The teams were huddling around their coaches; the match was about to start. The Bonita Beach players wore white home uniforms with red numbers on the shirts. The other team was dressed in green. The players on either side placed their hands together in the center of their circle and shouted bonding words, intended to psych them up for the battle to come. Then the six starters of each team trotted onto the court.
Tony had no trouble picking out Martha from Shahla’s description. She was tall and lanky and looked a bit awkward, in a body that had grown faster than her coordination. Acne spoiled her otherwise pretty face, indelibly marking her as a teenager, even though with her size she could have been a lot older.
The female referee, who sat on a platform at courtside, blew her whistle and gestured with her arm. A Bonita Beach player served the ball and the game began. Tony was immediately impressed by the quality of the play. Of course, here in the beach volleyball capital of the world, outstanding players were the rule, but Tony, who had grown up in western New York, was always fascinated with them.
Each player knew her role. One of the back players would dig out a smash so hard that Tony barely saw it and bump it to the setter. The Bonita Beach setter moved like a ballet dancer. She handled good balls and bad balls alike, making perfect sets, low, high, and sometimes backwards over her head in response to secret signals that Tony didn’t understand.
Unfortunately, the Bonita Beach hitters didn’t do as well. They scored some kills, but they also hit balls out of bounds or into the net. And too often two of the opposing players would leap at the same time as the hitter and block the ball back into the Bonita Beach court, often for a point or a side out.
In the middle of the first game, Tony felt his cell phone vibrate. He got up from his seat and walked quickly through the door of the gym, extracting the phone from his shirt pocket as he went. Outside he pressed the Talk button and said, “This is Tony.”
“Tony, Mona.”
“Hi.” Several students were talking loudly nearby. He walked away from them, hoping their voices wouldn’t carry over the phone.
“How is that presentation coming for the lunch tomorrow?”
He was presenting the company program to a group of doctors. Mona, who didn’t usually accompany him for these presentations, was going with him. Everything had to be perfect.
“It’s almost ready. I’ve got one more call to make, and then I’m coming back to the office to work on it. I should be there by six.” It was the correct thing to do. Mona was a workaholic, and he knew she’d still be there. He looked at his electronic organizer. “Oh, I forgot. I’m supposed to work at the Hotline tonight. Well, maybe I can skip that.”
“Do you have any calls scheduled for tomorrow morning?”
“Well, no.”
“Can’t you finish the presentation then? I don’t want you to miss the Hotline. I’ve noticed a change in you since you started there. You’re more sensitive to people.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I guess I can finish it in the morning.” That’s what he had been planning to do before Mona called. And now it was her idea, which was good. And his working on the Hotline had also been her idea. Whatever it took to keep her happy. Within limits.
They said goodbye, and Tony walked back inside. As he took his seat, Martha spiked the ball into the net. She hit the ball hard, but not always where she wanted it to go. Occasionally she scored with a blistering shot, and the handful of spectators would yell their approval. When she learned to control her shots, she would be a standout. Tony guessed that would happen within two years. She did better on defense. Using her height and jumping ability to advantage, she blocked several shots.
Tony hadn’t seen Joy play volleyball, but he suspected that she had looked a lot like Martha on the court-with better coordination. Shahla said she had been a league all-star. Bonita Beach could have used her today. The opponents lacked an outstanding player, but their teamwork eventually paid off in a close victory. Their players were ecstatic. They probably hadn’t beaten Bonita Beach for a long time.
After the game, the Bonita Beach players congratulated the players of the other team, an act of good sportsmanship Tony appreciated. As the sweat-soaked players headed toward the locker room, he stepped in front of Martha and said, “Nice game, Martha.”
She glanced at him with a who-is-this-guy look, made a rueful face and said, “Thanks.”
“I’m Tony, from the Hotline,” he said, falling into step beside her. She was taller than he was.
“Oh.” She stopped walking and faced him. “I’ve heard about you. What are you doing here?”
Who had talked to her about him? “I’ve been reading good things about your team, and I wanted to see it in action.”
“Yeah, right. It was good before Joy…” her voice broke, “when Joy was on the team.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Tony said. “May I buy you a coke at the Beach House?” It was only a few blocks away.
“I’ve got to shower. And I’ve got a lot of homework.”
“I’ll wait here until you shower. And I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.” Tony gave her his best pickup smile, the one he had used so successfully in college.
“Well, all right. I’ll meet you outside in a few minutes.”
Tony congratulated himself on still having the old charm, but he suspected that the reason she had accepted had more to do with the fact that they both worked on the Hotline. That created a bond between people.
“Joy was my best friend,” Martha said, stirring the milkshake she had ordered, with a straw. “I loved her. We grew up together. We did everything together. We learned to play volleyball together.”
Shahla had also said that Joy was her best friend. This tended to confirm his jealousy theory-not that Martha was jealous of Joy, but that Shahla was jealous of Martha. He said, “I suppose the other players were a little envious of the fact that Joy was an all-star.”
They had driven to the Beach House in separate cars. Many of the Bonita Beach students had their own cars, or at least had ready access to cars. This amazed Tony, who hadn’t had a car until he had bought one for himself after he finished college. He wondered if this affluence was good for them.
Martha shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. When you’re part of a team, you want the team to win. With Joy on the team, we were winners. Without Joy, we’re…well, we’re kind of mediocre. And she didn’t have a big head. She was a team player. We shouldn’t have lost today. With Joy, we would have won easily.”
She was lecturing him. Could she fake that level of intensity? Tony knew from his own experience as a teenager that they could be devious. But she sounded sincere. Seeing her up close, he realized that when she lost her acne, she would be a knockout. And when her coordination improved, she would be a good volleyball player. She didn’t have to take a backseat to anybody. He sipped his black coffee and shifted tactics. “Do you have any idea who might have killed Joy?”
“Detective Croyden asked me that question. It sounds crazy, but maybe it was somebody who wants the Bonita Beach volleyball team to lose. We’ve been dominating the league for years. The other teams would give a lot to beat us. You saw how they celebrated today. And it’s not just the kids. It’s the parents. When I was playing AYSO soccer, sometimes the referees had to red-card a rowdy parent.”
“Well, that narrows it down to a few hundred suspects.”
Martha smiled. “It’s just my idea. I don’t know of anybody in particular.”