Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  "I don't see it." Joe shook his head. "Other than Mom, who's very hard to read, they seem pretty normal. Sad, tired, shocked, but still able to make a normal connection. Or, in Gary's case, slobber all over a pretty girl."

  I glared at him. "I'm pretty sure Mrs. Rupert belonged to Turner's false memory group," I said. "And a reporter yesterday asked Kaitlin how she felt about the organization funding her father's defense."

  "I'm wondering about the two different murder methods," interrupted Laura. "First, a guy gets killed with a bullet to the throat. In the throat, for God's sake. That seems really unprofessional. Then Kaitlin gets stripped, maybe molested, we don't know that for sure, and beaten to death with a million-dollar club. I don't see the connection. Maybe there isn't one."

  Joe swallowed a mouthful of garlic mashed potatoes. "Try this one out. Supposing Turner had Mr. Atwater kill Bencher. Then later, when Kaitlin didn't bow out of the lawsuit against her father, he paid Atwater to rough Kaitlin up a little, just scare her away. But Atwater got overexcited and finished the job. If he molested his own daughter, I imagine he'd be capable of the same thing with a stranger."

  "I'm feeling a little queasy," said Jeanine. "Do you think we could talk about something else while we eat?"

  "Do you mind just one more question about the experimental golf club?" I asked. Jeanine nodded assent. "I'm not so sure Kaitlin really put that club in So Won's bag yesterday. Their bags look so much alike—maybe someone wanted Kaitlin eliminated from the tournament, not So Won Lee."

  "Interesting," said Joe.

  "Who do you have in mind?" asked Laura.

  "That's the hard part, she'd made so many enemies. How to choose?"

  "New subject," said Joe. "Are you planning to play tomorrow?"

  "Of course! Why would you ask that?"

  "Just wondered how you felt after the Smith bar thing."

  "I'm already feeling better," I said, cramming the last bite of cheeseburger into my mouth. "After this and a couple Advil, I'll be good as new."

  The phone rang just as I had moved into the twilight between wake and sleep.

  "It's for you," said Laura, rolling back under her pillow. "It's Charlie."

  "Hey," said my brother. "Mom told me you're pulling out of the tournament. Just called to say I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you're okay."

  "Mom's wishful thinking got mixed up with reality again," I said, laughing. "I shot sixty-eight today. She couldn't pry me out of this tournament. Where are you?"

  "D.C. Still at the office. Big trial starts tomorrow. But tell me about your day." I began to review the round for him in detail.

  Laura lifted the pillow off her head and rolled her eyes. "I hope you plan to pay him caddie fees for this." I ignored her.

  "Your hard work finally paid off," Charlie said when I'd finished describing the day. "Congratulations. Mom also told me Kaitlin Rupert got murdered in the motel gym. Is that true? Are you safe there?"

  I laughed again. Mom had a way of butchering facts almost beyond recognition. I told Charlie about finding Kaitlin's body the night before and getting trapped today under the bench press. "I honestly don't think someone set that up," I said. "No one knew I was going in there to work out." I shifted the conversation away from me. "From what you remember about Coach Rupert, do you think he would have molested Kaitlin?"

  "I've been asking myself that question since I heard about the lawsuit. He was like a second father to me, but easier to get along with than Dad. I could please Coach without taking on Dad's baggage."

  "Which baggage do you mean? Our father didn't travel light."

  "Dad so badly wanted me to be successful in a way that he hadn't managed. It was too much pressure. I had to get away. Getting close to Coach was the only way I figured out how to do that. It wasn't subtle or kind to Dad, but I was only sixteen."

  "That doesn't really answer the question."

  "I know, I know. I'm getting there. Bottom line, Coach was really a lot like Dad. Hard on his players, expected nothing but the top performance we could produce. Underneath the crustiness, we knew he really cared."

  "What about with his kids? His daughter? Dad pretty much gave up on me after you bailed out." I wished I'd been able to keep my voice from cracking.

  "I'm sorry about that." He was silent for a moment. "I think it was different with Coach. He was disappointed that Gary wasn't much of an athlete, but really excited about what he saw in Kaitlin. I just can't imagine him hurting her. In any way, but especially that one."

  "Lights out, for God's sake," Laura grumbled.

  "I gotta go," I said. "Caddie Snow is giving me hell."

  "Good luck tomorrow," said Charlie. "Be safe. And play well for you, not for Dad or anyone else."

  I lay awake a long time, sad about our conversation. I missed Charlie. I missed my father, a fact that didn't too often surface through my anger. As I drifted off to sleep for the second time, I remembered that I had not called Detective Maloney. I'd put it on my list for tomorrow, after I finished the final round of the tournament.

  Chapter 25

  After a quick breakfast of half a roll of Tums and three bites of Rice Krispies, I finished my warm-up routine at the driving range by 6:45. My still swollen neck had proven to be an advantage of sorts—any undisciplined swing provoked a painful twinge, which forced me to retreat to an easy tempo. Laura watched me grimace after a particularly wild tee shot.

  "You sure you want to go through with this?" she asked.

  "I did a lot of thinking lying under that barbell," I said. "Thinking about why I'm here and what this all means. What my brother said last night really pulled it together." Laura raised her eyebrows. "This is for me. I need to go out there and do the best I can. For me. I need to find out if I have what it takes to make it on the Tour. This is the best chance I'm going to get." I took a deep breath. "So I'm ready."

  Laura gave me a hug. "Then I'm with you. Let's go warm up the flat stick. Getting a couple of putts to drop today could be big."

  "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the final round of the LPGA Qualifying School, the seven-forty-five starting time. On the tenth tee, from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Miss Cassandra Burdette!"

  With the booming voice and the full-court-press introduction, I figured the starter must have had aspirations for announcing a bigger tournament than this one. The only fans available to respond to his broadcast were Joe, Jeanine, and the boyfriend of one of my playing partners. Their cheers produced a jolt of excitement that ran through my body, top to bottom. Smiling with encouragement, Laura fished the three-wood out of the bag and handed it to me. I rehearsed my preshot routine: sight the target, two quick practice swings, one final glance at the target. Then I nailed my drive down the middle of the fairway.

  "You corked that one!" Laura yelled. I moved to the side of the tee for the other golfers in our group. Eve Darling hit a solid drive, as did Kelly Faison, our third playing partner. As we started down the fairway, I spotted Gary Rupert in animated conversation with Max Harding on the far side of the practice putting green. Thank God they weren't following us. I felt a backbreaking pressure already, even without a bigger gallery. Then I realized that I'd forgotten to add Max to the list of suspicious characters we drew up during dinner last night.

  "What are you thinking about the approach shot?" Laura asked. I didn't admit I hadn't been thinking about the approach at all.

  "I'm going with an easy seven-iron. Pin's in back, right?"

  Laura checked the pin placement sheet—the players' guide to today's hole locations. The Plantation staff had saved the most precarious pin positions for our last day, just like in the real professional tournaments. That way, we had to choose between playing conservatively to protect our current standing, or straining to hit the riskier shots that could advance us in the field. Whether we succeeded and rolled our balls up close to the hole for easy birdies, or failed, and slam-dunked them into water hazards for bogeys or worse, this system made for great final-roun
d drama. Not to mention final-round terror for the players involved.

  "Yeah, pin's in back. You clocked the drive almost two fifty. That's one of your best! Seven-iron looks good." I waited for Eve and Kelly to hit their shots, then stepped up to my ball and swung.

  "Just what you wanted. You're on the dance floor," Laura said. Her words came just a beat late, reflecting the same disappointment I felt as I watched the ball stop well short of the hole. Given the long drive in the middle of the fairway, I'd had a chance to stick the second shot close to the pin. Instead, I left myself a fifty-foot birdie try. I sized up the putt without consulting Laura and rolled it close enough to drop the next one for par. We moved on to our second hole, the par-four eleventh.

  My legs and arms felt heavy, my neck hurt, my stomach churned. Too little sleep, too much fear, too many hopes tied to this one round. "I've hit the wall," I told Laura. "I can't even hit a simple seven-iron."

  "Don't think about it. You just hurried the swing a little. You're a player. Like Joe says"—she winked in his direction—"real players take it one shot at a time." She held out my three-wood and gave me a little shove toward the tee. My head throbbed from the effort of trying not to think. I managed two average swings and two medium putts, and with relief, scribbled another four on the score-card.

  "Do you have anything to eat in your bag?" asked Joe as he walked beside me to the twelfth tee.

  "Didn't you get enough breakfast?"

  "I want you to eat something," he said.

  "I'm not hungry."

  "Trust me, it'll keep you going," he said. "You have a lot of holes left to play."

  I rustled through three pockets before surfacing with a partially fossilized Power Bar. Gnawing on the end of the bar, I watched the other two golfers tee off. No major challenge here—I'd made birdie and par the previous two rounds. A smooth five-iron would take me home.

  But my mind kicked in with another agenda: a poise-sapping, fast-backward review of all the trouble I'd found anywhere during the first three days of golf. And then a quick, but also lethal, review of the trouble my playing partners had encountered. Any partners, anywhere. An ugly parade of shanks, hooks, worm-burners, rainmakers— all of which cost strokes, confidence, and tournament position—flooded my brain. IMRAS. Inexperienced mind run amok syndrome. I'd seen Mike struggle with the same thing during his rookie season.

  Swing through it, damn it, I told myself. Shut it out.

  Too late. My muscles had already tensed in reaction and my tee shot plopped into the pond in front of the green.

  I trudged toward the hazard where I would hit my next shot, remembering the only tournament that I'd caddied for Mike where he came in the money. We were in Cromwell, Connecticut, the final round of the Greater Hartford Open. We'd reached seventeen, the signature hole at River Highlands. From the championship tee, the fairway curved gracefully around a lake to a small green packed with spectators. Even for the pros, it was a hard hole. The landing area looked no wider than a two-lane highway. Pull your drive left, and you were in thick rough or a nasty sand trap or a difficult downhill lie. Push it too far right, you were wet. If you got lucky enough to keep your tee shot in play, the crowd salivated for your second. They loved a perfect approach that landed softly near the pin, almost as much as they loved to see golfers destroyed by a second shot into the water.

  That day, Mike fell in the second category. He started out well—blasting his drive down the middle of the fairway. I'd handed him his wedge, then hustled to move the bag out of his line of sight. That's when I'd noticed that his hands shook a little, a slight tremor that matched the quiver in his lower lip. Then he tightened his grip. With that simple adjustment, he murdered the shot—hit it fat, choked the zip out of it, sent it cannonballing into the pond, identical to the shot I'd just hit. The crowd moaned, filled with a conflicted mixture of sympathy and self-righteousness. Let's face it: most of the amateurs who'd played the course had made several ball donations to that pond, and most never even finished the hole. That didn't stop them from turning to the guy standing next to them.

  "Hell, I know how to hit that shot!" they'd say. And in their imaginations, with just a little work on their putting stroke, they'd have taken Mike's place in the tournament. That day Mike dropped a second ball near the pond's edge and hit a beautiful wedge to within inches of the cup, setting himself up for a tap-in putt and a nicely recovered bogey.

  That's what I directed myself to focus on—the recovery shot. Leave the screw-up behind me on the last tee and hit this one close to the cup, maybe even drop it in for a natural and unexpected par. Stop the bleeding. Build momentum. Even before I hit the thing, I imagined it arcing up over the water, dropping down on the brown patch I'd picked out on the green, and rolling up next to the pin. And it happened that way—amazing.

  I sunk that bogey putt, then eked out a bushel of pars and one lone birdie on the third hole. I'd long since lost track of where I stood in relation to the field. And Laura knew better than to bring it to my attention. There was no advantage to reminding me that the entire direction of my professional life rode on these last few holes.

  As I stood on the eighth hole tee box, we heard voices raised from the direction of the clubhouse. I stopped in midbackswing. "What the hell's that all about?"

  "Don't hit until you feel ready," said Joe. "I'll go take a look." He jogged off, returning to our group after I'd putted out.

  "You won't believe it. They hauled Walter Moore away in handcuffs. It took three deputies to bring him down." Then Joe put his competitive, no-nonsense game face back on. "We'll find out more when we get in. Just put a smooth cut on this last drive. You're almost home."

  Too tired to think about Walter's arrest or to try harder than was good for me, I hit the green three shots later, producing my second birdie opportunity of the day. I left the birdie putt short, but sank the par. A grin split my face as the ball clunked into the cup. After the other golfers putted out, Laura slung me over her shoulder and began what she called her signature Choctaw victory dance. "You were awesome!" she shouted as we whirled around.

  "I left a few shots out there...."

  "Don't even start with that nonsense. We are finals-bound. LPGA Tour—look out!"

  "Put me down, you'll throw your back out," I said. "Nothing's official yet. We have to wait for the other girls to come in. And I'm not leaving the scoreboard until the last number's posted."

  "Well, I'm ravenous," declared Laura. "I'm going over to the dining room. Shall I bring you something back?"

  "I'll get a bite later when we go to celebrate." I stretched out in the shade, with a full frontal view of the scoreboard one hundred yards to my left. As Laura carried my clubs off to the parking lot, my cell phone vibrated.

  "Cassie, it's Jack. Jack Wolfe."

  "You don't need to say your last name, you idiot." I laughed. "Wow, I can't believe we're really talking. Your timing is amazing. What time is it there?"

  "Midnight. I guess it's tomorrow by your calendar. How'd you do?"

  "I'm pleased," I said, reluctant to brag. My cheeks ached from smiling. "Unless the whole rest of the field comes in under par, I'm guessing my seventy-two puts me somewhere around fourteen or fifteen."

  For several minutes, Jack flooded me with questions and congratulations.

  "Are you coming back to the States anytime soon? I miss you," I said, surprising myself with my daring. Up to now, any intimate feelings we had for each other had been seen only a little, and heard even less. At this moment, I felt good enough to step further out on a limb with him.

  "Probably not before Christmas," he said. "But I called for another reason, too." I recognized the sound of a sharpening saw, its teeth bruising the bark on the branch I'd just stepped out on. "I don't know how to say this, so I'll just lay it on you. I got married last week."

  The tree limb thumped to the ground with me on it.

  I scrolled through my mental storehouse of etiquette according to Mom. I thought I
remembered one saying appropriate for the new bride and something else for the groom. Maybe "Congratulations" for guys telling you about their weddings? Or was it "Best wishes"? Whatever. I certainly couldn't repeat the parade of expletives that had rushed into my mind.

  "Congratulations," I said finally.

  "Gosh, I'm relieved you're taking it so well. I was scared to death to call you. It sounds crazy, happening so fast and all. But when I met Masako last month, I just fell head over heels. She's really different from American girls. Not that you aren't the greatest," he added quickly.

  "I'm no geisha." My only wish now was to wind this miserable conversation down fast.

  "That's just it," he said. "She has a totally different idea of how the relationship between a man and a woman should be. It's like the women over here get what they need because they are serving the needs of the man."

  And why wouldn't that appeal to him, a lovely Asian suck-up tending to his every whim.

  "I know it's not feministically correct. It sounds crazy, but she explained it all to me."

  "So she speaks English?" Obviously he struggled with the fine points.

  "Some," he said. "She's learning."

  She'd be learning a lot.

  "Will she travel with you?" I felt a sick fascination with the details of his impulsive commitment.

  "That's the beauty of the marriage deal," he said. "She doesn't work, so she can go with me anywhere and make sure I eat good stuff and get whatever else I need."

  "Hmm," I said. Like get laid on a regular schedule.

  "I'm so glad you understand. You're a doll, Cassie. I've been too embarrassed to tell you this was going on. I used to imagine us together—I even thought you could be my caddie. Who knows where it could have gone? But with both of us on Tour, it wouldn't have worked out in the end."

  "Yeah, great. This phone call must be costing you your week's earnings." I couldn't resist that one sucker punch. I'd read in the Herald-Tribune today that he'd missed another cut, so his week's earnings were zero. Again. I hoped Masako didn't eat much.