Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

Warm, friendly. Where the senator could meet with the common folk, show she was just a good old gal.

There were no pictures of her sons. A couple of Faith and Sam, both formal portraits, the kind given as Christmas gifts in gold frames. Faith smiled, but only like she’d just passed a CPA exam. Sam looked like he’d wandered out of a National Honor Society meeting, serious and bespectacled and boring. The perfect political grandson. Certainly the two sons had been failures in that regard.

A small stereo sat in the corner, playing soft solo piano music. Whit wandered over to the stereo, picked up the CD’s jewel box. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, played by Glenn Gould.

‘I find Bach a great comfort,’ Lucinda Hubble said from the doorway. She looked sunken and diminished. She wore a faded olive-green cardigan and a pair of old khakis, as though she might be loafing in a library or tending winter pansies in her flowerbeds.

‘Hello, Senator,’ Whit said. ‘I’m so very sorry about Pete.’

‘Thank you, honey.’ She cleared her throat and dabbed her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief. ‘These wells have just about run dry. I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but that was the governor and his wife on the phone.’ She said this with only the slightest hint of superiority.

She came and stood by Whit, her fingers playing air piano. ‘Do you hear Gould? He hums and breathes along as he plays. All that careful structure Gould builds, note by note, each one a key brick in a musical house, each note, each rest, played to his own exactitude, but still he can’t contain the passion he feels for the music.’ She switched the music off.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Whit said.

‘Pete hated classical music,’ she said. ‘He hated anything touched by beauty.’

Lucinda Hubble gestured at the chair on the other side of the desk, and he sat. She eased herself down into a heavy leather armchair.

‘Your daddy’s already called, and he and Irina have brought us a lovely casserole. It’s something Russian and quite unpronounceable, but I’m sure it’s delicious. So thoughtful. You thank them again for me, honey.’

‘Yes, ma’am, I will. And I won’t keep you long now. I just need to ask you some questions so I can make a determination on cause of death.’

‘Of course.’ She placed her hands, palm down, on the expansive smooth teak of the desk.

He wondered if she knew about him and Faith. She had given no sign – no sly smile, no slight frown of disapproval.

He led with a suggestion for suicide. ‘How would you describe Pete’s state of mind in the past few weeks?’

‘Depressed,’ Lucinda said. ‘He felt he had wasted his life because of the… particular career he had chosen.’

‘You knew about the porn?’

Lucinda flinched at the word but nodded. ‘I found out a couple of years ago. I called Pete at his home. He was apparently in the middle of shooting a film.’ She crumpled the handkerchief. ‘I could hear the women in the background. Laughing at me. Hollering about which one would get to appear in a scene with my son first.’ She touched at her blue eyeglasses. ‘Not what a mother ever wants to hear. I hung up. I told Faith. She already knew, she’d been shielding my so-delicate feelings. I was devastated, of course. I didn’t speak to him again until he came back to town.’

‘I think the press will find out,’ Whit said quietly.

‘Not from me, they won’t. And if they find out from you or from Detective Salazar, or any member of either of your offices, I will hath more fury than hell,’ Lucinda flared. ‘I can’t have Sam knowing about this. I just can’t.’

Not to mention the voters. ‘Do you think Velvet is going to stay quiet?’

‘I can’t control her.’

‘Did Pete say why he was coming home?’ Whit asked.

‘He said he no longer wished to pursue his acting career.’ Whit believed the words adult films or dirty movies or skin flicks were never going to pass her lips.

‘How did he plan on supporting himself?’

‘He didn’t say. I assumed he had savings, or could find legitimate work. He does know – knew – film production. Perhaps at a television studio in Corpus Christi or with Jabez Jones’s outfit.’

‘How much contact did you have with Pete after he returned to Port Leo?’

‘An hour, here and there,’ Lucinda said. ‘The chill had gone deep for years.’ She sank slightly into the bulk of the cardigan. ‘And selfishly, I did not want to be disappointed by him again. Pete thrives on disappointing others. I was happy to see him, but I wanted him to rehaul his life. I wasn’t willing to get too close until I thought he was sincere.’ Lucinda perceived the reaction in Whit’s face. ‘Perhaps I sound harsh, but mothers are mortal, too.’

‘No, I know it must have been tough for you. He told you nothing of this Corey film he planned?’

‘I didn’t know one word until Faith told me this morning. But I doubt Pete would have completed any real film. Bless his heart, he didn’t have the talent. The drive.’

‘I’m wondering why Pete chose Corey as a subject, after all these years.’

‘Penance, I suppose. He blamed himself for what happened to Corey.’

‘Why?’

‘Aren’t you the youngest of a whole passel of boys? Didn’t your brothers take care of you?’ She offered a wan smile.

‘Yeah, when they weren’t bossing me around or beating me up.’

Her smile faded. ‘Corey disappeared on a weekend when I was out of town on business. He vanished while he was on Pete’s watch, so to speak. Pete never forgave himself.’ She shrugged. ‘I think he’s been killing himself, slowly, for a long time. When certain people do wrong, they turn away from the world. Isolate themselves, slip on the hair shirt and self-destruct. It’s why he went into porn, and I think it eroded every bit of self-respect he had.’ She looked at Whit hard. ‘I’ve always believed you have to put your troubles behind you and soldier on.’

‘Maybe he came across new information about Corey’s disappearance. Like that Corey was still alive.’ It was a balloon to float.

The silence hung for nearly ten seconds. ‘I am certain Corey is dead.’

‘Why?’ Whit asked.

‘Because Corey would have contacted us if he was alive. He wouldn’t have let me suffer for all these years.’

‘Why did Corey run away from home?’

‘Don’t resurrect the other worst day of my life.’ For the first time she showed raw emotion, anger flaring her nostrils, her cheeks reddening.

Whit waited. Lucinda dragged her fingernails through her mop of red hair and gave a pained sigh.

‘I will never be able to author a book on good mothering, Judge. Taxpayers are easier to corral than willful children. Corey got involved with drinkers. Dopeheads. All to punish me for the time I was spending in Austin and the higher standards of behavior I expected from my boys. After their daddy died I let them run wild, do what they wanted, but once I was elected, they had to toe the line. It was not too much to ask of them. Pete tried, at least, but Corey slipped the leash like a wild dog.’

‘I know. I remember him, you know.’

‘Yes. He would have been about your age, now, wouldn’t he?’ She pondered Whit’s face wistfully.

‘You don’t think he’s living happily on a commune in Montana or a farm in Virginia?’

‘Does that really happen with most missing teenagers, Judge?’ Lucinda asked with a touch of frost. ‘I’d be overwhelmed to know Corey was in some idyllic retreat. Let me assure you the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to Corey is an ongoing thorn in my heart.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to Pete, Senator?’ Whit asked.