Page 46 of Rage

I was there one afternoon for a round of golf.

… admiring the landscaping …

I asked the manager about it …

… gave me the number for Samuel’s company.

… hired him on the spot.

“Do you know the name of the person at the club who Aaron and Samuel worked for?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No idea.”

“Did your brother say anything to you when he gave you the money?” I ask.

The boy purses his lips. “I didn’t think too much about it at the time, but he said something like: Don’t do what I did.”

“Do you know what he meant by that?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Anything else?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I just wanted you to know. Aaron wasn’t no thief. He never stole anything in his whole life. He earned that money planting all them trees and Sammy paid him well. That’s all I got to say about it.”

CHAPTER 12

Watching the boy walk away, I call Dispatch. “Get me everything you can find on The Club at Paint Creek.”

“Come again?” Lois stutters, likely because she’s as shocked as I am that the club has come up in connection to a police investigation.

“Find out who the manager is,” I tell her. “Get me all pertinent contact info, including the name of the grounds manager, if there is one.” Two Amish buggies wait to turn in to the Shetler lane as I pull onto the township road. I raise my hand and wave as I pass them. “Run their names through LEADS.”

“You got it.”

I thank her and call Tomasetti.

“How did the notification go?” he asks by way of greeting.

“If I’d had the option of bamboo slivers being shoved beneath my nails I would have taken it.”

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Anything new?”

I tell him about my conversation with the son, William. “It’s the second time I’ve heard The Club at Paint Creek mentioned in relation to this case.”

“Which links the club to Samuel Yutzy via the landscaping business,” he says.

“Kind of a loose connection,” I say.

“You never know where some random connection might lead,” he says. “Might be worth a quick look-see.”

“Meet me at the station?” I ask.

“See you in ten minutes.”

The Club at Paint Creek is the premier country club in the entirety of Holmes County. It sits on two hundred acres of lush grassland and rolling hills interspersed with hundred-year-old elm and oak trees. It boasts an eighteen-hole golf course, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a clubhouse that rivals any venue in the state. According to Lois, it’s owned by a corporate conglomerate out of Cincinnati and managed by a local man by the name of Lance Wingate.

I’m in the Explorer with Tomasetti riding shotgun. “Wingate is forty-six years old,” I tell him. “Never been arrested. No record. No lawsuits. Married. Two minor children.”