Playing the Devil

by R. J. Lee

  Wendy was about to answer when an earsplitting crack of thunder accompanied by a near-atomic flash of lightning produced the inevitable—the dreaded loss of power. The clubhouse was plunged into utter darkness, and smartphones instantly turned into flashlights throughout the building. Wendy glanced at her screen, and it prominently displayed: 6:13.

  “I think we should stay right where we are until the lights come back on,” Deedah said. “Meanwhile, I’ll call Rosalie Power and Light, report this, and see if they can tell me what’s going on. Of course, I’ll probably get a busy signal.”

  “Ordinarily, I would agree about waiting,” Wendy said. “Except that it could take a while and I need to use the ladies’ room. Wine always does that to me. Not that this is the perfect time to go by any means—in the dark, of course. What an afternoon. It’s hardly what I’d envisioned.”

  A few minutes later, Carly and the light from her phone entered the room, and she was hyperventilating. “What else can happen to us after all this?” she managed. “This is like a nightmare.”

  Deedah craned her neck and said, “Where’s Hollis?”

  “Still out there,” Carly told her. “There’s not much wind, so it’s not raining in under the portico. He said he heard another one of those transformers popping off somewhere in the distance, and then he said he wanted to stay a little longer and soak up the dark ambience or some such phrase.”

  “That’s my Hollis,” Deedah said, unable to suppress her amusement. “There’s no one on earth who talks like that but him.”

  Wendy took Carly by the arm gently. “Good timing. I was just headed to the ladies’ room. We would have to give up our official female cards if we didn’t go together. Isn’t it a requirement—you know, two or more?”

  Carly nudged her. “At least. I was just about to tell you that I wanted to go with you. And I might as well check on that drunken husband of mine while I’m at it. He’s liable to fall asleep and drown himself or try to climb out of that tub and hit his head.”

  “Don’t you think he’ll stay where he is under the circumstances?” Wendy added.

  Carly’s sigh was plaintive. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? If he doesn’t get all the booze he wants, though, he’ll probably get out and stagger around until he crashes into the bar.”

  “You’re exaggerating, right?”

  “Sweetie, you have no idea what he’s resorted to over the years to get his way.”

  * * *

  It took some time for the two women to reach the ladies’ locker room, but when they finally did, Wendy was surprised that Carly wanted to peel off first instead of accompanying her farther, as women often do on such occasions. “I want to get checking on Brent out of the way. He doesn’t deserve it, but it’s just a reflex action on my part, I guess. The deck’s not far away. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  “Be careful, please,” Wendy told her. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait and go together?”

  “I’m sure. You’re not used to him. I am.”

  Those few minutes that Carly had mentioned seemed like an eternity to Wendy once she was inside the bathroom alone. She noted for not the first time that darkness definitely slowed time down. It was a matter of sensory deprivation, she supposed. But not being able to see things clearly created an alternate reality of sorts. There was no depth perception, no sense of up and down, right and left, to speak of. There was just darkness, except for the paltry glow of her smartphone; and even that added nothing more than a ghostly element to the setting. To say that there was something of a Halloween haunted house present in the ambience was an understatement. All that was lacking were the spooky sound effects and the screaming children.

  The other thing Wendy noticed was that her hearing was being heightened greatly by the absence of any real illumination. Little from the eyes, much from the ears. Every little noise from afar that drifted her way seemed to take on a life of its own. There was occasional rumbling still going on outside from the storm. Then, there was an eerie quiet, broken by a brief shriek and a thud; then the sound of someone running in the hallway outside. Then nothing but silence.

  Had someone stumbled and hurt themselves? She had warned Carly to be careful. Where was Carly right now? Was she in some sort of trouble? Was she the person who had shrieked?

  Alarmed, Wendy finished up, quickly washing her hands at the sink, and was about to open the locker-room door when Carly beat her to the punch. She stood there in the doorframe, limply holding her smartphone. At any moment it looked like it might fall out of her hand onto the floor. The expression on her face was blank, her eyes widened in zombie-like fashion. But she said nothing.

  Wendy took Carly’s free hand and pulled her inside, closing the door behind her. “What’s the matter? I heard all these strange noises. Did you fall down? I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”

  Carly managed to shake her head, speaking almost in a whisper. “It’s Brent. I think he’s dead out there. It’s his eyes. They’re not blinking. He won’t answer me. You go and see. I’ll wait here. I tried to rouse him. I moved his head from side to side. It’s the look in his eyes. Go see for yourself.”

  “Are you crazy? I’m not leaving you alone, and I’m not going out there by myself, either. Come on, we’ll go together.”

  Carly backed away from her slightly. “I don’t know if I can do that. I think I might faint.”

  “Then you don’t have to look. But you’ll hang on to me while I check everything out. I need to keep an eye on you.”

  Wendy hooked her arm through Carly’s, and the two of them walked slowly toward the end of the hallway, then through the door and out onto the covered deck. Brent’s head was tilted back awkwardly, resting on the shelf of the acrylic hot tub, his eyes staring at the ceiling above, while the rest of his body remained submerged in the water, no longer swirling due to the power outage, but still giving off steam into the surrounding cooler air.

  “Brent?” Wendy managed while holding on to Carly tightly and shining her smartphone down on his face. “Brent? ” she repeated.

  But there was still no answer, and even in the limited light available to her, Wendy could see the deep, ugly gash on the crown of his head. She loosened her grip on Carly, leaned down, and lightly put her fingers on Brent’s warm neck, but there was no pulse. For an instant, it flashed into Wendy’s head that she probably shouldn’t have touched him; but without having to think any further, she contacted 911 on her phone to report the emergency. Then she texted both her father, Captain Bax, and her boyfriend, Ross Rierson, with the disturbing news.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  CHAPTER 3

  Power had been restored to the RCC by the time the Rosalie Police Department arrived upon the scene, though the weather continued to be uncooperative and delay their journey. First responders were also quick to confirm that Brent Ogle was indeed dead—the visible cause of death being blunt force trauma to the crown of the head. Something heavy had been wielded violently with ugly results. That something was easily retrieved when spotted at the bottom of the hot tub: it was the pestle used by Carlos Galbis in creating his julep and mojito specialties. There was no blood on it, however, as the soak in the hot tub had obviously acted as a dishwasher, cleaning it perfectly. Also found near the drain was the glass from which Brent had been downing the booze Carlos Galbis had been serving him all afternoon. It, too, was spotless, with no prints or DNA on it.

  As processing of the entire clubhouse was continued in earnest by various members of the Rosalie Criminal Investigations Division, it was determined that Brent had also been dead less than an hour, according to his liver temp. No surprise there. The longtime, gregarious coroner, Tommy Cantwell, arrived soon after and agreed with blunt force trauma as the preliminary COD. Interestingly, he had barely survived the last election cycle when his opponent had pointed out some irregularities that the public was not privy to.

  “But we’ll have to send the body down to Merrill
Higgins in Jackson for an autopsy, fellas,” Tommy said to those surrounding him. “We obviously have some foul play here. This is one for the medical examiner.”

  Meanwhile, some of the officers began separating the various witnesses or suspects, seating them well away from each other on the various sofas and chairs around the great room.

  There were eight people in all to consider: Deedah Hornesby; her son, Hollis; Carly Ogle; Tip Jarvis; Connor James; Carlos Galbis; Mitzy Stone; and even Wendy, herself, for the obvious reason that she was in the clubhouse at the time the murder had taken place. As the police would soon lament, the odd thing about it all was that none of those people—other than the actual murderer—could accurately be termed “witnesses,” since the entire building had been plunged into darkness when the murder had been committed. The time of both the loss and restoration of power had already been confirmed helpfully by the utility company. Power lost—6:13 CDT. Power restored—6:44 CDT. Approximately one half hour of a lack of stage lighting, so to speak. The theatrical aspect of it all seemed like something out of a play, but the dead body was real enough, and the blood was no mixture of corn syrup and red dye conjured up by a prop crew.

  Yet how reliable could what any of these eight people had seen—or thought they had seen—truly be, assuming they would be telling the truth to start with? That aspect aside, they all had to be classified as suspects, since it stood to reason that one of them was the likely murderer, unless some unknown person had managed to slip in from outside, do the deed, and then slip away unnoticed. No need to take on such paranoia at this early stage unless absolutely necessary, though.

  The lead detective on duty was Ross Rierson, who had played the same role during the infamous Grand Slam Murders case the previous year, which his girlfriend, Wendy Winchester, herself, had helped the department solve. Thus, it was beyond awkward—even surreal—that Ross had to approach Wendy as if she were a viable suspect, even though he knew that she could not possibly turn out to be a person of interest. He already knew that she had gone to the RCC to play bridge that afternoon because she had texted him as a reminder that morning. The two always stayed in touch throughout the day with their smartphones.

  Furthermore, Ross knew that, as the daughter of the highly respected Chief Bax Winchester, she was on the side of the angels. In fact, so angelic was she to him that he had proposed marriage to her last year, even though she had politely told him that she was not ready to walk down the aisle quite yet. They had continued to see each other, however, and she had assured him she needed time to become accustomed to her important new position at the Citizen and her new boss and editor, Lyndell Slover.

  Just before Deedah Hornesby agreed to make her office available to Ross so that he could do his preliminary questioning of everyone in private, one at a time, he took Wendy aside and spoke to her discreetly.

  “This is going to be a first—and last, I hope. Me questioning you this way, I mean,” he said, giving her that disarming smile that had lulled many a suspect into a complacency that had eventually resulted in a confession. “You . . . and then Miz Ogle will be the first two, since you both discovered the body.”

  “I can hardly believe it myself,” Wendy said out of the corner of her mouth. “It’s like a throwback to some old film noir. You know, the lights go out for a while and then when they come back on, somebody’s been murdered.” She snapped her fingers smartly, but she was hardly smiling.

  Ross managed a slight tilt of his head, showing off his shock of dirty-blond hair to great effect. “I can only hope this gets solved as easily as those old plots did.”

  Wendy caught his gaze intently, her tone one of resignation. “You’re not gonna like hearing this, but I think just about everyone here—with the possible exception of me—hated the man’s guts. And even I think I would have eventually gotten there had I spent much more time out here with him around. Whoever actually did it won’t be a shock to me.”

  “Hold that thought,” Ross said, lifting his index finger in the air. “I’ll want to explore that further with you.”

  * * *

  Ross wanted to get his interrogation of Carly Ogle out of the way as soon and as painlessly as possible. She still seemed to be in shock. Or was it the effect of the sedative she said Deedah Hornesby had given her to help calm her nerves? First, he lost no time in expressing his sympathy for her loss. She had then explained to him that Deedah and her son, Hollis, had insisted that she go home with them to spend the night and that they would be looking after her in her time of great distress.

  “You have no idea how much I do appreciate that. My son, David, lives way away up in Wisconsin. It might take him a day or two to get down here for services,” she concluded in somewhat mumbling fashion, working her fingers together into a nervous knot.

  “If you could, Miz Ogle,” Ross continued from behind Deedah’s desk, “just give me the sequence of events as you remember them that led to the discovery of your husband’s body. And try to speak up a bit more so my recorder gets everything. Thank you so much.”

  Nestled on Deedah’s sofa across from him, Carly took her time, her words coming with great difficulty. “I’ll . . . try.” There was a long pause. “As near as I can recall . . . I . . . well, I . . .” She briefly put her hand over her mouth. “Maybe you should start with Wendy Winchester first.”

  Ross gave her his most sincere smile, not the exaggerated one he used to intimidate suspects. “She’s up next, Miz Ogle. But I need you to tell me what happened as best you can. It will be vital to our investigation. You are the person most affected by this, and we want to see that justice is served.”

  Carly continued to sound ill at ease. “It’s just that . . . it all seems like a blur to me now. I’m not sure I’ll get everything right.”

  “Do your best, do your best. I assure you, I am on your side.”

  Finally, Carly put together a hurried sequence. “I went down the hallway after I left Wendy at the ladies’ locker-room door. Then I went out onto the deck and found Brent like that. He was lifeless; he wouldn’t answer me. I was in shock. The rest seems like a blur. I think I stood there, not believing what I was seeing. Then I headed back into the hallway, but I remember being frozen in place for a while, unable to move forward or backward. Then someone came in from the deck and tackled me, knocking me to the floor. They ran away, but I didn’t see who it was.” She paused for a breath and then slowed down somewhat. “And then . . . and then I went back inside the locker room and told Wendy to come look. And she did. And we both knew . . . he was dead. We just knew. But that gash on his head—I just couldn’t get over it. I know I’m still in shock.”

  “And that was when Wendy called 9-1-1 and texted me?”

  “Yes . . . I think so. She told me she was going to text you and her father.”

  Ross nodded sympathetically. “And she did. You said someone practically tackled you and knocked you over. From behind, or did they come directly at you?”

  Carly looked him straight in the eye for the first time. “They were . . . coming at me directly from the end of the hallway. Maybe they’d been out on the deck all along hiding and I hadn’t seen them; I don’t know. I was looking down at the light from my smartphone when it happened. I guess we’ve all gotten used to wandering around, looking at those tiny screens. I wasn’t paying attention, and . . . I certainly didn’t expect to be knocked down. I remember being startled and screaming, but it wasn’t loud or long. I wasn’t hurt or anything like that.”

  “Do you remember what time it was when you looked down at your phone?”

  “I’m not sure,” Carly said. “Maybe 6:30. But I really can’t be sure. I was in shock.”

  “And you didn’t get a good look at whoever knocked you down at all? Even at a piece of clothing they were wearing?”

  Carly squinted for a few seconds. “No, I didn’t get a look at anything. It all happened so fast. Suddenly, I was on the floor, and by the time I got up, whoever it was had disappeare
d into the darkness down the hallway in the direction of the great room.”

  “Do you think it was a man or a woman?”

  “I . . . really couldn’t say. It was just a body that threw itself against me. I suppose it could have been either a man or a woman.”

  Ross was shaking his head. “That’s where the power being off didn’t do us any favors. I have my own little saying—lots of people get away in the dark.” Then he made a clucking noise and moved on. “What about the sound the shoes made when whoever it was ran off?” He gave her his most expectant gaze. “You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? A woman’s heels make a different sound than a man’s golf shoe with cleats or sneakers and so forth.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean.” Carly drew herself up in an attempt to recall. “The only thing I remember is that those shoes didn’t make much of a sound. They sounded . . . well, soft.”

  Ross’s tone became more animated. “As in sneakers, maybe?”

  “No. Just as in . . . soft.”

  “You’re going to think I’m a bit off here,” Ross continued, keeping his tone lighthearted. “But I want to cover all the senses. What I mean is, when whoever it was tackled you, was there a unique odor of any kind? Perhaps a perfume or cologne you detected or even recognized?”

  Here, Carly seemed confident. “Now that you mention it, there was no odor of any kind that I can recall.” She put a finger to her temple and screwed up her mouth for a moment. “And all of us women playing bridge today were wearing different fragrances. So does that mean I was thrown to the floor by a man?”

  “Possibly,” Ross said as evenly as he could manage.

  “I hope that makes things easier for you, Mr. Rierson.”

  He nodded quickly, but there was a sober aspect to it. “It might narrow things down a bit. But it’s possible that whoever knocked you down wasn’t the person who killed your husband. Perhaps you surprised them as much as they surprised you.”

  “I don’t quite get it.”

  “What I mean is—suppose whoever it was had just discovered the body right after you did and wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. You just happened to be in their way.”