Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  "What are you wearing?" asked Laura. "Are you naked?"

  "Jeans and a golf shirt, O you of the dirty mind," he said. "Now picture me taking the burden from you." I visualized handing over my heavy package. "You feel light. You feel relieved," said Joe. "Open your eyes now. In that load were all those questions about the two murders. That worry is mine now. Your only concern is your golf game. Agreed?"

  We both nodded again. "Then I'll see you at the range at eight. In the meanwhile, Laura, stick to this girl like Crazy Glue. We don't want anything to happen to our favorite LPGA prospect."

  Chapter 20

  In spite of the late hour we'd finally gotten to sleep,

  I woke up at 5:30 a.m., muscle fibers twitching and brain cells spinning. Maybe a vigorous run would settle me down. I'd learned by painful experience in the first round that it didn't pay to arrive at the golf course too early. I got up and pulled on my running clothes in the dark.

  "Where the hell are you going?" asked Laura, her voice muffled by two pillows.

  "Out for a jog. I'm too anxious to just sit around."

  "You'll stay around the motel, then?" said Laura. "I don't want anything happening to you on my watch. Doc said you weren't to go out alone."

  "So come along."

  "Gimme a break. Not a chance I'm going jogging in the pitch dark. Can't you use the gym downstairs?"

  "Their equipment is pathetic," I said. "And I'll lose my mind if I wait around here until tee time." I knew Laura and Joe both meant well, but the weight of their good-natured worry had begun to feel an awful lot like living at home with Mom.

  "Just be careful," said Laura, rolling over and stretching. "I'm going to snooze for another twenty minutes or so. Hey, I had the weirdest dream. I have to remember to ask Doc what it means. I dreamed they canceled the rest of the tournament because a whole flock of Canadian geese landed in the parking lot and linked wings. None of the officials could get to the golf course from their cars because of all the honking and flapping."

  "You don't need an advanced degree to interpret that," I said. "You feel guilty that you didn't stop the goose hunt last winter at your course in Connecticut." Then it hit me. "Oh, my God. They may have really canceled the tournament, with someone murdered on the grounds." I strode over to the bedside table. "I'm going to call the office and find out."

  "It's five-thirty, Cassie. They won't be sitting around waiting to take your phone call at five-thirty." I dialed the number I found on the information packet Alice MacPherson had given me on the day I arrived. Busy signal.

  "You see," I said, placing the phone back in its cradle. "There is someone there."

  "You go out for your jog, and I'll call them again in twenty minutes, I promise," Laura said. "When you get back, I'll have all the latest news."

  I started down the stairs. By the time I'd reached the parking lot, it no longer felt like I had the patience to wait even half an hour to hear about the status of the tournament. I had to know now. I retrieved the spare key from under the wheel well of the Pontiac and drove over to the Plantation Golf and Country Club. If the tournament was status quo, I could jog on the Panther course while I was there: it would be prettier than running out by the Interstate. If the tournament was canceled, to hell with the exercise. I knew Laura could be talked into my favorite breakfast at the Cracker Barrel—cheddar cheese omelet with ham, sausage, and bacon, plus sausage gravy and biscuits on the side. A truckload of heart-stopping sludge, yes, but just what the golf doctor would prescribe to help cushion the collapse of a long-time dream.

  As I pulled into the parking lot at the club, my headlights flashed over a hunched figure hurrying toward the clubhouse. I stomped on the brakes and lurched to a stop next to Alice MacPherson. She appeared distracted, unaware that my rented Pontiac had nearly flattened her.

  I rolled down the window. "It's awful news about Kait-lin Rupert." Wouldn't pay to appear only interested in my own concerns.

  Alice nodded. "Unbelievable." She continued walking briskly toward the clubhouse.

  "Is everything still on here?"

  She nodded again, calling back over her shoulder, "No changes. Lucky for us, the crime scene is contained to the other golf course so we'll be able to proceed as planned on the Bobcat. I'm telling all the girls, you'll need to make yourself available to the sheriff's department for questioning, as they request. Oh, and we will be holding a memorial service for Kaitlin after the afternoon round. I'm estimating sometime around four, depending on the weather this afternoon. And speed of play." Just mentioning the possibility of slow play brought a scowl to her face. She rushed off in the direction of the anxious-looking group of volunteers huddled at the entrance to her office.

  I locked the car, crossed the road, and started off at a fast clip down the Panther's first fairway. Laura would kill me when I got back. But the conversation with Alice left me feeling like I needed to see the site where I'd found Kaitlin's body. This time in the daylight.

  I circled the perimeter of the front nine, staying close to the cookie-cutter condominiums and small resort homes that defined the boundaries of the golf course, and let my thoughts wander. Kaitlin's death had freed up another spot in the tournament. I wondered if the officials were planning to fill it with one of the girls who'd missed the cut. It was bad enough to have slithered in on the basis of So Won Lee's unfortunate elimination. I couldn't imagine how it would feel to advance because someone else had died. Been murdered. This line of thinking reminded me that another suspect could be added to the list of possible murderers: whichever golfer had the score that fell one shot higher than mine.

  Ridiculous train of thought.

  I ran past a hand-carved sign on the eighth fairway: "Wetland Preserve Area: Keep Out!" None of us players had had any desire to flaunt the rules. But in spite of our best intentions, I bet a dozen balls at least, and possibly the girls who'd sliced them, had gone into the wetlands over the past two days. I noticed that I already felt calmer about today's round than I had about playing the two days previous. Maybe due to a sense of fatalistic optimism, if such a thing existed. What will be, will be. Could my serenity have been the influence of Heather's annoying little mother? Since God has a plan and he's in charge, why the hell should I work so hard on promoting my idea of how things should go?

  Or maybe my equilibrium had to do with Joe Lancaster arriving in Venice—a reassuring belief that he would not allow me to disintegrate into a mass of pulsing, three-putting nerves. I could already imagine his advice.

  “Today and tomorrow we're going to be patient. You have thirty-six holes to play. Don't force any shots, just play one at a time. Think about your routine for each shot and the results will come."

  Really, there was nothing in those words that I couldn't have thought of myself. That I hadn't already told myself, for that matter. But Joe had a way about him, as soothing as a cat's purr, a well-worn baby's blanket, warm milk.

  You're losing it, Cassie, I told myself.

  I picked up the pace until I was breathing hard and hoarse. I passed a sign near the ninth green. "To Help Save the Earth, We Are Using Reclaimed Water." A few lights had begun to flicker on in the condos adjacent to the nature preserve and I heard the buzz of a stone saw from inside one of the new homes-in-progress. My watch read six o'clock. In fifteen minutes, Laura would begin to worry. I sprinted for several minutes until I reached the wooden bridge leading through the marsh to the thirteenth tee. Although the early morning sky had begun to lighten from black to an eggplant purple, a thick overhang of swamp maples reduced visibility in the marsh. I thought I recognized the haunting call of a pair of sandhill cranes. Maybe the same fellows we'd chased off the tee yesterday. Then, over the clip-clopping of my Nikes, I heard a loud rustling noise in front of me. Just ahead, an enormous alligator crawled across the walkway and plopped into the water. I couldn't help myself: I screamed.

  "Shut up, Cassie," I said aloud. "You're scaring the hell out of the wildlife."

  I c
ontinued to run the length of the boardwalk, now imagining the echo of a second set of footsteps. I looked behind me, but saw no one. I thought of Dr. Turner instructing his companion to frighten me. No need for that— I could do it perfectly well for myself. I glanced over my shoulder a second and third time. It would have been easy enough to hide in the shadows of the vegetation, but not so easy to follow me on the walk—unless you didn't care whether you were seen or heard. Now every woodland sound resonated with the possibility of danger. Damn, I wished I were back at the motel spinning on that shaky stationary bicycle.

  I burst out of the woods and loped the length of the fourteenth fairway, then back along the catwalk leading to fifteen and the safety of the access road. I'd had enough. Viewing the pit where Kaitlin's body had lain was a lousy idea anyway. I could hardly remember what my point had been. Some kind of personal or existential farewell? Just get me out of here.

  By the time I reached my car, I was drenched in sweat. The parking lot was buzzing with the arrival of the first wave of today's golfers. The atmosphere felt charged, partly due, I supposed, to the shock of Kaitlin's death. And partly to the death of the hopes of half the women in the field after yesterday's cut. Awesome golfers, nice girls, decent people—none of that mattered if they hadn't shot two solid rounds of golf over the last two days. And in two more days, only thirty of us would survive to move on to the final stage of Q-school; more corpses strewn along behind. Sheesh, I was getting morbid.

  I retrieved my cell phone from the glove compartment and called Laura. "The tournament's still on. I'll be back shortly," I said, and hung up before she could begin to scold. I leaned against the car to stretch my calves.

  "Morning, Miz Burdette."

  "Oh, my God, you scared the hell out of me." I turned to face Deputy Pate. His ugly leer lingered on the contours of my body, making me feel like I was outfitted for a wet T-shirt contest, in spite of the unkempt hair and the eau-de-Nike I was sure I reeked.

  "You seem jumpy."

  I shrugged and pulled my left foot up into a quadriceps stretch.

  "Finding a dead friend would do that to you, I suppose," he said. "Or was she a friend?"

  "Is that a rhetorical question, Deputy?'

  "This is a murder investigation, Miz Burdette. The question was quite serious."

  "Then no, she was not a friend. Which is not to say that I wanted her dead or killed her, either one. She was a difficult woman. I'm sure you are finding many others who feel just the same way in the process of your investigation. Why did you tell me you were the sheriff, Deputy Pate?"

  He stared at me, his eyes revealing nothing more than a cold reflection of my own. It had probably been a bad idea to confront him, to flaunt his embarrassing exposure the night before.

  "If it were up to me ..." He paused for dramatic effect. Though as far as I was concerned, the only effect the pause had was to underscore how powerless this little twerp had turned out to be. "If it were up to me, you would be under arrest, Miz Burdette. The circumstances of being the closest person to two freshly murdered bodies seem entirely too coincidental."

  "Excuse me, but I thought you said one of Dr. Bencher's patients had confessed to killing him?"

  "The guy turned out to be a wack job. Big surprise, eh? Finding a fruitcake in a shrink's office. So we're still looking." He stared me down for several seconds. "Good day." Then he swaggered off, leaving me in a now-too-familiar state of heightened panic. Tournament or not, I had to help find the real killer. Regardless of whether Pate occupied a ground-floor rung in his bureaucracy, he clearly intended to stir up trouble.

  My surrogate parents waited back in the motel room. "I'm fine. I need to shower. Let's talk at breakfast," I said, sweeping past Laura and Joe and into the bathroom in my best imitation of adolescent disdain.

  "Here's the deal," I explained later over corn flakes and wheat toast. "Pate says the patient who confessed to killing Bencher turned out to be a fraud. So we're back to two unexplained murders. Unfortunately, I was the wretched soul who discovered both of them. I need help here, guys. We can't just sit back and wait for that lardbutt to find the real killer. He isn't looking very hard, except at me."

  "The most important thing is that you tee off in ninety minutes," Joe began.

  "I understand we can't take care of this now," I said. "But Turner's threat has me worried, too. The whole time I was running, I imagined hearing someone sneaking up behind me. I know my concentration will improve if we make a plan before we leave for the golf course. Something a little more detailed than imagining I'm handing over a heavy load." I smiled at Joe. "No offense intended."

  Laura pulled out her Bobcat yardage book and opened it to the last page. "Fine, let's make a list. I always feel better with a list."

  "The obvious suspects would be So Won Lee, Walter Moore, Mr. Atwater, and Will Turner," I said. "Other than me, and I promise I didn't kill either one of those people."

  "Just to be thorough," said Joe. "Let's add anybody else who could have been at both of the crime scenes."

  "That's not so easy," I said. "Maybe Julie Atwater? But why would she kill the guy she had a consultation with? Why would she kill a friend, for that matter?"

  "What about Kaitlin's family? You said Gary had gone to pick them up at the airport. Could the note have been a cover-up?" said Joe.

  "The girl was found with her underwear ripped off and her head bashed in. That doesn't sound like a family affair to me."

  "But it doesn't rule them out," said Joe. "Stranger things have happened. Do you think she was raped?"

  I shrugged. "I have no idea. Incest, rape, who knows? I guess we should include all of them, whether it really makes sense or not. We can eliminate possibilities as we

  go."

  "I'll take Turner and both Atwaters," said Joe.

  "I'll look into the Ruperts and try to talk with the folks at the Deikon headquarters," said Laura. "That leaves you Walter Moore and So Won Lee." Laura picked up her tray and headed for the trash can.

  "Look, Kaitlin made the headline again," I said. I read from the front page of the Herald-Tribune. " 'Kaitlin Rupert, a participant in the LPGA Sectional Qualifying Tournament at the Plantation Golf and Country Club was discovered dead on the grounds yesterday evening. Cause of death appears to have been head trauma by blunt instrument, reportedly a golf club.' "

  I folded the paper in quarters. "The club used to kill Kaitlin bothers me," I said. "It wasn't a casual choice. When you think about it, an iron has a sharper blade—it would make a much better weapon than a wood. So it had to be someone who knew what had happened on the course earlier. Someone connected with the tournament. Or someone who understood the meaning of the experimental driver."

  "Or someone who knew enough about all that to throw the club into the pit and confuse the hell out of the scene," suggested Laura.

  "It's pathetic, when you think about Kaitlin's quote in the paper yesterday," I said. "She said she played every shot as though it was her last. And they were her last golf shots. She just didn't know it."

  "Time for you to play golf, young lady," said Joe. "We'll work on these problems later this afternoon."

  "I have other questions, too," I said. "Like why is Max Harding really in town? I didn't buy what he said when he was over the other night."

  Laura frowned. "Max Harding was over the other night? You didn't mention that."

  "I'm going to call Detective Maloney in Myrtle Beach, later, too," I said, ignoring her question. I hadn't meant to mention Max's visit at all. "I'm sure not going to get any inside scoop on any of this from Imposter Pate."

  Chapter 21

  The LPGA commissioner was holding a press conference in front of a small group of reporters and spectators when we arrived at the golf course. "This has been shocking news, absolutely unthinkable. Kaitlin Rupert was part of our golf family." He removed his glasses and polished the left lens with the end of his tie. He set the glasses back on his nose. "We have made the decision t
o continue on with the tournament in spite of the tragedy. We hope you will all demonstrate your support to Kaitlin's family by attending the memorial service. The service will be held next to the practice green at approximately four o'clock this afternoon. Questions?" He pointed to a small, thin woman in the crowd who had raised her hand.

  "Are the rest of us in danger?" she asked in a trembling, reedy voice.

  "The police have assured me that if they had a specific, reliable reason to believe the community was at risk, they would so inform us. They assure me that maintaining our safety is their primary duty. To that end, additional officers will be assigned to patrol the Plantation Golf and Country Club until the matter is resolved." Which did not sound altogether reassuring to me. I left the crowd and headed over to the range.

  Both Joe and Laura stood by while I warmed up—I stuck with the routine I'd seen Mike use for nine months. Maybe it was pure superstition, but changing anything now felt like asking for trouble. First I checked the placement of my right elbow, then the extension of my left forearm, finally the clearing movement of my hips—all the technical details that had tripped me up at various points in the past. Details that now I knew by heart. Then, starting with sand wedge, and on up to three-wood, I hit exactly eight shots with each club. Finally, I tackled the important but elusive job of developing a smooth tempo for today's round. Easy rhythmic swings that might help me coast through a lifetime's worth of frayed nerves, all packed into one morning.

  Although quiet while I worked at the range, Joe stepped forward when we reached the putting green. "Start with some lag putts here," he said. "Let's get a feel for the speed of the green." He stationed himself on the other side of the practice area and tossed the balls back to me after I rolled them toward the hole.

  "Looking good," he said. "I'm going to make a call and see how Mike's doing over at Ponte Vedra. He should have made the turn by now. Finish up with two-footers, so you have the sound of the ball dropping into the cup in your mind when you tee off."