Read Online Amen Corner by Rick Shefchik - Free Book Online Page B

pen backward, indicating a woman standing over his right shoulder, interviewing Cody Menninger. She didn’t look like she attended a lot of golf tournaments. She had short, curly, white-blond hair and her hoop earrings dangled below the collar of the white turtleneck she wore under a beige blazer. She finished off the look with black, spike-heeled boots and skin-tight black pants. She was filling up her notebook with Menninger’s recollections of what he’d seen on the golf course that morning.
    â€œWho is she?” Sam asked Daly.
    â€œDeborah Scanlon of the New York Times,” Daly said. “Pain in the ass. Don’t talk to her.”
    â€œI heard that, Daly,” Scanlon called over her shoulder. She thanked Menninger and moved over to join them.
    â€œHi,” she said with a quick, tight smile that seemed as practiced as it was insincere. She extended her hand to Sam. “Sam Skarda, right?”
    â€œRight,” he said. She gave him the kind of dead-fish handshake that made him do all the work.
    She pulled out her notebook and flipped through the pages with hyper-kinetic energy. Her eyes darted back and forth between Sam and others in the crowd around him like a flirt at a cocktail party, afraid she might be missing a better opportunity.
    â€œWhat did you tell Daly?” she said, felt-tipped marker poised to write. “I know you’re a cop. You must have noticed something down there. How close did you get?”
    â€œClose enough,” Sam said. “I saw that somebody had burned the words this is the last masters into the grass on the fairway.”
    â€œWho would do that?” Scanlon demanded. “An Augusta National member?”
    â€œI have no idea,” Sam said.
    â€œMy sources tell me there are some members here who’d rather shut down the Masters than let women into the club. They figure if the Masters goes away, the protesters go away.”
    â€œI don’t see it, Debbie,” Daly said. “They love their greens more than they hate women.”
    â€œButt out, Daly,” she said. “I want to know what Sam thinks.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about Augusta National’s members, except that they invited me to play here,” Sam said.
    â€œWhat else did you see?”
    â€œMedical examiners. Forensics experts. Canine units. The usual crime scene personnel. There’s no way I could tell what they were looking for from where I was.”
    â€œHow many dogs?”
    â€œTwo, that I saw.”
    â€œWhat were the dogs doing?”
    â€œProbably taking a whiz on Porter’s azaleas,” Daly said. “The cops are going to get a bill for that.”
    â€œThe dogs were sniffing around the trees and bushes on the hillside left of the green,” Sam said.
    â€œAnd what does that tell you?”
    â€œTells me they’re looking for someone’s scent.”
    â€œWhose scent?”
    â€œIf I knew that, I’d be talking to the cops, not you,” Sam said, suddenly tired of Scanlon’s staccato questions. “Look, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a shower.”
    â€œDebbie doesn’t mind,” Daly said. “She’d be glad to interview you while you take a shower.”
    â€œDaly, you’re a pig,” Scanlon said. “And it’s Deborah. Before you go, Sam, I just want you to tell me what you think happened down there. From a cop’s perspective.”
    â€œI’ll tell you the same thing I told Daly—off the record,” Sam said. Scanlon didn’t indicate any disagreement, so he continued: “It looks like somebody was trying to make some kind of statement. Maybe a warning.”
    â€œWho was he trying to warn?”
    â€œYou got me.”
    Scanlon closed up her notebook and walked off.
    â€œI’m just here to play golf,” Sam said to Daly. “Why is anyone interested in what I think?”
    â€œBecause the