CHAPTER 32

Golf Cart Hearse

The roads west were clear; we made the forty-mile trip in fortyfive minutes. To my relief, as well as my amazement, the Mustang still stood behind the shrubbery where I’d left it. Maybe Schorr’s deputies hadn’t spotted it: maybe they’d posted the squad car to intercept Benji, rather than to stake out my car. We drove on past the Mustang and parked the Jaguar in the Larchmont carriageway.

While the dogs tore through the underbrush, Mr. Contreras and I cleaned out the Jaguar. I was concerned about obliterating any trace of Benji, but he was happy to think he was getting dog hair and my fingerprints out of the car. We left it on the carriageway, keys in the ignition, for some New Solway cop to find.

We walked back along the ditch toward the Mustang. The route that had been so slow and fear-laden in the dark middle of night was an easy stroll now that I had Mr. Contreras and the dogs with me.

“I’m looking for the culvert where I got under the road,” I told my neighbor. “It’s got a muddy bottom; I’d like Mitch and Peppy to churn it up and hide my tracks.”

The gray air had thickened into blue-black evening. Mr. Contreras used my flashlight while I turned on the headlamp I’d used yesterday. It was Mitch who found the entrance. I stooped to look at the culvert floor.

Benji’s and my footprints were clearly visible; they overlay the wheel marks I’d noticed at the other end on Thursday evening.

“Looks like some kind of little utility truck, forklift or something, come along.” Mr. Contreras said. “Someone chasing after you?”

I stared from him to the wheel marks, suddenly making sense of what I was seeing. The golf cart that had been chasing me through my dreams. That was how Marc Whitby had been brought to the Larchmont Pond. Someone had driven him there. It was so easy. You could get a cart from the Anodyne golf course, drive it into Anodyne Park along the path put up for members, and then, if you knew about this culvert, get to Larchmont Hall.

In disjoint phrases, I explained what I thought had happened. My neighbor nodded intently. “If you’re right, doll, you better try to find that golf cart. Or you think your killer already disposed of it?”

“I don’t know,” I said unhappily. “Whoever it is-it’s not they’re so smart, but the law doesn’t care enough to go after them. So it could still be lying around.”

I looked at my watch. Six-thirty. The longer I put off confronting the law, the harder they would make it for me when I finally surfaced. Still, since we were out here, I’d take the extra time to talk to someone at the golf course.

I bumped the Mustang back onto the road and whipped down Dirksen to the golf course. Naturally there was a gate, an ornate affair with a picture, or maybe a logo, welded into the bars. A spotlight on the design highlighted a pond with cat’s tails sprouting around it. “Anodyne Park Golf Course” was emblazoned in gold and green across the top.