Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

‘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.’