Playing the Devil

by R. J. Lee

  Wendy noted the passion with which Deedah spoke. It was clear that the woman had a firm grasp of the reality of the darker side of human behavior. After all, she had prevailed against it in becoming the RCC director. She was no pushover.

  * * *

  A half hour later, Wendy found Mitzy Stone’s modest little apartment nestled inside a complex in the Rosalie suburb of Whiteapple Village to be in sharp contrast to impeccable Hornesby Cottage. Where Deedah had filled her spacious cottage with period antiques and designer décor items, Mitzy’s theme was obviously one of straightforward dedication to sports. The shag carpet and the low popcorn ceilings with sprinklers quite visible fit right in with the pictures of golf tournaments, football games, players, and coaches all over the walls, and what furniture there was had a “rent to buy” look to it. Wendy browsed them all as if she were in an art gallery, smiling at photos of Mitzy herself teeing off or sinking a putt with her arms raised in victory. Mitzy’s hospitality was much the same as Deedah’s had been, and the two women were soon seated at her kitchen table with Wendy sipping coffee while Mitzy enjoyed a beer.

  “I’ve always wanted to succeed at some sport,” Mitzy was saying as they settled into the interview. “I tried nearly everything, including basketball because I’m so tall. But I found my niche as a golfer. I even went to qualifying school for the LPGA tour. That’s a tough one, and I never quite made the cut. But being a pro is where I landed, and I’m grateful to Deedah for giving me the chance here in Rosalie.”

  “This wasn’t your first job, was it?”

  “No, indeed,” Mitzy said. “I’d been working at the Red Stick Country Club in Baton Rouge for a while, and before that, on the Mississippi coast. I do have considerable experience.”

  Wendy finished up her notes and said, “Talk to me about life out at the RCC. I think you know what I mean by that, too.”

  Mitzy put down her beer and leaned in confidentially. “I was happy to help people with their swings and how to select their clubs for various shots—the usual stuff. Most people were friendly and cordial to me. What I hadn’t counted on was a monster like Brent Ogle hanging around all the time. He seemed to be obsessed with me, and I tried my best to avoid him after a while. He told me he particularly didn’t like the fact that I used the men’s tee. I told him I wasn’t trying to show off, I was just challenging myself; but he implied that I was infringing upon his rights as a man. Now, you figure that one out.”

  “Everyone and everything bothered him, it appears,” Wendy said. “He made many enemies. One too many, I’d say.”

  Mitzy returned to her beer, taking a healthy swig. “He got riled up all the time, and he riled other people up as a result. It turned out to be a lethal combination but hardly a surprise.”

  “Let’s move on,” Wendy continued. “What did you think of the changes Deedah was making at the RCC? I was involved in one myself in trying to introduce bridge to the club offerings. We were convinced it would catch on. We still are, once we get past this awful murder.”

  “I’ve never been a big fan of card games, myself,” Mitzy said. “But I’ve had friends who were devoted to poker in all its many versions, and I know what kind of fun they had, making their small bets and scoping out each other’s tells and such. Deedah felt that there weren’t enough social events at the RCC, and she wanted to bring some of the fun inside. There was more than enough going on outside with the golf, tennis, and swimming. I’m sure you felt the same way.”

  Wendy’s sigh was full of exasperation, as she shook her head in slow motion. “All I’ve been wanting to do is to learn enough about bridge to be able to play it halfway decently. But the gods seem to keep preempting me.” Something in Wendy’s head seemed to click, bringing the hint of a smile to her face.

  Preempting.

  It had an entirely different meaning in the game of bridge, one she had tried to illustrate in that first meeting of the Bridge Bunch. Odd, that the word had caused her to pause and acknowledge it.

  “I’m assuming you and Deedah will keep the Bridge Bunch going after all this dies down,” Mitzy said.

  “I’m game, and Deedah hasn’t said otherwise to me.” Wendy referred to her prepared notes once again. “Do you mind my asking if you intend to stick it out with your job here in Rosalie?”

  Mitzy took her time, taking another swallow of beer first and then tactfully suppressing a belch. “When I came here, I had one thing in mind. To make a success of myself as a golf pro. To make a success of myself in general here in Rosalie.” Her face darkened a bit. “Maybe that’ll be a little easier now that . . .” She paused and shrugged, and then Wendy finished her sentence.

  “Now that Brent Ogle is gone?”

  “Why should I deny it?” she answered with a renewed confidence. “He was after me and practically everyone else out here. All of us will be able to breathe much easier from now on.”

  “Did you have anything else you wanted to add?”

  Mitzy drew herself up with a look of determination. “Just this. I’ve heard people say that women can’t work together in positions of authority. That their egos get in the way the same as men’s do. But I’m here to say that Deedah and I have been working together perfectly to make this clubhouse run smoothly from the get-go. It’s all about teamwork. It’s an old wives’ tale that females are at each other’s throats all the time in business or otherwise. Certainly not when we have a common enemy.”

  Wendy continued her note-taking; but even as she was writing, she was struck by Mitzy’s tone. Was there an element of unnecessary hostility in it? Wendy remembered much the same attitude from Deedah regarding Brent Ogle. Undoubtedly, the man had put everyone around him on the defensive, and those tactics had obviously cost him dearly.

  Then Wendy thought about Ross, her father, and the rest of the CID. What progress were they making in unraveling this murder? It was a bit early, but was the finger pointing to anyone in particular yet? The undeniable fact was that there were plenty of people with motive and opportunity under cover of darkness to have done the deed. It was also imperative that she get together with Ross soon to tell him about the existence of Gerald Mansfield, in case he did not already know. It might turn out to be a game changer for everyone.

  So. It was back to eight suspects again, since Wendy knew she was innocent. Yet within her mind and according to her moral compass, it was difficult to accept the reality that one of those eight people had actually picked up that pestle and laid into Brent Ogle’s skull with it. The act seemed too primitive, too uncivilized, and, more than that, a crime borne of great passion and rage. How much unbridled hatred had been engendered in one of those eight people—a list that still included Deedah, Carly, Mitzy, Tip, Connor, Carlos, Hollis, and the latecomer, Gerald Mansfield?

  CHAPTER 5

  Down at the station, Ross and his Captain Bax were discussing the report from the crime lab, now that processing of the RCC and its immediate surroundings had been completed. Previously, there had been Ross’s notes from his taped interrogations and a diagram of the clubhouse to consider. Bax had his big feet up on his desk, and his sturdy arms were folded across his chest as was his customary position much of the time; while Ross sat off to one side in a comfortable leather chair, turning to the next page of the preliminary CID report before he resumed their discussion.

  “Basically, everyone’s DNA and fingerprints are everywhere around the building,” he said with a hint of consternation. “That was no surprise. But there was nothing in or around the hot tub that doesn’t belong to the deceased. Of course, any prints or DNA on the pestle were completely erased by the hot water in which it was submerged. Ditto the glass that was also found near the drain. So the crime scene was spotless with all the humidity and steam surrounding it, except for a few hairs in the drain that belonged to Brent Ogle.”

  Ross paused and gave his mentor and the father of his girlfriend a pained expression before continuing. “We thought we might find Wendy’s prints on Brent O
gle’s neck because she told us she had checked it for a pulse when she and Carly Ogle found him. But the humidity, the steam, and his sweat obviously compromised them completely, because we found nothing we could use. So that really wasn’t helpful at all, even though Wendy volunteered the information thinking it might be.”

  Bax took his feet off the desk and sat back properly in his chair. Now he looked like a Chief of Police should—square jawed in his navy-blue uniform, unusually fit for a man in his fifties—with just that touch of gray at the temples to give him that aura of authority and experience. But there was a hint of sadness in his voice when he made some observations.

  “You know, I’m about five years older than Brent Ogle. Although I’d graduated and was in college about the time he became big man on campus with all the girls after him, I still kept up with RHS athletics. I remember his heroics in that Four-Second Game decades ago. That’s where he got the nickname The Baddest Devil of Them All, and I also remember the controversy surrounding the game. More than one St. Mark’s fan claimed that RHS had somehow cheated. But how could anyone prove such a thing? I do recall that the clock operator vehemently denied at the time that he had tinkered with the equipment to give RHS an extra second. What was his name again?”

  Ross quickly rifled through his notes and finally located what he was looking for. “Claude Ingalls.”

  “And Brent Ogle claimed his father had paid him to influence the outcome of the game?”

  “And the other officials as well, if they got the opportunity. Sounds like the ultimate conspiracy theory to me.”

  Bax tapped his finger on the desk absentmindedly. “Completely improbable. But you know as well as I do that football truly is a religion in the South and people have been known to do crazy things and throw sportsmanship in the trash, all to get a victory. The thing that really surprises me the most is what an obnoxious and ruthless person Brent Ogle had become, according to your summary of these interrogations. I knew he was a successful personal injury lawyer. Good gracious, he had enough billboards and cheesy TV spots promising people hundreds of thousands of dollars if they’d hire him. Whether it’s justified or not, some folks think there’s a stigma attached to that ‘get rich quick’ approach, and just maybe Brent lived down to that stigma and forgot all about just being a decent human being.”

  Ross was nodding eagerly as he thumped his notes with his finger for emphasis. “Wendy spent some time out at the RCC trying to get her new bridge club going, as you know, and she insists that what all the others said about Brent was absolutely true. She saw some of it for herself. He was incorrigible to everyone, except maybe those golfing pals of his. And there at the end, he even managed to provoke them. But somebody finally had enough of it all and took him out to the woodshed for the last time on Saturday.”

  “So, which of the others sent up a red flag to you? Or at least bears our further scrutiny.”

  Ross confidently explained his priorities. “Well, we have to focus on Carlos Galbis first. It was his pestle—the one he used to make his juleps—and from all my interrogations, including his, it was apparent that Carlos was treated shabbily by the deceased. The bar where Carlos worked was not very far from the locker-room wing, and it was a straight shot to the deck and the hot tub from there. We already know that Carlos served Brent Ogle a drink or two while he was out there. We can’t ignore the most obvious suspect, and the fact that Carlos admits he made a few trips out to the deck. Maybe Brent insulted him one too many times and Carlos just lost it out there. He could easily have returned in the darkness with the pestle and bludgeoned Brent in a fit of rage.”

  Bax nodded his approval of the analysis. “And then after Carlos? Where do we go next?”

  “I hate to say it, but it’s a roll of the dice. None of them had anything positive to say about Brent Ogle, as you’ve seen, and they all had the opportunity to sneak around in the dark and do him in. I’ve put together an overview or composite from my tapes of where everyone says they were during the blackout and who was with them at the time; and the fact is that with one exception, there were periods when most of them were by themselves with no one to observe them. I’d say they all pretty much knew their way around the clubhouse, even in the dark.”

  “Have you been able to establish a timeline?”

  Ross had a slightly equivocal expression on his face. “Rosalie Power and Light provided us with the blackout timeline. So we have the power loss down to the second and likewise the restoration. It was about a half an hour that we’re talking about. But after that, things get a bit sketchy. They all had their phones on, of course, but not a one of them was focused on the time all that much—not even Wendy. At that point, they were using their phones as flashlights or for following the storm on weather radar to see when it might let up so they could leave and get home. And not to sound too dramatic or corny about it, but one of them had to have used it to light the way to murder.”

  Bax’s face lit up in what appeared to be an aha! moment. “Have you considered the possibility that more than one person could have been involved in this murder? Two, maybe even three? Makes sense if Brent had made nothing but enemies at the RCC, and we know that for a fact.”

  Ross looked perplexed but soon forged ahead. “Frankly, I hadn’t gone there. Because it seems to me that if more than one person was involved, that would almost imply premeditation. The fly in the ointment there would be that an elaborate conspiracy after being plunged into darkness would be a stretch. How could like minds have gotten together easily and quickly under those circumstances? How could anyone have counted on the power outage in the first place? It wasn’t peculiar to one transformer and the RCC so that someone could have somehow manipulated it. Rosalie Power and Light confirms that the outage was citywide. That was a monster of a storm that spared no one. Fortunately, there were no fatalities. Plenty of property damage, though. The city has some cleaning up to do.”

  Bax put his elbows on his desk and brought his hands together. “You make good points, but just file that thought away. We might need to revisit it later. Meanwhile, I want to hear more about that exception you spoke of where someone was not alone all the time.”

  “That would belong to Tip Jarvis and Connor James,” Ross began. “They were the two golfers that went out on the course with Brent Ogle that stormy afternoon. They also had a physical altercation with him in the clubhouse great room that everyone witnessed. I have several blow-by-blow accounts of it that are almost exactly the same. The three of them had been drinking heavily. Then both Tip and Connor claim that they stayed together in the men’s locker room both before and during the blackout. They said they started out playing gin until that was no longer possible.”

  Ross got up and again showed Bax the diagram he had made of the RCC with its great room and bar and also the two wings—one near the front for the offices and pro shop and the other near the rear containing the locker rooms. That rear wing, of course, led to the covered deck where the hot tub was located.

  “By the way,” Ross continued, “that hot tub has not helped us out in the least. The RCC doesn’t use chlorine or bromine to keep it sanitary. I asked Deedah Hornesby about it, and she said they just shock the water on a regular schedule. It might’ve been helpful if chemicals had been in the water so we could detect it on anyone. But from that aspect, the water’s clean, and so are all the suspects.”

  Bax wrapped up his examination of the diagram for the second time and said, “Heh. So much for that. But we were just discussing more than one person being involved. Well, it appears that these two men were even closer to the deck and the hot tub than this Carlos was. I think you should make them your next interrogations after you finish up with the bartender. Obviously, they are vouching for each other, and they may be telling the truth. But see if you can catch one of them in a discrepancy and take it from there. One could have done the deed while the other was looking out for him.”

  “Will do,” Ross said. Then he glanced at his wat
ch and gasped. “Oops! I’m supposed to meet Wendy at the Bluff City Bistro for a quick lunch. She said she’s turned up something as a result of her interviews and wants to let us know about it in detail. She said it was too involved for a mere text.”

  Bax’s expression exuded the pride he’d been feeling for his only child since she’d solved The Grand Slam Murders the previous year. “You know, despite her protestations, I think that daughter a’ mine is gonna end up on the force one a’ these days. And, yeah, I know, she’s finally got that investigative reporter gig at the newspaper she’s always wanted. But if she keeps solving cases, I may have to make her an offer she can’t refuse.”

  Ross hesitated for a moment but then expressed what was really on his mind. He thought he had nothing to lose. “And I hope I can do the same when it comes to getting her to marry me.”

  “Don’t lose heart, son,” Bax told him. “Her mother was the same way. She was no pushover in the romance department. I had to work hard to earn every bit of Valerie’s affection and respect, but I can tell you, it was worth the wait. All I have is my memories now of that sweet woman—and some of her wonderful paintings that had her on the way to a distinguished career, I’m quite sure—but they’re the best memories a man could ever ask for.”

  * * *

  At the brick and lacework Bluff City Bistro overlooking the Mississippi River on scenic Broad Street, a smiling, energetic young waitress had just taken Ross’s and Wendy’s orders, removed their menus, and headed toward the kitchen. Ross had fallen back on his old standby—the Bluff burger, stuffed with blue cheese—while Wendy had gone for a Cobb salad this time around.

  “So what’s this inside info on the murder case you say you have for me?” Ross asked, taking a sip of his ice water and then putting his napkin in his lap.