Six Strokes Under (16 page)

 As dusk fell, I walked to Kaitlin's condo by way of the Bobcat's eighteenth fairway. Earlier today, I'd assumed I would never see this hole again. Now I had two more shots at it. I cut through a hedge and found the Ruperts' entranceway. Inside the vestibule, the door to their apartment was just cracked open. My knock echoed in the tiled hallway.

"Kaitlin," I called. "Hello. Gary. It's Cassie. Kaitlin! Anybody home?"

No answer. I knocked and called three more times.

The Ruperts' neighbor stuck his head out from his door. "Time to take a hike, girlie. Either they aren't home or they don't want company. Whichever it is, scram." He slammed his door shut.

Now, a dilemma. The last time I stepped uninvited through someone's open doorway, I'd discovered a dying, soon to be dead, man. One of those in a lifetime was enough. On the other hand, if either of the Ruperts was in trouble and I hadn't checked on them, I knew I'd feel responsible. And finally, I had to admit that a small part of me welcomed the chance to snoop.

I opened the screen door and walked in. The condo was similar to the one where I'd attended Bible study, with a combination living area/kitchen, decorated with rattan furniture, pastel colors, and tropical prints. I nudged each of the bedroom doors open and peered in. Gary's room was spotless; the only personal item in evidence a copy of
Into Thin Air,
which lay open on the bedside table. Kaitlin's bedcovers slopped onto the floor, blending with a pile of what I assumed was dirty laundry. I stepped over the pile and opened the door to her closet. No funny business there either. I decided to use the bathroom before heading home.

I pushed on the partly open door. It was jammed in place. I pushed harder, wedging my shoulders and head through the opening until I could look into the bathroom. There was nothing remarkable other than a cosmetic salesperson's dream supply of beauty products and a pile of dirty towels and clothing so substantial it blocked access to the facilities.

One of the many reasons I was thankful not to be Kaitlin's roommate. I turned to leave, feeling I'd done my duty. Maybe they'd simply forgotten to lock the door on the way to their dinner. In any case, it was really none of my business. Then I noticed a note left on the kitchen counter.

"Gone to pick up Mother and Pop at the airport. I'll drop them off at their hotel and be back after ten. Hope you had a good dinner and made things nicey-nice with Walter." Signed with a
G
and a smiley face.

The only mystery remaining was which Rupert had forgotten to close and lock the condo door. My money was on Kaitlin. I did also have to wonder how she'd feel about her parents arriving at Q-school, given the bad blood between them. And how she could possibly manage to make things "nicey-nice" with Walter Moore, given the lather he'd worked himself into this afternoon.

I walked back to the clubhouse to look for a ride home. The only light shone from a room near the dining hall, which had been turned into a temporary first aid station for the Q-school contestants.

"Can I help you?" asked the young man seated at the desk just inside the room. He smiled and gestured to the book he'd been reading. "Anatomy," he told me without my asking. "I'm starting medical school in the fall and I want to have a head start before I get there. They say it's brutal the first year."

"Sorry to bother you, then," I said. "I was hoping to catch a ride back to my motel."

The student ran his fingers through his blond brush cut. "As far as I know, everyone's gone home for the day. It was a happenin' scene here, I suppose you heard. Everyone was bushed. Would you like me to call you a taxi?"

I nodded. This guy might not know anything about medicine yet, but at least he had the makings of a good bedside manner. I hoped his years in med school wouldn't wipe that out. He dialed and spoke to the dispatcher at Triple-A Taxi.

"All the cabs are out at the moment, but they'll send someone over ASAP. It might be half an hour," he told me after he'd hung up.

"Damn," I said. Then belatedly, "Thanks." I felt too antsy to just sit and wait. "I guess I'll go over to the range and pace off some distances. The accuracy of my irons wasn't all that great today." Not that he cared about my golf game. "Could you send the taxi over if they show up before I get back?" The student nodded and returned to his anatomy text.

I walked across the road and past the Panther putting green and pitching area to the driving range. I paced across the field, visualizing precisely where I should be hitting each of my clubs. Joe would be proud. Fifty yards, one hundred, one fifty, two hundred, two fifty, three hundred, the markers read. Fairways and greens were my goal for tomorrow's round. And, getting all those putts to the neighborhood of the hole. Nothing was more demoralizing than a birdie putt left short.

Just ahead, I saw the pit that had been dug to repair the Panther's irrigation system. I suspected that pit, with its ensuing speedy putts, would be featured in a lot of nightmares in the year to come. I wondered why it had taken so long to get the replacement part. The course could lose its greens altogether if the new widget didn't arrive soon. I wondered if Julie's ball from this morning's round still lay in the pit. Two shots out of bounds on one hole— there was some really lousy luck. I leaned over and looked into the excavation.

"Shit!" I yelled. The pale form lying in the hole was definitely not a golf ball. I punched 911 on my cell phone. "There's a woman in the pit on the driving range. I think she's badly hurt. We need help right away."

The operator inquired about the location of the incident and then took my name. "Stay where you are," she said. "We'll send someone by."

I pressed end and glanced back in the direction of the pit. Hell if I was going to wait here alone. I sprinted over to the first aid office where I'd seen the student working.

"Help!" I said, struggling to catch my breath. "There's a body in the pit over on the range!" He looked doubtful. I tried to appeal to his status as Future Doctor of America. "Please hurry. We might have the chance to save her life."

He closed his book slowly, marking his place with a brochure for Busch Gardens. I grabbed his hand and dragged him to the driving range.

The medical student and I approached the pit. He held out a small penlight attached to his key ring. I flashed it over the bottom of the hole. A woman's body lay crumpled in one corner. In spite of the dim light, I was quite sure it was Kaitlin Rupert. I directed myself to observe the scene clinically, as Sheriff Pate, or even Joe Lancaster, would have done. I would not give into either the wave of nausea that flooded me or the powerful urge to scream and run.

A skimpy white lace brassiere and underpants had been stripped from Kaitlin's body and lay tangled on the loose dirt beside her. Along with her white-gold hair, they were saturated with blood. A golf club appeared to be embedded in the side of her head. The medical student nudged me aside and peered into the pit. There was a moment of stunned silence.

"I haven't finished reading the chapter on the brain," said the student. "But I'd say it's a nine-iron to the parietal lobe."

"It's not a nine-iron," I said. My voice came out tight and shrill. "It's a driver. It looks a lot like the Fairway Bruiser. Titanium shaft and illegally inflated coefficient of restitution, creating a springlike effect in the club face. Or on someone's brain. Outlawed according to Appendix II, 5a, the USGA Rules of Golf." And Kaitlin said I didn't know the rules.

"Are you feeling all right?" the student asked. He grabbed my forearm, guided me back from the edge of the excavation, and began to grope for my pulse. "Put your head between your knees if you feel faint. It's not uncommon for the layperson to feel woozy when they encounter the scene of an accident."

"This was no accident," I said.

The student keeled over and did a face plant into the grass.

From the rear seat of a Sarasota Sheriff's Department cruiser, I watched officials drape yellow crime scene tape around the end of the driving range containing the pit and Kaitlin's body. By the light of the flashing strobes on the police cars, I saw the medical student in the back of a second cruiser. Even from a distance, and even granting that intermittent blue lights would not do favors for anyone's complexion, his skin appeared sweaty and pale. I could not picture him handling a bloody ER assignment with the requisite gruff detachment.

"Kindly step out of the vehicle." The curt voice of one of the officers startled me out of my reverie about the medical student's future. I faced three more policemen when I emerged from the car. "Why were you out here?"

"It sounds weird," I said. "It was just a feeling I had, that somehow Kaitlin was in trouble. I can't really explain it all logically." It sounded more than weird. Even to my own ears, my explanation sounded weak, suspicious, and completely unconvincing. I forged ahead anyway, describing hearing about the missed interview, going to the Ruperts' condo, and then pacing off distances at the practice range while I waited for a cab. Finally, I described how I'd spotted the body and returned to the club to enlist the aid of the medical student.

Just then, Sheriff Pate swaggered up. Ignoring my wave, he drew the other officers several yards away from me.

"Pate says this is the second body you've stumbled on in two weeks," said the man who had been interviewing me, when he returned from the conference with Pate. "Interesting coincidence."

"Interesting is not how I'd describe it," I said. "Grisly, terrifying ..." The wall that had risen inside and blocked my feelings about discovering Kaitlin suddenly gave way. I sank to a squat beside the cruiser and began to cry.

"Get back in the vehicle," said Pate. "We're going to take a ride to the station."

At the sheriff's department, my interrogation did not wind down until after ten o'clock. I reviewed my movements during the entire evening for two different officers. Their questions took two unpleasant turns. First, the following irrefutable fact was established: I had found not one, but two, dead bodies in the short span of two weeks. No one knew this more vividly than I did.

Second, I had benefited from So Won Lee's elimination out of the golf tournament. Because of the illegal golf club found in her bag, I had squeaked into the second half of the tournament. Making me a logical perpetrator for the misplaced club. And now that same golf club had turned up as an apparent murder weapon. Were these events connected? I had no clue. I had no reasonable explanation for either of them. I reported in detail my conversations over the last week and a half with Walter Moore and Kaitlin herself, hoping they might shift suspicion from me to someone else. At this point, anyone would do.

"Sheriff Pate," I began.

"Sheriff Pate?" hooted one of the other officers. "In his dreams, he's Sheriff Pate. Low-down-on-the-totem-pole Deputy Pate, to you." Pate squirmed with discomfort as several of the deputies taunted him.

Why the hell had he lied to me about his title?

"We are not intending to arrest you tonight, Miss Bur-dette," said the only deputy who had not participated in razzing Pate. "But you may not leave this county until we inform you that you may go. Is that clear enough?"

I nodded. This implied threat made Detective Maloney’s desire to keep in touch after I'd found Bencher's body feel positively chummy. Evidently, the police had not been impressed with my protestations of ignorance and innocence. Although any number of people may have wanted Kaitlin Rupert dead, I looked like one of them. As I shuffled out to the vestibule, I felt scared, tired, confused, and ravenously hungry.

Walter Moore was slumped in a chair in the corner of the entrance area. He leaped to his feet when he saw me emerge from the hallway.

"Cassie! What's going on? Did they find the bastard who killed her? I didn't do it. I swear I didn't. Did you tell them I wouldn't hurt her?" If he'd looked wild as he shook Kaitlin on the practice range this afternoon, he'd downshifted into near-demented now.

"Just tell them the facts, Walter." I figured that would be good advice whether he'd murdered her or not. Either way, I desperately wanted to have confidence that the authorities I'd been taught to believe in would find the truth. Doubtful, though, with Pate on board.

I pulled my phone out to call for a taxi back to the Starlight Motel. It vibrated before I could dial the number.

"Cassie! It's Jeanine Peters. I've been trying to reach you for hours."

"I've been a little busy."

"One of the golfers from your tournament was murdered!"

"I know—" She interrupted me as I began to tell her that I'd had the bad luck to find the body.

"There's something you should see over at the office. I went back earlier this evening to get my makeup and I overheard some stuff. Dr. Turner is clearing out his files later on tonight. You wanted me to call you if anything came up."

"What is he clearing out?"

"I don't know exactly. It has to do with the False Memory Consociation—Turner's been worried about their plans to teach Kaitlin Rupert a lesson. Now that she's turned up dead, that plan is going to look really bad for him."

"How does he know she's dead? They only found her a couple of hours ago."

"I have no idea. You told me to call if I heard something. I'm just keeping my word. If you wanted to look at any of his papers, it's now or never."