“Yeah. And Richard’s an architect. How ‘bout yourself?”
To avoid the subject of greeting cards and cartoons, I pulled up beside the other cart and stared at the green as if transfixed. “Richard was right. I’ve got quite a downhill lie.”
All three men had putts ranging from twenty to thirty feet, but mine was just on the apron. This meant I couldn’t mark my ball, but also meant the flag, called the “pin” for some reason, could stay in the hole for my shot. Sometimes the ball hits the pin and drops in. That had happened a few times for opponents of mine, but never for me.
They marked their balls and stood back. Hank flashed me a smile. “Looks like you’re away, Molly.”
As if I couldn’t see that for myself. My ball was perched on top of a hill. If I misjudged the speed, it could easily roll clear across the green.
I went through the motions of lining up my putt, which meant getting down on one knee, holding up my putter, closing one eye, and leaning to one side and then the other. Truth be told, I’ve never so much as figured out what golfers are looking at when they go through these gyrations. But it was a nice stall technique that allowed me to ask more questions.
Donning a look of intense concentration while staring at the green blur of grass before me, I said, “This must be strange, playing with me when you were used to playing with Preston Saunders. Was he any good?”
“Yeah,” Hank said. “He was a scratch golfer.”
I gave an appreciative whistle. “You must miss him quite a bit, huh?”
Hank and Richard exchanged glances. Hank crossed his hairy arms and said to me, “It’s hard to see, but the green breaks sharply to the left.”
That was a clue to do the opposite and play for a break to the right. It was also a clue that they were suspicious about my relationship to Preston. If they weren’t going to answer my questions, I may as well putt.
“Bombs away,” I murmured and putted. The ball rolled to the left down the slope, then curved back slowly to the right…and dropped into the hole, dead center.
“Yes!” I cried. “A birdie!” Two wonderful, long shots and now a great putt! Lightning had struck three times in the same spot!
“You do consider this within par, don’t you? I won the bet, right?”
“So you did,” Richard grumbled. He winked at me again, but looked none too happy.
The men quickly got down to the business of making their own putts. They each sank their shots in two, parring the hole.
As we walked back to our carts, Hank asked, “Do you work, Molly?”
It struck me as pointless to lie, all the while trying to get the truth from them. Yet I might be able to avoid the subject of art. “I write greeting cards. I recently started my own business: Molly’s eCards.”
“Do you create your own artwork?”
So much for avoidance. “Mmm-hmm,” I murmured. They froze. I pretended not to notice their reaction. No seasoned golfer would dawdle around a green under normal circumstances. Especially not at this course, where slow play was considered a more serious crime than murder.
“Say, Molly,” Richard said. “Maybe I know your husband. What’s his name?”
“Jim.”
“Jim Masters?” Richard repeated, smiling at me, though his eyes were fierce. “And he’s an artist?”
“No, he’s an electrical engineer. Why?”
“So you’re the artist in the family. Are you a cartoonist?”
“Yes.” I returned my putter to my bag and got behind the wheel, but the men were still standing, watching me. “We’d better get to the next tee, guys.”
Hank grabbed my cart’s post. “Hold on a minute, here. Did you know Preston Saunders?”
“Yes, but only vaguely. He was just an acquaintance of mine. I went to high school with his wife, but I’ve lived out of town until recently.”
“So you sign your cartoons ‘Masters.’ Right?” Richard asked. He and Hank were really ganging up on me, but Chase was listening to all of this in silence.
“Right, but what does this—”
“That bastard,” Hank snarled. “He ripped us off again!”
On that note, the three men finally got into the carts.
As we drove to the second tee, I asked Chase, “Again?”
He said nothing and didn’t meet my eyes. It occurred to me that I had about as much clout in this country club as a roasted marshmallow. There was nothing I could do to stop them if they refused to honor our bet. Chase had called Preston an “SOB,” and Hank had called him “that bastard,” but I still hadn’t learned what Richard thought of him.
“The three of you don’t seem to have liked Preston very much. Why? Did he cheat?”
Chase shook his head. “Golf brought out the best in him. That was the one time he never cheated.”
He leaped out of the cart before I’d even braked.
The second fairway bent at almost a right angle around a lake. This formation is called a dogleg, though it resembles any mammal’s leg, the green being the paw. From the championship tee, which would be the doggy’s hip joint, it was 220 yards to the dog’s elbow. The women’s tee, closer to the green in acknowledgment of our weaker swings, was located forty yards away, about one-fifth of the way down the dog’s thigh.
“We’re going to cut off this leg,” Richard told me.
“And they say golf isn’t a violent sport,” I joked.
Again, no one smiled. As Richard had foretold, all three men not only hit across the lake, but to the far side of the fairway where they would have only a seventy-yard pitch shot to the green.
“Chase, let Molly take the cart,” Hank instructed. Chase grabbed his pitching wedge and his putter, and jogged along the path after Richard’s cart, rounding the lake on the green’s side. They were going to try to get to the green fast enough to give me the slip! Those welchers!
I floored it and headed to the women’s tee. From this angle, there was no chance of my hitting over the lake to where the men were. My only hope was to come around the leg as fast as they did. I was not adverse to faking shots and throwing the ball up ahead of me, but they could still see me from the other side of the lake, and besides, I have a lousy arm.
It took me three shots till I was close enough to reach the green. Even though I’d practically played golf polo, barely stopping the cart to swing, the men were already putting. Chase watched for my shot and waved me on while Richard returned the pin to the hole. My ball stayed on the green, but it was too late. The three of them had already putted. Drat!
As I neared, they were having a conference, their heads together. Hank gestured angrily and Richard, hands in pockets, shrugged. Chase looked over at me. I felt like the tag-along little sister whom the older brother and his buddies were about to ditch.
Sure enough, Chase was wearing a guilty smile as he rejoined me. “Sorry, Molly,” he said, “but we just realized, you actually lost the bet, since you said you’d make par, not within par.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You got a birdie, not a par.”
“Well, technically, but—”
“Each of our wives is playing just one group back. You can wait at the third tee and join up with them.”
As he spoke, I considered my options. One: Leap into the cart and refuse to budge. (I’d have to get off to hit my shot at the next tee, though, at which time they would drive away without me.) Two: Insist we call the marshal to arbitrate our dispute. (He’d side with the men, not with an unknown female nonmember.) Three: Taunt them into yet another bet, which I had virtually no chance of winning.
I was stuck.
“But what about the cart and—”
While I spoke, he took out my clubs and set them on the grass near the cart path. “My wife will have a cart for you to share. It was nice playing with you.”
They may have prevented me from talking to them during golf, but they’d never make me resign this easily. I still had questions for them. “Say,
Chase, I haven’t found a dentist here in town yet. Are you taking new patients?”
“Sure am. Just call my office, and we’ll get you scheduled.”
He waved and drove off. I made a couple of haphazard putts, then kicked my ball into the hole and carried my clubs to the third tee to await their wives.
Maybe this would all work out in my favor. I would have an easier time getting women to drop their guard. They might know about “Mike” Masters’s cartoon and the bet their husbands had made. Plus, it would be much easier for me to ask other women about a fight that had occurred among men.
Chapter 12
Aft!
After a short wait, three women drove up in a pair of golf carts. Out of the first cart stepped a tall and shapely, absolutely stunning African-American woman. She had very short hair, which accentuated her remarkable large eyes and high cheekbones. Carlton was a small, predominantly white town. She and I traveled in different social circles, and I’d have remembered her had I ever seen her before. I rose from the bench and met her halfway to the cart path.
“You must be Molly Masters,” she said with a melodic voice that bore a slight Jamaican accent. “Hello. I am Emma Groves, Chase’s wife.”
“How did you know my—”
“Hank Mueller called the clubhouse on his cell, then Sabrina.” She gestured with an open palm toward the two women behind her. “This is Hank’s wife, Sabrina. And Kimberly Worthington, Richard’s wife.”
Perhaps the old adage about long-time married couples looking alike had some truth to it. Kimberly had some of Richard’s physical characteristics: she was plump and elderly, though, unlike Richard, her hair was dyed blond. She also shared his loud, aggressive mannerisms as she pumped my arm vigorously and announced to the world how pleased she was to meet me.
And, as with Hank, I instantly didn’t like Sabrina. The first thing she said to me was, “What does your husband do for a living?” She nodded politely when I told her, but the damage had already been done. She wore her thick, auburn hair in a diagonally cut hairdo I’d seen on models in ads. Her face, though attractive, had an un-natural sheen caused by either makeup or recent cosmetic surgery. It was hard to guess what age she was aiming to emulate, but she looked to be in her late thirties or early forties.
“What did you shoot on the first two holes, honey?” Kimberly asked me, pulling out a pencil to add my name to her scorecard.
“I got a three on the first hole and a seven on the second, although my seventh stroke was technically a kick.”
“Whatever it takes, honey,” Kimberly replied, grinning.
I checked over her shoulder, glad to see that she’d written my name as Molly, not Honey.
“Whoa,” Sabrina said, lifting my ball retriever slightly from my bag, which, unasked, she was loading onto Emma’s cart. “Look at this. She’s going to be tough competition.”
Emma whistled and shook her head. Though baffled at what my ball retriever had to do with my score, I replied, “I use that a lot. My clubs can double as divining rods, my shots find water so often.”
“That experience will come in handy,” Emma said. I marveled at how beautiful she was as she explained, “We subtract one stroke for each ball we find.”
“That’s how I got a five on the last hole,” Sabrina said, combing her fingers through her fashionable hair. “It was actually an eight, but I got three balls out of the lake. Care to join us in our friendly wager?”
Uh-oh. I’d had a bad enough experience betting with the men. “I’m not much of a gambler.”
“It’s not much of a bet,” Sabrina said with a shrug. “Loser buys dessert.” She smiled.
“Dessert?” I scanned for cracks in Sabrina’s makeup, but saw none.
“The country club has a cheesecake that is out of this world,” Emma said with a wide smile, which I returned. As with her husband, Chase, there was something immensely likable about her. I was as drawn to her as I felt repelled by Sabrina and Hank Mueller.
“That’s the only reason I joined,” Sabrina said, lighting up a cigarette as she approached the tee. “The pastry chef. He goes, I go. Speaking of which, we need to hit before that damned marshal gets on our asses again, so I’m going.” She took a big draw on her cigarette, then rested it on the red marker that designated the women’s tee. In virtually the same movement, she stepped into her stance and swung. Her ball veered to the right of the fairway and hit a tree solidly. “Oh, damn,” she said, shaking her head as she retrieved her cigarette. “That tree got in my way.”
“Nice shot, Sabrina,” Emma said. “I’d say you’re a three-length farther down.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, wondering what a “three-length” was.
“Hitting a tree is just bad luck,” Emma explained. “You move your ball to where it would have been, had the tree not been planted in the wrong spot.”
I smiled, thinking these women were my kind of golfers. “So when we miss putts, do we get to blame the cup for being in the wrong spot?”
Sabrina chuckled and took another long draw on her cigarette. “Why not? It’s a good concept.” I couldn’t quite decide what it was about her that bothered me.
The rest of us hit our drives. Mine landed on the left side of the fairway some twenty yards ahead of Kimberly’s. Emma and Sabrina dropped us off at Kimberly’s ball, while they headed toward theirs on the opposite side of the fairway. Judging by how far Sabrina tossed her bail after picking it up, Kimberly would have been better off had she hit a tree.
Kimberly waggled her ample hips, brushed back a lock of her would-have-been-gray hair, then took an awkward swing at her ball, sending a divot of dirt and grass farther than her ball. She shrugged and stepped toward her ball, making no move to replace the divot. “Oh, well. We won’t count that shot. Call it, ‘ground under repair.’” She glanced back at the hole her club-head had left. “Sure needs repair now, at any rate.”
I laughed. The phrase “ground under repair” actually referred to designated areas of the course where maintenance crews had recently dug up the turf. She hit a much better second shot, though that would have been her third by anyone else’s count.
My ball went just fifteen yards with my next swing. Kimberly immediately called on my behalf, “Ground under repair!”
The four of us finished the hole and awarded ourselves scores none of us actually earned. Hoping to learn about the men’s relationships, I asked at the next tee-box, “Do your husbands make wagers during their rounds, too?”
“Constantly,” Sabrina answered, rolling her eyes while poofing her hair, reminiscent of Mae West, except with auburn tresses. “They bet money, not pastry.”
“Major money?”
“No, just fifty dollars a round.”
That was odd. Why the enormous bet about my cartoon?
“They’re ruthless about it,” Kimberly said. “It’s not the money, it’s that macho ‘Mine’s bigger than yours’ thing.”
“Kimberly!” Sabrina admonished, letting out a smoker’s wheeze as she laughed.
“If they’re that serious about small bets,” I said, trying to sound casual, “I wonder how they’d handle something larger.”
“Chase would step on someone’s face to win a big bet,” Emma said, a hint of anger seeping into her voice.
“So would Hank,” Sabrina said. “And he’d be wearing cleats at the time.”
“Richard’s the same way. Which is probably why they never bet more than fifty on anything.” Kimberly paused.
“Then again, Richard knows I’d kill him if I ever found out he bet a lot of money. So who’s to say he’s telling the truth about the amounts?”
She glanced at her two friends, who both looked thoughtful for a moment, then agreed that was a good question. Kimberly chuckled and wagged a pudgy finger at me. “Come to think of it, we missed quite an opportunity with you, honey. You could’ve spied on ‘em for us.”
Imagine that, I thought to myself.
Sabrina narrowed h
er eyes at me. “Did they make any bets while you were with them?”
There was no reason to admit that I’d made a bet to avoid being forced to join this current group. “No. but I was only with them for one and a half holes. They told me they’ve been golfing together for a number of years now.” I paused. “Since they’re so competitive, they must get into quite a few arguments. Or are they all good friends?”
Kimberly shrugged and looked at Emma. “Do men even have friends?”
Sabrina abruptly turned on a heel and said over her shoulder, “Let’s not talk about this now. Who’s up?”
Just what was it that Sabrina suddenly didn’t want to talk about, I wondered. The men’s friendships? Her husband, Hank, had changed subjects at almost the same exact point, right when I’d asked about the friendships among the four men. Yet the three men had seemed to be good friends, so the trouble must have been with Preston.
Now I was getting somewhere. But if I asked too many questions they’d get suspicious. The last thing I wanted was to get bumped back again, this time to a group of strangers.
This hole was a par three, the theory being that the golfer hits the drive onto the green, then two-putts into the hole. We all hit decent shots, landing within a few yards of the green. Emma was farthest from the hole. She hit a lousy second shot that went clear over the green. She immediately reached into her pocket and dropped a second ball, saying, “Mulligan toss, girls,” as she hit this one onto the green.
“Yes!” Sabrina said. She and Kimberly promptly picked up their balls and threw them onto the green.
This was more than a little unusual, but I merely watched them in silence. A “mulligan” was a term commonly used by weekend golfers: a flubbed shot was ignored, and the golfer merely hit a new one. I’d never heard of a “mulligan toss,” though. Was I supposed to compliment them on the accuracy of their throws?
“She’s taking a mulligan, so now all of us get to throw our balls forward,” Kimberly explained to me.
Never one to argue with a gift horse, I followed suit and got an excellent bounce and roll. I wound up making a par.
Death Comes to Suburbia (Book 2 Molly Masters Mysteries) Page 14
