Chapter 1

 

“Kate McCall, stop daydreaming. It’s your turn.”

Monica’s plaintive voice interrupted my mental inventory of things I still needed to do before bunco that evening. I shouldn’t have let Pam talk me into playing golf when I should be home vacuuming. Reality check, reality check: golf versus vacuuming? No contest. Golf won hands down.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

As usual I was going to be last to tee off. And I liked it that way. When it comes to procrastinating, I rule. I pulled a club from my bag and dug a ball out of my pocket. Jim would be so proud—not to mention surprised—to know that I’ve taken up the game I used to complain about. I imagine him smiling down on me from the Pearly Gates. Granted, I’m not a very good golfer, but do enjoy getting out on the course with some of the ladies from my bunco group. We call ourselves the Bunco Babes. Technically speaking, I’m not sure whether women of a certain age can still be considered “babes.” But then, I believe with the proper attitude anything is possible. And the Babes have attitude up the wazoo.

“Connie Sue landed on the green.” Monica pointed to the bright speck of pink 120 yards in the distance. She neglected to mention her shot landed in a sand trap. “Now let’s see you make it across.”

Monica tends to be competitive when it comes to golf. But then Monica tends to be competitive—period. Even at bunco. And bunco, as aficionados know, is strictly a roll of the dice. No skill, no strategy. Simply a roll of the dice.

“You can do it, sugar,” Connie Sue crooned. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader, I suppose.

Pam smiled encouragingly. “Make it across and I’ll let you wear the tiara tonight.”

If that wasn’t incentive, I didn’t know what was. Pam was referring to the fact she was the reigning queen of the Bunco Babes. The tiara had been Connie Sue’s idea. Figures, coming from a former Miss Peach Princess. At the end of each evening, a sparkly rhinestone tiara was awarded the highest roller. This is the winner’s to keep until next time we play. Then, after scores are tallied, the reigning queen relinquishes the crown to the new winner. Silly? Of course it is. Though some might loathe admitting it, I’d be willing to wager that everyone gets a kick out of wearing that tiara. It makes us feel special and appeals to our sense of fun. In other words, it makes us girls again.

“You’ve won it two times in a row,” Monica reminded Pam. “Fair warning, pal. You’re about to be dethroned tonight. I’m feeling lucky.”

“Girls, girls, girls,” Connie Sue drawled in her best Scarlet O’Hara imitation. “Don’t make me have to give you a time-out.” Connie Sue is the grandmother of twin toddlers. She likes to keep the rest of us up-to-date on parenting, lest we forget most of us once raised children of our own. Miracle that any of them survived, given today’s theories.

I squinted across the narrow gulley separating the elevated tee from the green, and sighed. I’ve always disliked the eighth hole. Nearly as much as I dislike the second, third, and fifth. There is no margin for error. Getting my ball on the green is a skill I have yet to acquire. If I’m lucky, it will land nearby. And let me tell you, that’s a very big if. More often than not, my ball lands in the thick vegetation below.

I strode up to the tee box with more bravado than I felt, pushed my hot pink tee into the hard-packed ground, and prepared to say farewell to my pretty lavender ball, which in all likelihood I would never see again.

“Remember, sugar, left arm straight, knees flexed, feet shoulder-width apart.” Connie Sue Cheerleader was at it again.

“Just keep your eye on the ball,” Pam reminded, perhaps just a tad guiltily for taking me away from my housework.

“What the heck,” I muttered. If Monica made it across that darn gulley, maybe there was hope for a duffer like me. I took a deliberate backstroke just as Brad Murphy, the club’s pro, had instructed. Then—just for a split second—my attention strayed. Did I have enough crabmeat for the spread I planned to make for bunco? Or should I run by Piggly Wiggly on my way home? Trust me, it’s not a good thing when your attention strays in the middle of your golf stroke.

My club kachunked as it connected with the ball. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I watched it arc against the blue Carolina sky. Monica, Connie Sue, and Pam groaned when my ball hit the fringe of the fairway, struck a rock, then bounced backward—straight into the . . . crap. No other word for it.

“The sun was in my eyes,” I said. A lie, a blatant lie.

None of us said a word as we climbed into our golf carts and navigated the steep winding cart path to the bottom of the hill.

“Good luck finding your ball,” Monica said as she dropped me off. I could tell from her smug expression that she was happy she wasn’t the one who had to search through weeds, brambles, and whatever.

I took an assortment of clubs out of my bag and headed for the spot where my ball had disappeared into the underbrush.

“I’ll help you look,” Pam offered. Her fluorescent yellow ball had managed to make it across the chasm, but just barely.

Ever leery of snakes, I used my eight iron to gingerly poke around. A warm breeze sent the reeds swaying and stirred up a sickeningly sweet odor. “Ee-yew!” I wrinkled my nose at the smell. “Something stinks in here.”

Pam joined in the search. “Ee-yew,” she echoed with a grimace when she, too, caught a whiff. “Maybe it’s a dead body.”

“Now who’s been watching too much CSI?”

Pam and I are both crime and consequence junkies. Criminal Minds, all versions of Law & Order, reruns of CSI in Las Vegas, Miami, or New York—it didn’t matter. Bring them on, the more the merrier.

“While we’re on the subject, who’s bright idea was it to play bunco the same night as CSI?”

“That’s why we DVR,” I said, poking at what looked like a plastic Walmart bag.

Pam glanced my way and shook her head. “Look at the trash. Disgusting! Next thing you know the Road Warriors will have to patrol the golf course.”

“Thank goodness for Road Warriors,” I said. Pam was referring to the intrepid band of volunteers who, armed with grabbers and orange vests, ruthlessly defend the highways and byways against discarded soda cans and Burger King wrappers.

“I can’t believe people throw stuff like this on the course.” I took a final jab at the bag and let out a squeal as an arm—or what might once have been an arm—tumbled free.

No ladylike squeal from Pam. She let loose a shriek that could be heard clear to the clubhouse. A gray squirrel scurried for cover. My numb brain registered birds, too large to be crows, circling overhead. They looked more like turkey buzzards, true scavengers here in the South. They can pick a carcass clean in no time flat. The veggie burger I had for lunch threatened to return as my gaze drifted to the . . . whatever.

Denial is a wonderful thing. One of the best defense mechanisms God ever invented. I stared and stared at the sickly gray pulp with a kind of morbid fascination. This couldn’t be real, I tried to convince myself. Appendages just don’t fall out of Walmart bags. Or any other kinds of bags, for that matter. Serenity Cove has very strict policies against littering.

Could be an arm off a mannequin, I told myself. A fake arm. Could be someone’s idea of a practical joke. A very twisted practical joke.

Pam clutched my sleeve. “Please, don’t tell me—”

Before she could finish her sentence, Connie Sue and Monica hurried over to see what all the fuss was about.

“Dammit, Pam,” Monica complained. “If you hadn’t let out that scream, I could have parred that hole.”

Connie Sue was the first of the pair to spot the grisly find lying amid the weeds. She clamped a hand over her mouth, all traces of color leaching from her face.

About that time, Monica, too, spotted the object of interest. She pointed a shaky finger. “Is that . . . ?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

“An arm.” I nodded, no longer able to pretend the object was anything but an arm.

At my pronouncement, Monica promptly lost her tuna melt all over her brand-new FootJoys.

“Hey, ladies,” a voice shouted from the tee box above us. “You’re holding up play.”

I recognized the man; I’d seen him at the fitness center during one of my sporadic workout sessions. After watching him hog the treadmill while others waited, I’d instantly cataloged him as a first-class jerk. I wondered how he’d react if he had been the one to find a dismembered body part in a Walmart bag. Probably keep right on playing. It would, after all, be a shame to slow down play.

Ignoring him, I rummaged in my pocket for my cell phone. Tees and ball markers fell to the ground. Then I remembered I had left my cell in my bag on the cart. “Darn,” I mumbled. My mind scrambled to come up with a plan, a protocol of sorts, but came up blank. Nothing so far in my life had prepared me for this kind of emergency.

“If you can’t find your ball, lady, take a penalty and get on with it,” the jerk’s partner hollered.

“We found an arm,” Pam hollered back.

The man took off his cap and scratched his head. “You found some yarn?”

“An arm!” My control snapped. Why did men refuse to wear hearing aids? “We found an arm!”

“Lady, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you found. Just move aside and let us play through.”

Fortunately, just then, the ranger pulled up alongside our golf cart at the bottom of the hill. “Trouble, ladies?”

Before I could get two words out, the jerk yelled, “Bill, tell these women they need to brush up on golf etiquette.”

“What’s the problem, ladies?” Bill asked.

As one, all four of us pointed to the grisly discovery.

Bill climbed out of the golf cart and ambled over for a better look. After one quick glance, he became the second person that afternoon to baptize a pair of FootJoys.