Per her request, we meet at her country club. Since I didn’t own a colorful pair of checkered pants and a splashy golf shirt, I attended the meeting in my usual attire: jeans, black T-shirt and sport coat.
It was an impressive building, some kind of Tudor mansion constructed in the 1920s by some famous architect. Leaving the Mav in the parking lot, I walked in the main door and down a hallway. There was a pro shop straight ahead with racks of golf clothes and golf balls. The whole place smelled like nothing but money. It was also as quiet as a library, its thick carpet and rich burled wood walls blocked any extra noise.
The dining room, where she and I were supposedly going to have lunch, was off to the right. I followed the arrows and saw Amelia waiting at the room’s entrance. She was dressed in a white golf outfit with her sunglasses perched on her head. If anyone belonged in a place like this, it was her.
She smiled, but it was thin, almost perfunctory. “August,” she said as I approached. “Thanks for coming.”
“How’d you play?”
“Some good shots, some bad ones. I try to focus on the good ones.” A good lesson for life, I thought.
She nodded and gestured toward the terrace. “Let’s sit down.”
We were shown to a small table overlooking the golf course. The green stretched out in front of us, a few golfers taking lazy swings. I pulled out a chair and sat down, Amelia settling in across from me. She ordered a coffee and a salad; I went with a beer and a burger.
“So,” she began, “you said you had some news?”
“Yes.” I glanced around just to make sure no one could hear us. The nearest table was a group of four men, reliving the apparent excitement of their round of golf. “I believe Richard didn’t die that day on the lake. I think he was picked up by someone in a boat and taken to North Marina.”
From my pocket, I pulled a print of the still image from the marina’s security camera.
She looked at it like a piece of dog shit stuck to her shoe.
“That’s definitely him,” she said. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Now what?”
“Now you tell me if you want me to end my investigation here. Or if you want me to take this new information to the cops because they clearly didn’t get this far, or if you want me to keep working the case.”
She leaned back as our server delivered our drinks. I took a long drink of my beer. Delicious.
“Keep going.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the sounds of the country club around us—the clink of glasses, the soft chatter of other members. I didn’t mention the woman from the footage. Not yet. And the image I’d showed was too vague for her to notice the shadow of a woman on Ricard’s other side.
The food arrived and we both ate. Surprisingly, Amelia appeared to have an appetite. My burger was cooked perfectly and although I could have finished it in three bites, I took my time. I was tempted to lift my pinky as I ate but figured that would be overdoing it.
“Anything from the computer?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She nodded, then asked, “Any theories?”
I thought about my conversation with Jazz. How much to pry? “Generally, something like this can be attributed to a few common themes: Infidelity, the end of a troubled relationship, or financial. Unless you tell me differently, I’m leaning toward the last.”
“No infidelity that I know of, as I think I’ve mentioned,” she replied. “The relationship was mature but, in my mind, not loveless. Financially, we had no issues at all.”
“Like I said, those are the big three, but there could be something else. I’ll do my best to find out what’s going on.”
She nodded and the waiter cleared our table after we were finished eating. I reached for my wallet but she held up a hand. “It’s already taken care of.” I didn’t know how that could be, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“Thank you for lunch,” I said.
Amelia gave a tired smile. “Anytime,” she said.
It had been a week or two since I’d seen Pops and I’d told him I would stop by and take him out for a good meal, so I drove from the country club to his gym, which was going from one extreme to the other.
As I pulled up, I noticed a few more cars than usual parked out front. Pops was probably training some of the younger fighters. The old building looked the same as always—weathered, a little rough around the edges, but still standing strong. I stepped out, making my way to the entrance.
As I approached the door, I caught sight of two figures leaning against the wall to the side. The shadows separated from their position and stepped into the light.
“Decker,” I said. The big heavyweight I’d knocked out was looking at me. A tough-guy stare he’d probably practiced. Next to him was a huge guy, at least two inches taller than me and fifty pounds heavier. Must have been a college football player one time. Probably an offensive lineman.
“You ain’t got Pops here to protect you,” he said, which made me laugh out loud. Pops could barely stand, for one thing. And for the other, Pops had been protecting Decker from me. But I wasn’t going to get into semantics.
They approached and the big guy went to my right, ostensibly cutting off my escape route to the gym.
I had no intention of running away.
Quite the opposite.
It didn’t take a great detective to figure out what was going to happen. Decker most likely told the big guy to attack me first. That way, I would be dealing with this sequoia with feet while Decker stepped in and walloped me, like I’d done to him.
Strategically, it was stupid on Decker’s part, but the guy hadn’t just come from a MENSA meeting. Guys as big as the one facing me rarely had to fight. Their size intimidated everyone. My guess is he was an average brawler at best.
Therefore, Decker was the bigger threat.
The big guy took a step toward me but instead of reacting to him, I snapped a straight left into Decker’s nose. It wasn’t a powerful punch but it straightened him up and threw off their plan.
Decker tried to regain his balance and lower himself to launch a roundhouse right, which I blocked with my left forearm and then drove a straight right into his teeth. Now this one had some power behind it and the lips split, more than one tooth fell to the sidewalk, and Decker staggered.
By this time, the huge guy had decided to hit me in the back. It was a kidney punch and it hurt, but I’d been hit much harder before. So I ignored him.
Decker was still standing, barely, and I started to throw the same shovel punch that had knocked him senseless. I figured the poor bastard probably had more than one nightmare about it and had been preparing for it ever since he’d gotten this harebrained idea.
It was, of course, a total deke, a fake, a counterfeit punch only designed to scare Decker into lowering his guard.
Which he did.
That gave me the opportunity for the kind of right hook Decker had tried to start off the fight with. My oversized brick of a fist crashed into his temple and he dropped to the sidewalk with a thud that seemed to echo down the street.
In the meantime, Sasquatch had landed a couple more shots to my body and I turned to face him. He looked at Decker, held up his hands and said, “I’ve got no beef–”
I punched him right between his hands. It landed on the point of his chin and then I waded in with body shots. It felt like the right thing to do; teach this uneducated person on the proper applications of strikes to the human body. A left hook to the ribs. A right hook to the kidney. More ribs. The same kidney. Bones were cracking, blood was probably gushing inside. He sank to his knees and I couldn’t resist. His head looked like it was on a T-ball stand and I whipped a right that broke his jaw. He landed almost on top of Decker.
They would be there for a while.
I turned to the gym doors and saw Pops, along with Milton, the trainer, and a couple of young fighters.
Pops looked at me. “Where are we going for dinner?” he asked.