Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 57, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2012

Death on the Range by Elaine Menge

I arrived just as Gray was unlocking the clubhouse door. My nephew Oliver had begged for a quick lesson before the county’s junior golf tournament, set for that morning. His group would tee off at eight thirty.

The night before, Oliver texted me in the charming way teenagers communicate nowadays: “Ant Marian I no u hate erly but rember im ur favorite nefew.” It took me a few beats to translate the hieroglyphics.

He’s my only nephew, and knows he’d be my favorite even if I had twenty. Partly thanks to my fellow teaching pro, Bobby, on whom I pinned my hopes for way too many years, I’ve never married and have no kids. This one, bestowed upon me and the world by my brother and his ex, has been a godsend — at least when he doesn’t get me up before sunrise.

But I liked it, hitting balls on a September morning, dew still weeping down the grass, the sun gearing up to slay the fog.

Our driving range is nice, a long crescent of individual stalls, each separated from the next with low wooden slats. There’s a second tier above. The upper deck is great as it gives golfers below shade in summer. Otherwise, I’ve never liked it up there — always feel a little off balance.

Naturally, Oliver was late.

There’d been a spritzing drizzle the night before, which accounted for the fog. Being up early reminded me of my youth, which still doesn’t seem that long ago. In my twenties I won the ladies’ state amateur title twice in a row; also won the girls’ version of Oliver’s junior tournament when I was his age.

This particular morning, all forty-nine years of me felt ageless. Despite hiccup-like hints of arthritis, my bones, cartilage, and synovial fluid were in happy sync.

I’m a teaching pro at the municipal range here, one of the million training centers in the Florida panhandle. We who ply this trade — those not employed by ritzy clubs — are a dime a dozen. Being the only female pro at Gulf Breeze, my worth’s closer to a nickel a bushel.

There were six of us, all PGA certified — LPGA for me — though we sometimes suspected that the newest member of our cohort, Marcello, might have faked his credentials.

We vied for a limited pool of students. Victims, Bobby called them.

When the economy tanks, competition tightens. I’d hear Mr. Joe — our oldest, most girth-challenged colleague — tell a student who was looking for Bobby that he’d do much better if he switched to him, Mr. Joe, even though Joe gives his lessons sitting down and hasn’t swung a club in years. Bobby plied his own less obvious methods to steal students from Mr. Joe, Marcello, and Jake and Riley, our two part-timers. Bobby never stole from me. That’d be like raiding a half-empty cookie jar. If anything, he steered clients my way. The less good-looking women, for instance.

Anyway, I was hitting some quality shots with my new hybrid club. Oliver’s laugh sounded in the background, letting me know he’d soon appear. He was joking with Gray, who when business is hopping, mans the front desk, but since it wasn’t, he wasn’t.

And then I heard a ping. One of my shots struck metal. Despite the fog, the glint of a club’s shaft caught my eye. It lay about as far out as I might be able to fling one. I slogged through the squishy grass to retrieve it.

Tubing the wet shaft through my hands, I could’ve sworn it was Bobby’s favorite sand wedge. Why Bobby’s wedge would be lying thirty yards out, I couldn’t fathom. Why anyone’s sand wedge would be lying out there, for that matter, was a minor mystery.

I brought the club back to my spot and hooked its head over the slatted barrier that separates one stall from another. Then I hugged Oliver while he made a lame excuse for being tardy.

He seemed several turns more tightly strung than usual. “I’m doing that reverse-pivot thing again, like I used to when I was a kid,” he said, rubbing his bangs out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “Yesterday’s practice, I even missed the ball. Pretended it was a practice swing, but it wasn’t. I looked like an amateur.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that he was an amateur, and also still pretty much a kid. I’m in the encouragement game. You have to be positive, no matter how delusional the hacker you’re working with might be. Oliver, full of raw talent, was only suffering a case of the yips.

“Think baseball,” I said. “Swing like a batter.”

“Yeah, that baseball drill.” He commenced swinging, as if a fastball had just zinged across the plate.

I shot a hand out to steady his head. “Feel the weight shift — that simple, natural shift. Now swing lower. Keep swinging like—” I was about to invoke a name in baseball, a hero who, sadly, is more famous for steroid use these days. I dropped a ball on the mat. “Aim at the blue flag.” It flapped a hundred yards out. “You’ll need to make more of these short ones than anything else.”

Oliver launched a beaut, nearly hit the flagstick, then followed that with two more, one of which did.

“Wow, you’re magic, Aunt Marian.” He turned to deliver a high-five, knowing I’m not into knuckle-crunches.

That’s the moment Bobby’s body chose to plunk smack dab in front of us. Thump, flop, it went, denting the wet mix of grass and mud.

I looked up at the concrete ceiling above and screamed — felt like my head was about to blow off. Oliver let out a stunned yelp.

That fast, I knew it was Bobby. He’d landed sideways, his back to us, but I recognized the wispy V of graying brown hair at the nape of his neck. More, I recognized the blue-checked windshirt, my gift last Christmas.

Next thing, I was on my knees in the muck, pushing on Bobby’s chest with both hands.

He was dead — arms and legs stiff, posed in a weird corkscrew — but I kept pushing, trying.

An unknown quantity of time elapsed. Two cops materialized, followed by two EMTs. I felt sure those EMTs, employing their lifesaving skills, would revive Bobby. Instead, sooner than I thought reasonable, they stretchered him into a vehicle I couldn’t place. Not a gleaming white ambulance with fat red and blue running stripes, but a narrow, mud-colored van — the coroner’s wagon, I learned. Its rude motor had been churning in the parking lot behind us long enough to arouse my anger.

As the van slowly withdrew, I wanted to launch hand grenades at it to make its live occupants realize they needed to give Bobby another chance, but the two men in blue left behind, with faces so nondescript I thought of them as identical twins, were intent on questioning me.

“How do you know the deceased?” one asked.

I thought he’d said diseased, and that made me remember that Bobby once told me he’d had whooping cough as a child.

Oliver was no longer there. I vaguely recall that he’d tried to comfort me. Later, I heard he’d made his tee time for the tournament. I was glad, but I did wish for a familiar face, all the same. It was just me and these two clowns in blue who wore wide belts with all kinds of gizmos hanging off them.

“Robert Beechum,” one of them said. “You know him?”

“Bobby’s a pro here, like me.” I became aware of what I must look like, my capris soaked and muddy at the knees. I picked up the wedge I’d found earlier and said, “Then, this must be Bobby’s after all.”

“Can you explain that remark?” the other one said. The way he eyed the club in my hand, you’d think I’d just stolen the crown jewels.

“I found this on the range when I got here. It looks like Bobby’s sand wedge, but that doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s evidence there, in your hand.” He held his arms out like a man who’s trying to keep a lunatic from jumping off a cliff. “If you would, very carefully, lean that against the wall where you found it.”

Though that wasn’t where I’d found it, I followed directions. I stared at the concrete ceiling above. “Has anyone checked upstairs?” I asked. “Bobby fell? Or did someone push him?”

Neither answered.

I must have been shaking pretty bad because, one on each side, supporting my elbows, they ushered me inside the clubhouse. Gray, his face as gray as his beard and his name, shuffled over and draped his ancient flannel sweat jacket over my shoulders. Soon we were snug in Mackal’s office — that’s Gulf Breeze’s manager. The identical twin cops steered me to a chair and left.

Next thing — it seemed like forever, but also like a very short time, if you know what I mean — a tall, thin woman dressed in a dusty gold pantsuit entered. She pulled Mackal’s chair from behind his desk and rolled it close to mine. Her blouse had a flappy silk bow at the neck, patterned with irregular brownish yellow spots that made me think of a giraffe’s coat. Her long neck, jutting above that bow and toward me, nearly bridged the distance between us.

The boss, Mackal, wouldn’t like this, I thought. A huge, imposing guy, he wears broad-brimmed hats, Western shirts, and mirrored sunglasses as if, loping in from West Texas, he’d been born into that costume. Boots go without saying. His office is his sanctuary. That’s the only moment I cracked a smile, imagining Mackal’s face if he just happened to walk in.

Detective Candy Finn caught sight of my grin. That didn’t work in my favor.

Anyone with a name like Candy, I can’t take seriously. She informed me with great pomp and circumstance that she was the investigator on this case.

“Case,” I said.

“The death of Robert Meechum.”

“I need to talk to Gray,” I said. “Ask if Bobby came in before me. Did he come early, and fall from up there?”

Detective Candy’s eyelids fluttered, as if to say, surely you must know this was no accident. I couldn’t help thinking her lashes were truly functioning as they might in the wild, to fan away gnats.

“You mean, someone pushed him? Those two cops, I asked them, did they bother to run upstairs, see if anyone was up there with Bobby? They wouldn’t answer.”

She gave me the patient smile of a major goddess. “The cops, as you put it, are more used to asking questions than answering them. Now, I have a few.” She tilted back in Mackal’s chair and pursed her lips, working them up and down in a way that was supposed to signal contemplation, but which put me more in mind of a giraffe chewing its cud.

When she asked about the exact nature of my relationship with Bobby, I saw no need to hide the fact that we’d been on-and-off lovers. If I didn’t say it, someone else would. Someone like Marcello, for instance — our PGA question mark.

I even admitted that Bobby had dumped me for what I vowed was the last time, only two weeks ago.

On the other hand, I didn’t feel the need to tell her that Bobby, two bottles of Rolling Rock beer scissored between the fingers of one hand, invited me up to the top deck the very night he dumped me.

He wasn’t intentionally insensitive. Bobby just had a very broad streak of yellow, not to mention dumbness, down the middle of his back. Somehow he thought that sitting up top with his legs dangling over the edge as he chugged the brew, would make a nice, comforting scene to inform me that, yet again, he’d fallen for another woman, and that this time, as a few times before, it was the real thing.

Apparently, he thought the upper deck would provide a nice setting even though years earlier, he’d also deemed it the ideal romantic spot to declare a proposal of marriage to me. Unfortunately — or fortunately, as my dad saw it back then — five days later he became enraptured with the trophy wife of a megabucks husband who’d hired Bobby to turn this slicing, hooking, clueless bit of fluff into a golfing whiz.

I saw no need to reveal these juicy tidbits to Detective Finn. As I reviewed the years in my head, I became aware of a broad streak of dumbness in myself. Still, I’d loved Bobby. Though vowing never to go back to him after this latest affair fizzled, I also knew I’d miss him like hell.

“You seem to be hinting that I killed him,” I said, since all of Finn’s questions were pointing that way.

Her blinking lashes fanned a few more invisible gnats.

I said, “Well, you can cross me off the list. I was coaching my nephew, Oliver, at the time.”

She answered breezily, “Beecham was already in rigor. You — home alone all last evening — you’re still in the mix. We won’t have a TOD until the report comes in. Till then, cheers, Ms. Larkin. For now, you’re free to go.”

I stared, then squeezed my eyes shut. “You mean Bobby died before I got here, before he fell?”

I hiked my shoulders in disbelief. “How does a body just happen to fall off the top deck, hours later? I mean, how does it choose the perfect moment to drop right in front of me, when...”

Candy patted my back as if to say, run along little chick — we’ll nail you later.

I squirmed away, trying to evade her touch, to let her know that answer didn’t cover it.

She blinked at me with fake compassion. “You were in the right place at the wrong time. He was in rigor. Then something — a breeze? — loosened his hold on those slats.”

I felt more in shock then than when the actual event occurred. Bobby’s killer had done the deed and left. Through the night Bobby had hung half on, half off the platform. Later, at the very time I was teaching Oliver, his body decided to keel over, take the plunge in front of us.

Just like Bobby. Always with the practical jokes.

When I emerged from Mackal’s office, the full contingent of golf instructors was gathered in the hall, awaiting their own interviews. For a fleeting moment I caught a glint of suspicion in Marcello’s eyes, our beloved Argentinian of the dubious PGA credentials. But then he and the others crowded around me, expressing their sorrow at Bobby’s passing. They clearly understood how hard this sudden death was.

Just then Mackal strode in. His brow furrowed at the sight of us. Working up a dismissive if vaguely wondering glance, he lifted his shades onto his forehead, then opened his office door. The language that ensued broke the tense mood in the hall.

Next thing, it was Mackal backing out — that big man, almost on tippy-toe. Candy Finn won the battle of his office, and clued him in that not even he, Mackal, was above suspicion.

That night, when I finally crawled into bed, it hit me full force. Bobby was gone.

I clutched my pillow as if it might turn into his warm, familiar body — and then, I couldn’t help it — I laughed. A scared, tired, drawn-out laugh he might have shared, if he only knew about all the crap I’d gone through that day on his account. Bobby had a keen love of the absurd.

For all of his infidelities, I loved him. Sure, maybe he deserved a kick in the pants on a regular basis, but not this deadly blow to the head.

That was the coroner’s conclusion, I heard the next day. One perfectly launched bop to the temple with Bobby’s own sand wedge, which the killer then flung from the top tier into the outer space of a black night. I pictured the club cartwheeling in the short grass, then lying still, waiting for morning when one of my balls was destined to ping off its dew-laden shaft.

I couldn’t sleep that first night. Who was Bobby’s new girlfriend anyway? — a question I hadn’t brought up with Candy Finn. Was she a student, or someone he’d met on the outside? Perhaps he realized he’d made a mistake. Invited her up to the top tier to dump her, as he’d dumped me, and she, being an unbalanced type who couldn’t take rejection — she’d clobbered him with his own sand wedge. Or maybe she had a jealous boyfriend or husband who’d dragged Bobby up there after hours. All these possibilities roiled in my head.

When I woke after what seemed like years of tossing and turning, I remembered I had a nine o’clock lesson waiting. Two more would come before lunch. After lunch, if no one stood me up, I’d be busy until three. Then, once school let out, my juniors would descend on me — a group of fifteen high-strung highschoolers I teach two days a week.

I could cancel everybody, but the bills that drop through my mail slot aren’t interested in personal griefs or sleepless nights.

At the range, everything had changed, right down to the ordinary workings of gravity. Balls popped off even the best students’ clubs at weird angles. Some who’d heard about Bobby acted as if nothing had happened; others expressed sorrow; a disgusting few seemed avid for details.

Gray hugged me first thing. Our oldest full-timer, Mr. Joe, though disapproving of my presence there on principle — I’m female and he thinks women are so hopeless they should be barred from the sport — sent a few gruff but caring words my way. Even Marcello, who usually only teased me about my hair or my skinny bones, spared a few moments to pin me with his beautiful liquid brown eyes and say with his signature romantic eloquence that although Bobby had been my sorry-assed lover not long ago, his own heart bled for me like the world’s greatest river.

Still, for the rest of the day I sensed that when any of us passed each other, our eyes didn’t quite meet. The part-timers too. It was as if instead of feeling we’d lost a comrade, they were embarrassed to admit that the thing wasn’t as clean as that.

Bobby was well liked. No matter, we were competitors. Someone killed him. Could that person be one of us?

I wondered if the others thought me guilty. I admit, I wondered if a fellow instructor could have done it for filthy lucre. Not Mr. Joe. He was too slow of foot, too mired in his own cobwebbed, semimisogynistic head. But what about Marcello? It seemed to me he had the most to gain.

And gain he did. In the next two weeks, Marcello picked up more of Bobby’s ex-students than the rest of us put together. He won the lion’s share of Bobby’s young guys, the ones who think they can shoot the moon, and a big chunk of his middle-aged duffers, and of course, nearly all of Bobby’s female golfers, at least the ones who weren’t so hormonally challenged as to be dead to Marcello’s masculine charm.

Four of Bobby’s older men gravitated to Mr. Joe, and for him, that addition was a big bonus. The two part-timers gained a few also. I ended up with three older women, one geeky guy, and a pretty good younger fellow who told me that Bobby always said I was a great teacher. I have to admit, that bit of posthumous praise coming from Bobby felt good.

But Marcello troubled me. Though Mr. Joe was the one who questioned his PGA pedigree the most, grumbling about false advertising and how the boss should check his standing in the PGA, I believe Joe kept his mutterings out of Marcello’s hearing. Bobby, on the other hand, had the bad habit of joking about Marcello’s status right to his face.

Bobby wasn’t being vicious. He wasn’t even much keyed into the issue. He was just the kind of guy who loved to discover fresh subject matter for a teasing.

Later, when Bobby heard that Marcello was not only from Argentina, but was also half German, he invented a new round of jokes, hinting at his blood ties to famous Nazi war criminals who’d migrated to that South American sanctuary. Though Marcello would laugh along, I sensed a pained smoldering in his eyes.

Bobby had that hail-fellow-well-met golfer’s side to him. I’m making him sound like a dummy. He wasn’t. He was just oblivious to certain social cues. He wasn’t cruel with his joking, but you could say that he was naive about how others, especially Marcello, might take his ribbing.

In view of this competitive history between Marcello and Bobby, I wondered why Candy Finn zeroed in on me instead of Marcello. Had she done any follow-up on who benefited most from Bobby’s death? Days after the murder, I was asked to appear at her office downtown to give a formal statement. None of the other pros at Gulf Breeze had been called on to go that extra mile. Apparently, I was her chief suspect.

I asked Finn point blank, “So you actually think I killed Bobby?”

“You’re merely a person of interest,” she answered.

I glanced at the photos in little frames on her desk, the ones I could see. Instead of a child or husband, they were all of a dog — one of those exotic Afghans with a hairdo like Rod Stewart’s. “I know what this person-of-interest stuff means nowadays,” I said.

She ignored my comment, just said, “Don’t leave town anytime soon. We’ll be in touch.”

I stopped at the threshold of her office, thinking of Marcello. I also wanted to ask if she realized Bobby had a new girlfriend. Who was she? Despite my suspicions, I wasn’t about to direct her inquiry one way or the other. If Marcello was innocent, I’d be a rat, and I have to admit that I found it hard to look into those soulful eyes of his and pronounce him a murderer. And if I brought the other woman up, it would make me sound bitter and perhaps make my jealousy seem an even more plausible motive.

“You have anything to add?” Candy asked, seeing me hesitate.

“Those dogs, Afghans. Good dogs, are they?”

“Loyal,” she said. “Extremely loyal.”

“Nice,” I said. “If only more people were.”

I don’t know how that sat with her, or if I’d stepped into it again, since — yes — I was thinking of Bobby when I said the words. Hardly the poster child for loyalty. Suspecting as much, she probably jotted a note on her pad for that one.

Back to Marcello: Only days after that interview, I learned not to trust his sincere liquid brown eyes. The crux of the matter was Bobby’s video camera — one of those gizmos teaching pros can’t live without these days. It’s a diagnostic tool that intimately analyzes a student’s swing.

I never could save enough to buy one for myself. Bobby, generous soul that he was — and he truly was — let me use his when he could spare it. Granted, it was an antique model — video instead of digital — but a great tool all the same.

He kept the camera on its stand in a storage closet at the range clubhouse. Bobby had a key, and I had a key.

I fleetingly wondered if Detective Candy might confiscate the thing, since looking at the swings of Bobby’s students might have forensic value. Days later, when I needed to use it, I was happy to find that Bobby’s swing analyzer, my friendly robot, was still there in the closet.

If you don’t have one of these expensive things, some students think you aren’t legit. But then, Mr. Joe never used one. In a second he could assess a problem swing better than any camera.

I’d wheeled Bobby’s equipment out to my teaching stall and was in the middle of a lesson with the younger guy Bobby had bragged about me to, when a cop showed up and laid his fat hands on my precious camera.

He flashed a badge and said, “This evidence is being impounded.”

My student’s eyebrows shot up. I’m afraid he thought his swing was such an eyesore, it had been condemned by the city fathers.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I need this machine for my work. You can’t do this.”

Turned out he could too do this.

Who’d brought Bobby’s video equipment to Detective Candy Finn’s attention, I wanted to know.

None other than Marcello.

Gray told me. He’d heard it from part-timer Riley, who’d gotten it from the horse’s mouth: Marcello himself.

“Pardon, but it was my duty to tell,” Marcello said, hand over heart as if reciting the Boy Scout pledge when I confronted him. “Detective lady — she call me, was there anything I not tell her, and I remember Bobby — so mad when he find you erased his swings. My duty it was, to tell. Sorry, so sorry, Marian, if this cause you inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience? This woman thinks I killed Bobby, you half-Nazi, fake-pro tattletale.”

Marcello shoved his hands into his pockets as if afraid I’d cut them off. He hiked his shoulders, then let them fall. “Duty dictates. I tell everything I know.”

“Same here,” I answered. “Like, duty dictates I tell how you’ve picked up nearly all of Bobby’s students. Pretty good motive, I think.”

“A woman’s scorn. Good motive too.” He turned his back to me. “Pretty good.”

I seethed at him behind his back, though his body language said he was more wounded than angry.

That damn swing camera.

Candy Finn called me on the carpet again because of the footage I’d erased. See, a few days before Bobby invited me up top to drink beers and to inform me that once again he’d found the love of his life, I’d borrowed his camera.

I’d never before much looked at videos of Bobby’s students, but this time, a blinking light let me know that no space was left on the tape. On my way to clearing a spot for my own student, I caught sight of some of Bobby’s. The guys’ photos were boring and straightforward. But then some female students popped up, caught on camera just before their swings. Several struck me as seriously flirtatious.

A fire crackled in my chest. One young gal in particular — a beauty pageant blond of the kind who all look alike, wearing a breast-hugging white knit top with a print of pastel-outlined golf balls traveling across her nipples — really hacked me off. I paused on her swing. Addressing the ball, she ran her tongue a complete circuit around the orifice bordered by bee-stung lips, shook her back end like a Playboy Bunny in heat, reared up on her toes, leveled off, and then smacked the ball. A beautiful shot, actually.

I pushed the erase button.

Bobby always said that if he croaked early, he’d will me his camera. Now Candy Finn had it. And Marcello had ratted me out, saying I’d erased Bobby’s students out of spite.

My fingerprints were all over the apparatus. No mystery why. I expected any minute to be handcuffed, if not hogtied. But my anger was directed more at myself than at the dimwitted detective with the ridiculous neck. Marcello had successfully deflected suspicion away from himself and onto me. If only I could have been more serene when I saw the swing videos of Bobby’s girls. If I’d exercised some control, perhaps Marcello’s greedy motives might have caught Candy’s fancy instead of my own jealous peevishness.

When she asked about the missing video footage, I summoned my deadpan look. I have a good poker face. When you hit as many bad shots as I have in my career, you learn to stare each one down as if it’d just crashed a party, acted rudely to the extreme, and yet you don’t much care.

“You’re excused,” Candy Finn finally said, like an exasperated high-school principal. Her tone seemed even more disapproving and suspicious than before, but I wasn’t detained. They had nothing on me.

Sadly, they didn’t have anything on anybody else either.

I was so mad at Marcello, the next Monday I stared him down as he approached my stall. He gave me a cheery buenos dias as if this were just another day. Then he stopped by Mr. Joe’s to converse, only two slots down from me.

My student was already ten minutes late, a sure sign that I’d been stood up. Doctors might fine you for ditching an appointment; we golf pros can’t recover a dime. Students have the upper hand and know it. If they don’t like your rules, they cancel the rest of their contracted series, get a refund, then talk you down behind your back. As a result, golf teachers are the most smilingly tolerant professionals on God’s green earth.

Stood up, I had nothing better to do than practice my own swing, and eavesdrop on Mr. Joe’s latest diatribe.

In his bass monotone belch of a voice, Mr. Joe resorted to his key word — dame — a favorite word, which refers to a woman, any woman, from eighteen to eighty.

“So this dame comes up to me and asks if I can teach her how to spin the ball backwards on the green on an approach shot. ‘You know, the way the professionals do.’ ” Mr. Joe used his best falsetto to mimic her.

“Ye-sss?” Marcello responded, lengthening the word as if trying to yank Mr. Joe’s point out of him.

“I said, little filly, that’s a highly specialized skill and girls can’t spin the ball on the green. Period.”

“Hoo, you say that?” Marcello rocked back on his heels. “Don’t you get it, Mr. Joe? If you say yes you can teach that, you have student for life.” He rubbed thumbs against fingers to signal dollar signs. “Money in bank.”

Mr. Joe ignored him. “So then this dame says, ‘But what about those LPGA women? They can spin the ball on the green.’ ”

Mr. Joe let his heavy head drop, and wagged it to and fro, as if holding it erect might signal agreement with this nutty dame. “I swear,” he said, “this dame’s eyes — beautiful eyes — get really big, piercing, like this is the biggest issue on earth. And that’s when I say, little filly, you’re making my point for me. Those LPGA gals you’re talking about — well, you can’t exactly say they’re bona fide females, hormonally speaking, now can you?”

He started in on a series of chuckles — deep bass, belly-rattling, yet toneless esophageal eruptions which, for Mr. Joe, signify mirth. Marcello joined in.

“She don’t have a clue of you.” Marcello, hands on hips, arched his spine backwards to give his raucous laugh emphasis. A hint of sputum clogged his bronchial tubes. He said, “You old female-hater, you.”

Mr. Joe’s freckled scalp, showing through thinning gray hair, glistened in the sunlight. He pointed his cigar at Marcello. “Don’t get me wrong, you Mr. PGA professional golfer. Women hold this world together. Don’t you forget it. They just don’t belong on a golf course.”

I could have spoken those words in perfect sync with him, I’ve heard them so often.

Marcello’s fake laughter continued as he sauntered back to his own teaching stall on the far end, as if he, Marcello, truly endorsed Mr. Joe’s views, when the very opposite was the case, especially since Mr. Joe had just made a dig at Marcello’s professional standing.

My guess is that Marcello was dumbfounded by the number of students Joe maintained, all of them guys, even though in the last few years Joe showed little inclination to swing a club himself. Now and then he’d play a round with an old friend, and he’d bring his Scottish terrier along for the ride in his golf cart — the best-behaved dog I’ve ever seen. But otherwise, Mr. Joe mainly sat in a webbed lawn chair at his habitual stall, just a few paces from the stairs leading to the upper tier, smoking cigars, sipping a mixture of whiskey and water, and generally dishing out his eccentric take on the universe.

A week later, we suffered an extremely rainy Wednesday. Few patrons, as we like to call them, came out to practice their swings. Only one of my students showed up: Brett, the young guy with talent Bobby had passed on to me.

When I first pushed through the range’s clubhouse doors to the outside, I noticed that Marcello was walking several yards ahead of me, heading out toward the teaching shed with a bucket of balls and a few clubs. That’s where we take our students if the heat’s bad or if rain threatens. Or, in Marcello’s case, if he wants privacy with a hot lady.

Since a light rain was blowing in, I ushered my student, Brett, to a stall several away from my usual spot, one more protected from the spatter. On the way, we passed Mr. Joe, who gave us a wave, along with a disapproving eye squint that said: Why would this young buck want a lesson from a little bit of a female like Marian?

I’ve known Mr. Joe for nearly twenty years. Aside from this insane hobbyhorse about women golfers, he’s got a soft heart, and he loves dogs. Anyone like that can’t be all bad, I tell myself. Maybe not even Detective Candy, I guess, with her exotic pooch.

Sometimes I had to suppress a desire to hug Mr. Joe’s rotund frame, because his flat, monotone, woman-bashing monologues reminded me of my cigar-smoking Uncle Fred so much. Like Uncle Fred, Joe was a cream-puff on the inside.

During the lesson with Brett, my back was to Mr. Joe. Nearing the end of the hour, thunder rumbled. A concentrated clap of discontent followed. The earth rocked beneath our feet. I stopped the lesson and promised Brett to add ten minutes onto the next session. When it comes to lightning, discretion is the better part of valor.

The raindrops came farther apart. I walked down to the teaching shed to hit a few balls off the grass, and was surprised that Marcello wasn’t still there. I didn’t realize that he’d passed us again, going back toward the range clubhouse during our lesson.

I lingered in the shed. Hit a few more balls, thinking of Bobby, the good times we shared. I stared at myself in the full-length mirror that leans against one wall, the mirror we keep there to witness good form, or bad, for our students. I stared at myself and wondered where Bobby was now. It felt so odd to be here still, Bobby somewhere else.

There hadn’t been a funeral, at least not in town. Bobby was from Nebraska. His son from an early marriage still lived there, and had Bobby shipped home. I gazed at the mirror and my throat did one of those painful knotted spasms, and I cried out loud, “Bobby, where are you?”

A while later, heading back to the range office, the rain nearly over with, I passed Mr. Joe once more. He was positioned in his webbed chair as always, chin resting on his chubby chest, apparently napping. I was about to call out a soft goodbye.

But as I neared I saw that this was no nap. The left side of his head, which from my initial vantage point had been the dark side of the moon, was a bruised mess. Joe’s own 7-iron, lying at his feet, appeared to be the weapon.

Mouth open, squinting against the dipping sun on the west side of the slight crescent our stalls describe, I made out the figure of Marcello, methodically hitting one ball after another to the medium range flag, his form perfect.

I ran to the range office. “Mr. Joe,” I called, again and again. “Mr. Joe — he’s dead.”

I couldn’t believe it. He seemed so much a part of Gulf Breeze, as solid and enduring as one of the concrete struts that supported the second tier. Sure, he was bullheaded, but he knew what he wanted to pull out of his students, and he succeeded even in his later years without so much as rising from his chair.

Once again, I’d been the last to see the victim alive. At least, the last anyone could attest to. Another interview with Detective Candy followed. Once again, nothing at the scene pointed to any one person. No prints on the club. And Mr. Joe didn’t work with a camera, bragged he didn’t need one of those newfangled things. His record-keeping wasn’t much better than Bobby’s, but I believe the police contacted all the students of his they could reach. The strange case of the Gulf Breeze Range was blared on the evening news, but the police obviously didn’t have a clue.

In the days that followed, the atmosphere at work was grim. Use of the range fell off, if not by much. Guys and gals who want to become better golfers will do anything, even ignore murder statistics. Besides, perhaps our patrons felt they could rest easy since it was only us teachers getting the ax. But the feel of the place, as balls pinged off clubs, was strange.

I love Florida, but I started Googling other places for employment. Scottsdale, Arizona, for instance. That dry heat, as opposed to Florida’s extreme humidity, was sounding more and more attractive. I took notes.

And I wondered. Who would be next? Me?

The day of Mr. Joe’s funeral, Marcello stood next to me as the priest finished his homily. “Poor old guy,” he said. “A good, God-loving man.”

I loved Mr. Joe in my own way, but didn’t think of him as pathetic, or overly religious. Maybe it was just Marcello’s way of filling an awkward pause with the usual culturally approved talking points. He seemed sincere, but something about his manner made me uneasy. I’m not sure if the look he gave me was a suspicious one, implying my possible guilt, or a sly one, weighing whether or not I might be successfully conned. I let myself fantasize. Was he the one? A suave sociopathic killer. His aim: collecting more students for himself and getting even with any who questioned his credentials. If so, had he reached his economic goals? Surely, he now had more students than he could manage.

Creepy musings. At least, days after the funeral, I was happy to hear that one of Joe’s students had taken on the care of his Scottie, Chipper.

I sent out resumes. Waited.

While waiting, unfortunately, I still had to work. I just made it a point of common sense never to be at the range after hours or when it was nearly deserted, which is midday, usually. Above all, I avoided Marcello.

September was doing its best to turn summer into fall, not that the difference is terribly noticeable in the Panhandle. By the first week of October, my favorite month, I still hadn’t gotten any nibbles.

I felt okay with that. We potential victims at the range, and the killer, whoever he was, seemed to achieve a truce. That is, no one else got his head bashed in.

Still, I didn’t let down my guard, was careful not to come in too early or stay too late.

After Mr. Joe left us, Marcello seemed depressed. But by mid October, his spirits picked up. One afternoon, passing my usual teaching spot, he ruffled my hair with one hand and called me his skinny amiga.

“He’s walking on air,” Gray told me later, standing behind his counter. “New girlfriend.”

Nothing special about that. Marcello always had a new girlfriend, though I’d never before heard Gray say he was walking on water, much less air, after the fact.

“How lovely,” I said. “You know her? Can you pick her out of a crowd?”

“Sure. She’s blonde. I’ve seen her around.”

“They’re all blonde. I mean, can you truly pick her out of a crowd?”

“Right, I get ya.” Gray gave me a good-natured wink.

I felt some disdain for Marcello’s taste. Just like Bobby, a lamebrain in the romance department. The great loves of Bobby’s life all turned out to be lookalikes. Marcello’s track record struck me as being on par with Bobby’s. Then again, Marcello was a lot less vulnerable to any woman, and I sensed that he had nothing like Bobby’s trusting heart.

Marcello, my main suspect. Marcello, who put the bug in Candy Finn’s ear about Bobby’s camera.

Despite that, I waved a guarded hello to him two days later as he passed me on the way to the teaching shed. Couldn’t help remembering that months before all this mayhem, I caught him there, locked in a passionate kiss with a student just the wrong side of married. I said, “So sorry,” and backed out as if I, and not they, had transgressed.

Anyway, this time when I sailed a wave Marcello’s way in the late afternoon, he seemed surprised that I made the effort. He nodded, gave me a wondering smile. In the beat that I was turning away, it seemed to me that his smile had morphed into something more authentic.

Barely an hour later, our part-timer, Riley, strolled down to the shed to hit a bucket of balls in peace. He never got off a single stroke. Marcello lay on the ground, his left temple bashed in.

About the time this discovery was made, I was already heading home, ready to enjoy a gourmet dinner cooked up by my local fancy grocery, the one I go to on those rare occasions when I get the itch to spend more money than makes sense. Just as I lifted the first forkfull, the phone rang. It was Gray. “You won’t believe this,” he said. “Marcello. He’s dead. The police are all over the place, just like before.”

The word dumbfounded is a stupid-sounding word, but that’s what I was.

Gray said, “Sorry to be short, but I wanted to give you a heads up.”

I wish he hadn’t. It would have been better if I could have appeared dumbfounded for Candy Finn’s benefit too.

The next call was from a nasal-voiced Gulf Breeze Police Department functionary. I was invited to come in for questioning that night. Or I might delay until morning, though the edge in the functionary’s voice implied that might not be a bright idea. My fancy shrimp dinner went back into the fridge.

Again I faced Candy. Her office lighting was a dim yellow that made me think of the bug-lights my grandfather used to screw in above his carport. Not cool, the news coming to her attention that for a third time I’d been the last to see a murder victim alive.

She dragged a hand down her long neck as if to reassure her voice box of some deep truth. “What can you tell me about your relationship with Marcello Reinhardt?” she asked.

I raised my brows and tilted my head, showing a hint of impatience. “He was a teaching pro at the range, like me.”

“That’s all?”

“Sorry, but you’re looking at the original Bobby’s girl. Period.” I felt so stupid, realizing that I’d actually used a teen song from the sixties to describe my love life.

“You had no romantic dealings with Mr. Reinhardt?”

Dealings? An uncontrollable sputter erupted from my throat. Good thing I was more than an arm’s length away from Detective Finn, for hygienic purposes.

She popped a tissue from its slotted box on the desk and dabbed at the wood as if an errant drop had landed there. “Care to explain that explosive response?”

“You’d have to know Marcello’s favorite word. Voluptuous,” I deadpanned. “He’d say things like, ‘Oh, my new girlfriend is so nice and pretty, and so voluptuous.’ ” My front teeth stabbed my lower lip as I smiled. “Let’s just say, I’m way too much on the scrawny side to attract Marcello’s attention.” Glancing at Candy’s not terribly bouncy chest, I wanted to add, same goes for you.

“The question is, did you wish you could attract his attention?”

I gave her a definitive, unwavering no. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m outta here.”

She stood, hesitated, as if wondering if she should keep me after school. Then she gave me a searing look like the ones you see on those true-crime channels coming from nearly omnipotent law enforcement guys. “Before you go,” she said, “is there anything else you’d like to say?”

I raised by brows wistfully. “Just that up until now, I thought Marcello killed Bobby and Mr. Joe.”

“So much for that theory.” Candy chewed her cheek and squinted at her notes. “All right, Miss Larkin — you can go.”

I wanted to click my heels and deliver a stiff-armed salute, but I needed to ask her something. At the door, I turned and gave her an expression of genuine concern. “What’s going on here anyway? You got a clue?”

The gaze she returned betrayed a flash of honest frustration. She quickly resumed her know-it-all manner and said, “Marian, if you truly have nothing to do with these killings, my advice is, watch your back.”

Outside the building, crossing the street on the way to my car, I took care to look both ways.

After Marcello left us, I was ready to go too. My brother told me more than once: “You get out of there. A serial killer’s on the loose. Don’t you get it?”

Oh, I got it. Initially, I thought the motive was some kind of “love” revenge. Bobby might have dumped his latest girlfriend, as he had me, by taking her upstairs, offering her a Rolling Rock. She was a nutcase, unable to take rejection on top of the insult of a cheap beer.

But my murder-for-passion theory went poof when Mr. Joe went down. Romance wasn’t a question there, and I’m sure Mrs. Joe would attest to that fact were she still alive.

The profit motive was back. One of us did it. Who stood to gain most? Marcello.

But now Marcello — athletic, bright and charming, if sometimes an enigma — had been caught off guard too. Could the devil be one of our part-timers; or our keeper, Gray; or even the general himself, Mackal? Or was I back to the jilted lover, romance-gone-bad angle again?

Who was Bobby’s new girlfriend, anyway? I’d never learned a thing about that. And who was this sweetheart Marcello had gone gaga over, according to Gray. And if the femme fatale I’d concocted in my head was the culprit, then why did Mr. Joe also end up on the wrong end of a club?

The only thing that seemed clear was that Candy Finn had no evidence. Three men bopped in the head. No evidence. They could as well have been hit by meteorites.

I did the only thing that made sense. I quit.

Quitting the range wasn’t like chucking a regular job. My decision meant nothing to Mackal or to range operation in general. We’re all free agents here, and simply pay an annual fee to make use of the facilities. So it’s more precise to say that I fired myself, even though my fee was paid up until the last day of December.

With some reluctance, I took leave of my students — made up a story about better prospects. Ah yes, better prospects, as in landing a job where chances of being clubbed to death might be better than three in six.

An old friend who managed a golf course in Sierra Vista, Arizona, said come on out. They had room for one more pro, a woman especially, to give help and encouragement to all of these baby boomer retirees.

The prospect of leaving Florida was painful. My brother and my favorite nephew, Oliver, were here in the Panhandle. And I love the ocean. I need to be near water. In Sierra Vista, the deepest body of H₂O I could expect to enjoy would be the treacherous water hazards bordering the fairways.

My departure was a week off. We were in the first days of December, when the weather in Florida is the best you can ask for. I’d told my landlord, boxed up my sentimental stuff. The rest was ready for the movers. I was antsy, wanting to hit some balls to get rid of nervous energy.

I went to the range.

Gray gave me a hug and pulled up a basket of balls, on the house. Two new instructors had put up the fee to teach here. “They seem like okay guys,” Gray said. I nodded, as if glad the world still turned on its axis. My former corner of the world would thrive very nicely without me. And without Bobby, Mr. Joe, Marcello.

The place was hopping. This did make my heart leap with a bit of joy. For a while there, after Marcello’s murder, the range took a definite hit. No one felt safe. But now it was December. The air was cool and crisp and even the grass on the range seemed greener and more alive than in spring.

Slots were open on ground level, but I longed to commune with the sky and horizon alone. Three wood, seven iron, and pitching wedge in hand, I trudged up the concrete steps to the second tier. Believing that facing my demons might have some value, I chose the stall Bobby and I shared that last night. I have to admit, though, that I hadn’t been dwelling on Bobby as much lately. He was the one who’d ended us, after all.

I simply kissed the breeze and wished his spirit well.

Despite recent traumas, my body and spirit were still intact. An almost celebratory mood filled me. I hit ball after ball off the mat, watched their lovely arches, wondered if they’d travel farther in the dry air of Arizona.

“Hello.”

I jumped. Craning around, I saw that the voice belonged to a young woman I’d vaguely been aware of several slots down, the only other golfer up top. Blonde, athletic looking.

“Aren’t you a teaching pro?” she asked. Her voice was higher than mine, but mellow — the kind of voice that has a pleasant smile in it.

“I was, but I’m retired now.” I had to work to keep from laughing at my own joke.

She didn’t catch my irony and seemed genuinely abashed. Her eyes, I couldn’t help noticing, were movie-star beautiful. Her age was a toss-up. Anywhere between twenty and thirty.

“Oh, gee, I was hoping you could help me.” She stepped up to the rubber tee on the mat next to my stall and set a ball down. “I just wish...”

I was amazed at the club speed during her practice swing. Much faster, more aggressive than mine. The club burned the air. Then she hauled off and hit a beaut.

“Nice,” I said. “You wish?”

She nailed me with a flirtatious eye and gave her rear end a wiggle as she posed with her club in the address position. She took another red-hot practice swing that made the air whistle. “I’ve been desperately trying to find someone who’ll teach me to spin the ball on the green. The way the pros do. They can pitch the ball above the hole, and it spins back just perfectly to below the pin, and then they have a putt for birdie.”

She pulled a ball from her pocket, gave the club another swing, on plane, and delivered another nice shot for an amateur. “It would sure help my game to learn that,” she said, as she stared the ball down.

Every last muscle, tendon, sinew in my body tensed. I noticed the shirt she was wearing, the familiar pattern of golf balls outlined in pastel shades, running across her breasts.

I cleared my throat and worked to look as relaxed as Freddie Couples. “You mean, you want to learn to spin the ball on the green.”

“Yes, yes. Isn’t that what I just said?” Her beautiful eyes gleamed a scary blue. “I’ve been told women can’t do that spin.” She faced me, holding the club at her side. Though I only glanced at her briefly, I saw that she was full of a passionate impatience to hear what my response would be.

“Nuts,” I tossed out. “Whoever said that is nuts.”

My heart raced. I examined the grip of my seven iron, as if it were giving me trouble.

“Awesome.” Her smile broke out wide and gay like a happy sun after a week of fog.

“I like that shirt,” I said, to further deflect her attention from my nervousness.

“Aren’t you Marian?” she asked, aiming those glittery eyes of hers at me with greater purpose. “Yes, Marian. I heard that you’re a good teacher.”

I held up a modest hand. I had to get out of here. Had to. “Yes, I used to be good.” I tried to sneak an off-putting snort into my laugh, but it sounded more like a polite sneeze. I noticed her arms, the well-defined muscles. This woman didn’t have an ounce of fat on her. I said, “Now I’m just another old lady, and I don’t teach anymore.”

“Don’t tell me that. Please give me a lesson.”

“As I said, I quit. But I’ll, well, let me check my schedule. Maybe I can fit you in later this week.”

“Now,” she said. “You’re just hitting balls up here, like you’ve got time on your hands. Give me a lesson now.”

How I wanted to run away. I gazed at the horizon, pictured Bobby’s sand wedge sailing out over the range, end over end. “A lesson now,” I said. “Sure thing.” I manufactured a cheerful, totally supportive, nurturing voice. And she bought it. “There’s just one item I need to get. A teaching tool.”

“Not one of those damn cameras.”

“Oh, no. It’s a club. Designed for the skill you want to learn, that backward spin.”

“They have a special club for that?”

“Yeah. It’s great. I’m going to get it.”

Her hands tightened on her own club which she now held in front of her, across her body. Her eyes shot out sparks of incomprehension. “You’re going?”

I flashed my tournament-winning smile. “Just to get this teaching tool out of my car. It’s a miracle worker.”

I started walking in a very casual way toward the stairs and refrained from looking back. My legs carried me down the steps. I passed Gray on the way out. He was talking to Mr. Franklin, one of our old geezers who still strikes a ball pretty well despite being eighty-eight. I thought of breaking in, telling him that the blonde creature upstairs was our girl, but what could I ask him to do? She hadn’t harmed me. And Detective Candy had let slip that there was no evidence to link the murders to anyone.

In the parking lot, I made it to my Malibu. I dumped myself in the driver’s seat.

Finding herself stood up, that crazy lady upstairs would be hopping mad. So what. I shoved the key in the ignition.

But someone will be next, a voice in my head rasped. So — I’d call Detective Candy, describe this gal. I wouldn’t be able to prove anything, though.

I gave the key a turn, the engine rumbled. I was ready to spit gravel, but my foot wouldn’t move off the brake.

I saw Bobby lying on the ground in front of me, Mr. Joe, crumpled in his chair. How I missed his blustery voice. Marcello, sauntering gracefully down the stalls, whistling Spanish serenades.

That dame upstairs, waiting for me — she was the one. I had no doubt. If I left, she was going to get away with it. I cut the engine, got out, slammed the door, pulled a nine iron from my bag in the trunk. I’d sucker our mystery girl into believing this was a magic club. Soon I was walking past Gray, still stuck in conversation with Mr. Franklin.

I shouldered the club and pushed through the glass door. Outside, mounting the steps, I thumbed keys on my cell. Detective Candy’s voicemail came on. At the tone I said, “Marian at the range. I’ve got her, right in front of me. No evidence, the only evidence is my guts. I’m gonna push her buttons. We’re on the top tier, and I’m asking, pay us a visit. Soon.” As I neared the mystery woman’s slot and she smiled at the iron in my hand, I added, “Or I might be next.”

I put more bounce into my last few steps. “Here we are,” I said, as I allowed her to snatch the miracle club from my sweaty hands. “Now tell me a little about yourself. I have a feeling you went to college on a golf scholarship.”

“Yes, that’s true.” She all but stuck her chest out in pride. “How did you know?”

“Just a hunch. You’re obviously no amateur.” I picked up my seven iron. “Couldn’t make the cut, huh?”

Her body tensed, the startling eyes no longer friendly. The monster was beginning to stir.

If not this question, one of the next ten I had in mind should do the trick. We would have our evidence. Unlike the others, there would be no sneaking up on me. I had the drop on her, wouldn’t take my eyes off her for a second.

She took a vicious practice swing. My teeth began chattering in the kind December sunlight. I’d just signed on for the scariest lesson of my life. Crazy. But what’s a life worth? Make that three.

Worth the risk.

Heck, maybe I’d even teach her to spin the ball backwards on the green.

Copyright © 2012 Elaine Menge