“W
hat do you think?” Tom asked me.
We shared a standard two room suite in the hotel. Detective Nichols interviewed him after me and had left.
“I don’t know what to think. It couldn’t be one of us,” Tom said.
“I agree. It would be hard for one of us to have slipped away, located Doug, and killed him without being noticed.”
“We only see each other a couple times a year at the most. Doug flies for AirExpress now, as does LG, but LG lives in Florida, and Doug lives, I mean lived, out in California.” Tom said. “They’re both pilots, but I’ve never heard that they have flown together. A couple of the others also fly with AirExpress, but the same thing goes.”
“We could be guessing all night, but we don’t even know when or where or how Doug was killed.”
“Think we’ll find out?”
“Yes. It may even be on the local news tonight.”
It was. A young, attractive TV reporter for the local news filled us in at the beginning of the ten o’clock broadcast.
“A visiting golfer was brutally murdered this evening in the old practice area of the Spiderwood Golf Course. A little after six, two women found the man sprawled out in the sand next to a practice green. The practice area is about a quarter mile from the clubhouse and the newer practice area. The victim had been struck in the head.”
A knock on our door interrupted our focus on the news. I answered it and was surprised to see Officer Whip Miller standing there.
“We need you both to show us your golf clubs, now.”
His “now” came across like a drill sergeant talking to a new recruit.
“You need to work on your presentation,” I said. “You’re not a storm trooper.”
He bristled at my remark, but I turned and shouted to Tom that we needed to go get our clubs.
“No, you need to come with me and show us your clubs. We have a team in the parking garage already.” I could sense he wanted to say something more to me, but he didn’t. Maybe I wasn’t the only person who had told him to work on his attitude.
We went with him to the garage. Both Tom’s and my clubs were in my car. Like me, Tom had driven to Myrtle Beach, and we had agreed we each would drive three times to the course of the day. On the seventh day, we would drive ourselves, and both head directly home after golf and lunch at the course. He would make it home by dinner. It would take me a long two days.
We passed four of our guys coming back from the parking garage. A couple of them gave us a nod, but no one spoke. I attributed that to the presence of Officer Miller. Once at my car, it took me a few seconds to untangle the two golf bags crammed into the Mustang’s small trunk.
“Please leave them there and back away,” Detective Nichols said. He had teamed up with two other policemen who wore lightweight windbreakers with the initials CSI prominently displayed. They inspected each club before telling us we could put them back in the car. Their bodies blocked my seeing what they were doing with the clubs.
“Don’t you have to send them off to the lab or something?” Tom asked.
“Not yet,” Nichols said. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
We stuffed the golf bags back into the trunk and left.
“Well, at least we now know they think the murder weapon was a golf club,” I said after we got back outside.
“If we had killed him, we could have simply wiped the club clean, and they wouldn’t have seen anything. That seemed strange to me,” Tom said.
“They might have been looking for a bent or damaged club. Although it would be foolish for the killer to have kept the murder weapon. Most likely it’s now in one of the hundreds of creeks and swampy areas around here.”
“I agree. What club would you have used?”
I thought his question was in bad taste to say the least, but I answered it. “Probably my four-iron hybrid.”
“Not me. I can’t hit anything with my irons. I’d use my driver.”
That night I managed to read for a while and get to sleep without any more disruption. Little did I know then that it would be the last peaceful night I would have for a while.