Deadly Divots

by Gene Breaznell

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “The same club that killed O’Reilly killed Al Jones,” the ME informed me, across from Jones’s body on the autopsy table.

  “A five iron?”

  “The head wounds are identical, as is the ash residue.”

  “Really?” I was surprised at the normally circumspect ME offering an opinion so early in the autopsy.

  “I’m not into the chest cavity yet,” the ME grinned, “but I plucked his brain like a grape.”

  He shoved a rubber-gloved fist into the empty cranium, twisted it around, and pulled it out with a loud popping sound he made with his tongue.

  “I get the idea,” I said. “But I won’t puke or pass out. You sure it’s the same five iron?”

  “I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “Shape of the wound, blade angle of 30 degrees, edges and grooves like gun barrels have rifling.”

  “You can match the blade of a club to dead flesh, like bullets to a gun barrel?”

  “And we can match these ashes, without even using a microscope. Look for yourself, Detective.”

  I moved to the ME’s side of the autopsy table and stared at the awful gash near the occipital bone.

  “See ’em?” the ME said, shoving me closer.

  “It’s better if I stay back,” I said. “I don’t have my reading glasses,” though it was the smell, not lack of magnification, that made me back off.

  “Of course we’ll test the ashes and make certain,” he said.

  “Then we’ll know it’s the same club?”

  “When you find it.”

  “But you said—”

  “The blade angle and measurement of the wounds on our two victims are similar, but flesh doesn’t take a perfect imprint. Remember Julius Caesar?”

  “I’m more familiar with Julius Boros, who won the U.S. Open before you were born.”

  “Remember that even if someone’s stabbed repeatedly, like Caesar, and the wounds appear identical, still we can never be sure it’s the same knife.”

  “Then what good is forensics?”

  “Find the five iron. If the ashes are still on it, we’ll know it was used in both murders.”

  “Even if I do find it, and there’s got to be thousands of them out there, I won’t know who used it.”

  “It may have some prints,” the ME said, the eternal optimist. I couldn’t blame him. When you’re performing autopsies all day, you need to look at the bright side once in a while.

  “And I could hit the Lotto,” I said, with a half smile.

  “At least we know it was swung by a lefty,” he told me. “Unlike the first murder, however, this fellow was facing his killer. And Jones wasn’t killed near his car. When your heart stops, you stop bleeding, and we didn’t find enough blood in the trunk or anywhere else.”

  “The body had to be lifted into the trunk,” I said, “which couldn’t have been easy. Particularly for the average woman, unless she had some help.”

  “Got a female suspect, preferably a weight lifter?”

  “I’ve got one can get it up,” I said, picturing Mrs. O bouncing naked out at the end of her diving board.

  “Hook her up to a lie detector.”

  “First let me get this straight. The same club that killed O’Reilly could have killed Jones.”

  “Correct.”

  “But it can’t be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “If you can’t find the club or it has no ashes.”

  “And the club was right-handed but swung by a lefty.”

  “Correct again.”

  “But Jones was facing the killer,” I said, “and O’Reilly’s back was turned.”

  “That’s the long and the short of it,” the ME said. “So is this . . .”

  He pulled back the sheet covering Jones’s lower abdomen, exposing his manhood.

  “That is a Texas longhorn,” I said.

  “And O’Reilly was hung like a stud gerbil,” said the ME. “Hey. Aren’t you—”

  “Don’t you have anything else to do but size up the stiffs?” I said. No pun intended.

  “Do you know that dead men can have erections, Detective? And that we can tell before we undress them?”

  “I give up. How can you tell?”

  “They die with a smile on their face. And one more thing,” the ME continued. “It’s about your golf shoes, with the heel spike missing.”

  “They’re not mine,” I said.

  “They’re not this guy’s either. Look at his feet.”

  I looked. They were too big for the shoes. Maybe there is some connection between big feet and a big schlong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I stopped at a neighborhood bar called Sand City on my way home that evening. It’s only half a mile from my house on Bayville Avenue. I should have gone straight home, but I needed a drink and wanted to avoid drinking alone.

  The bartender and I made small talk, though I had bigger fish to fry and was in the frying pan with them. I ordered only beer. Avoiding shots, liquid and leaden, I watched the sun sinking beyond Connecticut across the Sound. I let the long, unproductive day slip behind me, imagining happier days as lights in Greenwich gradually flickered on. As husbands and wives chatted on porches and patios, with children flocking back to their nests when it grew too dark to ride a bike or see a ball. I wished that Carol and I were still quietly conversing on our patio without a care in the world. I also wished I had watched more sunsets with her instead of hanging around the nineteenth hole.

  Though she had no interest in golf, Carol was great at discussing murder cases with me, sifting the clues instead of flailing at them, calming me down and pointing me in the right direction. Showing me the way. The way Dame Winifred’s little fictional dick would do it? Couloir means passageway in French, she once told me, ever the teacher. She also told me that neatness counts, whether coloring with fat crayons or collecting bullets and blood samples. I told her that’s easy to say when all your violence and gore happen on the printed page. Or offstage, like Murder on the Moor. I should have given her more credit. She would have asked right away if the golf shoes with the missing heel spike fit Al Jones’s feet. She would also have had some inclination as to who had planted them in his locker. That’s your killer, sans doute, she would have told me, as assuredly as Peter H. Couloir. I kicked myself for scoffing at some of her conclusions and accusing her of reading too many murder mysteries and then ordered another beer.

  Now I’m reduced to traipsing around and finding out whose feet fit those damn shoes, like Prince Charming’s pathetic old envoy desperately seeking Cinderella with the glass slipper. As if it will do any good. At least I know they’re too small for Randy Randall’s obese cousin and too large for Mrs. O’Reilly, who’s suddenly entering Sand City.

  What’s she doing here? I’m not ready for her yet. I’ve got a good buzz going, and I planned to question her tomorrow. I prefer catching my suspects by surprise. So they stammer, stall, and screw up their alibis. Now I’m more likely to stammer and stall, thanks to the short shorts and see-through T-shirt she’s barely wearing. I should hide behind the bar with my rumpled jacket and stained necktie, but she’s already seen me.

  “Detective Kanopka?” she said brightly, though her deep blue eyes looked slightly tired. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “Come here often?” I asked, hoping it didn’t sound like a pickup line.

  The bartender overheard us and smiled.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” I said, studying her facial expression, distracted by several wisps of her soft blond hair falling out of place.

  “Never with any tall Texas golf pros,” Mrs. O told me, reading my mind, brushing back the hairs as if they were Brillo and not spun gold. Mounting the bar stool beside me like a lap dancer, causing her short shorts to rise even higher, exposing even more of her long, lithe legs.

  I did not believe her. Bayville’s
little bars and remoteness were perfect for cheaters. She and Al Jones could have been cuddling in one of Sand City’s corner booths, even when I was here. If she had worn those shorts, however, I would have noticed her.

  “Gin and tonic?” she asked the bartender, who did not seem to recognize her.

  “It’s on me,” I said.

  “Thank you, Detective.”

  She held her glass in her right hand, but she could be a lefty. Could she swing a golf club well enough to fell a guy Jones’s size, then dump the body into his trunk? What would her reaction be to news of the murder? I was about to tell her about it and find out, until the TV above the bar did it for me.

  “There’s been another brutal murder on Long Island,” a local anchorman began, “at the exclusive Broken Oak Country Club.”

  I stared at Mrs. O as she stared at the TV screen, eyes widening, jaw dropping, full lips looking even more inviting. Get ahold of yourself, Kanopka, and stop drinking.

  “The bludgeoned body of golf pro Al Jones was found in the trunk of his car,” the anchorman continued as the camera panned the links, the Crown Vic, the mansion. The bulletin ended with an on-site reporter linking it to O’Reilly’s murder and suggesting a serial killer.

  As regular programming resumed, Mrs. O, with an expression close to disgust, said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t think you cared,” I said offhandedly.

  “You were watching my reaction,” she snapped.

  “It’s my job.” Wake up, Kanopka. She’s not all sweetness and light.

  “And I suppose the taxpayers, which also means me, are paying for my gin and tonic?”

  That bothered me. The drink was out-of-pocket.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Buying for a black widow?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “And I did not murder my golf pro or my husband.”

  I almost believed her. But I’ve met many cold-blooded killers who can beat both the lie detector and the good old wham-bam. They’re also crazy, which can give them the strength of Olympic weight lifters.

  “Your husband was sleeping around, you know.”

  “That’s part of why we were getting divorced. Remember?”

  “And Al Jones was sleeping with the members’ wives. And maybe he dumped you, so you killed him.”

  She smiled and sipped her gin and tonic, suddenly not mad at me.

  “If you must know,” she said, “Al Jones tried coming on to me more than once during my lessons. He said that my shoulder muscles tighten too much and my arms get too close together. He was always telling me not to squeeze the goodies. I don’t like men who think they can get away with anything.”

  “I feel the same way about certain women,” I said, imagining her goodies bursting through that thin cotton T-shirt.

  “Al Jones did not get away with anything with me,” Mrs. O insisted. “He was tall and handsome, but it takes more than looks to win me over.”

  I like hearing that from certain women.

  “You come here often?” I’m not giving up.

  “Not really.”

  “What are the odds?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of all the gin joints in the world . . .” I imitated Bogie in Casablanca, badly.

  She laughed and confessed, “I only come here to eat. I’ve always had a good appetite, even under the direst circumstances. If I’m ever on death row, I’ll order one hell of a last meal.”

  “Or one last roll in the hay with a horse-hung stud like Al Jones?”

  “Maybe I should have gotten to know him a little better.”

  “You knew him pretty well in this photo.” I showed her the newspaper clipping from Jones’s condo.

  She studied it and said, “That’s when he won the tournament last year. My husband was a big golf fan. Jones’s win was a big deal at the time. I was told that local pros don’t win too many tournaments. And my husband said I might learn something.”

  What else did he have in mind? Setting her up with the stud golf pro, catching them in the act, swinging the divorce proceedings in his favor?

  “I might learn something,” I said, “by searching your house again. This time, more thoroughly.”

  “Be my guest. I’ve been evicted.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her shoulders tensed, as if she believed that I had something to do with it. But her husband’s creditors, coming out of the woodwork, had the estate held in escrow.

  “I’m staying at the Tides Motel, just down the street,” she added, relaxing somewhat, sipping her drink.

  “It’s tidy,” I shrugged.

  She laughed, like Carol, who also liked puns.

  We ordered burgers and ate at the bar. I switched from beer to seltzer and lime. I was perfectly sober when we were finished eating and she asked, “Would you like to come back to the Tides with me?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  My tenants were away that evening. Though I normally enjoyed their presence upstairs, I did not need to hear them humping to beat the band, reminding me of what I could be doing at the Tides with Mrs. O’Reilly. If I slept with my suspects or anyone other than my wife, that is.

  I fell into bed with randy Dame Winifred instead. Murder on the Moor ’s binding split further and a few more loose pages fell out. Unlike loose women, however, I respected the tattered little tome more and more with each acquaintance. I reinserted the pages and started reading.

  The evil earl of Cranbrook had just shot his weird uncle Esmond as they struggled for the Webley-Vickers .44 that was stolen from the earl’s gun collection. The same gun had also killed Algernon Spotswood, a sportsman friend of the earl’s who was stuffed into a steamer trunk on the Orient Express, and Marty Phelps, the American found murdered out on the earl’s moor. The arrogant earl had accused Uncle Esmond of murdering Phelps over the affections of the mysterious Lady Barkworth and murdering Spotswood for seeing him with the gun, perhaps trying to replace it in the earl’s collection.

  I like a mystery with a few good twists, but I don’t like being tied up in knots. I was also impatient for Peter H. Couloir, currently questioning Lady Barkworth, to straighten things out.

  Lady Barkworth herself answered the door . . .

  Ain’t life tough when the servants are off? I skipped the nuances of dealing with the nobility and went to the real dialogue. Where Couloir, if he has any balls, will ask the tough questions.

  “Yes, Detective, I did know Martin Phelps. His demise was indeed tragic and untimely. But why ever have you come to me about it?”

  “Your Ladyship is very, may I say, close with the Earl of Cran-brook and his family. Are you not?”

  “What are you driving at, Detective?”

  “The Earl’s uncle has been shot and killed.”

  “Esmond? No!”

  “I am sorry. I know that you and he were—”

  “What?”

  “Please excuse me. It is only with your most kind indulgence that I am merely trying to establish, only for my own records, of course, a complete background for this murder case.”

  “You are trying, Detective. Indeed, quite trying. And I am quite busy. I must bid you good day.”

  Don’t let her throw you, Couloir. This so-called lady’s bark is worse than her bite.

  “I must ask one further question. It has been suggested that Esmond, Martin Phelps, and Your Ladyship were, shall I say, involved. And that the first murder resulted from a quarrel over Your Ladyship’s affections.”

  “Who on earth told you that?”

  “We have our sources and, with all due respect, they must remain confidential.”

  “Have your sources also told you that I was involved with Algernon Spotswood?”

  “Why, no.”

  “And that I had assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand and set off the Great War?”

  She’s feisty, like Mrs. O. She must also be a knockout, though Dame Winifred supplies no physical description or mention of her
age. Real cops need details, though a woman’s age usually remains a mystery.

  “I must remind Your Ladyship that this is a murder investigation, and not a matter for levity.”

  “Nor for preposterous, insolent accusations, Detective. Now, I must bid you good day.”

  She turned, imperiously, and glided away, leaving Couloir to mutter, almost inaudibly, “Thank you for your cooperation, Your Ladyship.”

  Crap. The chapter’s ended. Lady Barkworth could have plugged Marty Phelps, maybe even Algie. Or someone could have put her up to it. Like the evil earl himself? His weird uncle Esmond? There’s also the gamekeeper to contend with. So many suspects you need a scorecard. There was a scorecard of sorts: a page at the front of the book listing the cast of characters. But it fell out long ago and I lost it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Recognize these?” I asked, setting the golf shoes with the missing spike on Randy Randall’s desk. “They’re the shoes you found in Al Jones’s locker,” Randall said, shrugging and turning up his palms, as if saying So what? His know-it-all attitude irritated me, plus the fact that he looked none the worse from staying up so late the other night. His posture was square, his eyes were bright and every hair on his head was perfectly in place. I felt disheveled and dog-tired. “Please don’t let those shoes scratch my Chippendale desk,” he added.

  “They’re a perfect match for the heel print we found at the water hazard,” I told him, “next to O’Reilly’s body. We believe the killer was wearing them.”

  “Then Al Jones is your killer.”

  “These shoes don’t fit him. Not even close.”