Playing the Devil Read online

  Wendy was about to head over to Deedah’s office when the director, herself, suddenly appeared in the doorway to the office wing. “Everyone here, Wendy?”

  “All accounted for. We are ready to play.”

  “Even Hollis? He’s always late for everything. I seriously considering renaming him ‘Dawdle’ by the time he was in his teens.”

  “Even Hollis,” Wendy said, somewhat amused.

  “Then let’s deal the cards.”

  “Did you want one of Carlos’s cocktails before we start?”

  Deedah waved her off vigorously. “Not yet. Let’s see how the cards go first. I may be driven to drink if I have an afternoon of passing on every hand I’m dealt.”

  “Maybe the cards will take turns being good to us.”

  As the two women moved together to the bridge table, Wendy marveled once again at the foursome who had formed the new bridge club. How different they all were—particularly the women. Where Carly was constantly drowning her sorrows, Deedah was the quintessential “take charge” personality. A retired accountant who had put her skills to good use after her husband’s death, she was eminently qualified to run the RCC, making quick decisions and apologizing to no one.

  Unlike Carly, however, she disdained the latest fashions, preferring voluminous caftans that had the virtue of covering all of her significant figure flaws. Decidedly matronly in appearance, she usually just pulled her graying hair back into a knot or French twist and left it at that. Nonetheless, hers was a pleasant-enough round face that was far from off-putting. Wendy wasn’t quite sure how the four of them would get along as bridge players, but she was certain their time together would be anything but dull.

  Finally, it was time for the Bridge Bunch to get things started, and it was Wendy who did the honors after everyone was seated. “Well, here we are,” she began, smiling at the look of anticipation on their faces, “and I trust we will become the only game in town after a little time has passed. We’re only four right now, but we can always hope that we will grow to four or five tables with two dozen regulars. Maybe we can eventually hold our very own championship that will mean something.”

  “That would be lovely,” Deedah chimed in, and the others nodded approvingly.

  “Before we begin,” Wendy continued, “I’d like to offer a helpful pointer. I thought it would be fun for one of us to take turns explaining one particular element of bridge that’s not used as much as it could be. I’ll be the one this first time, and we’ll go around the table as the weeks pass.”

  She paused and then drew their attention to a hand she had already arranged for herself, separating it by suits and displaying it in the center of the table. “If you need to get up and stand behind me while I discuss this, be my guest.”

  The other three did exactly as she suggested, and then Wendy began explaining. “Today’s pointer is the preemptive bid. Take your time to look it over.”

  There were, in order:

  7 6 4 of spades

  K Q J 10 9 6 2 of hearts

  9 of diamonds

  J 4 of clubs

  After a short period of time had passed, Wendy resumed her presentation. “As you all can see, this hand does not have very much in the way of high card points—just seven, counting the four face cards. It does not have the thirteen or fourteen points normally required for an opening bid. But what it does have is length in hearts—seven of them, in fact. This is the perfect hand for a preemptive bid.”

  The others agreed by nodding their heads or making soft noises that showed they understood.

  “Although it’s possible that the heart suit might become the trump suit, depending upon what your partner has in the way of support, the primary purpose of a preemptive bid is to give the opponents trouble, to disrupt their communication. You preempt by opening at a high level. Thus, if they should get the contract, they will probably be at a much higher level than they would prefer to be. So, you would bid three hearts here, and your partner knows you do not have strength, you have length. The preemptive bid is a defensive bid, but you take the offensive even though you are in a weak position with point count traditionally.”

  Wendy allowed a few more moments to pass and then said, “Any questions on the preemptive bid?”

  It was Hollis who spoke up, applauding her softly a few times. “You did that beautifully, Wendy. I’ve always understood about preempting, but I must confess, I’m always nervous about actually using it. I’m afraid I’ll actually get caught playing the hand and messing up. You know, going down in flames.”

  “Probably not, though,” Wendy said. “At the very least, you will likely rob your opponents of a legit contract they could have had if you hadn’t thrown them off the track and gotten them out of their comfort zone.” Wendy then asked for further questions, but as there were none, the foursome again took their places around the table, and the Bridge Bunch began their very first deal.

  * * *

  The expected deluge that Carly had described upon her arrival began just as Brent Ogle, Tip Jarvis, and Connor James were finishing up the RCC’s ninth hole sometime after the bridge game had started. An explosion of thunder and a spidery bolt of lightning against the frowning black sky had them stuffing their clubs into their bags quickly and jumping into their golf carts as if their pants were on fire. Seconds later, sheets of heavy rain drenched the course, but the men did not have far to go to reach the clubhouse. The trio had been well aware of the forecast, yet had decided to see if they could get in a round anyway.

  For the first time ever in their years of casually playing together, the much more athletic Brent had finished behind the others by three strokes—even if they hadn’t managed the full eighteen. Incredibly, he had double-bogeyed the eighth hole and then followed that with another bogey on the ninth. Until this afternoon, he had never been bested by either of the other men by even a stroke at the end of nine or eighteen, even if they were all thoroughly middle-aged. Tip and Jarvis had whooped and hollered over their long-awaited triumph at the hole and on the way back in their carts. They were like giddy little boys in bumper cars. If they could have rammed Brent, they would have. Tip even raised his fist in the air, and Brent reacted to the gesture with a pronounced scowl plastered across his angular features. If he could have instantly grown a mustache and twirled it, he would have.

  “You guys both know the score wouldn’t have held up if we’d gotten to play the back nine. I just had that crazy slump there at the end,” Brent insisted as they entered the back door of the clubhouse off the wraparound deck and headed down the long hallway toward the locker room, lugging their clubs. Their intention was to put their clubs away, do a quick toweling off of arms and faces, and then avail themselves of Carlos’s services in the great room. The term designated driver was simply not in their vocabulary, yet they had somehow managed to avoid traffic tickets and car wrecks in all their outings together. The gods of the golf course were evidently looking after them.

  Brent decided not to drop the subject of his milestone loss, however. “I mean it. You fellas act like you won the US Open or something. Get over yourselves.”

  “Hey, we’ll take what we can get,” Tip said as an afterthought as they all sat down on the changing benches with their towels. He meant the reply as a joke, but Brent’s frown indicated that he was clearly not taking it in that spirit.

  They were perhaps Rosalie’s most unlikely trio of recreational friends. Not because they did not enjoy their cold dranks, as they preferred to call them, at the bar after golfing; and not because they never failed to swap “dumb blonde” and other juvenile sexist jokes in the locker room. It was anyone’s guess as to why undressing and showering within shouting distance of each other brought out this macho trait in them. Could they all really be that insecure?

  No, the puzzler was that Brent—who still had a full head of dark hair and was enjoying an incredibly successful career as a personal injury lawyer—was a graduate of Rosalie High School, while Tip, now a po
rtly dentist with an old-fashioned, graying crew cut, and Connor, a balding pediatrician with a habit of slapping his friends on the back too heartily—had both graduated from St. Mark’s Academy, an Episcopal private school that attracted wealthier Rosalieans to its corridors.

  The rivalry on the football field between the RHS Devils and the St. Mark’s Saints was as fierce and loaded as the biblical implications of their nicknames and mascots. All three men had played the game for their respective schools, but Brent had been RHS’s most accomplished quarterback ever, winning a scholarship to LSU for his dazzling athleticism. Tip and Connor had never been better than second string for St. Mark’s and had spent most of their time playing in mop-up situations after games had gotten out of hand.

  Over the years, there had been many showdowns when an invitation to the state play-offs was at stake. Victories against the other team were rubbed in, and losses were taken with bitter resignation and resentment. It was public school versus private—the less privileged versus the snobs—perhaps a concept officially left unspoken but branded upon the brains of everyone following the games.

  The most controversial of all the contests between the two schools was the one that had become known as The Four-Second Game, which had taken place quite a few decades earlier. St. Mark’s had led for most of the game, and the score was 16–10, St. Mark’s, with four seconds left. At the time, it had been nine years since St. Mark’s had beaten its public school rival, but it appeared that a breakthrough was at last at hand. Brent had thrown a pass into the St. Mark’s end zone for what would have been a tying touchdown for RHS, but the ball was batted down expertly by a Saints defender.

  Game over. Brent and company had finally tasted defeat in the series for the first time in a good while. Along with Saints fans in the bleachers, Tip and Connor had both jumped up and cheered wildly from their vantage point on the bench.

  But as it turned out, the game was not quite over. Saints fans and players looked up at the scoreboard clock, which somehow had one second left on it. But the pass play surely had taken at least four seconds. Not according to the clock, however, which was the assignment of the clock operator who sat in the press box. When Brent got off one last play in that final second and scored a touchdown when his receiver grazed the very edge of the left pylon, then won the game 17–16 when the extra point was kicked with time expired, Saints fans cried foul, insisting that the clock operator had kept the clock from running out by putting his thumb on it and giving RHS and Brent that one extra second to pull the victory out of the fire.

  “Sour grapes,” was the rallying cry of all RHS fans, including Brent, himself. “Get over it. You lost again. That makes ten in a row.” For his heroics, Brent earned the nickname of “The Baddest Devil of Them All.”

  As a result of that tenth consecutive loss, St. Mark’s longtime coach, P. J. Doughty, was fired for his inability to defeat his school’s archrival, leaving Rosalie in disgrace. It was likely for the best and also a relief, as he and his wife and daughter had been taunted mercilessly for years by their own fans for Coach Doughty’s lack of success against RHS. The sobering fact of life in the Deep South then as now was that football at whatever level enjoyed the status of a religion and its worship was taken as seriously as a heart attack. There had even been fans at the collegiate level who had been shot and killed over what had taken place on the football field. Imagine that. Taking a human life because of what a teenage kid had done with a pigskin.

  In the present moment, Brent had decided not to let go of his unexpected defeat at the hands of his inferior golfing buddies. As an athlete and a lawyer he had rarely lost, and he detested the feeling now as it gripped and squeezed him like a great boa constrictor. It was making it difficult for him to catch his breath. He quickly devised a strategy, preempting Connor by rising from the bench and slapping him on the back first. Then he repeated the gesture with Tip.

  “Let’s just forget about today out there and have a cold drank or two or three, why don’t we?” he told them both.

  “Sounds good to me,” Tip said, while Connor nodded and returned Brent’s backslap.

  Once they were all dried off and settled in at the table nearest the bar, Brent started barking in his customary fashion at Carlos Galbis. “Hey, Chico, stop posing over there and come take our coldo dranko orders. You’re not there for show, you know.”

  Under his breath and out of the side of his mouth, Tip said, “Why don’t you let up on him this once, Brent? He does a good job.”

  Brent’s tone was stoic, and he made no effort to keep his voice low. “Hey, if he can’t take a joke, it’s not my fault.”

  “I don’t think he appreciates you calling him Chico and teasing him about needing a green card all the time,” Tip continued, almost in a whisper. “You know his family’s been here for a long time.”

  Brent was laughing now, and there was a cruel edge to it. “I don’t always call him Chico. Sometimes, I call him Pablo. I’ll make a point to do it, just for you.”

  Carlos moved to their table quickly, pretending not to hear their conversation, and said as professionally as possible, “What would all of you gentlemen like to drink this afternoon?”

  “I want bourbon on the rocks, but easy on the rocks,” Brent said. “And keep ’em comin’. Keep your eyes peeled over here. When I snappo my fingers, you’ll know I’m ready for another one, Pablo.”

  Carlos took a calming breath and nodded eagerly. “Yes, sir.”

  Tip screwed his mouth up and ordered a mint julep, while Connor opted for a beer.

  Craning his neck as they waited for their drinks, Brent said, “I see my wife’s busy playing bridge across the room with Her Highness Deedah and that sissy son of hers. Oh, and that reporter from the Citizen, Bax Winchester’s daughter. She’s a looker with that strawberry-blond hair of hers.”

  Tip squinted. “What do you have against Hollis Hornesby all the time? He hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “You mean to tell me that since he started coming out here recently you don’t feel the least bit uncomfortable when he comes into the locker room?” Brent said, narrowing his dark-brown eyes. “He doesn’t even play golf or tennis. I think he comes in to get an eyeful.”

  “He comes in to use the bathroom after swimming a ton of laps in the pool,” Tip said. “Do you want him to do what all the little kids do right there in the water? Hey, we all know they do because we all did it growing up.”

  Brent’s left eye twitched a couple of times, and he looked bored. “Whatever. Deedah Hornesby is turning the RCC into a ladies’ club with all these card games and whatnot. Carly’s all excited about getting more of her garden club friends out here to dress up and gossip. She was like a canary out of its cage this morning, flying all over the place getting ready. And then there’s that female golf pro Deedah hired who refuses to use the ladies’ tee—that Missy Stone.”

  “It’s Mitzy,” Tip reminded him.

  “Missy, Mitzy, po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Anyway, what’s she doin’ with a man’s job? I warned all a’ you that this kinda thing would happen if Deedah got to run the show. This place has hit rock bottom.” Brent made a face in the direction of the bar. “Yo, what’s the holduppo over there?”

  “Coming right up, Mr. Ogle,” Carlos said, quickly raising his hand. “It takes a little more time with the julep order.”

  When the drinks finally arrived, Brent chugged his bourbon while the others looked on in disbelief. “Another one. And make it snappy,” Brent said to Carlos, who hurried off to the bar once again.

  “That was quick,” Tip said, after taking a sip of his julep. It was always a drink to savor. “What’s the hurry?”

  “I feel like getting drunk this afternoon, fellas,” Brent said. “You’re both welcome to join me.”

  Both Tip and Connor continued their sipping and said nothing, however.

  It was after Brent had made short work of his third drink and the others were well into their second a good forty minut
es later that he went into action. “In case you fellas have forgotten . . . this is the thirtieth anniversary of The Four-Second Game.”

  Connor put down his beer and groaned. “No, I didn’t realize it. But not that again.”

  “Yes . . . that again,” Brent told him, sounding quite boozy. “There’s something you guys should know, that . . . uh . . . The Baddest Devil of Them All has . . . uh, well . . . I’ve been keeping it a secret from you since . . . forever.”

  Connor didn’t even pretend to be interested and exchanged shrugs with Tip. It had been many years since Brent had brought up the subject to them. If he had kept at it constantly, they would likely have dropped him altogether. “I suppose you’re gonna tell us whether we want to hear it or not,” Connor said.

  “You got it, Connor. . . . Since you and Tip . . . you think you’re such big shots for beating me today . . . this is the perfect time to get this, you know, off my chest,” Brent continued. “You’ll never look at that game . . . uh . . . the same way again. What I’m gonna tell you will add ten strokes to your golf game and take ten years off your life.”

  “Go ahead and tell us, then,” Tip said, making a grim slash of his mouth, while Connor took a deep breath and braced himself. Something was warning them both that what would follow was going to be a trial by fire.

  CHAPTER 2

  Over at the bridge table, Wendy and her partner, Hollis, had just taken the first rubber after making game in spades. It had taken an hour and a half to accomplish that feat. They were having spectacular luck, and everything they had tried had worked from cross-trumping to finesses and even to the preemptive bid that Wendy had discussed earlier. Carly and Deedah had managed one paltry leg—a one club bid they had barely made—but that had been cut off by their opponents. Wendy could see that Deedah, particularly, was becoming more and more frustrated with every deal. This was not how Wendy had envisioned their maiden voyage as a club. It was never fun to play bridge when the same partnership got all the points all afternoon. It was always more fun if the deck contained “equal opportunity” cards.