Hole-In-One

The lush green stretched endlessly in front of us as we approached the ninth hole of the Laguna Woods Golf Club. I’d gone back to playing golf when my woman and I were three thousand miles apart, and I’d gotten to be part of a regular foursome. At least it gave me something to do every Wednesday, and I enjoyed both the game and the camaraderie. The group consisted of Jason Tyler, an Orthopedic Surgeon; Terry McGuire, an architect; Billy Woodruff, a Laguna Hills City Councilman; and me. I’m Rick Simon, and I’m partners in a private investigation firm, Simon and Donahue.

It was a good group of men, and like I said, I enjoyed the friendship and the chance to get away from work. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. There were many years when being a PI was the most important thing in my life, the only thing in my life. It still was the most important, but I had a responsible partner who agreed that my Wednesday mornings on the golf course made me a happier man. The woman I loved, Dani Coleman, was an artist who’d spent more than six months in New York painting murals for a chain of banks. When she finally got back home to Southern California, we patched up the differences we had in our relationship and got closer than we’d ever been. I wasn’t trying to avoid spending time with Dani; there was no doubt that I was crazy in love with her. She and I played tennis twice a week, but we enjoyed our time doing other things, too. One of mine was golf.

This particular Wednesday had dawned bright and sunny, one of those Indian Summer Days that’s so beautiful it almost breaks your heart. It rained two days ago, a rarity in Southern California, and all the smog left for parts unknown. The Santa Ana Mountains could be seen, along with many other sights that weren’t usually visible, and even the deer came out to see what was going on. We’d just finished the eighth hole, which was par four. I’d bogeyed the hole and was none too happy with myself, which is why I was walking ahead of the group, anxious to reach the tee for the ninth hole and a better outcome. Tyler and I usually shared a golf cart, but I needed to do something besides sit on my butt. I’d left the cart for him to use. I needed the time to convince myself there was nothing wrong with my golf game and I’d just hit a bad shot. About twenty yards away, off to my right was a small grove of bushes, and something in them caught my attention.

I stopped and stared for a moment but chalked it up to either a rabbit or my imagination. I’d prefer it to be the rabbit. The group caught up to me, and I watched Terry hit a shot off the tee that all golfers would kill for. He caught the green and the ball hit the angle of the hill just right . . . and before we all stopped screaming, it found the corner of the cup and fell in. That SOB had just hit a hole-in-one! No sooner had the celebration calmed down than I heard a sound I’m all too familiar with. It was a gunshot, and I swore that it came from the bushes where my rabbit was. Up ahead at the tenth tee, it looked like a man had just gone down. I quickly concluded that what I’d heard was no rabbit.

“Jason!” I yelled as I ran towards the golf cart. Tyler might have been an Orthopedic Surgeon, but he was a doctor, and his expertise would be needed. I got behind the wheel and took off; two or three steps later, Jason caught up to me and jumped on board.

“Was that a gunshot?” he asked me, almost out of breath.

“Yes, and I saw somebody go down. That’s why I wanted you to go with me,” I told him as I drove like a crazy man to get to the tenth tee. As soon as we arrived Jason ran for the man lying on the ground, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to make any difference. There was a lot of blood, and it looked to me like a kill shot. Jason searched for a pulse and a heartbeat but found neither. Meanwhile, I had been busy explaining who we were and what we were doing there.

“Are any of you related to him?” Jason asked.

One of the men nodded. “I’m his son-in-law. His name is Aaron Hotchner and I’m Joe Miller. Is he . . . ?”

“Dead?” Jason asked. “Yes, sorry. It was immediate – he didn’t feel anything. I’m a surgeon.”

Meanwhile, I had been on the phone with the police, and in just a few minutes we heard sirens. By the time the police got there I knew the names of the two golfers left from the foursome. They were Andy Nelson and Ron Carter. I thought they looked familiar, and Andy confirmed that they also played on Wednesday morning and had seen our foursome several times. Jason stayed with the son-in-law while he answered all the questions the patrolmen had. They had called it in as a homicide by this time, and Detective Nessa O’Connor and her partner, Brenda Gibson, were soon there. O’Connor was the one in charge, and she had the patrolmen cordon off the area and head to the clubhouse to close the course.

She kept looking at me like she knew me, and I finally went over and introduced myself. “That’s where I know you from,” she offered suddenly. “The infamous Sonny James.” We shook hands and she started laughing.

“What?” I asked her.

“I know Dennis O’Brien. He told me you were usually around when something odd happened, and I didn’t believe him. I’ll have to tell him he was right. Were you here on a case?” Nessa was about five feet two inches tall, with short, curly red hair and glasses. And she knew what she was doing.

“No, just playing golf with my regular group. Terry McGuire – that’s him in the red shirt – had just hit a hole-in-one and we were all acting like a bunch of juvenile delinquents when I heard the shot. I grabbed a cart and Jason and we raced down here.”

“Could you tell where the shot came from?” she asked.

“It sounded like it came from the bushes over there,” I explained, pointing to the stand of brush where I’d heard my ‘rabbit.’ “I heard something rattling around in there, but I thought it was a rabbit. I guess the rabbit came armed.”

“Did you see or hear anything after the shot from the brush?”

I shook my head. “No. I grabbed the golf cart and Jason, and we were here in less than a minute after the shot was fired. He didn’t have a chance, Detective. It was a kill shot.”

“Do you know any of the four men?”

“No, I’ve just seen them playing golf. Sometimes their tee time was before ours, and sometimes it was after. I know they heard us screaming like banshees this morning, but how often do you get to see a hole-in-one?”

“Can I call you at your office if I have more questions?” Nessa asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Here’s my card; you can get me directly at that number.”

“Are you going there now?”

“No. McGuire owes us a round of drinks to celebrate the hole-in-one. We won’t finish the round; we’ll go straight to the bar and tell everyone in the clubhouse that we saw him hit it. And we won’t talk about the murder.”

She smiled at me again. She had a friendly smile. “Thanks, gumshoe; I appreciate it.” And just to make sure I knew the ‘gumshoe’ was her teasing me, I got poked in the ribs.

I grinned back at her. “I’m surrounded by Irishmen.”

“Thank God,” she pronounced.

XXXXXXXX

The official scorekeeper down in the clubhouse signed off on Terry’s hole-in-one, noting that we couldn’t finish the round because the tenth hole had become a crime scene. We went straight to the bar and Terry ordered cocktails – even though it was now pushing nine o’clock. Hey, you don’t get to see a hole-in-one every day. I skipped the cocktail and had coffee and Baileys. The mood was tempered by what everyone had witnessed on the tenth hole.

I picked their brains and found that no one had seen or heard the rustling in the bushes. That’s when I excused myself and went to the lockers to get the pair of gloves I kept there in case of emergency. While I was at it, I took along an evidence bag, too. Please don’t ask me why I kept the supplies in my locker; after twelve years of doing this job, I try always to be prepared for the unexpected. I walked back to the bar and ordered another cup of coffee, this time without anything in it but cream. The four of us talked about Terry’s hole-in-one for a few minutes, and when they ordered their second round I left and went out to borrow a golf cart. One of ours was still available, and I took it back to the bushes to the right of the ninth hole.

The grass around the backside of the ninth hole was flattened; I could see that much from the edges of the crime scene tape that surrounded the shrubs. There had been something a whole lot larger than a rabbit back here. The bushes were bent and broken around the edges, and there was a cigarette butt buried in the grass near the outside edge of the tape surrounding the area. After slipping on my gloves, I picked up what was left of the cigarette and slipped it into the bag I’d brought with me. I spent a few more minutes looking at the grass surrounding the shrubbery; it appeared whoever had been there made a hasty exit to the north.

Satisfied that I’d learned all I could from the area the murderer so obviously hid in, I took the golf cart back to the clubhouse. The boys were still celebrating, but I had things to do and people to see, so I took off my golf shoes and the clothes I’d played golf in and went to take a shower. I dressed in the clean clothes I’d brought with me and stopped by the bar just long enough to tell our group I’d see them next Wednesday. Everybody’s name and phone number were in my phone if I wanted to ask them anything else.

As I left the golf course I kept having one nagging question float around my head – why was I sticking my nose into a case obviously being handled by the police? There was something about this whole thing that just wasn’t right. First of all, who lies in wait and murders someone on a golf course? And had Aaron Hotchner been the intended victim? Why? I needed more information before I went any further. And I knew just how to get it.

It took close to an hour to get to the office. When I arrived I was greeted by the sight of an unmarked police car in my parking space. I took the closest empty spot I could find and hurried in the front door. “What have you gotten involved in now?” was the first thing I heard from Robin when I got inside.

“Nothing except an early morning golf game, as far as I know.” That was the snappiest thing I could think of to say. “What prompted the question? And does it have anything to do with the unmarked police car sitting in my parking space?”

“Of course it does. There’s a good-looking, red-headed detective talking to Sean. But she asked for you when she got here.”

“Detective O’Connor, I assume,” was my comeback.

“That’s her. Aren’t there ever any ordinary-looking people on the police force anymore?”

I snorted. That was typical Robin, of course. Complaining about attractive detectives. I grabbed a cup of coffee and went in to see Sean and Nessa. “You’re in my parking space,” I laughed as I walked in and sat down.

“You weren’t using it,” the detective shot back.

“Did you just come by to disrupt our day?” I wanted to know.

“No, I talked to Dennis and he told me your partner was an Irishman. So, I came by to see a fellow mick and wait for you.”

“And what did you want to see me for? Didn’t you get enough of me this morning?”

“No, actually, I didn’t. I wanted to see if you had anything to add that you didn’t want to say in front of your buddies,” O’Connor told me.

“Nothing to say, but you might find this interesting,” and I handed her the evidence bag with the cigarette butt in it.

“Where did you find this?” the detective asked, surprise in her voice.

“Right outside the crime scene tape. Somebody missed it.”

“Sloppy police work,” Sean commented.

“Yeah, we’ve got a new CSI. And he’s not doing a thorough job. Look, all kidding aside. I could use your help on this, Simon.”

“Whatever you need, Detective.”

She threw a stare at me. “I need you to stop calling me detective. The name’s Nessa.” Then she glanced over at Sean. “You want in on this, Donahue? Or do you have better things to do?”

“Not better things, just other things. Besides, you’ve already got the golfer eating out of your hand.” We all kind of chuckled at that one.

“Come on, Nessa, let’s go to my office. And bring your cup.”

Detective O’Connor did as told and brought her cup, stopping at the coffee bar and refilling on the way to my office. Robin flashed me a big grin before we disappeared behind my closed door. I was curious to know just what did the detective want my help with?