Winifred, in oil, was still dramatically displayed in a shaft of moonlight through a lead-mullioned window, looking saucier than Escoffier, my wife would have punned. Anyway, moonlight became the grande dame of the mystery genre. The dame must have gotten a kick out of me creeping past her portrait into abyssal darkness, hackles raised like Freddie Kruger’s stalking me. Her enigmatic smile, like the Mona Lisa, mocked my consternation at the paltry plot twist of the murder of my prime suspect. It pales compared to her contrivances.

  I wished I could bull my way through this place like the day before, when I believed I was in hot pursuit of the horny golf pro. At least hot pursuit has a definite objective, like hitting a golf ball. Golf balls and killers on the lam are often unpredictable, though. At least I remembered how to get upstairs this way. Along the main entrance hall, through a hidden door in the wood paneling, to a stairwell. I only hoped I could find the hidden door in the dark.

  Moving like a cat burglar, I finally found the secret latch Randy Randall had showed me. I turned it and the door sighed open, as if I’d loosed Dame Winifred’s lacy bodice.

  I stepped inside the stairwell, worried about each creaking step betraying my presence. I also worried about Randall waiting at the top of the stairs with a five iron or a fire ax. I had noticed a few fire axes the day before. They are requirements for public buildings, and also Lizzie Borden types.

  I could feel the mansion breathing as it exhaled the sigh released by the hidden door. But the breathing suddenly stopped. My progress up the spiral stairs became purely mechanical. Utilitarian, no longer beguiling. The mansion was now annoyed at my intrusion. The formerly randy Dame Winifred had rapidly relaced her bodice and longed to put my neck in a noose.

  I pulled my snub-nose from its holster and plodded on.

  There were no fiends with five irons or fire axes at the top of the stairs. There was only a long, empty hallway, ending at the door that Randall had refused to open the day before, when I was chasing Al Jones, who was already dead. Unlike yesterday, however, the padlocks were missing, the burglar bars were off, and the door was ajar.

  I heard a voice beyond the door and saw the same light I had seen from the parking lot. I opened the door a little wider, slipped inside, and started climbing a short flight of stairs. The voice belonged to Randy Randall. He seemed to be talking to himself. I kept climbing. Though the stairs did not creak in the least, he saw me before I reached the top step.

  “Not again,” he said, seemingly used to my snub-nose. He should be shaking in his boots, after I nearly shot him in the pro shop.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “You first. You’re the one who’s trespassing.”

  “I saw the light from outside.”

  “So what? It’s my house and I live here.”

  “I got worried.”

  “What about?”

  “I thought you might need help. A killer’s on the loose, and you could be the next victim.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “The front door was unlocked. You also told me there was nothing—”

  I stopped in midsentence. Someone was lying on a cot in the shadows behind Randall.

  “Who are you?” I said, shoving my snub-nose at him.

  “He’s my cousin, Gregory,” said Randall.

  “He’s also a murder suspect.”

  “I can assure you that he is harmless.”

  “They all say that. Why didn’t you tell me about him before?”

  I stepped around Randall and stared at the man on the cot. He was morbidly obese, close to four hundred pounds I’d say, and grinning like an idiot. He looked harmless, seeming unable to swing a golf club or even get up.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked him.

  “Our aunt’s will granted him lodging here for life,” Randall answered. “Another reason I need to keep this place going. She left most of her fortune, unfortunately, to the nephew who wants nothing to do with Broken Oak.”

  “Let Greg talk,” I said.

  “Gregory can’t talk,” said
Randall.

  So it’s Gregory.

  “A congenital birth defect, Detective. He was born with no larynx.”

  “Can’t they fix it?”

  Randall shook his head, as if I should know better.

  “Can he move?”

  “Enough.” Randall frowned, as if I’d asked more than enough questions.

  “What does that mean?”

  “He can get around, but he has everything he needs right here.”

  Looking around, I noticed a kitchenette, a small bathroom, a TV, a large bookcase loaded with Dame Winifred’s mysteries. I thought of asking if Greg, er, Gregory could read, but, recalling the padlocks on the door, I had a more pertinent question.

  “Why do you lock him in?”

  “I have a court order,” Randall said, as if he had issued it himself. “He needs to be confined.”

  He also needs a bath, I thought. The room smelled like an old gymnasium.

  “Then he is dangerous,” I said, ready to read Randy the riot act for shielding a suspect and withholding evidence.

  “Only to himself,” said Randall, like a know-it-all talk radio psychologist tolerating a stupid caller.

  “Then why lock him up?” I said, seldom afraid of asking stupid questions.

  Continuing to frown, Randall told me, “There is also no reason for him to come in contact with our club members.”

  “What did he do?” I asked.

  “There was an incident, several years ago, where his kindness to a young boy was, shall I say, misinterpreted.”

  “He’s a child molester?”

  Randall’s eyes narrowed and he snapped, “You cops are all the same! You see only black or white, only right or wrong. There are no gray areas.”

  “You’re dead wrong,” I told him, smiling slightly. “I know that laws are subject to interpretation. That’s what makes them great, though not so good at times.”

  “How progressive of you,” Randall said, through clenched teeth. “If only you meant it.”

  “Any way you slice it,” I said, “you’re obstructing justice.” “With a poor unfortunate,” said Randall, suddenly pleading his cousin’s case, “who can barely get up and move around?”