An Act Of Murder by Linda Rosencrance Page A

by the phone.”
    Everything went off without a hitch, except for one small matter—Steve was deathly ill. The night of his wedding he was running a temperature of 103 or 104. He sweated bullets through the entire wedding, but he never let anybody know he was sick.
    Steve and Kim got married at the Eisenhower Chapel at Penn State. Mike was Steve’s best man and Maureen was Kim’s maid of honor. Maureen recalled a humorous moment during the ceremony.
    â€œSteve had forgotten the ring, so I ended up taking off my engagement ring and slipped that to him instead and he used that to put on her finger,” Maureen said. “It was kind of a funny thing.”
    The newlyweds had their reception at the Fire Hall in Boalsburg, a small town next to State College. The Hrickos didn’t really have much money in those days, so their honeymoon was an overnight stay at a local hotel.
    When they got married, Steve was working at Toftrees Resort & Four Star Golf Club, a golf course and conference center hotel complex, in State College. He worked there as an assistant superintendent and eventually became a golf-course superintendent at Iron Masters, a golf club near Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Beginning on Memorial Day, 1991, Mike worked as an assistant superintendent at Medford Lakes Country Club in Medford Lakes, New Jersey. During the two-and-a-half years he worked there, Steve was working at Iron Masters.
    â€œSteve was very, very busy at work and there was a little bit of conflict between the two of them (Kim and Steve) before Sarah was born,” Maureen recalled. “They were getting the nursery ready and it seemed to be taking forever and Kim was a little frustrated with trying to get things done around the house.”
    Sarah was born in August 1989—the busiest time of year for a golf superintendent. At first Steve was very intimidated by his daughter’s size. She was so small and he was so big. He was very clumsy around her. Although he loved her very much, he just didn’t know what to do for her. It didn’t help that Sarah was an extremely fussy baby. Nevertheless, everything seemed to be going along just fine. When Steve got the job at Iron Masters, the Hrickos moved from State College to Hollidaysburg.
    At the time Maureen was working as a sales representative for Bell Atlantic and was very busy at work and Mike was going to school, so the two couples would only see each other occasionally. But Mike and Steve talked on the phone quite a bit. And Maureen would sometimes travel to Hollidaysburg to see Kim.
    â€œWe didn’t talk to each other every day, or as much as we had when they lived in town. And I really missed them,” Maureen said.
    But things didn’t go well for Steve at Iron Masters. “He had a problem with some of the board members,” Mike said. “Some of the older members wanted one of the older guys who worked under Steve to be superintendent. They felt this older guy could do the job as well as, if not better than, Steve—and do it for less money. They were looking to bump Steve out, but the younger guys knew that Steve had an education and they knew that he had done a lot for the course. So there was a little rift there and I don’t remember if he was fired or stepped down, but he said enough is enough. He was tired of all the politics.”
    So the Hrickos moved back to State College and into an apartment in Steve’s parents’ house. For six months to a year, while Steve was looking for another job, he stayed home and took care of Sarah while Kim went to school to get her surgical technologist license. As Steve became more comfortable with his role as a full-time dad, the clumsiness he once felt taking care of Sarah completely melted away. He spent every moment with her, reading to her, playing with her, and just doing everything for her. Steve truly fell in love with the idea of being a dad. He was like a big burly teddy