Chapter 16: Forty-One Lines

"Let go of that girl," the white-haired woman said.

She hadn't raised her voice, and she hadn't stood up.

She sat at her table with a mimosa in one hand and her reading glasses on her nose.

The guard holding my arm froze.

"Madam," Stanford began.

"I've sat on this board for twenty-two years, Stanford. I know the bylaws better than you do."

"The Trust owns sixty percent of this club, and an Acting Chair cannot bar its owner from the grounds without a vote."

"There was no vote," Stanford said.

"Then I'm calling one."

She set down her glass.

"I move that the Acting Chair be removed from his seat and recused from this matter, pending a reading of that book."

"Seconded," said the man from the board who had voted to keep Ramsay.

"Seconded again," said another, from the far side of the veranda.

It was the man in gray who had sat with Stanford's allies in the boardroom.

He had put down his coffee cup, and he wasn't looking at Stanford.

Stanford laughed.

"You can't read a stolen book to a brunch."

"It's the club's book," Birdie said. "And I'm the caddie master."

"I read the tee sheet to every member on this veranda five mornings a week."

She picked up the ledger, and it looked bigger in her hands than it had on Zara's lap.

"January 9th, eighteen years ago. Five thousand dollars. Withdrawn by V.L. Marked Personal."

"February 2nd. Eight thousand. Personal."

She read them slowly, one at a time, in the voice she used for the starter's list.

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