Par for the Course by Clair Dickson

He walked me across the immaculate, precision cut grass, as a light breeze moved the few puffy white clouds across the sky. A perfect day for golf.

We crested the hill to a scene of butchery. The grass had been torn up in huge swathes, straight lines. Someone had put down grass clippings and tried to replace some pieces of sod in order to obscure the message. In letters three feet tall, the word WHORE had been carved in the grass.

"I couldn't close the course. I'd lose too much money," Ed Whipple said. "Besides, it's not on the fairway."

I pointed to a trail that lead off beyond the word. "You follow it?"

Ed nodded. "I didn't find anything."

"So. Who's the whore?"

"I-- Don't ask me!"

"The wife?"

He screwed up his face to look mean but only looked like an angry marshmallow. "My wife has nothing to do with this. I want you to find out who is behind it," he added.

"A scorned lover, no doubt. I'll see what I can find out."

Before he could speak, I was already walking down the slope to the trail. A couple yards in, I found a clearing with a branch in the path. One way led off to my left, back to the course. I continued down the straight path, and a few steps down it lay a discarded, drying condom. Ribbed, perhaps for whore pleasure.

The path came out at a little shed. I circled the building, but it had no windows and no entry besides the padlocked front door. It nagged at me as I made my way back down the path to the fork again.

I poked around the groundskeeper's buildings, asking about illicit affairs or anything unusual. For groundskeepers, I would have thought them to be better at hedging. One guy screwed up good though. He was a young guy, maybe just out of high school. He never once made eye contact as he eagerly told my boobs what he knew.

Craig was the only one who used the shed in the back, really. He stored things out there, but mainly he took girls out there to make out. As for which girls he took-- he wasn't too particular, but wait staff seemed to be his favorite. He served them real good.

I found my client in his office, fretting over something. "I need the key for that shed in the back?"

His eyes went up. "What for?"

"For my investigation. Your wife come around here much?"

"Yeah. She's the events manger. She's here all the time."

"Where's her office?"

"In the other building. Off the kitchen. She wanted to keep on eye on the staff."

"She here today?"

"Yeah. She left before me this morning, but left me a note saying she was going to be busy. I assure you, she doesn't have anything to do with this." He took out his keys and started to twist one off.

I reached over, bending extra far so he was staring right down my cleavage. "And I'm a nice girl," I countered in a low voice as I plucked the keys from his hand.

It took a couple tries to find the right key for the wife's office. The light was already on, but there was no one inside. I closed the door for private searching.

None of Ed's keys unlocked the desk, nor did I find any other keys. Padlocks slow me down, but desk locks are as easy as horny boys. I pried the drawers apart and open. The bottom drawer had her purse in it. In her purse I found two check books. I flipped through, noticing a trio of checks written to Craig White each about a week apart. And one check for Leman that was voided.

Behind a partition in the drawer, and under a woman's magazine and polo shirt, there was a box of ribbed condoms.

The door opened. I stood up.

"What the hell are you doing in my office?"

"Snooping. What the hell does it look like?"

Her face darkened. She had a powerful walk, but the carpet swallowed the sound of her heels. She rounded the desk and faced me. With the power suit and the business-woman hair, I expected the beating to be verbal not physical. She nailed me across the face with an open palm, then backhanded me. My reaction was entirely reflex. I punched her with a solid right jab, then stepped forward as she reeled to slam her into the wall. I left the woman crumpled on the floor with her nose bloodied and rushed off to try to finish my case before my ass was fired for beating up the client's wife. That never goes over well. Not even if the wife is a whore.

I poached a little cart to make better time as I cut across the course to the shed in the back corner. Parking the cart, I hopped out and selected the key I recalled Ed trying to take off.

I jammed the key in the padlock and popped it open. The door squeaked softly as I swung it open. Something else was swinging too. Thirty something guy. The rope holding his neck to the rafters was awful short. With upper arms like that, it didn't add up. It wasn't a surprise that his license identified him as Craig-- there were certainly more than a few woman who would like those arms around them. And the smirk in his driver's license photo was kind of charming.

He hadn't been dead long. And he hadn't died by hanging.

His baggy pants were unzipped. I didn't check to see if he was all tucked inside.

He had a wallet, but no cell phone. Everyone at the cart garage knew just how much Craig liked to us his cell to snap pictures of himself posing with any pretty lady he could get his arms around.

I looked closer at him, at the clothes. The shirt looked like it still had creases from being folded. In spite of the size of his wallet, there was no mark on the pants from where it sat. The back of his shirt and pants were dirty, as if he'd laid on something. I checked his hands. His arms were stiff. There was no dirt on his hands, or on the sides of his pant legs where he would have brushed his hands off.

Gently, I lifted the shirt and peered up underneath. That was a chest that was made for being shirtless-- except for the hole in it. I pushed the shirt up farther to get a better look. A bullet had gone right through him. But the shirt was dry. And he was clean. Who ever dressed him had waited until he'd stopped bleeding..

I closed up the shed and locked it. I sat on the golf cart and smoked, since I pretend that sucking in carcinogens helps me think. Then, most of the way through the smoke, I set off toward the butchered grass. The sprinkler sat low in the grass, barely noticeable. I stood on top of the plastic green cap and looked out over the letters carved into the sod. Anyone lying in those letters would have been washed pretty well by the sprinkler-- especially a high powered fairway sprinkler like that one.

I carefully brushed at the grass clippings and bit of sod that had been laid down to try hiding the words. The letters weren't just torn grass. The dirt beneath was saturated with dark brown or black. Not blood, though. I crumbled some dirt between my fingers and took a ginger sniff. Smelled like dirt.

But something else. Motor oil.

There was a pretty damn elaborate cover-up going on. I went back down the path to the condom and looked around for other clues. There was a pile of lawn clippings, left there by the mowers. A nice hiding spot. I scaled it and started digging.

I found the cell phone first. The background was a photo of Craig with some grinning cutie. And scrolling through the phone found no less than four pictures of my client's wife. I sent them to my phone for later. I dug a little more and found an empty oil quart. And a large piece of sod.

And a hand.

I recoiled upon touching the cold hand, nearly falling off the pile. She had come up behind me and the timing was fucking perfect. She wrapped something around my neck and pulled me against her.

I grabbed a hold of the ligature, then got out my knife and cut the nylons in two. She stumbled back, falling on her ass. Beyond her, stood my client. Gun in hand.

But he was stupid enough not to have it aimed, so I grabbed his wife by the hair and placed my knife against her neck. "Not another step. You had to have known that when you hired me, all this would come out."

Ed sighed. "I didn't think she was really involved."

"Right. And I'm the next porn queen." I bent the wife's head so I could see her face better. "That's Leman in the pile, isn't it?"

She swallowed. "Yeah."

"With a bullet in him."

She nodded.

Ed dropped the gun and jumped back. Maybe he didn't know just how vile this situation was.

"So, you killed Craig. Because you got tired of paying him off for those photos he had of you. Only Craig wasn't a blackmailer. He just wasn't stupid enough to turn down the money you were handing over for his silence. Leman helped you with the body. But he wanted to be paid, too. You started to write him a check, but then decided to just shoot him. Maybe you told him you thought you heard something."

She blinked and tears slid down her face as if she actually felt something. She nodded.

"Tell me something, Ed. Why didn't you just call the cops on the vandalism? Why call me?"

"Because… actually, I was afraid that someone might blackmail me, or my wife."

"Thanks. Next time, don't. Instead, everybody keep your pants on and there's nothing to blackmail you about." I shoved the wife away from me, folded up my knife, picked up the gun, and finally called the police.

© Clair Dickson 2008 All Rights Reserved