I told the guard in the gatehouse that I was working for Geraldine Graham and had some questions about a missing golf cart. He accepted this claim unblinkingly, but wouldn’t let the car inside the course with dogs in it “You never know, people say they’ll keep their animals in the car, but then they let them out on the course.”

I didn’t waste time on argument, just got permission to leave the car at the entrance while we went in. I pulled my briefcase from the trunk, since it still had Marc Whitby’s picture in it, and hurried up the drive to the clubhouse with my neighbor.

Saturday is such a busy golfing day that the head of the club was on duty in the clubhouse. A doorman pointed him out, a dapper fiftyish man

laughing with a red-faced group of drinkers in front of the fireplace. When I said I was a detective, a hush fell over the group. The manager whisked us into his office, just in case I was going to breathe something ghastly over his members. But when he heard my story-I worked for Ms. Graham; her son had had a near miss with a golf cart on the road several days ago; she was concerned and wanted to know if one had been stolen-he quickly off loaded me onto the equipment supervisor.

When Eli Janicek, the supervisor, trotted in, the club manager told him to get Mr. Contreras and me over to the equipment shed: we clearly lowered the tone of the place. We followed Janicek out the service entrance while the manager rejoined the drinkers at the fireplace.

Although Janicek’s attention was divided between me and his crew, who were calling in with reports on abandoned carts and clubs on the fairways, he answered my questions pretty directly. None of his carts was missing. Yes, some had been picked up from Anodyne Park last Monday morning, but there was nothing strange in that-members were always driving them over to the Anodyne estate and leaving them for the equipment crew to retrieve.

I was turning away, disappointed, when Janicek added, “Now I think of it, one was caked with mud and when we come to clean it up, we found the front pretty well dented in. That didn’t sit with me right. We clean up after the members, that’s our job, but then they abuse equipment and don’t even leave a note saying who was it that did it, that’s not right. People need to act responsible.”

The cart had been parked outside the bar, if he remembered right. When I asked if he could be sure of the date, he pulled out his log: yes, this was the one: the cart had been caked in mud up over the wheels. When, they hosed it down, they found dents in the sides, deep scratches in the paint and the front axle bent. Some kid treating a golf cart like a dune buggy, and, even if they found out who, the parents more than likely would chew out the clubhouse manager, not the kid. On Wednesday, when Janicek had cleaned up the cart, he’d sent it on to the repair shop but he didn’t think the mechanics had gotten to it yet, too big a backlog.