“It’s a golf joke,” Nicholson said. “They’re all the same.”
“Are you married?”
“I was,” Hedrick replied. “She died, and the funeral’s this afternoon. I’ll tell you, if the hearse passes us, I’m taking my cap off.”
“You’re not wearing a cap.”
“Well, if I were. No, I’m not married. Why do you ask?”
“Ever been?”
“Briefly, years ago. It didn’t work out, and I’m in no hurry to repeat the experiment.”
“I’m married,” Nicholson said.
“Oh?”
“Happily. Or so I’ve always thought.”
“Oh.”
“There I was,” Nicholson said, “with a beautiful wife. And a best friend. Do you begin to get the picture?”
“I get a picture,” Hedrick said, “but I don’t know whether or not it’s the picture.”
“There’s only one picture,” Nicholson said, “and you got it a lot quicker than I did. It took me a while. The signs were there, but I didn’t see them at first. Then I began to notice things. Facial expressions, eye movements. Something in the air. Nothing concrete, but there came a day when I just knew, and realized I’d known for a while. Known without knowing I knew, if you follow me.”
“Perhaps you were mistaken.”
“Just what I told myself. Then there came the day when my friend backed out of a foursome at the last minute. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, and for once I could guess the reason.”
“So what happened? The three of you played without him?”
“The three of us teed off together,” Nicholson said, “and the three of us played a couple of holes together, and then I pulled a muscle hitting a two iron and I was in agony. Or at least that’s the show I put on for the two fellows I was with.”
“You dropped out?”
“And left them to finish the round. I knew they wouldn’t quit just because I’d torn up my shoulder. I mean, they’re golfers, right? Hit the ball, drag Fred. Except in this instance Fred picked up his golf clubs and went home. Where I was not greatly surprised to find my friend’s car in my driveway.”
“It was definitely his car?”
“I suppose it could have been somebody else’s green Olds Cutlass, and that it just happened to have a dented right rear fender, and a license plate reading UNDRPAR. No, I’m afraid it was his car.”
“Still, there might have been an innocent explanation.”
“There might,” Nicholson agreed. “I pulled into the driveway and parked behind his car. Then I walked around to the rear of the house and looked in the bedroom window. Again, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for what I saw. Perhaps, for instance, my best friend had somehow sprung a leak, and my wife was merely trying to reinflate him.”
“Oh.”
“Quite.”
“What did you do? Burst in the door? Confront them?”
“Of course not.”
“Oh.”
“What I felt like doing,” Nicholson said, “was driving straight back to the country club and catching up with the fellows I’d been playing with. But how could I do that after my imaginary shoulder injury? So what I did was go to a chiropractor and get a deep heat treatment.”
“Even though there was nothing wrong with you?”
“You can always find someone happy to give you a deep heat treatment, and what harm can it do? It’s not as though I was in danger of melting. It enabled me to make a miraculous recovery, and I was out on the course the next day.”
“But not with your friend, I don’t suppose.”
“Why not? We’d been playing together for years.”
“But wasn’t it awkward?”
“Why should it be? He didn’t know that I knew anything.”
“And you could just act as though nothing had happened?”
“Not much acting required, is there? All I had to do was play golf and have the sort of cursory conversation one has on a golf course.”
“And inside?”
“In the clubhouse, you mean?”
“Inside yourself.”
“Inside myself,” Nicholson said calmly, “I was filled with murderous rage.”
“I can imagine. You must have wanted to kill them both.”
“Certainly not. Why would I want to kill my wife?”
“But—”
“The woman’s been an ideal wife since the day I married her. An ornament in public, a social asset, an impeccable homemaker, a splendid cook. More to the point, she’s an excellent companion, and, in intimate moments, a spirited partner. I’d have to be out of my mind to want any harm to come to her.”
“But she deceived you,” Hedrick pointed out. “She slept with your best friend.”
“I’m not sure that’s the right word for it,” Nicholson said thoughtfully. “From the look of things, sleep didn’t play much of a role in the relationship. But yes, she deceived me, and with my closest friend. And, quite possibly, with others I don’t know about.”
“And you can accept that?”
“I can certainly forgive it. She’s a woman, for heaven’s sake. Remember your Bible? Eve ate the apple. It cost us all our tenancy in Paradise, but does it make you want to kill the poor woman? Certainly not.”
“But—”
“She was a woman. She was tempted, she was powerless to resist. Not her fault. But as for the one who tempted her...”
“The serpent.”
“The snake,” said Nicholson, with feeling, “in the grass. The damned snake. He’s the one you want to crush under your heel.”
Nicholson held the honors, having won the previous hole. He took an unusually vicious practice swing.
“My best friend,” he said. “Fred.”
“His name can’t really be Fred.”
“It’s as good a name as any. And we might as well call him something. He’s the one who betrayed me. He’s the one I want to kill.”
He settled himself, addressed the ball. His swing was picture-perfect, and the ball sailed off down the fairway.
“And I’ll do it, too,” he said, and stooped to pick up his tee.
Hedrick sliced his own drive into the woods, and Nicholson could see the notion of a mulligan cross the man’s mind. But Hedrick walked manfully after his ball, and Nicholson kept him company and helped him find it. The man tried to recover with a daring shot between two trees, but the ball caromed off one of them and he wound up worse than where he’d started. He played safe on the third shot and got out onto the fairway, but it still took him five strokes before he reached the green of the par-four hole.
“You and... Fred,” he said along the way. “Is this where the two of you play?”
“We’re both members at Ellicott Creek,” Nicholson said. “That’s where we generally play. I’ve been a member here myself for a little over a year now as well, that’s one of the perks my firm extends when you make junior partner, and I’ve had Fred here a couple of times as my guest. But I doubt you’d know him.”
“I was wondering,” Hedrick admitted. They reached the green, and Hedrick, who was away, knelt down to read the green. He got up, stood over the ball. He said, “What you said before. That you intend to kill him. You were just saying that, weren’t you?”
The question was delivered in a tone that suggested it might or might not be rhetorical. One could answer it or not, and Nicholson chose not to.
Hedrick four-putted for a quintuple bogey.
“That big silver club in your bag,” Hedrick said. “Except of course it’s not silver. Titanium or something like that, isn’t it?”
“Some space-age alloy.”
“If they can put a man on the moon,” Hedrick said, “I suppose they ought to be able to add a few yards to a man’s tee shot. That’s the Big Brenda, isn’t it? But you haven’t been using it.”