The Club

by Jane Heller

  “Hunt,” I said. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “Like what?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe tell Duncan. He is her relative, after all.”

  We both glanced over at the Tewksburys’ table. Delia Tewksbury was there, but her husband was not.

  Hunt nodded, took my hand, told the others we’d be back in a minute, and led me over to the Tewksburys’ table.

  Delia Tewksbury, a tall, big-boned woman, had hair that could best be described as “skunklike.” It was worn in a tight French twist—always—and was very dark, except for the streak of silver that ran from her widow’s peak down to her left ear. She had pale, heavily powdered skin, with little dots of rouge on her cheeks, and she often smelled of rose petals—not the real ones but the kind that came in cans of Glade Air Freshener.

  “Hello, Mrs. Tewksbury,” I said, then introduced myself to her for the umpteenth time. So did Hunt.

  She smiled and said hello but showed no signs of having met either of us before.

  “We hate to disturb your dinner,” said Hunt, “but we’re a bit worried about your grandniece, who seems to have disappeared from the party.”

  “Claire? Disappeared?” She seemed genuinely alarmed. Perhaps she had a greater fondness for Claire than her husband did.

  Hunt shared our concerns with her and she suggested we tell Duncan about them when he returned from the men’s room. “He will know how to handle the situation,” she said. I suspected that she had never handled a situation in her life, not if she could help it.

  When Duncan returned, Hunt told him about Claire. Unlike his wife, he seemed unperturbed.

  “If you know Claire, you know how unpredictable she is,” he chuckled.

  “Really?” I said. “I wouldn’t call her unpredictable at all. She seems pretty consistent in what she does.”

  Duncan chuckled again. He was one of those perpetual chucklers, I had discovered the night of our interview with the Membership Committee. He chuckled when he was amused and he chuckled when he wasn’t. His chuckling was his cover, his way of making us think he was urbane and witty and a good sport, when what he really was, I guessed, was a sad old man who clung to a lifestyle that had long become as obsolete as he was becoming.

  “I think we should put together a search party,” I suggested. “Or call the police and let them do it.”

  “The police? At The Oaks? Nonsense,” he said. “We don’t want a fuss.”

  “Your grandniece has vanished,” I said firmly. “Fuss or not, we’ve got to do something.”

  Duncan looked at Hunt with an expression that said, “Can’t you handle your wife, sonny boy, the way I handle mine? What kind of a man are you?”

  “I agree with her, sir,” Hunt said. “We’ve got to do something. Claire is missing and we really should try to find her.”

  I smiled at Hunt. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

  We all agreed that there was no point in alarming the rest of the members, as the party was winding down and they’d all be going home anyway. So we enlisted the help of Perry, Addison, and several of the dining room staff, who were dispatched into the kitchen for flashlights.

  Kimberley went home with her grandparents, while nearly a dozen of us combed the grounds in search of Claire. It was close to midnight when we heard someone shouting.

  “I think the voice is coming from the fourth,” said Hunt as we stood near the approach to the golf course.

  “The fourth what?” I asked.

  “Hole,” he said. “It’s a par-3. A long par-3. Boy, it’s treacherous. It runs over water and offers a rock-wall plunge protecting forward pin positions, but the green is so big that back cup locations take the—”

  “Hunt, please,” I said. “This isn’t the time for a hole-by-hole assessment of the course. Let’s just find out where the voice is coming from, okay?”

  He nodded, took my arm, and guided us across his beloved course. Despite the full moon and our flashlight, the night was dark, and we had trouble finding our way over the fairways and greens.

  “Over here! Over here!” someone shouted.

  “That’s Perry,” said Hunt.

  We ran toward the voice, which, we discovered, was coming from a sand trap. The rest of our search party had already gathered there in a little semicircle.

  “You found her?” Hunt asked them.

  They stepped back and pointed to the body lying facedown in the sand. I gripped Hunt’s arm and shielded my eyes.

  “Is it…Claire?” I asked him.

  “Dear God, it sure looks like it,” he said. “It sure does.”

  “Oh, no,” I wailed. “It can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid it is our poor, poor Claire,” said Duncan Tewksbury, who sounded as if he cared.

  “Has anybody tried to turn her over?” Hunt asked the others.

  “No,” said Perry. “I, for one, didn’t want to touch anything. The police always say not to.”

  “What if she needs help?” I said, still hiding my face in the crook of Hunt’s arm. “What if she’s still alive?”

  “I took her pulse,” said a member of the kitchen staff. “There wasn’t any. She’s dead all right. And judging by that gash on the back of her head, she’s—”

  “Gash?” I said, looking up finally. I forced myself to confront Claire’s body. It was she, all right. I’d recognize that Native American medicine woman costume anywhere. And there was a gash—and it was mean and bloody. But who would want to hit her on the back of the head and why?

  “I’ll call the police,” said Hunt.

  “No!” said Duncan. “I should be the one to call them. I was her great-uncle after all.”

  Duncan put his hand to his forehead in a gesture meant to suggest his pain and suffering.

  “Why don’t you go inside the clubhouse with him,” I whispered to Hunt. “In case he becomes overcome with grief.”

  “Right,” said Hunt. “Want to come with me?”

  I shook my head. “I’m staying with Claire,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “Oh, Hunt. It’s so awful.”

  I began to cry. Hunt took me in his arms and rocked me, smoothing my hair off my face and kissing my forehead. “We’ll find out who did this,” he vowed. “Don’t you worry.”

  “But I still can’t believe she’s dead,” I said. “Just a few hours ago, I was talking to her, laughing with her, planning our cookbook…”

  It suddenly hit me: Claire was dead and so was our cookbook. Whoever killed her also killed any hopes I had of resuming my career.

  “Hey, look at this,” said Perry as he pointed to the golf club lying several feet away from the sand trap.

  Hunt and the others went over to get a closer look but didn’t pick it up.

  “It’s Henry’s pitching wedge,” he said.

  “It’s what?” I called out, then went over to see for myself.

  “It belongs to Henry Bradford, the golf pro,” Hunt explained. “It’s his pitching wedge.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because of the angle on the head of the club,” he said. “That’s what a pitching wedge looks like.”

  “No, I meant how do you know it belongs to the golf pro?” I said.

  “Look at the shaft,” Hunt pointed. “It’s got Greg Norman’s autograph on it: ‘The Great White Shark.’ Henry was very proud of that club.”

  “Was Henry angry at Claire?” I said.

  “Henry is out of town,” said Duncan. “He didn’t do this if that’s what you’re thinking, Mrs. Price. We don’t employ criminals at The Oaks. Whoever hurt my grand-niece must have been an outsider.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “I just thought that since it was Henry’s pitching wedge that seems to have been the murder weapon, we should—”

  “Henry’s clubs are for the members’ use,” said Duncan. “They’re in his office, for teaching purposes. Everyone at The Oaks has access to them.”

  “There’s no point in
our speculating,” said Hunt. “The police will figure out who did this to Claire. Duncan, are you ready to go inside?”

  Duncan nodded.

  “Be back in a few minutes, Jude,” said Hunt.

  “Before you go, may I have this?” I reached up to lift the cowboy hat off his head.

  “Sure,” he said. “But what do you want with it?”

  I walked over to Claire’s lifeless body, her face encrusted with sand, her hair matted with blood, and placed the cowboy hat gently over the back of her head, shielding it from the night air and our curious eyes.

  “You’re not supposed to disturb anything,” said Perry. “Not when there’s been a homicide.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “That’s not one of The Oaks’s dopey bylaws, is it?”

  I crouched down in the sand, very close to Claire’s body, and said my goodbye.

  “Farewell, my friend,” I whispered to her. “We didn’t know each other long or well, but I promise you I’ll make sure they find out who did this to you. Meanwhile, I hope that wherever you are now, wherever your soul has journeyed, there is no war, no famine, and no Men’s Grill.”

  Part Two

  Chapter Eight

  The country was grief-stricken over Claire Cox’s death. Reports about it were all over the media—from the morning news programs, during which political pundits from both parties debated her place in history, to the evening news shows, on which Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, and other female luminaries said how much they admired and respected her. Newspapers and magazines offered moving retrospectives of her life and times. Photos pictured her with the likes of Anita Hill, whom she had supported during the Clarence Thomas hearings; Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey, whom she dated after he broke up with Debra Winger; and Warren Beatty, with whom she had a relationship in the late 1970s. The tabloid media covered her life and death as if she were another Amy Fisher. All three networks were scrambling to produce TV movies based on her story.

  Who would want to kill her? I asked myself over and over. Who would want to end the life of a woman who had accomplished so much—and had so much more to accomplish? Who would want to kill her at my country club? In my little town?

  I shuddered when I thought about the fact that the killer was still on the loose and that the intrepid Belford Police Department hadn’t handled a homicide in nearly a half-century. Would they be up to the challenge of solving the case? Would they conduct a thorough investigation? Would they leave no stone unturned?

  I had my answer on Tuesday morning—the day after the club’s Wild West July Fourth party, which, of course, turned out to be wilder than anyone could have predicted. Hunt had taken the train into the city with Kimberley, and I was at home making the beds. The phone rang at about nine-thirty.

  “Mrs. Price?” said a male voice.

  “I’m not interested,” I said. God, those telephone salesmen were a pain. They were interrupting you in the middle of dinner or bugging you first thing in the morning, and they were never selling anything you were remotely interested in buying.

  I was about to hang up when the caller introduced himself as Thomas Cunningham—Detective Thomas Cunningham of the Belford Police Department.

  “Oh,” I said. “I thought you were trying to sell me a Discover card.”

  “No,” he said gruffly. “I’m trying to solve Claire Cox’s murder.”

  “Oh,” I said again. “Please excuse me. You see, the only people who call me Mrs. Price are telephone salesmen, my husband’s parents, and members of my country club.”

  “What does everyone else call you?” he asked.

  “Judy. Judy Mills.”

  “Mills is your maiden name?”

  “Yes. I was never big on hyphenated last names. I’ve always felt that you either take your husband’s name or you don’t—and I didn’t.”

  Silence, then: “So your full name is Judy Mills?”

  “No. My full name is Judith Rifka Mills.”

  “I didn’t catch the one after Judith.”

  “Rifka. It’s Hebrew for Rebecca. You know, like Becky?”

  More silence. I had a hunch that Detective Cunningham was really sorry he’d started this. “Look, Ms. Mills,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you about Ms. Cox.”

  “You mean, because I was one of the people who found her body?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “and because one of the women who was having dinner with her last night told us that you and Ms. Cox were writing a book together.”

  “Yes,” I said sadly. “A cookbook.”

  “Could you come down to headquarters this morning? Say around ten-thirty?”

  I thought for a minute. I didn’t have anything scheduled for ten-thirty. As a matter of fact, I didn’t have anything scheduled for the foreseeable future, except a gynecologist appointment two weeks from Wednesday and a periodontal checkup three weeks after that. I was jobless and appointmentless and directionless, and going down to police headquarters and talking to a cop sounded like a welcome change from sitting at home and waiting for the phone to ring. “Ten-thirty will be fine,” I said. “Just fine.”

  I arrived at the police station and was directed to the cubicle-size office of Detective Thomas Cunningham and his partner, Detective Jake Creamer, who was not present at the time of my visit.

  “Sit there,” said Detective Cunningham as he pointed to the chair next to his desk.

  I sat and stared at the detective as he went through a pile of pink “While You Were Out” message slips and tossed most of them in the garbage.

  Gee, I thought. He’s not bad-looking. Not bad at all. Thirty-five-ish and ruggedly handsome, he had a lean, sinewy build, a cleft in his chin, gleaming brown eyes, and hair that was so dark it was almost comic-book blue-black. And then there was his nose, which, judging from the right turn it took at the bridge, had been on the receiving end of one too many fists. I’m embarrassed to admit I checked out his left hand: no wedding band. I guessed he had a girlfriend, a manicurist he’d met in the bar of the local Pizza & Brew, and that they often spent the night at his house, having rough sex and watching professional wrestling matches on Pay Per View.

  “Thanks for coming, Ms. Mills,” he said, finally looking up at me.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, transfixed by the way the cleft in his chin moved as he talked.

  “I’ll need your address and date of birth,” he said as he pulled out a notebook and pen.

  “I live at 42 Beaverbrook Road. Belford.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “Is that absolutely necessary?”

  Okay, so I was being a little sensitive about my age. It’s not easy to admit you’re forty when you’re sitting with a very attractive younger man.

  “Yes, it’s absolutely necessary,” he said, revealing a hint of a smile.

  “May thirtieth, 1955.”

  “Now, tell me about your relationship with Ms. Cox.”

  I gave Detective Cunningham the whole sad story—how I was fired from my job at Charlton House, how I hadn’t been able to find another job, how my husband had suggested I start networking at our country club, how I had previously avoided the club like the plague but took his advice anyway, how I met Claire there, how we decided to write a cookbook together, how I spoke to her at the party the previous evening and how I was one of the group who found her body.

  “How long have you and your husband been members of The Oaks?”

  “About two years.”

  “You said you avoided the club. You don’t like it there?”

  “In a word: no.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no valet parking.”

  Detective Cunningham looked up from his notepad.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s not the main reason.”

  “What’s the main reason?”

  “The people are a bunch of phonies. The food’s not so hot either.”

  “Is there anything you like about The Oaks?”

&n
bsp; “Yes. The facilities are very well maintained. If I brushed my teeth as often as they brush those tennis courts, I wouldn’t have any enamel left.”

  “Did Ms. Cox have many friends at The Oaks?”

  “No.” Well, there was Ducky. But I didn’t see the need to mention their history together. It was such a long time ago.

  “She wasn’t very popular with the established members?”

  “God, no. She wanted to change things at the club. She thought women should be allowed to eat in the Men’s Grill and things like that.”

  “The what grill?”

  “The Men’s Grill. It used to be the club’s men-only restaurant.”

  “Oh, yeah. My father’s club has one of those.”

  Detective Cunningham didn’t strike me as a man whose father was into country clubs. “What club does he belong to?” I asked. Rotary? Elks? Knights of Columbus?

  “Actually, he’s on the Board of Governors at The Westover Country Club.”

  “Really?” The members at Westover were rich Catholics who tried to get into The Oaks but couldn’t.

  “Did Ms. Cox have any enemies at The Oaks? Anyone who might want to harm her?”

  I thought for a minute. “Well, a lot of people were against her joining the club,” I said. “She was the first single woman to get in. Even her great-uncle didn’t want her there.”

  “Would that be Duncan Tewksbury?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “So no enemies that you can think of?”

  “Enemies? It’s hard to say,” I said. “At country clubs you can’t really tell your enemies from your friends. The guy who plays golf with you one day could be the guy who hits you over the head with a pitching wedge the next.”

  Detective Cunningham stopped writing and looked up. “What do you know about that pitching wedge, Ms. Mills?”

  “You mean the one we found near Claire’s body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing, except that it belonged to Henry, the golf pro. It was one of his teaching clubs.”