Free 5 A Sporting Murder by CHESTER D CAMPBELL Page B

to
Hermitage a few years back. I was a reluctant participant at first, but my wife
is a world-class persuader. We soon developed friendships that had served us
well since. After dinner at a local restaurant, we would adjourn to the home of
Sam and Wilma Gannon for a gift swap. Another Air Force retiree, Sam had gone
from flying B-26 light bombers in Korea to handling the controls of giant C-17
Globemaster transport planes.
    At the dinner I got stuck beside
the class clown, a retired pharmacist in his seventies who fancied himself the
reincarnation of Jack Benny. He did resemble Benny a little, with his round
glasses and high forehead, and he had the requisite tight-lipped smile. But he
didn’t have the timing quite right. He made a dramatic pause before the punch
line, then botched it.
    Jill was luckier. She sat next to
Wilma Gannon. They had become best friends since returning to Nashville, where both
grew up though on opposite sides of town. The daughter of one-time missionaries
to China, Wilma liked to say Jill was born with a silver spoon in her mouth
while she arrived with wooden chopsticks.
    The Gannons lived in a brick ranch
not far from us. Though the neighborhood was like a chessboard in its
uniformity, the architects had varied the building materials enough to keep the
houses from resembling clones. The Gannons’ spacious den glowed with candles
large and small, abetted by winking strings of lights on a Christmas tree that
tickled the ceiling. You could tell it was real by the fresh evergreen smell. Cookies
and candy, crackers and dips vied for space on a long table anchored by a
sparkling glass punch bowl. Ice cubes drifted in a concoction as red as blood
spatters, though the others didn’t likely view it in those terms. Folding chairs
sat around the walls, where people drifted after loading up on the goodies.
    Everyone had brought a wrapped gift
to put under the tree. Sam strolled along with a basket of paper slips bearing
numbers, and we each took one. Starting with the bearer of the number “1,” we
all trooped to the tree to choose a gift. Under the rules, you had to open the
gift and show it around. The person with the next number could either take that
gift or go to the tree. The third person to possess a particular gift kept it.
Things got pretty raucous at times, such as when a prim little lady unwrapped a
three-cup bra supplied by the class wag. He tried to look innocent, but
everyone knew who to blame.
    While the women cleaned up the gift
wrap mess, I chatted with Sam, casually bringing up the NBA basketball deal. He
grew up in a rural area south of Tulsa and met Wilma at the University of Oklahoma, where he played basketball. Though he’d never been a starter, he had
the physique for it, being a few inches taller than my five-ten and a lot
slimmer. I’d heard him talk about how Oklahoma City should have an NBA team.
    “What do you think about this bunch
wanting to bring a pro basketball team to Nashville?” I asked.
    He leaned against a bookcase loaded
with paperbacks. “I’d probably buy a season ticket if Wilma didn’t object too vociferously.”
    “Know what you mean. We go to a
Titans game occasionally, but I couldn’t talk Jill into taking the season
ticket route.”
    “Some of the guys I play basketball
with over at the Y are really fired up about the possibility of a team here.
They say the people putting the deal together are loaded with cash.”
    “This Aregis fellow seems to be the
ringleader, from what I’ve seen.”
    “Right. They told me the deal has
been simmering the past several months. Aregis came up from Florida because of
his interest in it. They say he’s a real smooth operator, has lots of
connections.”
    “Any of your friends involved in
it?”
    “One of them works for Howard Hays
at Dollar Deal Stores. He’s apparently been involved in some of the
negotiations.”
    “I wonder if they’ve talked to any
teams about selling?”
    “I don’t think so,” Sam