The Club

by Jane Heller

  “Did you ever see any of the members playing with that club?”

  “No, but then I make it a point never to see the members playing with any club. I hate watching golf. It’s a really boring sport, if you ask me. Right up there with fly fishing.”

  Thomas Cunningham stared at me. Clearly, I was not his run-of-the-mill interviewee.

  “I think we’re just about finished here,” he said.

  “Oh?” I was disappointed. I had enjoyed having Detective Cunningham ask me questions, listen to my answers, ask for my opinions.

  Detective Cunningham gave the notes he’d taken during our interview to a secretary, asked her to type them up, and when she did, he handed me the pages and told me to read them over.

  “If everything’s correct, sign here,” he said.

  I signed.

  “Thanks for coming in.” He shook my hand and allowed himself a smile.

  My eyes went straight to the cleft in his chin, and the oddest thing happened. I began to imagine myself inserting my tongue in that cleft, in and out, in and out, in and out. Yes, I was horny, and yes, my marriage was stale, and yes, I’d always thought men with cleft chins exuded a certain animal magnetism, but to have fantasies right there in the police station—during a murder interrogation, no less—was humiliating and not a little disrespectful to the murder victim.

  You need to get a job, I told myself as I left police headquarters. You need to get a job and you need to get laid.

  I went home and sulked. How on earth was I going to get a job when there weren’t any? That very morning The New York Times had reported that Charlton House was laying off another twenty employees and that Gaines McGrath, another trade book publisher, was dismissing fifty of its Manhattan-based workers. I didn’t have a prayer of getting hired.

  I started to cry—big, dopey tears that ran down my cheeks into my shirt collar. Talk about feeling sorry for myself. I was the picture of self-pity. Why did Claire have to get murdered, I sobbed. Why couldn’t she have lived, so we could have written our cookbook? Why couldn’t we have written the cookbook and watched it hit the bestseller list? Why? Why? Why?

  In an attempt to calm myself, I flipped on the television set and channel-surfed until I came to a station that was broadcasting a rerun of “Mannix.” Before I knew it, I was glued to the episode, which found macho, dark-haired Detective Mannix, aka Mike Connors, solving the murder of a kindly pediatrician who had witnessed a hit-and-run accident. I thought of Detective Cunningham and decided he was much handsomer and sexier than Mannix. I wondered if he had found me the least bit attractive during our interview that morning. I wondered if his girlfriend was attractive. I wondered if she minded that he was a cop or if she was the type who was turned on by men with dangerous jobs. I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

  I hardly ever went to the club. Just thinking of Claire’s body lying in that sand trap made me wary of ever setting foot in the place again. Besides, I found it hard to deal with the members, who, with the exception of the handful of women who had respected Claire’s accomplishments, were more insufferable than ever. Talk about denial! A murder had been committed on the grounds of their goddamn country club and yet they acted as if nothing very significant had happened. Instead of being helpful and cooperative with the police, who had the daunting task of interviewing every single person who attended the July Fourth party, they bitched and moaned about having to schlep down to headquarters and answer a bunch of questions. Some of them complained that a fifteen-minute interview with the police would screw up their golf game or bridge game or both. Others were concerned that their names—and that of the club—would be forever linked with a murder. Still others said they felt harassed by the very police force they’d supported with their extraordinarily generous tax dollars. Even Hunt seemed irritated when Detective Creamer called and said it was his turn to be interviewed. “Why are these local characters wasting our time when the FBI should be handling a case of this importance?” he grumbled.

  Then one day Arlene called and asked if she could be my guest at the club.

  “My therapist says country clubs are a good place for meeting men,” she explained.

  “So you haven’t met anyone you really like?” I asked.

  “I’ve met men I like, but none that look like Fabio,” she sighed.

  “I’ve got a bulletin for you, Arlene,” I said. “You won’t find anyone who looks like Fabio at The Oaks. You won’t even find anyone who looks like Fabio’s great-grandfather.”

  Undaunted, Arlene spent the following Saturday with me at the club, and I couldn’t get over the change in her. This woman, who used to dress like a vestal virgin, had transformed herself into Ms. Hot Stuff—tight skirt, tight blouse, loose look. As we ate lunch in the terrace dining room, I noticed that every man I introduced her to eyed her lasciviously—even Ducky Laughton, who was married to Nedra, the sexpot, and grieving over the death of his old love Claire.

  “It’s a pleasure,” he said, shaking her hand and looking straight at her cleavage. The man could barely keep his tongue in his mouth.

  “Thank you,” said Arlene, batting her eyelashes. “Judy has told me so much about you. I feel as if I know you somehow.”

  I nearly gagged. I hadn’t told Arlene a thing about Ducky except that he was the one member of The Oaks who didn’t make my skin crawl.

  Ducky bowed. “I hope we’ll meet again, Arlene,” he said. “Now that the club is accepting single women at long last, perhaps you’ll think about becoming a member. It’s what Claire would have wanted, don’t you think, Judy?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I’ll leave you two to your lunch,” said Ducky.

  “Goodbye,” said Arlene as she uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again.

  When Ducky was gone, I leaned over and whispered to her. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But I think you’re being a little obvious.”

  “Obvious? How?” she said.

  “You know. The clothes. The hair. The makeup. Guys are turned off by women who come on strong.”

  “Says who?” she said. “I’ve had six dates in the last two weeks. None of them complained.”

  I shrugged and changed the subject. What did I know about men? My husband barely knew I was alive.

  Arlene and I talked about my inability to find a job, about my inability to get anyone to meet with me, about my inability to get anyone to return my phone calls. Then we talked about how tough it was to earn a living in the post-Recession nineties.

  “How’s the money situation?” Arlene asked at one point. “Is it tough on a marriage to live off one person’s income?”

  “Everything’s tough on a marriage,” I said ruefully. “But to answer your question, money doesn’t seem to be a problem. We’re still members of this obscenely expensive club, as you can see. And we’re certainly not starving. Actually, our financial life hasn’t changed much at all since I got fired, which is almost the most depressing thing about my getting fired. I always believed that my contribution to our income meant something, that without it Hunt and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the Good Life. But it turns out that we do just fine without my money, that life goes on, that our membership in The Oaks goes on, even though I’m not bringing in one red cent.”

  “Weird, isn’t it?” said Arlene. “You’re being supported by your husband, which is something millions of women would die for, yet you feel totally disposable, discarded, worthless…without any sense of identity…like some pathetic hanger-on…dependent…needy…unable to—”

  “I get the picture, Arlene,” I said, despising her for knowing exactly how I felt. “But enough about me. How’s your job?”

  “Fabulous,” she said. “I adore it. The people I work with are great, and I just got a promotion and a raise.”

  I mumbled a “congratulations,” but my heart wasn’t in it. Friendship schmiendship. It’s hard to be happy for someone who’s having the success you think you deserve.

/>   I was moping around the house one morning, trying not to think about the torrid sex Detective Cunningham and I would have if we were both free, when the detective himself called me.

  “Yes, Detective. Of course I remember you,” I said, my heart doing little pirouettes as I wound the telephone cord around my finger.

  “I’d like to see you,” he said.

  Did I sense a certain urgency, a certain huskiness in his voice, or was it just wish fulfillment on my part?

  “When?” I said, trying not to pant.

  “How about in twenty minutes?” he said.

  “That would be fine,” I said. “You have the address.”

  “Yeah. See ya.”

  He hung up. I hung up. Then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the hall mirror. Brother, I was still wearing my ratty bathrobe and the plastic bite plate that was supposed to prevent me from grinding my teeth at night.

  I hurried upstairs to freshen up and change, and tried to stay calm. But I was nervous. The last time I’d been home alone with a man other than my husband was when Valerio came to visit, and that didn’t count.

  I jumped when the doorbell rang.

  I let Detective Cunningham in and suggested we sit in the living room. I offered him coffee. He said he’d rather just talk.

  “Ms. Mills,” he began, “I hope you won’t be shocked by what I came to ask you to do.”

  Now I was really nervous. I’d been fantasizing about the man for days. Had he been thinking about me too? Was that why he had come? “Ask me,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d like to make you a proposition.”

  I was stunned. He was propositioning me. Be careful what you wish for, my mother always said.

  Okay, so he was sexy. And sure, I was aching for a little action. But as I said earlier, I wasn’t the adulterous type, not really. I wasn’t clever enough for adultery. Adultery takes cunning. You’ve got to plan ahead. You’ve got to find a trysting place. You’ve got to remember to shave your legs. I didn’t have the time or energy for all that. I had to throw everything I had into finding a job.

  “As I said, Ms. Mills, we’d like to make you a proposition.”

  Ms. Mills? Under the circumstances, shouldn’t he be calling me Judy? And what was all this “we” stuff? Was Detective Cunningham actually proposing a ménage à trois?

  “The answer is no,” I said firmly.

  “But you haven’t even heard what we want you to do.”

  “All right,” I said, “say what you came to say.” How awful could it be to have to sit and listen to a handsome hunk confess his passion for you?

  “We’d like to offer you a job.”

  “A job?”

  “Yeah. With the Belford Police Department.”

  I was confused. “The police department wants to do a cookbook?”

  I had once edited a cookbook that was put together by the New York City Fire Department. It had recipes for things like Firehouse Chili and Smoky Barbecued Chicken, and raised money for some charity or other. But a local police department’s cookbook? It didn’t sound like a huge seller.

  “Are you thinking of a book that’s sort of a cross between Joseph Wambaugh and Julia Child?” I asked.

  “No, no. You don’t understand,” he said.

  “What then? Joseph Wambaugh and Jacques Pepin?”

  He shook his head.

  “Daryl Gates and Jacques Pepin?”

  “Look, Ms. Mills.”

  “Judy.”

  “Judy. While we’re exploring all aspects of this case and following upon each and every lead, we think it’s possible that a member of your country club was responsible for Claire Cox’s death.”

  “Oh?”

  “We want you to help us find out if the killer was one of the members, and if so, which member.” He paused. “We want you to be our informant.”

  I was dumbfounded. “You want me to help you solve Claire’s murder?”

  “That’s right. Ms. Cox was a big celebrity, and the federal boys would love to get their hands on the case. But it’s our jurisdiction, our case to solve. Well, actually it’s my case to solve. Mine and my partner’s. And our boss wants us to solve it yesterday. You understand?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay, let me try again. The Belford Police Department isn’t a huge force. We’re a small-town force, ‘small’ being the operative word here. We can’t put every single guy on this one case. So my partner and I are kind of handling it the best we can. We’ve got hundreds of interviews to do, hundreds of leads to follow up on, hundreds of leads that have nothing to do with The Oaks. At the same time, we—or should I say I?—am interested in getting information about some of the members of The Oaks, to determine if one of them had a motive for killing Ms. Cox. But I don’t want to go in there and upset everybody. You know how bent out of shape they get, right?”

  “Do I ever. I hear some of them gave you a hard time when you asked them to come down to headquarters.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t the half of it. You should have seen what happened when we asked for a list of all the members.”

  “What? Nobody would give you one?”

  “Oh, they gave us one, but only after we got a subpoena for it. Then we started calling the members on the list and found out that a quarter of them were dead. No, I wouldn’t say the people at your club have been especially forthcoming.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “So, what we need right now—and I know this is a little out of the ordinary—is for someone to help us get information about The Oaks’s members and their relationship with the deceased. Someone who’s an insider, someone who could hang out there without arousing suspicion. We think you’d make a perfect informant.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’re a member of the club but you hate the place.”

  “I don’t hate…well, I see what you’re getting at.”

  “Good.”

  “What exactly would you want me to do?”

  “The same thing you’ve been doing. Go to the club. Play golf—”

  “I don’t play golf.”

  “Sorry. I forgot.” He smiled. The hole in his chin danced. “Then play tennis, swim, whatever. The important thing is to just be there, keep your eyes and ears open, tell us if you see or hear anything suspicious.”

  “I see and hear suspicious things all the time at The Oaks.”

  “Like what?”

  “The members cheat—at everything. The golfers doctor their score cards, and the tennis players call every close ball in their favor. There’s no such thing as sportsmanship at The Oaks.”

  He laughed. “It’s not their lack of sportsmanship I’m concerned about. It’s their possible connection to Claire Cox’s murder.”

  “So you’re saying you want me to spy on my friends at The Oaks?”

  “You said you didn’t have any friends at The Oaks.”

  “Good point.” My mind was racing. “But my husband does. He’s Mr. Popularity at the club. He’d be furious if he found out I was doing anything to jeopardize his membership. He uses the club to network. He’s trying to make partner at Fitzgerald & Franklin, the investment banking firm. He’s—”

  “Then don’t tell him,” said Detective Cunningham.

  “Don’t tell him?” What an idea. I told Hunt everything, or at least I used to. How could I possibly be a police informant and not tell him?

  “Look, Ms. Mills.”

  “Judy, remember?”

  “Sorry. Judy. And I’m Tom.”

  “Tom.”

  “It’s up to you whether or not you tell your husband. I just want to know if you’ll do it.”

  “Be an informant, you mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How would it work exactly?”

  “First, you’d come down to headquarters so we could run your prints, that kind of stuff.”

  “Run my prints?”

  “Yeah, the lieu
tenant is pretty strict about prints. He says if I’m going to go out on a limb and hire you, I’ve got to get you fingerprinted, make sure you are who you say you are. Then I’d give you a beeper so we could always be in touch with each other.”

  Always be in touch with each other. That had a nice ring to it.

  “So I’d be working directly with you?” I asked.

  “Only with me,” he said. “You have a problem with that?”

  “No, no problem,” I said.

  “As far as money goes, you’ll be paid about $200 a week for as long as we need you.”

  Paid? That did it. Income and Tom Cunningham too.

  I took a deep breath. “Tom,” I said. “Meet your new informant.”

  “So you’re taking the job?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “I hope so.”

  Chapter Nine

  What does one wear when one goes to the police station to begin a job as an informant?

  That was the question I pondered as I rummaged through my closet that Friday morning. I had no idea how to dress for the occasion. I was an out-of-work cookbook editor. What the hell did I know about being an informant? On the other hand, I’d had all those years in publishing, an industry full of gossips and rumor mongers and people who allowed themselves to be quoted in newspaper articles only if their names weren’t used. Maybe I knew more about being an informant than I thought.

  I tried on a few outfits and settled on one that I thought looked very country club-ish: white skirt, navy blue and red “nautical” shirt (it had little gold anchors on it), red sandals, and a white headband. All the women at The Oaks wore headbands, usually black velvet or some milky pastel. And when they didn’t wear headbands, they wore visors, which made the act of air-kissing nearly impossible. I mean, have you ever seen two visor-wearing women trying to air-kiss each other? They have to bob and weave like a couple of prizefighters trying to land a punch.

  “Where are you off to?” Hunt asked as he watched me dress. He was working at home that morning, then playing golf at the club in the afternoon.

  “I’m…uh…going to talk to some people about a job,” I said. Not a lie.