Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Four

The Sidon Country Club’s winding front entrance led to a clubhouse that might have been an old estate, two white stucco stories with one-story extensions on either side wearing three red-tiled roofs like jaunty, if sun-bleached, hats. I left the heap in a parking lot offering more spaces than necessary this time of year, and Velda and I entered through double doors into an oldish foyer in a facility apparently last modernized during FDR’s first term.

We moved past framed golf photos and a trophy case on either side of some fresh flowers on a table and on through a featureless dining room that was showing its age by its worn red carpet if nothing else. At just after eleven, a handful of diners seemed spotted around as if to keep the place looking honest. The Sidon Country Club had seen better days, but was holding its own in an age when its time-honored shallow values were in question.

No host or hostess stopped us from making our way through to a terrace with an expansive view of the greening course beyond the pool, though neither swimming nor golf — which spelled backward is “flog,” by the way — were in demand about now. The 19th Hole bar, however, all dark wood, red trimmings and drifting cigarette smoke, was doing good business, tables of middle-aged men ridiculous in sideburns and mustaches and bushy hair, all decked out in Nehru jackets, turtlenecks, and bellbottoms.

“Good God,” I said, barely loud enough for even me to hear, “how have I lived long enough to see this?”

Velda, at my side, curvaceous in an orange corduroy jumpsuit, whispered, “Mike, you are just not with it.”

“I’d have to be in a coma,” I said, “to let my sideburns grow out like that.”

Her laughter was like gentle water falling from a high fountain. “I’ll keep the barbers away while you’re napping.”

At the bar, a red-jacketed bartender around the age of his clientele and wearing the same style of sideburns and mustache, but bald, had the look of a GI who’d barely survived the Big One only to come home to a small postwar. He asked us what we’d have, and I said just some answers to a couple of questions, thanks. I made this point with an engraving of Abe Lincoln.

He or nobody checked to see if we were members, but maybe that would be bad form. Any bar would be glad to have Velda in it, and I was about as respectably casual as Mike Hammer gets in my tan sports coat and black polo shirt and lighter tan chinos.

Mid-morning, Mikki had gone off with Second to a pool party at the young man’s parents’ palatial place. I had questions that Velda couldn’t answer, so we’d set about to satisfy my native curiosity. Velda called the high school, operating strictly skeleton crew during Spring Break, only to be told information about the teaching staff was confidential. By announcing her status as the sister of a student, however, Vel managed to learn that tennis coach Mark Traynor worked part-time at the country club, giving lessons. He might be there catching a few extra hours.

The bartender confirmed that and gave us directions — “Just a quick walk to the east” — to the twin tennis courts, which were covered by a fabric air dome.

We found the trimly brown-haired, muscularly slender, boyishly handsome Traynor training (appropriately enough) an attractive blonde pupil of perhaps forty in what might have been nurse’s whites, had the medical profession allowed short sleeves, short shorts, and sneakers. Traynor wore a Sidon Senior High sweatshirt (“Go Gophers!”) and navy shorts and, of course, trainers.

Standing close behind her, the instructor guided the student’s racket-wielding arm with care as she looked back at him gratefully for providing a little warmth — the place was heated to a degree, but not enough so to matter on a crisp spring day like this.

Velda and I traded raised-eyebrow glances and took a white-slatted bench adjacent to the court and waited our turn. The lesson continued — balls were in play, let’s say — and after fifteen minutes, the blonde, who had a fine gleaming sweat going, pressed a hand around her trainer’s, chatted briefly and thanked him ever so, then trotted off the court to another bench, where she gathered a towel, slung it around her shoulders and, racquet in hand, bounced into the great outdoors like a foul ball worth snagging.

“She has nice form,” Velda said archly.

“I hadn’t noticed,” I lied.

Traynor grabbed a towel from the same bench as his departed student, rubbed his face, slung it around his neck, and came over to us with a friendly if guarded smile.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “these are private lessons.”

I’ll bet, I thought.

He continued: “By which I mean, unless you’re family or something... and I don’t recognize you folks... it’s really best we not have spectators.”

I’ll bet, Velda must’ve thought.

We stood.

I said, “We are family, but not that country club gal’s — this is Velda Sterling, Mikki’s big sister. I’m the girl’s godfather. Mike Hammer.”

His head went back a little and his eyes narrowed. “Ooooh... I heard you were Mikki’s ‘uncle,’ Mr. Hammer. You’re quite a well-known character in this part of the world.”

Velda said, “He’s quite a character whatever part of the world he’s in.”

Traynor laughed lightly. “Well, I don’t have a lesson scheduled for another half hour. Might I assume you’re here to talk about Mikki?”

“You might,” I said.

“Shall we go into the bar?” he asked, eyes going from Velda to me. “We can have something to drink and talk. I think it’s worth doing.”

“Drinking?” Velda asked. “Or talking?”

He didn’t respond to that, other than with a little laugh, and then led us toward the clubhouse.

“Don’t get the wrong idea about that private lesson,” Traynor said, with a slightly abashed smile. “Mrs. Daigle, that’s my student you saw, is an enthusiastic woman. She likes to be friendly and I let her. That was a fifty-dollar bill she handed me before she flounced off.”

I wondered what a C-note got her.

We didn’t need to get on this guy’s bad side, so I said, “I understand. Velda here is my secretary-slash-fiancée, and she gets her nose out of joint when I get too friendly with my female clients.”

She slapped my arm gently. “Do I, now?”

I raised my eyebrows at him and he smiled, and everything was cool.

In the 19th Hole, we took a booth toward the back. No waitress was working, so Traynor and I collected our drinks at the bar — he had an orange juice and I got Velda and me two ginger ales — and went back and settled in.

“On Long Island,” he said, still somewhat apologetic about the flirtation we’d witnessed, “a teacher’s salary doesn’t stretch very far. Coaching tennis and swim team, with my Driver’s Ed classes, all adds up to a passable income, but I have to moonlight to make it. This country club gig really helps out. I’ve got a young wife and a two-year-old to support, you know.”

I didn’t know. But what I did know was that a guy can have a wife and kid and still fool around. I rarely did divorce work, but plenty has been offered my way.

He sported a nice white smile as boyish as the rest of him. “Velda... may I call you that, Ms. Sterling?”

“Please.”

He leaned across the table a little. His expression seemed earnest. “I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you about Mikki. I understand your mother is hospitalized right now.”

Velda nodded. “Mom broke her hip. She’s in a nursing home here on the Island.”

“Sorry to hear about her injury... but I’m happy to talk to you, because you might have insights about your sister that an older woman, like your mom, might not.”

We were here to get insights out of him, not the other way around. But I let that ride for now. I sipped my ginger ale.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you, Velda,” he said, his serious expression taking some of the boyish handsomeness out of his face, “that your sister’s had scholarship offers from some of the best colleges, with the top tennis programs, in the country.”

Velda nodded. “I am aware of that.”

He grunted a non-laugh. “Mikki’s turning a blind eye to some incredible opportunities. As a sophomore and junior, she looked like she was on her way to a good college program and then the pros. Women’s tennis has really taken hold, lots of TV interest, and she had a bright future in her pocket.”

“Had, you say,” I said.

He sighed. “Well, her game has been off this year. Not disastrously so, and at first I ascribed it to the pressure she’s been under, the eyes that someone with her potential can have on her. But this spring season has been very disappointing to Mikki, I know. And I’ve been tough on her. Still, not near enough so for her to simply up and quit, the way she has.”

Velda said, “You don’t strike me as an unforgiving coach.”

“Tennis just isn’t that kind of sport — particularly women’s tennis. We have our showboat male players with foul tempers, like this kid Jimmy Connors coming up. But it’s kind of a, well, frankly, country club sport. It’s not like the coaches ream the players the way, say, football coaches do.”

How do they “ream” them, I wondered.

“Her grades are off, too,” Velda said.

“So I understand,” Traynor said, nodding. “Velda, if I might ask... do you know of Mikki taking any weight loss drugs? Diet pills? Amphetamines, barbiturates...?”

“No,” Velda said. “But I know Mikki was concerned that she was getting overweight.”

“Yes,” the coach said, “and she expressed that to me as well. Felt her weight was limiting her game, affecting her play... and if she was taking dangerous weight-control drugs, with their possibility of mood altering, and it led to her quitting the sport she loved so much... what a bitter, ironic outcome that would be.”

“So she lost interest in sports,” Velda said, “and in academics... we are talking about a teenage girl, here. Couldn’t just it be boy trouble?”

Traynor thought about that for a while, sipped his orange juice, then said, “I hesitate to get into that... but boy trouble could be the problem. I did see evidence of it.”

I asked, “How so?”

He wasn’t meeting our eyes now, as if his quietly expressed words were personal thoughts. “Mr. Hammer...”

“‘Mike’ is fine.”

“Mike. Mikki and I got close — tennis is a hands-on sport.”

“I noticed,” I said, and Velda nudged me under the table.

Traynor went on: “And Mikki was my student in Driver’s Ed, too — I was with her when she tested for, and got, her license. So she wasn’t just... another student. She was special. So bright, such a terrific natural athlete. But she was torn between...” He swallowed, glanced away. “I’m a little uncomfortable with this.”

Velda asked, “Are you betraying a confidence?”

Now he turned his head to meet her gaze. “No, but... we’re friends, Mikki and I, as much as any student and teacher can be.”

“Go on,” I said, a little tightly.

“She seemed to be... pulled between two young men. Attracted to both, pursued by both.”

“Seemed?” Velda asked.

He shrugged a single shoulder. “Mikki’s not in my range of influence now. Driver’s Ed was last semester, and she dropped out of tennis weeks ago. Both those young men could be out of her life by now, as far as I know.”

I said, “You’re talking about that Ellis kid and the boy they call Second.”

His nod came quick. “Yes, Mike — Brian Ellis and Garrett Andrew Williams the Second. His father owns this country club with some of his associates. Second’s father, I mean.”

“For a rich kid,” I said, “Second seems to have his head screwed on straight.”

“He does. He’s a good kid. Top student, excellent in his first years of college, I understand. The Ellis boy is a little older, and not nearly so impressive. I believe he’s going to college, too — Suffolk Junior, so maybe he is trying.”

I asked, “What else can you tell me about this Ellis kid?”

Traynor shrugged again. “Just that, in high school, he was an underachiever. And something of a doper.”

That sent my hackles rising. “A dealer?”

Traynor waved that off. “I don’t think so. Just your garden-variety stoner. Lot of them around these days. Harmless.”

I bristled. “Ask the kids strung out on H about that.”

His expression was conciliatory. “Mr. Hammer, Mike, this gateway drug stuff is nonsense. I wish these kids would find a new hobby, but I don’t think smoking a little grass is going to lead to bigger things, necessarily. I drank beer in high school and I’m not an alcoholic.”

“So did I,” I said, “and I am.”

He finished his juice and rose. “I should get ready for my next lesson. I hope I’ve been of some help. Don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything else I can do to be of help.”

He went quickly out while Velda and I lingered over our ginger ales.

I asked her, “You think maybe Mikki’s favorite teacher put the make on her, and then she got out of Dodge, fast as her tennies could carry her?”

“Maybe,” Velda said, thinking, looking into her glass of soda as if it might contain the answer. Then she looked up at me, the dark eyes narrowing. “But I felt her coach was being frank. Let’s take him at face value till we know otherwise.”

I took a last swig of the pop and scooted out of the booth. “Doll, I don’t take anybody but you and me at face value.”

The Sidon Nursing and Rehab Center was a low-slung one-story pink stucco affair that might have been a ranch-style house got out of hand. The front of the facility had plenty of windows nearly as tall as the structure itself and a portico entrance leading to four glass doors — all very pleasant unless you were stuck here getting over something.

We left the heap in another underused parking lot and, in a pale-pink-walled anonymously modern outer area, checked in at the front desk — it wasn’t visiting hours per se, but Velda had no trouble getting us in to see Mrs. Mildred Sterling. Clustered around was a group of wheelchair-seated residents looking longingly at the windows and doors, as if planning to make a break for it. Nurses moved through with no such illusionary longings, younger friendlier ones stopping to chat with this patient or that one, the more seasoned staff oblivious, as if these weren’t humans but potted plants.

As we walked the corridor, I said, “With any luck I’ll get killed in a shoot-out before my life comes to this.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad. Anyway, your shoot-outs usually put others in the hospital.”

I shrugged. “Or the morgue.”

Just making conversation.

Velda’s mom had a private room and, in a dark pink top and slacks seemingly designed to go with the place, looked comfy in a recliner with a pillow under her legs. She was your standard-issue little old lady with the ghost of youthful attractiveness remaining in her roundish face in its curly gray-haired setting. She was smaller than Velda and pudgy but not fat. But she obviously once had possessed the beauty she’d bequeathed to her daughter.

Mrs. Sterling beamed upon seeing us, of course, my presence a pleasant surprise — we’d always got along — and she was in the midst of dealing with a pleasant clipboard-bearing nurse while Velda and I dragged chairs over to wait our turn.

Acknowledging us with nods and smiles, the nurse departed and we pulled our chairs up, and small talk followed. I let Mrs. Sterling know I was staying on in Sidon for a while, my office temporarily shuttered; and Velda queried Mrs. Sterling about how they were treating her here and so on. Her mother seemed satisfied.

“It’s pleasant enough,” she said. “And the food is good, if on the starchy side. Just wish this place weren’t so expensive.”

“You’re worth it, Mom,” Velda said.

I asked, “How long will you be staying at this particular hotel?”

“At least another six weeks.” Velda’s mom had a musical voice, a second soprano and not her daughter’s husky alto. “Be out of here by the start of summer, I should think.”

“Mrs. Sterling,” I said, “I’d like to get your take on Mikki and her troubling behavior lately — quitting tennis, her grades slipping, all of it.”

Mrs. Sterling sighed. “I’m disappointed, of course. She might well have won a full ride scholarship, little budding tennis star that she was.”

“Till now,” Velda said.

Mrs. Sterling had Velda’s dark eyes. “I’m hopeful Mikki will go to a college with a good tennis program, and just... what’s the term?”

I said, “Walk on?”

She nodded. “Walk on and secure a spot on a team somewhere. Earn a place. Even some junior colleges have decent programs, you know, well within our means.”

Velda said, “Before that could happen, her interest in the sport would have to be rekindled.”

“It would. But Mikki’s a young girl, and young girls make bad decisions all the time... and straighten out, all the time.”

“She seems,” I said, “like a nice kid, tennis or no tennis. Does she need to ‘straighten out’? High school athletes sometimes lose interest in a sport where they’ve previously excelled. She may have seen what the collegiate competition is like, the advanced level of play, and had second thoughts.”

“I think you’re right on both accounts, Mike,” Velda’s mom admitted. “Mikki is a nice girl... but she’s going through the kinds of pressures many girls her age go through — not eating enough because she wants to look like a model, running around with boys when she should be studying.”

Velda said, “You wouldn’t say she’s... boy crazy, would you, Mom?”

Mrs. Sterling frowned, shook her head. “No. I do think she’s been torn between those two particular boys — the nice young man from a good family, and... excuse me for putting so crudely... that trailer trash boy with the motorbike.”

Velda turned to me. “Mikki was going with this Brian Ellis first, and fell in with his rough bunch. Then the two broke up and she started in with Second, and began running with a better crowd.”

“It’s all about cliques at her age,” I said.

“At least that ruffian,” Mrs. Sterling said, and it was an almost comic way to put it, “is out of her life now. He hung around the house all the time and I could hardly put up with it. I... I even caught them... I hate to admit it.”

“Caught them how?” I asked.

Keeping her voice hushed, Velda’s mom said, “She and this Brian... in bed together. In her bed, in her room. I’m afraid my little Mikki is no virgin.”

We did not, of course, share with Mrs. Sterling the French farce Velda and I had performed for Mikki in the spare bedroom. Or the earlier one I’d interrupted with Mikki and Second.

“Times have changed,” I admitted. “You call Ellis a ‘ruffian’ — why? Was he rude? We saw them arguing yesterday. Does he ever get violent with her, that you know of? If he laid a hand on that girl, I’ll—”

Mrs. Sterling’s eyebrows raised; for a moment she really looked like Velda. “He laid more than a ‘hand’ on her, but I don’t think in that kind of way. I never saw him strike her or anything of that nature. It was just his... demeanor. You know, the way he dressed. The long hair. The crude way he talked, such filthy language. How he swaggered around.”

I couldn’t take that too seriously: I’d been accused of swagger myself. And the occasional fucking obscenity. Still, you hate to see that kind of thing going on around an impressionable young woman like Mikki.

“Such a bad influence,” Mrs. Sterling said, her eyes — her whole face — tight. She was a jury foreman announcing a stiff sentence to a judge. But who was I to judge?

“Second, on the other hand,” she said, smiling a little, almost wistful, “he’s a breath of fresh air. Polite, well dressed. From a good family.”

I flipped a hand. “Boys will be boys, Mrs. Sterling. All of that hasn’t changed any of the facts: Mikki is still a quitter, taking herself off the tennis team that would’ve been her ticket out. And her grades are still terrible. Being with Second has hardly turned her around.”

“Give it time,” Mrs. Sterling said. “Bad influences always linger longer than good ones.”

Velda said, “Well, the Ellis boy is still a lingering presence. Mikki’s obviously tried to cut things off with him, but he doesn’t seem to get it.”

I said, “I’ll talk to him.”

Velda gave me a raised eyebrow look. “Mike...”

I raised a palm. “Just talk. I promise.” I shifted in my chair. “Mrs. Sterling, you said the Ellis kid hung around your house a lot, while Mikki was going with him.”

Her frown was grave. “Yes. He did. I didn’t like it, but what’s a mother to do?”

I asked, “Did you notice anything suspicious during the time Ellis was around?”

She didn’t hesitate in her response. “I certainly did. A watch of mine, an expensive Rolex that Velda’s late stepfather gave me, went missing. So did my wedding ring with a very nice, sizeable diamond. I’d stopped wearing it a few years ago. Didn’t fit and I meant to get it re-sized but never got around to it.”

Velda asked, “When did you notice this?”

“Just recently, but it could have happened any time. It may not have anything to do with anything.”

I asked, “You suspect Ellis?”

Mrs. Sterling sighed. Shrugged. “I shouldn’t accuse him. I have no specific reason to suspect him, other than... well.”

“Well what?”

“I overheard him and Mikki arguing, and I wondered if it might be about the theft, if that’s what it was. It may have been what broke them up and allowed the young Second boy to move in. It’s a bit of a mystery. Be nice to get to the bottom of it.”

“That, Mrs. Sterling,” I said, “is where I come in.”