Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“Base,” a tinny voice said.

“This is Noble. Call maintenance and tell them to put down their comic books and get down to Gull Drive at Live Oak and fix that pothole. If a member’s car hits that I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Roger, Chief,” the voice said.

Noble put down the radio. “Sorry about that. Where was I?”

“I forget,” Ham said, looking out the window at the golf course.

“Well, never mind, here we are.” He pulled into the drive of the country club building and parked. Immediately a man in a large golf cart drove up, took their clubs out of the Range Rover and stowed them in the cart. He drove them to the first tee, where two carts were waiting.

“You two ride together,” Holly said. “You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” She told the man to put her clubs in the other cart.

“What are you playing with, Ham?” Noble asked, peering at Ham’s clubs.

“Callaways.”

“The stainless steel ones?”

“Yep.”

“Tell you what: I’ll play your clubs, and you play mine. They’re the new Callaway irons, the tungsten-titanium ones.” He gave Ham a brief lecture on the clubs.

Holly teed off first, sending a long straight drive down the middle of the fairway. The two men drove next, landing within ten yards ahead of her ball. Holly got into her cart and followed Noble down the fairway. They were all on the green in two, and all three parred the hole.

As they played along, Holly realized that, for the first time, she could see many of the houses, which backed up onto the course. They were grandiose in scale, but seemed well designed, and the properties were beautifully landscaped.

Just beyond the ninth green was a little outdoor bar, and they sat down for a few minutes and had a beer. Holly thought it was a nice convenience, even if she had never had a beer in the middle of a golf game. What caught her attention was that the barman had a pronounced bulge under the left arm of his tight, white jacket.

“This is some place, Barney,” Ham said, looking around. “How long you been here?”

“Since shortly before the place opened. I’m a partner in a security service in Miami, and we were approached about providing services up here. In the end, they hired me to put together their own force, and I liked it up here, so I stayed. I’ve still got my share of the Miami outfit, though, and it does real well. You ready to play on?”

They drove from the tenth tee and continued their game. By the time they had finished the three of them were in a dead heat, when the handicaps were figured in. Barney drove them up to the clubhouse and led them into the pro shop. The place was large and had many displays of equipment.

“We stock only the finest stuff,” Barney said. “What did you think of the new Callaways?”

“I thought they were sensational,” Ham replied. “I played over my head today.”

“You want a set? Everything here is half price.”

“You sure? Wouldn’t that get you in trouble with your board?”

“Not a bit. It’s a funny thing: very rich people don’t like to pay retail for anything, so we make it cheap for them in the pro shop and the restaurant, while charging them an arm and a leg for just about everything else. Come on, let’s pick you out a set. How about you, Holly?”

“No, thanks, Barney. I’m well fixed for clubs.” Holly tagged along while Ham chose his irons and a set of the titanium woods, plus a new bag and a couple of dozen balls. He paid with a credit card, and Barney instructed the shop manager to have the new clubs put into Holly’s car at the front gate, along with his old ones.

Barney took Ham and Holly upstairs to the grill room, where they feasted on cheeseburgers. It was Holly’s first glimpse of some of the members, though there were no more than a couple of dozen of them in the large room. She thought they looked foreign, even the ones who weren’t Hispanic or Asian. She thought she heard two men speaking Arabic, but she wasn’t sure.

“Is it always this crowded, Barney?” she asked.

He laughed. “This is pretty typical. We never have a strain on the facilities.”

“Barney,” she said, “so far, I’ve seen three armed men—the guy who drove us in the cart, the bartender at the ninth hole and the golf shop manager. Is that usual?”

“You have a sharp eye,” Barney said. “A lot of our employees are trained and licensed to carry firearms. Makes for a nice extension to our security force, and the members like it that way.”

“Whatever you say.” Holly dug into her cheeseburger, which was as good as she’d ever had.