Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“I’ve got a key.”

“Then let’s get over there,” she said, starting for the house.

“Hang on,” he said, catching her wrist. “I don’t know that I’d go out there in broad daylight. You never know who’s watching. Let’s wait until tonight.”

“Okay, I guess it can wait until then.”

“Besides, you and I have a golf date.”

Holly did some stretching, then took a couple of practice swings and addressed the ball. She tried to relax and make an easy swing. There was the sound of a metal driver striking the ball, and she looked up to see it going high and straight down the fairway.

“Very nice,” Jackson said. “That’s a good two hundred and ten yards.” He stepped up to the ball, went through his routine and swung mightily.

“That’s a good two hundred and fifty yards,” Holly said. “Trouble is, it’s in the trees. Take a mulligan.”

Jackson made a grumbling sound.

“And don’t hit it so hard this time.”

He swung again; this time his slice was gentler. The ball landed ten yards beyond Holly’s but to the right of the fairway. They got into the cart and started driving.

For seventeen holes, they remained more or less even, trading the lead hole by hole. They were tied going into the eighteenth, and they both had good drives, but Holly’s second shot went into a bunker, while Jackson made the green in two. It took Holly two strokes to get out of the sand, and she three-putted, for a double bogey. Jackson parred the hole.

Jackson totted up their scores. “You had a ninety-one, I had an eighty-nine.”

Holly thought she had never seen a man so relieved, but she couldn’t resist puncturing his balloon. “What’s your handicap?” she asked.

“Twelve.”

“Mine’s fifteen. You owe me three strokes.”

His face fell. “It’s rude to beat your host, you know.”

“I know, and I’m so sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I know. I lied.”

They both burst out laughing.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some dinner, then we’ll go out to Chet’s house.”

CHAPTER

26

T hey drove north on A1A from the center of the town and turned onto the North Bridge, one of two serving the barrier island. Daisy sat in the rear seat, calmly looking out the window. Before they reached the mainland, Jackson turned off at an exit.

“It’s on Egret Island,” he said, pointing ahead. “It’s a beautiful place, the sort of property that would have made a very expensive development, but it was bought up in the late thirties by people who built fairly modest houses on fairly small lots. Some of them have been renovated and enlarged, and it’s getting to the point where waterfront property is rare enough that people are buying two houses, tearing them down and building a large one.”

They were driving down a fairly ordinary middle-class residential road, with two

or three larger, more expensive houses among them, brightly lit in the darkness.

“Chet’s place is right down at the tip of the island,” Jackson said. “By the way, a couple of your officers, Hurd Wallace and Bob Hurst, live out here—or at least, Wallace’s ex-wife does. She got the place in the divorce.”

The road narrowed, and the houses on either side disappeared. Holly saw a FOR SALE sign offering thirty acres.