Chapter 21 I Fear You Don’t Like Me #3
Unfazed, my lawyer continued, “So, you realized on Tuesday, August first, that the target had, well, disappeared. When you discovered that, did you check the netting? Make sure it was still safe to use?”
“No,” he answered, as we knew he would, because as derelict as that might make him sound to the jury, it was considerably better than saying he had checked the netting but hadn’t noticed how the spiderweb lines of nylon had been severed and the structural integrity compromised.
“How about on Wednesday?”
“No.”
“Thursday?”
“No.”
“Not even on Thursday?” he pressed, but even before Harry could offer his one-word response, Mr. Lindley accused my lawyer of badgering the golf pro, and the judge agreed that we had made our point.
“So,” said Mr. Barker, “is it accurate that you saw the target was gone and did literally nothing for three full days?”
“I suppose.”
“Months later, you told the police that you noticed the target was missing while giving a lesson. True?”
“Yes.”
“So, it’s not just that you saw it was gone on Tuesday, but when on Tuesday. To whom were you giving the lesson?”
“Teeny Godwin.”
“And, according to the club records and Mrs. Godwin, her lesson that day was ten a.m.”
“I guess.”
“When you saw the target had, well, vanished, who did you think had performed this little magic act?”
“Mira. Excuse me, Miss Winston.”
“And what did you say to her?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
“Interesting. You claim to believe you thought she had vandalized club property. She was at the club every day that week. You were both there Tuesday, after you saw it was gone, as well as on Wednesday and Thursday. And yet you made no effort to talk to her? Ask her about it?”
“No.”
“So, you didn’t check the net, and you didn’t talk to Mira. You just let it all slide.”
“She…she was a member.”
“And members can vandalize club property?”
“No.”
My lawyer steepled his fingers beneath his chin as if he were a professor and waited for the jury to absorb this. Then he shifted gears: “Did you ever coach Mira? Give her lessons?”
Here Harry smiled proudly. “I did. I gave the girl her very first lessons. And I coached her for a while. For years. I was her coach until she was fourteen.”
“And you stopped because she got a new coach?”
He arched his eyebrows as if it were of little consequence to him. “She started working with a lady golfer. A gal who had some LPGA experience.”
“That would be Heidi Romming, right?”
“Yes.”
“You resented that?”
“Not really.”
“Not really or not at all?”
“I mean, it surprised me, sure. I was giving her excellent coaching and seriously improving her game. I know what I’m doing. And, yes, it took some money out of my pocket. But if she wanted a lady coach, she wanted a lady coach. That was her decision.”
“Did you ever say to a Tallmadge Country Club member named George Eastburn, ‘I’ve won as many LPGA tourneys as Heidi Romming’?”
“I said something like that. It was, obviously, a joke.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Barker. And then he started back to the defense table as if he were finished, but mostly he was just letting Harry simmer.
At our table, he turned back to face the club pro, reminding him, “You said you never saw Mira hanging around the club swimming pool or the snack shack with other kids her age. You implied that you didn’t believe she even had friends her age, am I correct? ”
“Sure.”
“Is it possible that she had plenty of friends, but when she was at the country club, she was working diligently on her golf game? You’ve said yourself she was a fiery competitor.”
“It’s possible. Just telling you what I saw.”
“Right. One last thing. In that room, where the members store their clubs…you have access to their golf bags, correct?”
“Of course. The storeroom is beside my office and the pro shop.”
“You ever go back there?”
“All the time. Obviously. But if you’re going to accuse me of ripping the target off the net and stuffing it in Mira’s golf bag, don’t even—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because the district attorney was objecting, hoping to prevent the pro from saying something inflammatory. The judge agreed and reminded Fallows, “All you have to do is answer Mr. Barker’s question. Which you did.”
“Who else had access to the room where the golf bags were stored?” my lawyer pressed.
“My assistant, Curt Bolger. Clubhouse manager Liam Murphy. Caddy master Dom Gorski. The members sometimes go back there. Even some of the caddies.”
“Even some of the caddies,” repeated Mr. Barker.
“Sure. The ones we trust.”
“Is the door locked?”
Harry was now growing exasperated, and in his defiance, he began to sink into his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Sometimes. The club policy is that it’s supposed to be locked when Curt or Dom or I can’t be there.
But it rarely is. We’re a small club. We’re like a family.
If one of us can’t be there, we don’t want a member not to be able to get his or her bag, so sometimes, when it’s busy, we let that locked door policy slide,” he replied.
“The locked door policy,” repeated my lawyer. “You didn’t lose much sleep over it.”
“No, we really didn’t.”
“So, you don’t always know who’s back there.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No.”
And with that, my lawyer thanked the pro and said he had no further questions. But then he added, “For now.”