A Hole in One Murder Read online

  “A name he’s stuck with for the rest of his life if it’s stupid.”

  The back door opened and slapped shut at the opposite end of the house. Tickling her son and patting her husband on the back while he changed the diaper, she left them to go to the kitchen.

  “Well, look at you!” Trinh said. “Gun range rat has morphed into America’s Ambassador in golf cleats!”

  “At least I won’t be having a wardrobe malfunction on the course. Josh said something about that skirt you convinced me to buy was too tight around the back end.”

  “Momma, whatsa warble funchun?” three-year-old Thérèse asked from where she sat at the breakfast table.

  Melanie pushed the bowl of oatmeal to in front of her daughter again. “Your grandmother will explain when she takes you to the movies.”

  “Is it fun?”

  “Not for me, it wouldn’t be. Where is your grandmother?”

  “Go for walk,” the girl said.

  “I just saw her waiting to cross the highway,” Trinh said, in her usual place of leaning in a doorway, sipping coffee.

  “With any luck, she won’t make it.”

  “Momma…”

  “I didn’t say that, Sweetie. Just eat your breakfast.” Melanie drank from her mug of cold coffee, but poured out the last of it. “Okay, my nerves don’t need that. I wonder where Cassandra is?”

  “She’s part of the foursome?” Trinh asked.

  “She’s my caddie. I’ll have to find someone at the club to join us. Unless you…”

  “Forget it, Mel. You’re not dragging me into this little caper. As your Vice Mayor, I’m drawing the line at playing golf. I get enough exercise without being chased around the island by horny Japanese businessmen. And if there’s one person on this island worse at golf than you, it’s me. Forget it.”

  “Momma, Caffander gonna play warble funchun with you?”

  Melanie drew up a chair next to her daughter. “Okay, for the last time, how do you say her name?”

  “Caff…Cafsh…Caffishsander?”

  “Cah…san…dra.”

  “Cah…”

  “Okay.”

  “Sam…mich. Cat sammich?”

  While Trinh laughed, Melanie tried again, but still to no avail. She was saved when Cassandra showed up.

  Being the daughter of a US President now long dead, a fact few people still knew, Melanie was entitled to Secret Service protection. In the past, she and her family had three agents on their protection detail, including their first nanny. But through Melanie’s insistence, it shrank to one, that being Cassandra. About the same age as Melanie, she was more of a friend than aloof agent in dark clothes and wired earbud. Most of the time she kept her distance, leaving Melanie and her family the option to tap on two keys on their smart phones to summon help if there was trouble. In all the years of having remote protection, Melanie had used the button only twice.

  “Who’s up for golf?” Cassandra asked cheerfully when she came in.

  “I guess that’s me.” Melanie finished the pronunciation lesson with her daughter. “Be a good girl with your grandmother, okay? Make sure she doesn’t get lost at the mall and hold her hand. And what’s our rule for going to town with her?”

  “No crying?”

  “That’s rule number two. What’s number one rule when going out with Grandmother?”

  “No hot dogs.”

  “Right.”

  “Seriously?” Cassandra asked, once they were in her Escalade making the short trip to the golf course. “She can’t even have a hot dog?”

  “It’s meat.”

  “Supposedly. Josh doesn’t mind you raising her as a strict vegetarian?”

  “I’m raising her as a Buddhist. She’s Jewish on Saturdays when she goes to temple with him, when he actually makes the effort to go, and she’s Catholic on Sundays when Trinh takes her to church, and Episcopalian if she goes to church with Josh and Dottie. The rest of the week, we’re Buddhists.”

  “That makes her only five-sevenths Buddhist. Seems to me there’s enough wiggle room in there that she could have an occasional hot dog.”

  “Except I get an extra seventh for being bigger than the rest of them, another seventh for being able to beat up any of them, another seventh for being county mayor, and one last seventh for being crankier than all of them put together. When I need to be, anyway.”

  “Speaking of being cranky, you seem a little uptight,” Cassandra said.

  “Just this golf game. Dad was the golfer, not me. And Ambassador and President. What do I know about meeting foreign dignitaries?”

  “You’ll be fine. You speak fluent Japanese, so there won’t be any communication gap. Just relax and enjoy the game.”

  “You think I should speak Japanese with them? I doubt their English will be as good as my Japanese, but it seems to me it would make for better relations if I let them pretend to speak English.”

  “Let them decide. Whatever they start doing with you, go with that. Mostly these things are photo opportunities. Media will be there, so, play to them. Shake these guys’ hands, smile, look like you’re old best friends, and go play some golf. I’ve limited media exposure to only at the first hole and a short press conference at the end. The rest of the time, there will be three holes of distance between us and other foursomes, in front and behind. It’ll be as if we have the course to ourselves.”

  “I never did find a fourth,” Melanie said.

  Cassandra pulled into the clubhouse parking lot for the Napili Bluffs Golf Course. “I’ve had two agents come over from Honolulu for the weekend. One will be the fourth, the other his caddie. They’re new in our office, right out of the training academy, so this will be a good opportunity for all of us to get to know each other.”

  “Sorry to put you guys to all this work.”

  “And pass up the chance to play eighteen holes at Maui’s best course? Are you kidding? Agents would’ve come from DC for that.” They watched as two Asian men went into the clubhouse, dressed in what looked like expensive golf clothes. “Think that’s them?”

  “Yeah,” Melanie said. “The shorter one is Yoshi Takeda, the Minister of Urban Youth Development. I recognize him from the mole on his face. The other must be Goro Oguchi. Apparently, he owns some start-up sporting goods manufacturing company. I think that has a lot to do with him wanting to meet me.”

  “You know their culture as well as anyone, Melanie. It’s all about business with them. They’ll toss out a few subtle sales pitches for buying the guy’s sporting goods, and you in turn will act enthusiastic but not make any promises. That’s the game.”

  “That much I can do. I just don’t want to look foolish while playing the game.”

  “Just be polite, use formal language, and be one or two scores worse than them the whole time.”

  “That won’t be hard.”

  Before Melanie could leave the Escalade, Cassandra stopped her. “One last thing. Let me get balls and tees from pouches in your bag.”

  “Let me guess. You have your pistol and magazines hidden in it?”

  “Two pistols and enough magazines to shoot up the course for the entire morning. Plus, there’s a MAC-10. The other agents will also be armed.”

  “Surely you don’t think these two guys pose some sort of threat?” Melanie asked.

  “Less to you and more to themselves. The Minister’s bodyguards will be their caddies, and two others will tail along behind him. Either they think there’s some sort of risk, or it might just be SOP for them. That minister has been under fire at home lately, from all of Japan’s political parties, and just last week an official investigation was opened into possible misconduct. Apparently, more than a few people want his head on a platter.”

  “Swell,” Melanie said. “And I’m rolling out the red carpet for the guy.”

  “Well, in two days, he moves on to Washington DC, and he becomes their problem. In the mean time, it wouldn’t be out of the question that someone might take a p
ot shot at him. If anything does happen, let the other two agents handle it. I’ll get you back to the Escalade. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Melanie said, reaching for the door handle.

  “No, Melanie. I don’t want you getting involved in a shoot-out on the golf course, got it? And I doubt the Governor or DC wants anything like that, either.”

  “I just want to get through eighteen holes of golf without looking like a dope, and without straining my back too much. Everything else is on you, Cassie.”

  With no one else to do so, and Cassandra masquerading as a caddie rather than as a Secret Service agent, Melanie performed the introductions herself. She had never met the other two agents from Honolulu, so she allowed them to introduce themselves as though one was an old family friend and the other his caddie hired from the club.

  Like all Japanese professionals do, business cards were exchanged, examined closely, and kept clutched in hands. Even the simplest of greetings and exchanges of cards was fraught with cultural landmines. One wrong move, putting a business card in a hip pocket, not bowing properly, using the wrong honorific, could doom a formal relationship before it ever got started. Melanie smiled politely after bowing and shaking their hands. The Cabinet minister was nearly a decade older than her but was so well groomed, he seemed younger. The businessman was about her same age, had a fake suntan, and a pencil moustache. Neither would’ve been appealing to her had she been single.

  At the first tee, it was ladies first. Since Melanie was the only woman in the group, she teed up first. News reporters were there, including from the local newspaper and television station, networks from Honolulu, NHK World from Japan, and even someone from the huge QBN from New York was there, all of them snapping pictures or rolling film. Melanie eavesdropped on what the NHK reporter was reporting, and it wasn’t much different than what the Americans were reporting. Mostly it was about how a prominent member of Japan’s ruling cabinet had made a stop on Maui before going on to Washington DC for high-level meetings there.

  Melanie had been playing golf on and off for only a few years, and she knew the basics. Since she was the tallest in the group and as athletic as any of them, she decided to play from the same tee-off as the men. The biggest thing that hampered her usual play was a wicked hook to the left that showed up at the most inopportune moments. Fortunately, the wind was coming from offshore that morning, which should help push the ball back toward the fairway. But not trusting the whims of tropical tradewinds, she set her feet slightly offset, with the hope a hooked ball would land somewhere near the fairway. With a mighty stroke, she sent the ball in flight.

  The two Japanese men nodded and smiled, but muttered quietly to themselves.

  When she handed her driver back to Cassandra, Melanie whispered, “I hope QBN got film of that. It didn’t hook, but somehow it hit the fairway anyway.”

  Next went the Secret Service agent, still posing as Melanie’s distant cousin. Melanie watched in earnest, finding he had talent as his ball landed further down and right in the middle of the fairway, giving him a good lie to the green.

  Next went the sporting goods manufacturer. Right from the start, he had said he wanted to be called simply as Goro, acting a little chummier than what Melanie was comfortable with. When his ball bounced out of the rough and onto the fairway, Melanie complimented his drive.

  The last to tee up was Minister Takeda. Of all of them, he was wearing the most expensive outfit by far, hundreds of dollars more than anything Melanie was wearing. She watched him carefully as he teed up in slow motion, taking his time and seemingly relishing every moment of playing golf on a premiere Maui course on a warm, sunny morning. Although he was suntanned, his complexion looked as good as any woman could hope for, his hair was perfect, and his glasses were the type that tinted from clear to dark in mere moments when going outside. It was obvious he spent a fabulous amount of money on his appearance, something that never impressed Melanie much in a man.

  When Takeda sent his ball flying, Melanie was impressed with his stroke. He had been trained, almost to the level of looking professional.

  “Excellent shot, Takeda-sama,” she said to him, using the proper honorific one would use with a man at his level of government.

  “Thank you, but please, for today, just call me Yoshi, and my friend Goro.”

  Off they went to their balls, two of the minister’s bodyguards leading the way in one cart, while the Japanese men followed along behind them. Melanie and Cassandra followed them, with the other two agents bringing up the rear.

  By the time they got to the fourth hole, it was painfully obvious the match for the lead was between the Secret Service agent from Honolulu and the cabinet minister from Japan. Melanie and Oguchi were playing for third and fourth place, lagging several shots behind. Holing a long put for two over par at the fourth, she handed her putter back to Cassandra.

  “You’re one stroke ahead of Oguchi,” Cassandra whispered as they looked at the scorecard. “Try to even it up.”

  “Like I have much choice. This middle part of the course is where I have the most trouble. Those dang bunkers are everywhere, and I’ve been known to hook my ball into the water hazard to the left more than a few times.”

  “There’s no hazard on the left,” Cassandra said. “Just the bluffs and the ocean below.”

  “Yes, that giant water hazard called the Pacific Ocean is the one I have trouble with.”

  Even from two-hundred yards away, it was easy to see the waves breaking against the lava bluffs at the edge of the course. Every twenty seconds, another wave would break, sending fountains of water into the air, which was then blown toward the course by the steady wind. On the other side of the narrow fairway were deep bunkers filled with white sand, carved from the ancient lava flows. The fifth hole at Napili Bluffs was well known throughout the islands as being the toughest to navigate, even for pros.

  Melanie wanted to close her eyes before she swung her club, not really caring one way or the other if her ball landed in a bunker or the ocean. She muttered a silent prayer as the ball cut through the wind, staying on a low and straight course of flight. When it bounced, it skidded along the mown Bermuda grass in a nearly straight line toward the green another hundred yards further along.

  “How in the world did I do that?” she said, unaware the two Japanese men were watching her closely. “And why wasn’t QBN here getting that on tape?”

  “Melanie, I think you have been holding out on us,” Yoshi said. “If you are looking to wager with us, you should’ve done that two holes back when you were struggling with that row of palm trees.”

  “Missed my chance, I guess.”

  As if by some miracle, three of them stayed out of the water and sand, with only Goro finding his way into the third bunker to the right. It had hit high but rolled down to the lowest spot. When he walked down to it, Melanie could barely see his head as he planted his feet.

  “I can’t even see the top!” Goro shouted in Japanese from the bottom of the bunker. His English wasn’t even close to being as good as the cabinet minister’s, barely passable for even the simplest of conversations.

  “Just give it a good, solid whack, Goro,” Yoshi said. “Doesn’t matter where it goes, as long as it’s on grass.”

  Melanie heard the whoosh of a club head in sand, and the spray of sand that flew with it. But no ball. He tried again, with the same result. When there was profanity, it was all Melanie could do to not chuckle.

  “What’d he say?” Cassandra asked Melanie.

  “Same thing I always say on this hole.”

  “Which is?”

  “Something about the heredity of the sand.”

  “Goro! Quit digging a grave!” Yoshi shouted. He tossed a club down to his friend. “Use a sand wedge!”

  Two more strokes, both with the same result. With the fourth try, Melanie watched the ball fly above the level of the fairway before it bounced off the lip of grass that ringed the bunker and rolled down again.
/>
  “Just throw it!” Yoshi shouted, but not quite as loud.

  A moment later, the ball silently flew out and landed on the fairway grass.

  “Nice shot,” Melanie said, taking the man’s hand to help him from the bunker before he slid back down again. “I spend a lot of time in there also.”

  “Oh, you speak Japanese?” he asked as they walked to where their balls waited. They allowed the other two of the foursome to play.

  “Something my mother insisted on teaching me as a kid.”

  “That’s good news, because I was hoping to talk with you about something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, as you probably know, I own a new sporting goods company. We manufacture quality equipment for nearly every sport, as good as any other company. All of it is official and regulation when it comes to organized sports.”

  “I see.” Melanie did, too. He had finally launched into his sales spiel, something she’d been expecting all morning. “I already have all the gear I could possibly use, and just not much time to use it. You realize I have a busy surgical practice, right?”

  “Yes, but I’m more interested in something larger. I’ve looked into the history of athletic goods sales in Maui schools and found much of it is old or outdated. Even though the college is still fairly new, as are their sporting teams, I think they could compete at a higher level with better gear.”

  “And your company just happens to make what these teams need?” she asked.

  “Yes, of course. If you’re interested, I could make some sort of deal if equipment is bought in large batches and shipped all at once.”

  “I certainly appreciate the offer but this is something no one has brought up in county council meetings. Believe it or not, Maui County’s budget is very tight right now, and spending money on sports equipment is quite low on the list of expenditures.”

  “We even have equipment for large venue surf competitions. Maybe you watched that Grand Championship of the Pacific Surf Competition last month in Australia? We provided the bleachers and all of the vendor kiosks. Very high quality and easily portable. It erects in only a few hours and is wind-rated to near hurricane conditions, guaranteed to remain intact.”