A Kiss Gone Bad (7 page)

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 café. 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.

‘Tell your daddy he should’ve listened to me about
those overseas stock funds,’ Georgie said as Whit entered. ‘I’m making a killing. I could buy and sell Babe’s ass.’

‘He’s more conservative with his money,’ Whit said.

‘I would think anyone who imports firm young former Communist flesh into his bed would be receptive to new ideas.’ Georgie
kissed his cheek – she smelled of lip balm and oranges – and steered him to his corner table where Patsy Duchamp and Tim O’Leary
sat.

‘No coffee for Whit, Georgie, until he gives me a quote,’ Patsy Duchamp said as Whit sat down. Patsy was the editor of the
Port Leo Mariner,
a biweekly paper, and like Whit she had trudged home carting an English degree from a prestigious college. Patsy’s hair was
as dark as a crow’s feathers; she had sharp, penetrating eyes; and she rationed her smiles.

‘No comment. Patsy,’ Whit said as Georgie sloshed steaming coffee into Whit’s cup.

‘Quote, please.’ Patsy’s breakfast had already arrived, and she stirred a pat of butter into her grits.

‘It looks like he died of a gunshot wound, but I’m not saying anything official until we get an autopsy report from Corpus.’

‘I heard it looked self-inflicted,’ Patsy said.

‘I for sure have no comment now.’

‘Then you’ll call me the moment you know what the ME says, anyway. Or you better,’ Patsy said. ‘Pretty please.’

‘When did you take a Pollyanna pill?’ Pete Hubble’s death might be the biggest story of the year, of the past five years,
especially if it was murder, and Patsy lived for news to cover beyond city council and navigation district meetings, fishing
tournaments, and high school football.

‘You talk to the senator yet?’ asked Tim O’Leary, the county attorney. Tim looked worn this morning.

‘No. Late night?’ Whit asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Too much merlot or too much Graham Greene last night?’ Whit asked. Tim only had two vices.

‘It was an Australian cabernet, and too much Greene is impossible,’ Tim said.

‘You two aren’t gonna start talking literature and ignore all this juicy news,’ Patsy said. ‘So let’s talk Pete Hubble.’

‘Actually, let’s not,’ Whit said. ‘Let’s talk about Corey Hubble.’

Patsy lowered her eggy fork. ‘Oh, I smell me an ongoing series of stories.’

‘Patsy, if I farted, would it be off the record?’ Whit asked.

Patsy looked stung. ‘Fine, we’re miles off the record.’

Whit glanced around. No one was seated close to their table, an orchestration of Georgie’s. ‘Tell me what you remember about
Corey Hubble.’

‘Annoying,’ Tim said.

‘A rotten little punk,’ Patsy said.

‘Never got over his daddy’s death,’ Tim agreed.

‘Mad at the world,’ Patsy added.

‘Pissed at his own shadow,’ Tim said.

‘A pothead,’ Patsy said. ‘He hung around with dopers, you know.’

‘I always thought he was gay. He hated sports.’ Tim might relish his thick Tolstoys and full-bodied Syrahs, but he also worshiped
football and fishing, preferences iron-cast in most male Coastal Bend genes.

‘Not gay,’ Patsy said. ‘Corey dated my cousin Marian. In a way that should have gotten them on Jerry Springer. They beat each
other up a couple of times. If memory serves, Marian told me Corey would diddle her for exactly one minute with a look of
incredible gratitude on his face and then slap her around.’ She lowered her voice.
‘And I heard once he used to torture cats and Lucinda sent him to a therapist in Corpus, but that might have been political
mudslinging. Cats are big with the retiree vote.’

‘Do you remember anything about when Corey vanished?’ Whit asked. His regular order of scrambled eggs, garlic cheese grits,
bacon, and biscuits arrived, and Patsy and Tim waited until the waitress had refilled their coffee cups and retreated.

‘People said he’d run away to embarrass his mother.’ Tim gave a hangover frown to Whit’s food. ‘When he never came back, then
I think everyone imagined he’d been murdered while hitchhiking or some other unpleasant end.’

Patsy nodded. ‘It was common knowledge Corey resented Lucinda’s career in politics. He’d already lost a father, and now here
was his mother throwing herself into the most time-consuming career possible. Probably he got involved with the wrong people
somewhere, South Padre or Galveston or Mexico, and ended up dead.’

Whit made a leap of faith that Patsy would stick to her word about being off the record. ‘Do you remember Corey and Jabez
Jones being particular friends?’

Tim faked puking. ‘It annoys me no end that what Port Leo is going to be known for on television is an ex-wrestler who performs
ab crunches while quoting Scripture.’

‘You know, if my memory’s not fading with age, Jabez was the last person to talk to Corey,’ Patsy said. ‘I covered it in the
high school paper.’

‘Could you do me a huge favor and dig up the clippings from when Corey vanished?’ Whit asked.

‘Nothing more you can say?’ Patsy asked.

‘No. Can I still have the clippings?’

‘This is why God made little retired ladies bored
enough to do schlepp work at the
Mariner.
Sure, but what will you do for me?’ Patsy asked.

‘I’ll call you as soon as I have prelim autopsy results,’ Whit promised.

Patsy smiled. Like the Aztec goddesses, blood placated her.

Claudia had just finished showering after four hours of fidgety sleep when the knock came at her door. She pulled on her robe,
wrapped her heavy black hair in a towel, and peered through the door’s security hole.

David.

She had not seen him since he walked alongside her down the county courthouse hallway, saying quietly,
Listen, I’m sorry you did this, Claud. You know I still love you.
Her attorney had tucked a hand on her elbow and steered her away, past the flyers and the benches and the secretary puzzling
over a soda choice at the Coke machine and out to the bright fall light, the morning haze burning to wisps over the bay. She
had walked in married and walked out free and clear. She had gotten in her car, suddenly flustered and near weeping, and driven
halfway across Port Leo toward the home they shared before she remembered she didn’t live there anymore.

But she did still live in Port Leo, and both she and David were peace officers. Why not grab the inevitable by the throat
and give it a good shake? She opened the door.

‘Morning,’ David Power said. He’d gotten his auburn hair cropped shorter than usual. He wore his Encina County deputy’s uniform,
and she noticed the creases were flattened. She had tended his uniform for him, since he’d burn his hand if he got within
ten feet of an iron. Dark circles daubed the fleshiness beneath his eyes, and he’d missed a patch of reddish bristle on his
jaw during his shave.

‘Good morning. What’s up?’
Keep it brief, keep it polite.

‘Just wanted to see if you were okay. I heard about the Hubble case.’

‘Short on sleep, but fine.’

David shifted his beige Stetson from one hand to the other. ‘You know, if y’all need help, the sheriff’s department, we’re
glad to assist.’

‘Thanks. It’s under control.’ She didn’t say anything further, and he massaged the brim of his hat, drumming his fingertips
against the band.

‘Everything okay in your new place?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, sure.’ She knew he wanted to be invited in, but she didn’t want him in the little space she had staked out for her
own. She drew the robe a little tighter around her front in atypical modesty.

His voice lowered. ‘Jesus, Claud, I’ve seen your skin before. Remember Padre?’

They had honeymooned on South Padre, the mightiest and most beautiful of the long chain of Texas barrier islands, and unfortunately
it had been the best time in the marriage, a week away from both their cloying families, a week away from car wrecks and burglaries
and speeding tickets. David loved to invoke Padre, as if teeth-chilling margaritas, orange-bright sunsets, and spine-rattling
sex could serve as the basis for the rest of their lives.

‘David …’

His blue eyes narrowed and his fleshy mouth thinned. ‘You’re alone, right?’

‘I told you there’s no one.’

‘Right. I never hit you. Took wonderful care of you. Never cheated on you. You just don’t love me anymore. Same old, same
old.’

‘Are you coming to check up on me, spy on me, or belittle me?’ She kept her voice neutral.

David Power’s jaw worked. ‘Check on you. Sorry. I crossed a line. It still hurts. It’s gonna hurt for … an indeterminate period
of time. I don’t want to hurt you back, Claudia.’

‘I’m sorry for your hurt. I am. But we’ve had this discussion a hundred times before, and there’s no point in rehashing.’

Her phone rang and she said, ‘Look, I’ve got to get going …’ and he said, ‘I need to ask you about something else …’ so she
shrugged and said, ‘Wait a sec …’ and hurried to the telephone.

‘Hello?’

‘Claudia Salazar?’ A throaty woman’s voice but brisk as a Marine.

‘Yes, who’s callling?’

‘Hold please,’ ordered Captain Brisk. Instead of Muzak there was a recorded, sleek baritone, with soft strains of ‘America
the Beautiful’ playing in the background. The voice intoned: ‘Proven leadership for the Texas Coastal Bend … Senator Lucinda
Hubble. Democrat. Moderate. Protecting our children. Protecting our elderly. Protecting our precious coastal ecology and protecting
our health care while protecting our economy.’ Lots of protection. Claudia wondered if the faithful automatically wore condoms
during rallies. ‘A former nurse. Senator Hubble especially understands the needs and concerns of our retiree population. Vote
November seventh to reelect Senator Lucinda Hub—’