Mystery

SO, WHATEVER happened to Ben Hogan's 1-iron? Well, nobody knows for sure. And never will. All we do know is that somewhere between the fourth round of the 1950 U.S. Open and the next day's 18-hole playoff, it went missing. Along with his shoes, as it turns out. And it remained that way for more than three decades. In 1973, the executive director of the USGA, P.J. Boatwright Jr., wrote to Hogan asking if he would donate the club to the association's museum. That's when Hogan finally admitted he didn't have it. Ten years later, club dealer Bobby Farino purchased an old set of MacGregor woods and matching irons for $150 at The Players Championship.

Merion Golf Club's East Course occupies its acreage so divinely that it is sometimes hard to believe the famed Haverford Township layout didn't look exactly that way at the Creation. Surely, perhaps on the day he rested and got the golf bug, God designed Cobbs Creek to wrap itself gracefully, like a gently clutching palm, around three sides of the picturesque 11th green. And in the beginning, there must have been that towering oak that looms above two front-nine fairways, a natural hazard as imposing as it is splendid.

MAIN LINE-BRED director M. Night Shyamalan blasted onto Hollywood's A-list with "The Sixth Sense," but he was also responsible for the treacly Rosie O'Donnell drama "Wide Awake. " With expectations high for his follow-up, would Shyamalan catch lightning in a bottle again? Reuniting with Bruce Willis, Shyamalan revisited the mystery-suspense genre with "Unbreakable" (VHS: priced for rental; DVD: $29.99), and like issue #2 of a serial, the novelty has started to wear off. Willis plays a man who survives a colossal train wreck without a scratch and, searching for answers, finds a brittle, wheelchair-bound Samuel L. Jackson.

"Bedroom Eyes. " A drama starring Dayle Haddon and Kenneth Gilman. Directed by William Fruet from a screenplay by Michael Alan Eddy. Photographed by Miklas Lente. Edited by Tony Larner. Music by John Tucker. Running time: 90 minutes. An RSL production. In area theaters. Canadian filmmaker William Fruet sneaks up on us with "Bedroom Eyes," a sneaky-dirty, new-style sex mystery. It's about passion gone awry, but not in the old-fashioned, Claude Chabrol sense. In this case, the victim of passion is one Harry Ross (Kenneth Gilman)

The mysterious telephone call that appears on a phone bill usually is fairly easy to straighten out. Just call the phone company, and that's that. The customer who never placed the call won't be held responsible. But to the phone companies themselves, it's a more potent threat. This week, MCI Communications said such mystery calls were in a small way responsible for a $502.5 million loss in its fourth fiscal quarter. The company said it is suffering from fraud, as sophisticated criminals steal access codes, allowing them to complete a call and improperly charge it to a customer.

"After everything that I have been put through, you owe me an answer," Jack (Matthew Fox) tells one of The Others as ABC's "Lost" returns tonight. It doesn't really matter what Jack's question was - it hardly ever does - his demand for a reply is a statement of frustration that, as one reporter pointed out to the show's producers at a press conference last month, sounds as if it could have been taken almost word for word from one of the message boards where "Lost" fans gather to talk about the conspiracy that's so far held them captive for more than two years.

"Remember to keep your hands at your sides!" "And when you say you don't know who's behind a crime, you must mean it!" The director's admonitions, designed to perfect the actors' performances, resounded last Friday night in the 1796 Burlington County Court House on High Street, Mount Holly, during a final rehearsal of a play the company is excited about. The New Center Stage Theater company will give the South Jersey premiere performance of the play Something to Hide, a British murder-mystery released in this country in 1987, according to Charles West, NCS director.

A mystery of flight That little blue plane parked on someone's roof on Darby Road in downtown Darby was the greatest mystery my brothers and I confronted in our childhood. Forget Santa Claus. Forget the birds and the bees. Here was a true mystery. What was that little blue plane doing on someone's roof, and how did it get there? I am sure the mystery was shared by countless other youngsters leaving Delaware County via Island Avenue in the family station wagon on the way to the Jersey Shore.

You could be the bewitching temptress, or the hard-boiled detective, or - da da da dum - the victim. Mystery-murder parties, whether at a hotel or at home, can take the whodunit buff out of the paperbacks and right smack into the middle of his or her own fantasies. But the success of these parties depends largely on people who won't even be there. They are the people who write the mystery scripts. Two such authors live in the Northeast. Two years ago, Denise Baron and E. G. Green formed Postmortem Inc., a company that creates murder mysteries for parties and other functions.

Just when you think you've got a particular genre safely categorized, along comes the likes of John Lutz, author of the Edgar Award-winning Tropical Heat and his series main man, Fred Carver. His latest in paper has the unpromising title Kiss (Avon, $3.95) with its unfortunate echo of a local radio station and its horrendous TV ads. The case, unusual for the former policeman (now a private eye with a gimpy leg because of a bullet wound in a knee), finds him investigating the Florida Sunhaven Retirement Home where residents are dying.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - As a teenager, Steve Libert was mesmerized by a teacher's stories of the brash 17th-century French explorer La Salle, who journeyed across the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi in a quest for a trade route to the Far East that he hoped would bring riches and renown. Particularly intriguing was the tale of the Griffin, a vessel that La Salle built and sailed from Niagara Falls to the shores of present-day Wisconsin before sending it back for more supplies.

SO, WHATEVER happened to Ben Hogan's 1-iron? Well, nobody knows for sure. And never will. All we do know is that somewhere between the fourth round of the 1950 U.S. Open and the next day's 18-hole playoff, it went missing. Along with his shoes, as it turns out. And it remained that way for more than three decades. In 1973, the executive director of the USGA, P.J. Boatwright Jr., wrote to Hogan asking if he would donate the club to the association's museum. That's when Hogan finally admitted he didn't have it. Ten years later, club dealer Bobby Farino purchased an old set of MacGregor woods and matching irons for $150 at The Players Championship.

Eagles coach Chip Kelly bristled when queried about the depth chart, and quarterback Nick Foles offered a similar reaction when questioned about practice repetitions with the first or second team. It's clear during this week's mandatory minicamp, as it has been throughout the offseason, that the starting lineup remains a mystery even to Kelly at this point. One reason coaches often name starting quarterbacks is to eliminate speculation and ambiguity. Yet during Tuesday's practice, Michael Vick took the first snaps with the first-team offense.

The Burning Air By Erin Kelly Pamela Dorman Books. 321 pp. $26.95 Reviewed by Katie Haegele   The Poison Tree and The Dark Rose , Erin Kelly's first two novels, were engrossing thrillers with wonderful plot twists and loose ends that didn't get tied up until the very last page. Set partially in the '90s, both novels are romantic and gothic, with crumbling London mansions and pouty heroines who go around smoking clove cigarettes and studying medieval tapestry.

  Although an autopsy has been completed, the city Medical Examiner's Office will not rule on the cause of Julia Papazian Law's death until after reviewing results of toxicology tests that are pending, police said Tuesday. "All we can confirm right now is that there were no obvious signs of trauma to her body," said Lt. John Stanford, a police spokesman. Early Saturday morning, a maintenance worker found Law, a 26-year-old paralegal, face down in the bathtub of the condominium owned by her boss and boyfriend, defense lawyer A. Charles Peruto Jr. Peruto, 58, had recently started dating Law, who would have turned 27 Tuesday.

The Underlying Logic of the Office By Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan Twelve. 320 pp. $26.99 Reviewed by Jane Von Bergen Delta Air Lines president Edward H. Bastian had good news for analysts gathered for a recent industry conference sponsored by JPMorgan. The airline, he told them, had a profitable quarter, the first in a decade. Why? In part because of savings from an oil refinery in Delaware County it bought from Conoco Phillips in 2012. An oil refinery? What's an airline doing running an oil refinery?

A new clue into the 1972 disappearance of two boys on an orphanage camping trip in Burlington County has authorities digging deeper to solve the cold case. Until recently, relatives did not know whether Steven Soden, 16, was dead or alive. "We were hoping that he was still alive," said Soden's sister, April Leonard, 56, of Sekiu, Wash., who had given a DNA sample to police to see whether it matched any remains of unidentified victims of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Instead, the DNA matched four bones found at Bass River State Park in 2000.

  Nearly six months after a tractor-trailer rammed her family's car on the New Jersey Turnpike, the teenager who survived while sitting in the front seat is still coming to grips with the loss of her whole family. Though the headlines of the fiery Dec. 27 crash in Mount Laurel have faded, the tragedy is just starting to sink in for Nicole Mallett, said her uncle, Martin Caesar. Traffic was snarled for hours after the truck hit Mallett's Toyota Camry sedan, which was travelling south between Exits 4 and 5. Her father, mother, brother, and dog were killed.

An older black Labrador mix - found tied to a rock in a Bucks County creek - has captured hearts of animal lovers as police try to find who left her to drown in a rising tide. Wyatt Erb first spotted the dog late Saturday afternoon while on a walk with his wife Diana on Inner Road in Bristol Township. The dog appeared to be calmly laying by the edge of Neshaminy Creek, staring across the water as if lost in thought. But, when the couple passed again, the dog still hadn't budged.