Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

30

Palmetto Gardens had only one listed phone number; apparently all calls went through a switchboard. Holly asked for security, then asked for Barney Noble.

“Who’s calling?” a young male voice asked.

“Chief Holly Barker, of the Orchid Beach PD.”

“I’ll patch you through to his house.”

There was a click and one ring.

“Barney Noble.”

“Hey, Barney, it’s Holly Barker. How you doing?”

“Good, Holly, and you?”

“Can’t complain.”

“When’s Ham coming down?”

“That’s why I called you. He’s here for the duration, retired last week.”

“No kidding? About time. When’s he going to play some golf with me?”

“The sooner, the better, he says.”

“How about this afternoon?”

“Perfect. Mind if I tag along?”

“You play?”

“I’m my father’s daughter.”

“Sure, you come along. Two o’clock?”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll meet you at the front gate. Park where you did last time.”

“See you at two.” She hung up and turned to her father. They were in Jackson’s living room. “We’re on for two. Better wear your best golf duds, it’s a fancy place.”

Ham frowned. “Shit, you mean I can’t wear my combat fatigues?”

“You’d be shot on sight. Don’t wear those awful plaid Bermuda shorts, either.”

“You’re limiting my options.”

“That’s the idea.”

Jackson spoke up. “Why wasn’t I invited?”

“You want Barney Noble to know where you are? He might call Cracker Mosely and tell him.”

“You’ve got a point,” Jackson said.

“You can baby-sit Daisy.”

“Or her me.”

“That’s more like it, come to think.”

Holly pulled into the parking space at two sharp. Barney Noble was already there, waiting for them in his white Range Rover with the little green palmetto on the door. He got out to greet them.

“Hello, Holly. Jesus, Ham, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Ham shook his hand and grinned. “Must’ve been, what, ’73?”

“I reckon. Come on, let’s get your clubs in my car.”

Holly and Ham transferred their clubs to the Range Rover, then got in. The security gate opened, and the tire-buster spikes retracted.

“That’s some arrangement there,” Ham said. “You expecting armored personnel carriers?”

“Nah,” Barney replied. “Our board of directors is fond of overkill. Makes the members feel safe. It’s not like anybody ever tried to bust in here. Holly, did you know your old man was the toughest, meanest noncom in ’Nam?”

“That’s what he keeps telling me,” Holly replied.

“You’re both full of shit,” Ham said pleasantly.

“You ever miss ’Nam, Ham?”

“Not for a minute.”

“I do, sometimes. You know what I miss?” They hit a large pothole. Barney swore. “That was supposed to have been fixed yesterday,” he said. He picked up a handheld radio and said, “Base.”

“Base,” a tinny voice said.

“This is Noble. Call maintenance and tell them to put down their comic books and get down to Gull Drive at Live Oak and fix that pothole. If a member’s car hits that I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Roger, Chief,” the voice said.

Noble put down the radio. “Sorry about that. Where was I?”

“I forget,” Ham said, looking out the window at the golf course.

“Well, never mind, here we are.” He pulled into the drive of the country club building and parked. Immediately a man in a large golf cart drove up, took their clubs out of the Range Rover and stowed them in the cart. He drove them to the first tee, where two carts were waiting.

“You two ride together,” Holly said. “You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” She told the man to put her clubs in the other cart.

“What are you playing with, Ham?” Noble asked, peering at Ham’s clubs.

“Callaways.”

“The stainless steel ones?”

“Yep.”

“Tell you what: I’ll play your clubs, and you play mine. They’re the new Callaway irons, the tungsten-titanium ones.” He gave Ham a brief lecture on the clubs.

Holly teed off first, sending a long straight drive down the middle of the fairway. The two men drove next, landing within ten yards ahead of her ball. Holly got into her cart and followed Noble down the fairway. They were all on the green in two, and all three parred the hole.

As they played along, Holly realized that, for the first time, she could see many of the houses, which backed up onto the course. They were grandiose in scale, but seemed well designed, and the properties were beautifully landscaped.

Just beyond the ninth green was a little outdoor bar, and they sat down for a few minutes and had a beer. Holly thought it was a nice convenience, even if she had never had a beer in the middle of a golf game. What caught her attention was that the barman had a pronounced bulge under the left arm of his tight, white jacket.

“This is some place, Barney,” Ham said, looking around. “How long you been here?”

“Since shortly before the place opened. I’m a partner in a security service in Miami, and we were approached about providing services up here. In the end, they hired me to put together their own force, and I liked it up here, so I stayed. I’ve still got my share of the Miami outfit, though, and it does real well. You ready to play on?”

They drove from the tenth tee and continued their game. By the time they had finished the three of them were in a dead heat, when the handicaps were figured in. Barney drove them up to the clubhouse and led them into the pro shop. The place was large and had many displays of equipment.

“We stock only the finest stuff,” Barney said. “What did you think of the new Callaways?”

“I thought they were sensational,” Ham replied. “I played over my head today.”

“You want a set? Everything here is half price.”

“You sure? Wouldn’t that get you in trouble with your board?”

“Not a bit. It’s a funny thing: very rich people don’t like to pay retail for anything, so we make it cheap for them in the pro shop and the restaurant, while charging them an arm and a leg for just about everything else. Come on, let’s pick you out a set. How about you, Holly?”

“No, thanks, Barney. I’m well fixed for clubs.” Holly tagged along while Ham chose his irons and a set of the titanium woods, plus a new bag and a couple of dozen balls. He paid with a credit card, and Barney instructed the shop manager to have the new clubs put into Holly’s car at the front gate, along with his old ones.

Barney took Ham and Holly upstairs to the grill room, where they feasted on cheeseburgers. It was Holly’s first glimpse of some of the members, though there were no more than a couple of dozen of them in the large room. She thought they looked foreign, even the ones who weren’t Hispanic or Asian. She thought she heard two men speaking Arabic, but she wasn’t sure.

“Is it always this crowded, Barney?” she asked.

He laughed. “This is pretty typical. We never have a strain on the facilities.”

“Barney,” she said, “so far, I’ve seen three armed men—the guy who drove us in the cart, the bartender at the ninth hole and the golf shop manager. Is that usual?”

“You have a sharp eye,” Barney said. “A lot of our employees are trained and licensed to carry firearms. Makes for a nice extension to our security force, and the members like it that way.”

“Whatever you say.” Holly dug into her cheeseburger, which was as good as she’d ever had.

Driving home, Ham said, “I saw at least three more armed men around that place, and I don’t buy Barney’s explanation. What’s the point?”

“I don’t know,” Holly said, “but when I get time I’m going to look into it.”

“Something I didn’t tell you about Barney Noble,” Ham said.

“What’s that?”

“Lieutenants didn’t live long in Barney’s platoon. He lost three while I was in the company, and there were rumors that they’d been fragged. Barney never denied it.”

Holly knew that fragged meant killed by their own men.

“Barney didn’t like taking orders from shavetails just out of OCS,” Ham said. “None of them was a West Pointer; something would have been done about that.”

“Nothing was ever done, then?”

“Barney was transferred to headquarters and given a desk job halfway through his tour. When he was up for promotion to master sergeant, he was passed over.”

“Weren’t there any witnesses to all this?”

“If there were, they kept their mouths shut. None of them was going to cross Barney.”

“I can see why.”

“Did you notice, when we said good-bye, he didn’t ask us to play again?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why do you think he asked us in the first place? He could have made an excuse when you called him.”

“I think he wanted us to see what a nice, quiet, unthreatening place Palmetto Gardens is.”

“He didn’t like it much when you brought up the people who were packing.”

“No, he didn’t, did he?” Holly grinned.

“You be careful with him, honey,” Ham said.

“I will.”