The Club

by Jane Heller

  “Who?”

  “Who?”

  “We sound like a couple of owls.”

  I laughed. “Sorry. I’m a little distracted this morning.”

  “Probably the heat,” said Hunt. “It’s supposed to hit ninety today.”

  Ninety. Ugh. I hoped the Belford Police Station was air-conditioned.

  “So who are you interviewing with?” Hunt asked again. “You’re dressed kind of casually for a job interview.”

  “Oh, well it’s a real low-key company. Family owned.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Uh…Food Data Systems.” Sounded good to me.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “They’re new. Small. Not publicly traded.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Well, they…uh…compile recipes from cookbooks and put them on computer disks.” I hoped the questions would end here. I knew as much about computers as I knew about police work.

  “What do they do with the computer disks?”

  “They sell them to…um…people who are interested in food. It’s a mail-order kind of thing.”

  “Big market?”

  “Absolutely. People are always misplacing their favorite recipes. Remember when I couldn’t find my mother’s recipe for stuffed cabbage?”

  Hunt nodded, even though there was no such recipe. The only thing my mother stuffed was herself.

  “Well, by putting recipes on disks, people will have permanent access to them,” I went on. I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but Hunt didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps I was born for undercover work.

  “What would you do for this Food Data Systems?” Hunt asked.

  “Help gather the recipes from various cookbooks, acquire the electronic rights, things like that.”

  I couldn’t believe Hunt was asking me so many questions. He wasn’t usually so inquisitive. But then husbands always surprise you. When you want them to give you their undivided attention, they run off to play golf. When you want them to run off to play golf, they give you their undivided attention.

  “How did you hear about the job?” he asked.

  “From Arlene,” I said, trying to mask my impatience. “But listen, Hunt. I’ve really got to get going. My interview is for nine o’clock.”

  “It’s eight forty-five now,” said Hunt after checking his watch. “I hope for your sake this place is nearby.”

  “Yeah, it’s right off I-95.”

  I gave Hunt a quick peck on the cheek and took off.

  Sure, I felt guilty about lying to my husband. Very guilty. I’d spent the previous night tossing and turning and agonizing over whether I should tell Hunt about my deal with Detective Cunningham. Ultimately, I’d decided that it was better all around if I didn’t tell him, and the decision had given me a bad stomachache. Still, there was something oddly thrilling about deceiving him. Stomachache or not, I hadn’t felt so alive in months.

  “Good morning,” I said to Tom Cunningham as I walked into his office at eight-fifty.

  He nodded and introduced me to his partner, Detective Jake Creamer, a blond, heavyset man with a Marine-style crew cut and a ruddy complexion. Detective Creamer nodded at me too. Neither cop was especially friendly, but it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. Maybe they weren’t morning people.

  “We won’t keep you more than a few minutes,” said Tom, who hadn’t gotten any less attractive in the twenty-four hours since I’d last seen him. He was wearing blue jeans, a faded blue denim work shirt, and a pair of high-top Reeboks, and he was much sexier than Mannix. “But first we’ve got to get you fingerprinted and photographed.”

  “Photographed?” I’d been so concerned about leaving the house without Hunt finding out where I was going that I hadn’t paid much attention to my hair and makeup.

  “Yeah, photographed,” said Tom. “Like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.” He smiled at his joke. We were making progress.

  Tom took me down the hall for my photo shoot. It turned out that the guy who photographed me was the same guy who took all the mug shots of criminals. His work made passport photos look like Scavullo portraits.

  Getting fingerprinted wasn’t a picnic either. I broke a nail, forgot to wash the ink off my finger, and got black smudges all over my white skirt, not to mention my face.

  “Here,” Tom laughed as he handed me a damp paper towel. “Clean yourself up.”

  I tried to wipe the ink off the tip of my nose, but without a mirror it was difficult.

  “Let me,” said Tom, taking back the paper towel.

  He stood facing me, his body just inches from mine, and dabbed at my nose with the steady hand of a painter. I could feel his nearness, sense his manliness, smell his breath. Onion roll, I deduced. The man had definitely eaten an onion roll for breakfast.

  As we walked back to his office, I asked Tom if he had specific instructions for me as I prepared for my life as an informant.

  “Just go to The Oaks and keep your eyes and ears open,” he said. “We’ll probably meet once a week, unless you call me with something sooner. I’m counting on you, Judy.”

  I gulped. I suddenly realized that this was not a lark I was entering into. This was serious business. Belford’s Finest were counting on me!

  “I won’t let you down,” I said solemnly. “If Claire’s murderer is anywhere near The Oaks, I’ll find him.”

  Tom nodded, then handed me a beeper, which he alternately referred to as a pager. I’d seen beepers before, of course. Several people at The Oaks had them—the macho corporate types who loved getting “beeped” on the tennis courts or the golf course to remind us how important and indispensable they were. I always suspected that it was really their wives who beeped them, to remind them to bring home a carton of milk.

  “Your beeper comes with the vibrator option,” Tom said with a straight face.

  “The vibrator option?” Perhaps police work would expand my horizons in more ways than one.

  “The purpose of the vibrator option is to eliminate noise,” Tom explained with a wry smile. “There’ll be times when you won’t want to get beeped. So you just flip on the vibrator switch, and instead of getting beeped, you get vibrated.”

  “Oh,” I said and tried not to imagine Tom Cunningham getting vibrated. This wasn’t the time or the place.

  “Any other questions?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said as I put the beeper in my purse. “You haven’t mentioned whether you have any suspects in Claire’s case. Is there anyone in particular you’d like me to keep my eye on?”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Judy,” he said. “There were no fingerprints on that pitching wedge, which was bent and nearly broken. Whoever used it to kill Ms. Cox hit her over and over before calling it a night.”

  I shuddered.

  “In addition to there being no fingerprints on the murder weapon,” he continued, “there were no discernible footprints around the crime scene, because your little search party went into that sand trap and obscured whatever evidence there may have been. As for suspects, no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the murder. No motive has been established. We’re nowhere on this investigation. Nowhere. You’d be doing us all a giant favor if you came up with a motive for one of these people at your country club. Somebody had a reason for killing Ms, Cox, or thought they did.”

  I heaved a deep sigh.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Cold feet?”

  “No,” I said. “I was just wondering: what if it turns out that several people at the club thought they had a reason for killing Claire?”

  “Then you’ll be a very busy lady.”

  He smiled and showed me the door.

  For the next week I was The Oaks’s most omnipresent and enthusiastic member. I played tennis. I used the pool. I ate lunch on the terrace with the girls and dinner in the main dining room with my husband. I even—get this—took golf lessons. Hunt was overjoyed. He said if I showed a facility for the sport
, he’d buy me my own set of golf clubs. Hubba hubba.

  During a lunch with Bailey Vanderhoff and Penelope Etheridge, I learned a very interesting tidbit. We, or should I say they, were gossiping about Larkin Vail, who was often gossiped about at the club because of her prominence as the top woman tennis player. Generally, the way it works at clubs is that when you’re a mediocre player, everybody likes you but nobody wants to play with you. When you’re the club’s best player, everybody wants to play with you but nobody likes you. That rule was especially true in Larkin’s case. Six or seven years before, she was a so-so player with a wide circle of friends. Now that she was a whiz on the courts, she was down to a single friend: Nedra Laughton, her doubles partner. I tried to act riveted as Bailey and Penelope ripped her to shreds.

  “Don’t you despise the way she bounces the ball five times before she serves?” said Bailey. “I mean, is that pretentious or what?”

  “I don’t know about pretentious, but it’s definitely malicious,” said Penelope.

  “Malicious?” I said. “Isn’t that overstating it?”

  “No way,” Penelope insisted. “When she pulls that five-bounce routine, she’s deliberately trying to unnerve her opponent. Well, I, for one, refuse to stand for it.”

  “What do you do?” I asked.

  “I cough or adjust my visor or bend down to tie my shoelace,” she said. “It throws off her rhythm and makes her double fault.”

  “Gee, that’s inspired,” I said and tried to look as if I meant it.

  “What I don’t get is how nobody’s ever tried to run her out of the club,” said Bailey.

  “For bouncing the ball five times before she serves?” I asked, incredulous.

  “No,” said Bailey. “For her off-the-court behavior.”

  “What’s wrong with her off-the-court-behavior?” I asked. On the court Larkin was a monster, the classic example of a poor sport, but off the court she always seemed pretty normal. Relative to everybody else at The Oaks, that is.

  “You haven’t heard?” said Penelope.

  “Heard what?” I said.

  “About the match last year against the Westover Country Club,” she said. “We play them twice a summer.”

  I nodded and thought of Detective Cunningham’s father. “Go on,” I urged Penelope.

  “Well, Westover’s number-one player on the women’s A team is June Douglas,” Penelope went on. “Larkin had to play her and had a hissy fit.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “For the same reason Larkin always has hissy fits: she hates to lose,” Bailey offered.

  “It was the day of our tournament against Westover,” Penelope continued. “We were all sitting there drinking Gatorade and trying to make conversation with the Westover players before the matches started. Before we knew it, June Douglas was drunk as a skunk. The poor woman could barely walk, let alone play tennis.”

  “Drunk? From drinking Gatorade? How could that happen?” I asked.

  “Ask Larkin,” Bailey snickered.

  “I’m asking you guys,” I said.

  “It was Larkin who went inside the tennis house and came back with June’s Gatorade,” said Bailey. “June drank it and got drunk. Doesn’t that say it all?”

  “You’re not suggesting that Larkin spiked the woman’s drink,” I said.

  Penelope and Bailey nodded.

  “But surely this June Douglas would have smelled the alcohol before she drank it,” I said.

  “Not if Larkin spiked the Gatorade with vodka,” Penelope countered. “It doesn’t have a smell—especially if it’s Absolut, the kind Perry Vail happens to drink.”

  “I find it very hard to believe that Larkin would do something like that, competitive though she may be,” I said.

  “You may find it hard to believe, Judy, but June Douglas is sure that she was sabotaged,” said Bailey. “She told her husband, who told my husband, who told me.”

  “Then how come nobody else noticed what was going on?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” Bailey said. “Larkin could have brought a flask to the club and slipped the vodka into June’s cup without the rest of us noticing. All I can say is that June had to default the match, which gave Larkin the automatic win.”

  “Larkin’s a terrific player,” I said. “She doesn’t have to drug her opponents to beat them.”

  “She couldn’t beat Claire Cox a couple of weeks ago, remember?” said Bailey.

  Yes, I did remember. Not only that, she’d gone ballistic when she’d lost to Claire. Still, Larkin couldn’t possibly care enough about winning a dopey tennis match to drug June Douglas…or bludgeon Claire Cox to death, could she? The idea was absurd, but then many things about The Oaks were absurd.

  I decided to have lunch with Larkin and get my own impression of her psyche.

  “How’ve you been?” I asked her. She looked tanned and fit and ready for a couple of sets of tennis.

  “I’m super,” she said, taking a bite of her New Potato Salad. I had ordered the New Potato Salad too, only to discover that there was nothing “new” about it; the potatoes were so old they had liver spots.

  During most of the meal, Larkin gossiped about Bailey and Penelope and all the people at the club who gossiped relentlessly about her. In fact, Larkin was a world-class gossip, especially when it came to everybody’s tennis injuries. If you had even the slightest case of tennis elbow, she knew all the details—including which elbow. She ate very quickly, and when she had finished her lunch, she announced that she had to leave.

  “What’s the rush?” I said.

  “I have a game with Nedra at two-thirty,” she said.

  “But it’s only one-fifteen,” I said.

  “I know, but I want to be over at the courts by one-thirty. Nedra and I like to warm up before we play.”

  “For an hour? That’s a lot of warming up.”

  “Yes, but you’ve heard the old saying: ‘You can never be too rich, too thin, or too warmed up.’”

  No, I hadn’t heard that old saying. “Before you go,” I said, “how’s your tennis game going? You seem to be playing well this summer.”

  “Pretty well,” she said. “I’m having a little trouble with my drop shot, but otherwise I’m on course.”

  Spiked anybody’s Gatorade lately? I wanted to ask her. “Have you lost any matches so far?” I asked her instead.

  She thought for a minute. “No,” she said finally.

  “What about that match against Claire Cox?” I asked. Apparently, it had slipped Larkin’s mind.

  “Oh that,” she said. “I had my period that day. I wasn’t playing my best.”

  “Claire was a good player, though, wasn’t she?”

  “She had good strokes but she didn’t know where to place the ball.”

  “So you didn’t see her as competition for the women’s singles tournament later this summer?”

  “I see everyone as competition.”

  “It’s too bad about what happened to Claire, isn’t it?” I asked. It was time to stop pussyfooting around.

  “Horrible.”

  “And to think it happened at our club. During the Wild West July Fourth party.”

  “Dreadful.”

  “You and Perry were sitting near the Laughtons, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you enjoy the party?”

  “Very much. Perry and I thought the band was exceptional, especially when they played ‘The Achy Breaky Heart.’”

  “Did you happen to see Claire or talk to her during the evening?”

  “No.”

  “Really? You couldn’t miss her. She was the only Indian medicine woman at the party.”

  “Well, I didn’t see her.”

  “Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed her?”

  “Probably someone from one of those Right to Life groups.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I think the killer is someone who had a personal grudge against Claire.”

>   “Oh, you mean like a love affair gone sour?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Aha! Then I bet Ducky Laughton did it.”

  “Ducky? How can you accuse him of being a murderer?”

  “Because he used to have a thing for Claire Cox, according to Nedra.”

  “Yes, but he’s your best friend’s husband. The four of you are inseparable.” Did the woman have no loyalty?

  “Fine. So it wasn’t Ducky. Maybe it was Nedra.”

  “Nedra?” I was aghast that Larkin could stab her best friend in the back. If she could stab Nedra in the back, maybe she could hit Claire over the head.

  “Come on, Judy,” she said. “You’ve seen how jealous Nedra is. Maybe she lost it when she realized her husband would be sharing a golf course with his old lover.”

  I stared at Larkin. I knew I was supposed to be concentrating on the fact that she was a possible suspect in Claire’s murder, but I was fixated on what a rat she was, on how effortlessly she accused her only ally at the club.

  “Do you have any qualms about talking to me about Nedra this way?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Life’s a lot like tennis,” she said. “You have to play the ball wherever it lands.”

  I shuddered as I watched her get up to leave for her hour-long, prematch warm-up session with her best friend Nedra. Maybe she was the murderer and maybe she wasn’t. But one thing was certain: with friends like her, who needed enemies?

  I called Tom Cunningham when I got home from the club, but the department secretary said he was out on a case. Apparently, someone had robbed the Belford Hardware Store and taken, among other things, a Weber grill and a large bag of charcoal. The cops had already dubbed the thief the Barbecue Bandit.

  “Why didn’t you beep me?” Tom asked when he reached me about six o’clock. “If I’m not at the station, you’re supposed to beep me.”

  “It wasn’t an emergency,” I said. “I’m not even sure it warranted a phone call.”

  “Meet me in fifteen minutes and we’ll see,” he said.

  “Where?” I said. Hunt would be home soon. We were supposed to be having dinner with Nedra and Ducky at the club.

  “The parking lot of Stop ’n’ Shop,” he said.