Foul Ball
“Slide, Josh, slide.” Lisa Andrews made a megaphone of her hands, yelling encouragement from the dugout.
No good. The ball smacked the catcher’s mitt a split second before the stumbling runner touched home plate. That made the Comets’ third out, but Lisa couldn’t blame Josh. With yellow crime scene tape all over the wooded area behind the ball field, the kids on both teams were as rattled as the parents cheering them on.
Coach Bobby Nixon wasn’t so forgiving. As the downcast nine and ten year-olds grabbed their gloves to go back out on the field, Coach Nixon planted his beefy, six-foot frame in front of four-foot-nine Josh. “You blew it, kid. When are you going to show me some hustle?”
Lisa cringed. When she’d volunteered to help out with her son Brandon’s Little League team, she hadn’t bargained for working under a coach that acted like every game was part of the World Series.
At first, Coach Nixon had mostly ignored her. She’d stayed in the dugout handing out hugs, bandaging scraped knees and providing iced drinks. But after she’d spent a weekend at a coaching seminar for Little League volunteers, Lisa demanded a chance to put her new-found knowledge of the game to work. Coach Nixon grudgingly agreed. He needed some help and she was the only parent who was willing to spare the time. Now, if she could just learn to bite her tongue when he chewed the kids out. Not an easy task. His temper had been worse than ever since the body was discovered.
That would be last Monday evening. The Comets’ weekly practice had started calmly enough. Coach Nixon was late, so Lisa got the boys running bases as a warm-up. When the coach arrived he started his usual drill of batting grounders to the infield players while Lisa lobbed flies to the outfielders.
Halfway through practice a man throwing sticks for his dog discovered a woman’s battered body hidden under some brush in the swampy woods behind the ball field. Suddenly, the balmy summer evening was swarming with police cruisers and TV news trucks. Detectives had kept all the adults at the park’s ball field late into the night, getting names and addresses and taking statements.
Now it was Saturday—game day—and the cops still hadn’t made an arrest though they’d questioned everyone who’d been in the park that evening several times. Lisa could feel the tension in the crowd of onlookers; it hung over the bleachers like a droning swarm of gnats. The parents, who usually cheered themselves hoarse, were downright subdued. They eyed each other with suspicion and kept their kids extra close instead of letting them run all over the park. Thank goodness her Brandon played shortstop, right in front of her nose.
The gory details had been reported in yesterday’s paper under a screaming headline: Eastside Park Horror. The victim was Michelle Wendover, age twenty-six and employed at an ear-piercing pagoda at the Mall. Her face and skull had been bashed with a heavy mallet or club only an hour or two before she’d been found. At that time of day, the park had been swarming with walkers and joggers, but Michelle hadn’t been a fitness addict and the cops hadn’t turned up anyone who recalled seeing Michelle or her assailant. An unidentified source was quoted as saying that Michelle may have gone to the wooded area for a secluded meeting. The lack of drag marks suggested she’d been killed at the scene.
Lisa knew Michelle from the Mall. She remembered her as an overdone blonde trying to give a good imitation of a walking, talking Barbie doll. Over the years, local gossip had linked her name with a number of men, both single and married. Lisa hadn’t cared much for Michelle or her ways, but she was getting a little sick standing there in the blazing sun, contemplating Michelle’s violent death. No one deserved being pounded to death and left in the woods. Lisa gave a grateful sigh when her friend Angela came around the bleacher fence and interrupted her thoughts with a tall plastic cup of iced tea.
“Thought you might need this. It’s getting awfully hot.” Angela’s son played second base for the Comets, and the lanky redhead never missed an opportunity to get his game on her minicam, even if her pale skin was fried by the ninth inning. She also never missed an episode of Cops and considered herself an expert on police matters. “I hear Bobby Nixon is in the clear,” she whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Lisa asked, then winced as a pop fly bounced off the edge of Brandon’s glove.
“Michelle’s murder—what else is anybody talking about? The word is out that Coach had been seeing Michelle on the sly and that she was getting pushy about him leaving his wife.”
“Really? I never heard that. It’s probably just petty gossip.”
“Well, this isn’t. My neighbor’s daughter is dating one of the detectives on the case. She says all the damage was done to the right side of Michelle’s face and skull. That means it was a lefty that wielded the murder weapon.” To demonstrate, Angela made a swinging motion from left to right with an imaginary club.
Lisa glanced toward Coach Nixon. He took a swig from a bottle of water he was holding in his right hand.
“See,” Angela whispered, “Coach is right-handed—lucky thing for him.”
Lisa was frowning, so her friend went on, “Didn’t they take a handwriting sample when they came back to question you? They took one from everyone else—made out like there was a note with the body. Only there wasn’t. The cops weren’t interested in our handwriting; they wanted to find out who was left-handed without putting the murderer on the alert.” She nodded solemnly. “On TV, they call that investigative strategy.”
Lisa’s frown deepened. She asked thoughtfully, “Angela, can you come to practice on Monday?”
“I could work it out. If you really need me.”
“I do. Be sure to bring your minicam.”
By the end of the season, the Comets and their new coach were on their way to winning their division. It was the top of the ninth with little Josh on the pitcher’s mound. When he whipped the third strike past the other team’s batter, the crowd on the bleachers went wild.
Angela congratulated Coach Lisa Andrews with a crushing bear hug. “I’m so glad you stepped in when Bobby Nixon was arrested. The kids are playing great and actually having fun.”
Lisa answered with a grin. “I’m just glad I paid attention in that coaching seminar. When our instructor told us that there are a few players who throw right and bat left, Coach Nixon didn’t cross my mind. But when you told me he was in the clear because he was right-handed, I just got this niggling feeling in the back of my mind.”
Angela patted her minicam. “Well, thanks to your feeling, we got him right here on tape.”
“And once the cops saw that tape of Bobby Nixon batting grounders as a left-hander, they took it from there.” Lisa returned her friend’s hug, then yelled toward the excited youngsters, “Way to go, Comets. Who wants pizza?”