by Jeff Abbott
Delford did. ‘Oh, Lord, yes. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but she had to know. Suicide is so goddamned selfish. And this so close to the election.’
Whit sipped his coffee, letting Delford believe silence signaled agreement, then said, ‘We don’t know that it’s suicide, Delford.’
To their right, a blue-light bug zapper sounded a long, fuzzy trill as it dispatched some flying insect to creeper heaven. ‘Of course not. But I been in law enforcement thirty years, partner, and you’re wet behind both ears and balls. Pete Hubble clearly looks like a suicide to me. No sign of struggle, big old boy like him. He put that gun in his own mouth.’
Whit shrugged. ‘I think I’ll wait for the autopsy to make a ruling. But I sure don’t see why he’d come home after all these years just to kill himself. Especially after he was starting a new film project.’
‘I get it. You’re just interested in the media circus, get your name in the paper for the voters to see. I think you owe some common sense and courtesy to Lucinda Hubble that this be handled quickly and quietly.’
‘Since Dear Abby’s not available,’ Whit said, ‘how does ramming a ruling through quickly get classified as common sense and courtesy?’
Delford stubbed out his smoke. ‘It’s called decency. Try to add it to your vocabulary, partner. Lucinda’s done more for this county than most people have, and she’s suffered a lot of tragedy in her life. So show her some compassion.’
The woman has lost her son. I don’t plan on being anything but compassionate. Especially if it turns out her son’s been murdered.’
‘And you wouldn’t change your mind because she’s a Democrat and you’re a Republican?’ Whit had had to make a party affiliation to get the appointment from the Republican-controlled county commissioners, but he felt lukewarm about allegiance to any political party.
‘Party lines bore me, Delford.’
‘I imagine. The only party line you’re interested in is the one leading to the keg.’
Whit patted his pockets. ‘I like that one. I better write it down and note the time and date you actually attempted a joke.’
‘Listen, Whit.’ Delford lowered his voice but kept his amiable smile firmly fixed. ‘We all know you’re sort of learning as you go, but you sure don’t want the voters to realize that you’re, shall we say, still climbing the learning curve.’
‘For all your preaching about compassion,’ Whit said, ‘I haven’t heard you show one bit of sympathy for Pete Hubble.’
‘Lucinda doesn’t deserve for that good-for-nothing son of hers to muddy her name from the grave. You’re gonna be out there alone, Whit, looking like a fool when the police and the family – who know the truth – all say it’s suicide and you’re chasing shadows.’
‘What is this, a good-old-boy plea to stay in step?’ Whit said.
Delford shook his head. ‘You must’ve sniffed some of that pink paint, son. I’m not pressuring you to do diddly. My judgment is based on years of police experience. This is your first big death case, Whit. You screw it up and it’s real public, and it’s right before the election.’ He laughed and crushed his cigarette under his boot heel. ‘And just a tip: voters don’t vote for candidates who consort with porno queens.’
Delford went back into the police station. Whit watched the rain and finished his coffee. When he went back inside, Nelda told him Claudia and Velvet had left not three minutes before. He drove home, devoured a ham sandwich and a bag of corn chips while watching a Monty Python rerun on cable, and went to bed with his JP training materials. He read every detail on death inquest procedures.
He wondered how the voters would react if he and his brothers painted Delford’s house again.
Reading the procedures, written in law’s natively ornate style, made him drowse. His thoughts drifted to the last time he had been with Faith, making hurried love in a Laurel Point motel last week. She had seemed distracted, going through the motions of lovemaking without her usual ardor, kissing him as though she were tasting a sour peach. He had wondered if she was growing tired of him or preoccupied with Lucinda’s reelection campaign. Now he wondered if it was because Pete had reentered her life.
He doused the lights. When he fell asleep he dreamed not of Faith or Irina or Velvet but of his mother, calling his name like a siren from the surf-churned rocks.
10
‘That judge,’ Velvet said to Claudia as they pulled into the Port Leo Best Western’s half-full parking lot. ‘Tell me about him.’
‘What exactly do you want to know?’
‘He said there might be an inquest. He gonna be fair?’
‘Extremely fair,’ Claudia said.
‘He looks like a beach bum not tidied up all the way,’ Velvet said. ‘I directed a movie called Here Comes the Judge. I know, bad title, but schlock’s part of the game. I worried that Flip Wilson’s estate would sue. Did great on video. I had a guy who wore nothing under his judge’s robes in one scene, and he did the court reporter and half the jury.’
‘Wow, you really are a film visionary,’ Claudia said, not wanting to hear a synopsis of adult movies. ‘A real Scorsese.’
‘Aren’t you the meow kitty? I guess I shock you,’ Velvet said.
‘You’re trying too hard to shock me.’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘If you don’t think what you do is wrong, and you beat people over the head with it, they’ll probably keep their opinions to themselves.’
‘And what do you know about my profession? You know, most of the people in the adult film business are married. They work it just like a nine-to-fiver, then go home to their families.’
‘I’m sure there are hired killers who have white picket fences. It doesn’t make it respectable.’ Claudia turned to her. ‘I don’t believe in exploiting people.’
‘You ever use an informant in your line of work, Ms High-and-Mighty? Maybe someone who’s fallen on hard times, gotten himself in a little lick of trouble, and wants to stay out of jail? And they can, if they give you names and numbers and know who’s fencing what or where the marijuana’s stashed?’
Claudia stopped the car in front of the lobby doors. Rain slid down the windshield, blurring the world. ‘That’s different. I’m enforcing the law.’
‘You’re taking advantage of their weakness to get what you want. Don’t lecture me about using people, baby. I launch careers, I let lonely guys have some fun in the privacy of their own home, I show shy ladies how to make a man their love slave forever. It’s a public service, if that resonates with you.’
‘I have less than zero interest in debating you, Velvet. But I don’t know of many women who could do what you do and not feel degraded. Tart it up however you like.’
Velvet regarded her with interest. ‘I bet Whit wouldn’t wear anything under his robe, if I asked him.’
Christ, lady, your old one’s barely cold yet, David wasn’t even dead, only her spanking-new ex, but she couldn’t imagine touching another man right now. ‘Ask him and see what happens.’
‘Well, hello, raw nerve,’ Velvet said. ‘Didn’t mean to trespass.’
‘I’m not in the market, and I’m especially not in the market for Whit Mosley. I’m just being a realist. I know Whit. You’re not his type, and you’re involved in a case he’s adjudicating.’
‘Men are the simplest maps, honey, and no one can unfold one better than me. I just go for the thing pointing true north, and I learn all I need to know. Whit’s no different.’ She paused. ‘He up for reelection, like Lucinda?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sure the Hubbles will be riding your ass like the Pony Express to run the investigation the way they want.’
‘They don’t have any influence over me,’ Claudia said.
Velvet watched the rain splatter against the windshield. ‘Whit defended you to me, said you were a good investigator. I just hope he’s right. I’m sure in a little town sucking up to the right people makes all the difference in prom
otions.’
‘You’ve suffered a really nasty shock tonight, and I’m real sorry about your friend. So I’m just going to ignore what you just said, because you don’t know jackshit about me.’
‘You’re the one who got out the label maker, sweetie.’ Velvet opened the car door and ran through the rain. Claudia, peeved, followed her.
They went inside the motel lobby and got Velvet checked in. Claudia asked, ‘You’re gonna be okay here alone?’
‘I’d be better if there was a wet bar. I’ll settle for a shower and a bed. Thanks for the ride.’
‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ Claudia said. ‘I’ll have a patrol officer bring you by some clothes and toiletries.’ Let her see actual, respectable small-town nice. Maybe she would unleash a squad of church ladies on Velvet. No one could be nicer than church ladies on a mission.
‘Thank you. Now go work hard and get the fucker who did this,’ Velvet said. She turned off and went down the hall toward her room.
Claudia drove back to Golden Gulf Marina. The crowd had returned to their boats, although several craft showed lamps’ glimmers from behind the curtains. People still awake, shocked at death’s close amble, watching television or drinking decaf to lull themselves to sleep. In the gentle downpour she walked to Real Shame, watching the yellow crime scene ribbons flap in the breeze. She boarded and heard a low voice talking inside the cabin.
‘Yeah, it’s all taken care of. Not a problem.’
She opened the door and Eddie Gardner smiled, clicking off his cell phone.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Not much, just finishing up.’ He gestured to a stack of bagged items and rolls of film, neatly tagged. ‘How did the statements go? You squeeze a confession?’
‘Hardly. The girlfriend is sure he didn’t off himself, and the young woman who found the body is sure he did. I’d like to send both to Credible Witness School.’ Claudia thumbed through the stack of bagged items: bedding, individual items of clothing, including the pair of women’s panties (Velvet had said forcefully that she owned no pair with violets on them), wineglass, wine bottles, the videotape that Whit had found.
‘Find anything interesting?’ she asked.
‘Not counting the dirty movies, no. No contraband.’
She smiled. Gardner could be a toad but he wasn’t a bad guy, just overimpressed with himself. Both the other single women at the police station pined to date him, although the attraction eluded Claudia. She ought to shove Velvet toward Gardner and away from a decent guy like Whit. She’d make Gardner’s day.
‘Delford – with all the tact of a fart in church – told me to treat this like a suicide.’
Gardner stopped piling the evidence into a case. ‘It looks like one.’
‘I know. But considering who this guy is, to automatically assume
…’
‘Well, Delford’s a man of strong opinions, but he’s solved practically every major case he’s ever had. He knows police work.’
‘He’s old friends with Lucinda Hubble. She won’t want her son’s movie career brought to light, and I frankly don’t blame her.’
Gardner shrugged again. ‘Look, Claudia. Delford clearly has confidence in you. If he didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be here.’
A sudden pang of embarrassment at having shown her doubt hit her. Gardner bent back to his work, not looking at her.
‘I know. Thanks. Can I give you a hand with the evidence case?’
‘Naw, I got it.’ He hoisted a box to his shoulder. ‘You coming?’
‘In a minute. I want another look around.’
Gardner headed out the door, grunting as he carried the box. ‘They’ve got Fox sitting out on the dock all night to watch the boat, make sure no one comes aboard.’
‘Great. Thanks, Eddie,’ she said.
In Pete’s bedroom, Claudia carefully flicked on a light, using the edge of her hand. Black fingerprint dust marked the most obvious spots: the light switch, the door handle, the metal nightstand table, where Gardner and the deputies helping out from the sheriff’s office had dusted and lifted prints. Thank God David wasn’t on duty. She didn’t want to see him up close and personal quite yet, and it would be impossible to avoid with her in the police department and him in the sheriff’s office.
The body and the bedding were gone. She opened the closet door. She pulled some of the files out of the box. The minutiae of everyday life: phone bills, store receipts, credit card slips, bank records, all haphazardly clumped together. Pete wasn’t rich, but he wasn’t destitute. He had a balance slightly over ten thousand dollars in his Van Nuys, California, account according to his most recent statement, and he’d opened a new account last week at the Texas Coastal Bank, Port Leo branch, with an opening balance of four thousand. She jotted down the Van Nuys address; she wanted to check with the police there about both Pete and Velvet. It bothered her that he was staying on a boat with ties to a criminal family. Such affiliations did not appear overnight with a snap of the fingers.
She was searching the main cabin when Gardner came back aboard.
‘Hey, Eddie, did you see a laptop computer?’ she asked.
Gardner inspected a handwritten inventory pulled from his pocket. ‘There was a small portable printer in the other room, but I didn’t see a computer.’
‘Help me look.’
Nothing turned up except some dust bunnies beneath a couch and a box of shotgun ammunition hidden in a back drawer.
‘Two people have told us Pete had a laptop and now he doesn’t,’ Claudia said.
They searched again, behind furniture, in closets, in cabinets, for another half hour.
‘I don’t think it’s here, Claudia.’
Claudia crossed her arms. ‘So where the hell is it?’
11
Early Tuesday morning Whit awoke to his father prodding at him with a thick finger.
‘Get up, little bit,’ Babe Mosley rumbled, and Whit was lost in a childhood moment, his father between wives, Whit being ordered to rise before dawn and fix Daddy a coffee with bourbon. Breakfast at the Mosleys’ had never been like in the cereal commercials.
Whit blinked at his father’s frown. ‘Shit. Did my alarm not go off?’ Hopefully he was still dreaming, if he was going to suffer being referred to as ‘little bit.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us last night?’ Babe demanded. Despite his childish nickname he was a big barrel of a man, close to six-five and two hundred fifty pounds. He boasted a full head of grayish blond hair and clear blue eyes, but the cherubic face had softened like a souring cheese, moldered more by the dozen-plus years he’d spent drunk. The vodka aged him more than the weight of raising six boys and marrying four wives. Years of sobriety, combined with an addiction to various fitness programs, had restored his vitality, but no medicine had erased the drunkard’s veins.
‘My son’s the goddamned judge – a job I got you, thank you kindly – and I have to hear that Pete Hubble is dead on the radio.’
Whit stumbled to the commode and luxuriated with a heavenly pee. Babe followed him to the doorway.
‘Daddy, I can’t talk about cases.’ Whit flushed the toilet and started the shower.
‘This is your golden opportunity, Whitman.’
Whit doffed his boxers and stepped into the hot spray. ‘Say what?’
‘Lucinda Hubble rules this county like Queen Bee Victoria. This story’s gonna be huge. It’s your chance to show the voters what you can do, boy.’
‘I thought that’s what I was doing for the past six months.’ Whit squirted shampoo into his hand and soaped his hair.
‘Yes, but this gets your name in the papers. Front page. You got to milk this, son. When you gonna do the inquest? You’ll want to do a formal one, not just issue a cause of death. Make sure the Corpus paper’s there. Get your photo taken a bunch, maybe at the crime scene. In your robe, and wear proper shoes for once. Issue press releases, all that.’ Babe rubbed his hands together. ‘That asswipe Buddy
Beere must be shitting bricks with all this terrific publicity you’re gonna get.’
‘You get this morning’s merit badge for good taste,’ Whit said. ‘A man is dead, you know.’
‘I’m sorry for Pete and the Hubbles – you know that. What the hell was Pete doing back anyway? Where’s he been?’
‘Working for the CIA,’ Whit answered above the roar of the shower, to give Babe a meaty morsel. ‘Something about nuclear release codes in Ukraine. Perhaps we shouldn’t tell Irina.’
‘You’re not amusing to your daddy.’
‘Oddly enough, making you laugh about a death case wasn’t on my to-do list today. I got breakfast at the Shell Inn with Patsy and Tim.’
Babe frowned. ‘You tell Georgie to quit slinging mud all over town about poor helpless Irina.’
‘News flash. You not only remarry again but you fund a competing cafe. Of course she’s pissed at you.’ Whit rinsed shampoo from his head and soap from his body. Babe handed him a towel.
‘Georgie’ll forgive me – she always does. Women are far better at forgiving than men could ever be,’ Babe said.
Whit thought of Faith Hubble and wondered if that was really true.
The Shell Inn was an establishment one might generously term a half-breed. The front of the restaurant offered serviceable meals, catering to the fishing crowd and the retirees who refused to slap down more than five bucks for a meat-and-two-vegetable plate. The back contained a funky, dark bar that boasted its own atmosphere – breezes of bourbon, mists of beer, warm fronts of tobacco smoke. For the old guard of Port Leo the Shell Inn, which had been in continuous business since 1907 except the five times it was nearly destroyed by hurricanes, was a basic requirement of life in town, up there with a newspaper and water service.
Georgie O’Connor Mosley perched by the cash register, sipping milky coffee and contemplating the Corpus Christi Caller-Times financial section. She had been Whit’s first stepmother, his mother’s oldest and dearest friend. Georgie and Babe had married more out of friendship and a mutual hope to provide six devastated boys a mother, but those reasons shriveled under the never-setting sun of reality. Georgie, relentlessly practical and blunt, and Babe, a roaring drunk still in love with an absent first wife, only lasted three stormy, legendary years. The six Mosley boys all loved Georgie without reserve. They knew the bullet she had taken for them. Babe had bought the Shell Inn for her the Christmas after their divorce, a parting gift, and Georgie kept the Mosley name to irritate him.
