“Now who’s been watching too much
CSI
?”
Pam and I are both crime and consequence junkies.
Criminal Minds
, all versions of
Law & Order
,
CSI
in Las Vegas, Miami, or New York—it didn’t matter. Bring them on, the more the merrier.
“While we’re on the subject, whose bright idea was it to play bunco the same night as
CSI
?”
“That’s why we both bought TiVo,” I said, poking at what looked like a plastic Wal-Mart bag.
Pam glanced my way and shook her head. “Look at the trash. Disgusting! Next thing you know the Road Warriors will have to patrol the golf course.”
“Thank goodness for Road Warriors,” I said. Pam was referring to the intrepid band of volunteers who, armed with grabbers and orange vests, ruthlessly defend the highways and byways against discarded soda cans and Burger King wrappers.
“I can’t believe people throw stuff like this on the course.” I took a final jab at the bag and let out a squeal as an arm—or what might once have been an arm—tumbled free.
No ladylike squeal from Pam. She let loose a shriek that could be heard clear to the clubhouse. A gray squirrel scurried for cover. My numb brain registered birds, too large to be crows, circling overhead. They looked more like turkey buzzards, true scavengers here in the South. They can pick a carcass clean in no time flat. The veggie burger I had for lunch threatened to return as my gaze returned to the . . . whatever.
Denial is a wonderful thing. One of the best defense mechanisms God ever invented. I stared and stared at the sickly gray pulp with a kind of morbid fascination. This couldn’t be real, I tried to convince myself. Appendages just don’t fall out of Wal-Mart bags. Or any other kinds of bags, for that matter. Serenity Cove has very strict policies against littering.
Could be an arm off a mannequin, I told myself. A fake arm. Could be someone’s idea of a practical joke. A very twisted practical joke.
Pam clutched my sleeve. “Please, don’t tell me—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Connie Sue and Monica hurried over to see what all the fuss was about.
“Dammit, Pam,” Monica complained. “If you hadn’t let out that scream, I could have parred that hole.”
Connie Sue was the first of the pair to spot the grisly find lying amid the weeds. She clamped a hand over her mouth, all traces of color leaching from her face.
About that time, Monica, too, spotted the object of interest. She pointed a shaky finger. “Is that . . . ?” she asked in a voice barely above a whisper.
“An arm.” I nodded, no longer able to pretend the object was anything but an arm.
At my pronouncement, Monica promptly lost her tuna melt all over her brand-new FootJoys.
“Hey, ladies,” a voice shouted from the tee box above us. “You’re holding up play.”
I recognized the man; I’d seen him at the fitness center during one of my sporadic workout sessions. After watching him hog the treadmill while others waited, I’d instantly cataloged him a first-class jerk. I wondered how he’d have reacted if he had been the one to find a dismembered body part in a Wal-Mart bag. Probably kept right on playing. It would, after all, be a shame to slow down play.
Ignoring him, I rummaged in my pocket for my cell phone. Tees and ball markers fell to the ground. Then I remembered I had left my cell in my bag on the cart. “Darn,” I mumbled. My mind scrambled to come up with a plan, a protocol of sorts, but came up blank. Nothing so far in my life had prepared me for this kind of emergency.
“If you can’t find your ball, lady, take a penalty and get on with it,” the jerk’s partner hollered.
“We found an arm,” Pam hollered back.
The man took off his cap and scratched his head. “You found some yarn?”
“An arm!” My control snapped. Why did men refuse to wear hearing aids? “We found an arm!”
“Lady, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you found. Just move aside and let us play through.”
Fortunately, just then, the ranger pulled up alongside our golf cart at the bottom of the hill. “Trouble, ladies?”
Before I could get two words out, the jerk yelled, “Bill, tell these women they need to brush up on golf etiquette.”
“What’s the problem, ladies?” Bill asked.
As one, all four of us pointed to the grisly discovery.
Bill climbed out of the golf cart and ambled over for a better look. After one quick glance, he became the second person that afternoon to baptize a pair of FootJoys.
Chapter 2
Management sure picked a fine time to install automatic hand dryers in the women’s locker room, I thought as I helped Monica clean off her shoes. Toilet tissue just wasn’t the same as paper towels. The crumpled Kleenex I found in the pocket of my shorts didn’t work much better.
“This will have to do,” I told her. What I didn’t add was that her brand-new FootJoys would never again be the same. They were designed for mud and moisture, not regurgitated tuna melts.
“You’re right.”
I glanced up in surprise. Monica seldom agreed with anything I said. Not even when I was right. Beneath her tan, Monica’s complexion was the shade of moldy olives. I made a mental note for any future decorating I might decide to do: Those shades of tan and green just didn’t mix.
While I looked on, Monica toed off her specially ordered AA narrows and pitched them in the wastebasket. “Think I’ll go barefoot.”
“Makes sense to me,” I replied. Barefoot definitely seemed the way to go. These were extenuating circumstances. Just this once, the No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service rule would have to be ignored. No one wanted to smell barfed-on leather.
Monica bent over the sink and splashed cold water on her face. “I don’t know how you can be so calm, Kate.”
“I might look calm,” I said, giving my hands a good wash with plenty of soap and water, “but I bet my blood pressure hit a record high.”
Our eyes met in the mirror. “Who do you think
it
belongs to?” Monica voiced the question foremost in both our minds.
“It . . . ?”
Strange way to think of a body part. Strange, but safe. Impersonal. Since I couldn’t readily come up with a better euphemism for a severed arm, I just shrugged. “Guess we’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled to see who’s walking around lopsided.”
“Kate!” Monica stared at me, aghast. “How can you be so . . . glib . . . at a time like this?”
“Times like this, one needs to be objective. I keep asking myself, what would Gil Grissom do?”
“Don’t think I know him.” Monica patted her face dry with the hem of her golf shirt. “Does he live here in Serenity?”
Monica doesn’t watch much TV. She reads. Not just fiction, mind you, but literature, the esoteric type. She’d deny under oath that she ever picked up a book by James Pat terson or Nora Roberts. Mention Danielle Steel, and she’d have palpitations.
I felt the absurd impulse to giggle. “No,” I replied, trying to keep my lips from twitching. “Gil is from Vegas.”
“Oh,” she murmured, tucking her shirttail back into her microfiber shorts.
Someday I’ll inform her that Gil Grissom used to be the main character in
CSI
, my very favorite TV show, but that could wait. I wasn’t in the mood for explanations.
I peered at my reflection in the mirror. My reflection peered back. I noticed the roots of my short, Lady Clairol ash blond locks were in need of a touch-up. Behind rimless glasses, my sage green eyes, which I usually consider my best feature, had lost their sparkle. Guess finding an arm in a Wal-Mart bag can do that.
I jabbed the button of the automatic hand dryer. Hot air burst out with enough gusto to make the skin on my hands ripple. Another sign of aging, I thought glumly. Everything either ripples, sags, or wrinkles. I’m not usually this pessimistic. In fact, as a rule I don’t mind getting older—as long as I don’t look it or feel it. Go figure how that makes sense. However, finding an unattached body part was having an adverse effect on my sense of optimism.
“Guess we ought to get out there,” I said, giving my hair a final fluff. “The authorities should be here by now. They’ll want us to describe what we found.”
Monica clutched her stomach, her face again that moldy olive green. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Head between your knees.” Placing my hand firmly on Monica’s dark brown head, I gave it a nudge. Who would have guessed Monica of all people would suffer from a queasy stomach? Never hesitant to voice her opinion, confident in a way I often envied, Monica always seemed the strongest of our little tribe. “Take a deep breath,” I ordered.
“OK, OK,” she said at last, her voice shaky.
“Showtime,” I said with false cheeriness, and shoved open the door of the restroom. One glance and I was tempted to turn tail and sequester myself in one of the stalls. Maybe even spend the night there until things settled down.
Monica grabbed my arm. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “This place is a circus.”
News travels fast here in Serenity. Never let it be said that the residents turned down an excuse to party. Serenity Cove Estates, you see, is a community of “active” adults—very active, indeed, when it comes to socializing. Of course, some whisper, the little blue pill does its share in keeping the activity alive and well—if you catch my drift. Folks here don’t put off until tomorrow what they could do today. After all, one day you can be out on the course, the next, slip on a banana peel and end up awaiting a hip replacement.
The clubhouse grill, better known as the Watering Hole, strained at the seams to contain the multitude gathered to hear all the gory details. People lined the bar three-deep while the bartender along with one of the waitresses valiantly struggled to keep up with drink orders.
“Kate.” Pam waved at us from across the room. “Over here.”
Too late to turn back now. With Monica attached like a suction cup, I plowed through the crowd. I couldn’t help but notice the jerk from the eighth hole along with his buddy holding court in the center of the room. Their names came back to me. Mort Thorndike and Bernie Mason. Like many my age, I occasionally suffer temporary memory lapses. But not to worry, I’m told. Senior moments, nothing serious. Everyone in Serenity has them. It’s a downright epidemic.
“Yessir, we had our hands full dealing with a bunch of hysterical females back there,” Mort, jerk number one, said to everyone within hearing distance.
“You got that right.” Bernie, jerk number two, nodded his agreement. “Ladies looked like they would faint dead away any second, weren’t for us.”
Pompous fools! They remind me of that pair from
Sesame Street
, what’s-his-name and what’s-his-name. Mort, short and paunchy, and Bernie, his trusty sidekick, a string bean with a bad comb-over, were holding glasses of beer and obviously enjoying the limelight. Hysterical females, indeed! I wanted to set them straight right then and there, but bit my tongue. Time enough for that later.
Pam and Connie Sue were seated at a corner table. Someone had been thoughtful enough to provide each of them with a glass of wine. I could use one myself about now, but I didn’t want to take a Breathalyzer before speaking with the authorities.
“Here, sit.” Gloria Myers hastily vacated her seat at the table when she spied us. Janine Russell did the same. Nice ladies, Janine and Gloria. Both are fellow Bunco Babes as well as good friends. I first met them in a ceramics class, where I immediately became the poster child for uneven brushstrokes. Someday I’d return and finish the cookie jar I started months ago. No rush. Besides, everyone knows how fattening cookies are, and cookies are my weakness. Right up there next to chocolate. I blame them for the ten extra pounds I could stand to lose.
“You poor things,” Janine clucked. “How awful.” Janine, who could pass as actress Jamie Lee Curtis’s stand-in with her short, chic silver hairstyle and slim figure, was a former nurse and the nurturer of our little tribe of bunco gamesters.
“Can we get you something?” Gloria asked. “Water, iced tea, maybe a nice glass of wine?” The bracelets on Gloria’s wrist jangled as she motioned in the direction of the bar. Jewelry was Gloria’s one—and only—concession to fashion. Shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes, square jaw, minimal makeup. No muss, no fuss—that was Gloria. Her mother, Polly, was another matter entirely.
“Bourbon, straight up.”
My eyebrows soared in surprise. This from Monica, a teetotaler?
“Good girl.” Connie Sue patted Monica’s hand. “Meemaw used to say nothing like a swig of bourbon for what ails you.” I learned early on in our acquaintance that in Southern-speak
meemaw
translated means grandmother. Connie Sue is the only dyed-in-the-wool Southerner in the Bunco Babes. It never ceases to amaze me that after thirty-some years in Milwaukee, Connie Sue hasn’t lost her accent.
I settled for my usual—iced tea, unsweetened, with lemon. Don’t know how anyone can drink sweet tea, the beverage of choice here in the South. Ask me, it tastes like maple syrup straight off the shelf at the Piggly Wiggly. Iced tea is only one of many differences I’ve discovered between Ohio and South Carolina.
After Jim died, the kids thought I should return to Ohio, but for me, there’s no going back. Don’t get me wrong. Personally, I have nothing against Ohio. In fact, Toledo holds many fond memories, but Serenity Cove Estates is where I want to stay. It was love at first sight when Jim and I first saw the place with its pretty lake, loblolly pines, and magnolias the size of dinner plates. Next day we signed on the dotted line.
My reverie stopped when a hush fell over the crowd. All eyes turned toward the door. A man stood framed in the entrance, six feet, two inches, two hundred twenty pounds of pure muscle. His beige uniform was crisp and spotless, the creases in his pants sharp enough to slice cheese. He wore a shiny black holster on his hip and sported a shiny gold badge on his chest. His skin was the color of Starbucks Breakfast Blend.