Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  The black vinyl seat of my rented car singed my thighs during the entire five-mile ride to the golf course. Finally, a large banner marked the entrance to the club: "Plantation Golf and Country Club Welcomes LPGA Qualifying School, August 17-21. Spectators Welcome!" The last two words in particular gave me the willies. As Mike's caddie, I'd grown used to crowds watching every move we made. But this time, I'd be the one hitting the ball. I crossed a small wooden bridge over a dyed-blue pond and walked until I saw a hand-lettered sign identifying the LPGA office. With my gut doing cartwheels, I could tell the competition was finally beginning to feel real.

  "I'm here to register for Q-school?" My voice veered off into a question mark, sounding small and scared.

  A short, stout senior citizen with thick glasses and a friendly smile greeted me. "I'm Bunker," she said. "And this is Divot." She pointed to a petite woman behind the desk. "You need to check in over there. We're in charge of all the volunteers. Let us know if we can help you in any way this week." Divot nodded vigorously. Little people named Bunker and Divot? I wondered if I'd walked into golf's version of The Wizard of Oz—I braced myself in case they burst into song. Or began a soft-shoe with their partners, Fairway and Chip Shot.

  When no song and dance developed, I thanked the ladies and stepped in line behind two Asian women. One was in tears, the other argued in broken English for an exception to be made for her friend's lost application.

  "That's why we spell it out on the form," said the woman behind the desk. She was dressed like a golfer— white polo shirt, khakis, sensible shoes, and a short hairstyle that would stand up to a brutal travel schedule and a parade of golf visors. She pointed to the paper in front of her and began to read aloud. " 'Late or incomplete entry not acceptable,' " she said. " 'Deadline for entry means time of receipt at LPGA Headquarters. Entries should be submitted early to allow ample time for delay or error in transmission.' " The Asian player continued to sob. "I'm sorry," said the woman. "If the application turns up, you'll be able to play in the California tournament." Add brisk and firm to the list of adjectives that described her.

  I was shaking when I approached the desk. "Cassandra Burdette." I offered her my sweating hand.

  "Alice MacPherson," said the woman. The crushing handshake confirmed my first impression: no nonsense tolerated. Alice inclined her head in the direction of the weeping girl. "You feel bad about that, but there are rules." I nodded. "You're all set," she said, after pulling my record out of a stack of papers on her desk. "Here are the times we have available for practice rounds. For tournament play on Tuesday and Wednesday, you'll have one round on the Panther course, one on the Bobcat. Both rounds after the cut will be played on the Bobcat. So I'd suggest you try them both. The informational meeting for all players is Monday, eight in the morning. Attendance is not optional." I nodded. "Mandatory, in other words. Don't miss it." I nodded again and scheduled two practice rounds, one on each of the courses I'd be playing. Alice handed me a fat packet of materials.

  "Read through this," she said. "Welcome guide, list of nonconforming drivers, rules of play, yardage books for both courses. Pairings for the first round will be posted Monday. Good luck. Let us know if you need anything."

  I shook her hand again, my mouth bent into a weak smile. I stopped outside the office to peruse the players' bulletin board. Someone had tacked up the list of non-conforming equipment and a copy of the local rules of play. I also noticed a handwritten sign announcing a get-together the next night at "Joanne and Nicki's" condo. "Come for a time of fellowship and friendship. You will find what you need, if you follow in the way of our Lord," the notice read.

  I needed something all right, a way to get out of my own head—and maybe into someone else's brain. But I doubted that either Alice MacPherson or even Jesus himself could help me with that. Second best would be to get to the range and work on grooving my swing—the only place I might get relief from the thoughts swirling in my mind.

  "Leave enough time to get acquainted with both courses, but not so much you get stale or panicky," Joe Lancaster had told me. Good advice, but way too late, at least in the panicky department.

  The practice range was supplied with Titleist balls, scuffless and sharp white—better quality than most of the balls the customers at Palm Lakes used. I leaned my clubs against the bag stand and stretched. Hard to believe I was really here. Another piece of advice from Joe Lancaster came to mind.

  "Try to stay away from thinking about the big picture," he'd said. "Your mind can run on a thousand tracks, but your body can only reasonably handle one shot at a time. So, when I ask what you're thinking, I don't want to hear, 'How am I going to beat all these girls who are better prepared than me and have more experience and who will probably kick my ass and ruin my dream of competing on the Ladies Professional Golf Tour?' Okay?"

  I'd laughed hard when he put it that way a couple of weeks ago. Today, that run-on thought was as real as the grass in front of me, and not the least bit funny. I couldn't stop thinking about the Asian girl, whose chances for qualifying this week had been torpedoed by the U.S. Mail. Or maybe, to give the mail service the benefit of the doubt, some office clerk had screwed up and misplaced her application. Ouch. Or, suppose the girl's ambivalence about competing had subconsciously sabotaged her to the point where she "accidentally" threw the thing out herself. I laughed. I'd obviously spent too damn much time lately in the presence of headshrinkers.

  I pulled out my wedge and set up to hit short pitch shots to a red flag fifty yards out in the range. I wasn't going to make the cut as a long ball hitter, if Kaitlin was representative of the other players in the field. I'd have to depend on accurate approach shots and lots of putts dropping. After shanking two balls out to the right, I put the wedge away and retreated to easy swings with my nine-wood. It was hard to hit a bad shot with a club that forgave almost anything.

  "Your backswing looks a little flat."

  Some poor chump getting last-minute advice, I thought. Let's hope it helps.

  "Miz Burdette, in my experience, with a backswing that flat, you're goin' to tend to a big banana slice." Now I recognized the gravelly voice.

  "You must be Sheriff Pate," I said, offering my hand to a short, very sweaty man, whose uniform barely stretched over the expansive girth of his stomach. His shirt buttons had to work harder here than I thought their manufacturer had intended.

  "Let me see your club," said the sheriff. "I had the same problem last year. I'll show you how I fixed it."

  I didn't want to give him my club. It was a five-hundred-dollar titanium wood, with a graphite shaft and a custom Winn Contour grip. Three weeks of my paycheck at Palm Lakes had gone to pay for it. Even worse than lending him the club would be listening to his advice. It astonished me how the worst golfers considered themselves experts when it came to telling someone else what was wrong with her game. I sure didn't need a head full of Sheriff Pate's silly tips as I teed off on Tuesday. But I was in no position to quibble. I passed him the nine-wood.

  "You're taking it away like this," he said, demonstrating an ugly baseball swing. "You want to hold it out here, so you don't end up comin' outside in. That's where you get your slice." I nodded. He took a couple of big cuts with my club, ugly and fast. "Let's try her out." The ball he hit barely cleared the grass, starting out right and curving almost ninety degrees before it hit the ground and bounced to a halt.

  The sheriff scowled and inspected the club head. "I hope you didn't pay too much for this. The balance is all off. But you get the general idea."

  "Hard to hit them straight with a girl's club." I hoped I could suppress a powerful urge to laugh in his face.

  "So. You're the little gal they think offed that head-shrinker." He handed me my club.

  "No." I wiped the sheriff's sweat off the grip of the nine-wood. "I'm the one who found him after he'd been shot."

  "You don't 'specially look like a cold-blooded killer." He hitched his trousers up until they almost covered the stre
tch of stomach and undershirt that had escaped while he swung.

  "I didn't—"

  "Maybe a crime of passion," said the sheriff. "Yeah, that looks like more your style. Say you asked the doctor out for a drink and he says he's married. Then you don't want to take no for an answer so you push harder and he still says no. So you shoot 'im. Maybe you didn't think it out ahead of time, you're just hot-blooded, that's all." His eyes swept over my entire body, stopping to linger on my chest and just below my waist. "Or maybe he didn't say no. Those doctors all have couches in their offices, don't they? Just waiting for the pretty girls. Then he felt bad later about acting unprofessional and called off the whole thing. And then you shot 'im."

  "I did not know the man." I spoke the words slowly, as if to a very young child or a mentally retarded person, trying to hold the fury and fear out of my voice.

  He continued on as if I'd said nothing. "We know it couldn't have been a professional job. No hired gun worth his salt is gonna shoot some guy in the throat. Too messy, first of all. Second, might not really finish the job. Guy could talk or signal something on his way out. Know what I'm sayin'?"

  What was he saying? It was hard to tell from his demeanor whether he considered me a serious suspect or just enjoyed playing with me, knowing he had me trapped. "I guess maybe I don't know what you mean," I said.

  "I mean, if you didn't shoot 'im, chances are, the fellow that did thinks you know who did it. Get what I'm sayin' now?"

  "I'm in trouble either way," I said. "Either I killed a man, or else the guy who did might be looking for me. Might think I know more than I do."

  He nodded. "I'm sayin' watch your back, darlin'."

  "Do you think this will get wrapped up soon?"

  "We're tryin', little gal." Then he winked. "What kind of driver you hittin'?"

  "I don't use a driver," I said. "I tee off with a three-wood."

  "That so. Hope you get that shank thing worked out, then. You're going to need one hell of a short game." He grinned and walked away.

  Chapter 8

  I packed up and left the range as soon as Sheriff Pate's squad car pulled away. I planned to stop at the Publix supermarket I'd passed on the way to the club, buy a few staples to stock my kitchenette, and retreat to the motel. From there, my plan consisted of blotting out my mounting anxiety with bad TV sitcoms and a six-pack of Busch beer.

  I browsed the frozen food section in Publix and selected black bean burritos, well within my budget at three for a dollar. Then I moved to the produce section for a few bananas. Becky, of the postcard-to-Daddy fame, was there with her mother, who pushed a shopping cart loaded with strawberries, yams, melons, and broccoli. Sure, rub it in. Mommy was going to serve home-cooked meals all week so Becky didn't get gas or otherwise feel uncomfortable as she stood over her important putts. I glanced down at the frozen lumps in my carry basket, then abandoned them in front of the beer cooler and checked out with just the Busch. Screw the budget, microwaving frozen burritos would be too depressing.

  More than anything, I wished for the familiarity of Chili-Dippers. Maybe the regulars I hung with were a peculiar bunch of misfits, maybe some of them even further out than odd. But sitting on the fourth barstool from the end would feel more like home right now than anyplace else I could name. I drove by a branch of the chain restaurant Chili's. That would have to do. The name was close enough, and I knew I could get comfort food, even if it wasn't hush puppies and Calabash seafood. In the bar, I took the fourth seat from the entrance to the kitchen. When my Corona arrived, I squeezed in a wedge of lime and sat back to watch the other customers.

  A crowd of blue-hairs who'd taken advantage of the early bird special was leaving, replaced by young couples starting their Saturday night fun with a Chili's happy hour. A waitress dressed in jeans and a red golf shirt presented herself next to me. "Hi, my name is Cindi! I'll be taking care of you tonight."

  Damn, that sounded good. Though I knew she didn't mean taking care of what I really needed—reassurance that I belonged here and that everything would turn out just fine. Instead, I consoled myself by ordering fried chicken and mashed potatoes with cream gravy—heavy on fat and carbohydrates. It might not make any coach's list for a desirable training meal, but it was the closest I could get to South Carolina low-country cuisine.

  I watched Cindi work the room. She was adorable— her appeal centered mostly in the smile, the dimples, and a heartfelt solicitousness that seemed wasted at Chili's. I doubted she had a single thought about golf or murder on her mind, and she was the happier for it. If I bombed out this week, maybe Chili's was hiring. Realistically, though, I lacked the dimples and, more importantly, the sincere and sunny concern for the well-being of random customers.

  Halfway into my second Corona, I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Penny for your thoughts, Cassie. You're looking very serious tonight. As well as lovely, I cannot help but add," said Gary Rupert. It took me just a moment to recognize him, then I felt a rush of relief and gratitude for a familiar face. Any familiar face.

  "You startled me," I said. "I didn't expect to see anyone I knew in here. Have a seat. You're down here to watch Kaitlin?"

  "I'm her caddie," said Gary. "I thought you knew that."

  "Lucky her," I said. "You don't see my brother out here with me." I felt disloyal even mentioning Charlie. He supported me the best he could, considering his own pressure-cooker career as junior partner in a big D.C. law firm. "How'd you get the time off?"

  "At the moment, I've got all the time in the world," he said. "I made the mistake of signing on with a dot-com last year. They did a great selling job—I was going to make a million before I hit thirty-five. Instead, they hit the skids and I'm on the street."

  "Sore subject, I guess. But good timing for Kaitlin."

  We chatted about our respective trips down and places we'd found to stay. The Ruperts had rented a condo on the Bobcat's eighteenth fairway—"Kaitlin wanted to be close in," Gary explained. He looked hard at me. "How are you holding up?"

  I sighed. "Rough day."

  "Practice didn't go well?"

  "There's that, though I hardly got any in, really. The worst is this business about Bencher's murder." I told him about my meeting with Sheriff Pate.

  "So he thinks the murderer might believe you know something about how Bencher was killed?" I nodded. "Like what?"

  "Like maybe Bencher said something identifying his attacker before he died and I heard him. That's what my shrink friend Joe Lancaster thinks, too."

  "Did he say something?"

  I shrugged. "I don't think so. It was just a bunch of horrible gasps and gurgles as far as I could tell. And I've explained all that to the police several times."

  "Maybe Pate was just blowing smoke up your ass, enjoyed seeing you squirm." He half-patted, half-rubbed my knee.

  "Quite possible," I said. "The more rattled I felt, the more cheerful he seemed."

  "Was there anything else unusual about Bencher's office? Besides a dying headshrinker, I mean."

  I chuckled and thought back to the scene. "It was a mess—papers strewn everywhere. I caught hell when I started to clean things up. I know it was dumb. It was strictly instinct."

  "Or your mother's excellent training," said Gary. "So did you see anything there?"

  I shrugged again. "I don't think so." I laughed. "Maybe if they put me through hypnosis, all this important subconscious stuff would come out. On the other hand, could be you'd just hear gibberish about how Mom didn't play classical music when she was pregnant with me or some other stupid psychobabble."

  "Couple of beers here," Gary called to the bartender. "The police seem eager to relate this problem to Kaitlin's lawsuit. But from everything I've heard, Bencher was like a heat-seeking missile when it came to controversy."

  "That's what my friend Joe says," I told Gary. "He

  promised he'd ask around the shrink circles and see what dirt he could turn up."

  "Sounds awfully distracting, this bullshit. Let
me know if I can help." He patted my knee again and smiled. " Kaitlin's not really so bad, you know," he added. "She's just mega-insecure. In her mind, everyone's a threat. Especially a woman as talented and attractive as you."

  His hand brushed a little farther up my thigh, maybe accidental, maybe not. In any case, the combination of alcohol, Gary's concern and compliments, and the feel of his touch on my leg was surprisingly pleasant. I tried to think why I'd been so definite about refusing a date with him ten years ago. Just a dumb, shallow teenager, I decided. Drawing conclusions based on how clear someone's complexion was or how many touchdowns they scored. Attributes which didn't mean too much at this stage of life. Then I decided that if he touched my leg again, even farther up the thigh, I would not remove his hand.

  Kaitlin's arrival at the bar truncated any further development. She had her Deikon rep in tow, radiating an odd combination of testosterone and bonhomie.

  "I hope I'm not interrupting something," she said. The unpleasant curl of her lip suggested the opposite.

  "Hi, sis," said Gary. "I'd just about given up on you. I'm starving. Have you met Walter Moore, Cassie?"

  "Yo." My hand disappeared briefly into the Deikon equipment hunk's fleshy palm.

  "Want to join us for dinner?" said Gary.

  One quick look at the expression on Kaitlin's face made it clear just how unwelcome I would be at the Rupert dinner party. "I'll stay where I am, thanks. I'm sure my order's just about ready to come up," I said. "How'd you make out today, Kaitlin? Hit 'em straight?" That said just for the annoyance value of making her acknowledge my presence.

  "Just fine."

  "It's common courtesy to ask, 'And you?' " Gary said.