Hole in One by Walter Stewart

“At least, it’s not a very good reason to kill him.”
    â€œWell, I don’t think you should just assume he was killed by accident. The police aren’t saying that.”
    â€œWhy, what are the police saying?”
    â€œAccording to the radio, they’re considering all possibilities. That was on the news. And one of the possibilities is that somebody set out to kill Charlie, and did. It seems to me you might be more concerned about that than what happens to the old golf course.”
    â€œI am concerned, Emma, but I can’t do anything about Charlie. That’s a job for the cops. I can do something about the golf course, though.”
    â€œWhat can you do?”
    â€œI can find out what’s going on, and if there is a development in the works, I can write a story about it.”
    â€œYou think if you wrote a story, it might stop the development?”
    â€œYou never know.” The
Lancer
is crazy for development and the nice, big ads it generates in newspapers. If the
Lancer
had its way, the entire nation would be up to its hips in concrete, so I certainly wasn’t dreaming of unleashing a strong anti-development wave in the newspaper. I was just hoping that the news that we stood in danger might bring out the protesters.
    â€œThere are lots of lawyers with summer places around here,” I continued. “Maybe when the story appears, one of them will dig into the legal end, and find a way to stop the bulldozers.”
    Emma didn’t sound convinced, but she said she’d see what she could find out for me, for my story. “Freddy and Henrietta Tompkins are coming over for this afternoon, and we’ll see about this business of selling the golf course. The very idea!”
    Freddy Tompkins is our deputy reeve, an amiable gent who works from the same precept as the merchant marine: Make No Waves. It would be interesting to see the widow ply him with tea, cakes, and cross-examination, but I would be elsewhere, nobly attending to the stern duties of a professional journalist.
    When I got to the office—a nine-dollar cab ride, since
Marchepas
was
hors de combat
—I found Tommy Macklin, of all people, at my workstation, trying to input a story. We used to write stories; now we input them. Tommy was stabbing away at the console, but nothing was showing on the screen except, “ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.”
    He didn’t like it much, and as soon as I arrived, he started to take it out on me.
    â€œWhat the hell have you done to this computer?” he fumed. “You’ve screwed it up. We buy you this valuable equipment, and you screw it up. Well, it’s coming out of your salary.”
    I soothed the old buzzard down, eased him to one side, and fired up the computer with a few deft strokes.
    â€œThere,” I said. “Try it now.”
    Was he impressed? Of course not. “If you spent more time reporting and less time fooling around with this thing, you’d be a better journalist, Withers,” is all he said, as he bent to the difficult task of typing in a story. Naturally, I watched over his shoulder.
    â€œHole in One at Bosky Dell,” he typed, on the top line, and then, underneath, “From Our Golfing Correspondent.”
    â€œJesus, Tommy,” I blurted, “are you sure you want to do that?”
    He whirled in the chair—it’s one of those swivel affairs—and glowered at me.
    â€œMind your own damn business,” he said.
    â€œBut, Tommy, if we carry the story about your hole in one, aren’t we going to have to mention somewhere along the way that old Charlie Tinkelpaugh got blown to bits because of it?”
    â€œNot necessarily,” said Tommy. “We can run this story, which is a news story, on page one, and run an obit on Charlie Tinkelpaugh on the liner pages.”
    The liner pages are at the back, where we stick in items of little import, to keep the truss ads from bumping into