This Game of Murder

Chapter II

After a few moments Betty rose to her feet, glanced at him petulantly, and came over to sink next to him, laying her iron beside her.

“Five-minute break,” she said. “Give me a cigarette.”

He lighted two and handed her one. After taking a drag, she grinned.

“If we were worried about just our playing together causing scandal, wonder what would happen if someone saw us here.”

“I wasn’t worried,” he said. “You’re the only one who’s mentioned scandal.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly the sort of place for a married woman to be tête-à-tête with an ex-boy friend.”

She had a point. Though they were no more than thirty yards from the ninth green, no one could possibly have seen them from there. Or from anywhere more than five yards away, for that matter, for the little clearing was entirely surrounded by bushes.

Her nearness and their isolation began to have a strange effect on him. A trifle self-consciously he crushed out his cigarette after two puffs.

“Maybe it would be more decorous if I waited for you at the tenth tee,” he said, making no move to rise.

Carefully she stepped out her own cigarette. “Maybe I’d better start hunting again.” She made no move to rise either.

For a long moment they stared at each other. She was seated half turned toward him, her left shoulder nearly touching his right. Slowly she reached out to lightly touch his cheek with her fingers.

The next moment she was in his arms and he was crushing her to him savagely. Her lips were against his and he felt her tongue thrust into his mouth.

He was not conscious of undoing the snaps, but suddenly her halter was lying on the ground. Her back was arched across his lap and her plump breasts, snow white in comparison to her suntanned shoulders and stomach, thrust upward inches from his face. Burying his head between them, he ran his palm across one nipple, then the other, feeling them harden beneath his touch. She emitted a little moan.

He was conscious of removing her shorts, for it seemed to take him forever to find the side zipper. When he finally found it and pulled it down, she slid from his lap to lie full-length on the grass.

“Don’t,” she said in a hoarse whisper, at the same time raising her hips to make it easier for him to pull off the shorts.

She was wearing open-toed sandals instead of golf shoes. They came off with the shorts, leaving her stark naked.

She lay motionless, staring up at him glassily as he removed only the essential part of his own clothing. Then they were in each other’s arms, their bodies working together and their breaths coming faster and faster until both their bodies stiffened in an excruciating spasm, then together went limp.

When they were both dressed, she avoided his gaze. “I don’t think I’m up to the second nine,” she said. “Let’s go back to the clubhouse.”

“Are you ashamed of yourself?” he inquired with raised brows.

She glanced at him briefly, then away again. Picking up her club she began to work her way to the edge of the woods. He followed.

They both stopped behind the screen of bushes edging the woods when they saw two men on the tenth tee. The men glanced curiously at the two golf carts and one made some comment. Both looked around, seeking the owners of the carts, then shrugged and played through.

They waited until the two men were out of sight before venturing out into the open.

As they started to push their carts back toward the clubhouse, Marshall said, “Are you by any chance angry with me?”

“Of course not,” she said, still not looking at him. “It was more my fault than yours. I’m simply embarrassed.”

“Why?” he asked. “It isn’t as though it were the first time between us.”

This brought a quick glance from her. “It’s the first time since my marriage,” she said dryly. “Do you have to remind me of the follies of our youth?”

They walked on in silence for a time. He finally broke the silence. “You said embarrassed, not ashamed. Does that have some significance?”

It was a few moments before she answered. Then she said, “I’m not ashamed of breaking my marriage vows. What’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

“You mean Bruce has done some straying?”

“I would rather not talk about it,” she said.

“All right,” he said agreeably. “We’ll drop that subject. But why are you embarrassed?”

She stopped short and looked him full in the face for the first time since she had rolled from his arms in the woods. “Do you really insist on knowing?”

“I think I’m entitled to.”

“All right,” she said, producing a golf ball from the single little side pocket of her shorts. “Because I found my ball almost as soon as I entered the woods.”

After staring at her for a moment, he burst out laughing. She turned a deep red. She dropped the ball back in her pocket.

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “You can stop feeling embarrassed. I think you’re cute.”

“I think you have a perverted sense of humor,” she said, putting her nose in the air and moving on.

But a moment later she glanced sidewise with a little smile on her face. When he grinned at her, she reached out quickly and gave his hand a small squeeze.

“Still friends?” she asked.

“At the very least, friends,” he assured her.

At the clubhouse side entrance, which led to the locker rooms, they met Chief of Police Barney Meister coming out with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. The chief was a burly, moon-faced man of forty with a perpetually benign expression which concealed a remarkably shrewd mind.

“Hi, Barney,” Marshall greeted him. “Anything new on the cat burglar?”

Meister gave Betty a polite nod before saying, “This is my day off, Kirk. Can’t you newspaper guys stay off a man’s back just one day a week?”

“I’m not asking for a press conference,” Marshall said reasonably. “I just asked a simple question.”

The chief sighed. “I’ll give you a simple answer. No.”

As the man moved on, Marshall said to Betty, “Barney’s a little sensitive on that subject, I guess.”

“He should be. I think it’s ridiculous that the police can’t catch this man.”

The “cat burglar,” as he had come to be called by the general public, had gotten his designation from a news story written by Kirk Marshall after his third break-in. For the past two months he had been terrorizing the residents of the Rexford Bay area by breaking into homes while the inhabitants were sleeping. Recently, when surprised by a woman who awakened to find him in her bedroom, he had struck at her with some kind of weapon which inflicted a deep shoulder gash. As the room was dark, she had been unable to describe either her attacker or the weapon, but the wound suggested that the burglar carried either a hatchet or short-handled axe.

The burglaries had so far been confined exclusively to the Rexford Bay area, Runyon City’s wealthiest section, where the beach-front homes of the rich were strung along the shore of Lake Erie on both sides of the country club. Since the victims included some of the most influential people in town, the pressure on the police department to catch the culprit posthaste had been rather overwhelming.

Marshall said, “They’re doing all they can. I happen to know Barney has an extra police car patrolling this area all night long.”

They moved indoors and stopped again in the hallway in front of the women’s locker room. Betty said, “I’d hate to depend on our local cops for protection. I’ve been sleeping with a gun under my pillow ever since the attack on Mrs. Ferris.”

“Oh? What’s Bruce think of that?”

“He doesn’t know it. We haven’t been sleeping together for some time.”

The marriage must be breaking up, he thought. They not only had separate rooms, but apparently little conversation.

He said, “Hurry with your shower and I’ll buy you a day-cap.”

“All right,” she agreed, and disappeared into the women’s locker room.

The men’s locker room was only a few feet up the hall. Marshall had a quick shower and put on fresh clothing from the supply he kept in his locker. The soiled laundry he simply stuffed into his golf bag.

Betty appeared from the women’s locker room at the same moment he stepped into the hall. She was wearing fresh shorts and halter and, in addition to her golf bag, carried a small zippered case which presumably contained the other shorts and halter.

“That’s timing it nicely,” she said with a smile.

They entered the barroom together and stacked their golf bags side-by-side against the wall. There were now a number of people in the room, and it wasn’t until they approached the bar that Marshall realized one of them was Betty’s husband.

Bruce Case was thirty-six, with a wiry, well-muscled body and a darkly handsome face. He sat on a bar stool next to Doctor Emmett Derring, a thin, reedy man of about the same age who wore horn-rimmed glasses. Both had on old clothing and fishing hats.

Young Bruce Case, Jr., sat at a table near the bar sipping a bottle of orange pop through a straw.

A trifle coldly Betty said to her husband, “I didn’t expect to see you until dark.”

“Apparently,” Case said with a glance at Marshall. “They weren’t hitting, so we beached the boat and came in for a drink.”

Marshall said, “Hello, Bruce. How are you, Doc?”

“Pretty good,” the doctor said. “Buy you a drink?”

Bruce Case ignored the greeting.

“I’ll have a beer,” Marshall said, seating himself next to the doctor.

Betty sat next to her husband. Al the steward drew a beer and placed it before Marshall, then looked inquiringly at Betty.

Before she could order, Case said to her, “I found Bud unattended down on the beach while you were off with your old boy friend.”

Marshall turned on his stool to stare past Dr. Derring at the man. Betty flushed.

“He was hardly unattended,” she said. “There’s a lifeguard.”

“I don’t mind you catting around with your ex-lovers,” Case said, “but I don’t expect you to neglect your child to do it.”

Other conversation in the bar died as everyone stopped to listen.

Marshall said, “Just a minute, Case.”

Betty got up from her stool and said to her son, “Come on, Bud. We’re going home.”

“I haven’t finished my pop,” he said.

Taking the bottle from his hand, she set it on the table and drew him to his feet. She didn’t exactly drag him across the room, but he had to hurry to keep up. Slinging the strap of her golf bag over her shoulder, she picked up the zippered case with her left hand without releasing her hold on her son’s hand. A moment later she was gone.

Marshall got up, too. He said, “If you have anything to say to me or about me, Case, we’ll go somewhere private. Unless you prefer to get knocked off that stool.”

Bruce Case turned to stare at him. When he saw Marshall’s set expression, his own belligerence died and he smiled a bit weakly.

“I was mad at her, not you,” he said. “Sorry I made a damn fool of myself. Forget it and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“No, thanks,” Marshall said curtly. “I’ll forget it, but Doc’s already bought me a drink.”

Returning to his stool, he drained his beer glass in two long gulps, politely thanked the doctor, got up to collect his golf bag and left.