“Just at the driving range.”
“And did it perform the way it says in the ads? Evidently not, or you’d be using it on the course.”
“I don’t like it,” Nicholson said. “There’s something wrong with the way it’s balanced.”
“I ought to try it on the hole coming up. Par five, 585 yards. A little extra distance wouldn’t hurt.”
“I think the club’s defective,” Nicholson said. “Something wrong with the shaft. I’m planning on taking it back, letting them look at it.”
Hedrick chuckled. “Relax,” he said. “I don’t really want to borrow your Big Brenda. I know better than to try a new club in the middle of a round.”
Hedrick, using his own driver, hit the ball long and straight. It outran Nicholson’s drive by a good thirty yards. They walked down the fairway together, in silence at first. Then Nicholson said, “Over and over I’ve thought about killing him.”
“Your best friend. Except it turns out he’s no friend at all, so I don’t know what to call him.”
“I thought we had settled on Fred.”
“Seems silly, calling him that. But no sillier than talking of killing him.”
“People kill people all the time,” Nicholson said.
“Yes, but—”
“You read the papers, listen to the news, it’s just one murder after another.”
“That’s true, but—”
“A golf club,” Nicholson said.
“How’s that?”
“Be the best way to do it, don’t you think? After all the golf we played together over the years? Bash his treacherous brains out with a golf club, then wrap the shaft around his neck.”
“Can you bend a shaft like that?” Hedrick wondered. “Of course, once you’d bashed his head in, the question’s largely academic, isn’t it?”
They fell silent again when they reached Nicholson’s ball. He sent it on its way with his two wood.
“Good shot.”
“Good old brassie,” he said. “A little left, though. I was afraid of that fairway trap, and I played it a little too safe.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“So they say. I bought Big Brenda with the idea that I might use her on Fred.”
“Her?”
“Well, it, of course, but since the club has a woman’s name...”
“That alone makes it a good murder weapon,” Hedrick said. “Thing lists for close to five hundred dollars, doesn’t it?”
“Five forty-nine, but I got it for a third off.”
“Pretty good discount.”
“It’s still a lot to pay for a club you’re only going to swing once. But I couldn’t use one of my own clubs, could I?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Although,” he said, “when you come right down to it, what difference would it make? No matter what I used or how I did it, the police would come straight at me.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because they’d look for someone with a motive to kill Fred,” Nicholson said, “and they’d root around in his life and find out who he was sleeping with. And where would that lead?”
“I see what you mean.”
“And I’m sure I’d break down the minute they started questioning me. I’m not much good at keeping things to myself.” He clapped Hedrick on the shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
“You know what I’m thinking?”
“That we ought to trade murders. Like the Hitchcock film, where two fellows meet on a train, and they switch victims. You kill Fred while I’m out getting an ironclad alibi, and in return I kill your wife.”
“I’m not married,” Hedrick said.
“Your boss, then, or the person who stands between you and a huge inheritance. Look, it doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to do it.”
“I should say not,” Hedrick said.
“I couldn’t kill a stranger for no reason,” Nicholson said. “And I couldn’t let you kill Fred, either. I mean, the whole thing’s pointless unless I get to kill the son of a bitch myself.”
Hedrick’s second shot was almost as long as his first, and didn’t stop rolling until it was within a few yards of the green, just to the right of the trap. “Brilliant,” Nicholson told him. “You’re a sure bet to win your honors back this hole. An easy chip and you’re putting for a birdie.”
“If I putt the way I did last hole...”
“Well, why leave anything to chance? Sink the chip for an eagle.”
They walked to Nicholson’s ball. He shaded his eyes, looked at the green. “What do you think? A seven iron?”
“Or an eight. Pin’s way at the back of the green, though.”
“Seven iron,” Nicholson said, and drew it from his bag. He took a practice swing, and his eyes tracked the imaginary ball clear to the rear portion of the green.
“The way to get away with it,” he said, “would be to make it look as though it wasn’t about him.”
“Wasn’t about him? Who are we talking about?”
“Fred,” Nicholson said. “Who else?”
“If a man gets killed,” Hedrick said, “it has to be about him. Doesn’t it?”
“Not if it’s about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like golf,” Nicholson said. “If he were killed with a golf club, like we said, and if his body was found on a golf course...”
“I’m not sure I see what difference that makes,” Hedrick said, and then his jaw dropped and his eyes widened. “Jesus,” he said, “it was in the papers last week, wasn’t it? A fellow found in the deep rough at Burning Hills. The twelfth hole, wasn’t it?”
“I believe it was the fourteenth.”
“That’s the one with the water hazard, isn’t it? I didn’t pay much attention to the story, but he was killed with a golf club, wasn’t he?”
“Is that what happened?”
“My God,” Hedrick said, “you actually did it. And got away with it, from the sound of it. But why would you tell me about it now?” He frowned, then shook his head and took a step back, grinning. “Jesus, what a setup,” he said admiringly. “You had me going there for a moment, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“The poor guy at Burning Hills was a college kid, wasn’t he? A little too young to be your best friend and your wife’s lover, I’d have to say. You set up that whole story to get me going, and I have to give you credit.” He laughed. “ ‘Hit the ball, drag Fred.’ The college boy, I don’t suppose his name was Fred, was it?”
“He was somebody else,” Nicholson said.
“Well, I guess he was, wasn’t he? Hell of a thing, dying at that age. They haven’t found out who killed him or why, have they?”
“No.”
“Hard to make sense of, isn’t it? Why kill a college kid on a golf course?”
Nicholson addressed his ball, breathed in and out, in and out. He swung the seven iron and got just the right amount of loft. The ball floated all the way to the back edge of the green, backed up, and trolled to within inches of the cup.
“Beautiful,” Hedrick said.
“Thanks,” Nicholson said. “And to answer your question, I’d guess the boy was killed to establish a pattern.”
“A pattern? What kind of a pattern?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nicholson said. “Look, you know something about clubs. Take a look at this.”
He drew the Big Brenda out of his bag. Hedrick’s face showed first puzzlement, then concern. He started to say something, but Nicholson didn’t wait to find out what it was. Instead he seized the club’s silver-colored head in one hand and the shaft in the other and twisted. The club head came off in his hand, revealing the end of the shaft, honed to razor sharpness. “Just look at this,” he said, and lobbed the club head underhand at Hedrick.